There are certainly atheists who are simply unconvinced by the evidence that a God exists. I've always referred to these people as "agnostic", but people argue with me - I don't really care about the semantics... the point is that there are people who don't believe in God, but wouldn't automatically rule it out if new evidence was presented.
There are also atheists who firmly believe that there is no God, and they actively proselytize this. Chances are that Jesus/Allah/Thor/Neptune could personally reveal himself to them personally, make it rain licorice, make squirrels excrete fine aged whiskey, and they would reject the evidence out of hand.
My kids (non-religious and mixed-race) are in a Jewish day care center whose employees include a hijab-wearing Muslim. Now, I'll grant you that the Orthodox members do have their own room with their own teacher - but in general it shows that multiculturalism can and does work.
What doesn't work is extremism, and we should all work to rein it in.
Yeah, the Middle East was an enlightened, modern society.... 3000 years ago. Seriously, the US is just a scapegoat here. Look at how well the Syrians were living under Ottoman rule. Misery in that part of the world predates the US, let alone US involvement.
For home users, you have to wonder if they're just being cheap.
I have an XP machine (mainly for my wife). Cost is not the issue - it's time. I'd probably have to dedicate about 8 hours to installing the new OS, moving the data, setting up all of the applications, verifying backups still work, etc. At that point, I might as well just get a new computer... which is exactly what I will do when the XP security updates keep flowing. Then I just have to make the age-old Mac vs. PC decision:)
It's really not. Believe it or not, some people give to charity - and not only because the government lets you write it off. Others volunteer at shelters, adopt children, pick up litter, and otherwise make the world a better place. Some of these people are strongly anti-government.
Now personally, I think there is a place for government to serve as a charity as well. That is, I disagree with Libertarians on this issue. That said, I'm not going to demonize them just because I disagree with them.
Does it take more generosity to write a check yourself or to force other people to write checks?
Take global warming as an example. Look at Europe - they are dutifully reducing greenhouse emissions. The US is as well, though only by accident because of fracking. And yet, the global CO2 output continues to rise.
Unless you get everyone on board (in the case of CO2, that means the developing world), any action you take is symbolic.
I'd spend more time digging into this if you weren't an AC, but let me take the low-hanging fruit and attack his theory that reducing your personal use of the automobile will help the environment.
Let's get the "gas demand is inelastic" myth out of the way. This study calculates the average and long-term price elasticity of gasoline. For global warming, we are interested in the long-term number, which is -0.58 - meaning that a 10% rise in gasoline price leads to a 5.8% decline in quantity demanded. In "Review of price and income elasticities in the demand for road traffic", they come to a similar calculation of 6% decline in quantity demanded.
So it is pretty clear that your individual "conserved" gasoline will in fact obey the demand curve of economics.
That is pretty good. I just looked and we've used 15,000 kWh this past year. 40-year old 3200 sq ft house with a family of four. We ran the AC more than usual this summer, and I have two dehumidifiers going constantly in the basement. I haven't calculated it, but I'm sure those are killing me - it's like running two extra refrigerators.
"Midgley himself was careful to avoid mentioning to the press that he required nearly a year to recover from the lead poisoning brought on by his demonstration at the press conference."
I can't really fault him for creating CFCs... they seemed like a minor miracle. But the lead stunts were criminal, and naturally done in the name of greater financial rewards. Amazing that it took over 50 years to undo.
His death was also darkly humorous. After all that lead poisoning, Polio is what ultimately did him in... leading him to get tangled up in his own invention.
Everything you suggested will just reduce prices, inducing someone else to use those resources. You either need to force everyone on board (everyone in the world) or your solution is not effective. Your solutions make you feel good, and that might be enough reason to do them. Your intentions are noble, and that is to be commended. But if one locust in a hoard doesn't eat the grain in the field, the field will still get devoured.
I did that, thanks! Now my cities have a productivity bonus, happy populace, city walls, and a Cristo Redentor wonder! It also looks... whiter... somehow.
The only reason it would have been easier is because that particular election WAS a tie.
Lots of elections result in a tie. That is my whole point.
The true solution is to have a well-defined procedure and follow it whether there is a tie or not.
I agree. The problem is that I am not aware of any state that calls an election a tie if it is too close to call. So we are left with the courts injecting themselves where the law fails. The Florida result was clearly a tie, yet the law did not recognize it as such. Yes, the state Supreme Court also behaved inappropriately, but I don't think they would have if there was a clear path for tied elections. The law forced a result, with the only recourse for a meaningless result being a recount, followed by appeals for further recounts. The law compounded this dead end by not allowing enough time to assemble a hand-recount team, which then need to hand-count machine-readable ballots.
This is a very difficult position to put a judge in - clearly the law is deficient, but that is not reason alone for a court to overrule it. On the other hand, doing nothing allows the blatantly wrong process to continue. Obviously expanding the definition of a tie would not alone fix the mess in Florida, but I think it would have put the judge in a much more comfortable position to allow the lawful process to continue.
