Now, here's the thing I don't understand: why do people belive in the supernatural, when it has zero scientific or engineering utility? It seems that the answer is either that they've been indoctrinated to belive it and therefore do so blindly, or they are unsatisfied with their life or fear death and derive comfort from the idea that there's some "higher power" watching over them. Either way, why don't they just analyze their situation logically and realize that there's more utility in believing only in what is known and provable? After all, science can solve real problems, while superstition can't.
I can't answer for all theists, but I can answer for myself:
First, it seems clear that the question "does God exist?" might well be the most important question we might ask, from a long-term standpoint. So the engineering application is ready at hand...and empiricism is precisely the wrong tool to answer that question, because it declares all supernatural explanations inadmissable.
Second, I don't accept the notion of a self-causing universe. It seems fairly obvious that the starting point of the universe would require immense potential energy *and* a large amount of order, in order for basic thermo to work. Positing that "it was there, and we can't explain it" (As, e.g., Brian Greene does) is just a cop-out. I find it utterly unsatisfying.
Third, ethical theories that leave out God -- for example, Rand's "rational self-interest" or Mill's utilitarianism -- cannot account for *why* self-interest or utility should be ethical. In short, they cannot produce a meta-ethical theory to justify themselves. Or put another way, if there is no score-keeper, there is no score.
By contrast, the notion that God decrees what is good, and what is good is what God decrees, is fully satisfying. I can understand my own ethical impulses as reflections of being made in God's image. I can understand my own ethical shortcomings as experiences of being a part of fallen humanity. The Christian account of how we got to this point best explains (in my mind) our complicated relationship with morality.
Fourth, I find the account in the Gospels of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection to be more credible than alternate theories.
I fully recognize that none of these points amounts to a proof; but neither do alternate explanations. In the end, because inductive reasoning is not a principle of logic (see Hume on this point), we cannot *prove* a whole lot about life, such as how we separate knowledge from belief, or whether or not the scientific method "works" in all cases past, present, and future. Instead, we construct a system of beliefs that coheres. In my mind, Christianity coheres much more than atheism.
Now, having gotten to that point, a sense of need appears: I find myself in need of relationship with God. But that sense of need is not what caused me to believe in the first place.
What do your Fundie friends say when you ask the same question?
Disclaimer: I'm agnostic concerning the details of origins. I think six-day creation is the most likely meaning of Genesis 1, but even within the text, that presents some problems. Therefore: I wasn't there, and I don't know. And I'm not in a hurry to figure it out, either.
I would say they feel sorry for us, or think we're deluded or damaged or something. Specifically, how they act whenever we start arguing about religion is the very definition of "holier than thou." You know, I still can't understand how they can be smart and logical enough to become engineers, yet refuse to notice the flaws in the reasoning of those who try to claim that stuff like Genesis could have literally happened.
Aren't you acting "smarter than thou" towards them?
I say that not to criticize, but to point out that you've just illustrated that there is a huge, huge gulf between you and your friends that has to do with which sources of knowledge are credible, what types of intellectual problems are considered live-withable, and which axioms are considered reasonable to hold. None of those questions are issues of intelligence per se but of subrational considerations. (As quick evidence, it is worth contemplating that the majority of early scientists, including some real heavy lifters like Newton and Pascal, were theists *and* creationists.)
For example, are biologists credible sources about the origins of life?
On the one hand, one could argue that (a) they have devoted their lives to studying genetic mutations and the expressions of those mutations in organisms; (b) they have extensive training in the scientific method, including research training designed to help them decide when something has been scientifically established; (c) they are committed to following the scientific method, at least as members of a community. Ergo: if you can't trust biologists, whom can you trust?
On the other hand, one could also argue that (a) the scientific method, by its nature, closes itself off to supernaturalistic explanations. Therefore, science is inherently limited as a tool to investigate origins; (b) biogists have been trained in an environment which pushes evolution as the only viable explanation of origins; hence, biologists are prejudiced in the direction of evolution; and (c) that the scientific community punishes those members who question the viability of evolution as the explanation for origins. Therefore, biology has evolved into a biased, unreliable source for information about origins.
