"The other beneficiaries besides me? Google (Adwords), Paypal, and Uncle Sam. They'll get $90, $30, and $lots respectively as a result of September, all for doing zero marginal work: they just let the computer systems/country they established continue to operate, and they get more money."
Just *let them* continue to operate? Yeah, maintenance just happens on its own. When things wear out, they just get up and repair themselves.
Have you ever visited a "3rd world" country? Personally, I'm happy to pay my taxes. I think I getting a good deal, comparatively.
My guess would be that the definition of smell is simply chemical detection ( as opposed to light detection, vibration detection, heat detection, etc. ). IIRC in plant biology class, groves of trees often communicate through their underground rood network , which is often more intimate than their top-side relationships.
I remember working in a metal shop in 1998, a few years out of high school. Clinton had just sent cruise missles into Sudan and Afghanistan in an attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden. The next day the republicans in congress voted to impeach him over Monica Lewinski. I wondered what legal authority Clinton had to send missles into sovereign countries. Maybe Newt Gingrich was right -- was this wag the dog? NPR had reports on this shadowy Osama Bin Laden guy. This was the first time I had ever heard of him. Was he really a threat or was Clinton just trying to distract us from his personal problems?
Three years later and the WTCs are gone. Bush's people got the word from Clintons that OBL would be their primary focus. They got the plan from Al Gore. And they did JACK FUCKING SQUAT. They hold NOT A SINGLE MEETING about terrorism. Their idea of national security was pulling out of ICBM treaties, and erecting an imaginary missle shield.
So there you have it. You are full of shit. Under Clinton's watch in 1995, we jailed Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the original WTC bombings in 1993. He sent cruise missles into Afghanistan and Sudan, trying to kill OBL, and the Republicans cried "Wag the Dog!" He had come the closest to killing Osama Bin Laden than anybody else. The only criticism you have of Clinton is that his staffers removed the 'W' keys on their way out, which is a well-known Rove planted media article to discredit Clinton. 5 years into a war, Bush still has no idea where OBL is, the evil mastermind who attacked us and destroyed our towers, and stated on the 2004 campaign trail that he doesn't care asnd doesn't think much about him.
If you right-wing hacks hadn't been fucking things up, Osama Bin Laden would be dead now and the Trade Centers would still be standing. 5 years after the bombings that brought down the WTC and we still don't have OBL. We have no idea who was behind the anthrax mailings. Our ports are not secure. Airline security is a joke. Bush is a total fuck-up, and he has no concern to keep us safe from terrorists. In fact, keeping us scared and in danger will help him and his party win elections.
"Every president has sought to increase the scope and power of the office. This is nothing new."
Nixon actually went above and beyond, way way *way* beyond. Nixon literally said that he believed that the president can do whatever he wants to, simply because he is the president. This is a very dangerous idea. It means that the president is above the law, no different than a King or a dictator. To my knowledge, no other president in history has ever advocated or tried to implement this philosophy of presidential power. Thus, this is something new, and very dangerous.
Yes, various presidents have increased their power. For instance, Lincoln, who is universally liked by people on both sides of the isle, was the first to use the pocket veto, appointing candidates for official positions when congress was out of session, so that they were automatically confirmed. However, he never said that the president was above the law.
I am not accusing Republicans of being fascists. Most average republicans are true conservatives who would be horrified at the idea of a president who is above the law. However, Nixon, and the neocons who supported him and worked hard to get to this point, are fully behind the idea of the unitary executive. Unitary Executive is American constitutional legalese for 'dictator'.
The democrats may not be a whole lot better, but they haven't yet publically supported a dictator, or espoused support for the theory of the unitary executive. I find arguments that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats to be dangerously ignorant of political reality.
Hey, you forgot Dungeons and Dragons. Who knows how many innocent babies have been sacrificed after their young, unwed parents learned the ritual from the Dungeon Master's handbook?
Basically you are trying to shift blame away from management to unions, when it rightly belongs with management. Unions are trying to get the best deal for their employees, just like the consumer is trying to get the best deal on a car, or a supplier is trying to get the best deal on their product.
