feel free to try to vote him out next time and let democracy work
Voting no longer guarantees democratic-like representation in the USA. The 2000 prez elections saw that in full glory, corruption that would have caused a furore in most countries. There were a variety of fraudulent schemes in that campaign, but the one that takes the cake is the "database of felons" scheme covered by Greg Palast. Amazing how well this info was/is suppressed in the great media machine.
Stem-cell research policy from on-high will likely be highly partisan, influenced by a mixture of 'life-sciences' / pharmaceutical corporate back-room deals and a nod to the christian right doctrine necessary for the right optics to primary supporters. [see: "Iraq, reconstruction graft"]
Yes, "radical" -- in the same way that Charles Manson was a radical aesthete. But you're in reality referring to a very few fringe freaks, who get great media coverage because the news is a circus.
they probably think that the death of all humanity is ultimately a good thing...the word you're searching for is 'misanthropic' and yes some of the kookoo activists are deeply misanthropic, eg. Paul Watson. Misanthropes are as bad as Social Darwinists.
No being can stop using resources. It's simply a question of ecology. How much do you give back to the life-sustaining biosphere, it's vigor and diversity? Only robo-heads assume that technology must by definition consume increasingly vast amounts of resources. It's our sloppiness, technological youth, and immature economics (eg. GDP benefits from ecological disaster) that keeps us overusing and laying waste. (Sidestepping population debates here.)
Most environmentalists are all about appropriate technology, and want nothing more than society to act upon some of the basic principles of progress, such as "waste is a costly inefficiency" and "knowledge must complexify". That way we'll begin to understand chaotic systems like ecologies and develop cheaper, higher tech stuff that pollutes WAY less or not at all.
I think a bamboo bike in mass production would have to be pretty high-tech to succeed. And, like many environmentalists, I look forward to cleverly designed industry, cities, and social conditions--appropriate (sustainable) technology. It's conservative, applies the precautionary principle, but it's not technophobic, its really an argument about what technology and how to deploy it.
I was once (18 years ago) having lunch w/ someone I then found out was a gun-running Afghani mujahedeen (working indirectly with the CIA, but that's another story). He made the outrageous claim that there were more buddhists in the world than any other religion. When I protested with some rough stats, he replied: "Most christians don't act christian. Most muslims don't act muslim. But most buddhists act buddhist. It is a very practical guide to life."
Since this isn't 'natural' selection, but cultural, what are we really measuring with this process? I mean it's good unclean fun, but randomly seeded geek poetry will wind up being just that, no illusions, right?
Initially, the snippets remind me of unedited "l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e" poetry from the late '80s, but I suspect they'll be verging towards formal and stylistic standards like R.Frost or ee cummings, since that's what people got in school (and usually remember). I don't have faith that this will wind up with anything like the avant-garde direction that the newness of the generation technique suggests is possible.
There's a good tradition of last century's poets experimenting with generation techniques. Bryan Gyson and William Burroughs played with cutups, and someone's even automated the process with TextBlender Pro (disclaimer: haven't tried this one). I had a gas with this idea, and once had a month off so sequestered myself with a typewriter (yeah I'm getting old) and source texts by Buckminster Fuller, Nietzche, Attar, and some histories of WW2, in order to generate some centos for fun and non-profit (never published, needless to say).
William Carlos Williams claimed that poetry is a word machine:
To make two bold statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is redundant.
Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.
From: Williams's introduction to The Wedge, in Selected Essays of William Carlos Williams
Anyway, the Darwinian P. reports indicate that the process has a long way to go. So what will literary critics (before their descent into hell) claim about the validity and category of these poems? Is it just one more disintegration of the canon that comes with the post-post-modern post mortem? Will the poems stand the test of seven layers of meaning? O machine, wax!
Why isn't anyone mentioning Operation Northwoods? Seems to be prior art, if what the parent post insinuates is true. But it certainly confirms the theory of resorting to 'anything' to achieve total control, when you read the entire document... [Spoiler Alert!] a Joint Chiefs of Staff proposal to stage a series of terrorist attacks by Cubans to establish a pretext for invasion--40 years ago--and kept secret from allies and other top US military officials.
Really! I'd love to have confirmation of that assertion... funny thing is, the info about the hijackers that's available through the net all seems to me to be either spoon-fed from the government, or conspiracy theory, or avoids issues like their true origins, why their names weren't on the passenger lists (and which lists are real and which ones are um mistakes), and whether they're accounted for or not, instead assuming the premises of prior reportage.
This is a world-shattering, watershed event, yet has the poorest investigative climate I've ever seen for a major issue (vs. Lewinsky for instance).
