I stand by my statement--states are more accountable to their people. Protesting actions taken by a state has a bigger impact on the state's behavior, and if states were restored to their rightful places of power then people would pay much more attention to who they elect, making corporate takeovers less likely. As it stands, state officials aren't watched very carefully by most people, letting them fall easily into corruption.
And actually, it doesn't even matter if the states would do a better or worse job--the job is lawfully theirs. If people don't like it, then an amendment to the Constitution needs to be ratified. This nation was founded on the rule of law, yet it has been ignored for the past century. We wouldn't be in the mess we're in now, with giant corporations who got that way only through federal influence and corruption, had the people of this country paid attention to what government was doing and known their rights under the Constitution. Certainly good has come of this, too--the Civil Rights Act comes to mind--but the fact remains that we have abandoned the rule of law, which has made America less democratic and more plutocratic. This trend will only increase.
Let's take a look at the Glass-Steagal repeal. The "Yea" votes in the senate were:
52 Republicans 38 Democrats
The "Yea" votes in the House were:
207 Republicans 155 Democrats
That's not exactly a Democratic stand against the bill.
Now, one thing that gets glossed over is that the original bill that would have repealed Glass-Steagal in 1998 didn't include language subjecting to new, unified banks to the Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA is responsible for "encouraging" banks to make sub-prime loans...remember those?
The Democrats did indeed oppose the original bill, but when CRA language was added in we got the vote above. I don't like the repeal of Glass-Steagal either, but it alone is not to blame. Without the CRA language added to the bill, banks would have had very little incentive to make sub-prime loans in the first place.
So in reality, it is both parties in the political system to blame, as well as the banking industry for taking unfair advantage of the situation instead of being responsible. And of course the politicians aren't going to hold them responsible because they all play golf together and snort coke off of the same hookers' asses.
There are legitimate differences between the parties, but they are overshadowed by the massive self-service and corruption of the entire system. The economic collapse was not the fault of a single party or institution; it was a result of the collusion of the rich and powerful and unethical exploiting the apathy of the American people. Yeah, we share some blame too--if we were doing more than pretending that voting every few years made a difference, maybe some of this shit wouldn't happen.
Well we could have reined in the Fed by telling Congress to pass Ron Paul's Audit the Fed bill. There was enough support that a bastardized version got into the Dodd-Frank bill, but it was lip service and attached to a bill that gave the Fed even more power.
The difficulty in talking to people about the Federal Reserve is that most don't want to take the time to understand what it does, and especially now, the momentum for our best chance at reform is gone.
What "fixes" the economy is the people. if you tied up every single politician and held them captive in a prison for 5 years the economic recovery would be just fine. What congress can do, make laws that put CEO's and board members of banks and businesses that pull the crap that caused an economic collapse. but we keep voting in idiots that are either rich guys that dont like putting rich guys in jail, or they are friends of these scumbags that cause the problems.
Just so you know...this paragraph is exactly in line with one of the original Tea Party movement's talking points. They deserve most of the flak they're getting now because they let their focus waver and break, but the original sentiments expressed have a lot of merit.
The heads of those fine institutions are unelected--they are picked by whatever administration is elected to power. And since Americans aren't savvy enough to see that the vast majority of people they elect are also in it for personal gain...
America's dirty little secret is that the vast majority of federal law is unconstitutional. The document is quite clear on what powers the federal government has, and it is limited to the following:
Borrow money Regulate commerce among the states Regulate naturalization Regulate bankruptcies Coin money Fix weights and standards Punish counterfeiters Establish post offices Establish post roads Record patents Protect copyrights Create federal courts Punish pirates Declare war Raise an army Provide a navy Call up the militia Organize the militia Makes laws for Washington, DC Make rules for the Army and Navy
Everything else is left up to the states or to the people, as clarified by the 9th and 10th Amendments. The only reason special interests have so much power today is because they're dealing with one central government instead of trying to deal with individual states which are more likely to respond to pressure from their citizens.
The same applies to corporations and regulation: when people like me call for deregulation it is only at the federal level--the states have every right to regulate as their citizens please, and state regulations are (marginally) less likely to be written by the corporations to which they apply for their own advantage.
