You're joking, right? Nudity taboos are based in religion? Boy, have you got a lot to learn about religion!
And civilization is a movement away from superstition and towards rationality and science? I think you should look at the history of civilization some more. Civilization has existed for nearly 10000 years (or a bit more, opinions are divided). For a small minority of the population of the world, for no more than the last 1000 years, has civilization equated even a little bit with rationality and science.
Hate to disappoint you, but civilization (based, at least, on history) is more about art than science.
Also I don't think you'd find too many people who think that administration has not rolled back more rights then any other in recent history.
Actually, there seem to be lots. Even the Deomcrats' hero WJ Clinton worked at it. DMCA, anyone? SB Copyright Law (or whatever it is really called). His attempt to nationalize health care (which failed. Not yet sure whether I am happy about that or not). Ugly Rifle Ban (aka Assault Weapons Ban - did you know that the full automatic versions of every weapon banned by that law were still perfectly legal under that law - only the semi-auto versions were affected). As examples.
The Patriot Act had some effect on Civil Liberties. Not much, but some. Notice how little howling there is about it, compared, for instance, to Nixon's Wage/Price Controls? Or Roosevelt's Wage/Price Controls, for that matter.
Abortion funding may have been cut (I prefer to read the laws rather than the newspapers' descriptions, so I'm not sure about that one yet), but that isn't necessarily a matter of religion. Religious reasons are the most common given for opposing abortion, but they aren't the only reason (I oppose abortion, and am not especially religious, and not fundamentalist at all).
Hmm, can't think of anything else that has been done to roll back civil liberties under Bush or Clinton off the top of my head. Can't see where most of Bush's have been based on religious fundamentalism, either.
Just remember, disagreeing with you does NOT make someone opposed to science, anymore than you disageeing with me makes you opposed to science.
Metairie has the same population density, and much the same demogaphics as New Orleans. They are about the same size. New Orleans has a good year when it has only 200 murders. Metairie has a bad year when it has 20.
Are you suggesting that cities intrinsically have high crime rates? Seems an odd claim for what is supposed to be the centerpost of our civilization.
Or are you suggesting that poverty causes crime? I have heard that belief espoused before, but thought that it had been debunked by counterexample - for instance, rural Mississippi is one of the poorer parts of the country - it's crime rate is no more than national average, last I checked.
Didn't work too well, then. People sue Police Departments all the time. Just not for failure to protect them, since that's the one thing they CANNOT sue for.
By the by, self-defense is NOT "taking the law into your own hands". Again, read up on your Supremes.
you could always count on Our Hero (tm) to blow away the Bad Guy(tm) who was threatening a woman.
So another moral of these TV shows was that women are helpless little things?
Never watched Gunsmoke, I see. Miss Kitty did in a few Bad Guys (tm) in her time. No, most Westerns didn't portray women as "helpless", any more than most detective shows did. Certainly, there were "helpless" women on these shows, but there were also "helpless" men (though we much concede that "helpless" men were described in less flattering terms than "helpless" women were).
In case you don't remember, Miss Kitty was the local saloonkeeper in Dodge. That also made her the local Madame, but that was quietly overlooked in the show.
Neither is "what you think is right" and "Right". A vigilante is a danger to everyone, and it is a good thing that these TV shows remind us that vigilantes often kill inoccent people.
Neither is it true that what YOU think is right is necessarily Right. And, no, the classic Westerns didn't actually show much, if any, killing of innocent people (read: men - within the genre, killing a woman was "right out", unless she were, herself, a serious Bad Guy (tm), and even then it was unlikely). What they tended to show was Bad Guys (tm) killing innocents, and Good Guys (tm) killing/capturing Bad Guys (tm).
It's easy to bitch about human-made systems; we aren't perfect.
And yet...I don't bitch about human-made systems much. The Police have, in the occasions I have had reason to deal with them (in four or five jurisdictions), been unfailingly courteous and helpful (with one exception - that particular guy was an ass - but it was 4 in the morning, and most people are asses then). I recognize, however, that that won't help me if someone breaks into my home - they don't patrol close enough to respond in time to make a difference.
