Most notably, "imply" is not being used in the strict mathematical "=>" sense, but rather in the normal English sense. So correlation can indeed often suggest that something is a cause (or contributory cause) of something else, it's just that in the real world you can never say "it is 100% sure that X (and only X) causes Y" since X and Y are not going to be simple things.
For example, in any discussion of crime figures, you can't simply ignore other factors such as geography, the economy, education, political climate, technological advancements, average weather conditions or anything else, as they all may have some effect too.
The root of all evil on earth, it would seem? However, kind of interesting that the drop in crime is also correlated with the rise of the Sony PlayStation and XBox? Maybe instead of going out and getting drunk and trashing stuff, young men are staying home and getting less drunk and playing Modern Warfare.
Whether you think people commit crimes mainly for financial reasons, or due to mental health problems, or bad parenting, I see no reason why playing video games would provide an alternative outlet for their behaviour.
There is almost no comparison between "getting drunk and trashing stuff" and sitting in front of a TV pretending to shoot terrorists.
You're put on anti-psychotic drugs because you're psychotic. You don't get proscribed anti-psychotic drugs if you are not psychotic.
Pretty much by definition, anyone who goes on a mass murder spree is seriously distrubed in one way or another. The point for most non-Americans is that we don't allow mentally ill people access to weapons, in so far as it is humanly possible to stop them. Someone who has a psychotic outburst can do far less damage with a hammer than a semi automatic rifle, and if I had a psychotic child I most certainly wouldn't keep guns in the house whether it's legal or not.
You could kill more people with a gallon of gasoline and a couple of bike locks than I could with all the guns I could carry.
This is a slightly incomprehensible version (I don't get the bike locks idea) of the pro-gun argument that you could easily kill more people by flying a plane into a skyscraper than with an automatic weapon, so therefore why not ban skyscrapers and planes instead of guns?
The truth is that mass terrorist killings require a lot of planning, whereas most domestic murders are people reaching for an easily available weapon in the heat of the moment. And if that weapon is a semi automatic pistol rather than a brick, you're vastly more likely to end up killing someone.
The best way to prepare for a disaster is to live somewhere where your fucking government won't hang you out to dry if something goes wrong.
Anything on the scale of full out nuclear war or an extinction-level meteor aren't worth worrying about, as nothing you can do will make any difference other than blind luck as to where you are.
Since i got an ereader, i've read a lot of books i would never have read if i didn't have it. I live in a remote location and the nearest town has only one small bookshop. Being able to buy books online allows me to read books that i'd never bother ordering from the bookshop in town.
I know, it's a real shame that Amazon, the makers of the Kindle and associated downloadable books, don't deliver dead tree books to remote locations. Oh wait...
Everyone moves on a regular basis for school and then work
School/college is an irrelevant one-off as students have few possessions anyway, but most people I know don't move around that much for work. In the UK your choice is generally to stay where you are or move to London if you want the biggest choice of well paid jobs (in which case you'll be commuting anyway so you have a wide choice of where to live around London)
But there's little point moving a hundred miles between one small town and another every couple of years, most places are equally limited for jobs outside the capital..
Others prefer a different kind of freedom -- the ability to move to a new place without carting along boxes upon boxes of books.
You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere
Books really do not take up that much room unless you buy many thousands of them. Anyway, I WANT a house to be full of books. I don't want some minimalist white cube with an iPad resting gracefully in one corner next to the espresso machine on top of a single futon.
There is no connection between what rightwingers call the Nanny State and an actual police state (left or right wing).
A so-called Nanny State merely protects the most vulnerable from harm, e.g. by providing unemployment benefits, medical care and education by the state. This results in a reduction in freedom only to the extent that rightwingers believe all taxation is theft.
I had to sign that I would be willing to take a loyalty oath as condition of employment (didn't have to actually take an oath, though).
This shit has been around (at least) since the last time right-wing crazies shit all over our civil liberties-- the "red scare."
Each time the right manages to get a bit more of this shit entrenched. Maybe this time will be the one or maybe 3 more of these right-wing police state takeovers
Yeah, those California universities are bastions of right-wing radicalism.
Like many Americans you seem to be unaware of what right and left wing really mean, and of the reality of the power structures in your country.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, our current rulers even tried to go to the elections a few years ago in some parts of the country under the slogan "work gives freedom", (hint: means the same as "arbeit macht frei".) until someone happened to look in a history book.
Your comment makes as much sense as the rightwingers on here who say all Socialists are really Nazis, because, duh, it's the National Socialist Party. As a rule, you do have more freedom if you work, it's no fun being unemployed in a capitalist society. What words the real Nazis used over their concentration camps is irrelevant, they were just the sickest of sick jokes anyway.
