If they didn't like war, why did they join an organization whose sole purpose is to fight wars?
Only three kinds of people join the military: people who are too poor to ever achieve anything (so much for the joke known as "The American dream"...), people who like war and killing, and people who've deluded themselves into believing that killing Muslims will somehow make Muslims like the US enough not to retaliate. The last two kinds of people needed to be exterminated anyway, and the former probably have a better chance of surviving a war than they do of surviving America's ghettos and near-total lack of upward mobility.
You missed the part where I explicitly said that we should still buy helicopters. I think the Canadian military has around 30 or 40 helicopters... mostly they're just the kind that you use as part of docking large ships. Something about protocols or visibility or something. Of course, Canada has zero reason to worry about the people put out of work by NOT buying helicopters, since Canada doesn't build helicopters anyway. We mostly buy them from, well, probably the US. Still, helicopters are nice to have. Actually, helicopters are quite expensive. An economics professor calculated that for the cost of the last 12 Sea King helicopters we bought, Canada could build 12 provincial universities and operate them tuition-free for an entire century. Given that those Sea King helicopters crash like crazy, that might have been a better investment.
In any case, do you actually know how many Canadians are on disability and welfare? Take that number, and multiply it by about $10,000 -- the upper limit on all forms of government support. Most people get much less; you have to be utterly crippled to get that much. I think in BC, someone who just has no job and is eligible to work gets $6120 a year for a maximum of two years, contingent on demonstrating sufficient evidence that they are in fact job hunting. It's really not much money, and it's such a tiny, tiny amount compared to the genuinely expensive provincial programs like health care, common infrastructure, and that kind of thing.
In fact, for what the city of Toronto spends cremating the homeless people who die every winter, a homeless shelter could be operated year-round. Welfare is unbelievably cheap compared to other programs. I just don't get how conservatives can bitch about it. Why don't they complain about the billions of dollars in corporate support that the US uses to mask the fact that its economy is crumbling and its industry unsustainable? Why not the massive subsidies to pharmaceutical companies that are supposed to be supported by the prices of their drugs? Why not complain about the enormous cost of maintaining puppet regimes in third-world countries? Is keeping a few disabled people alive REALLY so horrible?
Hey, at least the war is making jobs for Americans again. For the last few decades, the billions that the US spent on wars mostly went to people like Saddam Hussain and Bin Laden. Just goes to show how bad an idea outsourcing war is. But finally, it's AMERICANS dying for America's stupid inane goals, not foreigners. In the long run, that will produce fewer enemies, and will turn Americans into pacifists as everyone who likes war gets the chance to die young in one...
Funny you should mention this, given that supporting the homeless/disabled/Africans costs dick-all in the grand scheme of things. The time that governments spend DISCUSSING welfare ultimately costs more (in terms of administrative salaries and parliment/congress time) that welfare itself ever will. For the cost of what Canada spends on helicopters for the miitary, every single jobless person in the entire country could be supported. That's not to say that we shouldn't buy helicopters, it's just putting things in perspective. (Note that I'm just referring to welfare/disability assistance and foreign aid, not something genuinely expensive like healthcare).
People who complain about the government supporting people who are incapable of working is really quite inexpensive, since there are very few people who can't work. It's things like the military, health care, and public works that suck up all the tax revenue. Welfare is insignificant.
I'm so sick of compassionless conservatives bitching about the couple of dollars per year that they pay for welfare, while at the same time endorsing the wars that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars paid per person for wars.
Here's an experiment, to convince you that the myth of the lazy jobless guy is just that -- a myth. Approach someone without a job (preferably one who isn't insane, as so many homeless folks are). Offer them a fulltime job (no benefits necessary) at minimum wage doing something that is within their capabilities. I guarantee that 90% of the welfare / disability recipients you make this offer to will accept your job offer. Of course, no one will ever make those offers, since most people are profoundly bigoted against the jobless -- which in turn is what KEEPS those people jobless. And disabled people are, for the most part, simply incapable of doing enough useful work to justify a salary that would keep them housed and fed. And so no one offers them jobs either. It's nothing to do with laziness. And if you don't believe me, just try my experiment. Go down to the local homeless shelter and try it (but avoid the schizophrenics -- they don't really count, being too crazy to know what's going on).
