I have some really bad news for you. The two parties (or one party if you have a tinfoil hat) do represent the people, pretty well in fact. Now, they don't represent everybody, but I think it's fair to say that the middle 80-90% or so do ok.
If you want to change the system you are going to have to do so from the inside. The inside. Go the viral route if you must, pick a party and hijack it to advance your own interest - the Ronulans seem to be trying this one, with limited success. But for the love of God, until the system changes, a third-party vote is wasted. When you get to the voting booth on Election Day, there are at most two candidates with a chance of being elected. You are never going to elect a third-party candidate by pulling in a plurality in the election (former reps/dems notwithstanding), partially because they are genuine fringe candidates who most people don't agree with, and partially because the system discourages people from doing so due to the wasted vote.
So yes, it's unfair, but you are not going to make it any less unfair by voting third party. It has zero effect on the system. Zero! Your measly third-party vote has less of an effect on the system than a marshmallow hurled at an elephant. If you want the system to change, then actually try changing the system. If you can't be bothered to do that, then congratulations, you're passively reinforcing the two-party system that you hate so very much. Ironic, isn't it?
Bringing federal cash into my congressional district: Essential spending
Bringing federal cash into one of the other 434 congressional districts: Pork
It's sort of a tragedy of the commons setup. Since the whole country pays for one district's pork, everyone has an incentive to do it, and we end up with 535 people trying to "bring home the bacon". And if they don't, they'll be voted out and replaced with someone who will.
This is the sort of thing that leads to deadlock. If everybody digs their heels in and absolutely refuses to compromise then nothing will get done (which I suppose would please the Libertarians to no end.) So we end up with things like "You have this thing which is important to you, and you suck it up with this other thing I want."
Same goes for executive veto. When the President gets the bill, he has to decide whether to kill it because of some small aspect he doesn't like. (Incidentally, this requirement is removed with a line-item veto, and is a pretty hefty transfer of power to the executive branch.)
It's absolutely insane to look at Fannie Mae and decide what we need is MORE government intervention in banks!!! It's only the government being involved that let FM grow to the size it needed saving anyway.
It's not a matter of more intervention. It's a matter of consistency. The companies should be tightly controlled to the extent that their failure is catastrophic. If you want to take away all the evil government intervention, that's a valid plan if and only if they are allowed to make fatal mistakes. Regulation and protection should go hand-in-hand.
So in essence, in order to protect against a single candidate who manages to take over the national election agency, which oddly enough doesn't seem to happen in other countries which use the system, you create a system which ensures that every single election will be confusing and broken, but that's OK because it is intrinsically good for every state to do its own thing? Hooray for the 51 Stooges!
All right, hotshots. If any of you really think that Bob Barr will be the only candidate on the ballot in November, then feel free to head over to intrade.com and make a killing on the "Bob Barr to get 1 or more electoral college votes" contract. Ask is $6 right now (pays $100 if he gets a vote). So this should be a great way to make tons of money in two months.
Of course, if you suspect that McCain will win the state regardless, then don't bother. Any takers?
I can't help but wonder why they waste all their time making so many boxed copies for retail. Blizzard has made excellent use of P2P distribution for major patches, and all of us WotLK beta types got to download many gigs of patches.
OK, there are undoubtedly people who want to live the experience of dressing up as their favorite elf maiden and waiting in line for hours to get the box at midnight, but seriously. All you really need to buy is a key to upgrade your account. Then they can let people download the client a week before the official launch date and flip a switch at launch time to enable the new content. No waiting, no order shortages, and they can use the money they saved from not having to make 50 million discs to buy gold or something.
If science is "continually revising itself" how can we trust anything it says?
Science continually acquires new information, which is evaluated along with existing information and used to produce new conclusions. This process is informally known as "learning".
If a religion is potentially good, but 90+% of the time smart and well-intentioned people screw it up, then it's a bad religion. So they can only say it's the people's fault so many times before it's not really the people's fault.
Well, 50 years ago it was an empirical fact that being white was necessary to be elected to the office.
If you're an optimist, this means that all those cold hard facts can eventually change, and everyone will be free! Yay!
If you're a pessimist, this means that Americans are just as bigoted as they were back then, only now it's the gays and atheists destroying America instead of blacks and Jews. Progress?
On a good day, maybe you'd lose a debate vs. a flat-earther, but you might also lose a game of ping-pong. Debating is like any other game, and it's only tangentially related to actual facts. Plus, whether you "win" or "lose" is determined by the audience, and if they don't have enough information to accurately evaluate your claims you can get away with a lot.