Blaming management for not negotiating better contracts with the union would be like blaming them for not negotiating better contracts with their suppliers. "They could compete with the Japanese, but the Japanese don't have to pay their suppliers as much." If management are not as good at negotiating contracts with suppliers as the Japanese are, it is management's fault alone, and they deserve to fail in competition with the Japanese. Same goes with union contracts or sticker price, or any other place where management has to negotiate.
As far as workers getting better benefits and jobs, Thom Hartmann does a good job explaining when workers get paid more. Historically, it has only happened under one of three conditions: 1. When there is a sudden shortage of workers. Thom argues that the black death in Europe sparked the Renaissance, because there were more people getting paid more who could pursue more education and develop more highly skilled forms of labor, like glasswork, metallurgy, printing, etc. 2. When there is a sudden influx of new wealth, such as when the European colonialists were literally shipping in tons and tons of gold they had plundered from the colonies. and 3. With government intervention, as was the case at the turn of the last century.
Thom Hartmann certainly is a lefty and has his bias. But, he backs up his argument with historical fact. If you know of a historical instance where workers got more money 'just because', or for reasons other than what Hartmann cites, I'd like to hear about it.
So, no business owner has any interest in paying their worker more -- they have an interest in paying their worker less. Just like you said, corporations are heartless, emotionless entities who don't care about workers. Any business owner who tries to single-handedly take better care of his workers with be shortly put out of business by his ruthless competitors.
My grandpa tells me stories of the state militia firing upon striking laborists camped out in front of locked out factories when he was a boy in the 30s. School boys passing by would fire rocks at the windows of the factory from slings, and the militia would fire on the strikers, thinking that they had hurled the rocks.
For most of human history, there has been the 5-10% of wealthy, ruling elites, and the rest were either chattel slaves, indentured servants, serfs, or just plain poor folk. The middle class is a relatively new phenomenon, mostly brought about by unions. With even a brief look at history, and an understanding of the power-hungry, blood-thristy nature of the human heart, I don't see how wages
We will have to fight and die to regain our unions and worker protections, just like our great-grandfathers did 100 years ago.
Except that the beta is here, now, and in Google's case, usually works pretty well. Most pre-announcements are just words, not code, and typically become vaporware.
I have no problem with RFID in the passport, as long as it is implemented in an intelligent manner. I don't see it as any more of an invasion of privacy than the personal photo and address information, and also the log of my recent travels.
I plan on having an aluminum foil carrying case for my RFID passport, when I get one, so it can't be read without being opened. Recently I saw a link to a company that makes wallets with a metal foil already embedded in the leather, so RFID chips can't be scanned remotely. The also sell a foil insert that goes in the bill area. I acn't remember the name though -- I thought it was a wordplay with 'wallet' and 'magnet', perhaps the word 'envelope'?
The only thing I don't want is an RFID implant. You might wear a farraday armband, but the whole idea reminds me too much of Jews getting serial numbers tatooed shortly before they were shipped into the death camps.
As far as GM, Ford, and Chrysler -- their Japanese competitors who are eating their lunch -- Honda, Nissan, Toyta -- are all unionized. Why aren't they failing also? If unionization is bringing down the big 3, how come they are being beat by unionized labor, even manufacturing cars here in the US?
Unionized labor is a red herring in this debate. It has little, if nothing to do with management failure. Don't worry about the corporations. They can take care of themselves, and if they can't, let 'em perish. The workers who lose their jobs to a company are much better off going adrift in a job market that has more unionized labor.
What we need unions for are so that your average American can have a 40-hour work week, have health insurance for their family, have a retirement, and send their kids to college.
Union wages not only help those working in a union shop, but also bring up the wages and benefits of those who are in non-union jobs, because those employers have to compete
The only recourse we have against corporations turning us in serfs or indentured servants are unions. Look at modern labor before unionization -- 14 year-old children working 60 hour weeks in dark coal mines, layed off when they lose a hand. Men slowly going into debt having to purchase eveything, including housing, from the company store. People dying in factory fires because there were no exits, or exit doors were just painted on walls. Now, America workers are competing agaisnt those kinds of working conditions in the 3rd world. Things are going to get much worse for the average working person here in the US, if current trends continue.
A few months ago I would have agreed with you. That was before I started learning the recent history.
It was after Nixon's political demise that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others who came to be called Neo-cons stared to look for ways to increase the power of the presidency. Remember, it was Nixon who said that anything the president does it legal, because it is the president who is doing it. In other words, the president is above the law. Since then, they have slowly been setting the stage for this very day.
