Hooray! I was hoping to find some reference to that book or either of the theories it is built upon: David Bohm's Holographic Universe theory, based on his reflections on quantum mechanics, essentially stating (IIRC and highly simplified) that a non-local hidden variable must exist and following that to a conclusion that space, time, matter, the entire universe is an unbroken whole that we conscious beings artificially divide; and Karl Pribam's Holonomic Brain Model, stating (IIRC and highly simplified) that our consciousness arises from the interference patterns created by brainwaves, and that the idea of functions of consciousness being tied to certain areas of the brain (language, memory, etc.) is faulty.
On Pribam's side there are some interesting experiments that include removing the brains of salamanders and putting them back in backwards, upside down, even sliced'n'diced, only to have the salamander act normally when brought back from sedation. The Holographic Universe is the best book I have come across for information on Pribam's development of the model, and the section that details his findings is indeed captivating as drinkypoo wrote.
The Holographic Universe is definitely an interesting book though it tends toward the mystical (ESP, auras, time travel, etc.) the further you read. I myself am somewhat inclined in that direction, or at least keep an open mind, but I believe the average Slashdotter will dismiss the whole thing out of hand. For those of you who are interested in Bohm's theory more than Pribam's (or like to impale your brains on advanced physics), I'd recommend David Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order. This book has none of the mystical implications of the Talbot book and lays out Bohm's theory much more fully, if you can understand it (I certainly couldn't once he started using the symbols presumably known to QM wizards). It is rather uneven, being very dry in some parts and very math-heavy in others, so watch out. I would personally prefer a book written for a more general audience, but his theory has been ignored for 50 years. Maybe I'll get my wish if the experiments in the article continue to point in his direction.
Full text is sometimes available through the THOMAS system, but good luck finding it.
The key change is that the full and final text would be available for public scrutiny a week before a vote is called, giving the public plenty of time to rant and rave to their respective congressmen when they find something they don't like, and giving the press plenty of time to find poor legislation and bring it to the public's attention.
The clause stating that it must be the final text is key, eliminating 11th-hour closed-session dealing and helping to ensure that each bill passes on its own merits. Since (according to CrimsonAvenger) the One Subject at a Time Act is dead on arrival, this is a decent alternative: at least all those riders will be flapping in the breeze for all to see.
Regarding the forced readings: I still like this idea mainly for the reason that it would tend to make legislation much, much shorter than it currently is. The more complex and lengthy a bill is, the easier it is to hide stuff in there that nobody (save those in the political class and their owners) wants. I would still be quite satisfied if nothing in the bill were passed save for the W00t Full Disclosure Baby clause.
Well, yes, but it's a shame that we may collectively prove to be too irresponsible to take action before it gets to that point. Violent revolution is not the most effective means for change and is a great waste of human potential.
Yes, I did misunderstand you; thanks for clarifying.
Here is the relevant text of the bill:
A BILL
To prohibit the abuse of legislative power...by declaring that all bills enacted in violation of this Act shall be void, having no legal effect whatsoever, which should be treated as nullities by the American people, this Act being mandatory in purpose, not directory only.
s an unfortunate characteristic of laws that a later one supersedes an earlier one. In this case, that means that even if this were passed, any subsequent law which dealt with riders would, by definition, supersede the One Subject at a Time Act, and render it null and void.
Well, sure. But the law would stick out like a sore thumb, especially since it would necessarily be titled something like "Repeal of the One Subject at a Time Act." If (joy of joys) the Read The Bills Act (or at least the full-text-online provision) had also been passed beforehand, the public's reaction to such a measure would keep it from passing.
You're right in your analysis of the consequences of such a law--the judicial branch gets too much power. Ideally, we the people would keep our elected officials accountable, but I don't think we will get that under our current partisan environment.
I agree that such a policy could cause listeners to tune out the readings, but I believe that this would only happen if there were a long stream of bills that required no debate before a vote. In practice this would be in my opinion unlikely, but even so I think that the effects you discuss in your last paragraph are beneficial enough to warrant some bored congressmen.
Do you know of an alternative method for determining if a congressman has understood the text of the bill he's voting on? If you think such a requirement (that is, ensuring that the bill is understood) is excessive, how else can we ensure that we are being represented by our elected officials?
Also, what do you make of the bill's other provisions about posting the full, final text online before a vote is called?
Oddly enough, it hasn't gone anywhere. Here's to hoping that the One Subject at a Time Act won't have the same experience.
Again, I must stress that hoping is not enough. If you want to see _any_ legislation that limits government and gives more power to the people passed, the only way to do so is to pressure your congressmen to co-sponsor and vote for these acts, and to persuade others to do the same. Congress will pass them, but they will have to be nagged by enough of us little people beforehand and dragged kicking and screaming to let go of the powers that they have seized through our negligence.
