I want to move to Japan, so I am planning a trip in a year or so; but I intend to spend $1000 on the flight and $2000-$3000 USD on hotels, food, etc. Busy city center Tokyo is not my style, I am more of a soft country setting type; I meditate a lot and enjoy playing Go and studying Aikido, have considered Judo.
Tourism is a contribution, isn't it? Money inflow into the economy. I have time, but not money to give to charity... but if I'm spending time there, I wouldn't mind helping locals out that need some labor help, or just want to play Go with someone to pass the time; it'll give me time to learn more about the culture and improve my command of the language anyway, even helping someone get their garage back in order, which is of course much more valuable than the labor put into it.
You didn't bother to read the post, or are an idiot. I explained a base psychological need for security in all things perceived as necessary for life, which is a strong evolutionary advantage and thus naturally developed as part of our species. Put packs of animals in situations where they constantly feel threatened and they will eventually begin to attack things around them, infight, etc, until they develop some sort of comfortable life.
If you have an alpha wolf that is constantly attacking members of its pack for no reason, stealing their food so they're often hungry, attacking them in their sleep, etc, eventually the other wolves will all attack it because they don't feel any safer by default anyway. They'll kill it, and one of them will become the pack leader.
Nature does not accept rule by assholes. I mean hell, the easiest way to get a girl to sleep with you is to make sure she's safe, relatively happy, not tired enough to really want to sleep, and not hungry. If she feels threatened and you start making moves, you're not getting anywhere. Doesn't this tell you something about the nature of peoples' desire for security?
I know, I really don't get it. Microsoft and PepsiCo are on there; but at the same time, Monsanto isn't (I actually only looked at the list to see if Monsanto was listed, in which case I'd have to facepalm). How the fuck is Best Buy on there? At least Verizon isn't, nor Comcast.
In any case where you feel continuously threatened, problems will occur. Stress becomes damaging, and you will seek to alleviate this stress. Because of this, people living in societies where they feel they are constantly in danger eventually form revolutions, then governments that address all their fears.
A situation which creates a society where the majority feels unsafe is abusive, and naturally rejected. A society which punishes murder, assault, theft, rape, etc reduces the amount of general danger people are in; thus these things are inherent rights: life, freedom (i.e. the freedom to say or do whatever you like without encroaching on the safety and freedom of others and without fearing repercussions), security in your belongings (that they won't be stolen), etc. If the society does not make a meaningful and generally effective attempt at ensuring these rights, that society will find itself faced with huge technical problems; then a new society will replace it.
This is a disjunct argument: we have copyright laws to encourage works to be created [by ensuring that they can be profited from, by making it possible to claim just compensation]. If you do not want your precious IP out in the world, then don't ever show it to anyone [and never profit from it, so don't even waste the time and expense creating it].
In economics, there are two kinds of resources, but I forget the names. One is a controllable resource, like access to CDs or food; while the other is uncontrollable, like access to air. While I can pick all the fruit off all the orange trees, I can't take air away from you. In arab desert country I can lord over the only source of water for two miles and become a powerful Sultan by using that influence to control the salt trade, but I can't take sunlight from you.
Of course, clean, refined, safe water is at a premium. It's also a solid good: I can sell you a gallon of water, and you can't give away two gallons of it. You could, however, buy the equipment to make water safe and pure.
Go back to pulling numbers out of your ass. 14 year copyright, 14 year patent, end of story. Even that's too long for most people to benefit... I would agree to a 6 year copyright with three filed extensions: up to 24 years. The first would be a cheap ($100) re-file; the second, moderately expensive ($1000) because if you're not making the cash in 12 years something is wrong. Besides that, you need to file all direct source material: all of the products of labor that went into the final product. This means all computer source code (but not necessarily design documentation), all the master tracks (but not necessarily sheet music, lyrics sheets, etc), computer source document files for books, etc. Where the line is drawn between "creating" and "assembling"... writing words, formatting them, etc, is "creating," while "Converting to PDF, printing," and so on is "assembling."
So if you want that big 18 or 24 year copyright, your software is getting PD'd open source, your master tracks are getting released, your word documents are being handed out, and any in-house proprietary tools you wrote or commissioned that are essential for building your work (remember, running a tool to convert X into Y is not creating, it's assembling) are also getting dumped with them.
