Strangely, the only thing to go through the mind of the tape recordings as they fell was "oh no, not again." It is believed that if we knew why the recordings thought this, we would know a lot more about the way the universe works.
Well, OK then! We're in complete agreement, why are we arguing?
But then any nation that has the strongest economy can be labeled Imperialistic.
Well, on the other hand, we may have some further points of disagreement. I'm not sure I agree with this. This leads to the conclusion that the US can't help being Imperialistic because it is economically strong, so therefore it cannot be blamed for being so. I think it would be possible to have the strongest economy without using that strength to exercise hegemony over other nations. I would further argue that exercising hegemony over other suposedely sovereign nations is a bad thing, and should be avoided.
You're absolutely right, of course. I was just trying to anticipate the opposition. You have to take into account that most people don't think of them as "coppers" (I prefer "pigs" myself), but as "law enforcement" or something like that, and they tend to assume that anything that helps them do their job is a good idea. If you start the argument with the premise that police are an inherently bad thing (which they are) you're not going to get a lot of sympathy from the majority of the middle-class American public. You have to try other angles.
To defeat that, someone will just try to "prove" that it's reasonable.
Oh, I'd love to see that. Please do.
iis that it would be unreasonable to take DNA samples, period.
Well, I agree with this to some extent. However, with a reasonable police force, it wouldn't have to be done in an Orwellian way. As others have pointed out, the data could be erased upon aquittal, the tests could be double-blind, the data could never be used for any purpose other than identification, etc. To me, "Orwellian" and "reasonable" are pretty much opposites anyway. No reasonable institution would be Orwellian. If it could be done in such a way that it's only used against the guilty, that it wasn't an invasion of privacy, and that there was no potential for abuse, this might be a good thing. But in this system, that'll never happen.
OK, confession time here: I'm actually an anarchist. I don't think we ought to have a govt at all. But since we do, it should be used in a reasonable way. Stopping rape and murder and so forth is a reasonable function of govt, assuming you're going to have one. I never bother to argue against govt in general, because the fraction of the audience receptive to that argument is extremely small. So granting, for the sake of argument, that we should have a govt, you have to grant that they should be given reasonable powers to perform reasonable functions. Unfortunately, our particular govt is far from reasonable.
I clicked on your link thinking it was "Free Naked Pictures".
Ha! Well, anything to get traffic!
Actually, interestingly enough, the number one spot for "beach pictures" in google, a term I'm obviously interested in, was, for a while, "naked beach pictures", a site with softcore pr0n. It's a pretty good site, but I somehow don't think that's what the "beach pictures" searchers had in mind. The big G must have improved their anti-spam algos, because it's gone now.
Do police departments remove your fingerprints from their posession if you are not convicted of a crime?
No. Not only that, but when a cop pulls you over and runs your ID, it's your arrest record that comes up, not your conviction record. Same applies when you're convicted of a crime: the judge gets to see all of your arrests, and often if you were not convicted, the record just says "disposition not given" or something like that. I met a guy in jail who had been accused and aquitted of rape (the girl in question admitted she was lying), but the rape arrest was still on his record and the record read "no disposition given" for the case. He had to go to a great deal of trouble to demonstrate to the judge that he had not actually been convicted of rape.
Under some of the anti-drug laws, they don't even have to give you back your confiscated property, even if you're not convicted.
If you haven't done anything wrong then what is there to fear
By this reasoning, there is no reason whatsoever not to take DNA from everyone at birth, install a tracking device in everyone which contains your ID and a GPS, and arrange to have you monitored all the time.
The amazingly naive "if you didn't do anything wrong" argument overlooks the numerous obvious cases in which people who didn't do anything wrong were persecuted by our "justice" system. It also overlooks all issues of privacy, and the potential for abuse. If carried to its logical extreme, the only possible answer is totalitarianism.
So this is just a rehash of the so-called "slippery slope" argument, but it applies and is important.
