Sure. But you don't own other houses made by the same blueprints, or which look similar. Even if you buy the blueprints themselves.
I wouldn't be too sure of that these days. I once worked in a library that had a really bad arrangement of shelfs; it was radial, so the shelfs were too close to each other near center and too far apart near the edge. Also, any and all noise would be echoed and amplified. But we couldn't rearrange the shelfs because we were told that the architect had a "right" to keep the library looking "as he had visioned".
Besides, if your house resembles a house that has appeared on some movie since Mickey Mouse was created, then clearly you need to pay license fees to the MPAA.
I'm not so sure of that. If we assume that religions were invented by people, it follows that people have some inborn instincts towards making and believing in them - a tendency towards faith. It would probably be far better to have the people with such instincts direct them towards established religions that have had centuries or millenias to become civilized and shed most of their nasty parts, than leave them easy prey to whatever charismatic cult leaders pop up every now and then. And it certainly is much better for them to direct any need for worship towards God or gods than Kim il Whatever.
Religion might be opium for the masses, but trying to make them quit will only result in them switching to crack cocaine.
Really, if you hear a puppy walking up, you jump out of the way?
Yes, if I hear an animal heading straight at me I either dodge or at the very least look what's going on, depending on how far it is.
Every time you hear someone carrying a radio playing classical music.... etc.
If I hear "Ride of the Valkyries" heading straight at me, yes, I'll dodge:).
There are lots of sounds that don't make us jump.
This isn't about jumping at sounds, this is about something being at a collision course with you. Why the heck wouldn't you dodge, or at least ensure it's nothing dangerous? And why would a car need to make extra noise just to accomodate your laziness/overconfidence/suicidal tendencies/whatever?
As a counter argument, I'd ask; do you think it logical for any reasonable individual to become religious purely out of protest to atheÃsts?
No, but it's perfectly logical to expect that people holding position X tend to shift towards more extreme forms of X when confronted by someone who's challenging this position in a hostile manner. X can be a religious position, a political position or a belief that My Little Pony is a good television series. Challenge these positions, and be annoying enough about it ("if you believe this, you're stupid or evil or both" is a classic), and you get fundamentalism, Tea Party movement, and a firm and unshakable belief that My Little Pony was engraved frame by frame in stone tablets at the dawn of time by the very hand of God himself, is being transferred onto cells today by a mysterious order of deathless warrior monks, and once the last episode airs the universe has fulfilled its purpose and will pop like a soap bubble.
So no, people are not going to become religious just to protest atheists, but they will make a bigger deal out of whatever religious feelings they already had.
It's funny, but I don't recall that the NKVD, KGB, SMERSH, or other secret police organs of Soviet Power in the USSR worried about blood feuds from torture, or any of that. They simply tortured and killed in staggering numbers.
And by doing so they turned pretty much everyone against the state, thus leading to the fall of the Soviet Union. So maybe they should had worried about blood feuds a bit more after all.
I'm surprised they don't get hit by more bikes then.
I'm not. I'm not blind, but I'm generally aware of what's happening around me, and can easily hear bikes coming. Are people just generally deaf, or what is the problem?
The framers were quite disparaging of Democracy, which they called the "tyranny of the majority".
And so they opted for a "tyranny of the minority" instead, which is also what they got. Congratulations. Do remember to thank them every time some wildly unpopular piece of bullshit legislation goes trough - after all, we wouldn't want the majority to spoil it for the 1%, now would we?
So it is not sufficient for most people to give up their rights, as you describe, but requires that every last person give up their rights.
No, it just requires a supreme court judge to decide that the people don't have that right. It's truly a pity that you don't have Democracy, where the people could object and have the power to be heard. Enjoy your Republic, where the Patricians rule and everyone else is a slave.
Too bad no one thought to apply this axiom to the Vaccine Opt-out debate (different slashdot article). Just because 99.9% of people do not to exercise their right to skip the needle, does not mean the other 0.1% lose their right to make their own Choice. We should not be forcing them to be injected. (IMHO)
Hey, you don't want to be vaccinated? Go ahead and skip it and die, should you encounter the disease you refused the vaccination against. No skin off my back, good riddance, natural selection doing its job, etc.
The problems start when you refuse your children to be vaccinated. After all, they too are citizens and entitled to the same rights as everyone else, such as protection against being exposed to grievous bodily harm - such as dying from diseases that they could simply be vaccinated against. At that point we have the parent's rights to be paranoid lunatics against the child's right to be protected, and things stop being so black-and-white since you're going to screw over someone no matter what you do.
