Don't get me wrong, it's a major pain to memorize thousands of characters. But in the language the system is native to (Chinese), it's not as bad as all that. Chinese characters do encode a lot of phonetic information -- it's just suggestive rather than definitive. On the other hand, they encode a *lot* more information about meaning/sense (and even etymology in some cases) than words written in a purely phonetic system.
In Japanese, well, it was probably a misguided decision to import that particular foreign writing system, but you go to literacy with the tools you have, not the tools you wish you had. Unless you're Korea, and then you independently invent the world's most brilliantly designed alphabet... and *still* use some Chinese characters anyway.
is having your language based on a character set that requires computer rendering for most people to be able to communicate clearly somewhat asinine?
It would be... if it were actually true. Kanji aren't some mystical thing that can never be written or recognized by hand. The official list of what kids are required to learn in high school just left out some characters because they were supposed to be "too hard". (Protip: they aren't. It's not some extraordinary superhuman feat to remember how to draw twenty little lines.) The electronics mean they can stop whining about it a bit.
No disrespect to those that practice the art of cartography
...I believe you may mean "calligraphy" here, as map-making doesn't seem at all relevant to the rest of your comment.
Historically, this has been done via re-distributive taxation: subsidizing federally "friendly" states with funds taxed from the "unfriendly" ones.
This is factually untrue. The more pro-Federal government, liberal/"blue" states tend to pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal funds; anti-government, "red" states receive more federal money than they pay in taxes. See e.g. here; I'm not immediately finding more recent figures, however.
I don't agree with all the bailouts that have been done lately, but there are two points here. First, these bailouts are necessary because the markets were insufficiently regulated. They got out of control, and as a result burned not only the bad people, but the good ones too. The bailing-out of Wall Street was (at some level) necessary, even if it was horrifically poorly structured, because otherwise the further spread of the collapse would have crushed your business, just like everyone else's. Google "counterparty risk" sometime.
We can't run a government based exactly on the Constitution for the same reason we can't build all computers off the model of a 1965 IBM mainframe spec -- government, as a technology, has evolved way beyond where it was 250 years ago. And mostly for the better (though manifestly not for the perfect).
Each state is a reasonable size for local government
Somebody hasn't looked at a map lately. State sizes and borders are primarily determined by historical artifact. They are in no sense of self-governable size. Even some Eastern states, like New York, have population disparities that make them almost ungovernable.
Moreover, modern governments' main function is to ensure the steady and effective progress of the economy. (That's a descriptive statement, not a prescriptive one). Without individual currencies, states could not accomplish this goal effectively (see Greece), but you couldn't have a much more minarchist central government while still avoiding disastrous panics, such as were commonplace before the New Deal and the regulatory regime put in place at that time. (Our recent troubles are largely due to the fact that the government is too small in its regulatory actions). But, if states actually had their own currencies, the Union would probably cease to function; even the Founders knew that (though they were writing the Constitution at the very dawn of the birth of modern economics).
Yeah, you probably also wouldn't have imagined you'd spend solid months of your life clicking buttons as though it were a job from the oppressed workers in Metropolis, either...
Also, let's not lose sight of a key issue here: If it looks like you're doing twice the speed limit, odds are pretty good you were speeding. Speaking as someone with a general mistrust of authority and who has been investigated for a serious crime under false pretences, I am perfectly content for police to enforce just laws against people who violate them.
My guess is it falls under the category of "attempting not to get disbarred for offering advice in a jurisdiction where he is not licensed to practice" or some such.
Also, remember, if he's *your* attorney from the Internet, and you lose your case, it hurts his win-loss record, and then he might not make the All-Star Litigation this year.
I think at the point they were brazenly calling their principals pedophiles, they've kind of lost the race for the "bravery and honesty" part of things...
In a democratic system, the people in whom trust is placed, ultimately, are intended to be the citizens. Not the cops, not the congresscritters, not the president, not the corporations, but the collective will of the population, who should be informed of the effectiveness of the people carrying out its will, and exercise recall power over them.
Or in other words, we should trust the cops because we've got our eyes on them. I don't subscribe to this faith-based government...
Regarding importing oil from Titan: While we are set to run out of oil here pretty fast, it would be a really colossally [pun averted] bad idea to bring a huge source of hydrocarbons here and burn it. We're liable enough to kill ourselves off burning our own hydrocarbons, let alone a whole new space-rock of them.