I am, by the way, a big believer in the deterrent value of firearms - I don't believe that using one is at all necessary to prevent a crime, if you are prepared to use one if needed.
But the idea of everyone carrying around a gun and killing any one who commits a crime is much more scary then the problems of the police.
Does it ever bother you that the parts of the country with the highest gun ownership rates tend to have the lowest crime rates? Washington DC and nearby Virginia are a classic example.
You've obviously not kept up on your Supremes. Quite a few years back, they ruled that the police have no obligation to protect any member of society from crime (This in response to a lawsuit brought against a police department). The police are reposnsible to protect society as a whole, not any particular member of it.
I can use all of my senses searching for information in printed books
Really? I've never gotten into tasting my books, or listening to them. I also don't do braille, which limits my ability to use me sense of touch to search for information in a book. And while books do have an odor about them, I've never been able to key the odor of a page to the information on that page. You, sir, are a profoundly skilled man, to be able to search in your books by touch, smell, taste, and sound....
Harold Bloom says that Shakespeare "invented the Human" -- that his plays were the first time characters with rich inner lives, complicated motivations, conflicts, and everything else that we think of as "Human" showed up in literature.
Harold Bloom is full of it. The Iliad and Odyssey come to mind.
Not "post-revolutionary", per se. The decline in American literacy seems to have started with compulsory schooling, in the second half of the 19th century.
There have been few books I have read more than once and LOTR is one of them
There are a great many books I have read more than once. Lord of the Rings is one of them. Though I haven't actually read it in many years - once I had it momeorized, there was no point;)
I am indifferent to TV violence or sex, since I don't watch TV, and haven't for years.
However, allowing sex/violence on TV is NOT a sign of the advance of civilization. Nor is it a sign of the decline of civilization. Nor is it much related to religion (the people opposed to sex on TV are often religious, the people opposed to violence are often not).
And I haven't seen this administration to be more hellbent on rllingback civil liberties than any in the past. Frankly, they all do this to the extent they can get away with it.
Fact is, the evidence show that people will buy $100 paper copies of books that they can get for free.
I'm confused. That's pretty much what he said. That people are paying $95.24 for a book that is also freely available online. He also says that the Amazon page selling the book for $95.24 even gives directions as to where to download it free.
No. Baen Books reserves "commercial rights" only. It does not prevent you from making backups, giving them away, sharing them with anyone. Just with making money off of it.
If publishers started to give out a CD that had their book on it (the publishing proofs would be best) along a purchased book (along with a nominal fee of a couple dollars tacked on to the price of the book or even free) people would equate an ebook with a purchase and with a real product equal to a book. That way they'd have both a hard copy and a copy that was transferrable to a harddrive or a portable device.
Two (that I know of) of Baen Books recent offerings have included CD's with the e-version of the book, plus 30-50 other ebook titles, some from the Free Library, some not. Cost for the book was the same as for the other books not so equipped.
Course, the CD *did* have a warning that it was included not out of the goodness of the the Publisher's heart. It was, according to the printed warning, part of a subtle attempt to expose you to other books sold by Baen, so that you would be tempted to buy them, and thus increase the Publisher's profit....
Call me nostalgic, call me romantic, call me old-fashioned
You're an old-fashioned, nostalgic romantic. Does that make you feel better?
I, and my several thousand books, tend to agree. Though I *do* read ebooks on my Palm, my laptop, my PC, from time to time. I get mine from Baen Books, by the way. Webscriptions is a wonderful thing, and the Free Library as well.
but I think there's something soul-satisfyingly and fundamentally *right* about books
"It's the smell." -- Rupert Giles.
Yes, there IS something fundamentally *right* about "real books". I don't think ebooks will ever completely replace books.
That said, get over the encryption thing, and the use restriction thing, and I'll force myself to be content with just ebooks, as I am now with the 100 or so I already have.