It's a shame that the Democrats, who get so many other things right, are so in love with the central power of the federal government. It's also kind of nonsensical given the party name: one would think a more democratic system would place local law and politics in a more important position than it currently occupies.
(Sorry for the lack of formatting. Cut and paste doesn't work here in Chrome, and I'm not hand-typing all those li tags.)
This is a horrible way of thinking about it. A friend of my father's is a EE Professor at USC, who has studied all sorts of high level mathematics. He freely admits he's probably never going to use 90% of them, but what's important in life is improving your toolbox so that you can solve the broadest range of problems possible. This doesn't just mean math, either - he passed the bar not too long ago because he found that not having a background in law had screwed him over pretty badly. So he worked to improve himself.
The key point here is that as a high school student, you're not going to know where you're going to end up, or what opportunities will be opened/missed by having/not-having certain skills.
It looked to me like the key point was that if you want to improve yourself, it's up to you to make it happen.
I agree fully with your assessment of missing elements of schooling, and I'm glad to see history gets a mention. It's very important not only for politics and business but also for pedagogy and the sciences. Understanding "the shape of things" often gives clever minds insight into how to (or how not to) improve them. The only reason this article exists is because we have all but abandoned the collective experience of teachers gathered since the 18th century in favor of "modern" practices dictated by bureaucrats...
If a racing driver knows that it takes more brake power for him to slow down when he's going fast than when he's going slow and also that the effect is magnified by the weight of his car but he can't quote "F=MA" at you, that doesn't mean he lacks understanding of the underlying physics--quite the opposite. He lacks understanding of the mathematical model of physics.
This can be easily demonstrated by entering physicists into races against the drivers. They may know F=MA and other, more complex equations but they cannot apply them the way that a racer who understands the physics from the inside can.
I could almost agree with that IF and ONLY IF they got rid of the no-fly list. If body scans are mandatory, then there's no flight risk from the people on that list who should actually be on it, much less those whose names ended up there accidentally or for political reasons.
No, he's right. "Finding ways to spend more school money" implies throwing money at the system without regard to what kind of impact it will have. The school system is so important that this should really never be done, although it often was in the beginning of this decade with lots of computer labs and school-supplied laptops and all that jazz.
What ought to be done is to see how we can improve the education system. IMO our reliance on standardized tests has done a lot of harm--they have their place, but "teaching to the test" is all too common and very harmful. Another thing is to focus on finding good teachers: it can't be done through certification only. As in the old childhood retort, it takes one to know one. Replacing bad teachers with good ones will cost a lot less than replacing sufficient chairs and desks with luxurious ones, and the returns will be much, much greater.
The gap between "concentrate very hard on some thing to make something simple happen" and "make the computer do what I want by thinking about it" is huge--I think it insurmountably huge. The optimism displayed strikes me as exactly the same sort that futurists had for flying cars decades ago. The term "logistical nightmare" seems perfectly apt to me. I recognize that I'm in the minority. I suppose time will tell.
Eh, new stuff all the time is overrated. The truth is that it takes time for any tech to be understood, and the better understanding you have of something the more you can usually do with it. We see this all the time with video game systems--most of them get much more interesting a few years after they've been out.
What worries me more is the unconscious assumption that newer == better. In this instance, people are talking about substituting a complicated system that directly interfaces with an even more complicated system in order to do something that could be accomplished with a simpler interface controlled by hand. All the existing brain-computer interfaces require the user to concentrate hard on certain thoughts in order to do not-very-impressive things. While the interface may become more fine-grained, I think there are lots of advantages to being able to type or click around the screen while thinking about where I will eat lunch or listening to the news. I don't want to have to sit in an isolation chamber in order to surf the Web just so I can do it without using my hands.
The guy mentioned in the summary is Robert Krulwich, an NPR correspondent and one half of the wonderful radio show Radiolab.
They usually look at the science behind all sorts of things, from psychology to physics to music. The production quality is fantastic, the content is almost always thought-provoking, and the hosts have an interplay that is often humorous while remaining informative. I've linked to several of their shows in the past when they were relevant to the discussion.
If you have a curious mind, you can easily spend countless hours listening to their shows, and unlike much entertainment they are all grounded in reality and will enrich your existence.
To be totally fair, John Carmack didn't work on JavaScript yet he did design Quake II's rendering engine, and he's kind of brilliant.