That's a fine principle, except that all consumers of food have a vested interest in changes to diet. You can eat organic all you want, if wind-bourne pollen from modified crops is fertilizing the neighboring organic fields, you'll wind up eating something whose health effects are not all that certain. And yes, in many cases anti-GMO folks are concerned when there isn't reason to be; but this is our food supply we're talking about, and a precautionary principle is in full effect.
Besides, self-regulating industries are prone to misrepresenting health effects when they have financial interests at stake. CF Vioxx... It's all well and good to say "let the market sort it out," but market solutions are ex post facto -- you don't know to punish a bad market actor until they've already dumped a billion barrels of oil in your gulf (and that's assuming that you, as a lowly, non-media-empowered consumer, can even break through the asymmetries of information in the first place). Regulations can be over-cautious and even misguided, and they can certainly fail; but they are much more effective than free-market actions in preventing the disaster before it happens repeatedly.
Nuclear first strike threats happen as a result of a superpower standoff in the absence of peaceful cooperation. Those criteria eliminate Pakistan and India (not really superpowers capable of competing after the nuke, i.e. they have no reason to nuke us) and China (too much interdependence at present, they'd be nuking themselves in the foot, so to speak). Not that the situation couldn't change in the future, but the diplomatic situation is such that the motivation just isn't there.
Iran should also be considered as a rational actor, whatever the current rhetoric is (and if we accept that the regime itself is rational, even if Ahmadenijad is not, then between MAD, third-party AD after a nuke strike, and the lack of any reasonable expectation of benefit from nuking the US, there's no credible threat). Iran has very evident rational reasons for its current attempt to get nuclear weapons.
With North Korea you might have something, since Kim Jong Il actually does control the government. But again, even granting he's unstable, he's not incoherently insane. His worldview has an internal logic -- it just doesn't agree with the rest of us. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that developing the nuclear arsenal serves a couple of purposes there: 1) technology sale for a country starved of exportable goods; 2) a bargaining chip in ongoing negotiations with the nuclear powers; and 3) the ability to deter the US from being involved in conventional warfare on the peninsula. Given the ongoing Cheonan incident, I wouldn't be surprised if that third one was the most significant.
In short, none of those examples pose a credible threat to the US at present. There's a potential threat in the future assuming technological development and a huge change in the diplomatic and economic situations, but those are some pretty big assumptions -- you would not need larger ones to imagine a credible nuclear threat from a non-state actor.
I think you are underestimating the rationality of North Korea and Iran. Kim Jong-Il is well aware of the consequences of his actions, and won't launch against anyone any time soon -- his main target would probably be South Korea anyway, and if he wanted to he could level Seoul with ballistic conventional weaponry before they could do anything about it.
Iran is not actually governed by Ahmadinejad; he's a figurehead. In any event, the logic of the situation suggests that Iran absolutely should want nukes -- but primarily as a deterrent against the other nuclear powers in its neighborhood (Israel) and the West (US). MAD not only discourages nuclear war, but conventional war as well. Getting nukes would greatly increase Iran's security and regional importance, if it can get through the dangerous phase where it looks like it might have nukes.
However, you're right that there's a credible threat of nuclear attack from a non-state actor. Thing is it won't come from an ICBM, it'll come in a suitcase, or in the back of a truck.
This is a facile tautology. It's impossible to criticize anything without becoming a critic of that thing. Surely you aren't suggesting that we disregard every report that comes from someone with an opinion? Particularly when that opinion may be the *result* of the findings, instead of predetermining them?
Obviously the right thing to do is to keep in mind the bias of the author, but evaluate the critical report's claims on their own merits.
Not to mention the scandal & furor caused by one of the first topless statues in American history -- of a porn starlet & ex-President named George Washington.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get me wrong, it's a major pain to memorize thousands of characters. But in the language the system is native to (Chinese), it's not as bad as all that. Chinese characters do encode a lot of phonetic information -- it's just suggestive rather than definitive. On the other hand, they encode a *lot* more information about meaning/sense (and even etymology in some cases) than words written in a purely phonetic system.
In Japanese, well, it was probably a misguided decision to import that particular foreign writing system, but you go to literacy with the tools you have, not the tools you wish you had. Unless you're Korea, and then you independently invent the world's most brilliantly designed alphabet... and *still* use some Chinese characters anyway.
is having your language based on a character set that requires computer rendering for most people to be able to communicate clearly somewhat asinine?