Also, a record of all tools needed is included, and who owns the rights; upon filing, these rights holders are contacted for a copy of their tool, if not on file already in another copyright extension. If they don't extend their copyright, then that tool is released; if they do extend their copyright--twice, past the 12 year first extension--then they are also required to release all source material. This is to ensure that such tools are on file, in case someone keeps a "very specialized" piece of software NDA'd and shifted to only a few clients (a couple dozen corporations have it). The software would still go out of copyright in 6 or 12 years, but only a few people would have it to release; those corporations may well not care anymore about that particular iteration of that tool by then, and it may be lost, and incompatible with old work, and now you lose that functionality. So we want it on record: what you used, who owns it, and a copy of it.
He had a HUGE career; that's just the only childhood thing anyone in their mid-20s would most recognize if they didn't already know about Vincent Price.
If a scifi/fantasy writer rewrote Xenosaga cannon as a novel, the novel would be a different expression of the story. It would be a completely different form of literary art. Storytelling itself, however, is art; as we have acknowledged the story is art, then we must also acknowledge that the game represents an execution of the story, and is itself an artful attempt to immerse the user in that story.
Listen to audiobooks a little. The one for 1984 is well-performed; some others (imagine if Vincent Price read an audiobook--the guy that voiced Vincent van Ghoul on The Thirteen Ghosts Of Scooby-Doo) would be amazing for horror stories. Others, still, are lifeless and flat. Storytelling is an art-- not just the story, but the telling of it, the voicing of the exact same words, the use of hand movements and props and pictures, acting, even the base writing can come as different sets of words that paint the exact same scene in various tones of emotion and levels of detail. If you can argue that something tells a story, you can argue--powerfully--that it's art.
as for certain tasks [...] a trackball really doesn't cut it, but it is [...] as precise as any mouse I ever used.
So, for tasks that require higher precision and agility, it doesn't really cut it? Yet it's as precise as any mouse you've ever used... if you nudge it obsessively slowly to slide into that single pixel. Hard to make a trackball move perfectly sideways steadily too...hard to do that with a mouse, but it's not all over the place.
Using a mouse has always been far easier than anything else anyone came up with, which is why they've never been replaced despite the wide availability of nibs, touchpads, and trackballs. People buy wireless mice for their laptops even.
It sounds to me like the original articles are written by people who look at the TV or at XBox Live stats and go, "Let's play the most hyped up series... oh, this game is crap. All games are crap." These aren't people who have searched for something; they're picking them up and going, "Hmm, you see? This sucks. Okay moving on."
The fastest way to qualify something is art is to put a powerful, well-designed, emotionally moving story behind it. People can bicker over paintings of soup cans or chunks of welded metal; but they have difficulty arguing when the arrangement of dyes and inks makes words (even poetry and haiku), or when the same ugly sculpture is chiseled out of stone with a hammer. Thus I usually point to things like Golden Sun to make my point, because even if you don't like it, you can't argue that the story isn't there unless you're functionally retarded. (The Legend of Zelda reference above was a stretch in this respect, and likely to be laughed at by these sort of people as "not art.")
You can argue that someone picked a stock beat, stock bassline, and cursed a lot into a microphone and called it music; you can't look at a deep and complex story and argue that somebody just clicked a few buttons and pumped this out in 10 minutes, even if it's "just another guy wanting to be Tolkien" (the stock response to "fantasy book I didn't like" -- mind you, one of the best series I've read was a sci-fi series that the author directly admits is a retelling of Wagner's "The Ring Cycle"). People accept movies as art because it's a medium for telling a story, and people accept all written word as art by default. Make the same association with video games and you win the argument.
Realize that even this article is, "Okay, well video games CAN be art but... they're not." It's not "These games I played, they're not art;" it's "I admit they can be art, but nothing anyone has ever produced in this form was ever of any artistic value, ever." There is an inherent fallacy in this argument: the converse accident. Everyone I've met speaks English, so everyone in the world must speak English, yes? What would you suggest to combat the argument?
DFH has some disasters and some middle-grounds (60 Minute IPA is a love-hate kind of thing, 90 I can't stand), but their shelter pale ale is a favorite of mine. It's an extremely simple and relatively light pale ale that develops a nutty flavor by some magic; I've been meaning to brew a Belgian style pale ale that does the same thing with just hops, barley, and yeast.