Also, JS for 3D games is kind of silly and a pipe dream, but that doesn't make the language useless. Moderate JS use can do a lot for page usability, and AJAX is pretty cool with lots of applications.
I love competition! I don't have to bother with being called a troll for reporting a problem, I can just switch to a better browser like Chrome! I do miss my tree-style tabs, though.
FF4's JS is faster? That's nice. Maybe that'll help to make up for the abysmal amount of time it takes to even LAUNCH on my system.
Java and Flash can still be used in apps, just not apps that live in the App Store.
It probably does make good business sense to make an app store for OS X, since the majority of its users are casual. The 70/30 profit split gives Apple more (undeserved) revenue, and also gives them control over what's most visible--we know how much Apple loves control.
I don't think OS X will end up like iOS, though. The iPhone and iPad are really more like appliances or toys than general-purpose computers. Like a game system, the company tightly controls what gets released on it. OS X on the other hand is a fully-functional operating system, and a damn fine one at that. There is enough of a market that uses it for more than web surfing that Apple can't completely close the OS without losing a significant user base. I have no doubt that they'd love to do it if they could--it's the control thing again--but I am confident that they won't.
You said it's anarchy for the powerful, not anarchy in toto. I'm asking how that, "anarchy for the powerful," differs from the current system in which powerful corporations and the people behind them essentially do what they want without repercussions since they've bought out governments.
Everything I've read about Crossover Games and other apps says Thief 2 causes problems. Heck, it even caused problems in Windows XP!
The best solution would be to use Boot Camp and put a Windows on there. But due to the tiny 120GB hard drive and my audio work, I simply don't have room. I just realized that I have a relatively old donated PC sitting under a desk, though...now I just have to find my Thief 2 discs...
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I stand by my statement--states are more accountable to their people. Protesting actions taken by a state has a bigger impact on the state's behavior, and if states were restored to their rightful places of power then people would pay much more attention to who they elect, making corporate takeovers less likely. As it stands, state officials aren't watched very carefully by most people, letting them fall easily into corruption.
And actually, it doesn't even matter if the states would do a better or worse job--the job is lawfully theirs. If people don't like it, then an amendment to the Constitution needs to be ratified. This nation was founded on the rule of law, yet it has been ignored for the past century. We wouldn't be in the mess we're in now, with giant corporations who got that way only through federal influence and corruption, had the people of this country paid attention to what government was doing and known their rights under the Constitution. Certainly good has come of this, too--the Civil Rights Act comes to mind--but the fact remains that we have abandoned the rule of law, which has made America less democratic and more plutocratic. This trend will only increase.
Let's take a look at the Glass-Steagal repeal. The "Yea" votes in the senate were:
52 Republicans
38 Democrats
The "Yea" votes in the House were:
207 Republicans
155 Democrats
That's not exactly a Democratic stand against the bill.
Now, one thing that gets glossed over is that the original bill that would have repealed Glass-Steagal in 1998 didn't include language subjecting to new, unified banks to the Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA is responsible for "encouraging" banks to make sub-prime loans...remember those?
The Democrats did indeed oppose the original bill, but when CRA language was added in we got the vote above. I don't like the repeal of Glass-Steagal either, but it alone is not to blame. Without the CRA language added to the bill, banks would have had very little incentive to make sub-prime loans in the first place.
So in reality, it is both parties in the political system to blame, as well as the banking industry for taking unfair advantage of the situation instead of being responsible. And of course the politicians aren't going to hold them responsible because they all play golf together and snort coke off of the same hookers' asses.
There are legitimate differences between the parties, but they are overshadowed by the massive self-service and corruption of the entire system. The economic collapse was not the fault of a single party or institution; it was a result of the collusion of the rich and powerful and unethical exploiting the apathy of the American people. Yeah, we share some blame too--if we were doing more than pretending that voting every few years made a difference, maybe some of this shit wouldn't happen.
Well we could have reined in the Fed by telling Congress to pass Ron Paul's Audit the Fed bill. There was enough support that a bastardized version got into the Dodd-Frank bill, but it was lip service and attached to a bill that gave the Fed even more power.
The difficulty in talking to people about the Federal Reserve is that most don't want to take the time to understand what it does, and especially now, the momentum for our best chance at reform is gone.