It would be... if it were actually true.
Kanji aren't some mystical thing that can never be written or recognized by hand. The official list of what kids are required to learn in high school just left out some characters because they were supposed to be "too hard". (Protip: they aren't. It's not some extraordinary superhuman feat to remember how to draw twenty little lines.) The electronics mean they can stop whining about it a bit.
No disrespect to those that practice the art of cartography
...I believe you may mean "calligraphy" here, as map-making doesn't seem at all relevant to the rest of your comment.
Historically, this has been done via re-distributive taxation: subsidizing federally "friendly" states with funds taxed from the "unfriendly" ones.
This is factually untrue. The more pro-Federal government, liberal/"blue" states tend to pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal funds; anti-government, "red" states receive more federal money than they pay in taxes. See e.g. here; I'm not immediately finding more recent figures, however.
If we have to do that as a private business, what makes government any different?
The fact that it's a government.
See the "Paradox of Thrift" and here generally.
I don't agree with all the bailouts that have been done lately, but there are two points here. First, these bailouts are necessary because the markets were insufficiently regulated. They got out of control, and as a result burned not only the bad people, but the good ones too. The bailing-out of Wall Street was (at some level) necessary, even if it was horrifically poorly structured, because otherwise the further spread of the collapse would have crushed your business, just like everyone else's. Google "counterparty risk" sometime.
We can't run a government based exactly on the Constitution for the same reason we can't build all computers off the model of a 1965 IBM mainframe spec -- government, as a technology, has evolved way beyond where it was 250 years ago. And mostly for the better (though manifestly not for the perfect).
Constitutionally? Not really, or at least not until about fifty years ago.
Each state is a reasonable size for local government
Somebody hasn't looked at a map lately.
State sizes and borders are primarily determined by historical artifact. They are in no sense of self-governable size. Even some Eastern states, like New York, have population disparities that make them almost ungovernable.
Moreover, modern governments' main function is to ensure the steady and effective progress of the economy. (That's a descriptive statement, not a prescriptive one). Without individual currencies, states could not accomplish this goal effectively (see Greece), but you couldn't have a much more minarchist central government while still avoiding disastrous panics, such as were commonplace before the New Deal and the regulatory regime put in place at that time. (Our recent troubles are largely due to the fact that the government is too small in its regulatory actions). But, if states actually had their own currencies, the Union would probably cease to function; even the Founders knew that (though they were writing the Constitution at the very dawn of the birth of modern economics).
You've still got a bunch of bits on a DVD. The fact they aren't good for much shouldn't mean you don't own them.
Yeah, you probably also wouldn't have imagined you'd spend solid months of your life clicking buttons as though it were a job from the oppressed workers in Metropolis, either...
Also, let's not lose sight of a key issue here:
If it looks like you're doing twice the speed limit, odds are pretty good you were speeding. Speaking as someone with a general mistrust of authority and who has been investigated for a serious crime under false pretences, I am perfectly content for police to enforce just laws against people who violate them.
My guess is it falls under the category of "attempting not to get disbarred for offering advice in a jurisdiction where he is not licensed to practice" or some such.
Also, remember, if he's *your* attorney from the Internet, and you lose your case, it hurts his win-loss record, and then he might not make the All-Star Litigation this year.
I think at the point they were brazenly calling their principals pedophiles, they've kind of lost the race for the "bravery and honesty" part of things...
I'm confused. Are you endorsing this?
In a democratic system, the people in whom trust is placed, ultimately, are intended to be the citizens. Not the cops, not the congresscritters, not the president, not the corporations, but the collective will of the population, who should be informed of the effectiveness of the people carrying out its will, and exercise recall power over them.
Or in other words, we should trust the cops because we've got our eyes on them. I don't subscribe to this faith-based government...
Regarding importing oil from Titan:
While we are set to run out of oil here pretty fast, it would be a really colossally [pun averted] bad idea to bring a huge source of hydrocarbons here and burn it. We're liable enough to kill ourselves off burning our own hydrocarbons, let alone a whole new space-rock of them.
Nah. If they did that, they'd have to admit that such things constitute psychological torture.
Nah, it usually takes the elderly far, far longer than 20 minutes for their children to get back to them.
