See, this is what a nation of tolerance would be like. I disagree on how awful some of those substances are, but it's okay because as long as I'm not harming you, you're not trying to stop me from using them. That makes me less likely to be concerned with trying to convince you that my viewpoint is the correct one since there is no rights-infringing legislation being pushed, and we can agree to disagree, freeing us up to discuss more fruitful topics or play Frisbee.
Americans are not good at self control. That is why we have problems with Alcohol and Tobacco, but it is too difficult to stop those, Alcohol proven by prohibition. But opening the door to Marijuana is actually quite stupid.
How is marijuana prohibition any different from that of alcohol, except that it has been going on much longer and was never truly made legal with a constitutional amendment? It was completely legal until 1937, and nobody cared one whit about it until some unscrupulous newspapers started Reefer Madness to keep the Mexicans from "stealing our jobs." The FUD has been spreading ever since.
I don't understand how anyone can look at the sordid situation of our prison population (highest percentage in the world!), a significant portion of which are non-violent drug offenses; take into account that it was recommended to be made legal at least twice by government task forces; understand that, just like alcohol, people will use it no matter its legal status, and it's much better to have the money go to enterprise instead of cartels; to see all that and still believe that it is better to keep it illegal.
We want to improve citizens productivity and their willingness to work.
We do? Huh, I thought it was all about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not making sure we have enough cogs to keep The Almighty Economy as profitable as possible.
The real question is if Marijuana was legal what will be the increase in use...
Well, if it's anything like the Netherlands, there'll be a bit of a spike right after, as all those people who were curious about it can try it out without fear, and then usage will drop back to what it is today (or even lower, as happened there). Or maybe it's as good as the hardcore advocates claim it is and everyone will start using it, obesity will decrease, cancer will disappear, Global Warming will reverse itself, and we'll all get ponies.
Now how will that effect the productivity and profitability the the US Economy.
This again? It likely won't affect it at all: most of the people who will use MJ legally are those who are already using it illegally, and the vast majority of them are otherwise Upstanding Citizens who are Playing Their Part for Society. And musicians, but you'll be hard-pressed to get rid of that scum;)
Is the gain from less jail and a additional non-black market greater then the loss of a percentage of Americans taking a mind altering drug that decreases their ambitions. And perhaps creates a higher level of parasitic jobless (the ones who can work, could find it, but choose not to, and take our resources) rate. Cause decrease in overall Tax Revenue and having a larger population of Poor jobless people where to bread more saver crime.
Ah, tired old DARE FUD and the Welfare Queen argument with a new, stoned face. Come back when you have more than scare tactics. (Also, I recognize all of the words in the last sentence, but I have no idea what they mean when put together that way. I think it's part of the Welfare Queen argument, but if it's something else, feel free to let me know and I'll shoot that down too.)
In terms of smoking, Most Americans measure their smoking on packs of percentage of packs of cigarettes a day. Other countries measure it in terms of cigarettes per day.
In terms of drinking where it is common they will have a few drinks over the day and not get drunk. Americans when they drink they will get drunk, very drunk.
And this has what to do with marijuana again? I was expecting some sort of conclusion...perhaps I am meant to conclude that Americans will use too much pot. But that's a very flimsy line of "reasoning," considering that all three drugs are very different.
Technically, all the producers and consumers could be busted on federal charges, state legal or no.
This isn't technically correct, though it is practically true. The 10th Amendment gives power which is not granted to the federal government and not prohibited by the Constitution to the states (or to the people). Drug laws are decidedly unconstitutional, though the Supreme Court has willfully misinterpreted it for decades by relying on the "common welfare" clause as a catch-all. I am hopeful that with states beginning to come around on the marijuana issue, realizing that the failed War on Drugs is much more harmful to our society than keeping pot illegal is, there will eventually be enough support from the citizenry to put the federal government back in its place.
Failing that, I can see an argument being made that "common welfare" doesn't apply to marijuana laws, since our police waste time prosecuting a victimless crime and our prisons fill up with non-violent offenders, the cartel wars in Mexico begins to spill over the border...in every case when it comes to marijuana, the "cure" is worse than the disease.
Do you consider the crystalens to be fully a part of your self in addition to being a device?
If so, I commend you for being quite consistent =) but could you understand how someone else would consider it to be otherwise?