Bass isn't particularly ground-breaking, but it's a decent pale ale. Have you had Miller? Or National Bohemian? Bass is easier to drink than Sierra Nevada; but Sierra Nevada is better. The problem is most Americans don't tolerate bitterness after living the high life on super-sugary sodas and sweet ketchup and sugar-packed sweet pickles. You give them a good beer and they gag on the bitterness; you need something good, but light. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is entirely too bitter, and it's a very light pale ale itself; personally I can't drink Sierra Nevada Torpedo, their IPA, because it's too bitter (and Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA is better, to my palate, despite being quite bitter itself-- Torpedo tastes too grassy, while 60 Minute has a very floral head from their choice of hops with a lot of malty taste to back up the bitter hoppiness).
There is a barrier to entry here. Be aware of it. If you think Islays cross that line too much, then I recommend Tullamore Dew (fuck tasteless Jameson's) in the cheap end.
While I accept your point, I strongly disagree with your suggested "tasty" drinks. Islay scotches and pale ales tend to be challenging drinks,.
everyone takes "Pale Ales" as "India Pale Ales," which are challenging. A pale ale is an EXTREMELY mild drink; the classic British Bitter is a well-balanced pale ale, and not very bitter. To put this in perspective, Sam Adams Boston Lager made me cry when I first tried beer (not used to bitter things at all), but a British Bitter pale ale was much less bitter and more palatable... it was the first beer I actually liked. I did like 60 Minute IPA by Dogfish Head, it tasted GOOD; but it was so damn hoppy (being an IPA) that it was like taking a brick to the face repeatedly.
Scottish ale is a pale ale, by the way; and the first time I tried red wine, I couldn't drink it (and white wine is pissy water) because it's too bitter and harsh. I still only really drink tawny port (ruby is too chewy and sweet) because a good red wine is completely incompatible with my palate.
It's strange to me that these people cite the big sellers, the AAA titles, the garbage being pushed and acclaimed mostly because of graphics and some new, interesting facet of gameplay. A lot of that stuff is still pretty raw and flimsy, artistically; it's a bunch of show. Bioshock is a good example: a lot of morality based decisions, and a fair sci-fi story, but it's not really more amazing than, say, Xenosaga. Xenosaga was less acclaimed for anything besides being a movie with short gameplay segments; but it would have made an excellent novel (I wish for a novelization often). You can call these about "even" artistically, but Bioshock got a hell of a lot more attention and lauding.
You'll find a lot of the same with games like i.e. Halo, which its fans say has a "deep story" but really it's the flimsiest expression of any kind of story possible. The game is simply an FPS with rainbow sprinkles; but Reach got so much serious attention. This is what these people are looking at, instead of the deep RPGs like Xenosaga or Tales of Symphonia, or games like Legend of Zelda (often a masterpiece of visual and architectural [Level design!] art, with light but well-integrated story elements; apparently Miyomoto wants to avoid heavy drama, too bad...).
Yes but it's blatantly obvious that the citizens of Utah don't know what's good for them, and they're protesting a necessary initiative to take some load off the government and put sane policies in place.
That the government is doing something only it favors doens't indicate that it shouldn't be doing something. What it indicates is that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. The fact that the people don't agree with it doesn't necessarily indicate that they know what's good for them; however, it does indicate that there is a problem somewhere else. The Utah government thus needs to examine this problem further and come up with another solution that both solves the problem (that the people are too god damn stupid to understand is actually a problem) and satisfies the people.
The real solution is to use hot water instead of a microwave. My mom won't use a microwave to boil water because "the radiation changes the stuff in the water to make it a poison" (talking about straight water, not coffee or noodles), but she'll cook other stuff in it; I attribute this to her being a retard, but being an even bigger retard than physically possible. I won't use a microwave because I've never bought one and don't need one. I always hated the results I got from a microwave anyway.
The taxes are $14/L for alcohol in the US I think. At 40%, 1.5L is $8.40 of taxes. Mind you, you're legally required to sell your liquor to a distributor, who sells it to the store, making mark-up at the brewer, distributor, and store level, so somewhere between $8.40 and $20 there's $12.60 of total mark-up, part of which pays for manufacturing, part of which pays for the bottle to put it in, part of which pays for shipping.
Is this why you should never use a non-dairy creamer with the microwave at work? Because the water may become superheated without nucleation, and then when you add a non-dairy creamer to the superheated coffee you suddenly get massive nucleation, a steam explosion, and hot water and superheated steam all over your arms?
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Yes of course, these people might reach 60 or 70 and get cancer and die, instead of reaching 62 or 72 and dying a natural death a few years later..
He's probably American. British people are rough and rude, Americans are generally just assholes. I want to move away from here.
