If they were serving up only everything that everyone "liked", they'd be just like every other crappy news feed out there that's happy to tell you about the latest shooting spree and sex scandal in gory details (over and over and over again until something more "interesting" comes along), but not about anything that takes more than an visceral reaction to digest.
Now wait a minute. Nowhere in my post did I advocate lowest-common denominator entertainment. In fact, I said I liked some of NPR's content.
NPR-type of content is about thinking. The end result is that you might think you don't like it, but you are at least given a chance to hear it and challenged to think about it. For a change.
Oh please. Some of the segments on NPR are absolutely terrible. Diversity for diversity's sake sometimes leads to trash (it has to, if it's truly diverse). The only reason a person would leave with the impression that he's thinking from a bad NPR segment is because the authors use larger vocabularies and the topics have pseudo-intellectual overtones. In the end, the only difference these pieces have from their shock-TV counterparts is that they cater to a different type of audience--I argue that their intellectual value is more-or-less the same.
Podcasting is popular for the same reason that Tivo is popular. It allows people to easily screen through a large amount of content to get what they want, and then view it on their terms. Why wouldn't this apply to NPR? Not everybody has some masochistic desire you do to swallow whole whatever NPR throws at them.
I like NPR, but for every worthwhile segment there are ten segments on things like the Wisconsin Cheese industry, or the effect of jazz music on the modern housewife, or some truly terrible music that's only included because it's "interesting."
Listening to NPR on the radio is like browsing slashdot on 0. Sure some of the things are very insightful, but the vast majority are not. It's a very basic signal-to-noise issue. Fortunately, with podcasting, you can skip through the riff-raff, with the added benefit of simply only recording shows that you enjoy. Plus, you can skip past commercials. It's no wonder people aren't even bothering with the radio version.
The US is, compared to any other western society, extremely religious. Granted, there are quite religious countries in Europe, too (Poland, Ireland and Italy), but not to the same extend, and they seem to be more successful separating it from politics... The relatively common references to god even by mainstream US politicians, along with the Good/Evil classification, let many things appear religiously motivated, even if not intended. I assume those Americans that don't share the mainstream's religiousity perceive that rhetoric as as frightening as I do.
Throwing around those figures like you do, begs the question: why is the United States, compared to Europe, so religious? Implicit in your statements is the view that the United States is in a death spiral towards becoming a theocracy. But that couldn't be farther from the truth. Religion in America, by and large, is on a decline. The disparity in those numbers is not due to a rise in popularity of religion in the states, but rather a sharp decline in religion in Europe in the past century.
The key to preventing "more 9/11 incidents" lies in understanding the terrorists' motivation. The US' military presence in the Middle East, along with the support for oppressive regimes as in Saudi Arabia and what is seen as agressive Israeli politics/military actions, is a major factor.
What you just outlined is not their motivations but rather their demands. There is a difference. Or do you really think that withdrawing support from Isreal and ceasing to have a military presence in the Middle East would bring peace? We might as well release all female detainees while we're at it, because that's one of their consistent demands as well.
If we want to answer the question of what really motivates these terrorists we'd better be ready for some unsavory and un-politically correct answers. The first of which may be that, in truth, nothing we can do would satisfy them. The second of which might be that maybe the religion of Islam (or at least the dominate institution/interpretation of it) is not one of peace and tolerance.
Just to be clear, I'm going to respond to your post and another respondent's post at the same time.
I don't know if there are still free clinics, supported by charities, but I'd be surprised if there weren't. I never said the US system is perfect, just that it doesn't have many of the flaws of the British system.
Have you ever seen a free medical clinic? They're usually understaffed, inundated with patients, and unable to provide anything but the most basic brand of care. If you're one of those people who points at the waiting lists in the British and Canadian healthcare systems, I suggest you analyze the waiting times for treatment (assuming it's available) at free clinics and state hospitals before leveling this criticism.
Last time I saw the figure, there were 41 million medically-uninsured Americans. Claiming that free clinics will take care of their medical needs is the equivalent of "let them eat cake." Given the rapid shift in age demographics we are experiencing, our healthcare needs are, by all estimates, going to drastically increase. I don't think 'imperfect' is the right word.
It's illegal to refuse medical care in a life-threatening situation in the US. For everything else, you can always go to a state hospital. Where I live, there is the LSUS Medical Center, which is run by Louisiana State University.
Ahh... but therein lies a problem: Bouncing from life threatening crisis-to-crisis costs more than diagnosing and treating problems preventatively; with the added bonus of increased patient satisfaction and outcome. Relying upon emergency medicine to treat the uninsured is quite literally pennywise, pound-foolish.
Furthermore, imagine workers as a resource. We can easily assume that healthy workers are more productive than sick or injured workers. In this way, wouldn't it make sense, then, from a national economic perspective to treat the health of our workers as an infrastructure issue? Under the current system, might we be, in a way, hamstringing our overall economic efficiency by providing a sub-standard quality of healthcare simply because we lack a proper perspective?
But more than the economics of it all, at some point, do we not have an obligation to one another to provide a modern level of healthcare to one another if we are in a position to do so?
This debate is not about the number of people _offended_ by the cartoons and making their opinions known. This debate is about the number of people who are using the cartoons as an excuse to do illegal activities. The protest in India that you linked was peaceful. There's nothing wrong in India with having a peaceful protest and blowing off some steam. There IS something wrong in places where the government and religious authorities are taking advantage of the cartoons to incite illegal activities.
This debate is entirely about the number of people offended by cartoons published by an independent newspaper in a foreign nation. Why should Danes be beholden to Islamic standards? And even if one finds the cartoons offensive, big fucking deal... Part of being a tolerant person requires that one tries to look past cultural differences and social mores. (That is, after all, what we're told when mosques in American neighborhoods blare morning prayers on loudspeakers at 5 AM.)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset that people are protesting--that's freedom of speech as far as I'm concerned. It's why they're protesting. It just further affirms in my mind that there is no significant voice for modernity among muslims today.
It's amazing to me how many people can't make this connection between Islamic terrorism and throngs of people angrily chanting "Death to Denmark!" The two are very much related.
Assuming that there were demonstrations in 10 countries, and there were 2,000 people in each demonstration, this makes up for 20,000 Muslims involved.
I am in a generous mood, so let us say 5,000 in each demonstration, in 20 countries. Total is 100,000 Muslims then. Mind you not all of these were violent, nor involved property damage. The most notable torching of embassies was in Lebanon and Syria, perhaps a couple of others.
Now, how much is 100,000 in the total population of Muslims worldwide which is estimated at 1.2 billion or more? This is 0.008% of the total.
Even if we assume that there are 1,200,000 Muslims involved, this is still 0.01%.
Negligible for sure.
I can't believe this amount of sophistry reached a score of five. Leave it to slashdot to buy into this bullshit.
First of all, even your "generous" numbers of protestors are ridiculously low. In India there was a single protest of 10,000 people. I remember reading about one demonstration where 100,000 people participated.
People like you often try to make similar disingenuous comparisons between the number of active terrorists and the total number of muslins. But that's misleading as a measure of extremism within the Islamic world. First of all, demonstrators and terrorists are by and large only males. This cuts down on your 1 billion figure quite significantly (approximately in half). Secondly, your "total muslims" includes children and the elderly, whereas the demonstrators/terrorist figure does not. Again, accounting for this would greatly increase the number as well. But your approximations are even more wrong in that they assume that in countries as big as India and Indonesia that there is only ONE group of protestors. This is demonstrably false.
If you're not seeing my point yet, it's that your math is not even close to accurate, which makes me suspect that you were after a certain conclusion before you even started.
Let's stop with the math and just qualitatively look at the situation. If what you're saying is true--that the number of extremist muslims is negligible--then why is the muslim media itself full of extremist sentiments on issues like these cartoons, Israel, or the Iraq war? Wouldn't the moderate muslims put a stop to it? Why is it that poll after poll finds that even muslims living in European countries like England often significantly support (to the point of admitting to the pollster) Sharia law and even terrorist actions within their host countries?
Even if the number of actual extremists is low, they undeniably enjoy popular support from average muslims. Look at the protests in Syria. Syria is a virtual police state where all public gatherings require permits and permission. And yet, we're supposed to believe that a small, "negligble" group of banditos destroyed the Danish embassy. Ballocks. It's quite obvious that those responsible received a tacit approval from at the very least the government and probably the populace as well.
Let's be honest. Even if Islam truly is a religion of peace, popular Islamic culture is incredibly backward and violent and in need of change, as evidenced by this cartoon fiasco.
I don't think you should be so quick to cast aside criticism of google's collusion with the Chinese.
First of all, the fact that they offer a free service to consumers doesn't automatically exempt them from criticism. Even if they don't pay anything, given the obvious success of the company, google users' patronship is obviously worth something. If google were a charity your point might be valid, but given that it makes a profit from its current arrangement, they're fair game for criticism.
Secondly, google invites this type of criticism when they advertise themselves as a beacon of corporate morality. I think most people expect a certain amount of opportunistic behavior from corporations. But when google does the same as say Yahoo or MSN while claiming it's different, it at least, on the surface, LOOKS like hypocrisy. Can you really blame people for calling them on it?