It's fairly easy to see that both arguments could be held by intelligent, reasonable people. And, since we have limited life-spans, it is not possible for all of us to become biologists ourselves and "get to the bottom" of the matter. In other words... for us non-biologists, belief or non-belief in evolution is not a matter of following the scientific method, but of credibility: which sources seem more reliable to us?
For six-day creationists, the inconsistencies between the fossil evidence and the Genesis account are fairly easy to explain: the data have been misinterpreted, or misrepresented, or falsified. The genetic similarities between organisms can be easily explained: like any engineer, God works with reuseable code. For the creationist, those are live-withable solutions. The notion that God might have claimed six-day creation and not meant it is *not* a live-withable solution.
Obviously, for an atheist, the reverse is true.
Now, in stating all of this, I'm not trying to argue (postmodernly) that everyone is right in his own reference frame. Rather, I'm arguing for respect and a clear recognition of where the differences lie. I happen to believe that atheism can't work as a philosophy. However, I also recognize that there are plenty of people smarter than me who disagree with me, as well as others who agree with me. The difference is not at the rational level, as if atheists' logic were faulty, but at the axiom level. Is it an acceptable ax
Modern Christian Fundamentalists, though technically "Conservative", make a lot of wild-assed interpretations from the Bible. They're really very liberal readers.
After reading your comments for years, I actually agree with you for once. No offense.:-)
Fundamentalists have become locked in a curious epistemological circle, starting with a critique of modernism: The problem with modern man is that he is his own authority --> I'm not like that; the Bible is my authority --> The literal meaning of the Bible is the true meaning of the Bible --> The literal meaning is the plain meaning to me when I read it.
Unstated: therefore, I am the final authority.
The result is that the majority of evangelicals believe doctrines at odds with both the Church Fathers and the historic Protestant Reformers (Luther/Calvin/Zwingli). If you are interested in a scholarly case for this, I recommend Keith Mathison's "The Shape of Sola Scriptura." Here is a shorter version of the same.
Now, back to the regularly scheduled disagreement: With regard to the Rahab item above, I don't think it takes too much imagination to picture a large section of the city walls falling and another large section not falling. Or did you imagine that Jericho only had one wall, all built in a seamless piece? Perhaps a Maginot line?
Yes, it is...assuming that he's telling the truth about what happened to him on a country road when no-one was watching. If he was, then I'm outraged at what happened to him.
If he wasn't, I'm not surprised, given his track record of trying to make Christians look bad.
I'm a Christian of the Historic Protestant and evangelical variety -- Bible-believing, but not a fundamentalist.
There is an element of truth in what you are saying. Many of us Christians -- the Bible-believing types -- would love to fire Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as the self-appointed spokesmen for Christians, except that we didn't hire them in the first place. Grr...
Furthermore, I am usually outraged at the dumb and sometimes hateful things that come out of Christians' mouths.
However, having made that concession, I now have to stress the other side: Christians are held up for ridicule in the public eye. This is accomplished not so much by newspapers overtly mocking Christians (although Ellen Goodman certainly does), but by going out and finding idiot Christians to interview.
Think about it: when was the last time you read a story about religion in the paper or online, and the "Christian" perspective was given by a seminary professor or Christian scholar? In general, that doesn't happen. Instead, the article writer will invariably quote someone like Falwell who has little training and little standing in the world of Christian thought.
The points are that (a) idiots come in all flavors, including both Fundamentalist and atheist; (b) news organizations, who are primarily driven by the need for controversy, do not usually find reasonable Christians to provide quotes; (c) therefore, you cannot trust your general impressions of Christians as a whole, even if those impressions seem validated by a few Christians you happen to know. Many, many, many -- the majority of -- Christians defy the stereotype propagated in the news; (d) "evangelicalism" is a broad tent.
If you are interested in seeing Christians as people instead of stereotypes, I would urge you to do some research on the fundamentalist/modernist controversy and then get to know some real people who are Christians.
