That's a pretty generous definition of moral relativism. I suppose it's close to the one religious extremists use though. It's also unsupported by history, and logic. Our basic legal code, things like thou shalt not murder, etc., predate current religious texts.
Moral relativism, at it's core, is the position that morals are subjective, and therefore can vary. If you and I take incompatible moral viewpoints that's okay. It doesn't matter where those morals come from. If you think morals should come from holy books, but you're okay with different religions following different moral codes, you're a relativist.
On the other hand, if you think there are objective, universal (or at least somewhat so) morals, then you're not a relativist. Those morals can be based on religion, a belief that we're all instilled with the same core moral beliefs (in which case democracy works just fine), evolutionary arguments (it's not a survival advantage for a social animal to murder, for example), or anything else.
The fact that you have one president instead of investing executive power in the party that controls the legislative house(s) suggests that your founding fathers did indeed intend that the winner of the presidential election should take all.
So how does that change if you get rid of the electoral college? Voters in particular areas will still tend to either be overwhelmingly for one side or split, and the focus will be on the split regions. I suppose instead of "Ohio" you might have "southern Ohio" or "northern Ohio and southern Michigan" (totally made up).
Care to elaborate on how Marx was wrong? Most of his predictions about what would happen because of capitalism seem to have come true. Pure capitalism destroyed itself, usually violently, and was replaced by mixed economies.
Without actually reading the source material, it sounds like you might be technically right, but I'm not sure it refutes the OPs point (never mind that it only even tries to refute one of his points).
So you needed a pattern of behaviour? So if you applied the thumb screws or waterboarded, no hanging, but if you did both together, hanged? That somehow excuses introducing the practice of waterboarding?
"In his defense, I suspect that the dog-on-roof thing was mere cluelessness rather than wickedness."
Hm... doing stupid stuff because you're clueless doesn't seem like such a good defence for an almost president of the most powerful country on Earth.
I'm Canadian and someone posted on Facebook yesterday that she didn't remember seeing so many posts when Canada voted. Yes, but when we voted we weren't deciding who gets to be in charge of the button for the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. We're all very glad you guys didn't choose the guy who is too clueless to take care of his dog.
There is no (Canadian) Western University. It's the University of Western Ontario, sometimes called "Western" for short, but never Western University. It's also only western if you're from southern Ontario since its actually located in the south east corner of the province.
I doubt very much they used specialized hardware on their MAV. Neural net algorithms work just fine on conventional processors. If they did build specialized hardware they could make it REALLY low power, but 1 watt sounds like a regular processor.
The visual centres in your brain use something very much like Gabor filters, and they're not hard to implement in hardware, so if they did "cheat" by precalculating the filters it's not a big deal.
"The problem is, no one has developed software that you walk around a building with a video camera, and it becomes a quake level."
Yes, actually, creating 3D models from pictures from multiple perspectives (generally acquired with video) is fairly standard. I remember seeing a DIY project, possibly here on Slashdot, using a webcam and a record turntable to create a 3D object scanner. You could make one that would make you Quake levels if you wanted to.
No, that doesn't seem to be what they've done here, probably because it requires too much processing power to do in realtime on an autonomous vehicle. It navigates the same way you do, by guessing which area of the image, based on shape, texture and colour, represents objects that are a) close and b) solid.
So will fixing the phone lines. And the power lines. Etc.
Cell towers are reasonably easy to harden against most disasters and are a very complete replacement for landlines. Plus, if you DO lose one, they're fairly easy to replace, as you point out, and they're heavily used when there isn't a disaster going on. Land lines are... none of those things.
So the US gave weapons to some guys who are still their friends. That's great. They also gave weapons to and trained a guy named Osama bin Laden, and I believe they later had a falling out and it cost them rather dearly. Probably quite a bit more than any good will or help from the Mujahadeen has been worth, as well meaning as they might be.
Ten commandments? What a restricted view! Clearly laws laid down by God are incorrupt so we should implement ALL of them! Ever mouth off to your parents when you were young? Got a tattoo? Touched or been near a menstruating woman? Done any sort of work on a Sunday (or a Saturday, or a Friday....)? Worn mixed fabrics? Lent or borrowed money? Etc. And those are just the Christian ones! There are lots of other religions with all sorts of good, uncorrupt laws, straight from God himself (or herself, or themselves)!
