Obviously, YMMV depending on your local community, but I've participated in lots of fun games of pick-up kickball, softball, etc. Considering half the people at any given sporting event had a beer in their hand when not actually on the field, lack of physical ability didn't seem to upset anyone.
One side is providing grant money to research the issue and publish the findings. The other side is providing personal payments to publicly voice a specific opinion. One of these is science, one of them is not.
I'm not sure that they have to be that way, either. They probably just don't want to change.
Eh, probably both. I suspect most people see this instinct as a positive attribute. And it unquestionably was at some point- saving a child from a hungry tiger rather than the adult that has probably already procreated and won't do so again is positively correlated from an evolutionary perspective. Whether it is still a positive trait is questionable, due to the paradigm change technology has brought to human civilization. But even if we all sat down and rationally decided it was a negative attribute, 100,000 years of selective pressure is pretty hard to overcome.
What if I'm trying to showcase my art, but not sell it
So, you want to advertise your product (your art), but you don't want to pay for that advertisement. Why should I pay for it? You don't wanna pay for it, I don't wanna pay for it, so just don't show it at all. I wonder who loses more in that scenario, you or me?
Or perhaps I just don't care about the victim's age. Why is that not possible?
Sure, it's possible (I'm willing to accept you at your word) but it is alien to most people. It is a natural instinct in the majority of humans to see something bad happening to a child as more tragic than that exact same bad thing happening to an adult. Maybe it's an evolutionary response to protect the future of the race, maybe it's easier to transfer your emotion about your own children (which is evolutionarily programmed to be stronger than emotion about just about any other human) to another child than another adult. Maybe it's an emotional response to the (presumed) innocence of the child versus the (presumed) emotional shields of the adult, making the act (likely) more traumatic to the child. Maybe children are just cuter and elicit more sympathy. Whatever the explanation, most people react more strongly to harm befalling children than they do harm that befalls other adults. Empathizing to an equal degree does not fit inside the common paradigm, EXCEPT under the edge case of not empathizing at all. Everyone can conceptualize zero empathy - they've experienced it. They cannot conceptualize equal non-zero amounts of empathy for a child and an adult, that lies outside their experience.
I completely agree this is a juvenile stunt, but censoring debate? Not at all, if anything, I imagine Savage has increased the public's awareness of Santorum's views on homosexuality. Yes, he has done so in a juvenile, rude manner. But this stunt merely brought to light the actual policy issue (anti-sodomy laws, gay marriage, etc.). If Santorum's policy position reflects poorly on him, whose fault is that? As for informing themselves, if you actually visit the site, it contains relevant information about Santorum's politics. The fact that they aren't flattering to Santorum is irrelevant - they are factual (as far as I can tell).
You also have to consider how often your next door neighbor gets hit on by attractive women when he is just out with his friends. Compare that to a celebrity, especially an attractive one. Saying no to the temptation twice in a lifetime isn't as hard as saying no to the temptation twice every night.
a) Drug penalties are often much lengthier than penalties for violent crime. B/c of federal sentencing laws, overcrowded prisons have let violent offenders out early to ease crowding, but were unable to release drug offenders early.
b) That's their lawyers job - why are black males being so poorly represented compared to other groups?
c) I'd be interested to see a study that correlated education to length of sentence. I've seen the studies that correlate to crime; I don't see the mechanism for a correlation to sentencing.
d) Probably the biggest factor - look at underage blacks vs. underage whites being charged as adults for similar crimes.
As for the original point, police are seldom prosecuted. They are OFTEN sued by individuals, punished by their department, censured, etc. But very seldom prosecuted. Compare stats of police officers to their similar demographic in the population at general (i.e. black officers to black non-officers).
If you are going to make these comments, be an equal-opportunity commenter.
Why not call out each party on its particular brand of bullshit, though? The Republicans ARE bigger hypocrites, saying one thing while intending to do the opposite, promoting certain values in public while not practicing them in private, etc. Of course there are hypocritical Democrats, but it doesn't seem to be such an integral part of the party platform.
