One of my pet peeves is the tendency of SF to ignore how real-world combat vessels operate - ship control and combat control functions are separated. On a surface warship of any size, they are physically separated.
Yeah, the only time Star Trek even hinted at this was during "Yesterday's Enterprise" when you heard a PA announcement in the background ordering someone to report to CIC. Then of course they ignored it for the final battle and had Picard commanding things from the bridge. I always thought it would be cool if they had shown Picard/Sisko down in CIC looking at the big picture while Riker/Worf (or Kira?) was on the bridge issuing the actual helm commands. Guess that such detail is beyond Hollywood.....
Accept sub-par candidates who will likely never be able to compete for top positions with the much smarter and more talented pre-war officers?
Who says you have to accept sub-par candidates? In a total war where your nation is fighting for it's very survival you'd just start drafting qualified candidates whom originally opted not to join the military. The US Naval Academy offers degrees in Oceanography but it isn't the only place in the United States where you can obtain such a degree. Wouldn't it make sense to assume that in the Federation there would be other places to learn about warp theory and cosmology than Starfleet Academy?
Seems to me like the Federation is just asking to get pwned by some species that has figured out a way to design warships that don't require dozens of PhDs in Astrophysics/Warp Theory/Gamma Particle Ray Beam Engineering to operate.
Why do you think they need dozens? In reality you'd really only need such expertise in your engineering department. You don't need a PhD in nuclear physics to command a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. Once you get into the command ranks it's more about tactics and strategy anyway. Even Star Trek represented this to a point with the gold shirts (TOS) and red shirts (TNG). How much did Kirk and Picard really know about what went on in engineering?
China, being communist, has a stated economic interest in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
That must explain Tiananmen Square......
American Capitalists, who really control the government through legalized bribery, have no such interest.
Capitalists don't control the Government. Capitalists have influence in the Government that outweighs their numbers but "control" is a bit of a stretch.
It only takes ten million dollars and ten corruptible underpaid soldiers to do this *WITHOUT* an order.
Actually it takes a bit more than that. Look up "permissive action links" the next time you lose sleep over the security of our nuclear weapons.
Yes they do. And in return we reward them with poverty, no VA benefits, and an utter lack of respect.
And that's relevant to my point in what way exactly? It seems that you are ignoring the point I was trying to make in favor of spouting liberal talking points.
Why not? The special effects were the only thing that kept me going. The storyline pissed me off both as a Trekker (destruction of Vulcan, Kirk as a whiny bitch, Spock and Uhura as an item) and as a normal movie goer (3rd year cadet gets command of the flagship at the end of the movie? yeah, right....).
The effects saved the movie for me. From the little touches (ships don't always share the same z-axis, the Arcologies in Iowa) to the re-imagined ships, engineering with actual engineering components (save the stupid water pipe scene) and a bridge that looked every bit as crowded and chaotic as you'd expect for controlling a starship with a crew of a thousand.
If it wasn't for the well done effects I would have walked out in disgust. The storyline wasn't as bad as some of the treknobabble particle-of-the-week plots that we've seen in the past but it was no Wrath of Khan or Pale Moonlight either. If I had to rank it with the other movies I'd put it behind Khan, Voyage Home, Undiscovered County, Generations and First Contact.
Only if your government doesn't have nuclear weapons. What is inalienable has changed considerably since 1776.
Oh please, that's just hyperbole. There isn't a single example in all of human history of any Government using nuclear weapons on it's own citizenry. Given the fact that even China hasn't resorted to this I'm not real worried about it happening as an American.
Do you really think the US military would carry out an order to drop an H-bomb on an American city? This isn't Nazi Germany -- our military doesn't swear a loyalty oath to the President. They swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies and to follow the orders issued through the chain of command according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The bill of rights already protects our personal rights and limits the federal government's powers over the states and the citizens.
Actually the Bill of Rights just codified our rights. Our rights are inalienable regardless of whether or not they are listed in the Bill of Rights.
Oh, wait, the Constitution is routinely ignored by the Federal Government. So I'm sure a non-binding technology bill of rights will have a huge impact on limiting the Federal Government's actions...
So are we going to start prosecuting auto makers for providing get-away vehicles to criminals?
If some of the anti-gun crowd had their way that's exactly what we do with the gun manufacturers when their product winds up in the hands of criminals.....