Lastly, I really think you're missing the point. Regardless of whether a service has been added for the Chinese public, the fact remains that google, through google.cn, is willfully helping the Chinese regime censor very important and relevant information. This is a dangerous precedent and should be cause for concern.
Interesting. I also found that section rather weak as well. However, I came up with a different conclusion when I encountered this section of The Republic (which I have not read in its entirety) in one of my philosophy classes last year. The rest of the class didn't seem to agree, but I'd like to hear what your learned thoughts on this matter are.
In short, it seemed to me that Socrates was someone who delighted in showing just how wise he really was, principally by bringing others down. The epitome of this is in his classic dialogue with Euthyphro. Note that in this section he often begins his critiques with self-depreciation or outright flattery, almost as if he's intentionally trying to build his opponents up--right before he crushes them. This is classic passive-aggressive behavior, which, as anyone who's ever experienced it can attest, can be particularly frustrating. Notice how Euthyphro, after being thoroughly trounced (with Socrates completely ready and willing to continue), ungracefully exits with the line "Another time, Socrates; for I am in a hurry, and must go now." Could this excuse be any weaker? He's in a hurry only after his position falls to pieces? He might as well just pretend that someone is calling his name and run away.
When viewed in this context, is it so hard to imagine that Socrates had perhaps made fools of some powerful people within Athenian society just as he did with Euthyphro? Think about the charges against him for a moment: corrupting the youth and dishonoring the gods. What are these? They're appeals to both emotion ("Think of the children!") and religion; both of which reside in the realm of disingenuous politics, not rational arguments.
I think we're fools if we believe that Socrates was put to death entirely for the philosophical content of his arguments. As colorful as that classical image may be, I don't buy it. Much of Socrates' work is interesting because it shows that human nature has largely remained static throughout the centuries, and yet, given that that is the case, the classical view dictates that we accept that the only outcome of Socrates' philosophical confrontations was a greater understanding of the subject at hand. But this is demonstrably false. How many people today enjoy losing an argument (even if their position was wrong in the first place)? Why then should we expect people in Athenian society to be any different in this regard?
If we accept this premise that there was more going on than the philosophical differences discussed in Socrates' work, then we must include that into Socrates' point of view as well. Here's where it gets interesting. From this perspective, why wouldn't Socrates choose to either ignore the trial or escape? What would he have to gain from this decision? Well, it's quite obvious: he's simply calling their (his political enemies') bluff. Socrates--never one to be beaten--wins in the end (and in the annals of history) by intentionally martyring himself.
Somehow the above motive seems much more likely than courageously holding oneself to some nonsensical view of law. As you show, his position with Crito is uncharacteristically weak. Are we really supposed to follow unjust laws or similarly accept the punishment of just laws that are enforced unjustly, simply by virtue of our mere residence within a state? What about in the case of conflicting laws? How does one resolve the fact that the mere act of moving to a different state is not (particularly in Socrates' time) without cost or risk? Similarly, what about the easily-imagined case of large area of states all having a particular brand of an unjust law, making injustice essentially impossible to escape? The conclusions Socrates gives us to all of these questions are very unclear if not outright wrong.
Socrates was unquestionably an intelligent person. I refuse to believe that a person capable of coming up with the allegory of the cave couldn't imagine the above scenarios. H
Again, this assumes that with this strategy for every "terrorist" you take out, you don't create two new ones to take his place, and you give the big guys at the top (like Osama) less instead of more power over the people's minds and hearts [and] There is no way (or at least less chance) they will attack again on American soil as long as there is "low hanging fruit" available shorter to home so to speak (I guess this is what you meant).
And again, you're assuming that I'm saying this when I most certainly am not. Nowhere in my post did I make a reference to the absolute number of terrorists. Nor do I expect that our strategy of keeping troops in the middle east will work forever. You seem unable to make the distinction between short-term and long-term goals/effects. Our efforts in the middle east (as I understand them) are a temporary strategy to buy us time domestically (by focusing the enemy's attention on Iraq) whilst we address the social factors which lead to terrorism. The theory is (and we can debate the legitimacy of this) that a democratic society in the center of the middle east will undermine Islamic extremism and provide a model for reform to neighboring countries.
And the only way to make people swallow this, to make them support actions that may result in having their houses bombed, their country politically isolated etc, is if they feel that things are already extremely bad and will only get worse anyway.
The only way...? Don't you think that's a bit of a sweeping statement? What about an appeal to religion? What if your actions are being rewarded in the afterlife quite greatly? What if you're told that your actions are in support of your brothers and sisters or an effort to defeat the embodiment of evil? Couldn't these be other ways of garnering support that are independent of U.S. foreign policy?
You seem to be of this notion that all the problems in the world are a direct result of our actions (or perhaps inaction). What if the problem in the middle east is the middle east itself? If that's the case, how would doing nothing solve anything?
It indeed may seem as a point of personal weakness, but what if "doing nothing" actually is a better way (possibly with better only meaning "less bad"?).
Then advocates of this strategy have a hell of a lot of explaining to do to the rest of us. But you're not doing that. You're finding examples of where our current strategy isn't working, and then just throwing your hands up in the air and claiming that doing nothing would be better.
You're jumping to a conclusion without (or at least without showing us) any evidence to support it. This is completely analogous to those intelligent design idiots who think that because they've found something not yet explained by the evolutionary model that the entire theory of evolution is invalid. It doesn't work that way. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
The problem is that this is politically a very hard thing to defend, because whatever bad then happens (even if it's much less bad than in case of big actions and would stop sooner) will be put down to the "not doing anything" and pressure will keep mounting to "do something, whatever it is". On the contrary, when bad things keep happening while you are "doing something" (even if it results in throwing extra wood on the bonfire), you can say "yes, but at least we're doing something about it, and we will keep on doing it until it's over."
It's interesting how you can recognize that most people generally have a flawed sense of causality and yet you can't see how this especially applies to your own argument. You're observing bad things happening in the middle east and then assuming that these things are a result of our actions which, to you, implies we should just STOP doing what we're doing. Do you not see what's wrong with this?
[GP:]You can attempt to distract him so he's blowing things up on the other side of the world rather than in your neighborhood.
That's based on the false premise that the number of terrorists is somehow predetermined and fixed, regardless of what you do (and that you therefore preferably keep them busy as far away from you as possible). That is not true.
No it's not. Nowhere in the author's statement did he indicate that he thought there were a fixed number of terrorists.
Presenting targets of opportunity to an enemy in the form of U.S. troops is actually a good strategy. It forces them to reveal themselves by attacking us where we are most prepared. This is aggressive, yes, but not an ill-founded, strategy.
Doing "nothing" is better than doing things which as main consequence have that more people become so desperate that they are willing to blow themselves up.
Ahh.. but is based upon the false premise that terrorists are desperate, tormented souls. This isn't the case. Look at Osama Bin Laden. He was extremely rich and grew up a privileged life, only to become the most notorious terrorist in the world. And he's not an exception to this. I suggest you read "Dying to Win." The author creates a database of every suicide terrorist incident since the mid 80s until the time that the book was written. The resulting conclusion is that our stereotypical views of terrorists and their motives are strikingly incorrect.
What the we in the West view as a last desperate attempt is actually seen as just another means of coercion to achieve victory by our enemies. Many suicide terrorists are educated and not actually personally affected by the conflict in which they participate. Given that is the case, how can you be so confident in your claims that the current administration is creating more terrorists or that "doing nothing" would alleviate the situation?
I'm not saying just doing nothing is the optimal solution, but I am 100% convinced that the current approach of the US is only worsening things
Fair enough, but don't be surprised if others look upon your views as whiney criticism without a viable alternative. It's like Tim Caine's speech. He kept saying "There's a better way" after mentioning Republican failures but never cared to elucidate what that "better way" was. Now I'm no fan of the Bush administration but THAT is a position of weakness.
As I understand it, strictly speaking, no electronic device can be EMP-proof. There is only EMP-resistance. Electronics can only be rated to handle EMP of a certain strength but they still fail when encountering a stronger EMP. What determines this resistance are the properties and thickness of the casing around the electronics.
It only takes a couple of generations of that sort of selective pressure to eliminate the seriously bad alleles, or at least reduce their occurrence to the level found in the general population.
No... That's not true at all.
In fact, by mere selection alone, one can NEVER remove a recessive abnormality (what the GP was discussing) from a population, because selection depends upon the PHENOTYPE of an indivdual but the persistance of a trait depends only on the GENOTYPE. The genetic abnormalities from inbreeding are just as prevelant (if not more) in the Nth generation of inbreds as the first.
The only time where this wouldn't be the case for a particular trait might be if the recessive allele, by genetic drift, became fixed because of the small effective population size. But in such a case, the population would still suffer (i.e. have decreased fitness) from lack of genetic diversity.
a quick defrost on the countertop (it defrosts quick, just a couple of hours) won't do any harm. the cooking process will kill most bacteria.
Not necessarily.
Doing so assumes a number of things:
The initial bacterial concentrations are low. For a microwave dinner, this is probably true. But for grandma's homemade spaghetti sauce or potato salad, you could be giving the bacteria the time they need to enter the log phase of their growth pattern--meaning lots of bacteria in very little time.