Don't we say the same thing about desktop Linux vs. Windows?
The difference being it's easier for these two to co-exist, but really, I don't think we'll see a mass extinction in the near future.
Bad ideas never die. They just go dormant for ten years, then emerge from the ground like mindless locusts.
We also call the phenomenon "Everything old is new again."
Unnecessary replies?
This is /., are there any other kind?
New doesn't necessarily equal dangerous, but it also doesn't necessarily equal benign, either.
I just want to know what I'm buying, and that plenty of somebody elses have done guinea pig duty first.
That's a fine principle, except that all consumers of food have a vested interest in changes to diet. You can eat organic all you want, if wind-bourne pollen from modified crops is fertilizing the neighboring organic fields, you'll wind up eating something whose health effects are not all that certain. And yes, in many cases anti-GMO folks are concerned when there isn't reason to be; but this is our food supply we're talking about, and a precautionary principle is in full effect.
Besides, self-regulating industries are prone to misrepresenting health effects when they have financial interests at stake. CF Vioxx... It's all well and good to say "let the market sort it out," but market solutions are ex post facto -- you don't know to punish a bad market actor until they've already dumped a billion barrels of oil in your gulf (and that's assuming that you, as a lowly, non-media-empowered consumer, can even break through the asymmetries of information in the first place). Regulations can be over-cautious and even misguided, and they can certainly fail; but they are much more effective than free-market actions in preventing the disaster before it happens repeatedly.
Nuclear first strike threats happen as a result of a superpower standoff in the absence of peaceful cooperation. Those criteria eliminate Pakistan and India (not really superpowers capable of competing after the nuke, i.e. they have no reason to nuke us) and China (too much interdependence at present, they'd be nuking themselves in the foot, so to speak). Not that the situation couldn't change in the future, but the diplomatic situation is such that the motivation just isn't there.
Iran should also be considered as a rational actor, whatever the current rhetoric is (and if we accept that the regime itself is rational, even if Ahmadenijad is not, then between MAD, third-party AD after a nuke strike, and the lack of any reasonable expectation of benefit from nuking the US, there's no credible threat). Iran has very evident rational reasons for its current attempt to get nuclear weapons.
With North Korea you might have something, since Kim Jong Il actually does control the government. But again, even granting he's unstable, he's not incoherently insane. His worldview has an internal logic -- it just doesn't agree with the rest of us. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that developing the nuclear arsenal serves a couple of purposes there: 1) technology sale for a country starved of exportable goods; 2) a bargaining chip in ongoing negotiations with the nuclear powers; and 3) the ability to deter the US from being involved in conventional warfare on the peninsula. Given the ongoing Cheonan incident, I wouldn't be surprised if that third one was the most significant.
In short, none of those examples pose a credible threat to the US at present. There's a potential threat in the future assuming technological development and a huge change in the diplomatic and economic situations, but those are some pretty big assumptions -- you would not need larger ones to imagine a credible nuclear threat from a non-state actor.
There is no credible threat of a nuclear attack from a missile, either.
I think you are underestimating the rationality of North Korea and Iran. Kim Jong-Il is well aware of the consequences of his actions, and won't launch against anyone any time soon -- his main target would probably be South Korea anyway, and if he wanted to he could level Seoul with ballistic conventional weaponry before they could do anything about it.
Iran is not actually governed by Ahmadinejad; he's a figurehead. In any event, the logic of the situation suggests that Iran absolutely should want nukes -- but primarily as a deterrent against the other nuclear powers in its neighborhood (Israel) and the West (US). MAD not only discourages nuclear war, but conventional war as well. Getting nukes would greatly increase Iran's security and regional importance, if it can get through the dangerous phase where it looks like it might have nukes.
However, you're right that there's a credible threat of nuclear attack from a non-state actor. Thing is it won't come from an ICBM, it'll come in a suitcase, or in the back of a truck.
This is a facile tautology.
It's impossible to criticize anything without becoming a critic of that thing. Surely you aren't suggesting that we disregard every report that comes from someone with an opinion? Particularly when that opinion may be the *result* of the findings, instead of predetermining them?
Obviously the right thing to do is to keep in mind the bias of the author, but evaluate the critical report's claims on their own merits.
Not to mention the scandal & furor caused by one of the first topless statues in American history -- of a porn starlet & ex-President named George Washington.
Bare man-chest! Indecent!