Your mill example is a good one since it is animal-as-part-of-machine and not machine-as-part-of-animal. I don't think anybody would say that the mill was not a machine, but I, for one, would say that although it was powered by animals, the animals were not a part of the machine in the same way that I am not a part of my bicycle.
I guess whether or not there is a distinction depends on how "alive" you consider brain cells outside of a brain to be. The real difference between the mill or the bicycle and the robot is that one uses whole animals while the other uses (living) animal parts.
You are begging the question, "Is it possible for us to build a 'sufficiently complex machine', i.e. a machine as complex as a living organism?"
Given that humans are the only living organisms that can build complex machines, and given that we're nowhere near creating machines that mimic even the lowly cell, much less anything more complex, there is nothing except for theoretical evidence to support the claim. And if you take a brief look into the history of psychology and the biology of the brain, a lot of that theoretical evidence comes up short because it's mostly espoused by computer scientists who are making claims outside of their area of expertise.
So no, you don't have to believe in a non-physical soul to come to the conclusion that biological organisms are more than just machines. Just because you subscribe to reductionism doesn't mean it is the only way or the most accurate way to look at things.
A caricature is easily identifiable as a deliberate distortion of its subject's features. These images are vague sketches of image-captured outlines, with some randomness thrown in.
Even rudimentary drawing robots like these are examples of artificial creativity.
Setting aside how ridiculous "artificial creativity" is, there is nothing to back up the article's assertion of creativity. The idea is novel, but the output is algorithmic with a bit of randomness thrown in.
After about 1960, the library began being more selective. That's bad enough in some senses...
Nah, we're not missing much. The 1960s is when completely useless books began to be published in earnest. The LOC didn't include pulp magazines because they didn't have broad cultural significance, and the torrent of academic books written under Publish or Perish should be in the same category. The pulps at least had widespread appeal as entertainment. There are hundreds of thousands of books published nowadays that do nothing except dilute the results of topical searches and bloat indices; listing meaningless statistics and calling it insight, or cataloguing facts and calling it a treatise.
The problem is that assigning triple damages and all that is just going to push texting to be more covert and more dangerous, which is what the article is about.
Everybody thinks they're a good driver. Everybody who texts while driving is sure that they're good at it and would never cause an accident. Now they'll be texting while hiding the phone in their lap, and once they do it a few times with no repercussions they'll feel like a pro at that too. Many certainly won't tell the truth about causing an accident while texting if they know they'll be in more trouble, so the only way to find out would be to subpoena cell phone records for every accident--not a good thing for privacy.
I have only played the single-player mode in Minecraft Alpha. It's hard to describe exactly what makes it so compelling. The best thing i can think of is its sense of adventure.
You're dropped into a randomly generated world with nothing but your fist. The terrain generator makes these fantastic landscapes that, while not always entirely Earthly, are usually quite engaging and natural: forested rolling hills, rocky islets, mountains with waterfalls (which have effective and consistent physics)...and dark foreboding caves, sometimes a small hole in a hillside, other times a straight-down pit you almost have to fall into to see. You never know what you'll find just over the next rise.
It's up to you to bootstrap your survival. You've probably seen the Penny Arcade comics, so you know the basics: punch a tree, get some wood, craft some tools. You'll want to find some coal for torches and make a safe house before it gets dark--that's when the monsters come out. And because the combat is so basic, the outcome of every mob encounter is always in question. Zombies aren't so bad, but skeletons, spiders, and the sneaky creepers can ruin your night pretty quickly.
It's a sandbox game, but it's also a little like Sim City or even an RTS: if you want to build stuff, you first have to collect the resources to do so. Any block can be removed from the game world, provided you have the right tools, and any block you've gathered can be placed wherever you like. Iron ore can be smelted (after you've crafted a furnace) into better tools; there's also rarer stuff like gold ore and diamonds the further down into the earth you go.
And that's where Minecraft really shines: down in the caves. You'll find mazes of twisty little passages, all alike. You'll find huge rooms with water- or maybe even lava-falls in them. You may come to a dead end with a dirt wall; dig your way through it and you might discover a whole new set of tunnels. Wherever you go down there, you'll need to light your way with torches. Not only do they let you see pitfalls and baddies, but their light keeps more monsters from spawning. I have never played a game where the darkness was so fear-inducing. It's surprising just how tense I get when I have a pocket full of ore, but I'm lost deep below the surface, running out of torches, and my last pickaxe and sword are almost busted. Conversely, the rush of happiness and sense of reward if I survive and find my way to daylight is just as magnified.