The cooking process reaches all parts of the food. Again, taking your example, with boiling water this is a good assumption. With an sliced ham or thick lasaugna, this probably isn't the case--that is unless you like your food burnt or as tough as shoe leather.
The bacteria don't employ endospores or enterotoxins. Even if you manage to kill all the bacterial cells in your food (which is much harder than you might think.) or if you just get the bacterial cell concentrations to acceptable levels, you're still not in the clear. Remember, food borne illness is often not an infection but rather an intoxication.
Your cooking process kills all bacteria equally. For instance, if you bake potatoes in aluminum foil in an oven, you indeed kill all of the cells. But let's say you make too many, so you just keep the extra potatoes in their aluminum foil inside the refrigerator. This very well could select for C. botulinum bacteria. Why? The baking drives steam from the potato out, creating an anaerobic microenvironment. Without competition from any other bacteria, the C. botulinum bacteria often have time before the food cools to generate botulinum toxin.
No immuno-compromised individuals are eating the food. Eating food with high bacterial concentrations is perfectly fine for a health, young slashdot reader. However, these foods could be very harmful (or even deadly) to an immuno-compromised person such as someone who is pregnant, a child, or the elderly.
Food microbiology is complicated. There's a reason why companies pay salaries in the hundreds of thousands to talented microbiologists. Because the microbiology is complicated and dependent upon so many factors, it's best that a layperson stick to a few basic rules when preparing food, even when they seem counter-intuitive. Most of them are very simple.
This is, pure and simple, a method to intimidate so called "liberal" professors at public institutions who actually THINK. Yes i know, in this day and age, thinking should be made a crime, right? I mean jesus what happens when we actually THINK about the ramifications of our actions internally and throughout the world?
The fallacy with this is that only those with extremist views are credited with "thinking." Everyone else is a "mindless autonomaton" marching lock-and-step towards the status quo.
It's been my experience that this is the problem with philosophy and political science institutions. Almost nobody writes thesis papers on factually true, logically sound, but normal and everyday views. Only the most extreme views are given credit because those MUST be from people who "thought" MORE than their counterparts. This runs rampant until the average philosophy class has, for instance, material on how the push towards natural breast feeding is actually an attempt by the "male patriarchy" into keeping women out of the workplace. Or they have demonstrably false material from Noam Chomsky--trained a linguist but with TRIPPY (and therefore correct) views on society.
Andrew Jones doesnt realize that public funded universities support MANY different types of thought and viewpoints. I'm sure UCLA has it's share of rightwing faculty who color their teachings with Limbaugh and O'Reilly factoids.
Well if this is the case, then won't these professors be exposed too? In fact, what you're saying is true, then an APPROXIMATELY EQUAL number of professors from various viewpoints will be affected. Of course, both of us know that, if they exist at UCLA, conservative professors are few and far between or in disciplines which don't involve their politics, meaning that only extremist liberals will probably be affected; thus your sense of outrage.
This country shows all the signs of becoming a military fascist dictatorship supported by multinational corporations. Does this jog ANYONE"S memory?
Obviously quite a few, because every other reference today about Bush or republicans from liberals breaks Godwin's law. If trying to prevent or stop fascism were their goal, then I guess this might be noble. But as it stands, it's merely cheap politics meant to draw allegories between Nazis and those who might hurt the liberal cause.
The students in the classrooms can interact and criticize all they like... i'd expect that all that they [professors] do is argue with students.
Hardly. You may like to skirt around this fact, but professors have a very powerful position with respect to their class. Many grades are given completely subjectively with no option of recourse. Even the dumbest students know this. Even if a professor is completely fair in his grading, students may still be afraid to speak up and voice their views.
"Without criticism"? This isn't criticism, this is rightist ideological monitoring with intent to intimidate and/or destroy professors who don't espouse rightist viewpoints.
Did we even read the same article? Exactly what is fascist about giving students FACTUAL information about their potential professors? Since when is the public at large supposed to embrace or even ignore extremists (BY DEFINITON, read the article) in positions of influence?
The spectrum has been slammed to the right by intimidation just like this in the media and the schools. I don't know what an extremist would be, in this climate. Who's to the right of Cheney? What spectrum? It's bivalued: Bush and Cheney on the "right" and everyone else is the "left". The new definitions don't recognize extremism on the right.
Wake-up. Our political spectrum is bi-valued, but that has more to do with our TWO-PARTY system than any vast right-wing conspiracy.
Second of all, you're mad if you think extremism on the right isn't ever exposed; it ROUTINELY is. It's almost all we ever talk about here at yro.Slashdot.org, for cripes sakes! If what you're saying is true, why aren't the idiotic things Pat Robertson says accepted as the norm? (Norm for society, not him--he's fucking crazy and has been for years.) How do you explain the outrage over the recent revelation of the NSA wiretaps or the quite large anti-war movement?
Brings to mind that other article on slashdot about college students not being literate enough to parse a political argument. Might not be stupidity; might just mean they haven't been exposed to any real political thought besides Limbaugh for the last decade. Semantically mindwrecked, incapable of being reasoned with. Filled with Truthiness.
If that is the case, then shouldn't you be supporting the cause? If there truly is, as you assert, an epidemic of professors assigning books written by the heretofore-unknown conservative wing of Academia, then shouldn't we know about it?
This is fascism. Don't say it's not because a "private" group is doing it. Fascism BY DEFINITION is a partnership of government and private concerns acting in concert. The "non-government" types perform the deeds the government can't yet do; you'll find that the personel switch between government and private employment at will.
Do you even have the slightest concept of what actual fascism is? By that diffuse definition of yours, anything is fascist; everything is fascist. A contracting company constructing a government building is fascism. A successful grassroots political campaign: fascism.
Not in a unanimocracy, actually. The GNAA idiot in your community can do whatever he wants on his property, but he can't get everyone in your community to agree with his practice. The same is true for the nut job that wants Social Security -- he could continue to bring the bill to the election, but if the community doesn't want to throw moeny into a pot to be spent willy-nilly, the law won't pass.
I don't think you understand the nature of the problem. You're only thinking of passing laws in the positive sense. Sure, the GNAA idiot couldn't pass a law to intentionally create potholes in the street, but he could definitely VOTE DOWN any law to fix potholes--with exactly the same results. What's more, he could just vote against each and every law--effectively halting the local legislature until his demands are met. Properly dispersed (exactly ONE in every district), a very small minority of obstructionists could put the entire country in jeopardy.
You might argue that this wouldn't be in the personal best interests of such spoilers and thus such an event is impossible or at least unlikely. However, this would be short-sighted. What about agents or sympathizers of a foreign power or even a rival district? What about the few malevolent people who revel in the misery of others?
Lets be honest, a unanimocracy is an academic novelty, and that's putting it kindly.
All the things you ask for are tyrannical and prevent me from doing what I want to do. You have no reason to deal with public companies -- stop buying from them if they lie about their books or their products.
I disagree. All of the things you're suggesting require prerequisites that may or may not exist. First of all, consumers are only as powerful if they're informed about the market. This doesn't have to be the case, and, in fact, most assuredly wouldn't be the case if the company in question either owned or had agreements with major media companies. Secondly, the power of consumers is largely diminished in an unhealthy market (ex. a monopoly). Without a strong government, what entity would correct these unhealthy markets?
Don't force them to disclose anything.
Why not? Such disclosure is a fundamental to a healthy, free market. The benefits of corporate licensure are granted at the leisure of the public with the implicit agreement that it serve the public interest even, if only indirectly. More information about the inner workings of public companies would empower consumers and reduce corruption. There'd still be room for trade secrets, of course, but the scandals that characterize our system today would be nigh on impossible to achieve.
Big business comes directly out of the democratic process.
That's an awfully large sweeping statement. As China is proving day after day, there's nothing inherent about Capitalism that prevents non-democratic entities from participating--and competing well even.
Whenever you give 51% of the people control over the individual's freedom, you can expect there to be abuse.
Well, of course. But you're oversimplifying the systems of control within the United States. Your point might ring true if we only had a single election every four years that determined everything, but we don't. This is basic government 101 stuff. There are three branches of the federal government on different schedules for re-election. This severely limits parties from gaining and maintaining a stranglehold of power (in politics, time changes everything; a lesson Republicans are soon going to find out in the upcoming elections). Even if one party controlled the supreme court, presidency, and 51% of Congress, an extreme agenda would STILL be difficult to pursue given the likelihood of dissenters within the faction and the threat of a backlash from the electorate. Furthermore, extreme changes to the structure of the system are stymied by the fact that a change to the constitution requires 66% of the legislature and re-ratification by most states.
It's pretty well recognized that the government was designed to be inefficient and difficult to change. A slight majority of power (51%) for one faction would not equate into the catastrophic consequences you project. Come on... give the founder's a little more credit than that.
Democracy is evil, support Unanimocracy!
I hoping this is a joke, but seeing as how this is rated +5, I'll bite. What you're suggesting is little better than anarchy. In fact, in practice, it would be anarchy. Look no further than the trolls and GNAA idiots on Slashdot for the reason why. A properly dispersed, obstructionist minority could send the entire system in to a paralysis.