TV shows WERE scripted! Some were scripted to produce laughs at certain places, some to make people happy or sad when certain events happened. And some were scripted where the bad guy got his.
Most likely, though, Westerns were scripted that way because having the Good Guy(tm) behave in an obnoxious manner would make him not a Good Guy(tm). Just as making the Bad Guy(tm) behave nobly would make his badness questionable. Note that there WERE episodes of some Westerns where the Bad Guy(tm) behaved nobly. Usually those were the episodes that were resolved without violence (other than the initial accidental/misunderstood violence that provoked the conflict.
Violence is part of "entertainment" because it is one of the easiest ways of illustrating vices, virtues, and conflicts. Guns are especially apt for this, since it requires nothing other than a draw, a shot, some fake blood, and a fall. Unlike, say, swords, which look fake as all hell anywhere they are used - sticking a sword all the way through someone was pretty hard to do convincingly back in the day.
One of the virtues (at least in the USA) is to stand up for oneself, rather than running to mommy (or the nanny state). Considering that you beleive that censorship is bad, you seem to believe you are capable of doing right without running to the Government for aid, correct? The Good Guy(tm) in a Western was much the same way - the Law couldn't protect him (it can't protect you either, according to the US Supremes), so he defended himself. With his fists if possible, with a gun if necessary.
Today, we seem to believe we are "above" violence. We should let the Law handle things that would have been handled with violence. A commendable attitude. Of course, this discussion, as so many others on/. is about people complaining and whining that the law is wrong/evil/bad/high-cholesterol/whatever. If the Law is such sure protection, why complain about it? Or is the Law only a shield for the individual when the Law is one you personally approve of? If so, there is always room for taking the law into your own hands. With a computer, a CD/DVD burner, a P2P network, a gun. Just depends on the law....
I own firearms. I don't talk about using them at all, except when I go to the range. Then I usually say something like "I'm going to the range to blow holes in some targets. Anyone want to go along?" I don't expect to need to use one in self defense, though there were a couple times in the last fifteen years when it came tolerably close. I'm not sure I'm mentally prepared to do so, and won't know until and unless the crunch comes (and if anyone who hasn't been in combat tells you otherwise, they're lying to you and themselves). But I AM physically prepared - I have the option of defending myself with the most effective weapon for the purpose, if the situation should come up.
USSR's flights were irrelevant to our flight safety record. We didn't share technology with them, nor they with us.
That said, there were ~105 flights by the Russians, as of whenever they'd completed four flights to the ISS. Plus one Chinese flight. Brings the total to ~250 flights.
There might not have been 250 flights in 1910. Probably were, but might not. There were that many total in the period from 1903-1908, though.
So what's that mean? You see spaceflight fun and entertaining, in the same way that airshows and NASCAR are?
No, that says I find men going places and doing things interesting, and robots going places boring.
I do not think our current manned space programs contribute to anything, other than learning how to live up there and (eventually) go places and do things. Which doesn't change the fact that our manned space program SHOULD be about going places and doing things.
As to the trip to Australia analogy. I take it you believe that before the very first "boat" was built, people knew enough to design one capable of going to far places safely? Or do you believe that they didn't, and shouldn't have built that first boat until they knew enough. If they had done the latter, we'd still be waiting for the first boat.
so the only remaining motivator is science
That isn't much of a motivator. Just check with non-scientists. They could care less. And I could care less about the science, without the exploration, colonization, and exploitation. If we stay home, it isn't worth the cost for the science parts of space.
Industrial exploitation doesn't require any science, really. It requires engineering. We won't get the engineering down without trying it out.
I am too old to get into space. Unless a miracle happens, I will be dead by the time it becomes feasible for just anyone to go. Nonetheless, I believe that it is a make or break decision for us as a species. If we don't choose to start now, we never will. We'll be more comfortable as time passes, and less "adventurous" (today is a wonderful example of that - when I was a kid, space was "the final frontier". Now, space is "too dangerous, and easier to explore with robots"). There will come a point where noone will ever consider the idea seriously again. If we aren't offplanet before then, we may as well be extinct.