So there's that sense of adventure, and there's also room for lots of individuality. There is no in-game map to hold your hand, and there are as many methods to (try and) keep yourself from getting lost as there are players. I play on a MacBook Pro, meaning my render distance is pretty short, so I tend to use trails of torches above-ground to lead me from my fort(s) to working caves. Inside the caves I'm working out a system of double and triple torches in various configurations to keep myself oriented. Other people build arrows out of cobblestone or dirt, or wall off certain branches for later, or heaven knows what else. You're forced to deal with the challenges the game world throws at you, but you can do it however you like. What's the point besides exploration? Well, you can build a minecart roller coaster or a giant Sphinx, or just a homey little cottage. Whatever you build is entirely individual, since as you say you're basically working with big-ass voxels. I like expanding my houses sometimes, but the real fun for me is in the exploration.
Oh, one more thing. The game is currently in Alpha. It has no right being even mildly playable, and instead it's the most engaging game I've played in a long time--in fact I can't remember the last time I was up until 5:00 AM playing a game before this. When Survival MultiPlayer starts to come together (it's playable but players and mobs can't deal damage yet) it's going to be a big deal. I'm having so much fun in my own worlds, I can only imagine what it'll be like exploring with a group of friends.
The problem is the discrepancy between what the Tea Party claims as its official beliefs (small government, less taxes) and what the Tea Party actually believes (Obama is a Socialist Marxist fascist dictator who worships Hitler and Allah and wants to take all the rich people's money away and give it to all the poor people and sell us all out to the world government).
That isn't what the Tea Party movement actually believes. That is a minority viewpoint that is overplayed by the media to discredit the movement and neutralize its effectiveness. The conservative news outlets like Fox play up this caricature of the movement while the liberal news outlets use the provided caricature to tear it to shreds--it's kind of like a straw man, only behind the scenes it's the same oligarchy setting it up and tearing it down. The official beliefs are by and large what the Tea Party movement is actually about; you just don't get to see it because that isn't where the cameras are pointed.
I am in agreement with the stated goals of the Tea Party, but any group that has Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as its unofficial spokespeople is not a group I would ever want to associate with.
Painting Glenn Beck as a Tea Party guy is a brilliant move by our plutocratic overlords. His popularity with the group, if I'm not mistaken, took off when he made a turnabout regarding Ron Paul, someone who really does represent Tea Party ideals--in fact, it was Ron Paul supporters who popularized modern-day tea parties. Fox latched on to and perverted the idea, using Beck and others to push their own agenda and to de-fang the movement from making any changes that would benefit average Americans over corporations and the political class.
Paul himself has said exactly what you did: that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin ought not to be spokesmen for the movement, and that people who listen to them are being taken for a ride.
Regardless, the damage is done and the Tea Party movement has very little respect. What may save the movement despite itself is the continued recession despite numerous bailouts. Word has it that Democrats are in trouble come November, and there are lots of Republican candidates running on the Tea Party staple of small government. The fierce primary election infighting between them and the more established Republicans gives me hope that the party may be forcefully reformed from the big-government warmongering monster it's become.
I voted for Obama, and either he doesn't know what he's saying (very possible), or he's lost his mind.
These are really the only two options you see? That's pretty naive. Seems more likely to me that like every other president in the past few decades, he promised to do what sounded good to the most people to get in, and now he's doing whatever his handlers tell him to.
William James was already discussing this stuff before the end of the 19th century. In addition to emotion providing motivation (notice that they are both derived from the same root word), all rationality is derived from experience, and experience includes emotion. It is perfectly rational for one person to be fond of a particular movie because he enjoys the plot, and it is perfectly rational for another to dislike the same film because it reminds him of the sad state his life was in when he first saw it. Most people still don't easily accept such pluralism because in this day and age, among the intelligentsia, its emotional basis is seen as shameful--an amusing paradox.
I'm impressed that you got the diacritical marks to show up on slashdot.
Huh, I just started encountering this today. Doesn't work in this comment box either. Guess I'll just have to get used to responses with [citation needed] =)
Honestly, that number was more indicative of my feelings about how my state is governed than anything else, and was an attempt at humor. The truth is that I know too little about most other states to make any intelligent comments about them unless their practices, good or ill, are revealed through news stories. I figure the ones I never hear much about (Idaho, Arkansas, the Carolinas) are better run than the ones that get publicized for dumb stuff like this.