I am dismayed at the overwhelming liberalism present on this site. I had hoped that fellow geeks would have more sense than this. Conservatism, capitalism...that is what our country was founded on. McCain is not the poster child for the conservative movement by any means, but he is far superior to the socialist ideas put forth by Obama and fellow liberals, such as Nancy Pelosi. Please, PLEASE, take some time to understand the issues prior to repeating the nonsense so abundant in our media.
The reason this site is 'overwhelmingly liberal' is that/. has a global audience. Not just Alabama. It's easy to be a liberal when you're compared with, say, FOX, or the Republican Party. Hell, even the Democrats are pretty damned conservative on some things, particularly the red-state ones. This is roughly the same line of reasoning involved in creating Conservapedia - this thing is more liberal than me, therefore it must be horribly biased, and I must create my own with a correct view!
When you hear people talk about the 'far left' attacking Obama for being too conservative, consider that a large number of people (many not in America) consider your politics to be less about 'liberal vs. conservative' and more 'conservative vs. extremist'. You have mainstream politicians who haven't the slightest concern for the rights of women or gays, and in America a smear campaign involves calling the other guy a Muslim. That should be right up there with saying he's a Jew or a Catholic, but in America it's still just fine.
Everybody's a centrist in their own mind (or alternatively, thinks that there's a 'right' and a 'wrong' side of the center.) If 90% of the people you see are more liberal than you, then congratulations, you're atypically conservative.
Explain why Bush caused the price of oil to drop. His objections weren't the issue and there's no real effect unless Congress also approves the drilling. It was symbolic and had a matching effect on the oil. Post hoc, etc.
Keep in mind that the kind of people who undergo liposuction aren't going to be that healthy to begin with... that probably drags the death rate up a bit. Maybe not a lot, but it's still pretty low to begin with, and it then gets compared to things like what, a nose job? Risky, that.
Actually, I would say it's less acceptable to portray a torture scene in a TV show like 24. People get it into their heads that it's ok for government agents to do such things to people. Particularly politicians - see http://www.slate.com/id/2195864/
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to change the system you are going to have to do so from the inside. The inside. Go the viral route if you must, pick a party and hijack it to advance your own interest - the Ronulans seem to be trying this one, with limited success. But for the love of God, until the system changes, a third-party vote is wasted. When you get to the voting booth on Election Day, there are at most two candidates with a chance of being elected. You are never going to elect a third-party candidate by pulling in a plurality in the election (former reps/dems notwithstanding), partially because they are genuine fringe candidates who most people don't agree with, and partially because the system discourages people from doing so due to the wasted vote.
So yes, it's unfair, but you are not going to make it any less unfair by voting third party. It has zero effect on the system. Zero! Your measly third-party vote has less of an effect on the system than a marshmallow hurled at an elephant. If you want the system to change, then actually try changing the system. If you can't be bothered to do that, then congratulations, you're passively reinforcing the two-party system that you hate so very much. Ironic, isn't it?
Bringing federal cash into my congressional district: Essential spending
Bringing federal cash into one of the other 434 congressional districts: Pork
It's sort of a tragedy of the commons setup. Since the whole country pays for one district's pork, everyone has an incentive to do it, and we end up with 535 people trying to "bring home the bacon". And if they don't, they'll be voted out and replaced with someone who will.
This is the sort of thing that leads to deadlock. If everybody digs their heels in and absolutely refuses to compromise then nothing will get done (which I suppose would please the Libertarians to no end.) So we end up with things like "You have this thing which is important to you, and you suck it up with this other thing I want." Same goes for executive veto. When the President gets the bill, he has to decide whether to kill it because of some small aspect he doesn't like. (Incidentally, this requirement is removed with a line-item veto, and is a pretty hefty transfer of power to the executive branch.)
It's absolutely insane to look at Fannie Mae and decide what we need is MORE government intervention in banks!!! It's only the government being involved that let FM grow to the size it needed saving anyway.
It's not a matter of more intervention. It's a matter of consistency. The companies should be tightly controlled to the extent that their failure is catastrophic. If you want to take away all the evil government intervention, that's a valid plan if and only if they are allowed to make fatal mistakes. Regulation and protection should go hand-in-hand.