That robust frame of theirs was probably good for endurance, but those tasty suckers sure couldn't run fast!
I dunno, I saw an interesting documentary on them that suggested they probably had shit for endurance compared to us. They attributed that conclusion to their different gait and the fact that it would require more energy to move that heavy frame.
Humans aren't very fast by the standards of the animal kingdom but we do have a fair amount of endurance compared to a lot of other animals. With enough water a reasonably fit human can march all day long. Many other animals can't do that because they overheat and tire out much quicker than we do. Dogs/wolves are adapt at doing it -- maybe that explains why they adapted so easily to living with humans?
But for every complete prude that wouldn't even hold hands in public, there's also someone who has to be militantly in your face about everything
I've run into those people. What pisses me off is that if you call them on it they will usually play the discrimination card even though you'd find it equally offensive to see a heterosexual couple acting in the same manner. I'm of the opinion that PDA (public display of affection) needs to be appropriate for the situation -- I'll give my girlfriend a passionate kiss when we are slow dancing somewhere but I'm not going to do the same when are sitting in a family restaurant with kids at the next table.
and yes, once upon a time when I managed a McDonalds when I was a teenager, I had to throw people out for having sex in the dining room
Hmm, must be something in the food at McDonald's. When I worked at one as a teenager we had two employees get fired for having sex in the basement on break. I probably would have called the police if I had been in your shoes. I'd suspect they broke a fair number of laws by doing that.
Unfortunately, I also know a lot of homosexuals that won't tolerate most Christians
I know a lot of people that won't tolerate most Christians. I don't consider myself particularly religious but some of the more militant atheists I've run into during my time can be every bit as judgmental as the fundamentalist christian.
What the GOP needs is a Reagan type figure. Yes, Reagan was very much a social conservative, but he largely campaigned on economic reform and bringing a pride back to the American people after the Carter "malaise."
Reagan had charisma and speaking ability as well. Something that's been lacking in the recent GOP candidates. I cringed every single time I watched McCain speak. What's amazing is that he managed to hold it as close as he did until the economic crisis hit and he "suspended" his campaign. I knew it was all over once that happened.
You don't get to that level of office in a state as big as NY without having some "friends" that you need to pay back.
That's one of the reasons I've contemplated moving to a smaller state if I ever leave NYS. It seems that once you reach a certain critical mass of population that politics turns into machine politics and money/party starts to matter more than ideas. States on my short list if I ever leave NYS would include Vermont, New Hampshire and Alaska. NH and Alaska because they line up nicely with my Libertarianism (although I worry about NH with all of the Boston ex-pats moving there). Vermont for the small state and just uniqueness of the place. Vermont is an odd case -- it's so liberal that they elected a self-described "socialist" to the US Senate, yet anyone can buy a handgun and carry it openly or concealed without needing a permit. Quite the strange combination isn't it?
Maybe living this far upstate, I'm so used to the scum coming out of NYC that I'm predisposed to assume they're all corrupt until they prove themselves otherwise
Ever seen The Wire and the political subplot during Seasons 3 and 4? It's a pretty good representation of the "compromises" that politicians make to achieve higher office. I don't think most of them start out corrupt -- I just think that you need to make so many compromises and promises to achieve higher office that eventually you lose sight of why you ran in the first place and it becomes more the institution of you than representing your constituents.
Private enterprise has not funded more than a hundredth of scientific achievements in the last century.
Yeah, except for the laser (Hughes Research Laboratories), light bulb (various private inventors, finally brought to market by Thomas Edison), electrical engineering (Telsa, Westinghouse, Edison, etc), the telephone (various inventors not connected with Government), blah, blah, blah, blah. We'd all be helpless sheep stuck in the middle-ages if it wasn't for all that Government funding of scientific research......
But then how will I be able to refinance my mortgage while getting that penis enlargement using the money I won in the British lottery?
I'm convinced that the only real solution to spam is to find the people who are stupid enough to buy the products offered via spam and beat the ever living shit out of them. The spammers wouldn't keep doing it if people didn't keep buying their shit.....
I think what P was suggesting is that you can have absolute freedom to harm yourself, or socialized medicine. Choose one. Me, I'd choose the second, but by failing to choose you have effectively given up your right to criticize either.