I wasn't trying to be cold-hearted about conjoined twins; I was just imagining a situation in which it might be difficult to discern how many organisms are present. In practice, it may be that all such cases are lethal abnormalities, so that all living cases of conjoined twins are clearly two organisms.
With regard to normal twins, I agree that the language doesn't parse nicely. I'm not intending "distinct" to mean "unique", but simply "distinct from other organisms which might be present and attached." So for example, tapeworms living in me are not a part of me, because they are genetically distinct from me -- they are separate organisms.
I haven't found a pithy way to word it so that the impression of uniqueness is not conveyed. Any suggestions?
Tunneling is a function of both the physical width and potential energy height of the energy barrier. Obviously, they don't want to increase the width. I don't know the details, but I would surmise Warning... he's making this up... that their process simply increases the (height of the) potential barrier from drain to gate.
Heh...for just a second as my eyes hit the headline, I thought that the researchers had discovered some "direct tunneling" from Kentucky to the United Kingdom.
I'm really confused. I was under the impression that any old implementation of RFC 793 qualifies as "TCP".
In other words, TCP is a protocol, not an algorithm.
So... if Vista has some fabulous new algorithms for implementing TCP, then why can't other OSes be patched to benefit from those algorithms also? OR, if Vista is implementing something other than TCP, then how can it be (fully) backwards compatible?
Seems like the word "compatibility" might need to be scrutinized here.
"Given any language resembling English, there must exist a word within that language whose spelling is nonesevent. I have a wonderful proof, which unfortunately cannot fit within the margins..."
Good points. In the 2004 election, I made a point of telling the election officer what I thought about electronic voting. He smiled. *sigh*
You're incorrect here, the house is only stacked in favor of populous states in the sense that NY has more overall votes than montana.
That's exactly the sense I mean. If there is an issue that is important to NY state, you guys have a much better chance of someone from your state being on a committee that can help.
False in that in 2000 (and in 2004 (link to GAO report included) a single state fraud magnified the results of fraud.
I've got the article and I'll look at it. Thanks. I'm usually suspicious of "big scandal that hasn't been picked up by the mainstream media" stories, but a GAO report is something else entirely.
Disagree here, think you've got it exactly backwards. What's happened in the past is hot contention over battleground states - you get millions of candidate visits to Ohio, none to Alaska or Hawaii, and more noticeably a more partisan split- There's never any reason under the current system for e.g. a Gore to visit Texas- since it was crystal clear that there was no way in hell he was going to win texas it'd just be a waste of time.
Others have agreed with me. Think of it this way: as it is, candidates visit the "swing states" a whole lot: OH, FL, MI, WI, IA, etc. If the vote were strictly popular, they would visit the "swing cities" -- NYC, LA, Houston, Boston, Miami, etc. Only one type of voter would really be courted: urban. I think under the current system, the candidates see a larger cross-section of voter types. So maybe Minnesota doesn't get a lot of attention. But the issues important to Minnesotans will overlap a lot with voter issues in WI and IA. So they get some benefit. At least, that's the theory!
It's moot anyway; the states like the EC and there's no way that 3/4 of the legislatures will agree to amend the Constitution to eliminate it. Who likes it? Not "the states", but, let's be clear, like all things in politics, the people from the smaller states.
Exactly. And on this point, the balance between population and geography is "vindicated" -- NY and CA can't do a darn thing about it. When I said "the states", I meant the majority of states, which means lots of small states.:-)
In any case, I suppose all this is moot, we'll all get drafted and sent to Fallujah in a year or two, we can argue about it there. I'm going to have to make time to practice my waterboarding skills....
I'm past age, and you're safe, too: there's not a snowball's chance in Jamaica that we'll have a draft for this war. But if I'm wrong, you can take it up with my brother, who's going (Marine infantry) in January.:-(
Having tossed around the electoral college idea for a long time, I've decided that I like it for a number of reasons.