Actually, if you look at the old westerns a bit closer, you'd see that it is the BAD GUYS who "shoot the people who disagree". The Good Guys(tm) seemed to do their shooting in the context of self-defense, and defense of others (you could always count on Our Hero (tm) to blow away the Bad Guy(tm) who was threatening a woman.
As to your second point ("that right will win in the end if you let the law handle it."), if you believe that, please stop whining about the Microsoft settlement, the last election, and the SCO lawsuits (even if they win).
Hate to say it, but "the Law" and "Right" are NOT tied together - there are unjust laws everywhere. Hell, you're bitching about a law you feel is unjust.
Incorrect. Those laws were enforced in the early days of TV. Later on, as what passed for civilization here became more permissive/relaxed, they were increasingly ignored.
Actually, there are two halves to the "think of the children" crowd:
the half on the right: oppposed to sex and nudity on TV.
the half on the left: opposed to violence on TV.
This sounds like the quid pro quo given to the Left half to keep them from raising too much stink about what the Right half wanted: cutting down the sex...
Discount Florida? You are aware that the Fourteenth Amendment has something to say about not being allowed to vote for Electors, right? Also that the Constitution specifies that day of the Presidential elections? So, Florida couldn't do it over. If the Florida Courts (the US Supremes had no power to do this, but the Florida Supremes might have been able to get away with it - unlikely, but possible) had decided that rather than do it over, no Electors would be chosen from Florida, Florida would have lost its House Delegation as well, till the next Presidential election.
As to Miami being unable to do a proper recount, they were prevented by the Gore campaign. Florida's election law provided for recounts under certain specific conditions. Gore's campaign chose not to take advantage of that, but to try to use the Courts.
Note that I do NOT believe that that particular decision was Gore's idea. It was probably the worst decision he ever made, if in fact he did make it, since the time wasted in Court made the normal recount procedures impossible within the time allowed by Florida law.
Serious problems, I said. I don't get consider one poll opening late for lack of ballots "serious".
Nor do I consider polling stations far away from home to be "serious", unless it is a systemic failure - all the Democrats have polling places two hours from home, while all Republicans are 50 yards from their polling place, for instance.
I do not argue that there are not problems in ALL elections, except the ones in Iraq under Saddam (100% of registered voters voted in his last election, and every one of them voted for Saddam! Talk about a well run election!).
However, there are seldom "serious" problems in any elections in places with a long tradition of democracy. I think Canada and the USA count, as do most European countries. Australia. Places you find problems are where people routinely game the system, where they have no tradition of democratic rule.
Slashdot Mirror
And civilization is a movement away from superstition and towards rationality and science? I think you should look at the history of civilization some more. Civilization has existed for nearly 10000 years (or a bit more, opinions are divided). For a small minority of the population of the world, for no more than the last 1000 years, has civilization equated even a little bit with rationality and science.
Hate to disappoint you, but civilization (based, at least, on history) is more about art than science.
Also I don't think you'd find too many people who think that administration has not rolled back more rights then any other in recent history.
Actually, there seem to be lots. Even the Deomcrats' hero WJ Clinton worked at it. DMCA, anyone? SB Copyright Law (or whatever it is really called). His attempt to nationalize health care (which failed. Not yet sure whether I am happy about that or not). Ugly Rifle Ban (aka Assault Weapons Ban - did you know that the full automatic versions of every weapon banned by that law were still perfectly legal under that law - only the semi-auto versions were affected). As examples.
The Patriot Act had some effect on Civil Liberties. Not much, but some. Notice how little howling there is about it, compared, for instance, to Nixon's Wage/Price Controls? Or Roosevelt's Wage/Price Controls, for that matter.