There is a bill being aggressively pushed by DownsizeDC, the Read The Bills Act, which requires not just that the congressmen read the bill, but requires each bill to be read aloud in session before it can be voted on. This ensures that all congressmen voting on the bill will have heard its text, and it will also do a lot to cut the size of these monstrosities.
In addition, the bill must be posted online 7 days in advance, and no changes may be made without resetting that 7-day period, ensuring that the public can see and react to exactly what will be passed.
Everyone whose heard of this thing (and is not in the political class) is for it, and there's been enough pressure that the House Minority Leader requested the 7-day full-text posting of Obama's stimulus package. It's a great step, and it shows that the pressure from the electorate's phone calls and messages is working, but there's no reason that it should only be applied to a single bill.
The other bill they're pushing for, which I'll mention here because it also represents another process to improve our quality of legislation, is the One Subject at a Time Act. It's pretty self-explanatory, and would end the use of "riders" - sneaking unpopular chunks of legislation (or pork) into other popular or necessary bills.
If you want to see these changes made, one of the best things you can do is to raise awareness of these bills, call your congressmen, and convince your friends and family to do the same.
One could also assume that Mr. Smith as a professional airline pilot has a vested interest in making his job look good. I'm sure that the numbers check out, but the GP also said that jet aircraft "require fuel that has a high energy density." Assuming that the fact is accurate, to find out if jet aircraft are "insanely inefficient" we must also look at the relative energy densities of jet fuel and good old gasoline, and figure out how much of a difference in production resources/costs it makes. This is left as an exercise for someone who cares more than I do.
Shortly after I posted I ended up chatting with a friend who also recommended TD Bank. I plan on opening up an account there tomorrow.
(In reply to the sibling AC, the bank I am coming from is Harleysville, formerly Willow Financial, formerly First Financial. I looked at the demo of Citizen's online banking and it looks pretty similar to the one at TD, and TD has the added benefit of a location half a block from where I work.)
That is exactly the kind of service I am looking for. My old bank was recently taken over, and neither of their websites allowed me to view anything more than the past month of transactions. In addition to that disservice, the new bank got rid of the surprisingly wonderful e-banking site used by the old bank, replacing its user-friendly, intuitive interface with a shitty homegrown classic ASP checkbox-n-submit-ridden mess that doesn't support half the functionality of the old one. Not only that, but my account was inaccessible for about a week, wreaking havoc with my scheduled payments--I'm still sorting out the mess, and my credit card company is now charging me the default rate because of it. I was in the middle of composing a nastygram to my current bank when I stumbled upon this comment giving me hope that there are good banks out there.
Can anybody point me to a bank or credit union with excellent online services that has operations in southeastern PA? I'm in the market for one.
You're absolutely right, and as someone more familiar with German-speaking culture than the average American (I took 5 semesters of Deutsch) I am fully aware of its Austrian origin. Since the entire post is intended to be humorous, I decided to sacrifice factual accuracy for a familiar German word that often sounds funny to English-speaking hearers.
Had I known such an esteemed colleague as Anonymous Coward would call me out, I would have used Wurst instead. I find Schnitzel more entertaining to read and say aloud. Try it!
You know what, though? If we pulled our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and the 130 other foreign countries where we have bases, and if we stopped spending money on things that blow up or have no other use except in the military, we probably would be able to afford some big tax cuts or infrastructure spending.
Much of the money that goes to fund our unnecessary wars is money that disappears. The goods that it purchases either do not exist after one use (bombs, bullets, missiles) or are so specialized as to be useless in our society (fighters, bombers, tanks).
Now, the way things are being run, by a political class that is completely out of touch with reality, such a sensible position is entirely unrealistic. But GP still has a point with a tax vacation - the government certainly does not limit its spending to its intake, and it's already between $10 and $50 trillion in debt depending on who you ask, so what does it matter at this point if we dig the giant hole a little deeper?
You're giving me way too much credit. In actuality I was only playing off of mi's suggestion that if I pulled a Godwin, I would get a +5. The flurry of replies that my comment generated instead is infinitely more entertaining =)
I'm all for reinstating Godwin's Law, but when our country is like Nazi Germany in all but name and lack of schnitzel, there are more important things to worry about!
People, people! Frames of reference, please! Weight is _always_ relative. An object of near-infinite mass unaffected by an external gravitational field, if conscious, would experience subjective weightlessness.
I hear this is why your mom moved out past the Kuiper belt.
the obvious outcome of libertarian ideology: the rich prosper, the rest face the choice between slavery or death.