(from weakest to strongest) It provides a last (theoretical!) check on "the will of the people." Even though being a faithless elector is against state law in many states, an elector can still choose to cast his vote for whomever and his vote will be federally binding.
The electoral college makes it highly improbable that a third-party candidate will win. Compare to Germany's recent mess, where it took a month just to figure out which party would actually be able to form a coalition.
It balances population and geography. In the Legislative Branch, the House is stacked in favor of populous states; the Senate, in favor of less populous states. That was agreed upon for a reason: the smaller states wanted to balance the power of bigger states like... erm, New York. Similarly, the Electoral College allows a balance between population and geography in the presidential selection process.
The Electoral College isolates the consequences of voter fraud. Let's say someone commits fraud in New York City on election night. It would have to be massive (Republican!) fraud to actually make a difference in the outcome. By contrast, under a straight popular vote, just a small amount of fraud in every state could swing a tight race. Obviously, counterarguments could be made for fraud in tight states like FL in 2000 -- but the point is that regulators know where to look for the fraud, as opposed to having it distributed across the country. Ditto for proportional division of electoral votes, as ME, NE, and maybe now CO do. Interesting link here on the effects of the "Maine" method.
The electoral college provides that the candidates will have to make a genuine effort in many different states. If popular votes were the only consideration, candidates would promise and then enact policies favorable to high-population-density areas, and let the rest of the country go to hell. So to speak.
It's moot anyway; the states like the EC and there's no way that 3/4 of the legislatures will agree to amend the Constitution to eliminate it.
I'm unclear about your argument... are you suggesting that SCOTUS should have declined the petition from Bush?
I don't agree. The electoral college deadline was Dec. 18, the Fla. deadline was Dec. 12, and it seems clear that SCOTUS was going to get involved on Constitutional issues of equal protection. It seems to me that they saw the handwriting on the wall: they were going to get dragged in, and they might as well get dragged in sufficient time to make a decision.
Could they have remanded the outcome to Congress? The minority opinion recommended that. Perhaps that might have been the best outcome. I don't for a moment pretend that they made the best possible ruling -- I'm neither a judge nor a lawyer.
My only point is that SCOTUS did not jump in; they accepted a request to make a ruling.
... but it's a harder question than one-line definitions allow for.
Agreed. And the cases you posit are reasonable boundary cases to try. Nevertheless:
(1) Sperm, egg, and people with XXY, X, XYY, or XXX genetic makeup are all genetically human. However, sperm and egg are not organisms (a fairly standard definition can be found in the Wiki under Lifeform). The others are.
(2) Identical twins are separate organisms and therefore not a point of confusion. Conjoined twins are, OTOH, a problem. At this point, I'm willing to accept that a very small number of rare situations will be difficult to determine and might require the drawing of an arbitrary line. How would you want to sort out conjoined twins?
(3) Persons with autoimmune or degenerative disorders are still functioning as organisms. The boundary case would be someone who is brain-dead.
your definition of "human being" is, um, crap.
Thanks for the support. It's the best I have for now, and it seems to be more clear than some vague notion of a soul, or of mental function.
Personally the day the Supreme Court decision came down in 2000 was the day I stopped believing that I live in a democracy.
Nah, you still live in a (representative) democracy. SCOTUS had to stop the madness at some point, and it just happened to not fall your guy's way. They didn't "step in"; they were asked for a ruling by both sides.
The thing to stop believing is that a nation of 296M can possibly carry out a voting process that reports out an accuracy of +/- 100 votes. That's why I will never, *ever* support replacing the electoral college with a popular election. Imagine the agony of a nationwide recount...
The other thing to stop believing is that a representative democracy automatically leads to a government of peace and enlightenment. All three branches have had their black eyes -- the Dred Scott decision, the Watergate scandal, the McCarthy hearings -- but the democracy keeps on functioning reasonably well.
The beautiful part of a representative democracy is that in four or at most eight years, the tide turns. Just think: in Soviet Russia, the president only left office in a wooden box.