I've never wanted socialized medicine, because I fail to see how having a Government ration my health care and stick it's nose into my business is any improvement over having a private company do the same. At least the private company doesn't have well armed goons to enforce it's edicts and I can choose to do business with whichever one I'd like.
As for the abortion thing... by definition, a zygote is alive (or else we need to redefine a whole lot of biology) and has human DNA, ergo, it is a human and they have the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the rest of us. I could drop dead of a heart attack right now and that zygote could miscarry, but that doesn't mean either of us should be killed for someone else's convenience
I tend to come down on the side that an individual has the right to control his or her own body and that said right outweighs the right of another to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If you needed a bone marrow transfusion and I was the only compatible donor, should the state be able to force me to donate it or should I have final say over what happens to my body? Personally I find abortion to be repugnant and those that use it as a form of birth control to be even more so but I'm just not comfortable with the prospect of state control of our bodies.
I'd like to see it become a whole lot easier to adopt unwanted children in the US to help solve the problem, since the standards are beyond ridiculous at this point and there are a lot of people that want and would care for a child, but the system refuses them for not being the absolute, perfect, fairy tale ideal
You don't even have to go through an adoption if you don't want to have an abortion. Every single state that I'm aware of (NYS included) has a safe haven law. You can leave your newborn at the hospital/police station/firehouse with no questions asked. I do agree that it should be easier to adopt though. It would help to reduce the number of abortions and make it easier to get wards of the state into loving stable homes. The current process is a joke. Friends of mine went through it a few years ago. The wife was asked if they had a good sex life. When she told them it was none of their business they told her that they have to ask because "people with good sex lives are less likely to molest children". WTF?
I don't expect anyone, straight, gay or somewhere in between, to be openly fondling each other in the restaurant.
I do find that to be pretty annoying and offensive. Were it my business I would ask them to desist and to leave if they are unable to do so. If the business-owner refuses to do so then I'm probably going to take my business elsewhere.
Again, it makes us look like the lesser party of big government rather than a party actually of small government... and why vote for the lesser party when you can vote for the full party?
I get what you are saying but there has to be some middle ground between Rush Limbaugh's desire to run 100% ideologically pure candidates and the McCain's/Specter's of the World. There does come a point when someone splits with the party on so many issues that they aren't worth supporting any longer but as you previously said you'll never manage to find someone who agrees with you on everything.
Fortunately for them, I don't see Specter making it out of the PA Democrat Primary next year.
You have more hope than I do. He'll have his fund raising machine, the support of the party establishment and lots of name recognition. Those three things usually equal victory in American elections. I'd love to be proven wrong on this though.
Which is another case of Pataki becoming indistinguishable from the Democrats the longer he was in office. Back in 1994, I actually believed in him. As time went on, he was just as irresponsible with the budget as Mario Cuomo was (and again, I return to the beginning of this thread, with the problem of the three men in a room)
I was never a fan of Pataki for a number of reasons. He seemed to treat a lot of the state agencies as patronage jobs for his political cronies. When Spitzer came in with a electoral mandate for reform I had misplaced hopes
I know this will hard for you US'ians to accept but it's a proper role for Government to regulate what you can eat when your obesity rates are driving up the cost of medicine.
Bzzt, no, it's not a "proper role" for Government to protect me from myself. If my insurance carrier wants to penalize me for a being a fatass then all the power to them. It's none of Washington's business.
Consequently, I don't think the government should take my money and use it to fund stuff like health inspections at slaughterhouses or meat packing plants, etc
I don't believe that the government should be using my money for those purposes. When you buy an electrical appliance are you content with the UL listing or do you limit your purchases to those appliances that have been tested by some Federal agency?
And finally, I'm a pacifist and believe that all violence is wrong. Therefore, none of my money should be spent on the military; for that matter, I don't want that money going to my local police force because they carry guns and nightsticks.
The difference is that the military is actually envisioned by the Constitution. Federal funding for scientific research and slaughterhouse inspection is not.
They might object but they will have been represented. That is the key difference. If the political leaders truly, routinely make decisions against the majority then they will no longer be the political leaders.
The tyranny of the majority is just as insidious as other kinds of tyranny. When the Government takes my money and uses it to fund things that I have moral objections to I have no recourse. When private capital does it I can choose to invest my funds with a different firm.
The taxpayers absolutely have the right (under a Democratic system) to ensure expenditures of those funds are in line with their needs, values, etc. The elected officials properly make political decisions regarding spending taxpayer money--as it should be.