I'm not familiar with the Harrisburg debt issue, but being close to Philly has kept me up on theirs. I've a friend who is a police officer, so I see on one hand how poorly they're (generally) funded and on the other hand how invasive PA laws can be. This DHS thing is a big negative, especially considering how bad the practice of fracking is for residents to begin with. Our drug laws are pretty strict, including alcohol--we're one of the few states where the only place to get liquor is at state-run stores. The Amish pay no road tax, though their buggies excessively wear down the roads. Much of this sort of thing can be found in any state, I'm sure, and it's only because I live here that I'm aware of so much of it, so it's skewed my perception. The grass is always greener etc.
Thinking further about it, I've concluded that I find too little difference between most state governance to name many names. Most of my dislike is for federal laws, and a lot of that stems from the fact that those issues are taken out of the hands of state governments where they properly belong. I pretty obviously lean libertarian, so I'll favor states whose laws promote personal freedom and dislike those whose laws don't, but the fact is that there's not a whole lot of room for them to decide much, which leaves me looking at little more than the corruption index.
In reality, the area in which I live and have always lived is gorgeous during every season and is full of friends and family, so barring anything really mind-numbingly perverse, despite its shortcomings, PA is and will likely remain first in my list of places to live.
I was getting worried when the hubbub over the school spying on its students through webcams died off. Good to see we're maintaining our position as the fifth worst state in the Union.
Wii Play is overall not so good, but I found both Laser Hockey and Tanks (especially co-op Tanks) to be quite fun. Mine was $10 more than just a Wiimote, but those two games contained within ended up being worth more than $10 to me.
Slashdot Mirror
See, this is what a nation of tolerance would be like. I disagree on how awful some of those substances are, but it's okay because as long as I'm not harming you, you're not trying to stop me from using them. That makes me less likely to be concerned with trying to convince you that my viewpoint is the correct one since there is no rights-infringing legislation being pushed, and we can agree to disagree, freeing us up to discuss more fruitful topics or play Frisbee.
Kudos.
Americans are not good at self control. That is why we have problems with Alcohol and Tobacco, but it is too difficult to stop those, Alcohol proven by prohibition. But opening the door to
Marijuana is actually quite stupid.
How is marijuana prohibition any different from that of alcohol, except that it has been going on much longer and was never truly made legal with a constitutional amendment? It was completely legal until 1937, and nobody cared one whit about it until some unscrupulous newspapers started Reefer Madness to keep the Mexicans from "stealing our jobs." The FUD has been spreading ever since.
I don't understand how anyone can look at the sordid situation of our prison population (highest percentage in the world!), a significant portion of which are non-violent drug offenses; take into account that it was recommended to be made legal at least twice by government task forces; understand that, just like alcohol, people will use it no matter its legal status, and it's much better to have the money go to enterprise instead of cartels; to see all that and still believe that it is better to keep it illegal.
We want to improve citizens productivity and their willingness to work.
We do? Huh, I thought it was all about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not making sure we have enough cogs to keep The Almighty Economy as profitable as possible.
The real question is if Marijuana was legal what will be the increase in use...
Well, if it's anything like the Netherlands, there'll be a bit of a spike right after, as all those people who were curious about it can try it out without fear, and then usage will drop back to what it is today (or even lower, as happened there). Or maybe it's as good as the hardcore advocates claim it is and everyone will start using it, obesity will decrease, cancer will disappear, Global Warming will reverse itself, and we'll all get ponies.
Now how will that effect the productivity and profitability the the US Economy.
This again? It likely won't affect it at all: most of the people who will use MJ legally are those who are already using it illegally, and the vast majority of them are otherwise Upstanding Citizens who are Playing Their Part for Society. And musicians, but you'll be hard-pressed to get rid of that scum ;)
Is the gain from less jail and a additional non-black market greater then the loss of a percentage of Americans taking a mind altering drug that decreases their ambitions. And perhaps creates a higher level of parasitic jobless (the ones who can work, could find it, but choose not to, and take our resources) rate. Cause decrease in overall Tax Revenue and having a larger population of Poor jobless people where to bread more saver crime.
Ah, tired old DARE FUD and the Welfare Queen argument with a new, stoned face. Come back when you have more than scare tactics. (Also, I recognize all of the words in the last sentence, but I have no idea what they mean when put together that way. I think it's part of the Welfare Queen argument, but if it's something else, feel free to let me know and I'll shoot that down too.)