Not being an abject coward (at least when it comes to harmless sequences of bits on computers), I wouldn't give a rat's ass about the videogame itself. I might ask the police to investigate the MAKER for making threats against me / my loved ones. If it turned out that the game was not meant as a threat, then fine. Free speech. I wouldn't be offended. Of course, if the videogame simple re-enacted attacks on my family (which is a less-stupid analogy), I'd simply regard it as a tasteless, but entirely legitimate expression by the author.
It's ALWAYS the right time for free speech. ALWAYS. Without exception. It doesn't matter whether it's a time of war, tragedy, or whatever else. Free speech is an end in itself. It's people saying the most vile, wrong-headed things imaginable that keep the boundaries of social oppression from falling on those of us with genuinely important, yet contraversial, things to say.
I'd say the inflammatory tone is necessary. The problem doesn't really end with you avoiding these things, because there are more than enough cowards out there to convince governments that freedom of expression really isn't that important, when censorship and government regulation of the arts can win votes among the spoiled masses. It's necessary that we bitch-slap some sense into these people before they cause real harm, with legislations that are very hard to have struck-down.
I can't stand cowards/whiners/pussies and their "it's too soon!" bullshit. Immediately isn't soon enough for things that offend people.
For some reason, people have this idea that they have the right to never have their feelings hurt. Well fuck them. If being offended by stuff is the worst thing that ever happens to you, then you've lived a charmed life.
I swear, when a people are so spoiled and safe that they can get upset about a VIDEOGAME, it's time for war. Spending a few hours every night in a shelter waiting for the tanks to stop shelling your neighbourhood is just the kind of thing people need to remind of how enormously trivial a videogame is. Seeing your neighbours being taken away to deathcamps is good too. I suppose going to a deathcamp yourself might serve as a reminder, but you would never really get a chance to implement that knowledge...
To summarize: it's just a videogame. Whoopitty shit. Find something serious to care about, like the fact that the USA is adopting fascism, or that Europe has become a power-keg for racially/religiously/economically driven violence. Those things matter. Videogames based on what was possibly the smallest massacre in human history do not.
Avarice isn't too bad a theory, but I have trouble believing that the RIAA/MPAA could be so dumb. Sony is still in hot water over a badly designed piece of supposedly legitimate software. This is the kind of thing that could land people in JAIL. Suppose the virus gets onto a government computer and erases some legitimate files? What about a military computer? The US military has demonstratibly poor computer security. This could cause them huge problems if it got loose.
My theory is that this was made by someone who WANTS people to think that the RIAA made it, so that even more people will turn against them and take some heat off of P2P.
Why not just secede from the Union? After all, Republicans couldn't really complain given that most of them think that Lincoln was a tyrant for stopping the south from seceding. Of course, given that the blue states are paying for the red states (farming and empty oil wells not being particularly profitable these days), it would result in total economic collapse of the remaining portions of the Union, but it's not like those states aren't already perilously close to third-world conditions anyway.
It doesn't eliminate the liability at all. It just means that the apology can not be used in court against the party doing the apologizing. As it stands right now, if you apologize for something, that can later be used against you in court. Ergo, governments and businesses almost never apologize, unless compelled to as part of a court ruling or settlement.
An interesting off-topic little factoid: the government of British Columbia, the province in which I am occasionally proud to live, is considering passing a law that would make it easier for businesses, prominent individuals, and the government to apologize. It's kind of cool if you think about it -- consider how many matters can be resolved quickly and painlessly if one party just says "I fucked up, sorry dude." A bit of goodwill goes an amazingly long way.
The problem of course is the potential legal/financial liability that goes with that, which is what this new law would eliminate. I read that there's a lot of interest in such a law in many parts of the US as well. Could we be entering a time when governments start to be a bit more honest about their screw ups?
Here's an idea: kill everyone. Then there are no more terrorists!
Just because something helps your government get rid of terrorists, doesn't mean that it's a good idea.
Aside, I note that Bin Laden is still at large and laughing his ass off at America's half-hearted attempts to get him. He'll probably die of lung cancer long before an American gets anywhere near him. For god's sake, we know where he is!! The Pakistan/Afghanistan border! JUST GO AND SHOOT HIM! They only reason it hasn't happened yet is that his continued "menace" is the best thing that ever happened to the Republican party. They'll hold total power over the US for as long as he lives and keeps releasing his assinine little videos. So there's no real motivation to actually capture him. All this spying is probably more to keep tabs on guys like Kaczinsky and McVeigh, since, ya know, spying on Americans wont help much with stopping terrorist organizations located in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (who are America's allies, supposedly).