If you live in Vancouver, Canada, and you use the skytrain, you have high chance of being asked for your "papers" (ticket) at least once a day if not more by either transit police (with guns and full police powers) or a translink employee. I missed a train once as I was coming up the escalator because I had to dig out my monthly pass out of my wallet. The smartcard and gates cannot come soon enough.
Having to show a fucking train ticket is hardly akin to rounding people up and sending them off to concentration camps. That is a really, really long slippery slope you're talking about.
(I have actually been asked by a TSA agent how I was able to afford airline tickets.)
I was asked by an Israeli border guard/passport control person (amongst many other questions) why I had my slightly unusual middle name, and what my favourite book/author was (amongst many other questions). The point is how you react, they are trained to recognise any signs of excess nervousness or prevarication.
If answering security questions becomes optional, there is no point in having security. I felt very safe on El Al, and they objectively have long had the best anti-terrorist record of any airline.
It is a standard customs question to ask students where they got their expensive tickets from, and who paid for them. They trap a lot of (stupid) drug mules that way.
You make an interesting point with "... less critical infrastructure...". I'm not saying you're wrong, but by applying what you're saying, the TSA (thus the Feds?) considers a sports arena a critical infrastructure? Sounds like the perfect way for the security theater apparatus to claim just about anything critical infrastructure in order to apply their mission creep and extend their tentacles into everything else around.
Geez, when is the security bullshit gonna stop piling up?
A terrorist attack on a sports event would let you target an awful lot of people in a relatively small space, and it would guarantee a large amount of publicity. Whatever slashdotters may think about sport, it is very popular.
You do realise that C.S. Lewis and Sinclair Lewis are, in fact, two different writers?
So the fact that wikiquote can't find the quotation in the works of Sinclair Lewis says nothing about whether C.S. Lewis wrote it, although admittedly it seems unlikely.
Slashdot Mirror
Then I took a statistics class. Now I don't.
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Most notably, "imply" is not being used in the strict mathematical "=>" sense, but rather in the normal English sense. So correlation can indeed often suggest that something is a cause (or contributory cause) of something else, it's just that in the real world you can never say "it is 100% sure that X (and only X) causes Y" since X and Y are not going to be simple things.
For example, in any discussion of crime figures, you can't simply ignore other factors such as geography, the economy, education, political climate, technological advancements, average weather conditions or anything else, as they all may have some effect too.
The root of all evil on earth, it would seem? However, kind of interesting that the drop in crime is also correlated with the rise of the Sony PlayStation and XBox? Maybe instead of going out and getting drunk and trashing stuff, young men are staying home and getting less drunk and playing Modern Warfare.
Whether you think people commit crimes mainly for financial reasons, or due to mental health problems, or bad parenting, I see no reason why playing video games would provide an alternative outlet for their behaviour.
There is almost no comparison between "getting drunk and trashing stuff" and sitting in front of a TV pretending to shoot terrorists.
Pretty much by definition, anyone who goes on a mass murder spree is seriously distrubed in one way or another. The point for most non-Americans is that we don't allow mentally ill people access to weapons, in so far as it is humanly possible to stop them. Someone who has a psychotic outburst can do far less damage with a hammer than a semi automatic rifle, and if I had a psychotic child I most certainly wouldn't keep guns in the house whether it's legal or not.
You could kill more people with a gallon of gasoline and a couple of bike locks than I could with all the guns I could carry.
This is a slightly incomprehensible version (I don't get the bike locks idea) of the pro-gun argument that you could easily kill more people by flying a plane into a skyscraper than with an automatic weapon, so therefore why not ban skyscrapers and planes instead of guns?
The truth is that mass terrorist killings require a lot of planning, whereas most domestic murders are people reaching for an easily available weapon in the heat of the moment. And if that weapon is a semi automatic pistol rather than a brick, you're vastly more likely to end up killing someone.
I see you follow the libertarian philosophy of history: everything is about property rights, and the government always expands and is always evil.
Unfortunately, for the Japanese and other seafood lovers, giant squid have high levels of ammonia.
So what? Most fish and seafood taste like piss anyway.
Anything on the scale of full out nuclear war or an extinction-level meteor aren't worth worrying about, as nothing you can do will make any difference other than blind luck as to where you are.
That makes me think that my mother really likes ebooks because with the large font setting she can read without her glasses.
My wife is of the age when you start to get long-sighted, and she definitely likes ebooks for that reason.
Since i got an ereader, i've read a lot of books i would never have read if i didn't have it. I live in a remote location and the nearest town has only one small bookshop. Being able to buy books online allows me to read books that i'd never bother ordering from the bookshop in town.
I know, it's a real shame that Amazon, the makers of the Kindle and associated downloadable books, don't deliver dead tree books to remote locations. Oh wait...