For better or worse a large number of those tax payers are going to object that the expenditures of these funds don't match their values regardless of what you do. Hence why it would make more sense to get the Government out of it altogether and let private capital fund this research.
That's not true. The people in charge now are less interested in telling us who we can sleep with and more interested in telling us what kinds of foods we can eat. Yeah, the Government is still trying to micromanage our lives like an obsessed baby sitter, but hey, it's still change you can believe in;)
Wouldn't it be better to really get the government out of science altogether and let the actual scientists decide what to research instead of having some politically and/or religiously motivated bureaucrat making those decisions for them? Federal funding has always come with politically motivated restrictions. When Obama said he was getting the government "out of" science by increasing governmental funding I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
I've become more socially conservative than I ever thought I would but I'm still Libertarian in that I really don't care what you do behind closed doors as long as it doesn't impact my peaceful enjoyment of life. The only social issue that I see that can't be solved through a Libertarian approach is abortion. That's a tough one and it's only made worse by the extremists on both sides, ranging from "zygote == human being and murdering abortion doctors is acceptable" to "third trimester abortions should be legal". The only thing I've been able to conclude about abortion is that the extremists on both sides of the issue scare the hell out of me.
but outside of a handful of people, the whips keep people in line. Snowe and Collins may be RINOs, but at least they're consistent in their views.
That's another thing I don't understand about the GOP. The sheer number of GOP officials and rank-and-file who cheered Specter's defection and/or have condemned Snowe and Collins amazes me. Would you rather have somebody who votes with you most of the time or would you rather run a "true" Republican who loses and wind up with somebody who votes against you all of the time?
The Democrats seem to have learned this lesson. Tester and Baucus are both unapologetically in favor of gun rights. The Liberal base doesn't much like this but when Schumer was running the DSCC he was smart enough to realize that somebody who shared his views on guns would be unelectable in Montana. So what's better? Having someone who votes against the party line on a few issues or losing the race and having someone who votes against you on all issues? More importantly, when is the GOP going to relearn this lesson?
In the outlying counties like mine, agriculture is the primary industry anyway. Nationwide, people are still going to need corn, apples, milk, etc.
It's always bothered me that our state imports so much food when we have the capacity to feed ourselves. Around here the only grocery store that even makes an effort to stock NYS produce is Wegman's. The others stock their shelves with stuff imported from California (even when it grows locally) or other far-flung locations. During the summer my GF and I make an effort to procure the bulk of our produce from local farmers markets. You get better quality and get to keep your money in the local economy. What's not to like?
I had a couple friends do that specifically... got their permit and picked up an AR-15 while they still could.
I tell my friends that as far as gun rights go I'm far more worried about Albany than I am about Washington. New gun control seems to be a non-starter at the Federal level for now. Too many Democrats got elected in rural districts and they aren't willing to lose their seats for the sake of San Francisco's agenda. The gun rights viewpoint is well represented in Washington. In Albany on the other hand.......
I'm hopeful that eventually the 2nd amendment will be incorporated against the states and we can start to roll back some of the draconian laws that NYS has on the books. The only saving grace really is the fact that we aren't Illinois or California -- but I fear that with the downstater's in full control of Albany that it's only a matter of time before we get there.
Or I could replace them with cheaper incandescents which don't come with the added bonus of needing to be driven back to the store to be properly disposed of and which can't poison me if they break.......
Wow, I wonder what kind of wattage you have to draw to heat a swimming pool? That's kind of impressive, albeit scary.
In my experience the regular old fluorescent setups handled it just fine. I am not an electrical engineer but my guess would be that you could build a better ballast when you aren't limited to the footprint of a CFL. Or perhaps the old mechanical ballasts are more resistant to voltage changes than the newer solid-state ones?
I actually preferred the non-CFL fluorescents because they wouldn't dim as noticeably as incandescents when the voltage dipped. I just wish the CFL's would have tolerated it better. I wasted a decent amount of money trying different brands and swapping them out before I gave up on it and replaced them all with incandescents.
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One of my pet peeves is the tendency of SF to ignore how real-world combat vessels operate - ship control and combat control functions are separated. On a surface warship of any size, they are physically separated.