You are right that I am refusing to acknowledge that.
Naturally people will challenge results, but courts would have a lot more ammunition. Today if the vote has a single-digit margin and the number of ballots cast was sufficiently large, no judge could seriously argue that the vote was valid. If there is a law that defines exactly what constitutes a valid vote, a judge does not need to work as hard.
To go back to the 2000 Florida election again - which I know I'll regret - it would have been very difficult for the Florida Supreme Court to order a hand recount if the machines had declared the election a tie, and then declared a tie again after a recount. Even as it was, they got slapped with a 7-2 Supreme Court decision... the law being unambiguous would have made them even less likely to intervene.
Now, there is a court case pending in a close riding where some irregularities have been found, and the number of bad ballots is larger than the margin of victory. I'm hopeful the judge will order a by-election.
Right, wouldn't it be more orderly if this were codified and a judge didn't basically have to make up law as he goes?
Do you have any other useful proposal for what to do if an election had an ambiguous result?
I don't particularly care. Presumably people already have a pretty good system in place to handle a tie. I'm just redefining a "tie" to mean anything within the error (precision) of the voting system. In Washington and in Canada recently there have been coin-flips. If the people there are happy with that, then that's fine. You could also let the legislature pick the winner. Mostly, a tie is a solved problem, so I don't really need to go there.
"A vote or so" at each district, or "a vote or so" for the entire country? A vote or so in every 6000 is a small error, but scaled up to 6 million is 200 votes. This is on the scale of the Florida mess in 2000.
I agree with you. I'm not saying that the process should be relaxed. I'm saying that we should recognize that there is some inherent error. Elections decided by a handful of votes are bullshit elections... they are a tie. The law should recognize that.
No, you have moved the problem. I am saying that 2% is the margin of error, so 2.000000000% is a winner and 1.999999999% is a tie. This is exactly the same as the automatically-triggered recounts that happen today.
I have no problem with a recount being part of the process. What I want is recognition by law that an election might have an ambiguous result. Some (most?) places have some kind of process in place if a tie should occur - I'm just talking about broadening the definition of a tie.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are both right. :)
There are certainly atheists who are simply unconvinced by the evidence that a God exists. I've always referred to these people as "agnostic", but people argue with me - I don't really care about the semantics... the point is that there are people who don't believe in God, but wouldn't automatically rule it out if new evidence was presented.
There are also atheists who firmly believe that there is no God, and they actively proselytize this. Chances are that Jesus/Allah/Thor/Neptune could personally reveal himself to them personally, make it rain licorice, make squirrels excrete fine aged whiskey, and they would reject the evidence out of hand.
My kids (non-religious and mixed-race) are in a Jewish day care center whose employees include a hijab-wearing Muslim. Now, I'll grant you that the Orthodox members do have their own room with their own teacher - but in general it shows that multiculturalism can and does work.
What doesn't work is extremism, and we should all work to rein it in.
Yeah, the Middle East was an enlightened, modern society.... 3000 years ago. Seriously, the US is just a scapegoat here. Look at how well the Syrians were living under Ottoman rule. Misery in that part of the world predates the US, let alone US involvement.
For home users, you have to wonder if they're just being cheap.
I have an XP machine (mainly for my wife). Cost is not the issue - it's time. I'd probably have to dedicate about 8 hours to installing the new OS, moving the data, setting up all of the applications, verifying backups still work, etc. At that point, I might as well just get a new computer... which is exactly what I will do when the XP security updates keep flowing. Then I just have to make the age-old Mac vs. PC decision :)
It'll sound funnier if you suck in some helium first.
Hydrochlorides, huh? Freebase your hard drive...
It's really not. Believe it or not, some people give to charity - and not only because the government lets you write it off. Others volunteer at shelters, adopt children, pick up litter, and otherwise make the world a better place. Some of these people are strongly anti-government.
Now personally, I think there is a place for government to serve as a charity as well. That is, I disagree with Libertarians on this issue. That said, I'm not going to demonize them just because I disagree with them.
Does it take more generosity to write a check yourself or to force other people to write checks?
That was a terrible troll. Or maybe it was awesome satire. Hard to tell on the internet.
Of course we are not locusts - it was analogy.
Take global warming as an example. Look at Europe - they are dutifully reducing greenhouse emissions. The US is as well, though only by accident because of fracking. And yet, the global CO2 output continues to rise.
Unless you get everyone on board (in the case of CO2, that means the developing world), any action you take is symbolic.
I'd spend more time digging into this if you weren't an AC, but let me take the low-hanging fruit and attack his theory that reducing your personal use of the automobile will help the environment.
Let's get the "gas demand is inelastic" myth out of the way. This study calculates the average and long-term price elasticity of gasoline. For global warming, we are interested in the long-term number, which is -0.58 - meaning that a 10% rise in gasoline price leads to a 5.8% decline in quantity demanded. In "Review of price and income elasticities in the demand for road traffic", they come to a similar calculation of 6% decline in quantity demanded.