Abortion funding may have been cut (I prefer to read the laws rather than the newspapers' descriptions, so I'm not sure about that one yet), but that isn't necessarily a matter of religion. Religious reasons are the most common given for opposing abortion, but they aren't the only reason (I oppose abortion, and am not especially religious, and not fundamentalist at all).
Hmm, can't think of anything else that has been done to roll back civil liberties under Bush or Clinton off the top of my head. Can't see where most of Bush's have been based on religious fundamentalism, either.
Just remember, disagreeing with you does NOT make someone opposed to science, anymore than you disageeing with me makes you opposed to science.
Are you suggesting that cities intrinsically have high crime rates? Seems an odd claim for what is supposed to be the centerpost of our civilization.
Or are you suggesting that poverty causes crime? I have heard that belief espoused before, but thought that it had been debunked by counterexample - for instance, rural Mississippi is one of the poorer parts of the country - it's crime rate is no more than national average, last I checked.
By the by, self-defense is NOT "taking the law into your own hands". Again, read up on your Supremes.
Yah, I do all those things, none of which have much to do with searching for information in a book.
So another moral of these TV shows was that women are helpless little things?
Never watched Gunsmoke, I see. Miss Kitty did in a few Bad Guys (tm) in her time. No, most Westerns didn't portray women as "helpless", any more than most detective shows did. Certainly, there were "helpless" women on these shows, but there were also "helpless" men (though we much concede that "helpless" men were described in less flattering terms than "helpless" women were).
In case you don't remember, Miss Kitty was the local saloonkeeper in Dodge. That also made her the local Madame, but that was quietly overlooked in the show.
Neither is "what you think is right" and "Right". A vigilante is a danger to everyone, and it is a good thing that these TV shows remind us that vigilantes often kill inoccent people.
Neither is it true that what YOU think is right is necessarily Right. And, no, the classic Westerns didn't actually show much, if any, killing of innocent people (read: men - within the genre, killing a woman was "right out", unless she were, herself, a serious Bad Guy (tm), and even then it was unlikely). What they tended to show was Bad Guys (tm) killing innocents, and Good Guys (tm) killing/capturing Bad Guys (tm).
It's easy to bitch about human-made systems; we aren't perfect.
And yet...I don't bitch about human-made systems much. The Police have, in the occasions I have had reason to deal with them (in four or five jurisdictions), been unfailingly courteous and helpful (with one exception - that particular guy was an ass - but it was 4 in the morning, and most people are asses then). I recognize, however, that that won't help me if someone breaks into my home - they don't patrol close enough to respond in time to make a difference.
I am, by the way, a big believer in the deterrent value of firearms - I don't believe that using one is at all necessary to prevent a crime, if you are prepared to use one if needed.
But the idea of everyone carrying around a gun and killing any one who commits a crime is much more scary then the problems of the police.
Does it ever bother you that the parts of the country with the highest gun ownership rates tend to have the lowest crime rates? Washington DC and nearby Virginia are a classic example.
You've obviously not kept up on your Supremes. Quite a few years back, they ruled that the police have no obligation to protect any member of society from crime (This in response to a lawsuit brought against a police department). The police are reposnsible to protect society as a whole, not any particular member of it.
Really? I've never gotten into tasting my books, or listening to them. I also don't do braille, which limits my ability to use me sense of touch to search for information in a book. And while books do have an odor about them, I've never been able to key the odor of a page to the information on that page. You, sir, are a profoundly skilled man, to be able to search in your books by touch, smell, taste, and sound....
Harold Bloom is full of it. The Iliad and Odyssey come to mind.
Not "post-revolutionary", per se. The decline in American literacy seems to have started with compulsory schooling, in the second half of the 19th century.
There are a great many books I have read more than once. Lord of the Rings is one of them. Though I haven't actually read it in many years - once I had it momeorized, there was no point ;)
However, allowing sex/violence on TV is NOT a sign of the advance of civilization. Nor is it a sign of the decline of civilization. Nor is it much related to religion (the people opposed to sex on TV are often religious, the people opposed to violence are often not).