In terms of smoking, Most Americans measure their smoking on packs of percentage of packs of cigarettes a day. Other countries measure it in terms of cigarettes per day.
In terms of drinking where it is common they will have a few drinks over the day and not get drunk. Americans when they drink they will get drunk, very drunk.
And this has what to do with marijuana again? I was expecting some sort of conclusion...perhaps I am meant to conclude that Americans will use too much pot. But that's a very flimsy line of "reasoning," considering that all three drugs are very different.
Tobacco is physically addictive (I should k
Technically, all the producers and consumers could be busted on federal charges, state legal or no.
This isn't technically correct, though it is practically true. The 10th Amendment gives power which is not granted to the federal government and not prohibited by the Constitution to the states (or to the people). Drug laws are decidedly unconstitutional, though the Supreme Court has willfully misinterpreted it for decades by relying on the "common welfare" clause as a catch-all. I am hopeful that with states beginning to come around on the marijuana issue, realizing that the failed War on Drugs is much more harmful to our society than keeping pot illegal is, there will eventually be enough support from the citizenry to put the federal government back in its place.
Failing that, I can see an argument being made that "common welfare" doesn't apply to marijuana laws, since our police waste time prosecuting a victimless crime and our prisons fill up with non-violent offenders, the cartel wars in Mexico begins to spill over the border...in every case when it comes to marijuana, the "cure" is worse than the disease.
Fair enough. Never having been in that situation, it's hard for me to imagine.
(Nice pun, too!)
Do you consider the crystalens to be fully a part of your self in addition to being a device?
If so, I commend you for being quite consistent =) but could you understand how someone else would consider it to be otherwise?
Your mill example is a good one since it is animal-as-part-of-machine and not machine-as-part-of-animal. I don't think anybody would say that the mill was not a machine, but I, for one, would say that although it was powered by animals, the animals were not a part of the machine in the same way that I am not a part of my bicycle.
I guess whether or not there is a distinction depends on how "alive" you consider brain cells outside of a brain to be. The real difference between the mill or the bicycle and the robot is that one uses whole animals while the other uses (living) animal parts.
You are begging the question, "Is it possible for us to build a 'sufficiently complex machine', i.e. a machine as complex as a living organism?"
Given that humans are the only living organisms that can build complex machines, and given that we're nowhere near creating machines that mimic even the lowly cell, much less anything more complex, there is nothing except for theoretical evidence to support the claim. And if you take a brief look into the history of psychology and the biology of the brain, a lot of that theoretical evidence comes up short because it's mostly espoused by computer scientists who are making claims outside of their area of expertise.
So no, you don't have to believe in a non-physical soul to come to the conclusion that biological organisms are more than just machines. Just because you subscribe to reductionism doesn't mean it is the only way or the most accurate way to look at things.
Calling it a rat brain would be like calling a heap of randomly wired intel-made-transistors a core2duo.
Sssssh....that's how I make money on eBay!
A caricature is easily identifiable as a deliberate distortion of its subject's features. These images are vague sketches of image-captured outlines, with some randomness thrown in.
Even rudimentary drawing robots like these are examples of artificial creativity.
Setting aside how ridiculous "artificial creativity" is, there is nothing to back up the article's assertion of creativity. The idea is novel, but the output is algorithmic with a bit of randomness thrown in.
No idea =) I'd expect that sort of nonsense in Idle...hopefully it's not metastasizing.
(second attempt - slashdot keeps fucking dropping my posts)
Oh no, they're here. All three of them.
After about 1960, the library began being more selective. That's bad enough in some senses...
Nah, we're not missing much. The 1960s is when completely useless books began to be published in earnest. The LOC didn't include pulp magazines because they didn't have broad cultural significance, and the torrent of academic books written under Publish or Perish should be in the same category. The pulps at least had widespread appeal as entertainment. There are hundreds of thousands of books published nowadays that do nothing except dilute the results of topical searches and bloat indices; listing meaningless statistics and calling it insight, or cataloguing facts and calling it a treatise.
The problem is that assigning triple damages and all that is just going to push texting to be more covert and more dangerous, which is what the article is about.