Yeah, the only time Star Trek even hinted at this was during "Yesterday's Enterprise" when you heard a PA announcement in the background ordering someone to report to CIC. Then of course they ignored it for the final battle and had Picard commanding things from the bridge. I always thought it would be cool if they had shown Picard/Sisko down in CIC looking at the big picture while Riker/Worf (or Kira?) was on the bridge issuing the actual helm commands. Guess that such detail is beyond Hollywood.....
Accept sub-par candidates who will likely never be able to compete for top positions with the much smarter and more talented pre-war officers?
Who says you have to accept sub-par candidates? In a total war where your nation is fighting for it's very survival you'd just start drafting qualified candidates whom originally opted not to join the military. The US Naval Academy offers degrees in Oceanography but it isn't the only place in the United States where you can obtain such a degree. Wouldn't it make sense to assume that in the Federation there would be other places to learn about warp theory and cosmology than Starfleet Academy?
Seems to me like the Federation is just asking to get pwned by some species that has figured out a way to design warships that don't require dozens of PhDs in Astrophysics/Warp Theory/Gamma Particle Ray Beam Engineering to operate.
Why do you think they need dozens? In reality you'd really only need such expertise in your engineering department. You don't need a PhD in nuclear physics to command a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. Once you get into the command ranks it's more about tactics and strategy anyway. Even Star Trek represented this to a point with the gold shirts (TOS) and red shirts (TNG). How much did Kirk and Picard really know about what went on in engineering?
China, being communist, has a stated economic interest in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
That must explain Tiananmen Square......
American Capitalists, who really control the government through legalized bribery, have no such interest.
Capitalists don't control the Government. Capitalists have influence in the Government that outweighs their numbers but "control" is a bit of a stretch.
It only takes ten million dollars and ten corruptible underpaid soldiers to do this *WITHOUT* an order.
Actually it takes a bit more than that. Look up "permissive action links" the next time you lose sleep over the security of our nuclear weapons.
Yes they do. And in return we reward them with poverty, no VA benefits, and an utter lack of respect.
And that's relevant to my point in what way exactly? It seems that you are ignoring the point I was trying to make in favor of spouting liberal talking points.
don't rely on special effects for content
Why not? The special effects were the only thing that kept me going. The storyline pissed me off both as a Trekker (destruction of Vulcan, Kirk as a whiny bitch, Spock and Uhura as an item) and as a normal movie goer (3rd year cadet gets command of the flagship at the end of the movie? yeah, right....).
The effects saved the movie for me. From the little touches (ships don't always share the same z-axis, the Arcologies in Iowa) to the re-imagined ships, engineering with actual engineering components (save the stupid water pipe scene) and a bridge that looked every bit as crowded and chaotic as you'd expect for controlling a starship with a crew of a thousand.
If it wasn't for the well done effects I would have walked out in disgust. The storyline wasn't as bad as some of the treknobabble particle-of-the-week plots that we've seen in the past but it was no Wrath of Khan or Pale Moonlight either. If I had to rank it with the other movies I'd put it behind Khan, Voyage Home, Undiscovered County, Generations and First Contact.
Only if your government doesn't have nuclear weapons. What is inalienable has changed considerably since 1776.
Oh please, that's just hyperbole. There isn't a single example in all of human history of any Government using nuclear weapons on it's own citizenry. Given the fact that even China hasn't resorted to this I'm not real worried about it happening as an American.
Do you really think the US military would carry out an order to drop an H-bomb on an American city? This isn't Nazi Germany -- our military doesn't swear a loyalty oath to the President. They swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies and to follow the orders issued through the chain of command according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The bill of rights already protects our personal rights and limits the federal government's powers over the states and the citizens.
Actually the Bill of Rights just codified our rights. Our rights are inalienable regardless of whether or not they are listed in the Bill of Rights.
Oh, wait, the Constitution is routinely ignored by the Federal Government. So I'm sure a non-binding technology bill of rights will have a huge impact on limiting the Federal Government's actions...
Beat me to it :(
So are we going to start prosecuting auto makers for providing get-away vehicles to criminals?
If some of the anti-gun crowd had their way that's exactly what we do with the gun manufacturers when their product winds up in the hands of criminals.....
That robust frame of theirs was probably good for endurance, but those tasty suckers sure couldn't run fast!
I dunno, I saw an interesting documentary on them that suggested they probably had shit for endurance compared to us. They attributed that conclusion to their different gait and the fact that it would require more energy to move that heavy frame.