Lots of people like to spout that talking point. It's not true. Most first world governments, domestically, have exactly the same rights where homicide is concerned as you do. Cops can't shoot you for any reason they feel like. They may only use deadly force against you in defence of themselves or another person, to whom you pose an immediate (and generally deliberate) danger. The only exception is that some backwards countries still have capital punishment.
Internationally there isn't really much law, but nations are subject to international "law", just as you are. Yes, some don't follow it very well and should be locked up.
Representative's votes are SUPPOSED to be beholden - to their constituents. It's the responsibility of the constituents to monitor their representative's voting record (which absolutely must be public) and, if it fails to represent them, not reelect that representative or impeach him.
Which is why in civilized places that take elections seriously you have to prove you either can't vote by mail or have to prove you've got a damn good reason for doing so.
Because then you need armies of people to count, and people counting paper ballots are less accurate than (honest) electronic machines.
The electronic voting combined with a verifiable paper receipt allows quick, easy, accurate tabulation of votes AND simple, easy, robust, fraud-resistant verification in case of irregularities.
True, but an updated Elite on smartphones and tablets would be pretty cool. The existing mobile games in the genre are a bit too limited, and something like X3 with a very complex economy is probably too resource intensive.
On the other hand, X3 on a tablet would be awesome, if someone could pull it off.
Obviously somebody's Skype hand had a baby thirteen to nineteen years ago. I'm not precisely what a Skype hand is, nor how it can procreate, but it sounds kinky.
It's my impression the US provided weapons, not sold them, to Afghanistan in the 70s. Wikipedia seems to agree with me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan–United_States_relations#Soviet_invasion_and_civil_war). The authoritative source on the subject seems to be only available on microfilm and I don't feel like walking over to the library.
Anyway, even if it was sales, the US might have made about $3 billion on 70s Afghanistan arms sales. How much has it spent on dealing with 911 and the fallout? More than half a trillion anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Judging by how accurate Silver's predictions were, either your hypothesized effects on voting are very small or Silver is already correcting for them.
The fourth column would be a large group of pissed off Spanish revolutionaries, just like the first, second and third columns.
That's a pretty generous definition of moral relativism. I suppose it's close to the one religious extremists use though. It's also unsupported by history, and logic. Our basic legal code, things like thou shalt not murder, etc., predate current religious texts.
Moral relativism, at it's core, is the position that morals are subjective, and therefore can vary. If you and I take incompatible moral viewpoints that's okay. It doesn't matter where those morals come from. If you think morals should come from holy books, but you're okay with different religions following different moral codes, you're a relativist.
On the other hand, if you think there are objective, universal (or at least somewhat so) morals, then you're not a relativist. Those morals can be based on religion, a belief that we're all instilled with the same core moral beliefs (in which case democracy works just fine), evolutionary arguments (it's not a survival advantage for a social animal to murder, for example), or anything else.
Two trillion dollars to the military.
There's really only two things a military that big is good for, and they tend to go hand in hand.
The fact that you have one president instead of investing executive power in the party that controls the legislative house(s) suggests that your founding fathers did indeed intend that the winner of the presidential election should take all.
So how does that change if you get rid of the electoral college? Voters in particular areas will still tend to either be overwhelmingly for one side or split, and the focus will be on the split regions. I suppose instead of "Ohio" you might have "southern Ohio" or "northern Ohio and southern Michigan" (totally made up).
Care to elaborate on how Marx was wrong? Most of his predictions about what would happen because of capitalism seem to have come true. Pure capitalism destroyed itself, usually violently, and was replaced by mixed economies.
Without actually reading the source material, it sounds like you might be technically right, but I'm not sure it refutes the OPs point (never mind that it only even tries to refute one of his points).
So you needed a pattern of behaviour? So if you applied the thumb screws or waterboarded, no hanging, but if you did both together, hanged? That somehow excuses introducing the practice of waterboarding?
I'm curious, how do you base laws on moral relativism (particularly if they're also religious)? You only go to jail if you agree you broke the law?
"In his defense, I suspect that the dog-on-roof thing was mere cluelessness rather than wickedness."
Hm... doing stupid stuff because you're clueless doesn't seem like such a good defence for an almost president of the most powerful country on Earth.