I want to move to Japan, so I am planning a trip in a year or so; but I intend to spend $1000 on the flight and $2000-$3000 USD on hotels, food, etc. Busy city center Tokyo is not my style, I am more of a soft country setting type; I meditate a lot and enjoy playing Go and studying Aikido, have considered Judo.
Tourism is a contribution, isn't it? Money inflow into the economy. I have time, but not money to give to charity... but if I'm spending time there, I wouldn't mind helping locals out that need some labor help, or just want to play Go with someone to pass the time; it'll give me time to learn more about the culture and improve my command of the language anyway, even helping someone get their garage back in order, which is of course much more valuable than the labor put into it.
You didn't bother to read the post, or are an idiot. I explained a base psychological need for security in all things perceived as necessary for life, which is a strong evolutionary advantage and thus naturally developed as part of our species. Put packs of animals in situations where they constantly feel threatened and they will eventually begin to attack things around them, infight, etc, until they develop some sort of comfortable life.
If you have an alpha wolf that is constantly attacking members of its pack for no reason, stealing their food so they're often hungry, attacking them in their sleep, etc, eventually the other wolves will all attack it because they don't feel any safer by default anyway. They'll kill it, and one of them will become the pack leader.
Nature does not accept rule by assholes. I mean hell, the easiest way to get a girl to sleep with you is to make sure she's safe, relatively happy, not tired enough to really want to sleep, and not hungry. If she feels threatened and you start making moves, you're not getting anywhere. Doesn't this tell you something about the nature of peoples' desire for security?
I know, I really don't get it. Microsoft and PepsiCo are on there; but at the same time, Monsanto isn't (I actually only looked at the list to see if Monsanto was listed, in which case I'd have to facepalm). How the fuck is Best Buy on there? At least Verizon isn't, nor Comcast.
It actually is a natural right.
In any case where you feel continuously threatened, problems will occur. Stress becomes damaging, and you will seek to alleviate this stress. Because of this, people living in societies where they feel they are constantly in danger eventually form revolutions, then governments that address all their fears.
A situation which creates a society where the majority feels unsafe is abusive, and naturally rejected. A society which punishes murder, assault, theft, rape, etc reduces the amount of general danger people are in; thus these things are inherent rights: life, freedom (i.e. the freedom to say or do whatever you like without encroaching on the safety and freedom of others and without fearing repercussions), security in your belongings (that they won't be stolen), etc. If the society does not make a meaningful and generally effective attempt at ensuring these rights, that society will find itself faced with huge technical problems; then a new society will replace it.
This is a disjunct argument: we have copyright laws to encourage works to be created [by ensuring that they can be profited from, by making it possible to claim just compensation]. If you do not want your precious IP out in the world, then don't ever show it to anyone [and never profit from it, so don't even waste the time and expense creating it].
In economics, there are two kinds of resources, but I forget the names. One is a controllable resource, like access to CDs or food; while the other is uncontrollable, like access to air. While I can pick all the fruit off all the orange trees, I can't take air away from you. In arab desert country I can lord over the only source of water for two miles and become a powerful Sultan by using that influence to control the salt trade, but I can't take sunlight from you.
Of course, clean, refined, safe water is at a premium. It's also a solid good: I can sell you a gallon of water, and you can't give away two gallons of it. You could, however, buy the equipment to make water safe and pure.
Go back to pulling numbers out of your ass. 14 year copyright, 14 year patent, end of story. Even that's too long for most people to benefit... I would agree to a 6 year copyright with three filed extensions: up to 24 years. The first would be a cheap ($100) re-file; the second, moderately expensive ($1000) because if you're not making the cash in 12 years something is wrong. Besides that, you need to file all direct source material: all of the products of labor that went into the final product. This means all computer source code (but not necessarily design documentation), all the master tracks (but not necessarily sheet music, lyrics sheets, etc), computer source document files for books, etc. Where the line is drawn between "creating" and "assembling" ... writing words, formatting them, etc, is "creating," while "Converting to PDF, printing," and so on is "assembling."
So if you want that big 18 or 24 year copyright, your software is getting PD'd open source, your master tracks are getting released, your word documents are being handed out, and any in-house proprietary tools you wrote or commissioned that are essential for building your work (remember, running a tool to convert X into Y is not creating, it's assembling) are also getting dumped with them.