So I wonder at how people come to firm conclusions about the hijackers, since I haven't been convinced by any one source.
You're right, I equated freedom from interference with a kind of protection. In fact, that is what Chapter 11 of NAFTA is all about -- expansive new rights for investors [corps, really] wildly beyond the rights of individuals, neighbourhoods, municipalities, regions, civil powers, and even nation states. A lot of people are freaked out by this trend of non-interference.
On the one hand, they regulate (er, interfere), on the other they protect from interference (er, award radical new freedoms). Splitting hairs, I guess.
"An uneducated populace is unable/unwilling to go out and provide for themselves, hence you have income disparity."
I'd like to test that theory, but don't have the time right now to do the literature search. My experience (hanging and working with millionaires and entrepeneurs, hanging and working with ne'er-do-well artists and slackers, living and working with the homeless/street kids/multi-generation impoverished) suggests to me that there are many educated loafers, and that many of the wealthiest are not there by merit; and that an education can often lead to pursuits other than the acquisition of personal wealth.
I've seen lots of folks who work their asses off doing fundamentally crucial work, and make $22K/yr, and I know plenty who make +$100K but mostly cruise, or put in long hours but it isn't really crucial work. This is the old problem of exchange value (for labour) not being rationalized with use value... never mind danger pay.
No-one's disproved the industrial theory of skimming surplus value of labour for profits to my satisfaction, if you know of such disproof please direct me to it.
"I also find the assertion of socialists that the government knows what's good for me better than I do insulting and extremely condescending." I couldn't agree with you more, except that I see that it is primarily 'conservative' governments who tell me what substances I can put in my body, who I can sleep with or marry, what I can watch or read, and who I can worship (or not).
On the other hand, since any society is implicitly interdependent, we share some of the costs of idiots who dump PCB's in their back yard or can't drive properly, so I'm glad that there's at least some regulation, e.g. the rules of the road! Stay on the right of the yellow line, eh! It's good for you!
Oh, Canada's gov isn't happy to protect corporations? How about Ethyl Corp. and Chapter 11 in the NAFTA?
There are many ways in which the Canadian government has (and must) put collective rights before that of the individual, we only got a Charter of Rights 20 years ago. But corporations also enjoy huge benefits over the individual in Canada, including enormous debt in unpaid taxes and large resource extraction rights without due local process.
No, regulated market capitalism is alive and well in Canada, despite ridiculous statements by propagandists.
Taxes aren't that bad here, especially when you factor in the cost of medical insurance. (I make ~$60k/yr CDN and pay about 28% taxes without loopholes, so duh!) For some, they're better than having an equivalent position in the USA, as they discover when they move down and experience user-pays-for-everything, and they move back to Canada for economic reasons. It all depends on cost-of-living in various regions, and even the region of Canada or US one moves to, as well as the income bracket you're in. I've found that the moderately wealthy complain about taxes consistently, if they're from a somewhat socialized industrial nation.
If I get cancer, I can still change jobs or provinces without losing my medical benefits or paying disproportionately. That's not commie, that's humane, you twit!
One other thing... gross disparity of income leads to other extremely expensive social ills, like massive prisons, health problems, badly educated populace, violence and insecurity, drug use, despair, riots, and extreme cultural stress. It's a hidden cost, and we canucks have our share of these problems. I think it's hilarious that 'Americans' consider us socialized pinkos!
Besides, isn't Robin Hood a hero? You presume that the rich never steal from the poor.
I Am Not A Liberal, I'm not even a federalist or any kind of supporter of the Canadian government... end qualifier.
Chretien has been in power for such a long time [longer than Trudeau!] for a number of reasons, not all of them because he's canny at manipulating party politics. He has a populist approach (how many national leaders regularly lampoon themselves on nationally broadcast comedy shows), he's a classic Liberal after the fashion of Trudeau in many respects, and the Canadian gov. under him has many international accomplishments to chalk up.
If you're referring to the resistance to join in the invasion of Iraq (while supporting them with reconnaisance and being a full member of the War on [anything we define as] Terrorism), then you aren't really paying attention to the International stage of politics as a whole. As a statesman who's been in elected power for a realllly long time, word is that he's respected.
Paul Martin will likely be the next PM, and chances are he'll be a Quisling to the Americans, so many Canadians are nervous, remembering how Mulroney sold us out in the same way.
"This looks to me like socialism at work under the guise of capitalism." -- First of all, let's get clear that all the North American (and industrialized "democracies'") economies are mixtures of both capitalism and socialism, in varying degrees. Don't they teach anything in Social Studies?