However, it hasn't yet been legally tested whether or not he can blast loud noises into the neighborhood. What if someone is standing on the sidewalk and is bothered by the noise? Public nuisance or not? Judge Judy will decide.
Heh. IE5 used to try a large number of permutations of prefixes and suffixes. I would watch in wonder when I typed in an inaccessible URL, like "scrod.com", and receive
According to this, HR 776 (1995) outlawed installation of high flush toilets. The fact that he found one for cheap is probably a reflection of demand, not supply.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't answer for all theists, but I can answer for myself:
First, it seems clear that the question "does God exist?" might well be the most important question we might ask, from a long-term standpoint. So the engineering application is ready at hand...and empiricism is precisely the wrong tool to answer that question, because it declares all supernatural explanations inadmissable.
Second, I don't accept the notion of a self-causing universe. It seems fairly obvious that the starting point of the universe would require immense potential energy *and* a large amount of order, in order for basic thermo to work. Positing that "it was there, and we can't explain it" (As, e.g., Brian Greene does) is just a cop-out. I find it utterly unsatisfying.
Third, ethical theories that leave out God -- for example, Rand's "rational self-interest" or Mill's utilitarianism -- cannot account for *why* self-interest or utility should be ethical. In short, they cannot produce a meta-ethical theory to justify themselves. Or put another way, if there is no score-keeper, there is no score.
By contrast, the notion that God decrees what is good, and what is good is what God decrees, is fully satisfying. I can understand my own ethical impulses as reflections of being made in God's image. I can understand my own ethical shortcomings as experiences of being a part of fallen humanity. The Christian account of how we got to this point best explains (in my mind) our complicated relationship with morality.
Fourth, I find the account in the Gospels of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection to be more credible than alternate theories.
I fully recognize that none of these points amounts to a proof; but neither do alternate explanations. In the end, because inductive reasoning is not a principle of logic (see Hume on this point), we cannot *prove* a whole lot about life, such as how we separate knowledge from belief, or whether or not the scientific method "works" in all cases past, present, and future. Instead, we construct a system of beliefs that coheres. In my mind, Christianity coheres much more than atheism.
Now, having gotten to that point, a sense of need appears: I find myself in need of relationship with God. But that sense of need is not what caused me to believe in the first place.
What do your Fundie friends say when you ask the same question?
I would say they feel sorry for us, or think we're deluded or damaged or something. Specifically, how they act whenever we start arguing about religion is the very definition of "holier than thou." You know, I still can't understand how they can be smart and logical enough to become engineers, yet refuse to notice the flaws in the reasoning of those who try to claim that stuff like Genesis could have literally happened.
Aren't you acting "smarter than thou" towards them?
I say that not to criticize, but to point out that you've just illustrated that there is a huge, huge gulf between you and your friends that has to do with which sources of knowledge are credible, what types of intellectual problems are considered live-withable, and which axioms are considered reasonable to hold. None of those questions are issues of intelligence per se but of subrational considerations. (As quick evidence, it is worth contemplating that the majority of early scientists, including some real heavy lifters like Newton and Pascal, were theists *and* creationists.)
For example, are biologists credible sources about the origins of life?
On the one hand, one could argue that (a) they have devoted their lives to studying genetic mutations and the expressions of those mutations in organisms; (b) they have extensive training in the scientific method, including research training designed to help them decide when something has been scientifically established; (c) they are committed to following the scientific method, at least as members of a community. Ergo: if you can't trust biologists, whom can you trust?
On the other hand, one could also argue that (a) the scientific method, by its nature, closes itself off to supernaturalistic explanations. Therefore, science is inherently limited as a tool to investigate origins; (b) biogists have been trained in an environment which pushes evolution as the only viable explanation of origins; hence, biologists are prejudiced in the direction of evolution; and (c) that the scientific community punishes those members who question the viability of evolution as the explanation for origins. Therefore, biology has evolved into a biased, unreliable source for information about origins.
