Gotcha, and that's a good point. I'm a bit less sanguine about whether the count will be accurate though, given all the problems they've had with those machines already. From what I've seen, they are less accurate than the old system but don't allow for any form of recount. That's pretty messed up, IMO.
These problems have been known for a long time, and the apathy about them in the news media is simply astounding. A brief web search will give you an idea how widespread the problems are, and how well known they are, yet little has been done. Why do you think that is? Well, elections are run by the states, particularly by each state's Secretary of State. That's an elected position. Guess which party the Secretary of State in most of the problem states is a member of?
Not a significant problem? Did you read the article? They don't have paper lists at the polling sites according to the article, and as a result they had to call in the name of each voter into the main election office. It was a huge slowdown, according to the article.
Calling them the "current crop of Anarchists" actually demonstrates my point very well - they simply aren't organized. They all acted independently, and while some individual school shooters may have some kind of political goal at work, most of them had no put no such effort into thinking over their actions as far as I can tell. Instead, they're basically very disturbed individuals who for the most part are really spoiled children simply lashing out in anger.
That's where I start to see a fundamental difference with your "average" terrorist. For the most part, those people really are oppressed in a way that makes calling the school shooters "oppressed" a mockery. Those children certainly have problems, but they're not comparable.
In contrast with school shootings, terrorism is strategic behavior. It is designed to lead to a specific political goal in a way that the random violence of the school shootings simply isn't. In the case of groups like Hamas in particular, they don't want a seat at the negotiating table in the first place. They don't believe that they can achieve their goals through negotiation. Since their main goal is the elimination of Israel,they're right. The school shooters don't have that excuse either, since they can achieve their goal without violence and they certainly don't need to kill themselves to do it. That's simply narcissistic behavior and shouldn't be glorified as some sort of political martyrdom, which is what it sounds like you are doing./p?
I see where you're going, and the individual motivations for action may well be very similar. That isn't enough to make school shootings "terrorism," since the perpetrators are not part of any organized attempt to change government policy (i.e. having a political agenda). While the Hamas bomber is alienated as well, they are part of an organization with a coherent political agenda which their attack supports, rather than a random act by a disaffected individual or two. That's a rather important difference because it has large implications for understanding why we get the behavior we see, and how we can go about changing it. You can't try to reduce organized political violence in the same way as individual and imitative violence by disaffected teens - it won't work. Calling Columbine, Santee, and so on acts of terrorism both confuses the issue of what terrorism really is and diminishes what those events really represent.
Rage against the system/= a political agenda. Considering them the same thing is analytically useless, since it conflates dissimilar activities under one category and muddies our ability to understand both forms of behavior. By the way, I've both been an outsider, and I study terrorism.
To not put too fine a point on it, direct elections have never been about guarding our liberty. We have elections - direct and indirect - to better ensure that our representatives serve our interests rather than their own. Liberty is protected through the system of checks and balances as much as it is through the judicial branch in particular. By making it difficult for the government to act (and thus difficult for narrow majorities to oppress minorities) our individual liberty is better protected. The Courts have an important part in this, but mainly only since the 1930s. Before then, virtually none of the Bill of Rights applied to state laws, so it was quite easy for the states to infringe on our liberty.
Incorrect: "Terrorism" requires more than just terror, it requires a Political goal. That's why these school killings are not terrorism and never will be - there's no political agenda. People going "postal" are also not terrorists, because they lack a political agenda. Timothy McVeigh, Hamas, and Al Qaeda all have (or had) political agendas, and that's what makes their actions terrorism. (OK, so they are also non-state actors targeting innocents as part of their attempt to coerce a government over a political agenda, if you want to be picky)
You're confusing freedom from the government with freedom from other people. Like it or not, Israel is a democracy who's citizens are free in the first sense. I emphasize "citizens" here, since the palestinians another poster referred to are not and will not be citizens. They could have been, if their grandparents hadn't fled in 1948/9. That's neither here nor there, though. The presence of terrorists does not mean a country is not a democracy, nor in fact does the presence of people who cannot vote. They're called "non-citizens", and EVERY democracy has them. As for getting bags searched and soldiers walking around with assault rifles, I take it you haven't travelled by air lately?
Hey Ray, I've got a "biological experiment" for you. Maximize the preservatives in your diet and minimize the bacteria, etc., by subsisting completely on Twinkies and Bourbon. Now THAT's an experiment!