I sympathize with your disgust at the nature of things currently with our government. However, the real cause of the unchecked corruption by big business isn't our system of democracy or a Republican majority. After all, business was, for the most part, completely in check at one point in our history under the same basic system we have today. The devil, as always, is in the details. I'm no expert, but I would pin the problem on a few specific things such as: the lack of congressional term limits (and the rise of professional politicians), the emergence of telecommunications media, the lack of transparency and accountability within public corporations, and the lack of more stringent restrictions on campaign contributions. If any one of these flaws were to fundamentally change, I think we'd definitely see ebbing in the power of big business. Now achieving such changes in our current situation is a big problem indeed...
This is where I disagree -- when you allow international trade, you open yourself to finding people who are more efficient at a given task than people local to you. This frees up the local people to find what they're most efficient at doing.
Which, in the case of Ethiopians, for example, seems to be... well... dying.
The problem with a truly global economy is that it assumes a pretext of certain conditions (workers' representation, basic resources, market oversight, etc.), while selecting for the exact opposite. The inevitable result of this is consumers do save a few cents on products--achieving the academic ideal of efficiency--but at the expense of the health and well-being of a faraway people and land.
On the topic of efficiency, what is it that makes Malaysia, for instance, so efficient at textiles? Would you really have us believe that something particular about the region or people makes it more conducive to what amounts to unskilled, slave labor? What's really happening in these instances is that non-market values (societal independence, civil rights, environmental quality, etc.) are being disproportionately squandered to achieve maximal market competitiveness. Sure not all nations will (or will be forced to) take this route, but some inevitably will, creating the much-reviled "race to the bottom."
What ruins international trade is all the treaties, agreements and tariffs.
No, those only exacerbate the problem. What really ruins international trade (from a human condition standpoint) is the vastly skewed distribution of resources and power throughout the world. Think about it: patents, for instance, wouldn't be quite so exploitative if third world countries were producing them at the same rate per capita as their western counterparts. But this isn't the case.
Has the Bush administration actually invoked FISA as their legal basis?
No they have not. Interestingly enough, the FISA court itself became quite alarmed when evidence started to appear in its proceedings which was obtained through the executive order.
The current justification for the wire-tapping executive order is based upon the War Powers Act. As I understand it, the basic gist of this position is (1) we are at war and (2) any surveillance gathered is therefore military intelligence, exempt from the usual proceedings and review. This is, of course, is quite a dubious position to take and is probably why the president personally requested that the NYT editors not release the story about a year ago.
Remaining unsettled are some of the following questions:
Does such a broad interpretation of the War Powers act apply in a war not involving any particular nation-state?
Can the president specifically violate a congressional law using the War Powers Act?
If the old FISA standard of evidence was "more likely than not" which was supposedly too much (ex. being on a known terrorist mailing list), what is the new one?
Could this be grounds for impeachment?
Should those responsible for leaking this story to the press be prosecuted?
Exactly why didn't the NYT release the story when they first knew about it? Seeing as how they released it now, national security seems unlikely. More to the point: why now? Was it to scoop the James Risen's forthcoming book?
And, probably most importantly, was this executive order really necessary to further the War on Terror?
It's going to be interesting to see how it all unfolds over the next couple months, but it looks like it's going to get REAL ugly. Those interested should check out the new book from James Risen, the NYT reporter who did all the legwork, which should have more details. It's called "State of War," and should come out later this week.
Because you are punishing people who are successful, arbitrarily, and using the money they earned to give to people who did not earn it, also arbitrarily. Where is there any fairness in that system? It's not even a flat tax rate, where everyone pays 10% or whatever... the rich pay not only more money, but also a higher percentage. Stop me if you hear any fairness anywhere.
Taxing the rich more isn't necessarily punishing them. Furthermore, I wouldn't be so quick to call such a system arbitrary. It's not as if the rich exist and make their money within a vacuum. The rich are able to make their money as a direct result of the structure of our economic system and the security provided by the government. Arguably, they benefit the most from this arrangement and, as such, should pay more per capitia to support programs which maintain the status quo (welfare, law enforcement, and so on).
Moral obligation, maybe. Legal obligation? No way. Not in the constitution, and morally I cannot find a desire to force someone to help someone else out. Where does it end? Should a doctor be forced to provide a certain percentage of their medical knowledge to sick people for free?
Why not? I can think of worse things than establishing an sense of obligation for one another. Regardless, the slope isn't as slippery as you paint it. The law already holds those unwilling to help accountable in extreme cases. We call this criminal negligence.
In response to your specific example, many doctors are required to do a certain percentage of pro-bono cases as required by their associated hospitials. The fact that you think this is a hypothetical situation is telling to the lack of resistance these policies have received.
You have poorer friends and girlfriend's sister you could be helping out directly with the money you've earned. But instead you are forced to give much of your money to the federal government, who will waste most of it through bureacracy and ineffiency, and your poorer friends may see a very slight trickle down effect. How efficiently nice of you?... Charity starts at home my friend,
Given the egoist position you seem to espouse, I find it hard to believe that the system you envision would work. If the parent poster is naive in believing in government, you're even more naive in simply blindly trusting in human nature. What's more, you seem to be woefully ignorant of the distribution of wealth in the general population and the current nature of American society.
If simply asking for help from a family member were a solution for the poor, don't you think they would have done that already? As hard as you may find this to believe: many families are entirely poor.
In the above cases, you probably might reply that the local community would support them, which might have been true 100 years ago but certainly not today. The fact is that modern American society is probably the most mobile in the history of man. It's not uncommon to live thousands of miles away from friends or family or to change locations every couple years. Furthermore, with the increased prevalence of mass communications, the American public is increasingly becoming more and more atomized. Community groups and programs that once thrived are increasingly finding it hard to get--or even maintain--membership. In short, how can you expect knowledgeable, supportive communities to provide all-inclusive charity when their members will hardly participate or even know one another?
A friend of mine was a graduate student in philosophy and was TA'ing for a Morality and Justice section. This class was centered around take-home essay responses to prompts.
When grading one of the responses from one of a rather lackluster student my friend found that the essay was unusually good. In fact, not only was it really good, it was uncannily familiar too. It finally dawned on him why.
It was his own paper that he had written when he took the section two years earlier! Apparently, the student had taken it upon himself to hack into Virginia Tech's student fileserver and download other students' works. And yet, after all that effort, he never noticed that the paper's owner was the TA himself!
Exactly, this story completely undermines the entire argument that the patent system somehow benefits small inventors--it doesn't.
SURE, this guy won in the end... AFTER 25 YEARS. How many countless other inventors have simply given up? Would this guy have been able to also patent new ideas or defend other contested patents during this time period?
What's the point in intellectual property if you're realistically only allowed to keep what companies don't want?
I am not one to speculate on figures-- what do the numbers matter anyway? What difference does it make if it were five hunderd thousand, six million, or fifteen million?
A big difference. Simply glossing over the sheer size and malevolence of the holocaust like you're doing is misguided. The holocaust was probably the most despicable act a group of men has ever done to others. We should never forget this. (And, no, I am not Jewish.)
What you're doing is a weak attempt at moral relativism. It's no wonder you don't want to bother with numbers. You want to draw parallels between, for instance, sterilization programs that affected hundreds and the systematic torture and execution of millions--that's ridiculous.
It troubles me that nobody else has objected to your post. And yet, somehow I'm not surprised. This type of reasoning is frequently used to equate the United States to any and every evil entity that ever existed. So popular is this type of reasoning is that "Bush is a Nazi" actually turns up MORE results (with or without the quotes) in google than "Hitler was a Nazi." This is, of course, despite the fact that Hitler actually WAS a Nazi.
The end result of this isn't what you think. Always dredging up every failure of one's own when discussing the unrelated evils of others doesn't lead to a cosmopolitan, enlightened view of the world. Rather, it diffuses any sense of morality entirely. A moral stance becomes impossible to hold when being apparently accountable for comparable acts of ancestors from hundreds of years ago.
Put simply, your type of analysis is a contrarian point of view that adds little to the discussion. Did anyone actually forget about the atrocities against Native Americans? Do we need to be reminded that--yes-- those too were evil?
Know your history, yes, but at least keep things in perspective.
At any given point in time any one of us has a number of cancerous cells in our body. They're not sentiently floating around looking for tissue to victimize--they're doing what they've been programmed to do: survive.
Interesting post. However, on this point I disagree. Normal cells are not programmed to survive as individuals. In fact, programmed cell death is crutial to our very existence as organisms. The very fact that cancer cells lack these functions is what makes them so dangerous, and why it's a useful analogy to compare cancerous cells to something along the lines of a parasite or entity unto itself.
The real question has always been: Why isn't the immune system responding appropriately? In most cancers the immune system is responding improperly or flat-out ignoring the problem.
I just wanted to add here that part of the problem is that the rapid division and high mutational rates of cancerous cells selects for cancerous cells which are most able to evade the immune system and proliferate most efficiently. Indeed, even in individuals where the immune system is by all accounts functioning well, cancer can still develop because of these evasive mutations.
Furthermore, an important function of the immune system is tolerance of self-antigens. If it doesn't, an autoimmune disease (or allergy) is the result. For most mammals, existence is therefore a balancing act between overreacting to perceived threats or incorrectly classifying a threat as "self." It's not that the immune system is necessarily ignoring a threat but rather (fatally) erring on the side of caution.