It's fairly easy to see that both arguments could be held by intelligent, reasonable people. And, since we have limited life-spans, it is not possible for all of us to become biologists ourselves and "get to the bottom" of the matter. In other words ... for us non-biologists, belief or non-belief in evolution is not a matter of following the scientific method, but of credibility: which sources seem more reliable to us?
For six-day creationists, the inconsistencies between the fossil evidence and the Genesis account are fairly easy to explain: the data have been misinterpreted, or misrepresented, or falsified. The genetic similarities between organisms can be easily explained: like any engineer, God works with reuseable code. For the creationist, those are live-withable solutions. The notion that God might have claimed six-day creation and not meant it is *not* a live-withable solution.
Obviously, for an atheist, the reverse is true.
Now, in stating all of this, I'm not trying to argue (postmodernly) that everyone is right in his own reference frame. Rather, I'm arguing for respect and a clear recognition of where the differences lie. I happen to believe that atheism can't work as a philosophy. However, I also recognize that there are plenty of people smarter than me who disagree with me, as well as others who agree with me. The difference is not at the rational level, as if atheists' logic were faulty, but at the axiom level. Is it an acceptable ax
After reading your comments for years, I actually agree with you for once. No offense. :-)
Fundamentalists have become locked in a curious epistemological circle, starting with a critique of modernism: The problem with modern man is that he is his own authority --> I'm not like that; the Bible is my authority --> The literal meaning of the Bible is the true meaning of the Bible --> The literal meaning is the plain meaning to me when I read it.
Unstated: therefore, I am the final authority.
The result is that the majority of evangelicals believe doctrines at odds with both the Church Fathers and the historic Protestant Reformers (Luther/Calvin/Zwingli). If you are interested in a scholarly case for this, I recommend Keith Mathison's "The Shape of Sola Scriptura." Here is a shorter version of the same.
Now, back to the regularly scheduled disagreement: With regard to the Rahab item above, I don't think it takes too much imagination to picture a large section of the city walls falling and another large section not falling. Or did you imagine that Jericho only had one wall, all built in a seamless piece? Perhaps a Maginot line?
Jus' yankin' your chain...
Yes, it is...assuming that he's telling the truth about what happened to him on a country road when no-one was watching. If he was, then I'm outraged at what happened to him.
If he wasn't, I'm not surprised, given his track record of trying to make Christians look bad.
There is an element of truth in what you are saying. Many of us Christians -- the Bible-believing types -- would love to fire Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as the self-appointed spokesmen for Christians, except that we didn't hire them in the first place. Grr...
Furthermore, I am usually outraged at the dumb and sometimes hateful things that come out of Christians' mouths.
However, having made that concession, I now have to stress the other side: Christians are held up for ridicule in the public eye. This is accomplished not so much by newspapers overtly mocking Christians (although Ellen Goodman certainly does), but by going out and finding idiot Christians to interview.
Think about it: when was the last time you read a story about religion in the paper or online, and the "Christian" perspective was given by a seminary professor or Christian scholar? In general, that doesn't happen. Instead, the article writer will invariably quote someone like Falwell who has little training and little standing in the world of Christian thought.
The points are that (a) idiots come in all flavors, including both Fundamentalist and atheist; (b) news organizations, who are primarily driven by the need for controversy, do not usually find reasonable Christians to provide quotes; (c) therefore, you cannot trust your general impressions of Christians as a whole, even if those impressions seem validated by a few Christians you happen to know. Many, many, many -- the majority of -- Christians defy the stereotype propagated in the news; (d) "evangelicalism" is a broad tent.
If you are interested in seeing Christians as people instead of stereotypes, I would urge you to do some research on the fundamentalist/modernist controversy and then get to know some real people who are Christians.
The problem is that it decreases the signal/noise ratio on slashdot. There are those of us that think that the S/N ratio is low enough already. YMMV.
Yeah, or answer their phone when it rings?
With regard to normal twins, I agree that the language doesn't parse nicely. I'm not intending "distinct" to mean "unique", but simply "distinct from other organisms which might be present and attached." So for example, tapeworms living in me are not a part of me, because they are genetically distinct from me -- they are separate organisms.