While science MAY be a threat to those in power (I disagree) that has no bearing on whether or not this will catch on. The basic problem facing a channel like this is the widespread willful ignorance of Americans. If it isn't directly related to their chosen way to make money and isn't otherwise entertaining, they aren't interested. Unless this is done in a very entertaining way, it won't get much of a viewership. It may have enough to catch on, but that'll be about it.
Thank god for small favors. It's bad enough they can import these things, at least they aren't made here and weren't designed here! We've got enough problems...
That's unnecessarily restrictive parenting. It should be possible for parents to allow their children to use the home computer and even be online without watching them every second by that age. The fundamental point is that these pets are marketed to kids, and then promote gambling. Not a good combo, and it should not be up to the parents to control such ridiculous marketing.
I'm guessing you have no children? Neither do I, but I'm quite aware that it is impossible to monitor a 9 year old all the time. This wouldn't be a problem in the first place if they weren't targeting kids in this way.
The problem has never really been getting from Earth to Mars, it has always been getting out of our own gravity well (as was noted above). Many of the interplanetary propulsion systems are also considered questionable not because they won't work, but because of the danger they pose to the environment if we have an accident on launch. Launching nuclear powered craft makes people nervous, even though the danger is overstated.
MAD isn't iterated as you note, but it also really isn't accurate to call it PD. In MAD, you get the same score whether you retailate against an attack or not.
Of course, the real problem with treating MAD as a 2x2 game is that it really is an extended form game, with the players taking their moves in sequence rather than simultaneously. You may be able to simulate MAD reasonably well with an extended form of PD, but that's not what we're dealing with here.
but, why do we bother with the search for ever larger prime numbers? Is there any actual point to knowing that 2^20+million-1 is a prime number 6.3 million digits long?
I'm genuinely curious about this. I'm an academic, and some of my colleagues do research that seems completely unconnected from any utility whatsoever, so I am familiar with that practice. I'm just wondering if that's what is going on here, or if there is some deeper utility to this, like maybe helping develop the perfect recipe for chocolate chip cookies?
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Gotcha, and that's a good point. I'm a bit less sanguine about whether the count will be accurate though, given all the problems they've had with those machines already. From what I've seen, they are less accurate than the old system but don't allow for any form of recount. That's pretty messed up, IMO.
These problems have been known for a long time, and the apathy about them in the news media is simply astounding. A brief web search will give you an idea how widespread the problems are, and how well known they are, yet little has been done. Why do you think that is? Well, elections are run by the states, particularly by each state's Secretary of State. That's an elected position. Guess which party the Secretary of State in most of the problem states is a member of?
Not a significant problem? Did you read the article? They don't have paper lists at the polling sites according to the article, and as a result they had to call in the name of each voter into the main election office. It was a huge slowdown, according to the article.
Calling them the "current crop of Anarchists" actually demonstrates my point very well - they simply aren't organized. They all acted independently, and while some individual school shooters may have some kind of political goal at work, most of them had no put no such effort into thinking over their actions as far as I can tell. Instead, they're basically very disturbed individuals who for the most part are really spoiled children simply lashing out in anger.
That's where I start to see a fundamental difference with your "average" terrorist. For the most part, those people really are oppressed in a way that makes calling the school shooters "oppressed" a mockery. Those children certainly have problems, but they're not comparable.
In contrast with school shootings, terrorism is strategic behavior. It is designed to lead to a specific political goal in a way that the random violence of the school shootings simply isn't. In the case of groups like Hamas in particular, they don't want a seat at the negotiating table in the first place. They don't believe that they can achieve their goals through negotiation. Since their main goal is the elimination of Israel,they're right. The school shooters don't have that excuse either, since they can achieve their goal without violence and they certainly don't need to kill themselves to do it. That's simply narcissistic behavior and shouldn't be glorified as some sort of political martyrdom, which is what it sounds like you are doing./p?
I see where you're going, and the individual motivations for action may well be very similar. That isn't enough to make school shootings "terrorism," since the perpetrators are not part of any organized attempt to change government policy (i.e. having a political agenda). While the Hamas bomber is alienated as well, they are part of an organization with a coherent political agenda which their attack supports, rather than a random act by a disaffected individual or two. That's a rather important difference because it has large implications for understanding why we get the behavior we see, and how we can go about changing it. You can't try to reduce organized political violence in the same way as individual and imitative violence by disaffected teens - it won't work. Calling Columbine, Santee, and so on acts of terrorism both confuses the issue of what terrorism really is and diminishes what those events really represent.