We had Reagan, who destroyed the unions and set up the boogeyman of the welfare queen, to destroy the social safety net and job security of the middle class. Look where we are now -- Productivity is the highest its been in fifty years, yet people are making less money, working more hours, with less benefits. Prices are up, savings is at an all-time low, and credit card debt at a high. People can't worry about politics -- they are too busy working. Have a problem with this? Shut up with your class warfare and get back to work.
Then came Bush Sr., who was somewhat stymied by a democratic congress and a single term. Clinton's anti-terrorism efforts were hampered by Republicans charging about gays in the military and Lewinsky. I assume I don't need to tell you about Bush.
So if you look at who the major players are behind the scenes in the Regan and both Bush presidencies, you will find Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and assorted other Neo-cons who wanted to strengthen the presidency after Nixon's impeachment. Scary.
The Silicon Valley tycoons who are pushing this bill aren't the same ones who are venturing into manufacturing high performance eletric cars, are they?
"The whole concept of not just outright conquering other nations whom you disagree with, and are more powerful than, is a relatively recent invention. Only since World War II has it really taken hold as a global opinion. Prior to that, it was just assumed that any great power had the right to colonize/dominate any minor country it could, and fight over territory from other great powers using whatever means it had."
I doubt it. I think that conquering weaker states as the natural order was a propagandic meme that the ruling elites developed to enrich themselves.
You see, there was a time when nobody really ruled anybody else -- not in the sense that we think of today. Sure, there were elders whose opinions were respected, relatives who had a say in your life, but there wasn't really 'the man' who could throw you in jail or have you killed if you broke some law. You had to worry about what your neighbor would do to you if you offended them, but there were no cops to call, no judge who had a final say, no king to plead to -- no third party who didn't have a direct interest in your conflict.
We have run into groups of people who live without authorities -- i.e. strangers who tell you what to do and can punish you for not listening to them. We ask them "take us to your leader" and their basic answer is "Hey, I'm a grown man, and I do whatever the hell I want to". They live deep in jungles, on islands, etc. They basically have the same 'material footprint', as far as housing patterns and distribution of wealth, as almost *everyone* did 6,000 years ago, so we don't really have any reason not to think that everybody was basically autonomous for most of human history.
The problem is that the people who believed in living with your neighbors and getting along with others tended to be conquered. The conquerers then wrote histories extolling their leaders for liberating the conquered people from their cruel masters and backwards ways, and generally carrying out the fate of the universe by conquering weaker people.
There are still people around who live in relative autonomy, but really aren't interested in conquering other people. Native Americans inside the United States, specifically the Hopi, practice a 'live and let live' philosophy in regards to themselves and their neighbors. It helps to live in a hard-scrabble desert instead of valuable, high-yield farmland. The autonomous Inuit in Canada, and the autonomous tribes in the Amazon are other good examples. I am not claiming they live in a Eden-like Utopia -- they do have murder, revenge killings, disease, infant mortality, etc. -- but they are very keen on defending their independence against Empires, and have basically done so for all of their existance.
The lesson here is that if you aren't living in valuable farmland, you can rule yourselves, and not really have to pay taxes.
Not, don't get me wrong. There were empires in the Americas before the Europeans arrived, and they were just as cruel, power-hungry, and blood-thirsty as the European conquerers. But that doesn't means that there weren't Native Americans, such as the Hopi, who weren't the non-conquering type, and didn't very much care to be ruled either, thank you very much.
It's good to have a sense of history. It's also good to have a sense of anthropology and archaeology. It isn't until you have a non-perishable staple crop ( basically, wheat in the Middle East, Rice in Asia, and Corn in the Americas ) that you can have societies that support people who do something other than hunting or farming, such as make crafts, or tell other people what to do, or fight. Some of those greedy people who think that they are above everyone else and deserve to be wealthy start whipping up a frenzy against *those* people living over *there*, how they are a threat, and need to be liberated by our kind leaders. Of course, they must also start paying their taxes.
There are probably some people who view environmentalism as a moral/ethical issue, that we are interfering with God's creation. However, I think most people do believe that what humans do to make a living is morally okay, if not 'natural'.