Considering that you picked these three examples, I feel it's safe to assume that the rest of our interventions (hundreds over the last century) must have been quite misguided.
If you're really willing to make an assumption like that, then do I even need to point out the problem with your thinking?
All the parent poster was pointing out was the the U.S. isn't some completely evil institution that sows death and destruction around the world with every action that it takes. He needn't provide every case where the United States did the "right thing" to invalidate the GP's very biased sentiment.
I'm not going to sit here and defend every instance of United States foreign policy for the past "40+ years". Yes, we all know much of it, intentionally or not, was fucked up. All I'm asking for is a bit of fairness in our critique. The United States has done a lot of good. Few (if any) countries in the United States' current position could or would do better. Believe it or not, some atrocities were not the result of US action. And like it or not, the United States is overall a stablizing force in Geopolitics. If the United States fell by the wayside, things would probably become much worse, not better. Try explaining that to the "Blame America First"-brigade, though.
Slashdot Mirror
If they were serving up only everything that everyone "liked", they'd be just like every other crappy news feed out there that's happy to tell you about the latest shooting spree and sex scandal in gory details (over and over and over again until something more "interesting" comes along), but not about anything that takes more than an visceral reaction to digest.
Now wait a minute. Nowhere in my post did I advocate lowest-common denominator entertainment. In fact, I said I liked some of NPR's content.
NPR-type of content is about thinking. The end result is that you might think you don't like it, but you are at least given a chance to hear it and challenged to think about it. For a change.
Oh please. Some of the segments on NPR are absolutely terrible. Diversity for diversity's sake sometimes leads to trash (it has to, if it's truly diverse). The only reason a person would leave with the impression that he's thinking from a bad NPR segment is because the authors use larger vocabularies and the topics have pseudo-intellectual overtones. In the end, the only difference these pieces have from their shock-TV counterparts is that they cater to a different type of audience--I argue that their intellectual value is more-or-less the same.
Podcasting is popular for the same reason that Tivo is popular. It allows people to easily screen through a large amount of content to get what they want, and then view it on their terms. Why wouldn't this apply to NPR? Not everybody has some masochistic desire you do to swallow whole whatever NPR throws at them.
-Grym
I like NPR, but for every worthwhile segment there are ten segments on things like the Wisconsin Cheese industry, or the effect of jazz music on the modern housewife, or some truly terrible music that's only included because it's "interesting."
Listening to NPR on the radio is like browsing slashdot on 0. Sure some of the things are very insightful, but the vast majority are not. It's a very basic signal-to-noise issue. Fortunately, with podcasting, you can skip through the riff-raff, with the added benefit of simply only recording shows that you enjoy. Plus, you can skip past commercials. It's no wonder people aren't even bothering with the radio version.
-Grym
The US is, compared to any other western society, extremely religious. Granted, there are quite religious countries in Europe, too (Poland, Ireland and Italy), but not to the same extend, and they seem to be more successful separating it from politics... The relatively common references to god even by mainstream US politicians, along with the Good/Evil classification, let many things appear religiously motivated, even if not intended. I assume those Americans that don't share the mainstream's religiousity perceive that rhetoric as as frightening as I do.
Throwing around those figures like you do, begs the question: why is the United States, compared to Europe, so religious? Implicit in your statements is the view that the United States is in a death spiral towards becoming a theocracy. But that couldn't be farther from the truth. Religion in America, by and large, is on a decline. The disparity in those numbers is not due to a rise in popularity of religion in the states, but rather a sharp decline in religion in Europe in the past century.
The key to preventing "more 9/11 incidents" lies in understanding the terrorists' motivation. The US' military presence in the Middle East, along with the support for oppressive regimes as in Saudi Arabia and what is seen as agressive Israeli politics/military actions, is a major factor.
What you just outlined is not their motivations but rather their demands. There is a difference. Or do you really think that withdrawing support from Isreal and ceasing to have a military presence in the Middle East would bring peace? We might as well release all female detainees while we're at it, because that's one of their consistent demands as well.
If we want to answer the question of what really motivates these terrorists we'd better be ready for some unsavory and un-politically correct answers. The first of which may be that, in truth, nothing we can do would satisfy them. The second of which might be that maybe the religion of Islam (or at least the dominate institution/interpretation of it) is not one of peace and tolerance.
-Grym
Just to be clear, I'm going to respond to your post and another respondent's post at the same time.
I don't know if there are still free clinics, supported by charities, but I'd be surprised if there weren't. I never said the US system is perfect, just that it doesn't have many of the flaws of the British system.
Have you ever seen a free medical clinic? They're usually understaffed, inundated with patients, and unable to provide anything but the most basic brand of care. If you're one of those people who points at the waiting lists in the British and Canadian healthcare systems, I suggest you analyze the waiting times for treatment (assuming it's available) at free clinics and state hospitals before leveling this criticism.
Last time I saw the figure, there were 41 million medically-uninsured Americans. Claiming that free clinics will take care of their medical needs is the equivalent of "let them eat cake." Given the rapid shift in age demographics we are experiencing, our healthcare needs are, by all estimates, going to drastically increase. I don't think 'imperfect' is the right word.
It's illegal to refuse medical care in a life-threatening situation in the US. For everything else, you can always go to a state hospital. Where I live, there is the LSUS Medical Center, which is run by Louisiana State University.
Ahh... but therein lies a problem: Bouncing from life threatening crisis-to-crisis costs more than diagnosing and treating problems preventatively; with the added bonus of increased patient satisfaction and outcome. Relying upon emergency medicine to treat the uninsured is quite literally pennywise, pound-foolish.
Furthermore, imagine workers as a resource. We can easily assume that healthy workers are more productive than sick or injured workers. In this way, wouldn't it make sense, then, from a national economic perspective to treat the health of our workers as an infrastructure issue? Under the current system, might we be, in a way, hamstringing our overall economic efficiency by providing a sub-standard quality of healthcare simply because we lack a proper perspective?
But more than the economics of it all, at some point, do we not have an obligation to one another to provide a modern level of healthcare to one another if we are in a position to do so?
-Grym
This debate is not about the number of people _offended_ by the cartoons and making their opinions known. This debate is about the number of people who are using the cartoons as an excuse to do illegal activities. The protest in India that you linked was peaceful. There's nothing wrong in India with having a peaceful protest and blowing off some steam. There IS something wrong in places where the government and religious authorities are taking advantage of the cartoons to incite illegal activities.
This debate is entirely about the number of people offended by cartoons published by an independent newspaper in a foreign nation. Why should Danes be beholden to Islamic standards? And even if one finds the cartoons offensive, big fucking deal... Part of being a tolerant person requires that one tries to look past cultural differences and social mores. (That is, after all, what we're told when mosques in American neighborhoods blare morning prayers on loudspeakers at 5 AM.)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset that people are protesting--that's freedom of speech as far as I'm concerned. It's why they're protesting. It just further affirms in my mind that there is no significant voice for modernity among muslims today.
It's amazing to me how many people can't make this connection between Islamic terrorism and throngs of people angrily chanting "Death to Denmark!" The two are very much related.
-Grym
Let us do some math.
Assuming that there were demonstrations in 10 countries, and there were 2,000 people in each demonstration, this makes up for 20,000 Muslims involved.
I am in a generous mood, so let us say 5,000 in each demonstration, in 20 countries. Total is 100,000 Muslims then. Mind you not all of these were violent, nor involved property damage. The most notable torching of embassies was in Lebanon and Syria, perhaps a couple of others.
Now, how much is 100,000 in the total population of Muslims worldwide which is estimated at 1.2 billion or more? This is 0.008% of the total.
Even if we assume that there are 1,200,000 Muslims involved, this is still 0.01%.
Negligible for sure.
I can't believe this amount of sophistry reached a score of five. Leave it to slashdot to buy into this bullshit.
First of all, even your "generous" numbers of protestors are ridiculously low. In India there was a single protest of 10,000 people. I remember reading about one demonstration where 100,000 people participated.
People like you often try to make similar disingenuous comparisons between the number of active terrorists and the total number of muslins. But that's misleading as a measure of extremism within the Islamic world. First of all, demonstrators and terrorists are by and large only males. This cuts down on your 1 billion figure quite significantly (approximately in half). Secondly, your "total muslims" includes children and the elderly, whereas the demonstrators/terrorist figure does not. Again, accounting for this would greatly increase the number as well. But your approximations are even more wrong in that they assume that in countries as big as India and Indonesia that there is only ONE group of protestors. This is demonstrably false.
If you're not seeing my point yet, it's that your math is not even close to accurate, which makes me suspect that you were after a certain conclusion before you even started.
Let's stop with the math and just qualitatively look at the situation. If what you're saying is true--that the number of extremist muslims is negligible--then why is the muslim media itself full of extremist sentiments on issues like these cartoons, Israel, or the Iraq war? Wouldn't the moderate muslims put a stop to it? Why is it that poll after poll finds that even muslims living in European countries like England often significantly support (to the point of admitting to the pollster) Sharia law and even terrorist actions within their host countries?