Humans aren't very fast by the standards of the animal kingdom but we do have a fair amount of endurance compared to a lot of other animals. With enough water a reasonably fit human can march all day long. Many other animals can't do that because they overheat and tire out much quicker than we do. Dogs/wolves are adapt at doing it -- maybe that explains why they adapted so easily to living with humans?
Or were neanderthals so cornered by humans that they resorted to cannibalism?
If only they had developed gunpowder and resistance to smallpox... err wait, n/m thinking of something else ;)
Cannibalism: The act or practice of eating human flesh by mankind
H. neanderthalensis != H. sapiens
But for every complete prude that wouldn't even hold hands in public, there's also someone who has to be militantly in your face about everything
I've run into those people. What pisses me off is that if you call them on it they will usually play the discrimination card even though you'd find it equally offensive to see a heterosexual couple acting in the same manner. I'm of the opinion that PDA (public display of affection) needs to be appropriate for the situation -- I'll give my girlfriend a passionate kiss when we are slow dancing somewhere but I'm not going to do the same when are sitting in a family restaurant with kids at the next table.
and yes, once upon a time when I managed a McDonalds when I was a teenager, I had to throw people out for having sex in the dining room
Hmm, must be something in the food at McDonald's. When I worked at one as a teenager we had two employees get fired for having sex in the basement on break. I probably would have called the police if I had been in your shoes. I'd suspect they broke a fair number of laws by doing that.
Unfortunately, I also know a lot of homosexuals that won't tolerate most Christians
I know a lot of people that won't tolerate most Christians. I don't consider myself particularly religious but some of the more militant atheists I've run into during my time can be every bit as judgmental as the fundamentalist christian.
What the GOP needs is a Reagan type figure. Yes, Reagan was very much a social conservative, but he largely campaigned on economic reform and bringing a pride back to the American people after the Carter "malaise."
Reagan had charisma and speaking ability as well. Something that's been lacking in the recent GOP candidates. I cringed every single time I watched McCain speak. What's amazing is that he managed to hold it as close as he did until the economic crisis hit and he "suspended" his campaign. I knew it was all over once that happened.
You don't get to that level of office in a state as big as NY without having some "friends" that you need to pay back.
That's one of the reasons I've contemplated moving to a smaller state if I ever leave NYS. It seems that once you reach a certain critical mass of population that politics turns into machine politics and money/party starts to matter more than ideas. States on my short list if I ever leave NYS would include Vermont, New Hampshire and Alaska. NH and Alaska because they line up nicely with my Libertarianism (although I worry about NH with all of the Boston ex-pats moving there). Vermont for the small state and just uniqueness of the place. Vermont is an odd case -- it's so liberal that they elected a self-described "socialist" to the US Senate, yet anyone can buy a handgun and carry it openly or concealed without needing a permit. Quite the strange combination isn't it?
Maybe living this far upstate, I'm so used to the scum coming out of NYC that I'm predisposed to assume they're all corrupt until they prove themselves otherwise
Ever seen The Wire and the political subplot during Seasons 3 and 4? It's a pretty good representation of the "compromises" that politicians make to achieve higher office. I don't think most of them start out corrupt -- I just think that you need to make so many compromises and promises to achieve higher office that eventually you lose sight of why you ran in the first place and it becomes more the institution of you than representing your constituents.
Private enterprise has not funded more than a hundredth of scientific achievements in the last century.
Yeah, except for the laser (Hughes Research Laboratories), light bulb (various private inventors, finally brought to market by Thomas Edison), electrical engineering (Telsa, Westinghouse, Edison, etc), the telephone (various inventors not connected with Government), blah, blah, blah, blah. We'd all be helpless sheep stuck in the middle-ages if it wasn't for all that Government funding of scientific research......
Nuke spammers from orbit.
But then how will I be able to refinance my mortgage while getting that penis enlargement using the money I won in the British lottery?
I'm convinced that the only real solution to spam is to find the people who are stupid enough to buy the products offered via spam and beat the ever living shit out of them. The spammers wouldn't keep doing it if people didn't keep buying their shit.....
I think what P was suggesting is that you can have absolute freedom to harm yourself, or socialized medicine. Choose one. Me, I'd choose the second, but by failing to choose you have effectively given up your right to criticize either.