Also, a record of all tools needed is included, and who owns the rights; upon filing, these rights holders are contacted for a copy of their tool, if not on file already in another copyright extension. If they don't extend their copyright, then that tool is released; if they do extend their copyright--twice, past the 12 year first extension--then they are also required to release all source material. This is to ensure that such tools are on file, in case someone keeps a "very specialized" piece of software NDA'd and shifted to only a few clients (a couple dozen corporations have it). The software would still go out of copyright in 6 or 12 years, but only a few people would have it to release; those corporations may well not care anymore about that particular iteration of that tool by then, and it may be lost, and incompatible with old work, and now you lose that functionality. So we want it on record: what you used, who owns it, and a copy of it.
I should run for office.
Socialist Soviet Russia had no such thing as copyright, and all works published in Russia immediately entered the public domain.
He had a HUGE career; that's just the only childhood thing anyone in their mid-20s would most recognize if they didn't already know about Vincent Price.
If a scifi/fantasy writer rewrote Xenosaga cannon as a novel, the novel would be a different expression of the story. It would be a completely different form of literary art. Storytelling itself, however, is art; as we have acknowledged the story is art, then we must also acknowledge that the game represents an execution of the story, and is itself an artful attempt to immerse the user in that story.
Listen to audiobooks a little. The one for 1984 is well-performed; some others (imagine if Vincent Price read an audiobook--the guy that voiced Vincent van Ghoul on The Thirteen Ghosts Of Scooby-Doo) would be amazing for horror stories. Others, still, are lifeless and flat. Storytelling is an art-- not just the story, but the telling of it, the voicing of the exact same words, the use of hand movements and props and pictures, acting, even the base writing can come as different sets of words that paint the exact same scene in various tones of emotion and levels of detail. If you can argue that something tells a story, you can argue--powerfully--that it's art.
as for certain tasks [...] a trackball really doesn't cut it, but it is [...] as precise as any mouse I ever used.
So, for tasks that require higher precision and agility, it doesn't really cut it? Yet it's as precise as any mouse you've ever used... if you nudge it obsessively slowly to slide into that single pixel. Hard to make a trackball move perfectly sideways steadily too...hard to do that with a mouse, but it's not all over the place.
Using a mouse has always been far easier than anything else anyone came up with, which is why they've never been replaced despite the wide availability of nibs, touchpads, and trackballs. People buy wireless mice for their laptops even.
It sounds to me like the original articles are written by people who look at the TV or at XBox Live stats and go, "Let's play the most hyped up series ... oh, this game is crap. All games are crap." These aren't people who have searched for something; they're picking them up and going, "Hmm, you see? This sucks. Okay moving on."
The fastest way to qualify something is art is to put a powerful, well-designed, emotionally moving story behind it. People can bicker over paintings of soup cans or chunks of welded metal; but they have difficulty arguing when the arrangement of dyes and inks makes words (even poetry and haiku), or when the same ugly sculpture is chiseled out of stone with a hammer. Thus I usually point to things like Golden Sun to make my point, because even if you don't like it, you can't argue that the story isn't there unless you're functionally retarded. (The Legend of Zelda reference above was a stretch in this respect, and likely to be laughed at by these sort of people as "not art.")
You can argue that someone picked a stock beat, stock bassline, and cursed a lot into a microphone and called it music; you can't look at a deep and complex story and argue that somebody just clicked a few buttons and pumped this out in 10 minutes, even if it's "just another guy wanting to be Tolkien" (the stock response to "fantasy book I didn't like" -- mind you, one of the best series I've read was a sci-fi series that the author directly admits is a retelling of Wagner's "The Ring Cycle"). People accept movies as art because it's a medium for telling a story, and people accept all written word as art by default. Make the same association with video games and you win the argument.
Realize that even this article is, "Okay, well video games CAN be art but... they're not." It's not "These games I played, they're not art;" it's "I admit they can be art, but nothing anyone has ever produced in this form was ever of any artistic value, ever." There is an inherent fallacy in this argument: the converse accident. Everyone I've met speaks English, so everyone in the world must speak English, yes? What would you suggest to combat the argument?
From what I gather, the governor had no say in the matter: legislature had veto override power.
DFH has some disasters and some middle-grounds (60 Minute IPA is a love-hate kind of thing, 90 I can't stand), but their shelter pale ale is a favorite of mine. It's an extremely simple and relatively light pale ale that develops a nutty flavor by some magic; I've been meaning to brew a Belgian style pale ale that does the same thing with just hops, barley, and yeast.