People cite this as a failing of libertarian ideology when the reality is that it is happening under our current debt-based economy to an extent much greater than libertarian policies would harbor. The current system rewards the already filthy rich, demonstrated by the continued growth of the gap between rich and poor (in the USA, anyway). The way the system is engineered, there must always be a greater amount of debt than money because all money is loaned into existence. For the very rich, this is a boon because lending money now usually results in payment with interest, increasing their wealth. For everybody else, it means that we end up buying a lot on credit and face increasing debt levels due to the same interest. And that's not even going into the hidden wealth-eroding effects of inflation that disproportionately affect the middle and lower classes: it used to be that only one source of income was needed to maintain a family; now most households require two incomes just to get by, not even increasing in net wealth.
Libertarianism is not a magic bullet that will eradicate poverty, but I submit that poverty will never be eradicated. The best we can do is to mitigate its effects on people as much as possible without causing problems for the whole society. Lots of slashdotters believe that more socialist policies are the answer to that. I personally believe that more libertarian policies and a healthy dose of community would serve us better, and further, that libertarian policies would tend to increase our sense of community. Unfortunately I cannot yet articulate this theory as well I'd like to, but the basics lie in each individual's levels of empathy, ability (including financial means), and personal responsibility. I possess a ton of empathy and a decent chunk of ability (though not financial means), but I have been pretty irresponsible because I viewed poverty as "someone else's problem." After all, the government is taking care of it, right?
It seems to me that the outcome of libertarian ideology is that the industrious prosper while the lazy face the choice between action or death*. The small number of individuals who are incapable of doing very much are cared for by their local communities and by charity organizations, much as they are today. There is decidedly less room for "slavery" in a libertarian society than in the one we have now, where many of us (myself included) are like indentured servants working to pay back the credit binge we've been on since birth.
*This has little to do with our current system, and I am not implying that if you are poor, you must be lazy.
Slashdot Mirror
Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Knock Knock!
...who's there?
Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Knock Knock!
*sigh* Who's there.
Knock Knock!
WHO'S THERE.
Knock Knock!
GODDAMMIT! WHO'S THERE?
Philip Glass.
Hooray! I was hoping to find some reference to that book or either of the theories it is built upon: David Bohm's Holographic Universe theory, based on his reflections on quantum mechanics, essentially stating (IIRC and highly simplified) that a non-local hidden variable must exist and following that to a conclusion that space, time, matter, the entire universe is an unbroken whole that we conscious beings artificially divide; and Karl Pribam's Holonomic Brain Model, stating (IIRC and highly simplified) that our consciousness arises from the interference patterns created by brainwaves, and that the idea of functions of consciousness being tied to certain areas of the brain (language, memory, etc.) is faulty.
On Pribam's side there are some interesting experiments that include removing the brains of salamanders and putting them back in backwards, upside down, even sliced'n'diced, only to have the salamander act normally when brought back from sedation. The Holographic Universe is the best book I have come across for information on Pribam's development of the model, and the section that details his findings is indeed captivating as drinkypoo wrote.
The Holographic Universe is definitely an interesting book though it tends toward the mystical (ESP, auras, time travel, etc.) the further you read. I myself am somewhat inclined in that direction, or at least keep an open mind, but I believe the average Slashdotter will dismiss the whole thing out of hand. For those of you who are interested in Bohm's theory more than Pribam's (or like to impale your brains on advanced physics), I'd recommend David Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order. This book has none of the mystical implications of the Talbot book and lays out Bohm's theory much more fully, if you can understand it (I certainly couldn't once he started using the symbols presumably known to QM wizards). It is rather uneven, being very dry in some parts and very math-heavy in others, so watch out. I would personally prefer a book written for a more general audience, but his theory has been ignored for 50 years. Maybe I'll get my wish if the experiments in the article continue to point in his direction.
Full text is sometimes available through the THOMAS system, but good luck finding it.
The key change is that the full and final text would be available for public scrutiny a week before a vote is called, giving the public plenty of time to rant and rave to their respective congressmen when they find something they don't like, and giving the press plenty of time to find poor legislation and bring it to the public's attention.
The clause stating that it must be the final text is key, eliminating 11th-hour closed-session dealing and helping to ensure that each bill passes on its own merits. Since (according to CrimsonAvenger) the One Subject at a Time Act is dead on arrival, this is a decent alternative: at least all those riders will be flapping in the breeze for all to see.
Regarding the forced readings: I still like this idea mainly for the reason that it would tend to make legislation much, much shorter than it currently is. The more complex and lengthy a bill is, the easier it is to hide stuff in there that nobody (save those in the political class and their owners) wants. I would still be quite satisfied if nothing in the bill were passed save for the W00t Full Disclosure Baby clause.