Everybody thinks they're a good driver. Everybody who texts while driving is sure that they're good at it and would never cause an accident. Now they'll be texting while hiding the phone in their lap, and once they do it a few times with no repercussions they'll feel like a pro at that too. Many certainly won't tell the truth about causing an accident while texting if they know they'll be in more trouble, so the only way to find out would be to subpoena cell phone records for every accident--not a good thing for privacy.
I don't have a good solution.
No need to flail. Just hold your arm in front of the offending child and give a solid tap on the brake. Let momentum do most of your work for you =)
Seems a little absurd to add that, considering the person you're speech-to-texting is capable of decoding speech far better than a microprocessor.
I have only played the single-player mode in Minecraft Alpha. It's hard to describe exactly what makes it so compelling. The best thing i can think of is its sense of adventure.
You're dropped into a randomly generated world with nothing but your fist. The terrain generator makes these fantastic landscapes that, while not always entirely Earthly, are usually quite engaging and natural: forested rolling hills, rocky islets, mountains with waterfalls (which have effective and consistent physics)...and dark foreboding caves, sometimes a small hole in a hillside, other times a straight-down pit you almost have to fall into to see. You never know what you'll find just over the next rise.
It's up to you to bootstrap your survival. You've probably seen the Penny Arcade comics, so you know the basics: punch a tree, get some wood, craft some tools. You'll want to find some coal for torches and make a safe house before it gets dark--that's when the monsters come out. And because the combat is so basic, the outcome of every mob encounter is always in question. Zombies aren't so bad, but skeletons, spiders, and the sneaky creepers can ruin your night pretty quickly.
It's a sandbox game, but it's also a little like Sim City or even an RTS: if you want to build stuff, you first have to collect the resources to do so. Any block can be removed from the game world, provided you have the right tools, and any block you've gathered can be placed wherever you like. Iron ore can be smelted (after you've crafted a furnace) into better tools; there's also rarer stuff like gold ore and diamonds the further down into the earth you go.
And that's where Minecraft really shines: down in the caves. You'll find mazes of twisty little passages, all alike. You'll find huge rooms with water- or maybe even lava-falls in them. You may come to a dead end with a dirt wall; dig your way through it and you might discover a whole new set of tunnels. Wherever you go down there, you'll need to light your way with torches. Not only do they let you see pitfalls and baddies, but their light keeps more monsters from spawning. I have never played a game where the darkness was so fear-inducing. It's surprising just how tense I get when I have a pocket full of ore, but I'm lost deep below the surface, running out of torches, and my last pickaxe and sword are almost busted. Conversely, the rush of happiness and sense of reward if I survive and find my way to daylight is just as magnified.
So there's that sense of adventure, and there's also room for lots of individuality. There is no in-game map to hold your hand, and there are as many methods to (try and) keep yourself from getting lost as there are players. I play on a MacBook Pro, meaning my render distance is pretty short, so I tend to use trails of torches above-ground to lead me from my fort(s) to working caves. Inside the caves I'm working out a system of double and triple torches in various configurations to keep myself oriented. Other people build arrows out of cobblestone or dirt, or wall off certain branches for later, or heaven knows what else. You're forced to deal with the challenges the game world throws at you, but you can do it however you like. What's the point besides exploration? Well, you can build a minecart roller coaster or a giant Sphinx, or just a homey little cottage. Whatever you build is entirely individual, since as you say you're basically working with big-ass voxels. I like expanding my houses sometimes, but the real fun for me is in the exploration.
Oh, one more thing. The game is currently in Alpha. It has no right being even mildly playable, and instead it's the most engaging game I've played in a long time--in fact I can't remember the last time I was up until 5:00 AM playing a game before this. When Survival MultiPlayer starts to come together (it's playable but players and mobs can't deal damage yet) it's going to be a big deal. I'm having so much fun in my own worlds, I can only imagine what it'll be like exploring with a group of friends.
You should fool with a joke-a-like before you correct people as it just makes you learn like a look.
The problem is the discrepancy between what the Tea Party claims as its official beliefs (small government, less taxes) and what the Tea Party actually believes (Obama is a Socialist Marxist fascist dictator who worships Hitler and Allah and wants to take all the rich people's money away and give it to all the poor people and sell us all out to the world government).