Bass isn't particularly ground-breaking, but it's a decent pale ale. Have you had Miller? Or National Bohemian? Bass is easier to drink than Sierra Nevada; but Sierra Nevada is better. The problem is most Americans don't tolerate bitterness after living the high life on super-sugary sodas and sweet ketchup and sugar-packed sweet pickles. You give them a good beer and they gag on the bitterness; you need something good, but light. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is entirely too bitter, and it's a very light pale ale itself; personally I can't drink Sierra Nevada Torpedo, their IPA, because it's too bitter (and Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA is better, to my palate, despite being quite bitter itself-- Torpedo tastes too grassy, while 60 Minute has a very floral head from their choice of hops with a lot of malty taste to back up the bitter hoppiness).
There is a barrier to entry here. Be aware of it. If you think Islays cross that line too much, then I recommend Tullamore Dew (fuck tasteless Jameson's) in the cheap end.
While I accept your point, I strongly disagree with your suggested "tasty" drinks. Islay scotches and pale ales tend to be challenging drinks,.
everyone takes "Pale Ales" as "India Pale Ales," which are challenging. A pale ale is an EXTREMELY mild drink; the classic British Bitter is a well-balanced pale ale, and not very bitter. To put this in perspective, Sam Adams Boston Lager made me cry when I first tried beer (not used to bitter things at all), but a British Bitter pale ale was much less bitter and more palatable... it was the first beer I actually liked. I did like 60 Minute IPA by Dogfish Head, it tasted GOOD; but it was so damn hoppy (being an IPA) that it was like taking a brick to the face repeatedly.
Scottish ale is a pale ale, by the way; and the first time I tried red wine, I couldn't drink it (and white wine is pissy water) because it's too bitter and harsh. I still only really drink tawny port (ruby is too chewy and sweet) because a good red wine is completely incompatible with my palate.
It's strange to me that these people cite the big sellers, the AAA titles, the garbage being pushed and acclaimed mostly because of graphics and some new, interesting facet of gameplay. A lot of that stuff is still pretty raw and flimsy, artistically; it's a bunch of show. Bioshock is a good example: a lot of morality based decisions, and a fair sci-fi story, but it's not really more amazing than, say, Xenosaga. Xenosaga was less acclaimed for anything besides being a movie with short gameplay segments; but it would have made an excellent novel (I wish for a novelization often). You can call these about "even" artistically, but Bioshock got a hell of a lot more attention and lauding.
You'll find a lot of the same with games like i.e. Halo, which its fans say has a "deep story" but really it's the flimsiest expression of any kind of story possible. The game is simply an FPS with rainbow sprinkles; but Reach got so much serious attention. This is what these people are looking at, instead of the deep RPGs like Xenosaga or Tales of Symphonia, or games like Legend of Zelda (often a masterpiece of visual and architectural [Level design!] art, with light but well-integrated story elements; apparently Miyomoto wants to avoid heavy drama, too bad...).
Did you just use the "oh the rich people can pay for it all" argument?
If a 6 foot tall rock drops anywhere I can "race" to in minutes, I'm sure I'll hear it without the cameras.
Yes but it's blatantly obvious that the citizens of Utah don't know what's good for them, and they're protesting a necessary initiative to take some load off the government and put sane policies in place.
That the government is doing something only it favors doens't indicate that it shouldn't be doing something. What it indicates is that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. The fact that the people don't agree with it doesn't necessarily indicate that they know what's good for them; however, it does indicate that there is a problem somewhere else. The Utah government thus needs to examine this problem further and come up with another solution that both solves the problem (that the people are too god damn stupid to understand is actually a problem) and satisfies the people.
That's what government is supposed to do.
The real solution is to use hot water instead of a microwave. My mom won't use a microwave to boil water because "the radiation changes the stuff in the water to make it a poison" (talking about straight water, not coffee or noodles), but she'll cook other stuff in it; I attribute this to her being a retard, but being an even bigger retard than physically possible. I won't use a microwave because I've never bought one and don't need one. I always hated the results I got from a microwave anyway.
I've never seen prices that low, ever.
The taxes are $14/L for alcohol in the US I think. At 40%, 1.5L is $8.40 of taxes. Mind you, you're legally required to sell your liquor to a distributor, who sells it to the store, making mark-up at the brewer, distributor, and store level, so somewhere between $8.40 and $20 there's $12.60 of total mark-up, part of which pays for manufacturing, part of which pays for the bottle to put it in, part of which pays for shipping.
Is this why you should never use a non-dairy creamer with the microwave at work? Because the water may become superheated without nucleation, and then when you add a non-dairy creamer to the superheated coffee you suddenly get massive nucleation, a steam explosion, and hot water and superheated steam all over your arms?