Even if the number of actual extremists is low, they undeniably enjoy popular support from average muslims. Look at the protests in Syria. Syria is a virtual police state where all public gatherings require permits and permission. And yet, we're supposed to believe that a small, "negligble" group of banditos destroyed the Danish embassy. Ballocks. It's quite obvious that those responsible received a tacit approval from at the very least the government and probably the populace as well.
Let's be honest. Even if Islam truly is a religion of peace, popular Islamic culture is incredibly backward and violent and in need of change, as evidenced by this cartoon fiasco.
-Grym
I don't think you should be so quick to cast aside criticism of google's collusion with the Chinese.
First of all, the fact that they offer a free service to consumers doesn't automatically exempt them from criticism. Even if they don't pay anything, given the obvious success of the company, google users' patronship is obviously worth something. If google were a charity your point might be valid, but given that it makes a profit from its current arrangement, they're fair game for criticism.
Secondly, google invites this type of criticism when they advertise themselves as a beacon of corporate morality. I think most people expect a certain amount of opportunistic behavior from corporations. But when google does the same as say Yahoo or MSN while claiming it's different, it at least, on the surface, LOOKS like hypocrisy. Can you really blame people for calling them on it?
Lastly, I really think you're missing the point. Regardless of whether a service has been added for the Chinese public, the fact remains that google, through google.cn, is willfully helping the Chinese regime censor very important and relevant information. This is a dangerous precedent and should be cause for concern.
-Grym
Interesting. I also found that section rather weak as well. However, I came up with a different conclusion when I encountered this section of The Republic (which I have not read in its entirety) in one of my philosophy classes last year. The rest of the class didn't seem to agree, but I'd like to hear what your learned thoughts on this matter are.
In short, it seemed to me that Socrates was someone who delighted in showing just how wise he really was, principally by bringing others down. The epitome of this is in his classic dialogue with Euthyphro. Note that in this section he often begins his critiques with self-depreciation or outright flattery, almost as if he's intentionally trying to build his opponents up--right before he crushes them. This is classic passive-aggressive behavior, which, as anyone who's ever experienced it can attest, can be particularly frustrating. Notice how Euthyphro, after being thoroughly trounced (with Socrates completely ready and willing to continue), ungracefully exits with the line "Another time, Socrates; for I am in a hurry, and must go now." Could this excuse be any weaker? He's in a hurry only after his position falls to pieces? He might as well just pretend that someone is calling his name and run away.
When viewed in this context, is it so hard to imagine that Socrates had perhaps made fools of some powerful people within Athenian society just as he did with Euthyphro? Think about the charges against him for a moment: corrupting the youth and dishonoring the gods. What are these? They're appeals to both emotion ("Think of the children!") and religion; both of which reside in the realm of disingenuous politics, not rational arguments.
I think we're fools if we believe that Socrates was put to death entirely for the philosophical content of his arguments. As colorful as that classical image may be, I don't buy it. Much of Socrates' work is interesting because it shows that human nature has largely remained static throughout the centuries, and yet, given that that is the case, the classical view dictates that we accept that the only outcome of Socrates' philosophical confrontations was a greater understanding of the subject at hand. But this is demonstrably false. How many people today enjoy losing an argument (even if their position was wrong in the first place)? Why then should we expect people in Athenian society to be any different in this regard?
If we accept this premise that there was more going on than the philosophical differences discussed in Socrates' work, then we must include that into Socrates' point of view as well. Here's where it gets interesting. From this perspective, why wouldn't Socrates choose to either ignore the trial or escape? What would he have to gain from this decision? Well, it's quite obvious: he's simply calling their (his political enemies') bluff. Socrates--never one to be beaten--wins in the end (and in the annals of history) by intentionally martyring himself.
Somehow the above motive seems much more likely than courageously holding oneself to some nonsensical view of law. As you show, his position with Crito is uncharacteristically weak. Are we really supposed to follow unjust laws or similarly accept the punishment of just laws that are enforced unjustly, simply by virtue of our mere residence within a state? What about in the case of conflicting laws? How does one resolve the fact that the mere act of moving to a different state is not (particularly in Socrates' time) without cost or risk? Similarly, what about the easily-imagined case of large area of states all having a particular brand of an unjust law, making injustice essentially impossible to escape? The conclusions Socrates gives us to all of these questions are very unclear if not outright wrong.
Socrates was unquestionably an intelligent person. I refuse to believe that a person capable of coming up with the allegory of the cave couldn't imagine the above scenarios. H
Again, this assumes that with this strategy for every "terrorist" you take out, you don't create two new ones to take his place, and you give the big guys at the top (like Osama) less instead of more power over the people's minds and hearts [and] There is no way (or at least less chance) they will attack again on American soil as long as there is "low hanging fruit" available shorter to home so to speak (I guess this is what you meant).
And again, you're assuming that I'm saying this when I most certainly am not. Nowhere in my post did I make a reference to the absolute number of terrorists. Nor do I expect that our strategy of keeping troops in the middle east will work forever. You seem unable to make the distinction between short-term and long-term goals/effects. Our efforts in the middle east (as I understand them) are a temporary strategy to buy us time domestically (by focusing the enemy's attention on Iraq) whilst we address the social factors which lead to terrorism. The theory is (and we can debate the legitimacy of this) that a democratic society in the center of the middle east will undermine Islamic extremism and provide a model for reform to neighboring countries.
And the only way to make people swallow this, to make them support actions that may result in having their houses bombed, their country politically isolated etc, is if they feel that things are already extremely bad and will only get worse anyway.
The only way...? Don't you think that's a bit of a sweeping statement? What about an appeal to religion? What if your actions are being rewarded in the afterlife quite greatly? What if you're told that your actions are in support of your brothers and sisters or an effort to defeat the embodiment of evil? Couldn't these be other ways of garnering support that are independent of U.S. foreign policy?
You seem to be of this notion that all the problems in the world are a direct result of our actions (or perhaps inaction). What if the problem in the middle east is the middle east itself? If that's the case, how would doing nothing solve anything?
It indeed may seem as a point of personal weakness, but what if "doing nothing" actually is a better way (possibly with better only meaning "less bad"?).
Then advocates of this strategy have a hell of a lot of explaining to do to the rest of us. But you're not doing that. You're finding examples of where our current strategy isn't working, and then just throwing your hands up in the air and claiming that doing nothing would be better.
You're jumping to a conclusion without (or at least without showing us) any evidence to support it. This is completely analogous to those intelligent design idiots who think that because they've found something not yet explained by the evolutionary model that the entire theory of evolution is invalid. It doesn't work that way. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
The problem is that this is politically a very hard thing to defend, because whatever bad then happens (even if it's much less bad than in case of big actions and would stop sooner) will be put down to the "not doing anything" and pressure will keep mounting to "do something, whatever it is". On the contrary, when bad things keep happening while you are "doing something" (even if it results in throwing extra wood on the bonfire), you can say "yes, but at least we're doing something about it, and we will keep on doing it until it's over."
It's interesting how you can recognize that most people generally have a flawed sense of causality and yet you can't see how this especially applies to your own argument. You're observing bad things happening in the middle east and then assuming that these things are a result of our actions which, to you, implies we should just STOP doing what we're doing. Do you not see what's wrong with this?
-Grym
That's based on the false premise that the number of terrorists is somehow predetermined and fixed, regardless of what you do (and that you therefore preferably keep them busy as far away from you as possible). That is not true.
No it's not. Nowhere in the author's statement did he indicate that he thought there were a fixed number of terrorists.
Presenting targets of opportunity to an enemy in the form of U.S. troops is actually a good strategy. It forces them to reveal themselves by attacking us where we are most prepared. This is aggressive, yes, but not an ill-founded, strategy.
Doing "nothing" is better than doing things which as main consequence have that more people become so desperate that they are willing to blow themselves up.
Ahh.. but is based upon the false premise that terrorists are desperate, tormented souls. This isn't the case. Look at Osama Bin Laden. He was extremely rich and grew up a privileged life, only to become the most notorious terrorist in the world. And he's not an exception to this. I suggest you read "Dying to Win." The author creates a database of every suicide terrorist incident since the mid 80s until the time that the book was written. The resulting conclusion is that our stereotypical views of terrorists and their motives are strikingly incorrect.
What the we in the West view as a last desperate attempt is actually seen as just another means of coercion to achieve victory by our enemies. Many suicide terrorists are educated and not actually personally affected by the conflict in which they participate. Given that is the case, how can you be so confident in your claims that the current administration is creating more terrorists or that "doing nothing" would alleviate the situation?
I'm not saying just doing nothing is the optimal solution, but I am 100% convinced that the current approach of the US is only worsening things
Fair enough, but don't be surprised if others look upon your views as whiney criticism without a viable alternative. It's like Tim Caine's speech. He kept saying "There's a better way" after mentioning Republican failures but never cared to elucidate what that "better way" was. Now I'm no fan of the Bush administration but THAT is a position of weakness.
-Grym
As I understand it, strictly speaking, no electronic device can be EMP-proof. There is only EMP-resistance. Electronics can only be rated to handle EMP of a certain strength but they still fail when encountering a stronger EMP. What determines this resistance are the properties and thickness of the casing around the electronics.