"...they take away the rights of businessmen to decide how they compete." -- More like 'limit' than 'take away' -- it's called regulation and it's the norm for all industry, practically everywhere, again in [hugely] varying degrees.
The issue here seems to be a mixture of the move to competition in the local phone markets (we're still mentally used to Utility Monopoly in most parts of Canada... and often fond of its simplicity) and a policy approach that considers online access as a kind of essential service, and therefore needing greater protections from leveraged competition that doesn't favour the consumer.
"It has nothing to do with what they are arming with, your visit to Switzerland proves that."
IANA[Sociologist], but your research method leaves something to be desired! It's easy to hypothesize that handguns carry a different level of physical and mental accessibility... automatic rifles are for coordinated defense/assault, handguns are for personal defense/assault. My suspicion is that it is more than an issue of a culture that accepts poverty [and I DIDN'T intend to suggest individual intelligence, you misquote me] and violence, but also is strongly influenced by a particular relationship to guns, one that includes the ideal of everyone with a piece at all times, with no acknowledgement of the laws of escalation.
In Switzerland, they don't carry guns around on their hips! What are you thinking, the wild west? The answer is NOT "extremely simple" -- and I think you've never lived there. Plus, the murder rate by guns isn't as low in Switzerland as other places that have restricted access to handguns, like Canada (I guess Canucks prefer knives or broken beer bottles).
I would be interested in knowing just which countries you've been in where the murder rate is astronomical compared to the USA. If you mean places that are an economic disaster, with widespread desperate poverty, well big surprise! But if you mean heavily industrialized nations, please enlighten.
"You're a criminal, you've got your gun. You know that the honest folks don't. Now how scared are you of sticking up a cafe?" -- Well, thank you for illustrating my point about culture perfectly. You exhibit an acceptance that crime carries an acceptable risk of lethal violence. I think that that is a cultural attitude that suggests societal immaturity, rather than an abhorrence of lethal violence... in other words, a culture where someone wants/needs to steal but is more likely unwilling to kill, will have a different relationship to guns -- "you" would be scared of sticking up a cafe because of the risk of killing someone! No it's not naive to think this, but it is dependent upon social and cultural conditions, everything from income disparity to racism to what's on the tube.
I remember being a spry 19 with a Eurailpass and a girlfriend living in Switzerland. When I got there to visit, I was profoundly struck by the culture around guns. I'd go to restaurants and there'd be rifles leaning up against the umbrella stand, and other kinds of casual behaviour with the weaponry of those in military service.
Maybe someone Swiss can throw perspective on this. The Swiss murder rate is low, gun ownership is very high [the stats I've seen are for handguns, but as in Canada a higher proportion of guns are rifles than in USA]. (I'm not going to karmawhore with links to stats--the gun debate uses stats like bullets, anyway--google away.)
Even in Canada, where we have very low handgun murder rates compared to our neighbour, we don't just leave rifles unattended in public spaces. What that spoke to me of was a trust that everyone else around is more or less responsible, understands and respects the rules around guns, and is not desperate.
Since the country has survived with great stability through some incredible historical pressures, I figure the trust wasn't naive. (Maybe things are different in the EU now.) They had/have a cultural understanding around guns and poverty, about getting along politically, perhaps, an expectation of honesty, smaller town sizes...?
Everyone was involved in public military service in some way, at various times. They certainly weren't a big melting pot at the time. Who knows. But it's obvious that gun proliferation is damaging to US society... Not because of the arming of the people, but what they're arming with, and why. Maybe gun advocates should also be anti-poverty activists, in order to achieve their goals.
it is the US governments policy of poking its nose into other peoples business and its evil foreign policy that is the only reason that most of Europe isn't speaking Russian/German right now and still has the right to free speech.
I'm sorry, but without belittling the central role of the USA in fighting WWII, your characterization just comes across as more propaganda.
The USA didn't enter the european theatre until Hitler declared war on them-- and that only after they lured Japan into conflict, despite repeated calls to arms from european allies. That doesn't really compare to the USA declaring war willy-nilly around the globe to support the building of a transnational hegemony.
While the principles of the US constitution may be admirable, and their military intervention welcomed by some, it doesn't make the administration's foreign policy democratic or freedom oriented. Is Afghanistan really freed? Who created the conditions for the Taliban's rise to power? As I said, do your research and justify your claim to a brain, or else do your propagandist duty. Does the price of democracy and freedom come at the expense of propping up or setting up most of the major tinpot dictators since WW2? or being constantly at war? What is it about american jingoism that demands a binary view of politics, so that you're either "with us or against us"?