On the other hand, the Democrats are (as a party) whiny, do-nothing blowhards. They'd rather do nothing and be perceived as "good" than do something good and be perceived as "bad". Then whine about how misunderstood they are when people criticize their wishy-washy bullshit.
It's not that either party is admirable, but each is despicable in its own unique little way. There are so many ways both party suck exactly the same way, it's important to cherish the distinctions between them (and their suckitude).
That makes it incredibly difficult to separate out those lawyers who are decent people only doing their job and those lawyers who really have no morals
You say that as though someone who has morals, but is willing to ignore them for money (i.e., doing their job) is somehow more admirable than someone who simply has no morals. Since I doubt the immoral lawyer would do the job sans paycheck, what difference is there between the two?
You might be right that the prohibition of public sex originates out of prurience, but the sanitation concerns are legitimate. I think you are underestimating the prevalence of STDs, at least in America. Look at HPV statistics. The odds of catching it from non-sexual fluid contact is probably very small, but not zero. Even without STDs, it's just nasty to let people rub their bare asses on public furniture.
Remember, back when all this was being dreamed up, the total population of the US was around 3 million. Thirteen original states means states averaged less than 300,000 people. Not that there isn't still plenty of scope for corruption and evil, but with just a few hundred thousand people, it's easier to spot and deal with.
It's not what you do to whoever or whatever in your bedroom. It's the fact that you want to force me and my kids to accept it, and before we can do that, you have to tell us what it is. Frankly, we don't want to know.
hey, when heterosexuality is kept quiet and no one mentions it in public, I'll accept your argument here as legitimate. Until then, allowing one view point to be expressed as openly as desired and requiring a different view point to only be held in private is not equality.
Are the Tetris clones duplicating the same exact shapes, with the same color scheme, same algorithm for generating the next shape, same point system for rewarding a player for removing a row, same level progression design, same music, etc.? If so, they absolutely should be squashed. If they merely copy the idea of dropping random shapes, allowing the user to manipulate them in order to fill in rows and gain points, then they shouldn't be squashed. From what I have read (haven't played either game) it sounds like this is more akin to the first scenario I posited.
Company screwed up for the last 60 years. And are now (possibly) being taken to task for the last round of victims - I see nothing that will punish the company for the previous generations of people killed by their negligence (at best - at worst, malicious indifference). I'd hardly call that "functioning perfectly".
What he said might be legal, but it certainly rouses a "reasonable suspicion" that there are illegal things going on. That is what an investigation (what was called for here) actually does, you know. Looks at a questionable situation and tries to determine what is actually happening.
does it clearly state on the box that you are buying a license rather than a game
I'd say it's worse than that. I recently bought a PC game that clearly stated certain content and maps were only available online. The player would need an Internet connection to access this content or the online player community, but that there was an offline mode. Nowhere did it state that to activate the offline mode, one had to first login to the online server. It wasn't a problem for me, but it struck me as pretty close to fraud. The way it was worded, it definitely gave me the impression that I could play without having an Internet connection. I don't have a problem with the authentication scheme, per se, but it need to be clearly spelled out that your machine MUST be capable of making a connection or the game is useless.
Because in 1984, we get rats on our faces. Brave New World, we get mandatory drugs and promiscuous sex. RATS ON OUR FUCKING FACES vs. Sex, Drugs (Rock n' Roll optional). You really have to ask why people are deathly afraid of one and (at best) Meh about the other?
Ok, that's true. I equate government intervention with regulation, but there are other kinds. Although I question that absent government regulation, things like professional licensing wouldn't still exist. It is the industries themselves that want and support that sort of thing - if government stepped out, I suspect industry would simply find a different mechanism of enforcement. In fact, I suspect that is true of most areas that you say government is causing market distortion - as long as that distortion favors a large, powerful, private entity, the distortion would continue even without government intervention. It's just that buying government is the easiest intervention; the powerful entities would simply find alternatives if you took government completely out of it.