I've never wanted socialized medicine, because I fail to see how having a Government ration my health care and stick it's nose into my business is any improvement over having a private company do the same. At least the private company doesn't have well armed goons to enforce it's edicts and I can choose to do business with whichever one I'd like.
As for the abortion thing... by definition, a zygote is alive (or else we need to redefine a whole lot of biology) and has human DNA, ergo, it is a human and they have the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the rest of us. I could drop dead of a heart attack right now and that zygote could miscarry, but that doesn't mean either of us should be killed for someone else's convenience
I tend to come down on the side that an individual has the right to control his or her own body and that said right outweighs the right of another to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If you needed a bone marrow transfusion and I was the only compatible donor, should the state be able to force me to donate it or should I have final say over what happens to my body? Personally I find abortion to be repugnant and those that use it as a form of birth control to be even more so but I'm just not comfortable with the prospect of state control of our bodies.
I'd like to see it become a whole lot easier to adopt unwanted children in the US to help solve the problem, since the standards are beyond ridiculous at this point and there are a lot of people that want and would care for a child, but the system refuses them for not being the absolute, perfect, fairy tale ideal
You don't even have to go through an adoption if you don't want to have an abortion. Every single state that I'm aware of (NYS included) has a safe haven law. You can leave your newborn at the hospital/police station/firehouse with no questions asked. I do agree that it should be easier to adopt though. It would help to reduce the number of abortions and make it easier to get wards of the state into loving stable homes. The current process is a joke. Friends of mine went through it a few years ago. The wife was asked if they had a good sex life. When she told them it was none of their business they told her that they have to ask because "people with good sex lives are less likely to molest children". WTF?
I don't expect anyone, straight, gay or somewhere in between, to be openly fondling each other in the restaurant.
I do find that to be pretty annoying and offensive. Were it my business I would ask them to desist and to leave if they are unable to do so. If the business-owner refuses to do so then I'm probably going to take my business elsewhere.
Again, it makes us look like the lesser party of big government rather than a party actually of small government... and why vote for the lesser party when you can vote for the full party?
I get what you are saying but there has to be some middle ground between Rush Limbaugh's desire to run 100% ideologically pure candidates and the McCain's/Specter's of the World. There does come a point when someone splits with the party on so many issues that they aren't worth supporting any longer but as you previously said you'll never manage to find someone who agrees with you on everything.
Fortunately for them, I don't see Specter making it out of the PA Democrat Primary next year.
You have more hope than I do. He'll have his fund raising machine, the support of the party establishment and lots of name recognition. Those three things usually equal victory in American elections. I'd love to be proven wrong on this though.
Which is another case of Pataki becoming indistinguishable from the Democrats the longer he was in office. Back in 1994, I actually believed in him. As time went on, he was just as irresponsible with the budget as Mario Cuomo was (and again, I return to the beginning of this thread, with the problem of the three men in a room)
I was never a fan of Pataki for a number of reasons. He seemed to treat a lot of the state agencies as patronage jobs for his political cronies. When Spitzer came in with a electoral mandate for reform I had misplaced hopes
I know this will hard for you US'ians to accept but it's a proper role for Government to regulate what you can eat when your obesity rates are driving up the cost of medicine.
Bzzt, no, it's not a "proper role" for Government to protect me from myself. If my insurance carrier wants to penalize me for a being a fatass then all the power to them. It's none of Washington's business.
Consequently, I don't think the government should take my money and use it to fund stuff like health inspections at slaughterhouses or meat packing plants, etc
I don't believe that the government should be using my money for those purposes. When you buy an electrical appliance are you content with the UL listing or do you limit your purchases to those appliances that have been tested by some Federal agency?
And finally, I'm a pacifist and believe that all violence is wrong. Therefore, none of my money should be spent on the military; for that matter, I don't want that money going to my local police force because they carry guns and nightsticks.
The difference is that the military is actually envisioned by the Constitution. Federal funding for scientific research and slaughterhouse inspection is not.
They might object but they will have been represented. That is the key difference. If the political leaders truly, routinely make decisions against the majority then they will no longer be the political leaders.
The tyranny of the majority is just as insidious as other kinds of tyranny. When the Government takes my money and uses it to fund things that I have moral objections to I have no recourse. When private capital does it I can choose to invest my funds with a different firm.