-Grym
It only takes a couple of generations of that sort of selective pressure to eliminate the seriously bad alleles, or at least reduce their occurrence to the level found in the general population.
No... That's not true at all.
In fact, by mere selection alone, one can NEVER remove a recessive abnormality (what the GP was discussing) from a population, because selection depends upon the PHENOTYPE of an indivdual but the persistance of a trait depends only on the GENOTYPE. The genetic abnormalities from inbreeding are just as prevelant (if not more) in the Nth generation of inbreds as the first.
The only time where this wouldn't be the case for a particular trait might be if the recessive allele, by genetic drift, became fixed because of the small effective population size. But in such a case, the population would still suffer (i.e. have decreased fitness) from lack of genetic diversity.
-Grym
a quick defrost on the countertop (it defrosts quick, just a couple of hours) won't do any harm. the cooking process will kill most bacteria.
Not necessarily.
Doing so assumes a number of things:
Food microbiology is complicated. There's a reason why companies pay salaries in the hundreds of thousands to talented microbiologists. Because the microbiology is complicated and dependent upon so many factors, it's best that a layperson stick to a few basic rules when preparing food, even when they seem counter-intuitive. Most of them are very simple.
-Grym
This is, pure and simple, a method to intimidate so called "liberal" professors at public institutions who actually THINK. Yes i know, in this day and age, thinking should be made a crime, right? I mean jesus what happens when we actually THINK about the ramifications of our actions internally and throughout the world?
The fallacy with this is that only those with extremist views are credited with "thinking." Everyone else is a "mindless autonomaton" marching lock-and-step towards the status quo.
It's been my experience that this is the problem with philosophy and political science institutions. Almost nobody writes thesis papers on factually true, logically sound, but normal and everyday views. Only the most extreme views are given credit because those MUST be from people who "thought" MORE than their counterparts. This runs rampant until the average philosophy class has, for instance, material on how the push towards natural breast feeding is actually an attempt by the "male patriarchy" into keeping women out of the workplace. Or they have demonstrably false material from Noam Chomsky--trained a linguist but with TRIPPY (and therefore correct) views on society.
Andrew Jones doesnt realize that public funded universities support MANY different types of thought and viewpoints. I'm sure UCLA has it's share of rightwing faculty who color their teachings with Limbaugh and O'Reilly factoids.
Well if this is the case, then won't these professors be exposed too? In fact, what you're saying is true, then an APPROXIMATELY EQUAL number of professors from various viewpoints will be affected. Of course, both of us know that, if they exist at UCLA, conservative professors are few and far between or in disciplines which don't involve their politics, meaning that only extremist liberals will probably be affected; thus your sense of outrage.
This country shows all the signs of becoming a military fascist dictatorship supported by multinational corporations. Does this jog ANYONE"S memory?
Obviously quite a few, because every other reference today about Bush or republicans from liberals breaks Godwin's law. If trying to prevent or stop fascism were their goal, then I guess this might be noble. But as it stands, it's merely cheap politics meant to draw allegories between Nazis and those who might hurt the liberal cause.
-Grym
The students in the classrooms can interact and criticize all they like... i'd expect that all that they [professors] do is argue with students.
Hardly. You may like to skirt around this fact, but professors have a very powerful position with respect to their class. Many grades are given completely subjectively with no option of recourse. Even the dumbest students know this. Even if a professor is completely fair in his grading, students may still be afraid to speak up and voice their views.
"Without criticism"? This isn't criticism, this is rightist ideological monitoring with intent to intimidate and/or destroy professors who don't espouse rightist viewpoints.
Did we even read the same article? Exactly what is fascist about giving students FACTUAL information about their potential professors? Since when is the public at large supposed to embrace or even ignore extremists (BY DEFINITON, read the article) in positions of influence?
The spectrum has been slammed to the right by intimidation just like this in the media and the schools. I don't know what an extremist would be, in this climate. Who's to the right of Cheney? What spectrum? It's bivalued: Bush and Cheney on the "right" and everyone else is the "left". The new definitions don't recognize extremism on the right.
Wake-up. Our political spectrum is bi-valued, but that has more to do with our TWO-PARTY system than any vast right-wing conspiracy.
Second of all, you're mad if you think extremism on the right isn't ever exposed; it ROUTINELY is. It's almost all we ever talk about here at yro.Slashdot.org, for cripes sakes! If what you're saying is true, why aren't the idiotic things Pat Robertson says accepted as the norm? (Norm for society, not him--he's fucking crazy and has been for years.) How do you explain the outrage over the recent revelation of the NSA wiretaps or the quite large anti-war movement?
Brings to mind that other article on slashdot about college students not being literate enough to parse a political argument. Might not be stupidity; might just mean they haven't been exposed to any real political thought besides Limbaugh for the last decade. Semantically mindwrecked, incapable of being reasoned with. Filled with Truthiness.
If that is the case, then shouldn't you be supporting the cause? If there truly is, as you assert, an epidemic of professors assigning books written by the heretofore-unknown conservative wing of Academia, then shouldn't we know about it?
This is fascism. Don't say it's not because a "private" group is doing it. Fascism BY DEFINITION is a partnership of government and private concerns acting in concert. The "non-government" types perform the deeds the government can't yet do; you'll find that the personel switch between government and private employment at will.
Do you even have the slightest concept of what actual fascism is? By that diffuse definition of yours, anything is fascist; everything is fascist. A contracting company constructing a government building is fascism. A successful grassroots political campaign: fascism.
-Grym
I don't think you understand the nature of the problem. You're only thinking of passing laws in the positive sense. Sure, the GNAA idiot couldn't pass a law to intentionally create potholes in the street, but he could definitely VOTE DOWN any law to fix potholes--with exactly the same results. What's more, he could just vote against each and every law--effectively halting the local legislature until his demands are met. Properly dispersed (exactly ONE in every district), a very small minority of obstructionists could put the entire country in jeopardy.
You might argue that this wouldn't be in the personal best interests of such spoilers and thus such an event is impossible or at least unlikely. However, this would be short-sighted. What about agents or sympathizers of a foreign power or even a rival district? What about the few malevolent people who revel in the misery of others?
Lets be honest, a unanimocracy is an academic novelty, and that's putting it kindly.
All the things you ask for are tyrannical and prevent me from doing what I want to do. You have no reason to deal with public companies -- stop buying from them if they lie about their books or their products.
I disagree. All of the things you're suggesting require prerequisites that may or may not exist. First of all, consumers are only as powerful if they're informed about the market. This doesn't have to be the case, and, in fact, most assuredly wouldn't be the case if the company in question either owned or had agreements with major media companies. Secondly, the power of consumers is largely diminished in an unhealthy market (ex. a monopoly). Without a strong government, what entity would correct these unhealthy markets?
Don't force them to disclose anything.
Why not? Such disclosure is a fundamental to a healthy, free market. The benefits of corporate licensure are granted at the leisure of the public with the implicit agreement that it serve the public interest even, if only indirectly. More information about the inner workings of public companies would empower consumers and reduce corruption. There'd still be room for trade secrets, of course, but the scandals that characterize our system today would be nigh on impossible to achieve.
-Grym
Big business comes directly out of the democratic process.
That's an awfully large sweeping statement. As China is proving day after day, there's nothing inherent about Capitalism that prevents non-democratic entities from participating--and competing well even.
Whenever you give 51% of the people control over the individual's freedom, you can expect there to be abuse.
Well, of course. But you're oversimplifying the systems of control within the United States. Your point might ring true if we only had a single election every four years that determined everything, but we don't. This is basic government 101 stuff. There are three branches of the federal government on different schedules for re-election. This severely limits parties from gaining and maintaining a stranglehold of power (in politics, time changes everything; a lesson Republicans are soon going to find out in the upcoming elections). Even if one party controlled the supreme court, presidency, and 51% of Congress, an extreme agenda would STILL be difficult to pursue given the likelihood of dissenters within the faction and the threat of a backlash from the electorate. Furthermore, extreme changes to the structure of the system are stymied by the fact that a change to the constitution requires 66% of the legislature and re-ratification by most states.
It's pretty well recognized that the government was designed to be inefficient and difficult to change. A slight majority of power (51%) for one faction would not equate into the catastrophic consequences you project. Come on... give the founder's a little more credit than that.
Democracy is evil, support Unanimocracy!
I hoping this is a joke, but seeing as how this is rated +5, I'll bite. What you're suggesting is little better than anarchy. In fact, in practice, it would be anarchy. Look no further than the trolls and GNAA idiots on Slashdot for the reason why. A properly dispersed, obstructionist minority could send the entire system in to a paralysis.
I sympathize with your disgust at the nature of things currently with our government. However, the real cause of the unchecked corruption by big business isn't our system of democracy or a Republican majority. After all, business was, for the most part, completely in check at one point in our history under the same basic system we have today. The devil, as always, is in the details. I'm no expert, but I would pin the problem on a few specific things such as: the lack of congressional term limits (and the rise of professional politicians), the emergence of telecommunications media, the lack of transparency and accountability within public corporations, and the lack of more stringent restrictions on campaign contributions. If any one of these flaws were to fundamentally change, I think we'd definitely see ebbing in the power of big business. Now achieving such changes in our current situation is a big problem indeed...