I think what people construe as 'BAD' is coastal cities flooding all over the globe ( think Katrina in New York, LA, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, etc. ), increasted desertification, famine, ecozone change, loss of farmland, etc. etc.
The suffering, loss of life, destruction, displacement, famine and starvation are what people are concerned about and consider 'BAD'. Sure, in the course of human history there has been plenty of tours of the Four Horseman, but civilization is an attempt to mitigate these risks. I suspect a lot of people who think this kind of thing is no big deal because it has happened regularly, would change their tune is they had to flee famine or invaders.
Yes, it has happened in the past, and it certainly will happen again, but the whole point of civilization is to make life easier by removing or mitigating these risks. Some people are indifferent, and some people what to try to avoid this kind of catastrophe, for themselves and future people. Everyday that I get my fat, lazy ass up and get in the car to work on the internet, I thank god for all the technological advances that allow me to spend my life looking at pictures of naked women on the internet.
Are the people who play online virtual-life games the same who would buy real-life avant-garde fashions, even if they find such things suitable enough for their avatars?
One of the safeguards inherent in the system is to scoop a fellow 'internet reporter' and destroy their story. If you can show that someone else's report is dmeonstrably false, that improves your credibility, and tells readers that they need to come to *you* in order to get the accurate story. If you want a bigger audience, debunk other's stories, and tell good, solid stories yourself.
My bet is what will happen first is that scientists will be able to generate the larger breast organ in the lab, and start surgically implanting those instead of the silicone or saline. I think it's a harder trick to get the new breat tissue growing in exactly the right places.
Isn't anything we design thereby a product of evolution? If evolution produced the human brain, which in turn produced a prosthetic limb, isn't it evolution which ultimately created the limb?
Well, considering that a limb is made up of serveral organs, such as bones and muscles, I would think that you would have to get organs before you could get limbs.
Am I mistaken, but aren't you still guilty of a crime you commit today, even if your actions are legalized next year?
In other words, we have no Ex Post Facto laws. You can't have something made illegal retroactively into the past. If congress passes a law tomorrow making it illegal to use the internet, we aren't breaking the law for using the internet today.
Similarly, can you retroactively make something legal? If the president is breaking the law today, and his actions are made legal tomorrow, isn't he still guilty of breaking the law?
Excuse me, but Aditi's post reads like an astroturfing editorial.
"[Intelligence] is powerful way to keep any country safe."
What self-respecting geeks makes obvious, circular statements like that in support of their argument? What self-respecting geek modded this insightful? This sounds like a 6th grader's paragraph response in civics class. Does Aditi think that anyone on slashdot is seriously arguing against intelligence!?
We've seen that the Bush administration has paid of journalists to write editorials favorable of its policies and programs. The pentagon has voiced concern that its propaganda has leaked into state-side media. With a president that has such a radical agenda and such a low approval rating, and a pattern of buying support, why shouldn't we expect similar campaigns on sites with influential mindshare like slashdot?
We don't have such a procedure here. I might be missing perhaps one step, but I think that literally, the leader of the senate can call for a vote on any bill on the floor at any time. Then it goes to the president's desk and he signs it.
And to get on the floor of the senate, all that has to happen is that the senator introduces it.
If you happened to catch Michael Moore's Farenheit 911, despite it's distortions and mismatches between image and narration, he does have an accurate interview with congressman John Conyers about the congress passing bills in the middle of the night, without members having actually *read* the bill.
The American senate can move as fast as they want to. Since the congress is controlled by Republicans, and the president is a Republican, they could practically pass this overnight. And no, in an election year, Democrats are not going to oppose this.
I admit you caught me -- I don't specifically know about "law of [linearj] superposition of electric fields", but any measurement I've seen of the real world has some small degree of divergence from the formulas -- small in orders of magnitude. The official line is that this variance is due to the imperfection of lab setup, imperfection of materials measured, and the imperfection of the measuring equipment.
I suspect that most phenomena don't 'measure up' quite as exactly as electrical fields. If that's the case, I think the most I could say about the universe is that some phenomena can be precisely modeled by math, some are very close, while others (such as long-term weather, human behavior) cannot.