And I haven't seen this administration to be more hellbent on rllingback civil liberties than any in the past. Frankly, they all do this to the extent they can get away with it.
I'm confused. That's pretty much what he said. That people are paying $95.24 for a book that is also freely available online. He also says that the Amazon page selling the book for $95.24 even gives directions as to where to download it free.
No. Baen Books reserves "commercial rights" only. It does not prevent you from making backups, giving them away, sharing them with anyone. Just with making money off of it.
One month's cost: $15 for six books.
Individual book prices: $4.
Two (that I know of) of Baen Books recent offerings have included CD's with the e-version of the book, plus 30-50 other ebook titles, some from the Free Library, some not. Cost for the book was the same as for the other books not so equipped.
Course, the CD *did* have a warning that it was included not out of the goodness of the the Publisher's heart. It was, according to the printed warning, part of a subtle attempt to expose you to other books sold by Baen, so that you would be tempted to buy them, and thus increase the Publisher's profit....
You're an old-fashioned, nostalgic romantic. Does that make you feel better?
I, and my several thousand books, tend to agree. Though I *do* read ebooks on my Palm, my laptop, my PC, from time to time. I get mine from Baen Books, by the way. Webscriptions is a wonderful thing, and the Free Library as well.
but I think there's something soul-satisfyingly and fundamentally *right* about books
"It's the smell." -- Rupert Giles.
Yes, there IS something fundamentally *right* about "real books". I don't think ebooks will ever completely replace books.
That said, get over the encryption thing, and the use restriction thing, and I'll force myself to be content with just ebooks, as I am now with the 100 or so I already have.
TV shows WERE scripted! Some were scripted to produce laughs at certain places, some to make people happy or sad when certain events happened. And some were scripted where the bad guy got his.
Most likely, though, Westerns were scripted that way because having the Good Guy(tm) behave in an obnoxious manner would make him not a Good Guy(tm). Just as making the Bad Guy(tm) behave nobly would make his badness questionable. Note that there WERE episodes of some Westerns where the Bad Guy(tm) behaved nobly. Usually those were the episodes that were resolved without violence (other than the initial accidental/misunderstood violence that provoked the conflict.
Violence is part of "entertainment" because it is one of the easiest ways of illustrating vices, virtues, and conflicts. Guns are especially apt for this, since it requires nothing other than a draw, a shot, some fake blood, and a fall. Unlike, say, swords, which look fake as all hell anywhere they are used - sticking a sword all the way through someone was pretty hard to do convincingly back in the day.
One of the virtues (at least in the USA) is to stand up for oneself, rather than running to mommy (or the nanny state). Considering that you beleive that censorship is bad, you seem to believe you are capable of doing right without running to the Government for aid, correct? The Good Guy(tm) in a Western was much the same way - the Law couldn't protect him (it can't protect you either, according to the US Supremes), so he defended himself. With his fists if possible, with a gun if necessary.
Today, we seem to believe we are "above" violence. We should let the Law handle things that would have been handled with violence. A commendable attitude. Of course, this discussion, as so many others on /. is about people complaining and whining that the law is wrong/evil/bad/high-cholesterol/whatever. If the Law is such sure protection, why complain about it? Or is the Law only a shield for the individual when the Law is one you personally approve of? If so, there is always room for taking the law into your own hands. With a computer, a CD/DVD burner, a P2P network, a gun. Just depends on the law....
I own firearms. I don't talk about using them at all, except when I go to the range. Then I usually say something like "I'm going to the range to blow holes in some targets. Anyone want to go along?" I don't expect to need to use one in self defense, though there were a couple times in the last fifteen years when it came tolerably close. I'm not sure I'm mentally prepared to do so, and won't know until and unless the crunch comes (and if anyone who hasn't been in combat tells you otherwise, they're lying to you and themselves). But I AM physically prepared - I have the option of defending myself with the most effective weapon for the purpose, if the situation should come up.