What "fixes" the economy is the people. if you tied up every single politician and held them captive in a prison for 5 years the economic recovery would be just fine.
What congress can do, make laws that put CEO's and board members of banks and businesses that pull the crap that caused an economic collapse. but we keep voting in idiots that are either rich guys that dont like putting rich guys in jail, or they are friends of these scumbags that cause the problems.
Just so you know...this paragraph is exactly in line with one of the original Tea Party movement's talking points. They deserve most of the flak they're getting now because they let their focus waver and break, but the original sentiments expressed have a lot of merit.
The heads of those fine institutions are unelected--they are picked by whatever administration is elected to power. And since Americans aren't savvy enough to see that the vast majority of people they elect are also in it for personal gain...
America's dirty little secret is that the vast majority of federal law is unconstitutional. The document is quite clear on what powers the federal government has, and it is limited to the following:
Borrow money
Regulate commerce among the states
Regulate naturalization
Regulate bankruptcies
Coin money
Fix weights and standards
Punish counterfeiters
Establish post offices
Establish post roads
Record patents
Protect copyrights
Create federal courts
Punish pirates
Declare war
Raise an army
Provide a navy
Call up the militia
Organize the militia
Makes laws for Washington, DC
Make rules for the Army and Navy
Everything else is left up to the states or to the people, as clarified by the 9th and 10th Amendments. The only reason special interests have so much power today is because they're dealing with one central government instead of trying to deal with individual states which are more likely to respond to pressure from their citizens.
The same applies to corporations and regulation: when people like me call for deregulation it is only at the federal level--the states have every right to regulate as their citizens please, and state regulations are (marginally) less likely to be written by the corporations to which they apply for their own advantage.
It's a shame that the Democrats, who get so many other things right, are so in love with the central power of the federal government. It's also kind of nonsensical given the party name: one would think a more democratic system would place local law and politics in a more important position than it currently occupies.
(Sorry for the lack of formatting. Cut and paste doesn't work here in Chrome, and I'm not hand-typing all those li tags.)
This is a horrible way of thinking about it. A friend of my father's is a EE Professor at USC, who has studied all sorts of high level mathematics. He freely admits he's probably never going to use 90% of them, but what's important in life is improving your toolbox so that you can solve the broadest range of problems possible. This doesn't just mean math, either - he passed the bar not too long ago because he found that not having a background in law had screwed him over pretty badly. So he worked to improve himself.
The key point here is that as a high school student, you're not going to know where you're going to end up, or what opportunities will be opened/missed by having/not-having certain skills.
It looked to me like the key point was that if you want to improve yourself, it's up to you to make it happen.
I agree fully with your assessment of missing elements of schooling, and I'm glad to see history gets a mention. It's very important not only for politics and business but also for pedagogy and the sciences. Understanding "the shape of things" often gives clever minds insight into how to (or how not to) improve them. The only reason this article exists is because we have all but abandoned the collective experience of teachers gathered since the 18th century in favor of "modern" practices dictated by bureaucrats...
If a racing driver knows that it takes more brake power for him to slow down when he's going fast than when he's going slow and also that the effect is magnified by the weight of his car but he can't quote "F=MA" at you, that doesn't mean he lacks understanding of the underlying physics--quite the opposite. He lacks understanding of the mathematical model of physics.
This can be easily demonstrated by entering physicists into races against the drivers. They may know F=MA and other, more complex equations but they cannot apply them the way that a racer who understands the physics from the inside can.
I could almost agree with that IF and ONLY IF they got rid of the no-fly list. If body scans are mandatory, then there's no flight risk from the people on that list who should actually be on it, much less those whose names ended up there accidentally or for political reasons.
It's a factual yet minuscule threat, and the response is way out of proportion.
It's like we're allergic to terrorists.
Anyone who knows how to count!
I agree, except that "failed to stop it" kind of implies that they tried.
"Republicans started it, democrats continued it" is more fitting.
No, he's right. "Finding ways to spend more school money" implies throwing money at the system without regard to what kind of impact it will have. The school system is so important that this should really never be done, although it often was in the beginning of this decade with lots of computer labs and school-supplied laptops and all that jazz.