We're heading in the wrong direction. We should be looking for a STABLE currency that can not be devalued.
That would entail absolute market control by the government. After all, as you save up your million dollars, the amount of money circulating decreases, so it's value increases. If you then spend them, the amount of money circulating increases, so it's value decreases.
The former can be solved by printing more money, but the latter is more difficult - while it's in principle a simple matter of increasing taxes to remove money from circulation, in practice the million dollars spent don't enter the economy evenly and will even make many people worse off due to the rising prices, so they can't really take the increasing tax burden. So, either you accept that the government can tell you how much you can spend and where, or you accept that currency can and will be devalued.
And besides, why would you even expect that money you saved when you were 20 would have the same purchasing power 40 years later? Thw world has changed in the meantime, nations have risen and fallen, energy and raw materials are more expensive than they were in your youth, and the productivity of work is likely far higher. Money is meant to simplify the logistics of transactions; why on Earth do you think you're entitled to treat it as an option you'll cash in 40 years later? And why in Hell do you think that enabling such schemes should be the primary or even any concern of economic policy?
Maybe the absence of a global steward is better than the US.
That's not an option anymore. The world has gotten small; with the whole world less than a second away communication-wise and less than a day travel-wise, the strongest country or country-like entity (EU?) can rule it. And with natural resources getting scarce, there's plenty of incentive to.
Capitalism generally espouses the view that wealth can be created.
Communism generally espouses the view that wealth can only be transferred.
No, both systems say that wealth can be created, and both even say it happens the same way: through labour (thus the myth of becoming rich by working hard). The only difference is in who should get the majority of the wealth thus created: in capitalism, it's the owner of the factory, in communism, it's the people who work there, and in the real world, it's the CEO who ran it bankrupt.
Another way of saying this is that under communism, all companies are worker cooperatives.
As ugly and imperfect as the US may be, don't you think its principles and ideals and those of its allies are worth protecting?
Well, I dunno. All I know is that as an European, I'd rather trust the Internet and the world to be managed by the US than the EU, UN or my own government. That First Amendment thing balances out a lot of bullshit.
I'd venture to guess, that MANY people that are non-muslims feel that same tinge of fear or apprehension when they see someone get on a plane with "muslim garb".
Because obviously someone trying to smuggle an explosive device onboard will dress so as to stick out and draw suspicion.
Either way your life is ruined. So no, there is no real difference.
Of course we can't (because it's both morally wrong and impractical) require people to not hate people who say nasty things. But in the past, such people could learn their lesson, move elsewhere and begin anew - indeed, America itself was a popular target for that. Nowadays that's no longer possible, since we're trying to make establishing a new identity as hard as possible, so your first mistake is also your last. That is a problem, and it needs to be solved; imperfect human beings simply can't live with everything they've ever done or said following them for the rest of their lives.
There's a reason why "papers, please" has such a strong association with oppression.
What makes you think that the powers that be want there to be abundance for all? How would they lord it over people who didn't need to beg for their table scraps?
Scarcity gives power to those who control resources; it will never end as long as any human being dreams of being another's master. And besides, let's face it: if someone who wasted his youth slacking becomes just as wealthy as someone who spent every waking moment at hard work (or at least looking busy), how many here will cry foul?
A society where the goal is that no one lacks anything is also known as a welfare state, often disparagingly called "nanny state" here, because people want the "undeserving" to lack things. This world is exactly what people want it to be; the only thing that they disagree with is their own position in it. So instead of trying to change it, they try to change their position in it. Thus, the world will remain as it is.
I'm not sure whether either the Anonymous attacks or the funny quips will help the case of civil liberties.
I don't think that anything would. The reason they're eroding is that communism fell, so the powers that be no longer have any reason to pretend being nice. And they learned their lesson about having their own rethoric turned against them, thus the focus is on "security" with the new terrorism boogeyman (and the bit older drugs one).
It's important to remember that the whole concept of "freedom is good" is very new and never really took root. Our modern societies are still basically feudal systems where what you own determines your position and power in a hierarchy. In such a system freedom is neither valued nor sustainable; a system where masses of serfs serve a few wealthy masters cannot give those serfs freedom, because then the serfs will stop serving their masters and the system comes down. And while the threat of being cut out of economy (unemployment) works as a way to keep the low down to a point, the Occupy protests show quite clearly that there are limits to how far you can squeeze people before it stops working; at some point every feudal system needs to decide between using force to keep the peons in line or being destroyed. Our lords have made their choice and are getting ready for a showdown.