Umm, because the U.S. government and its agencies have orchestrated the violent deaths of millions, and sanction the suffering of many millions more? The research isn't hard to conduct, just look for info on the CIA's covert wars, for example.
To those of us who respect democracy and freedom, the US propaganda rings pretty hollow once you've seen testimony from its defected agents, and follow the foreign policy track record.
Lifters are well and good, but that reeks of large-scale BS.
If you mean that lifters are a-grav, yeah, there seems to be some evidence that they're just really good ionizers, though I have trouble believing that the wind produced by ionization is strong enough to lift that much. But it hasn't really been studied in an adequately scientific manner, has it? At least not publicly. So you and I don't really know.
If you're talking about the Hutchison [note spelling] Effect, well it's pretty widely documented, and Hutchison himself doesn't claim to understand it or explain it precisely. And elevation of objects is just one of the possible effects. Again, it hasn't been studied publicly in any adequate way, though given the large amount of shady and military interest (and interference) Hutchison has received, someone with deep pockets is studying it closely, privately. It would be premature to label what he's discovered as 'antigravity', since again we don't have enough data.
Oh pshaw, go on. The movie isn't ruined, and the 'spoiler' is barely enough to give you even a hint of what happens. Really. Most of the audience has read the book multiple times, and so has much greater insight into the story than any shoddywood production can give. Even seeing the movie won't ruin the suspense of the book for you, as The Jackson greatly simplifies. So chill, and get into the spirit of it.
God was speaking to scientifically primitive people. If he mentioned aliens on other planets how would they take it? How would they write it? They didn't even have the words in their vocabulary.
Well, (s)He might have described it through the eyes of a prophet, like this: "I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north--an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures."
Von Daaniken I'm not, but that's pretty trippy testimony for something that's canon.
If you're a pro or semi-pro, and actually pay for the software and use it to make money, a few hundred bucks is just a penny-ante investment in greater productivity. The economics of using FCP are excellent; Premiere is, well, expensive, as anyone who's struggled with its nasty synch problems for long clips and PCI firewire card compatibility knows well. Plus, there's no contest in the interface department, and I still use a copy of Premiere 2.1 on an old clunker for fun, as well as using up to Premiere 6 on both platforms and FCP 3. You get how expensive Premiere is to run over the course of years when you try teaching newbies to use it, as opposed to FCP.
Basically, you'd make back that few hundred dollars in no time, then start making money, if FCP worked better for you. Productivity is the real $$$.
I can legally drive a car, license a gun, fink on my sodomite neighbors, or practice dubious quack health care of various kinds, all of which gives me some degree of control over the bodies of others. But I am prohibited from obtaining or using a vast array of substances, many of which are less toxic than aspirin.
We favour coercive control over others' bodies to allowing individual freedoms with our own bodies.
It isn't just about the brain/mind. Prohibition is also about offering your entire body up to the State, under the guise of paternalism.
Given that human culture often evolves in a way catalyzed by hallucinogenics, prohibition may also be part of a method to control the overall direction of cultural development with sinister motives. [end paranoid transmission]
Then why do I have an appendix? (Or slim body hairs?)
We don't know; overly reductionist thinking has led us to believe that vestigial body parts have no function, but some evidence suggests that the appendix is integral (though obviously not essential) to the immune system. Debates are out there on this topic, google it.
Likewise with the lack of abundant human body hair. The only other mammals with hair like ours (forget the head for a moment) are either acquatic (from hippos to cetaceans) or subterranean. Based on this and other evidence, some hypothesize that we spent 5+ million years in the swamps at one point in our evolutionary history, which would answer your question. I always thought it strange, when I was a teenager and swimming about 12km/day, that jungle/savanna primates could happily, even obsessively, swim so much and far, so maybe there's something to it.
The face is a human's primary means of identification and emotional communication--a clearer face is an obvious evolutionary advantage, within the species. --Then why do I have to scrape my face every morning? Some evolutionary joke means that if I don't, I'll soon be sucking on last week's eggs and tripping over neverending beard, something chicks don't dig. Maybe beards (and head hair) are ways of ensuring that we use sharp implements -- blame it on the black monolith...
If this kind of stuff gives you a charge, you HAVE to check out Paul Pietsch's work on trying to relate brain to mind. He swaps brains in amphibians, mushes them up, etc., and watches the wee beasties more or less get along.
I thought of this because of the question raised in the article about identity: "It probably would change people's ideas of themselves, to say nothing of their ideas of artistic talent."