As for biological analogy, you still haven't explained how it is anything more than a superficial resemblance to economics. Your two examples talk about the impact of technology on economies. Technological advance, by definition, advances whatever field you are looking at. That doesn't in any way suggest that two separate fields advanced by technology are similar. To equate biological systems to economic systems, account for the difference between an evolved system composed of non-sentient agents and a designed system composed entirely of sentient agents. Account for the difference between disparate ecosystems that have little overlap except on a macro scale versus disparate ecosystems that are complexly impacted on both macro and micro scales by other ecosystems. Both of these factors are likely to result in vastly different system reactions to similar external stimuli. Of course, if you can successfully model your systems to either account for these differences or diminish their impacts, you still have to make the case that a successful outcome in a biological sense translates to a successful outcome in economics. So far, you've done nothing but point out superficial similarities (both systems utilize available resources on an individually competitive basis to grow the overall ecosystem - which you didn't even point out, merely implied).
Monopolies are almost always the result of a tilted playing field, that results from government intervention in one form or another, temporary shocks such as technological advance, or the violation of laws.
So, monopolies are almost always the result of government intervention (i.e. regulatory legislation), the result of companies breaking the law (i.e. ignoring government's attempted intervention in the form of regulatory legislation), or technology (i.e. some third factor that has nothing to do with government)? Well, at least we've ruled out Santa Claus as causing monopolies...
And you follow this non-statement up with some mumbo jumbo comparing economic systems to biological ecosystems. Bravo, sir. Bravo indeed.
I've seen this time and again, and I just don't understand it. Corporations are doing things that are bad for the environment, the economy and society in general (AKA, being abusive) in order to grow their own bottom line. This is despite rules that say they aren't allowed to do these things (regulations). You say that if we suddenly got rid of the regulations (allowed these things), corporations would stop doing them? I mean, I can understand an argument that regulations are ineffective or unnecessarily complex and burdensome, but how exactly do they CAUSE bad behavior by the corporations?
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I've had a lot of success with Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
Obviously, YMMV depending on your local community, but I've participated in lots of fun games of pick-up kickball, softball, etc. Considering half the people at any given sporting event had a beer in their hand when not actually on the field, lack of physical ability didn't seem to upset anyone.
Increased length and quality of life.
From what I understand, increasing girth would increase the quality more so than increasing length....
One side is providing grant money to research the issue and publish the findings. The other side is providing personal payments to publicly voice a specific opinion. One of these is science, one of them is not.
Meh, what have future generations ever done for us?
I'm not sure that they have to be that way, either. They probably just don't want to change.
Eh, probably both. I suspect most people see this instinct as a positive attribute. And it unquestionably was at some point- saving a child from a hungry tiger rather than the adult that has probably already procreated and won't do so again is positively correlated from an evolutionary perspective. Whether it is still a positive trait is questionable, due to the paradigm change technology has brought to human civilization. But even if we all sat down and rationally decided it was a negative attribute, 100,000 years of selective pressure is pretty hard to overcome.
What if I'm trying to showcase my art, but not sell it
So, you want to advertise your product (your art), but you don't want to pay for that advertisement. Why should I pay for it? You don't wanna pay for it, I don't wanna pay for it, so just don't show it at all. I wonder who loses more in that scenario, you or me?
Or perhaps I just don't care about the victim's age. Why is that not possible?
Sure, it's possible (I'm willing to accept you at your word) but it is alien to most people. It is a natural instinct in the majority of humans to see something bad happening to a child as more tragic than that exact same bad thing happening to an adult. Maybe it's an evolutionary response to protect the future of the race, maybe it's easier to transfer your emotion about your own children (which is evolutionarily programmed to be stronger than emotion about just about any other human) to another child than another adult. Maybe it's an emotional response to the (presumed) innocence of the child versus the (presumed) emotional shields of the adult, making the act (likely) more traumatic to the child. Maybe children are just cuter and elicit more sympathy. Whatever the explanation, most people react more strongly to harm befalling children than they do harm that befalls other adults. Empathizing to an equal degree does not fit inside the common paradigm, EXCEPT under the edge case of not empathizing at all. Everyone can conceptualize zero empathy - they've experienced it. They cannot conceptualize equal non-zero amounts of empathy for a child and an adult, that lies outside their experience.