I'm Canadian and someone posted on Facebook yesterday that she didn't remember seeing so many posts when Canada voted. Yes, but when we voted we weren't deciding who gets to be in charge of the button for the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. We're all very glad you guys didn't choose the guy who is too clueless to take care of his dog.
There is no (Canadian) Western University. It's the University of Western Ontario, sometimes called "Western" for short, but never Western University. It's also only western if you're from southern Ontario since its actually located in the south east corner of the province.
I doubt very much they used specialized hardware on their MAV. Neural net algorithms work just fine on conventional processors. If they did build specialized hardware they could make it REALLY low power, but 1 watt sounds like a regular processor.
The visual centres in your brain use something very much like Gabor filters, and they're not hard to implement in hardware, so if they did "cheat" by precalculating the filters it's not a big deal.
"The problem is, no one has developed software that you walk around a building with a video camera, and it becomes a quake level."
Yes, actually, creating 3D models from pictures from multiple perspectives (generally acquired with video) is fairly standard. I remember seeing a DIY project, possibly here on Slashdot, using a webcam and a record turntable to create a 3D object scanner. You could make one that would make you Quake levels if you wanted to.
No, that doesn't seem to be what they've done here, probably because it requires too much processing power to do in realtime on an autonomous vehicle. It navigates the same way you do, by guessing which area of the image, based on shape, texture and colour, represents objects that are a) close and b) solid.
So will fixing the phone lines. And the power lines. Etc.
Cell towers are reasonably easy to harden against most disasters and are a very complete replacement for landlines. Plus, if you DO lose one, they're fairly easy to replace, as you point out, and they're heavily used when there isn't a disaster going on. Land lines are... none of those things.
So the US gave weapons to some guys who are still their friends. That's great. They also gave weapons to and trained a guy named Osama bin Laden, and I believe they later had a falling out and it cost them rather dearly. Probably quite a bit more than any good will or help from the Mujahadeen has been worth, as well meaning as they might be.
Says the anonymous coward. This deserves a funny mod just for the irony.
Ten commandments? What a restricted view! Clearly laws laid down by God are incorrupt so we should implement ALL of them! Ever mouth off to your parents when you were young? Got a tattoo? Touched or been near a menstruating woman? Done any sort of work on a Sunday (or a Saturday, or a Friday....)? Worn mixed fabrics? Lent or borrowed money? Etc. And those are just the Christian ones! There are lots of other religions with all sorts of good, uncorrupt laws, straight from God himself (or herself, or themselves)!
Lots of people like to spout that talking point. It's not true. Most first world governments, domestically, have exactly the same rights where homicide is concerned as you do. Cops can't shoot you for any reason they feel like. They may only use deadly force against you in defence of themselves or another person, to whom you pose an immediate (and generally deliberate) danger. The only exception is that some backwards countries still have capital punishment.
Internationally there isn't really much law, but nations are subject to international "law", just as you are. Yes, some don't follow it very well and should be locked up.
Representative's votes are SUPPOSED to be beholden - to their constituents. It's the responsibility of the constituents to monitor their representative's voting record (which absolutely must be public) and, if it fails to represent them, not reelect that representative or impeach him.
Which is why in civilized places that take elections seriously you have to prove you either can't vote by mail or have to prove you've got a damn good reason for doing so.
Because then you need armies of people to count, and people counting paper ballots are less accurate than (honest) electronic machines.
The electronic voting combined with a verifiable paper receipt allows quick, easy, accurate tabulation of votes AND simple, easy, robust, fraud-resistant verification in case of irregularities.
True, but an updated Elite on smartphones and tablets would be pretty cool. The existing mobile games in the genre are a bit too limited, and something like X3 with a very complex economy is probably too resource intensive.
On the other hand, X3 on a tablet would be awesome, if someone could pull it off.
Because sssibilants are ssscary.
Obviously somebody's Skype hand had a baby thirteen to nineteen years ago. I'm not precisely what a Skype hand is, nor how it can procreate, but it sounds kinky.
It's my impression the US provided weapons, not sold them, to Afghanistan in the 70s. Wikipedia seems to agree with me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan–United_States_relations#Soviet_invasion_and_civil_war). The authoritative source on the subject seems to be only available on microfilm and I don't feel like walking over to the library.
Anyway, even if it was sales, the US might have made about $3 billion on 70s Afghanistan arms sales. How much has it spent on dealing with 911 and the fallout? More than half a trillion anyway.