This sounds eminently reasonable, though I'm not sure I like the "arrested for a felony" part, it would be much more reasonable to use convictions. But they print you on arrest, so why shouldn't they take your DNA too, right?
Ah, but they fingerprint you for a drivers' license too. They didn't, at one time, but now they do. Because the argument was made that, well, if we take your prints on arrest, why shouldn't we take them for a drivers license too? That will, of course, be the next step.
I would actually be completely in favor of this if we had a resonable law enforcement system, which we don't, and if there were any way to assure that this will not be used as an argument for taking DNA from everyone, which there isn't. As it is, I think this sort of thinking needs to be stopped before it spreads.
Wow, that's amazing! Small world, eh? That's really weird.
I get the feeling there is a bunch totally crazy shit going on just below the surface
You ain't just whistlin' Dixie! Boy, could I tell you some stories. I met more international fugitives down there than I can count on both hands. I knew people who had connections with the Columbian cartels, people who have been international drug runners, I even met the former foreign minister of Sandanista Nicaragua. Good friend of mine, actually. All kinds of weird shit is going on down there. And I didn't remotely get to the bottom of it, either.
Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it. You just made yourself a friend!
it would be a useful tool if the situation wasn't so simple.
But that's just it, you see. The situation is not remotely simple. You've just been told that it is. Look a little deeper. This is part of the pattern of behavior I'm talking about. Imperialist nations often rely on simplistic, black-and-white models of international politics to justify their imperialism. It's standard operating procedure.
If there's a grey area that's debatable, then bring up the point and debate it.
I was just giving what I thought was a rather obvious example of the utility of studying history. If you want to unpack the subject, it is, as I said, rather complex, and we could go on about it for days and not get to the bottom of it. But here's what I see as the central gray area that's debatable: will US corporations profit from the exploitation of Iraq's natural resources? Right now that money is going into a UN-managed fund for the reconstruction of Iraq. Well, guess who has the contract for that job. This is a huge gray area and it's extremely complex, and all the other drama surrounding the issue is used to distract you from paying attention to it.
Watch two things: the disposition of troops, and the flow of money. Everything else is just hype.
Oh, no, it's not nearly as cool as that. I've seen that done, it's awesome and beautiful. The doctrine of change of course, on the other hand, is just an old-fashioned, bald-faced lie.
I also don't see how you can argue that history can help the general public understand the present and at the same time say the public's knowledge of the present is usually wrong. What then is history helping us understand?
OK, let me give you an example. It's been beaten to death, but it will suffice. The US govt claims that it is not practicing imperialism in the occupation of Iraq. However, a good look at the history of the US clearly shows that the US govt has frequently practiced imperialism before (this comes through despite the massive distortion applied by the mainstream US political discourse to make it seem otherwise), and that at the time they often claimed that they weren't. This observation should lead, at the very least, to a healthy skepticism about their current claims.
So what's the starting salary for playing with yourself to pr0n?
Not much, but there's an enormous amount of money to be made from other people playing with themselves to pr0n. If pr0n is what you love, become a pr0n king, if you're good at it you'll make a killing.
The content of the doctrine is: "Yes, in the past we did some wrong things because of innocence or inadvertence. But now that's all over, so let's not waste any more time on this boring, stale stuff."
The doctrine is dishonest and cowardly, but it does have advantages: It protects us from the danger of understanding what is happening before our eyes. --Noam Chomsky
The quote about "the past is over" is interestingly typical of Dubyaspeak. It sounds like nonsense, but if you look at it closely, it's actually the most pernicious form of deception. It would be very convenient for his puppet masters if we were to all forget about all that old boring stuff from history, wouldn't it?
So now that the discussion's cooling down a bit and there's time to think, I want to just tell you a little bit of my story.
I knew what I wanted to do with my life since I was five years old. I wanted to be a physicist. I got through two years of grad school (and was doing quite well, thank you) when I was essentially forced to drop out due to family problems. This journal entry talks a little bit about how this came about and gives links to the press coverage, it's actually quite an interesting story but it's also a very long one and I needn't go into the details to make my point.