I completely agree this is a juvenile stunt, but censoring debate? Not at all, if anything, I imagine Savage has increased the public's awareness of Santorum's views on homosexuality. Yes, he has done so in a juvenile, rude manner. But this stunt merely brought to light the actual policy issue (anti-sodomy laws, gay marriage, etc.). If Santorum's policy position reflects poorly on him, whose fault is that? As for informing themselves, if you actually visit the site, it contains relevant information about Santorum's politics. The fact that they aren't flattering to Santorum is irrelevant - they are factual (as far as I can tell).
You also have to consider how often your next door neighbor gets hit on by attractive women when he is just out with his friends. Compare that to a celebrity, especially an attractive one. Saying no to the temptation twice in a lifetime isn't as hard as saying no to the temptation twice every night.
a) Drug penalties are often much lengthier than penalties for violent crime. B/c of federal sentencing laws, overcrowded prisons have let violent offenders out early to ease crowding, but were unable to release drug offenders early.
b) That's their lawyers job - why are black males being so poorly represented compared to other groups?
c) I'd be interested to see a study that correlated education to length of sentence. I've seen the studies that correlate to crime; I don't see the mechanism for a correlation to sentencing.
d) Probably the biggest factor - look at underage blacks vs. underage whites being charged as adults for similar crimes.
As for the original point, police are seldom prosecuted. They are OFTEN sued by individuals, punished by their department, censured, etc. But very seldom prosecuted. Compare stats of police officers to their similar demographic in the population at general (i.e. black officers to black non-officers).
If you are going to make these comments, be an equal-opportunity commenter.
Why not call out each party on its particular brand of bullshit, though? The Republicans ARE bigger hypocrites, saying one thing while intending to do the opposite, promoting certain values in public while not practicing them in private, etc. Of course there are hypocritical Democrats, but it doesn't seem to be such an integral part of the party platform.
On the other hand, the Democrats are (as a party) whiny, do-nothing blowhards. They'd rather do nothing and be perceived as "good" than do something good and be perceived as "bad". Then whine about how misunderstood they are when people criticize their wishy-washy bullshit.
It's not that either party is admirable, but each is despicable in its own unique little way. There are so many ways both party suck exactly the same way, it's important to cherish the distinctions between them (and their suckitude).
That makes it incredibly difficult to separate out those lawyers who are decent people only doing their job and those lawyers who really have no morals
You say that as though someone who has morals, but is willing to ignore them for money (i.e., doing their job) is somehow more admirable than someone who simply has no morals. Since I doubt the immoral lawyer would do the job sans paycheck, what difference is there between the two?
You might be right that the prohibition of public sex originates out of prurience, but the sanitation concerns are legitimate. I think you are underestimating the prevalence of STDs, at least in America. Look at HPV statistics. The odds of catching it from non-sexual fluid contact is probably very small, but not zero. Even without STDs, it's just nasty to let people rub their bare asses on public furniture.
B/c it's unsanitary, i.e. damaging to the public health. You can't piss, shit or spit on public property, either.
Remember, back when all this was being dreamed up, the total population of the US was around 3 million. Thirteen original states means states averaged less than 300,000 people. Not that there isn't still plenty of scope for corruption and evil, but with just a few hundred thousand people, it's easier to spot and deal with.
It's not what you do to whoever or whatever in your bedroom. It's the fact that you want to force me and my kids to accept it, and before we can do that, you have to tell us what it is. Frankly, we don't want to know.
hey, when heterosexuality is kept quiet and no one mentions it in public, I'll accept your argument here as legitimate. Until then, allowing one view point to be expressed as openly as desired and requiring a different view point to only be held in private is not equality.
Are the Tetris clones duplicating the same exact shapes, with the same color scheme, same algorithm for generating the next shape, same point system for rewarding a player for removing a row, same level progression design, same music, etc.? If so, they absolutely should be squashed. If they merely copy the idea of dropping random shapes, allowing the user to manipulate them in order to fill in rows and gain points, then they shouldn't be squashed. From what I have read (haven't played either game) it sounds like this is more akin to the first scenario I posited.