Slashdot Mirror
"The other beneficiaries besides me? Google (Adwords), Paypal, and Uncle Sam. They'll get $90, $30, and $lots respectively as a result of September, all for doing zero marginal work: they just let the computer systems/country they established continue to operate, and they get more money."
Just *let them* continue to operate? Yeah, maintenance just happens on its own. When things wear out, they just get up and repair themselves.
Have you ever visited a "3rd world" country? Personally, I'm happy to pay my taxes. I think I getting a good deal, comparatively.
My guess would be that the definition of smell is simply chemical detection ( as opposed to light detection, vibration detection, heat detection, etc. ). IIRC in plant biology class, groves of trees often communicate through their underground rood network , which is often more intimate than their top-side relationships.
Having paid attention!?
I remember working in a metal shop in 1998, a few years out of high school. Clinton had just sent cruise missles into Sudan and Afghanistan in an attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden. The next day the republicans in congress voted to impeach him over Monica Lewinski. I wondered what legal authority Clinton had to send missles into sovereign countries. Maybe Newt Gingrich was right -- was this wag the dog? NPR had reports on this shadowy Osama Bin Laden guy. This was the first time I had ever heard of him. Was he really a threat or was Clinton just trying to distract us from his personal problems?
Three years later and the WTCs are gone. Bush's people got the word from Clintons that OBL would be their primary focus. They got the plan from Al Gore. And they did JACK FUCKING SQUAT. They hold NOT A SINGLE MEETING about terrorism. Their idea of national security was pulling out of ICBM treaties, and erecting an imaginary missle shield.
So there you have it. You are full of shit. Under Clinton's watch in 1995, we jailed Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the original WTC bombings in 1993. He sent cruise missles into Afghanistan and Sudan, trying to kill OBL, and the Republicans cried "Wag the Dog!" He had come the closest to killing Osama Bin Laden than anybody else. The only criticism you have of Clinton is that his staffers removed the 'W' keys on their way out, which is a well-known Rove planted media article to discredit Clinton. 5 years into a war, Bush still has no idea where OBL is, the evil mastermind who attacked us and destroyed our towers, and stated on the 2004 campaign trail that he doesn't care asnd doesn't think much about him.
If you right-wing hacks hadn't been fucking things up, Osama Bin Laden would be dead now and the Trade Centers would still be standing. 5 years after the bombings that brought down the WTC and we still don't have OBL. We have no idea who was behind the anthrax mailings. Our ports are not secure. Airline security is a joke. Bush is a total fuck-up, and he has no concern to keep us safe from terrorists. In fact, keeping us scared and in danger will help him and his party win elections.
"Every president has sought to increase the scope and power of the office. This is nothing new."
Nixon actually went above and beyond, way way *way* beyond. Nixon literally said that he believed that the president can do whatever he wants to, simply because he is the president. This is a very dangerous idea. It means that the president is above the law, no different than a King or a dictator. To my knowledge, no other president in history has ever advocated or tried to implement this philosophy of presidential power. Thus, this is something new, and very dangerous.
Yes, various presidents have increased their power. For instance, Lincoln, who is universally liked by people on both sides of the isle, was the first to use the pocket veto, appointing candidates for official positions when congress was out of session, so that they were automatically confirmed. However, he never said that the president was above the law.
I am not accusing Republicans of being fascists. Most average republicans are true conservatives who would be horrified at the idea of a president who is above the law. However, Nixon, and the neocons who supported him and worked hard to get to this point, are fully behind the idea of the unitary executive. Unitary Executive is American constitutional legalese for 'dictator'.
The democrats may not be a whole lot better, but they haven't yet publically supported a dictator, or espoused support for the theory of the unitary executive. I find arguments that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats to be dangerously ignorant of political reality.
Hey, you forgot Dungeons and Dragons. Who knows how many innocent babies have been sacrificed after their young, unwed parents learned the ritual from the Dungeon Master's handbook?
Basically you are trying to shift blame away from management to unions, when it rightly belongs with management. Unions are trying to get the best deal for their employees, just like the consumer is trying to get the best deal on a car, or a supplier is trying to get the best deal on their product.
Blaming management for not negotiating better contracts with the union would be like blaming them for not negotiating better contracts with their suppliers. "They could compete with the Japanese, but the Japanese don't have to pay their suppliers as much." If management are not as good at negotiating contracts with suppliers as the Japanese are, it is management's fault alone, and they deserve to fail in competition with the Japanese. Same goes with union contracts or sticker price, or any other place where management has to negotiate.