My point is, when I left physics, it was actually a profound relief. Turns out, after much soul-searching, I realized I didn't really want to be a physicist, I just wanted to learn about physics. I love the subject, but the discipline sucks in the same way nearly everything in the system sucks. Now my goal is to get out of the system, and I'm very happy about it. This all came about by following my heart, and not doing what was "best for my career," and I am very glad things have gone this way. But I have no idea what our young friend's path should be, so I gave the only advice that I can, which is "follow your heart." It's simple, and it works.
You really never know what life is going to throw at you. You might dedicate yourself assiduously to something for years, and then get spun off on a completely different path. So that's why I say do what you love. I always did, and I've never regretted it.
Unfortunately for this guy, you also have to be smart in a conventional sense.
To be a lawyer? Oh, my, that's a good one. Tell that to the moron who prosecuted me. He was dumb as a post, it's a wonder he made it into law school, let alone through it. You have to be a good bullshitter, but I think that's about it.
there will be hours, or days or weeks or months, where you need to suck it up and apply yourself to something tedious
This is quite true, and I didn't mean to say that it isn't. Self-discipline is very important. But remember that self-discipline is simply the ability to do what you want to do. Sometimes it's very hard to do what you want to do, and you have to force yourself to do it anyway. But that's OK. You should definitely develop the ability to do things that are difficult, that's a key skill. What I'm saying is, you should do what you want to do. Sometimes the path to that will be tedious at times, but just remember that it's a path you have chosen, and stay on it.
But for heaven's sake, don't become one of these automata who hate their jobs and do them anyway because they can't come up with anything better to do. Be creative.
By the way, if you're worried about money, my understanding is that the experts in making money almost always say "do what you love, and the money will come."
And you should just go be a lawyer and get it over with. They make great money, hardly work at all, and all it takes is a willingness to be totally evil.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a great example of a staggeringly well-designed technology. Efficient, clean, useful, and damn cool looking, if you ask me. I want one.
Strangely, the only thing to go through the mind of the tape recordings as they fell was "oh no, not again." It is believed that if we knew why the recordings thought this, we would know a lot more about the way the universe works.
Well, OK then! We're in complete agreement, why are we arguing?
But then any nation that has the strongest economy can be labeled Imperialistic.
Well, on the other hand, we may have some further points of disagreement. I'm not sure I agree with this. This leads to the conclusion that the US can't help being Imperialistic because it is economically strong, so therefore it cannot be blamed for being so. I think it would be possible to have the strongest economy without using that strength to exercise hegemony over other nations. I would further argue that exercising hegemony over other suposedely sovereign nations is a bad thing, and should be avoided.
California, the state in question, is one of them.
You're absolutely right, of course. I was just trying to anticipate the opposition. You have to take into account that most people don't think of them as "coppers" (I prefer "pigs" myself), but as "law enforcement" or something like that, and they tend to assume that anything that helps them do their job is a good idea. If you start the argument with the premise that police are an inherently bad thing (which they are) you're not going to get a lot of sympathy from the majority of the middle-class American public. You have to try other angles.
Nope. I don't make foes, and I don't remove friends. It's a principle thing.
Oh, I'd love to see that. Please do.
iis that it would be unreasonable to take DNA samples, period.
Well, I agree with this to some extent. However, with a reasonable police force, it wouldn't have to be done in an Orwellian way. As others have pointed out, the data could be erased upon aquittal, the tests could be double-blind, the data could never be used for any purpose other than identification, etc. To me, "Orwellian" and "reasonable" are pretty much opposites anyway. No reasonable institution would be Orwellian. If it could be done in such a way that it's only used against the guilty, that it wasn't an invasion of privacy, and that there was no potential for abuse, this might be a good thing. But in this system, that'll never happen.