Company screwed up for the last 60 years. And are now (possibly) being taken to task for the last round of victims - I see nothing that will punish the company for the previous generations of people killed by their negligence (at best - at worst, malicious indifference). I'd hardly call that "functioning perfectly".
What he said might be legal, but it certainly rouses a "reasonable suspicion" that there are illegal things going on. That is what an investigation (what was called for here) actually does, you know. Looks at a questionable situation and tries to determine what is actually happening.
does it clearly state on the box that you are buying a license rather than a game
I'd say it's worse than that. I recently bought a PC game that clearly stated certain content and maps were only available online. The player would need an Internet connection to access this content or the online player community, but that there was an offline mode. Nowhere did it state that to activate the offline mode, one had to first login to the online server. It wasn't a problem for me, but it struck me as pretty close to fraud. The way it was worded, it definitely gave me the impression that I could play without having an Internet connection. I don't have a problem with the authentication scheme, per se, but it need to be clearly spelled out that your machine MUST be capable of making a connection or the game is useless.
Because in 1984, we get rats on our faces. Brave New World, we get mandatory drugs and promiscuous sex. RATS ON OUR FUCKING FACES vs. Sex, Drugs (Rock n' Roll optional). You really have to ask why people are deathly afraid of one and (at best) Meh about the other?
Ok, that's true. I equate government intervention with regulation, but there are other kinds. Although I question that absent government regulation, things like professional licensing wouldn't still exist. It is the industries themselves that want and support that sort of thing - if government stepped out, I suspect industry would simply find a different mechanism of enforcement. In fact, I suspect that is true of most areas that you say government is causing market distortion - as long as that distortion favors a large, powerful, private entity, the distortion would continue even without government intervention. It's just that buying government is the easiest intervention; the powerful entities would simply find alternatives if you took government completely out of it.
As for biological analogy, you still haven't explained how it is anything more than a superficial resemblance to economics. Your two examples talk about the impact of technology on economies. Technological advance, by definition, advances whatever field you are looking at. That doesn't in any way suggest that two separate fields advanced by technology are similar. To equate biological systems to economic systems, account for the difference between an evolved system composed of non-sentient agents and a designed system composed entirely of sentient agents. Account for the difference between disparate ecosystems that have little overlap except on a macro scale versus disparate ecosystems that are complexly impacted on both macro and micro scales by other ecosystems. Both of these factors are likely to result in vastly different system reactions to similar external stimuli. Of course, if you can successfully model your systems to either account for these differences or diminish their impacts, you still have to make the case that a successful outcome in a biological sense translates to a successful outcome in economics. So far, you've done nothing but point out superficial similarities (both systems utilize available resources on an individually competitive basis to grow the overall ecosystem - which you didn't even point out, merely implied).
Monopolies are almost always the result of a tilted playing field, that results from government intervention in one form or another, temporary shocks such as technological advance, or the violation of laws.
So, monopolies are almost always the result of government intervention (i.e. regulatory legislation), the result of companies breaking the law (i.e. ignoring government's attempted intervention in the form of regulatory legislation), or technology (i.e. some third factor that has nothing to do with government)? Well, at least we've ruled out Santa Claus as causing monopolies...
And you follow this non-statement up with some mumbo jumbo comparing economic systems to biological ecosystems. Bravo, sir. Bravo indeed.
If you think Steve Jobs is charismatic, I'd sure hate to hang out with your friends. Talk about a dead party....
Corporations are abusive because of regulations.
I've seen this time and again, and I just don't understand it. Corporations are doing things that are bad for the environment, the economy and society in general (AKA, being abusive) in order to grow their own bottom line. This is despite rules that say they aren't allowed to do these things (regulations). You say that if we suddenly got rid of the regulations (allowed these things), corporations would stop doing them? I mean, I can understand an argument that regulations are ineffective or unnecessarily complex and burdensome, but how exactly do they CAUSE bad behavior by the corporations?