Don't Americans already vote on major issues from time to time? Usually on the same ballot as state and municipal elections, from what I understand.
Sadly you don't see much of that in other democracies, or on national level issues. And since virtually no one votes in local elections, it doesn't mean much. Still, it sounds nice.
Moron, republicanism is what you call it when your nation IS A REPUBLIC. Like early Rome or modern France or the USA pre-1996. This is as opposed to true democracy like classical Athens, parlimentary democracy like Canada or England, Communism like China or North Korea, or a theocracy Iran or the USA circa-1996.
It's already got a name -- totalitarianism. As in history textbooks have a section called "the totalitarian regimes of the 30s and 40s". Interestingly, most of them were originally democratic, Russia being the notable exception.
You forgot amendment 509 (or DIX, in Roman numerals): "Bush is the decider, and all rights belong to him and him alone, for he speaks the word of the lord."
To question Bush is to question the word of God. What kind of Satanic asshole are you, anyway?!
Not to mention that this is a private enterprise, so they'll be making money and stimulating the economy at the same time -- and only need to be mildly profitable for a slew of like-minded ventures to spring up across the globe. Not unlike the thermal depolymerization plant in the states, the first is practically just a demonstration of the feasability. The real money is when 20 identical plants spring up somewhere, and then another 100 down the line. Combining recycling and fuel production is a fabulous thing, although it's a bit surprising that our waste and garbage contains so much recoverable energy.
Well, it's not like the US isn't one of the other leaders in Nuclear technology. And with all the recent interest in nuclear, y'all could make a killing exporting snazzy little reactors that run on the plutonium from de-commissioned weapons. As long as you only export them to people you trust, of course. Everyone else gets depleted landfill-grade radon...:P
Even an unequal cooperation can have enormous benefits. Look at Canada and the US with regards to nuclear research. Canada didn't get any bombs out of it (not that we particularly need any when our allies are armed to the nuts with them), but our scientists saw enough of the action to later on make us a leader in nuclear power. Having some of the world's biggest uranium deposits helps, of course, but still. An unequal partnership, if leveraged properly, can be just awesome. It's definitely better than no partnership at all, especially for wee little nations like the aforementioned Canada.
This is a complete load of SHIT. For some reason, a lot of people have this idea that scientists shout down dissenting views. It just ain't true. If you come up with a falsifiable theory that makes a number of accurate predictions that existing theories are incorrect about, while still being completely consistent with existing observations, everyone will come around lickity-damn-split. It's happened numerous times in the past. Just look at that electric-universe shit. Their predictions all failed to come to pass, and so everyone ignored them. But if their predictions had come true and that comet had done defied existing theories, and they'd made a few other predictions that other, non-retarded theories, were wrong about, those doofuses would have gotten the nobel prize.
I know it's fun to pretend scientists are as stupid as religious fanatics are, but they're really not. They think, they're reasonable, they're intelligent, and they're critical -- and that's why religion is dying while science is being funded in ways that nothing in all of history can rival.
I suppose that one could call the grand unified force (or whatever else turns out to be bottom layer once we're done peeling the onion of physics) by whatever name one wishes, be it God or Chi or FSM. The philosophical issue doesn't arise until you try to anthropomorphize it and ascribe personality and moral attributes to it, or claim that it's tricking you and that the universe is actually younger than some trees...
It's a sad fact -- Americans hate anyone who either serves the public, or posesses scientific or technical knowledge of any kind. People that work tech support fall into both groups, and so are essentially treated like lepers.
There's also the fact that most American business managers consider their employees and customers to be parasites that are bleeding the company dry, and treat them as such. The fact that employees actually want to be paid for their labour, and that customers expect to actually receive goods and/or services just drives American CEOs up the wall (which is why they lobby for laws that would remove those two issues).
You have to remember, the US Government is completely bogged down with cronyism and the GWB personality cult. Much like the totalitarian states of the 30s and 40s, they have no real idea what's going on -- they're too busy admiring their "grand works", and patting each other on the back.
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Only three kinds of people join the military: people who are too poor to ever achieve anything (so much for the joke known as "The American dream" ...), people who like war and killing, and people who've deluded themselves into believing that killing Muslims will somehow make Muslims like the US enough not to retaliate. The last two kinds of people needed to be exterminated anyway, and the former probably have a better chance of surviving a war than they do of surviving America's ghettos and near-total lack of upward mobility.