Another interesting angle is to look into the way the brain may rely on quantum processes... Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell has done some interesting, if nigh-kooky, summaries of work on this.
"The playing field is not level? That is ridiculous."
Please. Do you really think that all the money spent on marketing and strategic sales/distribution agreements are for nought? Marketing is where the bulk of spending in psych research is going [well, maybe the military, but that's black-box stuff], because it works.
Show me the OSS stuff on the shelves, why was/is it so hard to try to avoid paying MS tax when buying hardware, explain to me why the anti-trust decisions turned into travesties, show me how OSS is leveraging its distribution/mindshare to squeeze out competitors and subvert standards.
OSS is not free. You have to support it with trained professionals. Support is expensive, but seems less so when everyone has to have the same stuff on their drives.
Slashdot Mirror
Voting no longer guarantees democratic-like representation in the USA. The 2000 prez elections saw that in full glory, corruption that would have caused a furore in most countries. There were a variety of fraudulent schemes in that campaign, but the one that takes the cake is the "database of felons" scheme covered by Greg Palast. Amazing how well this info was/is suppressed in the great media machine.
Stem-cell research policy from on-high will likely be highly partisan, influenced by a mixture of 'life-sciences' / pharmaceutical corporate back-room deals and a nod to the christian right doctrine necessary for the right optics to primary supporters. [see: "Iraq, reconstruction graft"]
Well, as you said, feel free to "try."
they probably think that the death of all humanity is ultimately a good thing...the word you're searching for is 'misanthropic' and yes some of the kookoo activists are deeply misanthropic, eg. Paul Watson. Misanthropes are as bad as Social Darwinists.
No being can stop using resources. It's simply a question of ecology. How much do you give back to the life-sustaining biosphere, it's vigor and diversity? Only robo-heads assume that technology must by definition consume increasingly vast amounts of resources. It's our sloppiness, technological youth, and immature economics (eg. GDP benefits from ecological disaster) that keeps us overusing and laying waste. (Sidestepping population debates here.)
Most environmentalists are all about appropriate technology, and want nothing more than society to act upon some of the basic principles of progress, such as "waste is a costly inefficiency" and "knowledge must complexify". That way we'll begin to understand chaotic systems like ecologies and develop cheaper, higher tech stuff that pollutes WAY less or not at all.
I think a bamboo bike in mass production would have to be pretty high-tech to succeed. And, like many environmentalists, I look forward to cleverly designed industry, cities, and social conditions--appropriate (sustainable) technology. It's conservative, applies the precautionary principle, but it's not technophobic, its really an argument about what technology and how to deploy it.
I was once (18 years ago) having lunch w/ someone I then found out was a gun-running Afghani mujahedeen (working indirectly with the CIA, but that's another story). He made the outrageous claim that there were more buddhists in the world than any other religion. When I protested with some rough stats, he replied: "Most christians don't act christian. Most muslims don't act muslim. But most buddhists act buddhist. It is a very practical guide to life."
Initially, the snippets remind me of unedited "l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e" poetry from the late '80s, but I suspect they'll be verging towards formal and stylistic standards like R.Frost or ee cummings, since that's what people got in school (and usually remember). I don't have faith that this will wind up with anything like the avant-garde direction that the newness of the generation technique suggests is possible.
There's a good tradition of last century's poets experimenting with generation techniques. Bryan Gyson and William Burroughs played with cutups, and someone's even automated the process with TextBlender Pro (disclaimer: haven't tried this one). I had a gas with this idea, and once had a month off so sequestered myself with a typewriter (yeah I'm getting old) and source texts by Buckminster Fuller, Nietzche, Attar, and some histories of WW2, in order to generate some centos for fun and non-profit (never published, needless to say).
William Carlos Williams claimed that poetry is a word machine:
- To make two bold statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is redundant.
Anyway, the Darwinian P. reports indicate that the process has a long way to go. So what will literary critics (before their descent into hell) claim about the validity and category of these poems? Is it just one more disintegration of the canon that comes with the post-post-modern post mortem? Will the poems stand the test of seven layers of meaning? O machine, wax!Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character. From: Williams's introduction to The Wedge, in Selected Essays of William Carlos Williams
"ALL the hijackers came here LEGALLY!"
Really! I'd love to have confirmation of that assertion... funny thing is, the info about the hijackers that's available through the net all seems to me to be either spoon-fed from the government, or conspiracy theory, or avoids issues like their true origins, why their names weren't on the passenger lists (and which lists are real and which ones are um mistakes), and whether they're accounted for or not, instead assuming the premises of prior reportage.