Well, yes, but it's a shame that we may collectively prove to be too irresponsible to take action before it gets to that point. Violent revolution is not the most effective means for change and is a great waste of human potential.
Well thanks for taking the jam out of my doughnut.
=(
Yes, I did misunderstand you; thanks for clarifying.
Here is the relevant text of the bill:
A BILL
To prohibit the abuse of legislative power...by declaring that all bills enacted in violation of this Act shall be void, having no legal effect whatsoever, which should be treated as nullities by the American people, this Act being mandatory in purpose, not directory only.
(full text)
Doesn't that language, emphasizing the mandatory nature of the restriction, take care of the issue you raised?
s an unfortunate characteristic of laws that a later one supersedes an earlier one. In this case, that means that even if this were passed, any subsequent law which dealt with riders would, by definition, supersede the One Subject at a Time Act, and render it null and void.
Well, sure. But the law would stick out like a sore thumb, especially since it would necessarily be titled something like "Repeal of the One Subject at a Time Act." If (joy of joys) the Read The Bills Act (or at least the full-text-online provision) had also been passed beforehand, the public's reaction to such a measure would keep it from passing.
You're right in your analysis of the consequences of such a law--the judicial branch gets too much power. Ideally, we the people would keep our elected officials accountable, but I don't think we will get that under our current partisan environment.
Thank you.
I agree that such a policy could cause listeners to tune out the readings, but I believe that this would only happen if there were a long stream of bills that required no debate before a vote. In practice this would be in my opinion unlikely, but even so I think that the effects you discuss in your last paragraph are beneficial enough to warrant some bored congressmen.
Do you know of an alternative method for determining if a congressman has understood the text of the bill he's voting on? If you think such a requirement (that is, ensuring that the bill is understood) is excessive, how else can we ensure that we are being represented by our elected officials?
Also, what do you make of the bill's other provisions about posting the full, final text online before a vote is called?
Thanks for sharing!
Myself, I played kickball a lot and got picked last. I gained very little self-esteem from that.
I confess that I don't understand what you are implying.
I'm all for rooting out scandals and Truth, Justice, and The American Way
Well we've managed to root out 3 of the 4... ;)
Oddly enough, it hasn't gone anywhere. Here's to hoping that the One Subject at a Time Act won't have the same experience.
Again, I must stress that hoping is not enough. If you want to see _any_ legislation that limits government and gives more power to the people passed, the only way to do so is to pressure your congressmen to co-sponsor and vote for these acts, and to persuade others to do the same. Congress will pass them, but they will have to be nagged by enough of us little people beforehand and dragged kicking and screaming to let go of the powers that they have seized through our negligence.
There is a bill being aggressively pushed by DownsizeDC, the Read The Bills Act, which requires not just that the congressmen read the bill, but requires each bill to be read aloud in session before it can be voted on. This ensures that all congressmen voting on the bill will have heard its text, and it will also do a lot to cut the size of these monstrosities.
In addition, the bill must be posted online 7 days in advance, and no changes may be made without resetting that 7-day period, ensuring that the public can see and react to exactly what will be passed.
Everyone whose heard of this thing (and is not in the political class) is for it, and there's been enough pressure that the House Minority Leader requested the 7-day full-text posting of Obama's stimulus package. It's a great step, and it shows that the pressure from the electorate's phone calls and messages is working, but there's no reason that it should only be applied to a single bill.
The other bill they're pushing for, which I'll mention here because it also represents another process to improve our quality of legislation, is the One Subject at a Time Act. It's pretty self-explanatory, and would end the use of "riders" - sneaking unpopular chunks of legislation (or pork) into other popular or necessary bills.
If you want to see these changes made, one of the best things you can do is to raise awareness of these bills, call your congressmen, and convince your friends and family to do the same.
One could also assume that Mr. Smith as a professional airline pilot has a vested interest in making his job look good. I'm sure that the numbers check out, but the GP also said that jet aircraft "require fuel that has a high energy density." Assuming that the fact is accurate, to find out if jet aircraft are "insanely inefficient" we must also look at the relative energy densities of jet fuel and good old gasoline, and figure out how much of a difference in production resources/costs it makes. This is left as an exercise for someone who cares more than I do.
Shortly after I posted I ended up chatting with a friend who also recommended TD Bank. I plan on opening up an account there tomorrow.
(In reply to the sibling AC, the bank I am coming from is Harleysville, formerly Willow Financial, formerly First Financial. I looked at the demo of Citizen's online banking and it looks pretty similar to the one at TD, and TD has the added benefit of a location half a block from where I work.)