TL;DR You never had any liberties to begin with, it was all propaganda, but some people actually believed that bullshit, so now the point is being clarified.
However, technicians have an important perspective on the company's needs which can only come from having your head down in the trenches.
More to the point, someone who does a job daily inevitably ends up knowing more about it than someone who doesn't, even if the latter is a genius with a Doctorate on Everything. Consequently, the former knows how to do the job efficiently while the latter doesn't, so any attempt of the latter to actually manage the former tends to lead to problems. This then explains an observation I've made:
The best thing a boss can do to raise morale and efficiency is to take a vacation.
I really wonder if that wasn't the intent of the ending. One man cannot save the universe....only effect a very small part within his sphere of influence.
Arkhipov did. And of course on the other side of the equation are Hitler, Stalin and Mao, who's shadow still makes the world a worse place than it needs to be. But then again, imagine a world with Hitler but no Stalin, where the Nazis would have marched through a still-agrarian Russia with ease and likely won World War II.
The thing is, while most decisions made by most people most of the time are pretty much meaningless, every now and then destiny really does hang by a single thread. And the first two games do set Shepard up as someone who is constantly there when it does, to the extent that it's noticed in-universe by the Illusive Man. So changing this at a crucial moment would, in fact, be quite strange, and would certainly make for a bad ending (but would make for a fine mid-plot twist if, for example, it turned out that some entity was using the main character all along).
Then again, I haven't played ME3, so this is all speculation on my part.
A witness was quoted as saying that the engine sounded like it was dying. The problem there is that the Hornet is a twin engine plane. If it was an engine going out, then they could have just shut it down and flew home on the remaining engine.
Assuming, of course, that the failure wasn't caused by something that would affect both engines - like, say, contaminated fuel or air.
It might actually be even stranger than the normal Streisand-related backfiring; there's a theory floating around that EA are actually deliberately exploiting the increased publicity of this to divert attention away from the fact that they're an utter bunch of assholes in many other ways.
Sure, why not? If you need someone who makes you look good by comparison, then Christian Right will always be happy to deliver.
But this is only because we have a population that revels in it's own ignorance.
Not ignorance but righteousness. The one unifying trait of pretty much everyone holding any kind of even remotely political opinion in America (and more and more frequently elsewhere) is to refuse to believe that anyone could possibly honestly disagree with them. No, they must be evil or stupid or both, so convert the stupid with simplistic propaganda and try to intimidate the evil to change their wicked ways. And of course nowadays it's becoming increasingly common to simply declare any disagreement "trolling" - which, to be fair, it probably is: few would advocate socialized healthcare on a conservative forum for purposes of promoting insightful discussion.
This all makes it impossible to negotiate or compromise, since that would require giving into "evil" a little bit. It becomes impossible to even talk to one another, since meaningful conversation requires at least trying to comprehend what the other is saying, and why would I try to understand lies a malefactor is spouting out of sheer evilness of his dark heart? And as an added bonus the resulting frustration and adrenaline make for fertile ground for all kinds of extreme movements.
In other words, it's not that people are proud to be ignorant, it's that they all think politics is a D&D LARP, they're all playing paladins, and that paladin is Miko Miyazaki.
Ive always thought that if, as a lawmaker, you propose a law that is later found to be Unconstitutional, said lawmaker should be charged with TREASON for knowingly attempting to circumvent the Constitution
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't be too sure of that these days. I once worked in a library that had a really bad arrangement of shelfs; it was radial, so the shelfs were too close to each other near center and too far apart near the edge. Also, any and all noise would be echoed and amplified. But we couldn't rearrange the shelfs because we were told that the architect had a "right" to keep the library looking "as he had visioned".
Besides, if your house resembles a house that has appeared on some movie since Mickey Mouse was created, then clearly you need to pay license fees to the MPAA.
Nobody's belief systems are built on axioms, they're build on cultural osmosis, and culture is built on memetic evolution.