As far as workers getting better benefits and jobs, Thom Hartmann does a good job explaining when workers get paid more. Historically, it has only happened under one of three conditions: 1. When there is a sudden shortage of workers. Thom argues that the black death in Europe sparked the Renaissance, because there were more people getting paid more who could pursue more education and develop more highly skilled forms of labor, like glasswork, metallurgy, printing, etc. 2. When there is a sudden influx of new wealth, such as when the European colonialists were literally shipping in tons and tons of gold they had plundered from the colonies. and 3. With government intervention, as was the case at the turn of the last century.
Thom Hartmann certainly is a lefty and has his bias. But, he backs up his argument with historical fact. If you know of a historical instance where workers got more money 'just because', or for reasons other than what Hartmann cites, I'd like to hear about it.
So, no business owner has any interest in paying their worker more -- they have an interest in paying their worker less. Just like you said, corporations are heartless, emotionless entities who don't care about workers. Any business owner who tries to single-handedly take better care of his workers with be shortly put out of business by his ruthless competitors.
My grandpa tells me stories of the state militia firing upon striking laborists camped out in front of locked out factories when he was a boy in the 30s. School boys passing by would fire rocks at the windows of the factory from slings, and the militia would fire on the strikers, thinking that they had hurled the rocks.
For most of human history, there has been the 5-10% of wealthy, ruling elites, and the rest were either chattel slaves, indentured servants, serfs, or just plain poor folk. The middle class is a relatively new phenomenon, mostly brought about by unions. With even a brief look at history, and an understanding of the power-hungry, blood-thristy nature of the human heart, I don't see how wages
We will have to fight and die to regain our unions and worker protections, just like our great-grandfathers did 100 years ago.
Except that the beta is here, now, and in Google's case, usually works pretty well. Most pre-announcements are just words, not code, and typically become vaporware.
I have no problem with RFID in the passport, as long as it is implemented in an intelligent manner. I don't see it as any more of an invasion of privacy than the personal photo and address information, and also the log of my recent travels.
I plan on having an aluminum foil carrying case for my RFID passport, when I get one, so it can't be read without being opened. Recently I saw a link to a company that makes wallets with a metal foil already embedded in the leather, so RFID chips can't be scanned remotely. The also sell a foil insert that goes in the bill area. I acn't remember the name though -- I thought it was a wordplay with 'wallet' and 'magnet', perhaps the word 'envelope'?
The only thing I don't want is an RFID implant. You might wear a farraday armband, but the whole idea reminds me too much of Jews getting serial numbers tatooed shortly before they were shipped into the death camps.
As far as GM, Ford, and Chrysler -- their Japanese competitors who are eating their lunch -- Honda, Nissan, Toyta -- are all unionized. Why aren't they failing also? If unionization is bringing down the big 3, how come they are being beat by unionized labor, even manufacturing cars here in the US?
Unionized labor is a red herring in this debate. It has little, if nothing to do with management failure. Don't worry about the corporations. They can take care of themselves, and if they can't, let 'em perish. The workers who lose their jobs to a company are much better off going adrift in a job market that has more unionized labor.
What we need unions for are so that your average American can have a 40-hour work week, have health insurance for their family, have a retirement, and send their kids to college.
Union wages not only help those working in a union shop, but also bring up the wages and benefits of those who are in non-union jobs, because those employers have to compete
The only recourse we have against corporations turning us in serfs or indentured servants are unions. Look at modern labor before unionization -- 14 year-old children working 60 hour weeks in dark coal mines, layed off when they lose a hand. Men slowly going into debt having to purchase eveything, including housing, from the company store. People dying in factory fires because there were no exits, or exit doors were just painted on walls. Now, America workers are competing agaisnt those kinds of working conditions in the 3rd world. Things are going to get much worse for the average working person here in the US, if current trends continue.
A few months ago I would have agreed with you. That was before I started learning the recent history.
It was after Nixon's political demise that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others who came to be called Neo-cons stared to look for ways to increase the power of the presidency. Remember, it was Nixon who said that anything the president does it legal, because it is the president who is doing it. In other words, the president is above the law. Since then, they have slowly been setting the stage for this very day.