That said, there were ~105 flights by the Russians, as of whenever they'd completed four flights to the ISS. Plus one Chinese flight. Brings the total to ~250 flights.
There might not have been 250 flights in 1910. Probably were, but might not. There were that many total in the period from 1903-1908, though.
So what's that mean? You see spaceflight fun and entertaining, in the same way that airshows and NASCAR are?
No, that says I find men going places and doing things interesting, and robots going places boring.
I do not think our current manned space programs contribute to anything, other than learning how to live up there and (eventually) go places and do things. Which doesn't change the fact that our manned space program SHOULD be about going places and doing things.
As to the trip to Australia analogy. I take it you believe that before the very first "boat" was built, people knew enough to design one capable of going to far places safely? Or do you believe that they didn't, and shouldn't have built that first boat until they knew enough. If they had done the latter, we'd still be waiting for the first boat.
so the only remaining motivator is science
That isn't much of a motivator. Just check with non-scientists. They could care less. And I could care less about the science, without the exploration, colonization, and exploitation. If we stay home, it isn't worth the cost for the science parts of space.
Industrial exploitation doesn't require any science, really. It requires engineering. We won't get the engineering down without trying it out.
I am too old to get into space. Unless a miracle happens, I will be dead by the time it becomes feasible for just anyone to go. Nonetheless, I believe that it is a make or break decision for us as a species. If we don't choose to start now, we never will. We'll be more comfortable as time passes, and less "adventurous" (today is a wonderful example of that - when I was a kid, space was "the final frontier". Now, space is "too dangerous, and easier to explore with robots"). There will come a point where noone will ever consider the idea seriously again. If we aren't offplanet before then, we may as well be extinct.
As to your second point ("that right will win in the end if you let the law handle it."), if you believe that, please stop whining about the Microsoft settlement, the last election, and the SCO lawsuits (even if they win).
Hate to say it, but "the Law" and "Right" are NOT tied together - there are unjust laws everywhere. Hell, you're bitching about a law you feel is unjust.
Incorrect. Those laws were enforced in the early days of TV. Later on, as what passed for civilization here became more permissive/relaxed, they were increasingly ignored.
What?? You want to CENSOR TV? Forbidding commercials is just as much censorship as forbidding sex or violence.
the half on the right: oppposed to sex and nudity on TV.
the half on the left: opposed to violence on TV.
This sounds like the quid pro quo given to the Left half to keep them from raising too much stink about what the Right half wanted: cutting down the sex...
Discount Florida? You are aware that the Fourteenth Amendment has something to say about not being allowed to vote for Electors, right? Also that the Constitution specifies that day of the Presidential elections? So, Florida couldn't do it over. If the Florida Courts (the US Supremes had no power to do this, but the Florida Supremes might have been able to get away with it - unlikely, but possible) had decided that rather than do it over, no Electors would be chosen from Florida, Florida would have lost its House Delegation as well, till the next Presidential election.
As to Miami being unable to do a proper recount, they were prevented by the Gore campaign. Florida's election law provided for recounts under certain specific conditions. Gore's campaign chose not to take advantage of that, but to try to use the Courts.
Note that I do NOT believe that that particular decision was Gore's idea. It was probably the worst decision he ever made, if in fact he did make it, since the time wasted in Court made the normal recount procedures impossible within the time allowed by Florida law.
Ahh, struck to the heart! You have neatly countered my every argument! Your acumen is, as usual, incomparable!
Nor do I consider polling stations far away from home to be "serious", unless it is a systemic failure - all the Democrats have polling places two hours from home, while all Republicans are 50 yards from their polling place, for instance.
I do not argue that there are not problems in ALL elections, except the ones in Iraq under Saddam (100% of registered voters voted in his last election, and every one of them voted for Saddam! Talk about a well run election!).
However, there are seldom "serious" problems in any elections in places with a long tradition of democracy. I think Canada and the USA count, as do most European countries. Australia. Places you find problems are where people routinely game the system, where they have no tradition of democratic rule.