OK, confession time here: I'm actually an anarchist. I don't think we ought to have a govt at all. But since we do, it should be used in a reasonable way. Stopping rape and murder and so forth is a reasonable function of govt, assuming you're going to have one. I never bother to argue against govt in general, because the fraction of the audience receptive to that argument is extremely small. So granting, for the sake of argument, that we should have a govt, you have to grant that they should be given reasonable powers to perform reasonable functions. Unfortunately, our particular govt is far from reasonable.
Ha! Well, anything to get traffic!
Actually, interestingly enough, the number one spot for "beach pictures" in google, a term I'm obviously interested in, was, for a while, "naked beach pictures", a site with softcore pr0n. It's a pretty good site, but I somehow don't think that's what the "beach pictures" searchers had in mind. The big G must have improved their anti-spam algos, because it's gone now.
No. Not only that, but when a cop pulls you over and runs your ID, it's your arrest record that comes up, not your conviction record. Same applies when you're convicted of a crime: the judge gets to see all of your arrests, and often if you were not convicted, the record just says "disposition not given" or something like that. I met a guy in jail who had been accused and aquitted of rape (the girl in question admitted she was lying), but the rape arrest was still on his record and the record read "no disposition given" for the case. He had to go to a great deal of trouble to demonstrate to the judge that he had not actually been convicted of rape.
Under some of the anti-drug laws, they don't even have to give you back your confiscated property, even if you're not convicted.
By this reasoning, there is no reason whatsoever not to take DNA from everyone at birth, install a tracking device in everyone which contains your ID and a GPS, and arrange to have you monitored all the time.
The amazingly naive "if you didn't do anything wrong" argument overlooks the numerous obvious cases in which people who didn't do anything wrong were persecuted by our "justice" system. It also overlooks all issues of privacy, and the potential for abuse. If carried to its logical extreme, the only possible answer is totalitarianism.
This sounds eminently reasonable, though I'm not sure I like the "arrested for a felony" part, it would be much more reasonable to use convictions. But they print you on arrest, so why shouldn't they take your DNA too, right?
Ah, but they fingerprint you for a drivers' license too. They didn't, at one time, but now they do. Because the argument was made that, well, if we take your prints on arrest, why shouldn't we take them for a drivers license too? That will, of course, be the next step.
I would actually be completely in favor of this if we had a resonable law enforcement system, which we don't, and if there were any way to assure that this will not be used as an argument for taking DNA from everyone, which there isn't. As it is, I think this sort of thinking needs to be stopped before it spreads.
Wow, that's amazing! Small world, eh? That's really weird.
I get the feeling there is a bunch totally crazy shit going on just below the surface
You ain't just whistlin' Dixie! Boy, could I tell you some stories. I met more international fugitives down there than I can count on both hands. I knew people who had connections with the Columbian cartels, people who have been international drug runners, I even met the former foreign minister of Sandanista Nicaragua. Good friend of mine, actually. All kinds of weird shit is going on down there. And I didn't remotely get to the bottom of it, either.
Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it. You just made yourself a friend!
love and blessings,
freejung
But that's just it, you see. The situation is not remotely simple. You've just been told that it is. Look a little deeper. This is part of the pattern of behavior I'm talking about. Imperialist nations often rely on simplistic, black-and-white models of international politics to justify their imperialism. It's standard operating procedure.
If there's a grey area that's debatable, then bring up the point and debate it.
I was just giving what I thought was a rather obvious example of the utility of studying history. If you want to unpack the subject, it is, as I said, rather complex, and we could go on about it for days and not get to the bottom of it. But here's what I see as the central gray area that's debatable: will US corporations profit from the exploitation of Iraq's natural resources? Right now that money is going into a UN-managed fund for the reconstruction of Iraq. Well, guess who has the contract for that job. This is a huge gray area and it's extremely complex, and all the other drama surrounding the issue is used to distract you from paying attention to it.
Watch two things: the disposition of troops, and the flow of money. Everything else is just hype.