What ought to be done is to see how we can improve the education system. IMO our reliance on standardized tests has done a lot of harm--they have their place, but "teaching to the test" is all too common and very harmful. Another thing is to focus on finding good teachers: it can't be done through certification only. As in the old childhood retort, it takes one to know one. Replacing bad teachers with good ones will cost a lot less than replacing sufficient chairs and desks with luxurious ones, and the returns will be much, much greater.
The gap between "concentrate very hard on some thing to make something simple happen" and "make the computer do what I want by thinking about it" is huge--I think it insurmountably huge. The optimism displayed strikes me as exactly the same sort that futurists had for flying cars decades ago. The term "logistical nightmare" seems perfectly apt to me. I recognize that I'm in the minority. I suppose time will tell.
Anyone want to place a bet? ;)
Inevitable? Really?
It'll end up just like cold fusion and flying cars, IMO.
Eh, new stuff all the time is overrated. The truth is that it takes time for any tech to be understood, and the better understanding you have of something the more you can usually do with it. We see this all the time with video game systems--most of them get much more interesting a few years after they've been out.
What worries me more is the unconscious assumption that newer == better. In this instance, people are talking about substituting a complicated system that directly interfaces with an even more complicated system in order to do something that could be accomplished with a simpler interface controlled by hand. All the existing brain-computer interfaces require the user to concentrate hard on certain thoughts in order to do not-very-impressive things. While the interface may become more fine-grained, I think there are lots of advantages to being able to type or click around the screen while thinking about where I will eat lunch or listening to the news. I don't want to have to sit in an isolation chamber in order to surf the Web just so I can do it without using my hands.
The guy mentioned in the summary is Robert Krulwich, an NPR correspondent and one half of the wonderful radio show Radiolab.
They usually look at the science behind all sorts of things, from psychology to physics to music. The production quality is fantastic, the content is almost always thought-provoking, and the hosts have an interplay that is often humorous while remaining informative. I've linked to several of their shows in the past when they were relevant to the discussion.
If you have a curious mind, you can easily spend countless hours listening to their shows, and unlike much entertainment they are all grounded in reality and will enrich your existence.
They're pretty indistinguishable to some of us in the US, too.
To be totally fair, John Carmack didn't work on JavaScript yet he did design Quake II's rendering engine, and he's kind of brilliant.
Also, JS for 3D games is kind of silly and a pipe dream, but that doesn't make the language useless. Moderate JS use can do a lot for page usability, and AJAX is pretty cool with lots of applications.
I love competition! I don't have to bother with being called a troll for reporting a problem, I can just switch to a better browser like Chrome! I do miss my tree-style tabs, though.
FF4's JS is faster? That's nice. Maybe that'll help to make up for the abysmal amount of time it takes to even LAUNCH on my system.
Java and Flash can still be used in apps, just not apps that live in the App Store.
It probably does make good business sense to make an app store for OS X, since the majority of its users are casual. The 70/30 profit split gives Apple more (undeserved) revenue, and also gives them control over what's most visible--we know how much Apple loves control.
I don't think OS X will end up like iOS, though. The iPhone and iPad are really more like appliances or toys than general-purpose computers. Like a game system, the company tightly controls what gets released on it. OS X on the other hand is a fully-functional operating system, and a damn fine one at that. There is enough of a market that uses it for more than web surfing that Apple can't completely close the OS without losing a significant user base. I have no doubt that they'd love to do it if they could--it's the control thing again--but I am confident that they won't.
You said it's anarchy for the powerful, not anarchy in toto. I'm asking how that, "anarchy for the powerful," differs from the current system in which powerful corporations and the people behind them essentially do what they want without repercussions since they've bought out governments.
The strong Libertarian position is anarchy for the powerful.
How would that be any different from today?
This sort of idle speculation belongs in idle, don't you think?
"There are some good reasons for Apple to buy Facebook. And lots of reasons not to. They probably won't, but, hey, you're reading this, aren't you?"
Everything I've read about Crossover Games and other apps says Thief 2 causes problems. Heck, it even caused problems in Windows XP!
The best solution would be to use Boot Camp and put a Windows on there. But due to the tiny 120GB hard drive and my audio work, I simply don't have room. I just realized that I have a relatively old donated PC sitting under a desk, though...now I just have to find my Thief 2 discs...