In any case, do you actually know how many Canadians are on disability and welfare? Take that number, and multiply it by about $10,000 -- the upper limit on all forms of government support. Most people get much less; you have to be utterly crippled to get that much. I think in BC, someone who just has no job and is eligible to work gets $6120 a year for a maximum of two years, contingent on demonstrating sufficient evidence that they are in fact job hunting. It's really not much money, and it's such a tiny, tiny amount compared to the genuinely expensive provincial programs like health care, common infrastructure, and that kind of thing.
In fact, for what the city of Toronto spends cremating the homeless people who die every winter, a homeless shelter could be operated year-round. Welfare is unbelievably cheap compared to other programs. I just don't get how conservatives can bitch about it. Why don't they complain about the billions of dollars in corporate support that the US uses to mask the fact that its economy is crumbling and its industry unsustainable? Why not the massive subsidies to pharmaceutical companies that are supposed to be supported by the prices of their drugs? Why not complain about the enormous cost of maintaining puppet regimes in third-world countries? Is keeping a few disabled people alive REALLY so horrible?
Hey, at least the war is making jobs for Americans again. For the last few decades, the billions that the US spent on wars mostly went to people like Saddam Hussain and Bin Laden. Just goes to show how bad an idea outsourcing war is. But finally, it's AMERICANS dying for America's stupid inane goals, not foreigners. In the long run, that will produce fewer enemies, and will turn Americans into pacifists as everyone who likes war gets the chance to die young in one...
People who complain about the government supporting people who are incapable of working is really quite inexpensive, since there are very few people who can't work. It's things like the military, health care, and public works that suck up all the tax revenue. Welfare is insignificant.
I'm so sick of compassionless conservatives bitching about the couple of dollars per year that they pay for welfare, while at the same time endorsing the wars that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars paid per person for wars.
Here's an experiment, to convince you that the myth of the lazy jobless guy is just that -- a myth. Approach someone without a job (preferably one who isn't insane, as so many homeless folks are). Offer them a fulltime job (no benefits necessary) at minimum wage doing something that is within their capabilities. I guarantee that 90% of the welfare / disability recipients you make this offer to will accept your job offer. Of course, no one will ever make those offers, since most people are profoundly bigoted against the jobless -- which in turn is what KEEPS those people jobless. And disabled people are, for the most part, simply incapable of doing enough useful work to justify a salary that would keep them housed and fed. And so no one offers them jobs either. It's nothing to do with laziness. And if you don't believe me, just try my experiment. Go down to the local homeless shelter and try it (but avoid the schizophrenics -- they don't really count, being too crazy to know what's going on).
It's ALWAYS the right time for free speech. ALWAYS. Without exception. It doesn't matter whether it's a time of war, tragedy, or whatever else. Free speech is an end in itself. It's people saying the most vile, wrong-headed things imaginable that keep the boundaries of social oppression from falling on those of us with genuinely important, yet contraversial, things to say.
Hilarious scenario. I'm going to be laughing all week just imagining that...
I'd say the inflammatory tone is necessary. The problem doesn't really end with you avoiding these things, because there are more than enough cowards out there to convince governments that freedom of expression really isn't that important, when censorship and government regulation of the arts can win votes among the spoiled masses. It's necessary that we bitch-slap some sense into these people before they cause real harm, with legislations that are very hard to have struck-down.
For some reason, people have this idea that they have the right to never have their feelings hurt. Well fuck them. If being offended by stuff is the worst thing that ever happens to you, then you've lived a charmed life.
I swear, when a people are so spoiled and safe that they can get upset about a VIDEOGAME, it's time for war. Spending a few hours every night in a shelter waiting for the tanks to stop shelling your neighbourhood is just the kind of thing people need to remind of how enormously trivial a videogame is. Seeing your neighbours being taken away to deathcamps is good too. I suppose going to a deathcamp yourself might serve as a reminder, but you would never really get a chance to implement that knowledge...
To summarize: it's just a videogame. Whoopitty shit. Find something serious to care about, like the fact that the USA is adopting fascism, or that Europe has become a power-keg for racially/religiously/economically driven violence. Those things matter. Videogames based on what was possibly the smallest massacre in human history do not.
My theory is that this was made by someone who WANTS people to think that the RIAA made it, so that even more people will turn against them and take some heat off of P2P.
Why not just secede from the Union? After all, Republicans couldn't really complain given that most of them think that Lincoln was a tyrant for stopping the south from seceding. Of course, given that the blue states are paying for the red states (farming and empty oil wells not being particularly profitable these days), it would result in total economic collapse of the remaining portions of the Union, but it's not like those states aren't already perilously close to third-world conditions anyway.