So in essence, in order to protect against a single candidate who manages to take over the national election agency, which oddly enough doesn't seem to happen in other countries which use the system, you create a system which ensures that every single election will be confusing and broken, but that's OK because it is intrinsically good for every state to do its own thing? Hooray for the 51 Stooges!
No, they only want to make it difficult for undesirable people to vote. (Old article, but still...) http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/28/scotus.voter.id/index.html
All right, hotshots. If any of you really think that Bob Barr will be the only candidate on the ballot in November, then feel free to head over to intrade.com and make a killing on the "Bob Barr to get 1 or more electoral college votes" contract. Ask is $6 right now (pays $100 if he gets a vote). So this should be a great way to make tons of money in two months.
Of course, if you suspect that McCain will win the state regardless, then don't bother. Any takers?
I think the usual objection to domestic drilling is that by the time you get any oil out of it, you already have the alternative energy sources.
OK, there are undoubtedly people who want to live the experience of dressing up as their favorite elf maiden and waiting in line for hours to get the box at midnight, but seriously. All you really need to buy is a key to upgrade your account. Then they can let people download the client a week before the official launch date and flip a switch at launch time to enable the new content. No waiting, no order shortages, and they can use the money they saved from not having to make 50 million discs to buy gold or something.
Well, since you brought up the stupid questions... http://www.codeslate.com/2007/01/you-dont-bury-survivors.html
If science is "continually revising itself" how can we trust anything it says?
Science continually acquires new information, which is evaluated along with existing information and used to produce new conclusions. This process is informally known as "learning".
Well, to paraphrase Steve Yegge ( http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html )...
If a religion is potentially good, but 90+% of the time smart and well-intentioned people screw it up, then it's a bad religion. So they can only say it's the people's fault so many times before it's not really the people's fault.
If you're an optimist, this means that all those cold hard facts can eventually change, and everyone will be free! Yay!
If you're a pessimist, this means that Americans are just as bigoted as they were back then, only now it's the gays and atheists destroying America instead of blacks and Jews. Progress?
On a good day, maybe you'd lose a debate vs. a flat-earther, but you might also lose a game of ping-pong. Debating is like any other game, and it's only tangentially related to actual facts. Plus, whether you "win" or "lose" is determined by the audience, and if they don't have enough information to accurately evaluate your claims you can get away with a lot.
It is perfectly clear how this ruling will affect them: not at all. They are not California.
Right, now what happens when someone from another state breaks a non-compete by getting a job in California (or the other way around)?
I am dismayed at the overwhelming liberalism present on this site. I had hoped that fellow geeks would have more sense than this. Conservatism, capitalism...that is what our country was founded on. McCain is not the poster child for the conservative movement by any means, but he is far superior to the socialist ideas put forth by Obama and fellow liberals, such as Nancy Pelosi. Please, PLEASE, take some time to understand the issues prior to repeating the nonsense so abundant in our media.
The reason this site is 'overwhelmingly liberal' is that /. has a global audience. Not just Alabama. It's easy to be a liberal when you're compared with, say, FOX, or the Republican Party. Hell, even the Democrats are pretty damned conservative on some things, particularly the red-state ones. This is roughly the same line of reasoning involved in creating Conservapedia - this thing is more liberal than me, therefore it must be horribly biased, and I must create my own with a correct view!
When you hear people talk about the 'far left' attacking Obama for being too conservative, consider that a large number of people (many not in America) consider your politics to be less about 'liberal vs. conservative' and more 'conservative vs. extremist'. You have mainstream politicians who haven't the slightest concern for the rights of women or gays, and in America a smear campaign involves calling the other guy a Muslim. That should be right up there with saying he's a Jew or a Catholic, but in America it's still just fine.
Everybody's a centrist in their own mind (or alternatively, thinks that there's a 'right' and a 'wrong' side of the center.) If 90% of the people you see are more liberal than you, then congratulations, you're atypically conservative.
Explain why Bush caused the price of oil to drop. His objections weren't the issue and there's no real effect unless Congress also approves the drilling. It was symbolic and had a matching effect on the oil. Post hoc, etc.
Keep in mind that the kind of people who undergo liposuction aren't going to be that healthy to begin with... that probably drags the death rate up a bit. Maybe not a lot, but it's still pretty low to begin with, and it then gets compared to things like what, a nose job? Risky, that.
Actually, I would say it's less acceptable to portray a torture scene in a TV show like 24. People get it into their heads that it's ok for government agents to do such things to people. Particularly politicians - see http://www.slate.com/id/2195864/