We had Reagan, who destroyed the unions and set up the boogeyman of the welfare queen, to destroy the social safety net and job security of the middle class. Look where we are now -- Productivity is the highest its been in fifty years, yet people are making less money, working more hours, with less benefits. Prices are up, savings is at an all-time low, and credit card debt at a high. People can't worry about politics -- they are too busy working. Have a problem with this? Shut up with your class warfare and get back to work.
Then came Bush Sr., who was somewhat stymied by a democratic congress and a single term. Clinton's anti-terrorism efforts were hampered by Republicans charging about gays in the military and Lewinsky. I assume I don't need to tell you about Bush.
So if you look at who the major players are behind the scenes in the Regan and both Bush presidencies, you will find Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and assorted other Neo-cons who wanted to strengthen the presidency after Nixon's impeachment. Scary.
I came off more critical than I intended to be. I am mostly a leftie and I support this kind of law and environmental endeavors in general.
The Silicon Valley tycoons who are pushing this bill aren't the same ones who are venturing into manufacturing high performance eletric cars, are they?
"The whole concept of not just outright conquering other nations whom you disagree with, and are more powerful than, is a relatively recent invention. Only since World War II has it really taken hold as a global opinion. Prior to that, it was just assumed that any great power had the right to colonize/dominate any minor country it could, and fight over territory from other great powers using whatever means it had."
I doubt it. I think that conquering weaker states as the natural order was a propagandic meme that the ruling elites developed to enrich themselves.
You see, there was a time when nobody really ruled anybody else -- not in the sense that we think of today. Sure, there were elders whose opinions were respected, relatives who had a say in your life, but there wasn't really 'the man' who could throw you in jail or have you killed if you broke some law. You had to worry about what your neighbor would do to you if you offended them, but there were no cops to call, no judge who had a final say, no king to plead to -- no third party who didn't have a direct interest in your conflict.
We have run into groups of people who live without authorities -- i.e. strangers who tell you what to do and can punish you for not listening to them. We ask them "take us to your leader" and their basic answer is "Hey, I'm a grown man, and I do whatever the hell I want to". They live deep in jungles, on islands, etc. They basically have the same 'material footprint', as far as housing patterns and distribution of wealth, as almost *everyone* did 6,000 years ago, so we don't really have any reason not to think that everybody was basically autonomous for most of human history.
The problem is that the people who believed in living with your neighbors and getting along with others tended to be conquered. The conquerers then wrote histories extolling their leaders for liberating the conquered people from their cruel masters and backwards ways, and generally carrying out the fate of the universe by conquering weaker people.
There are still people around who live in relative autonomy, but really aren't interested in conquering other people. Native Americans inside the United States, specifically the Hopi, practice a 'live and let live' philosophy in regards to themselves and their neighbors. It helps to live in a hard-scrabble desert instead of valuable, high-yield farmland. The autonomous Inuit in Canada, and the autonomous tribes in the Amazon are other good examples. I am not claiming they live in a Eden-like Utopia -- they do have murder, revenge killings, disease, infant mortality, etc. -- but they are very keen on defending their independence against Empires, and have basically done so for all of their existance.
The lesson here is that if you aren't living in valuable farmland, you can rule yourselves, and not really have to pay taxes.
Not, don't get me wrong. There were empires in the Americas before the Europeans arrived, and they were just as cruel, power-hungry, and blood-thirsty as the European conquerers. But that doesn't means that there weren't Native Americans, such as the Hopi, who weren't the non-conquering type, and didn't very much care to be ruled either, thank you very much.
It's good to have a sense of history. It's also good to have a sense of anthropology and archaeology. It isn't until you have a non-perishable staple crop ( basically, wheat in the Middle East, Rice in Asia, and Corn in the Americas ) that you can have societies that support people who do something other than hunting or farming, such as make crafts, or tell other people what to do, or fight. Some of those greedy people who think that they are above everyone else and deserve to be wealthy start whipping up a frenzy against *those* people living over *there*, how they are a threat, and need to be liberated by our kind leaders. Of course, they must also start paying their taxes.
There are probably some people who view environmentalism as a moral/ethical issue, that we are interfering with God's creation. However, I think most people do believe that what humans do to make a living is morally okay, if not 'natural'.