I haven't found a pithy way to word it so that the impression of uniqueness is not conveyed. Any suggestions?
Twins are separate organisms; there's no point of confusion *unless* they are conjoined, which I would consider to be a boundary case. Fair?
Tunneling is a function of both the physical width and potential energy height of the energy barrier. Obviously, they don't want to increase the width. I don't know the details, but I would surmise Warning ... he's making this up ... that their process simply increases the (height of the) potential barrier from drain to gate.
Heh...for just a second as my eyes hit the headline, I thought that the researchers had discovered some "direct tunneling" from Kentucky to the United Kingdom.
More info here.
How did they give "feedback" to this neural net? If the "brain" is going to learn, then it must have a way to tell success from failure. How?
In other words, TCP is a protocol, not an algorithm.
So ... if Vista has some fabulous new algorithms for implementing TCP, then why can't other OSes be patched to benefit from those algorithms also? OR, if Vista is implementing something other than TCP, then how can it be (fully) backwards compatible?
Seems like the word "compatibility" might need to be scrutinized here.
There is of course another possibility ... that he wrote the d**n thing himself and signed Condi's name to it. Or were you implying that?
"Given any language resembling English, there must exist a word within that language whose spelling is nonesevent. I have a wonderful proof, which unfortunately cannot fit within the margins..."
Hey now...!!!
You're incorrect here, the house is only stacked in favor of populous states in the sense that NY has more overall votes than montana.
That's exactly the sense I mean. If there is an issue that is important to NY state, you guys have a much better chance of someone from your state being on a committee that can help.
False in that in 2000 (and in 2004 (link to GAO report included) a single state fraud magnified the results of fraud.
I've got the article and I'll look at it. Thanks. I'm usually suspicious of "big scandal that hasn't been picked up by the mainstream media" stories, but a GAO report is something else entirely.
Disagree here, think you've got it exactly backwards. What's happened in the past is hot contention over battleground states - you get millions of candidate visits to Ohio, none to Alaska or Hawaii, and more noticeably a more partisan split- There's never any reason under the current system for e.g. a Gore to visit Texas- since it was crystal clear that there was no way in hell he was going to win texas it'd just be a waste of time.
Others have agreed with me. Think of it this way: as it is, candidates visit the "swing states" a whole lot: OH, FL, MI, WI, IA, etc. If the vote were strictly popular, they would visit the "swing cities" -- NYC, LA, Houston, Boston, Miami, etc. Only one type of voter would really be courted: urban. I think under the current system, the candidates see a larger cross-section of voter types. So maybe Minnesota doesn't get a lot of attention. But the issues important to Minnesotans will overlap a lot with voter issues in WI and IA. So they get some benefit. At least, that's the theory!
It's moot anyway; the states like the EC and there's no way that 3/4 of the legislatures will agree to amend the Constitution to eliminate it. Who likes it? Not "the states", but, let's be clear, like all things in politics, the people from the smaller states.
Exactly. And on this point, the balance between population and geography is "vindicated" -- NY and CA can't do a darn thing about it. When I said "the states", I meant the majority of states, which means lots of small states. :-)
In any case, I suppose all this is moot, we'll all get drafted and sent to Fallujah in a year or two, we can argue about it there. I'm going to have to make time to practice my waterboarding skills....
I'm past age, and you're safe, too: there's not a snowball's chance in Jamaica that we'll have a draft for this war. But if I'm wrong, you can take it up with my brother, who's going (Marine infantry) in January. :-(
- (from weakest to strongest) It provides a last (theoretical!) check on "the will of the people." Even though being a faithless elector is against state law in many states, an elector can still choose to cast his vote for whomever and his vote will be federally binding.
- The electoral college makes it highly improbable that a third-party candidate will win. Compare to Germany's recent mess, where it took a month just to figure out which party would actually be able to form a coalition.