This is a world-shattering, watershed event, yet has the poorest investigative climate I've ever seen for a major issue (vs. Lewinsky for instance).
So I wonder at how people come to firm conclusions about the hijackers, since I haven't been convinced by any one source.
You're right, I equated freedom from interference with a kind of protection. In fact, that is what Chapter 11 of NAFTA is all about -- expansive new rights for investors [corps, really] wildly beyond the rights of individuals, neighbourhoods, municipalities, regions, civil powers, and even nation states. A lot of people are freaked out by this trend of non-interference.
On the one hand, they regulate (er, interfere), on the other they protect from interference (er, award radical new freedoms). Splitting hairs, I guess.
"An uneducated populace is unable/unwilling to go out and provide for themselves, hence you have income disparity."
I'd like to test that theory, but don't have the time right now to do the literature search. My experience (hanging and working with millionaires and entrepeneurs, hanging and working with ne'er-do-well artists and slackers, living and working with the homeless/street kids/multi-generation impoverished) suggests to me that there are many educated loafers, and that many of the wealthiest are not there by merit; and that an education can often lead to pursuits other than the acquisition of personal wealth.
I've seen lots of folks who work their asses off doing fundamentally crucial work, and make $22K/yr, and I know plenty who make +$100K but mostly cruise, or put in long hours but it isn't really crucial work. This is the old problem of exchange value (for labour) not being rationalized with use value... never mind danger pay.
No-one's disproved the industrial theory of skimming surplus value of labour for profits to my satisfaction, if you know of such disproof please direct me to it.
"I also find the assertion of socialists that the government knows what's good for me better than I do insulting and extremely condescending." I couldn't agree with you more, except that I see that it is primarily 'conservative' governments who tell me what substances I can put in my body, who I can sleep with or marry, what I can watch or read, and who I can worship (or not).
On the other hand, since any society is implicitly interdependent, we share some of the costs of idiots who dump PCB's in their back yard or can't drive properly, so I'm glad that there's at least some regulation, e.g. the rules of the road! Stay on the right of the yellow line, eh! It's good for you!
Oh, Canada's gov isn't happy to protect corporations? How about Ethyl Corp. and Chapter 11 in the NAFTA?
There are many ways in which the Canadian government has (and must) put collective rights before that of the individual, we only got a Charter of Rights 20 years ago. But corporations also enjoy huge benefits over the individual in Canada, including enormous debt in unpaid taxes and large resource extraction rights without due local process.
No, regulated market capitalism is alive and well in Canada, despite ridiculous statements by propagandists.
Can't resist a good troll...
Taxes aren't that bad here, especially when you factor in the cost of medical insurance. (I make ~$60k/yr CDN and pay about 28% taxes without loopholes, so duh!) For some, they're better than having an equivalent position in the USA, as they discover when they move down and experience user-pays-for-everything, and they move back to Canada for economic reasons. It all depends on cost-of-living in various regions, and even the region of Canada or US one moves to, as well as the income bracket you're in. I've found that the moderately wealthy complain about taxes consistently, if they're from a somewhat socialized industrial nation.
If I get cancer, I can still change jobs or provinces without losing my medical benefits or paying disproportionately. That's not commie, that's humane, you twit!
One other thing... gross disparity of income leads to other extremely expensive social ills, like massive prisons, health problems, badly educated populace, violence and insecurity, drug use, despair, riots, and extreme cultural stress. It's a hidden cost, and we canucks have our share of these problems. I think it's hilarious that 'Americans' consider us socialized pinkos!
Besides, isn't Robin Hood a hero? You presume that the rich never steal from the poor.
That's ridiculous! Mod parent as troll please.
I Am Not A Liberal, I'm not even a federalist or any kind of supporter of the Canadian government... end qualifier.
Chretien has been in power for such a long time [longer than Trudeau!] for a number of reasons, not all of them because he's canny at manipulating party politics. He has a populist approach (how many national leaders regularly lampoon themselves on nationally broadcast comedy shows), he's a classic Liberal after the fashion of Trudeau in many respects, and the Canadian gov. under him has many international accomplishments to chalk up.
If you're referring to the resistance to join in the invasion of Iraq (while supporting them with reconnaisance and being a full member of the War on [anything we define as] Terrorism), then you aren't really paying attention to the International stage of politics as a whole. As a statesman who's been in elected power for a realllly long time, word is that he's respected.
Paul Martin will likely be the next PM, and chances are he'll be a Quisling to the Americans, so many Canadians are nervous, remembering how Mulroney sold us out in the same way.