I'm not so sure of that. If we assume that religions were invented by people, it follows that people have some inborn instincts towards making and believing in them - a tendency towards faith. It would probably be far better to have the people with such instincts direct them towards established religions that have had centuries or millenias to become civilized and shed most of their nasty parts, than leave them easy prey to whatever charismatic cult leaders pop up every now and then. And it certainly is much better for them to direct any need for worship towards God or gods than Kim il Whatever.
Religion might be opium for the masses, but trying to make them quit will only result in them switching to crack cocaine.
Yes, if I hear an animal heading straight at me I either dodge or at the very least look what's going on, depending on how far it is.
If I hear "Ride of the Valkyries" heading straight at me, yes, I'll dodge :).
This isn't about jumping at sounds, this is about something being at a collision course with you. Why the heck wouldn't you dodge, or at least ensure it's nothing dangerous? And why would a car need to make extra noise just to accomodate your laziness/overconfidence/suicidal tendencies/whatever?
And by doing so they turned pretty much everyone against the state, thus leading to the fall of the Soviet Union. So maybe they should had worried about blood feuds a bit more after all.
I'm not. I'm not blind, but I'm generally aware of what's happening around me, and can easily hear bikes coming. Are people just generally deaf, or what is the problem?
If it doesn't sound like a car, do you know to jump out of the way?
I dunno about you, but if I hear something coming at me, I jump out of the way first and confirm its identity second.
And so they opted for a "tyranny of the minority" instead, which is also what they got. Congratulations. Do remember to thank them every time some wildly unpopular piece of bullshit legislation goes trough - after all, we wouldn't want the majority to spoil it for the 1%, now would we?
No, it just requires a supreme court judge to decide that the people don't have that right. It's truly a pity that you don't have Democracy, where the people could object and have the power to be heard. Enjoy your Republic, where the Patricians rule and everyone else is a slave.
Hey, you don't want to be vaccinated? Go ahead and skip it and die, should you encounter the disease you refused the vaccination against. No skin off my back, good riddance, natural selection doing its job, etc.
The problems start when you refuse your children to be vaccinated. After all, they too are citizens and entitled to the same rights as everyone else, such as protection against being exposed to grievous bodily harm - such as dying from diseases that they could simply be vaccinated against. At that point we have the parent's rights to be paranoid lunatics against the child's right to be protected, and things stop being so black-and-white since you're going to screw over someone no matter what you do.
That would entail absolute market control by the government. After all, as you save up your million dollars, the amount of money circulating decreases, so it's value increases. If you then spend them, the amount of money circulating increases, so it's value decreases.
The former can be solved by printing more money, but the latter is more difficult - while it's in principle a simple matter of increasing taxes to remove money from circulation, in practice the million dollars spent don't enter the economy evenly and will even make many people worse off due to the rising prices, so they can't really take the increasing tax burden. So, either you accept that the government can tell you how much you can spend and where, or you accept that currency can and will be devalued.
And besides, why would you even expect that money you saved when you were 20 would have the same purchasing power 40 years later? Thw world has changed in the meantime, nations have risen and fallen, energy and raw materials are more expensive than they were in your youth, and the productivity of work is likely far higher. Money is meant to simplify the logistics of transactions; why on Earth do you think you're entitled to treat it as an option you'll cash in 40 years later? And why in Hell do you think that enabling such schemes should be the primary or even any concern of economic policy?
That's not an option anymore. The world has gotten small; with the whole world less than a second away communication-wise and less than a day travel-wise, the strongest country or country-like entity (EU?) can rule it. And with natural resources getting scarce, there's plenty of incentive to.
No, both systems say that wealth can be created, and both even say it happens the same way: through labour (thus the myth of becoming rich by working hard). The only difference is in who should get the majority of the wealth thus created: in capitalism, it's the owner of the factory, in communism, it's the people who work there, and in the real world, it's the CEO who ran it bankrupt.
Another way of saying this is that under communism, all companies are worker cooperatives.
Well, I dunno. All I know is that as an European, I'd rather trust the Internet and the world to be managed by the US than the EU, UN or my own government. That First Amendment thing balances out a lot of bullshit.
Because obviously someone trying to smuggle an explosive device onboard will dress so as to stick out and draw suspicion.
Either way your life is ruined. So no, there is no real difference.
Of course we can't (because it's both morally wrong and impractical) require people to not hate people who say nasty things. But in the past, such people could learn their lesson, move elsewhere and begin anew - indeed, America itself was a popular target for that. Nowadays that's no longer possible, since we're trying to make establishing a new identity as hard as possible, so your first mistake is also your last. That is a problem, and it needs to be solved; imperfect human beings simply can't live with everything they've ever done or said following them for the rest of their lives.