- It balances population and geography. In the Legislative Branch, the House is stacked in favor of populous states; the Senate, in favor of less populous states. That was agreed upon for a reason: the smaller states wanted to balance the power of bigger states like
... erm, New York. Similarly, the Electoral College allows a balance between population and geography in the presidential selection process. - The Electoral College isolates the consequences of voter fraud. Let's say someone commits fraud in New York City on election night. It would have to be massive (Republican!) fraud to actually make a difference in the outcome. By contrast, under a straight popular vote, just a small amount of fraud in every state could swing a tight race. Obviously, counterarguments could be made for fraud in tight states like FL in 2000 -- but the point is that regulators know where to look for the fraud, as opposed to having it distributed across the country. Ditto for proportional division of electoral votes, as ME, NE, and maybe now CO do. Interesting link here on the effects of the "Maine" method.
- The electoral college provides that the candidates will have to make a genuine effort in many different states. If popular votes were the only consideration, candidates would promise and then enact policies favorable to high-population-density areas, and let the rest of the country go to hell. So to speak.
It's moot anyway; the states like the EC and there's no way that 3/4 of the legislatures will agree to amend the Constitution to eliminate it.interesting article on the EC.
I don't agree. The electoral college deadline was Dec. 18, the Fla. deadline was Dec. 12, and it seems clear that SCOTUS was going to get involved on Constitutional issues of equal protection. It seems to me that they saw the handwriting on the wall: they were going to get dragged in, and they might as well get dragged in sufficient time to make a decision.
Could they have remanded the outcome to Congress? The minority opinion recommended that. Perhaps that might have been the best outcome. I don't for a moment pretend that they made the best possible ruling -- I'm neither a judge nor a lawyer.
My only point is that SCOTUS did not jump in; they accepted a request to make a ruling.
Links:
Wiki Bush v. Gore
Findlaw Bush v. Gore.
Agreed. And the cases you posit are reasonable boundary cases to try. Nevertheless:
(1) Sperm, egg, and people with XXY, X, XYY, or XXX genetic makeup are all genetically human. However, sperm and egg are not organisms (a fairly standard definition can be found in the Wiki under Lifeform). The others are.
(2) Identical twins are separate organisms and therefore not a point of confusion. Conjoined twins are, OTOH, a problem. At this point, I'm willing to accept that a very small number of rare situations will be difficult to determine and might require the drawing of an arbitrary line. How would you want to sort out conjoined twins?
(3) Persons with autoimmune or degenerative disorders are still functioning as organisms. The boundary case would be someone who is brain-dead.
your definition of "human being" is, um, crap.
Thanks for the support. It's the best I have for now, and it seems to be more clear than some vague notion of a soul, or of mental function.
Nah, you still live in a (representative) democracy. SCOTUS had to stop the madness at some point, and it just happened to not fall your guy's way. They didn't "step in"; they were asked for a ruling by both sides.
The thing to stop believing is that a nation of 296M can possibly carry out a voting process that reports out an accuracy of +/- 100 votes. That's why I will never, *ever* support replacing the electoral college with a popular election. Imagine the agony of a nationwide recount...
The other thing to stop believing is that a representative democracy automatically leads to a government of peace and enlightenment. All three branches have had their black eyes -- the Dred Scott decision, the Watergate scandal, the McCarthy hearings -- but the democracy keeps on functioning reasonably well.
The beautiful part of a representative democracy is that in four or at most eight years, the tide turns. Just think: in Soviet Russia, the president only left office in a wooden box.
However, it hasn't yet been legally tested whether or not he can blast loud noises into the neighborhood. What if someone is standing on the sidewalk and is bothered by the noise? Public nuisance or not? Judge Judy will decide.
Trying scrod.com
Trying www.scrod.com
Trying www.scrod.com.com
Trying www.scrod.com.net
Trying www.scrod.com.org
Trying www.scrod.com.edu
...
IE6 seems to have fixed that behavior.
According to this, HR 776 (1995) outlawed installation of high flush toilets. The fact that he found one for cheap is probably a reflection of demand, not supply.