"This looks to me like socialism at work under the guise of capitalism." -- First of all, let's get clear that all the North American (and industrialized "democracies'") economies are mixtures of both capitalism and socialism, in varying degrees. Don't they teach anything in Social Studies?
"...they take away the rights of businessmen to decide how they compete." -- More like 'limit' than 'take away' -- it's called regulation and it's the norm for all industry, practically everywhere, again in [hugely] varying degrees.
The issue here seems to be a mixture of the move to competition in the local phone markets (we're still mentally used to Utility Monopoly in most parts of Canada... and often fond of its simplicity) and a policy approach that considers online access as a kind of essential service, and therefore needing greater protections from leveraged competition that doesn't favour the consumer.
"It has nothing to do with what they are arming with, your visit to Switzerland proves that."
IANA[Sociologist], but your research method leaves something to be desired! It's easy to hypothesize that handguns carry a different level of physical and mental accessibility... automatic rifles are for coordinated defense/assault, handguns are for personal defense/assault. My suspicion is that it is more than an issue of a culture that accepts poverty [and I DIDN'T intend to suggest individual intelligence, you misquote me] and violence, but also is strongly influenced by a particular relationship to guns, one that includes the ideal of everyone with a piece at all times, with no acknowledgement of the laws of escalation.
In Switzerland, they don't carry guns around on their hips! What are you thinking, the wild west? The answer is NOT "extremely simple" -- and I think you've never lived there. Plus, the murder rate by guns isn't as low in Switzerland as other places that have restricted access to handguns, like Canada (I guess Canucks prefer knives or broken beer bottles).
I would be interested in knowing just which countries you've been in where the murder rate is astronomical compared to the USA. If you mean places that are an economic disaster, with widespread desperate poverty, well big surprise! But if you mean heavily industrialized nations, please enlighten.
"You're a criminal, you've got your gun. You know that the honest folks don't. Now how scared are you of sticking up a cafe?" -- Well, thank you for illustrating my point about culture perfectly. You exhibit an acceptance that crime carries an acceptable risk of lethal violence. I think that that is a cultural attitude that suggests societal immaturity, rather than an abhorrence of lethal violence... in other words, a culture where someone wants/needs to steal but is more likely unwilling to kill, will have a different relationship to guns -- "you" would be scared of sticking up a cafe because of the risk of killing someone! No it's not naive to think this, but it is dependent upon social and cultural conditions, everything from income disparity to racism to what's on the tube.
Maybe someone Swiss can throw perspective on this. The Swiss murder rate is low, gun ownership is very high [the stats I've seen are for handguns, but as in Canada a higher proportion of guns are rifles than in USA]. (I'm not going to karmawhore with links to stats--the gun debate uses stats like bullets, anyway--google away.)
Even in Canada, where we have very low handgun murder rates compared to our neighbour, we don't just leave rifles unattended in public spaces. What that spoke to me of was a trust that everyone else around is more or less responsible, understands and respects the rules around guns, and is not desperate.
Since the country has survived with great stability through some incredible historical pressures, I figure the trust wasn't naive. (Maybe things are different in the EU now.) They had/have a cultural understanding around guns and poverty, about getting along politically, perhaps, an expectation of honesty, smaller town sizes...?
Everyone was involved in public military service in some way, at various times. They certainly weren't a big melting pot at the time. Who knows. But it's obvious that gun proliferation is damaging to US society... Not because of the arming of the people, but what they're arming with, and why. Maybe gun advocates should also be anti-poverty activists, in order to achieve their goals.
I'm sorry, but without belittling the central role of the USA in fighting WWII, your characterization just comes across as more propaganda.
The USA didn't enter the european theatre until Hitler declared war on them-- and that only after they lured Japan into conflict, despite repeated calls to arms from european allies. That doesn't really compare to the USA declaring war willy-nilly around the globe to support the building of a transnational hegemony.
While the principles of the US constitution may be admirable, and their military intervention welcomed by some, it doesn't make the administration's foreign policy democratic or freedom oriented. Is Afghanistan really freed? Who created the conditions for the Taliban's rise to power? As I said, do your research and justify your claim to a brain, or else do your propagandist duty. Does the price of democracy and freedom come at the expense of propping up or setting up most of the major tinpot dictators since WW2? or being constantly at war? What is it about american jingoism that demands a binary view of politics, so that you're either "with us or against us"?
Umm, because the U.S. government and its agencies have orchestrated the violent deaths of millions, and sanction the suffering of many millions more? The research isn't hard to conduct, just look for info on the CIA's covert wars, for example.