It doesn't eliminate the liability at all. It just means that the apology can not be used in court against the party doing the apologizing. As it stands right now, if you apologize for something, that can later be used against you in court. Ergo, governments and businesses almost never apologize, unless compelled to as part of a court ruling or settlement.
The problem of course is the potential legal/financial liability that goes with that, which is what this new law would eliminate. I read that there's a lot of interest in such a law in many parts of the US as well. Could we be entering a time when governments start to be a bit more honest about their screw ups?
Just because something helps your government get rid of terrorists, doesn't mean that it's a good idea.
Aside, I note that Bin Laden is still at large and laughing his ass off at America's half-hearted attempts to get him. He'll probably die of lung cancer long before an American gets anywhere near him. For god's sake, we know where he is!! The Pakistan/Afghanistan border! JUST GO AND SHOOT HIM! They only reason it hasn't happened yet is that his continued "menace" is the best thing that ever happened to the Republican party. They'll hold total power over the US for as long as he lives and keeps releasing his assinine little videos. So there's no real motivation to actually capture him. All this spying is probably more to keep tabs on guys like Kaczinsky and McVeigh, since, ya know, spying on Americans wont help much with stopping terrorist organizations located in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (who are America's allies, supposedly).
Sadly you don't see much of that in other democracies, or on national level issues. And since virtually no one votes in local elections, it doesn't mean much. Still, it sounds nice.
Moron, republicanism is what you call it when your nation IS A REPUBLIC. Like early Rome or modern France or the USA pre-1996. This is as opposed to true democracy like classical Athens, parlimentary democracy like Canada or England, Communism like China or North Korea, or a theocracy Iran or the USA circa-1996.
It's already got a name -- totalitarianism. As in history textbooks have a section called "the totalitarian regimes of the 30s and 40s". Interestingly, most of them were originally democratic, Russia being the notable exception.
To question Bush is to question the word of God. What kind of Satanic asshole are you, anyway?!
-- Mark
Not to mention that this is a private enterprise, so they'll be making money and stimulating the economy at the same time -- and only need to be mildly profitable for a slew of like-minded ventures to spring up across the globe. Not unlike the thermal depolymerization plant in the states, the first is practically just a demonstration of the feasability. The real money is when 20 identical plants spring up somewhere, and then another 100 down the line. Combining recycling and fuel production is a fabulous thing, although it's a bit surprising that our waste and garbage contains so much recoverable energy.
Well, it's not like the US isn't one of the other leaders in Nuclear technology. And with all the recent interest in nuclear, y'all could make a killing exporting snazzy little reactors that run on the plutonium from de-commissioned weapons. As long as you only export them to people you trust, of course. Everyone else gets depleted landfill-grade radon... :P
Even an unequal cooperation can have enormous benefits. Look at Canada and the US with regards to nuclear research. Canada didn't get any bombs out of it (not that we particularly need any when our allies are armed to the nuts with them), but our scientists saw enough of the action to later on make us a leader in nuclear power. Having some of the world's biggest uranium deposits helps, of course, but still. An unequal partnership, if leveraged properly, can be just awesome. It's definitely better than no partnership at all, especially for wee little nations like the aforementioned Canada.
I know it's fun to pretend scientists are as stupid as religious fanatics are, but they're really not. They think, they're reasonable, they're intelligent, and they're critical -- and that's why religion is dying while science is being funded in ways that nothing in all of history can rival.
I suppose that one could call the grand unified force (or whatever else turns out to be bottom layer once we're done peeling the onion of physics) by whatever name one wishes, be it God or Chi or FSM. The philosophical issue doesn't arise until you try to anthropomorphize it and ascribe personality and moral attributes to it, or claim that it's tricking you and that the universe is actually younger than some trees ...
Damn you and your calm, reasonable attitude! Without fear and panic, we have nothing! Nothing I tell you!
There's also the fact that most American business managers consider their employees and customers to be parasites that are bleeding the company dry, and treat them as such. The fact that employees actually want to be paid for their labour, and that customers expect to actually receive goods and/or services just drives American CEOs up the wall (which is why they lobby for laws that would remove those two issues).
You have to remember, the US Government is completely bogged down with cronyism and the GWB personality cult. Much like the totalitarian states of the 30s and 40s, they have no real idea what's going on -- they're too busy admiring their "grand works", and patting each other on the back.