That isn't what the Tea Party movement actually believes. That is a minority viewpoint that is overplayed by the media to discredit the movement and neutralize its effectiveness. The conservative news outlets like Fox play up this caricature of the movement while the liberal news outlets use the provided caricature to tear it to shreds--it's kind of like a straw man, only behind the scenes it's the same oligarchy setting it up and tearing it down. The official beliefs are by and large what the Tea Party movement is actually about; you just don't get to see it because that isn't where the cameras are pointed.
I am in agreement with the stated goals of the Tea Party, but any group that has Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as its unofficial spokespeople is not a group I would ever want to associate with.
Painting Glenn Beck as a Tea Party guy is a brilliant move by our plutocratic overlords. His popularity with the group, if I'm not mistaken, took off when he made a turnabout regarding Ron Paul, someone who really does represent Tea Party ideals--in fact, it was Ron Paul supporters who popularized modern-day tea parties. Fox latched on to and perverted the idea, using Beck and others to push their own agenda and to de-fang the movement from making any changes that would benefit average Americans over corporations and the political class.
Paul himself has said exactly what you did: that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin ought not to be spokesmen for the movement, and that people who listen to them are being taken for a ride.
Regardless, the damage is done and the Tea Party movement has very little respect. What may save the movement despite itself is the continued recession despite numerous bailouts. Word has it that Democrats are in trouble come November, and there are lots of Republican candidates running on the Tea Party staple of small government. The fierce primary election infighting between them and the more established Republicans gives me hope that the party may be forcefully reformed from the big-government warmongering monster it's become.
I voted for Obama, and either he doesn't know what he's saying (very possible), or he's lost his mind.
These are really the only two options you see? That's pretty naive. Seems more likely to me that like every other president in the past few decades, he promised to do what sounded good to the most people to get in, and now he's doing whatever his handlers tell him to.
Looks like Gene Ray has started watching Star Trek...
William James was already discussing this stuff before the end of the 19th century. In addition to emotion providing motivation (notice that they are both derived from the same root word), all rationality is derived from experience, and experience includes emotion. It is perfectly rational for one person to be fond of a particular movie because he enjoys the plot, and it is perfectly rational for another to dislike the same film because it reminds him of the sad state his life was in when he first saw it. Most people still don't easily accept such pluralism because in this day and age, among the intelligentsia, its emotional basis is seen as shameful--an amusing paradox.
I'm impressed that you got the diacritical marks to show up on slashdot.
Huh, I just started encountering this today. Doesn't work in this comment box either. Guess I'll just have to get used to responses with [citation needed] =)
Honestly, that number was more indicative of my feelings about how my state is governed than anything else, and was an attempt at humor. The truth is that I know too little about most other states to make any intelligent comments about them unless their practices, good or ill, are revealed through news stories. I figure the ones I never hear much about (Idaho, Arkansas, the Carolinas) are better run than the ones that get publicized for dumb stuff like this.
I'm not familiar with the Harrisburg debt issue, but being close to Philly has kept me up on theirs. I've a friend who is a police officer, so I see on one hand how poorly they're (generally) funded and on the other hand how invasive PA laws can be. This DHS thing is a big negative, especially considering how bad the practice of fracking is for residents to begin with. Our drug laws are pretty strict, including alcohol--we're one of the few states where the only place to get liquor is at state-run stores. The Amish pay no road tax, though their buggies excessively wear down the roads. Much of this sort of thing can be found in any state, I'm sure, and it's only because I live here that I'm aware of so much of it, so it's skewed my perception. The grass is always greener etc.
Thinking further about it, I've concluded that I find too little difference between most state governance to name many names. Most of my dislike is for federal laws, and a lot of that stems from the fact that those issues are taken out of the hands of state governments where they properly belong. I pretty obviously lean libertarian, so I'll favor states whose laws promote personal freedom and dislike those whose laws don't, but the fact is that there's not a whole lot of room for them to decide much, which leaves me looking at little more than the corruption index.
In reality, the area in which I live and have always lived is gorgeous during every season and is full of friends and family, so barring anything really mind-numbingly perverse, despite its shortcomings, PA is and will likely remain first in my list of places to live.
The bit in question.
I, on the other hand, knew the reference but feel like I'm missing the humor.
I was getting worried when the hubbub over the school spying on its students through webcams died off. Good to see we're maintaining our position as the fifth worst state in the Union.
Wii Play is overall not so good, but I found both Laser Hockey and Tanks (especially co-op Tanks) to be quite fun. Mine was $10 more than just a Wiimote, but those two games contained within ended up being worth more than $10 to me.