So it is pretty clear that your individual "conserved" gasoline will in fact obey the demand curve of economics.
Sounds like a platitude to me. I think the principle works on a micro-economic scale but fails on the macroeconomic level.
That is pretty good. I just looked and we've used 15,000 kWh this past year. 40-year old 3200 sq ft house with a family of four. We ran the AC more than usual this summer, and I have two dehumidifiers going constantly in the basement. I haven't calculated it, but I'm sure those are killing me - it's like running two extra refrigerators.
My favorite bit:
"Midgley himself was careful to avoid mentioning to the press that he required nearly a year to recover from the lead poisoning brought on by his demonstration at the press conference."
I can't really fault him for creating CFCs... they seemed like a minor miracle. But the lead stunts were criminal, and naturally done in the name of greater financial rewards. Amazing that it took over 50 years to undo.
His death was also darkly humorous. After all that lead poisoning, Polio is what ultimately did him in... leading him to get tangled up in his own invention.
Everything you suggested will just reduce prices, inducing someone else to use those resources. You either need to force everyone on board (everyone in the world) or your solution is not effective. Your solutions make you feel good, and that might be enough reason to do them. Your intentions are noble, and that is to be commended. But if one locust in a hoard doesn't eat the grain in the field, the field will still get devoured.
I did that, thanks! Now my cities have a productivity bonus, happy populace, city walls, and a Cristo Redentor wonder! It also looks... whiter... somehow.
The only reason it would have been easier is because that particular election WAS a tie.
Lots of elections result in a tie. That is my whole point.
The true solution is to have a well-defined procedure and follow it whether there is a tie or not.
I agree. The problem is that I am not aware of any state that calls an election a tie if it is too close to call. So we are left with the courts injecting themselves where the law fails. The Florida result was clearly a tie, yet the law did not recognize it as such. Yes, the state Supreme Court also behaved inappropriately, but I don't think they would have if there was a clear path for tied elections. The law forced a result, with the only recourse for a meaningless result being a recount, followed by appeals for further recounts. The law compounded this dead end by not allowing enough time to assemble a hand-recount team, which then need to hand-count machine-readable ballots.
This is a very difficult position to put a judge in - clearly the law is deficient, but that is not reason alone for a court to overrule it. On the other hand, doing nothing allows the blatantly wrong process to continue. Obviously expanding the definition of a tie would not alone fix the mess in Florida, but I think it would have put the judge in a much more comfortable position to allow the lawful process to continue.
You are right that I am refusing to acknowledge that.
Naturally people will challenge results, but courts would have a lot more ammunition. Today if the vote has a single-digit margin and the number of ballots cast was sufficiently large, no judge could seriously argue that the vote was valid. If there is a law that defines exactly what constitutes a valid vote, a judge does not need to work as hard.
To go back to the 2000 Florida election again - which I know I'll regret - it would have been very difficult for the Florida Supreme Court to order a hand recount if the machines had declared the election a tie, and then declared a tie again after a recount. Even as it was, they got slapped with a 7-2 Supreme Court decision... the law being unambiguous would have made them even less likely to intervene.
Now, there is a court case pending in a close riding where some irregularities have been found, and the number of bad ballots is larger than the margin of victory. I'm hopeful the judge will order a by-election.
Right, wouldn't it be more orderly if this were codified and a judge didn't basically have to make up law as he goes?
Do you have any other useful proposal for what to do if an election had an ambiguous result?
I don't particularly care. Presumably people already have a pretty good system in place to handle a tie. I'm just redefining a "tie" to mean anything within the error (precision) of the voting system. In Washington and in Canada recently there have been coin-flips. If the people there are happy with that, then that's fine. You could also let the legislature pick the winner. Mostly, a tie is a solved problem, so I don't really need to go there.
Duel with pistols at dawn :)
Or go on Fear Factor.
In Washington State, the default is a coin flip - but the candidates can use any method they agree upon...
My math is hopeless, lol. It's obviously 1000.
"A vote or so" at each district, or "a vote or so" for the entire country? A vote or so in every 6000 is a small error, but scaled up to 6 million is 200 votes. This is on the scale of the Florida mess in 2000.
I agree with you. I'm not saying that the process should be relaxed. I'm saying that we should recognize that there is some inherent error. Elections decided by a handful of votes are bullshit elections... they are a tie. The law should recognize that.
Are you confident enough in the process that if the vote were decided by a single ballot you wouldn't feel the need to recount?
No, you have moved the problem. I am saying that 2% is the margin of error, so 2.000000000% is a winner and 1.999999999% is a tie. This is exactly the same as the automatically-triggered recounts that happen today.
I have no problem with a recount being part of the process. What I want is recognition by law that an election might have an ambiguous result. Some (most?) places have some kind of process in place if a tie should occur - I'm just talking about broadening the definition of a tie.