Ah, so it's working. Sad to see.
No, you don't. However, have you ever heard the phrase "pattern of behavior" before?
Oh, no, it's not nearly as cool as that. I've seen that done, it's awesome and beautiful. The doctrine of change of course, on the other hand, is just an old-fashioned, bald-faced lie.
I am humbled and awed to be in your presence. He's one of my heroes too, but I've never met the guy. You've just made a friend, my friend.
OK, let me give you an example. It's been beaten to death, but it will suffice. The US govt claims that it is not practicing imperialism in the occupation of Iraq. However, a good look at the history of the US clearly shows that the US govt has frequently practiced imperialism before (this comes through despite the massive distortion applied by the mainstream US political discourse to make it seem otherwise), and that at the time they often claimed that they weren't. This observation should lead, at the very least, to a healthy skepticism about their current claims.
Not much, but there's an enormous amount of money to be made from other people playing with themselves to pr0n. If pr0n is what you love, become a pr0n king, if you're good at it you'll make a killing.
It could also be deliberate deception. Noam Chomsky calls this the doctrine of change of course.
The content of the doctrine is: "Yes, in the past we did some wrong things because of innocence or inadvertence. But now that's all over, so let's not waste any more time on this boring, stale stuff."
The doctrine is dishonest and cowardly, but it does have advantages: It protects us from the danger of understanding what is happening before our eyes. --Noam Chomsky
The quote about "the past is over" is interestingly typical of Dubyaspeak. It sounds like nonsense, but if you look at it closely, it's actually the most pernicious form of deception. It would be very convenient for his puppet masters if we were to all forget about all that old boring stuff from history, wouldn't it?
It was a joke, man!
"Sheesh, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off." --Zaphod
Wow, that's really deep. Thanks, DJ!
So now that the discussion's cooling down a bit and there's time to think, I want to just tell you a little bit of my story.
I knew what I wanted to do with my life since I was five years old. I wanted to be a physicist. I got through two years of grad school (and was doing quite well, thank you) when I was essentially forced to drop out due to family problems. This journal entry talks a little bit about how this came about and gives links to the press coverage, it's actually quite an interesting story but it's also a very long one and I needn't go into the details to make my point.
My point is, when I left physics, it was actually a profound relief. Turns out, after much soul-searching, I realized I didn't really want to be a physicist, I just wanted to learn about physics. I love the subject, but the discipline sucks in the same way nearly everything in the system sucks. Now my goal is to get out of the system, and I'm very happy about it. This all came about by following my heart, and not doing what was "best for my career," and I am very glad things have gone this way. But I have no idea what our young friend's path should be, so I gave the only advice that I can, which is "follow your heart." It's simple, and it works.
You really never know what life is going to throw at you. You might dedicate yourself assiduously to something for years, and then get spun off on a completely different path. So that's why I say do what you love. I always did, and I've never regretted it.
To be a lawyer? Oh, my, that's a good one. Tell that to the moron who prosecuted me. He was dumb as a post, it's a wonder he made it into law school, let alone through it. You have to be a good bullshitter, but I think that's about it.
Hey, how'd you guess? ;-)
This is quite true, and I didn't mean to say that it isn't. Self-discipline is very important. But remember that self-discipline is simply the ability to do what you want to do. Sometimes it's very hard to do what you want to do, and you have to force yourself to do it anyway. But that's OK. You should definitely develop the ability to do things that are difficult, that's a key skill. What I'm saying is, you should do what you want to do. Sometimes the path to that will be tedious at times, but just remember that it's a path you have chosen, and stay on it.
But for heaven's sake, don't become one of these automata who hate their jobs and do them anyway because they can't come up with anything better to do. Be creative.
By the way, if you're worried about money, my understanding is that the experts in making money almost always say "do what you love, and the money will come."
And you should just go be a lawyer and get it over with. They make great money, hardly work at all, and all it takes is a willingness to be totally evil.