How do you take the politics out of the science when you hold the science hostage to political considerations to get the required funds?
The taxpayers absolutely have the right (under a Democratic system) to ensure expenditures of those funds are in line with their needs, values, etc. The elected officials properly make political decisions regarding spending taxpayer money--as it should be.
For better or worse a large number of those tax payers are going to object that the expenditures of these funds don't match their values regardless of what you do. Hence why it would make more sense to get the Government out of it altogether and let private capital fund this research.
It's the same old business as usual.
That's not true. The people in charge now are less interested in telling us who we can sleep with and more interested in telling us what kinds of foods we can eat. Yeah, the Government is still trying to micromanage our lives like an obsessed baby sitter, but hey, it's still change you can believe in ;)
Wouldn't it be better to really get the government out of science altogether and let the actual scientists decide what to research instead of having some politically and/or religiously motivated bureaucrat making those decisions for them? Federal funding has always come with politically motivated restrictions. When Obama said he was getting the government "out of" science by increasing governmental funding I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
I'm a fairly socially conservative atheist
I've become more socially conservative than I ever thought I would but I'm still Libertarian in that I really don't care what you do behind closed doors as long as it doesn't impact my peaceful enjoyment of life. The only social issue that I see that can't be solved through a Libertarian approach is abortion. That's a tough one and it's only made worse by the extremists on both sides, ranging from "zygote == human being and murdering abortion doctors is acceptable" to "third trimester abortions should be legal". The only thing I've been able to conclude about abortion is that the extremists on both sides of the issue scare the hell out of me.
but outside of a handful of people, the whips keep people in line. Snowe and Collins may be RINOs, but at least they're consistent in their views.
That's another thing I don't understand about the GOP. The sheer number of GOP officials and rank-and-file who cheered Specter's defection and/or have condemned Snowe and Collins amazes me. Would you rather have somebody who votes with you most of the time or would you rather run a "true" Republican who loses and wind up with somebody who votes against you all of the time?
The Democrats seem to have learned this lesson. Tester and Baucus are both unapologetically in favor of gun rights. The Liberal base doesn't much like this but when Schumer was running the DSCC he was smart enough to realize that somebody who shared his views on guns would be unelectable in Montana. So what's better? Having someone who votes against the party line on a few issues or losing the race and having someone who votes against you on all issues? More importantly, when is the GOP going to relearn this lesson?
In the outlying counties like mine, agriculture is the primary industry anyway. Nationwide, people are still going to need corn, apples, milk, etc.
It's always bothered me that our state imports so much food when we have the capacity to feed ourselves. Around here the only grocery store that even makes an effort to stock NYS produce is Wegman's. The others stock their shelves with stuff imported from California (even when it grows locally) or other far-flung locations. During the summer my GF and I make an effort to procure the bulk of our produce from local farmers markets. You get better quality and get to keep your money in the local economy. What's not to like?
I had a couple friends do that specifically... got their permit and picked up an AR-15 while they still could.
I tell my friends that as far as gun rights go I'm far more worried about Albany than I am about Washington. New gun control seems to be a non-starter at the Federal level for now. Too many Democrats got elected in rural districts and they aren't willing to lose their seats for the sake of San Francisco's agenda. The gun rights viewpoint is well represented in Washington. In Albany on the other hand.......
I'm hopeful that eventually the 2nd amendment will be incorporated against the states and we can start to roll back some of the draconian laws that NYS has on the books. The only saving grace really is the fact that we aren't Illinois or California -- but I fear that with the downstater's in full control of Albany that it's only a matter of time before we get there.
Or I could replace them with cheaper incandescents which don't come with the added bonus of needing to be driven back to the store to be properly disposed of and which can't poison me if they break.......
Wow, I wonder what kind of wattage you have to draw to heat a swimming pool? That's kind of impressive, albeit scary.
In my experience the regular old fluorescent setups handled it just fine. I am not an electrical engineer but my guess would be that you could build a better ballast when you aren't limited to the footprint of a CFL. Or perhaps the old mechanical ballasts are more resistant to voltage changes than the newer solid-state ones?
I actually preferred the non-CFL fluorescents because they wouldn't dim as noticeably as incandescents when the voltage dipped. I just wish the CFL's would have tolerated it better. I wasted a decent amount of money trying different brands and swapping them out before I gave up on it and replaced them all with incandescents.