-Grym
This is where I disagree -- when you allow international trade, you open yourself to finding people who are more efficient at a given task than people local to you. This frees up the local people to find what they're most efficient at doing.
Which, in the case of Ethiopians, for example, seems to be... well... dying.
The problem with a truly global economy is that it assumes a pretext of certain conditions (workers' representation, basic resources, market oversight, etc.), while selecting for the exact opposite. The inevitable result of this is consumers do save a few cents on products--achieving the academic ideal of efficiency--but at the expense of the health and well-being of a faraway people and land.
On the topic of efficiency, what is it that makes Malaysia, for instance, so efficient at textiles? Would you really have us believe that something particular about the region or people makes it more conducive to what amounts to unskilled, slave labor? What's really happening in these instances is that non-market values (societal independence, civil rights, environmental quality, etc.) are being disproportionately squandered to achieve maximal market competitiveness. Sure not all nations will (or will be forced to) take this route, but some inevitably will, creating the much-reviled "race to the bottom."
What ruins international trade is all the treaties, agreements and tariffs.
No, those only exacerbate the problem. What really ruins international trade (from a human condition standpoint) is the vastly skewed distribution of resources and power throughout the world. Think about it: patents, for instance, wouldn't be quite so exploitative if third world countries were producing them at the same rate per capita as their western counterparts. But this isn't the case.
-Grym
Has the Bush administration actually invoked FISA as their legal basis?
No they have not. Interestingly enough, the FISA court itself became quite alarmed when evidence started to appear in its proceedings which was obtained through the executive order.
The current justification for the wire-tapping executive order is based upon the War Powers Act. As I understand it, the basic gist of this position is (1) we are at war and (2) any surveillance gathered is therefore military intelligence, exempt from the usual proceedings and review. This is, of course, is quite a dubious position to take and is probably why the president personally requested that the NYT editors not release the story about a year ago.
Remaining unsettled are some of the following questions:
It's going to be interesting to see how it all unfolds over the next couple months, but it looks like it's going to get REAL ugly. Those interested should check out the new book from James Risen, the NYT reporter who did all the legwork, which should have more details. It's called "State of War," and should come out later this week.
-Grym
Because you are punishing people who are successful, arbitrarily, and using the money they earned to give to people who did not earn it, also arbitrarily. Where is there any fairness in that system? It's not even a flat tax rate, where everyone pays 10% or whatever... the rich pay not only more money, but also a higher percentage. Stop me if you hear any fairness anywhere.
Taxing the rich more isn't necessarily punishing them. Furthermore, I wouldn't be so quick to call such a system arbitrary. It's not as if the rich exist and make their money within a vacuum. The rich are able to make their money as a direct result of the structure of our economic system and the security provided by the government. Arguably, they benefit the most from this arrangement and, as such, should pay more per capitia to support programs which maintain the status quo (welfare, law enforcement, and so on).
Moral obligation, maybe. Legal obligation? No way. Not in the constitution, and morally I cannot find a desire to force someone to help someone else out. Where does it end? Should a doctor be forced to provide a certain percentage of their medical knowledge to sick people for free?
Why not? I can think of worse things than establishing an sense of obligation for one another. Regardless, the slope isn't as slippery as you paint it. The law already holds those unwilling to help accountable in extreme cases. We call this criminal negligence.
In response to your specific example, many doctors are required to do a certain percentage of pro-bono cases as required by their associated hospitials. The fact that you think this is a hypothetical situation is telling to the lack of resistance these policies have received.
You have poorer friends and girlfriend's sister you could be helping out directly with the money you've earned. But instead you are forced to give much of your money to the federal government, who will waste most of it through bureacracy and ineffiency, and your poorer friends may see a very slight trickle down effect. How efficiently nice of you? ... Charity starts at home my friend,
Given the egoist position you seem to espouse, I find it hard to believe that the system you envision would work. If the parent poster is naive in believing in government, you're even more naive in simply blindly trusting in human nature. What's more, you seem to be woefully ignorant of the distribution of wealth in the general population and the current nature of American society.
If simply asking for help from a family member were a solution for the poor, don't you think they would have done that already? As hard as you may find this to believe: many families are entirely poor.
In the above cases, you probably might reply that the local community would support them, which might have been true 100 years ago but certainly not today. The fact is that modern American society is probably the most mobile in the history of man. It's not uncommon to live thousands of miles away from friends or family or to change locations every couple years. Furthermore, with the increased prevalence of mass communications, the American public is increasingly becoming more and more atomized. Community groups and programs that once thrived are increasingly finding it hard to get--or even maintain--membership. In short, how can you expect knowledgeable, supportive communities to provide all-inclusive charity when their members will hardly participate or even know one another?
-Grym
A friend of mine was a graduate student in philosophy and was TA'ing for a Morality and Justice section. This class was centered around take-home essay responses to prompts.
When grading one of the responses from one of a rather lackluster student my friend found that the essay was unusually good. In fact, not only was it really good, it was uncannily familiar too. It finally dawned on him why.
It was his own paper that he had written when he took the section two years earlier! Apparently, the student had taken it upon himself to hack into Virginia Tech's student fileserver and download other students' works. And yet, after all that effort, he never noticed that the paper's owner was the TA himself!
-Grym
Exactly, this story completely undermines the entire argument that the patent system somehow benefits small inventors--it doesn't.
SURE, this guy won in the end... AFTER 25 YEARS. How many countless other inventors have simply given up? Would this guy have been able to also patent new ideas or defend other contested patents during this time period?
What's the point in intellectual property if you're realistically only allowed to keep what companies don't want?
-Grym
I am not one to speculate on figures-- what do the numbers matter anyway? What difference does it make if it were five hunderd thousand, six million, or fifteen million?
A big difference. Simply glossing over the sheer size and malevolence of the holocaust like you're doing is misguided. The holocaust was probably the most despicable act a group of men has ever done to others. We should never forget this. (And, no, I am not Jewish.)
What you're doing is a weak attempt at moral relativism. It's no wonder you don't want to bother with numbers. You want to draw parallels between, for instance, sterilization programs that affected hundreds and the systematic torture and execution of millions--that's ridiculous.
It troubles me that nobody else has objected to your post. And yet, somehow I'm not surprised. This type of reasoning is frequently used to equate the United States to any and every evil entity that ever existed. So popular is this type of reasoning is that "Bush is a Nazi" actually turns up MORE results (with or without the quotes) in google than "Hitler was a Nazi." This is, of course, despite the fact that Hitler actually WAS a Nazi.
The end result of this isn't what you think. Always dredging up every failure of one's own when discussing the unrelated evils of others doesn't lead to a cosmopolitan, enlightened view of the world. Rather, it diffuses any sense of morality entirely. A moral stance becomes impossible to hold when being apparently accountable for comparable acts of ancestors from hundreds of years ago.
Put simply, your type of analysis is a contrarian point of view that adds little to the discussion. Did anyone actually forget about the atrocities against Native Americans? Do we need to be reminded that--yes-- those too were evil?
Know your history, yes, but at least keep things in perspective.
-Grym
At any given point in time any one of us has a number of cancerous cells in our body. They're not sentiently floating around looking for tissue to victimize--they're doing what they've been programmed to do: survive.
Interesting post. However, on this point I disagree. Normal cells are not programmed to survive as individuals. In fact, programmed cell death is crutial to our very existence as organisms. The very fact that cancer cells lack these functions is what makes them so dangerous, and why it's a useful analogy to compare cancerous cells to something along the lines of a parasite or entity unto itself.
The real question has always been: Why isn't the immune system responding appropriately? In most cancers the immune system is responding improperly or flat-out ignoring the problem.
I just wanted to add here that part of the problem is that the rapid division and high mutational rates of cancerous cells selects for cancerous cells which are most able to evade the immune system and proliferate most efficiently. Indeed, even in individuals where the immune system is by all accounts functioning well, cancer can still develop because of these evasive mutations.
Furthermore, an important function of the immune system is tolerance of self-antigens. If it doesn't, an autoimmune disease (or allergy) is the result. For most mammals, existence is therefore a balancing act between overreacting to perceived threats or incorrectly classifying a threat as "self." It's not that the immune system is necessarily ignoring a threat but rather (fatally) erring on the side of caution.
-Grym
Considering that you picked these three examples, I feel it's safe to assume that the rest of our interventions (hundreds over the last century) must have been quite misguided.
If you're really willing to make an assumption like that, then do I even need to point out the problem with your thinking?
All the parent poster was pointing out was the the U.S. isn't some completely evil institution that sows death and destruction around the world with every action that it takes. He needn't provide every case where the United States did the "right thing" to invalidate the GP's very biased sentiment.
I'm not going to sit here and defend every instance of United States foreign policy for the past "40+ years". Yes, we all know much of it, intentionally or not, was fucked up. All I'm asking for is a bit of fairness in our critique. The United States has done a lot of good. Few (if any) countries in the United States' current position could or would do better. Believe it or not, some atrocities were not the result of US action. And like it or not, the United States is overall a stablizing force in Geopolitics. If the United States fell by the wayside, things would probably become much worse, not better. Try explaining that to the "Blame America First"-brigade, though.
-Grym