To those of us who respect democracy and freedom, the US propaganda rings pretty hollow once you've seen testimony from its defected agents, and follow the foreign policy track record.
If you mean that lifters are a-grav, yeah, there seems to be some evidence that they're just really good ionizers, though I have trouble believing that the wind produced by ionization is strong enough to lift that much. But it hasn't really been studied in an adequately scientific manner, has it? At least not publicly. So you and I don't really know.
If you're talking about the Hutchison [note spelling] Effect, well it's pretty widely documented, and Hutchison himself doesn't claim to understand it or explain it precisely. And elevation of objects is just one of the possible effects. Again, it hasn't been studied publicly in any adequate way, though given the large amount of shady and military interest (and interference) Hutchison has received, someone with deep pockets is studying it closely, privately. It would be premature to label what he's discovered as 'antigravity', since again we don't have enough data.
Oh pshaw, go on. The movie isn't ruined, and the 'spoiler' is barely enough to give you even a hint of what happens. Really. Most of the audience has read the book multiple times, and so has much greater insight into the story than any shoddywood production can give. Even seeing the movie won't ruin the suspense of the book for you, as The Jackson greatly simplifies. So chill, and get into the spirit of it.
Well, (s)He might have described it through the eyes of a prophet, like this: "I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north--an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures."
Von Daaniken I'm not, but that's pretty trippy testimony for something that's canon.
If you're a pro or semi-pro, and actually pay for the software and use it to make money, a few hundred bucks is just a penny-ante investment in greater productivity. The economics of using FCP are excellent; Premiere is, well, expensive, as anyone who's struggled with its nasty synch problems for long clips and PCI firewire card compatibility knows well. Plus, there's no contest in the interface department, and I still use a copy of Premiere 2.1 on an old clunker for fun, as well as using up to Premiere 6 on both platforms and FCP 3. You get how expensive Premiere is to run over the course of years when you try teaching newbies to use it, as opposed to FCP.
Basically, you'd make back that few hundred dollars in no time, then start making money, if FCP worked better for you. Productivity is the real $$$.
I can legally drive a car, license a gun, fink on my sodomite neighbors, or practice dubious quack health care of various kinds, all of which gives me some degree of control over the bodies of others. But I am prohibited from obtaining or using a vast array of substances, many of which are less toxic than aspirin.
We favour coercive control over others' bodies to allowing individual freedoms with our own bodies.
It isn't just about the brain/mind. Prohibition is also about offering your entire body up to the State, under the guise of paternalism.
Given that human culture often evolves in a way catalyzed by hallucinogenics, prohibition may also be part of a method to control the overall direction of cultural development with sinister motives. [end paranoid transmission]
We don't know; overly reductionist thinking has led us to believe that vestigial body parts have no function, but some evidence suggests that the appendix is integral (though obviously not essential) to the immune system. Debates are out there on this topic, google it.
Likewise with the lack of abundant human body hair. The only other mammals with hair like ours (forget the head for a moment) are either acquatic (from hippos to cetaceans) or subterranean. Based on this and other evidence, some hypothesize that we spent 5+ million years in the swamps at one point in our evolutionary history, which would answer your question. I always thought it strange, when I was a teenager and swimming about 12km/day, that jungle/savanna primates could happily, even obsessively, swim so much and far, so maybe there's something to it.
The face is a human's primary means of identification and emotional communication--a clearer face is an obvious evolutionary advantage, within the species. --Then why do I have to scrape my face every morning? Some evolutionary joke means that if I don't, I'll soon be sucking on last week's eggs and tripping over neverending beard, something chicks don't dig. Maybe beards (and head hair) are ways of ensuring that we use sharp implements -- blame it on the black monolith...
I thought of this because of the question raised in the article about identity: "It probably would change people's ideas of themselves, to say nothing of their ideas of artistic talent."
Another interesting angle is to look into the way the brain may rely on quantum processes... Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell has done some interesting, if nigh-kooky, summaries of work on this.
"The playing field is not level? That is ridiculous."
Please. Do you really think that all the money spent on marketing and strategic sales/distribution agreements are for nought? Marketing is where the bulk of spending in psych research is going [well, maybe the military, but that's black-box stuff], because it works.
Show me the OSS stuff on the shelves, why was/is it so hard to try to avoid paying MS tax when buying hardware, explain to me why the anti-trust decisions turned into travesties, show me how OSS is leveraging its distribution/mindshare to squeeze out competitors and subvert standards.
OSS is not free. You have to support it with trained professionals. Support is expensive, but seems less so when everyone has to have the same stuff on their drives.
However, I agree with all your other statements.