I think what people construe as 'BAD' is coastal cities flooding all over the globe ( think Katrina in New York, LA, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, etc. ), increasted desertification, famine, ecozone change, loss of farmland, etc. etc. The suffering, loss of life, destruction, displacement, famine and starvation are what people are concerned about and consider 'BAD'. Sure, in the course of human history there has been plenty of tours of the Four Horseman, but civilization is an attempt to mitigate these risks. I suspect a lot of people who think this kind of thing is no big deal because it has happened regularly, would change their tune is they had to flee famine or invaders.
Yes, it has happened in the past, and it certainly will happen again, but the whole point of civilization is to make life easier by removing or mitigating these risks. Some people are indifferent, and some people what to try to avoid this kind of catastrophe, for themselves and future people. Everyday that I get my fat, lazy ass up and get in the car to work on the internet, I thank god for all the technological advances that allow me to spend my life looking at pictures of naked women on the internet.
He said past millions of years, not 'past 1000 years'.
Are the people who play online virtual-life games the same who would buy real-life avant-garde fashions, even if they find such things suitable enough for their avatars?
One of the safeguards inherent in the system is to scoop a fellow 'internet reporter' and destroy their story. If you can show that someone else's report is dmeonstrably false, that improves your credibility, and tells readers that they need to come to *you* in order to get the accurate story. If you want a bigger audience, debunk other's stories, and tell good, solid stories yourself.
My bet is what will happen first is that scientists will be able to generate the larger breast organ in the lab, and start surgically implanting those instead of the silicone or saline. I think it's a harder trick to get the new breat tissue growing in exactly the right places.
Isn't anything we design thereby a product of evolution? If evolution produced the human brain, which in turn produced a prosthetic limb, isn't it evolution which ultimately created the limb?
Well, considering that a limb is made up of serveral organs, such as bones and muscles, I would think that you would have to get organs before you could get limbs.
Am I mistaken, but aren't you still guilty of a crime you commit today, even if your actions are legalized next year?
In other words, we have no Ex Post Facto laws. You can't have something made illegal retroactively into the past. If congress passes a law tomorrow making it illegal to use the internet, we aren't breaking the law for using the internet today.
Similarly, can you retroactively make something legal? If the president is breaking the law today, and his actions are made legal tomorrow, isn't he still guilty of breaking the law?
Excuse me, but Aditi's post reads like an astroturfing editorial.
"[Intelligence] is powerful way to keep any country safe."
What self-respecting geeks makes obvious, circular statements like that in support of their argument? What self-respecting geek modded this insightful? This sounds like a 6th grader's paragraph response in civics class. Does Aditi think that anyone on slashdot is seriously arguing against intelligence!?
We've seen that the Bush administration has paid of journalists to write editorials favorable of its policies and programs. The pentagon has voiced concern that its propaganda has leaked into state-side media. With a president that has such a radical agenda and such a low approval rating, and a pattern of buying support, why shouldn't we expect similar campaigns on sites with influential mindshare like slashdot?
We don't have such a procedure here. I might be missing perhaps one step, but I think that literally, the leader of the senate can call for a vote on any bill on the floor at any time. Then it goes to the president's desk and he signs it.
And to get on the floor of the senate, all that has to happen is that the senator introduces it.
If you happened to catch Michael Moore's Farenheit 911, despite it's distortions and mismatches between image and narration, he does have an accurate interview with congressman John Conyers about the congress passing bills in the middle of the night, without members having actually *read* the bill.
The American senate can move as fast as they want to. Since the congress is controlled by Republicans, and the president is a Republican, they could practically pass this overnight. And no, in an election year, Democrats are not going to oppose this.
I admit you caught me -- I don't specifically know about "law of [linearj] superposition of electric fields", but any measurement I've seen of the real world has some small degree of divergence from the formulas -- small in orders of magnitude. The official line is that this variance is due to the imperfection of lab setup, imperfection of materials measured, and the imperfection of the measuring equipment.
I suspect that most phenomena don't 'measure up' quite as exactly as electrical fields. If that's the case, I think the most I could say about the universe is that some phenomena can be precisely modeled by math, some are very close, while others (such as long-term weather, human behavior) cannot.