Everyone moves on a regular basis for school and then work
School/college is an irrelevant one-off as students have few possessions anyway, but most people I know don't move around that much for work. In the UK your choice is generally to stay where you are or move to London if you want the biggest choice of well paid jobs (in which case you'll be commuting anyway so you have a wide choice of where to live around London)
But there's little point moving a hundred miles between one small town and another every couple of years, most places are equally limited for jobs outside the capital..
Yes, I am of an older generation.
Others prefer a different kind of freedom -- the ability to move to a new place without carting along boxes upon boxes of books.
You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere
C.P. Cavafy.
It sounds like you are creating your own dystopia. I feel sorry for you. Life should be messy, or else you might as well be a robot, or dead.
Books really do not take up that much room unless you buy many thousands of them. Anyway, I WANT a house to be full of books. I don't want some minimalist white cube with an iPad resting gracefully in one corner next to the espresso machine on top of a single futon.
Get out of here with your common sense and so-called facts! I bet you don't even own a tinfoil hat.
A so-called Nanny State merely protects the most vulnerable from harm, e.g. by providing unemployment benefits, medical care and education by the state. This results in a reduction in freedom only to the extent that rightwingers believe all taxation is theft.
I work for a California public college.
I had to sign that I would be willing to take a loyalty oath as condition of employment (didn't have to actually take an oath, though).
This shit has been around (at least) since the last time right-wing crazies shit all over our civil liberties-- the "red scare."
Each time the right manages to get a bit more of this shit entrenched. Maybe this time will be the one or maybe 3 more of these right-wing police state takeovers
Yeah, those California universities are bastions of right-wing radicalism.
Like many Americans you seem to be unaware of what right and left wing really mean, and of the reality of the power structures in your country.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, our current rulers even tried to go to the elections a few years ago in some parts of the country under the slogan "work gives freedom", (hint: means the same as "arbeit macht frei".) until someone happened to look in a history book.
Your comment makes as much sense as the rightwingers on here who say all Socialists are really Nazis, because, duh, it's the National Socialist Party. As a rule, you do have more freedom if you work, it's no fun being unemployed in a capitalist society. What words the real Nazis used over their concentration camps is irrelevant, they were just the sickest of sick jokes anyway.
Obama was the gleaming example of Hope and Change, and here he's almost indistinguishable in policy from Bush.
If you take over in the middle of two stupid wars, it's hard to do much about it, simply cutting and running is not really an option.
Not far off.
If you live in Vancouver, Canada, and you use the skytrain, you have high chance of being asked for your "papers" (ticket) at least once a day if not more by either transit police (with guns and full police powers) or a translink employee. I missed a train once as I was coming up the escalator because I had to dig out my monthly pass out of my wallet. The smartcard and gates cannot come soon enough.
Having to show a fucking train ticket is hardly akin to rounding people up and sending them off to concentration camps. That is a really, really long slippery slope you're talking about.
(I have actually been asked by a TSA agent how I was able to afford airline tickets.)
What was your answer? Did it include the words "none", "damn", "business", "yours"?
I suppose you'd have just reached for your AR15 and shot them?
(I have actually been asked by a TSA agent how I was able to afford airline tickets.)
I was asked by an Israeli border guard/passport control person (amongst many other questions) why I had my slightly unusual middle name, and what my favourite book/author was (amongst many other questions). The point is how you react, they are trained to recognise any signs of excess nervousness or prevarication.
If answering security questions becomes optional, there is no point in having security. I felt very safe on El Al, and they objectively have long had the best anti-terrorist record of any airline.
It is a standard customs question to ask students where they got their expensive tickets from, and who paid for them. They trap a lot of (stupid) drug mules that way.
You make an interesting point with "... less critical infrastructure ...". I'm not saying you're wrong, but by applying what you're saying, the TSA (thus the Feds?) considers a sports arena a critical infrastructure? Sounds like the perfect way for the security theater apparatus to claim just about anything critical infrastructure in order to apply their mission creep and extend their tentacles into everything else around.
Geez, when is the security bullshit gonna stop piling up?
A terrorist attack on a sports event would let you target an awful lot of people in a relatively small space, and it would guarantee a large amount of publicity. Whatever slashdotters may think about sport, it is very popular.
If you dissolved it tomorrow, the FBI, CIA, NSA and the rest would still be there. At least you can identify an TSA employee.
If they're not only securing transport but anything else, they might also change their name. From TSA to SA.
Congratulations! You're the one millionth poster on this thread to make this joke!
So the fact that wikiquote can't find the quotation in the works of Sinclair Lewis says nothing about whether C.S. Lewis wrote it, although admittedly it seems unlikely.