There's a reason why "papers, please" has such a strong association with oppression.
What makes you think that the powers that be want there to be abundance for all? How would they lord it over people who didn't need to beg for their table scraps?
Scarcity gives power to those who control resources; it will never end as long as any human being dreams of being another's master. And besides, let's face it: if someone who wasted his youth slacking becomes just as wealthy as someone who spent every waking moment at hard work (or at least looking busy), how many here will cry foul?
A society where the goal is that no one lacks anything is also known as a welfare state, often disparagingly called "nanny state" here, because people want the "undeserving" to lack things. This world is exactly what people want it to be; the only thing that they disagree with is their own position in it. So instead of trying to change it, they try to change their position in it. Thus, the world will remain as it is.
I don't think that anything would. The reason they're eroding is that communism fell, so the powers that be no longer have any reason to pretend being nice. And they learned their lesson about having their own rethoric turned against them, thus the focus is on "security" with the new terrorism boogeyman (and the bit older drugs one).
It's important to remember that the whole concept of "freedom is good" is very new and never really took root. Our modern societies are still basically feudal systems where what you own determines your position and power in a hierarchy. In such a system freedom is neither valued nor sustainable; a system where masses of serfs serve a few wealthy masters cannot give those serfs freedom, because then the serfs will stop serving their masters and the system comes down. And while the threat of being cut out of economy (unemployment) works as a way to keep the low down to a point, the Occupy protests show quite clearly that there are limits to how far you can squeeze people before it stops working; at some point every feudal system needs to decide between using force to keep the peons in line or being destroyed. Our lords have made their choice and are getting ready for a showdown.
TL;DR You never had any liberties to begin with, it was all propaganda, but some people actually believed that bullshit, so now the point is being clarified.
More to the point, someone who does a job daily inevitably ends up knowing more about it than someone who doesn't, even if the latter is a genius with a Doctorate on Everything. Consequently, the former knows how to do the job efficiently while the latter doesn't, so any attempt of the latter to actually manage the former tends to lead to problems. This then explains an observation I've made:
The best thing a boss can do to raise morale and efficiency is to take a vacation.
Arkhipov did. And of course on the other side of the equation are Hitler, Stalin and Mao, who's shadow still makes the world a worse place than it needs to be. But then again, imagine a world with Hitler but no Stalin, where the Nazis would have marched through a still-agrarian Russia with ease and likely won World War II.
The thing is, while most decisions made by most people most of the time are pretty much meaningless, every now and then destiny really does hang by a single thread. And the first two games do set Shepard up as someone who is constantly there when it does, to the extent that it's noticed in-universe by the Illusive Man. So changing this at a crucial moment would, in fact, be quite strange, and would certainly make for a bad ending (but would make for a fine mid-plot twist if, for example, it turned out that some entity was using the main character all along).
Then again, I haven't played ME3, so this is all speculation on my part.
Assuming, of course, that the failure wasn't caused by something that would affect both engines - like, say, contaminated fuel or air.
Sure, why not? If you need someone who makes you look good by comparison, then Christian Right will always be happy to deliver.
Ah yes, the existence of the proto-SS is also a good indicator.
Not ignorance but righteousness. The one unifying trait of pretty much everyone holding any kind of even remotely political opinion in America (and more and more frequently elsewhere) is to refuse to believe that anyone could possibly honestly disagree with them. No, they must be evil or stupid or both, so convert the stupid with simplistic propaganda and try to intimidate the evil to change their wicked ways. And of course nowadays it's becoming increasingly common to simply declare any disagreement "trolling" - which, to be fair, it probably is: few would advocate socialized healthcare on a conservative forum for purposes of promoting insightful discussion.
This all makes it impossible to negotiate or compromise, since that would require giving into "evil" a little bit. It becomes impossible to even talk to one another, since meaningful conversation requires at least trying to comprehend what the other is saying, and why would I try to understand lies a malefactor is spouting out of sheer evilness of his dark heart? And as an added bonus the resulting frustration and adrenaline make for fertile ground for all kinds of extreme movements.
In other words, it's not that people are proud to be ignorant, it's that they all think politics is a D&D LARP, they're all playing paladins, and that paladin is Miko Miyazaki.
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."