That is exactly the kind of service I am looking for. My old bank was recently taken over, and neither of their websites allowed me to view anything more than the past month of transactions. In addition to that disservice, the new bank got rid of the surprisingly wonderful e-banking site used by the old bank, replacing its user-friendly, intuitive interface with a shitty homegrown classic ASP checkbox-n-submit-ridden mess that doesn't support half the functionality of the old one. Not only that, but my account was inaccessible for about a week, wreaking havoc with my scheduled payments--I'm still sorting out the mess, and my credit card company is now charging me the default rate because of it. I was in the middle of composing a nastygram to my current bank when I stumbled upon this comment giving me hope that there are good banks out there.
Can anybody point me to a bank or credit union with excellent online services that has operations in southeastern PA? I'm in the market for one.
You're absolutely right, and as someone more familiar with German-speaking culture than the average American (I took 5 semesters of Deutsch) I am fully aware of its Austrian origin. Since the entire post is intended to be humorous, I decided to sacrifice factual accuracy for a familiar German word that often sounds funny to English-speaking hearers.
Had I known such an esteemed colleague as Anonymous Coward would call me out, I would have used Wurst instead. I find Schnitzel more entertaining to read and say aloud. Try it!
You know what, though? If we pulled our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and the 130 other foreign countries where we have bases, and if we stopped spending money on things that blow up or have no other use except in the military, we probably would be able to afford some big tax cuts or infrastructure spending.
Much of the money that goes to fund our unnecessary wars is money that disappears. The goods that it purchases either do not exist after one use (bombs, bullets, missiles) or are so specialized as to be useless in our society (fighters, bombers, tanks).
Now, the way things are being run, by a political class that is completely out of touch with reality, such a sensible position is entirely unrealistic. But GP still has a point with a tax vacation - the government certainly does not limit its spending to its intake, and it's already between $10 and $50 trillion in debt depending on who you ask, so what does it matter at this point if we dig the giant hole a little deeper?
You're giving me way too much credit. In actuality I was only playing off of mi's suggestion that if I pulled a Godwin, I would get a +5. The flurry of replies that my comment generated instead is infinitely more entertaining =)
I'm all for reinstating Godwin's Law, but when our country is like Nazi Germany in all but name and lack of schnitzel, there are more important things to worry about!
People, people! Frames of reference, please! Weight is _always_ relative. An object of near-infinite mass unaffected by an external gravitational field, if conscious, would experience subjective weightlessness.
I hear this is why your mom moved out past the Kuiper belt.
the obvious outcome of libertarian ideology: the rich prosper, the rest face the choice between slavery or death.
People cite this as a failing of libertarian ideology when the reality is that it is happening under our current debt-based economy to an extent much greater than libertarian policies would harbor. The current system rewards the already filthy rich, demonstrated by the continued growth of the gap between rich and poor (in the USA, anyway). The way the system is engineered, there must always be a greater amount of debt than money because all money is loaned into existence. For the very rich, this is a boon because lending money now usually results in payment with interest, increasing their wealth. For everybody else, it means that we end up buying a lot on credit and face increasing debt levels due to the same interest. And that's not even going into the hidden wealth-eroding effects of inflation that disproportionately affect the middle and lower classes: it used to be that only one source of income was needed to maintain a family; now most households require two incomes just to get by, not even increasing in net wealth.
Libertarianism is not a magic bullet that will eradicate poverty, but I submit that poverty will never be eradicated. The best we can do is to mitigate its effects on people as much as possible without causing problems for the whole society. Lots of slashdotters believe that more socialist policies are the answer to that. I personally believe that more libertarian policies and a healthy dose of community would serve us better, and further, that libertarian policies would tend to increase our sense of community. Unfortunately I cannot yet articulate this theory as well I'd like to, but the basics lie in each individual's levels of empathy, ability (including financial means), and personal responsibility. I possess a ton of empathy and a decent chunk of ability (though not financial means), but I have been pretty irresponsible because I viewed poverty as "someone else's problem." After all, the government is taking care of it, right?
It seems to me that the outcome of libertarian ideology is that the industrious prosper while the lazy face the choice between action or death*. The small number of individuals who are incapable of doing very much are cared for by their local communities and by charity organizations, much as they are today. There is decidedly less room for "slavery" in a libertarian society than in the one we have now, where many of us (myself included) are like indentured servants working to pay back the credit binge we've been on since birth.
*This has little to do with our current system, and I am not implying that if you are poor, you must be lazy.
but it doesn't seem to show up...
But then how could they post the dupes?