Rage against the system /= a political agenda. Considering them the same thing is analytically useless, since it conflates dissimilar activities under one category and muddies our ability to understand both forms of behavior. By the way, I've both been an outsider, and I study terrorism.
Umm, we tried that in this country. It doesn't prevent election problems, just shifts their nature.
To not put too fine a point on it, direct elections have never been about guarding our liberty. We have elections - direct and indirect - to better ensure that our representatives serve our interests rather than their own. Liberty is protected through the system of checks and balances as much as it is through the judicial branch in particular. By making it difficult for the government to act (and thus difficult for narrow majorities to oppress minorities) our individual liberty is better protected. The Courts have an important part in this, but mainly only since the 1930s. Before then, virtually none of the Bill of Rights applied to state laws, so it was quite easy for the states to infringe on our liberty.
Incorrect: "Terrorism" requires more than just terror, it requires a Political goal. That's why these school killings are not terrorism and never will be - there's no political agenda. People going "postal" are also not terrorists, because they lack a political agenda. Timothy McVeigh, Hamas, and Al Qaeda all have (or had) political agendas, and that's what makes their actions terrorism. (OK, so they are also non-state actors targeting innocents as part of their attempt to coerce a government over a political agenda, if you want to be picky)
You're confusing freedom from the government with freedom from other people. Like it or not, Israel is a democracy who's citizens are free in the first sense. I emphasize "citizens" here, since the palestinians another poster referred to are not and will not be citizens. They could have been, if their grandparents hadn't fled in 1948/9. That's neither here nor there, though. The presence of terrorists does not mean a country is not a democracy, nor in fact does the presence of people who cannot vote. They're called "non-citizens", and EVERY democracy has them. As for getting bags searched and soldiers walking around with assault rifles, I take it you haven't travelled by air lately?
I wonder if I could quickly patent triple-clicking, to get a lock on that "feature"...
Hey Ray, I've got a "biological experiment" for you. Maximize the preservatives in your diet and minimize the bacteria, etc., by subsisting completely on Twinkies and Bourbon. Now THAT's an experiment!
While science MAY be a threat to those in power (I disagree) that has no bearing on whether or not this will catch on. The basic problem facing a channel like this is the widespread willful ignorance of Americans. If it isn't directly related to their chosen way to make money and isn't otherwise entertaining, they aren't interested. Unless this is done in a very entertaining way, it won't get much of a viewership. It may have enough to catch on, but that'll be about it.
Thank god for small favors. It's bad enough they can import these things, at least they aren't made here and weren't designed here! We've got enough problems...
That's unnecessarily restrictive parenting. It should be possible for parents to allow their children to use the home computer and even be online without watching them every second by that age. The fundamental point is that these pets are marketed to kids, and then promote gambling. Not a good combo, and it should not be up to the parents to control such ridiculous marketing.
I'm guessing you have no children? Neither do I, but I'm quite aware that it is impossible to monitor a 9 year old all the time. This wouldn't be a problem in the first place if they weren't targeting kids in this way.
The problem has never really been getting from Earth to Mars, it has always been getting out of our own gravity well (as was noted above). Many of the interplanetary propulsion systems are also considered questionable not because they won't work, but because of the danger they pose to the environment if we have an accident on launch. Launching nuclear powered craft makes people nervous, even though the danger is overstated.
MAD isn't iterated as you note, but it also really isn't accurate to call it PD. In MAD, you get the same score whether you retailate against an attack or not. Of course, the real problem with treating MAD as a 2x2 game is that it really is an extended form game, with the players taking their moves in sequence rather than simultaneously. You may be able to simulate MAD reasonably well with an extended form of PD, but that's not what we're dealing with here.
but, why do we bother with the search for ever larger prime numbers? Is there any actual point to knowing that 2^20+million-1 is a prime number 6.3 million digits long? I'm genuinely curious about this. I'm an academic, and some of my colleagues do research that seems completely unconnected from any utility whatsoever, so I am familiar with that practice. I'm just wondering if that's what is going on here, or if there is some deeper utility to this, like maybe helping develop the perfect recipe for chocolate chip cookies?