Please remember that it wasn't so much religion as it was political/economic control through abusing religion.
Contrariwise, if you're not careful, you'll throw the baby out with the bathwater. We're entering an amoral atheistic society. You'll keep the worst parts of religious history (under the guise of political parties) and throw out the best parts (work ethic, taking responsibility, golden rule, family values, etc).
Worshiping at the altar of non-religion is still worshiping.
That's a nice little sound-bite, but it really does not stand up to even trivial scrutiny.
You cannot worship non-belief. There are simply too many things not to believe in.
What you object to is dogmatically sticking to ones beliefs, to the insensitivity of others (or worse, persecution). That rationale is very easy for atheists to fall for. It can be said that they stick to it religiously. They zealously promote non-religion with the misguided sense that they are helping others. It is highly hypocritical. Because they dogmatically stick to the false premise that all religion must persecute others, they become the persecutors.
The lions in your refrigerator are microscopic. The elephants hiding behind your couch are invisible, and you actually are a dead zombie. You just don't realize it, because of a psychological hallucination that you are not actually dead.
In which case you actually can't prove anything at all... ever. For instance, the entire world (yourself included) could be figments of my imagination. Or maybe we're both characters in a book, and just don't know it.
If you can prove anything, you can prove some negatives. Of course, you do need to accept some axioms on faith, or you'll be checked into a mental institution. (no offence intended)
You can have one evil that is far superior to another (competence, ideological honesty, etc). It happens every once in a while in elections. It almost always happens in primaries. (Granted, there are rarely any incumbents in primaries.)
Not necessarily. If the incumbent is far superior to the challenger, let them stand. You CAN move backwards if you don't.
Take term limits, for example. They haven't fixed anything in California. If anything, they've made things worse. Blindly replacing incumbents doesn't lead to better politicians any more than blindly reelecting incumbents for decades.
No, we should make incumbents really work at earning reelection, and we need to keep the truly insane out of public office.
Some of your arguments are absolutely true and valid. Intentional sustained inflation is theft. It is a tax that goes, not to the government, but to the financial sector (granted, some of it offsets the national debt).
The reason the Continental Currency failed so badly was severalfold. (1) Congress at the time was even worse at managing monetary policy than the Fed is now. (hardly an argument for or against the Fed) They were basically being treated as a bond redeemable when paying taxes. Bonds during wartime tend to fall bellow face value, as risk of non-payment rises. (2) The colonies were already flooded by foreign currency. You didn't need to gamble about whether the British or the colonist would win. You just traded in Spanish coin. Besides, the British empire wasn't going to go away. The British pound sterling was still going to have value. (3) British counterfeiting further propelled inflation. (Strangely enough, this is what the Nazis were preparing to do at the end of the war.) Both sides were paying for the war by printing Continentals. How could the currency not fail? Even if it had been backed by gold, they would have become worthless.
Further, even currencies backed by gold have failed, leading to government default. Spain did this repeatedly. Tying to the gold standard doesn't remove the politicians and their antics, but it does expose you to additional foreign problems. It just makes mismanagement harder to prevent, and makes government fraud easier to hide. (harder to perpetrate, but easier to hide == more attractive to fraud)
Wealth is too big of a thing to place in the hands of bureaucrats. Direct accountability means abolishing the federal reserve.
Yet, you haven't explained where the authority would go, or why specifically it would be better. Surely you don't want it to go to Congress, which has a pervasive history of corruption. You wouldn't be increasing transparency nor accountability, I can tell you that right now.
Because you know, heaven forbid that we actually have a real check on the monetary supply or -gasp- a meaningful currency rather than just meaningless variables on a computer screen and worthless pieces of paper and junk metal tokens.
And you mean gold isn't? They both have value specifically because people place value in them as money. (exchangeable stores of perceived value) They are both worthless otherwise. True, "precious" metals have some industrial and aesthetic value, but not nearly enough to support any prices that we've ever seen. (same with the metals in fiat coin, if you think about it)
And as for having a real check on monetary policy, it's really hard to devise. The makeup and rules of the FOMC should probably be adjusted. Fed actions and rational need to be openly published. Somebody outside the Fed needs veto power. Etc. Just abolishing the Fed only serves to move the problems somewhere else. It's easier to fix them where they stand. (in other words, extremely hard but possible)
That's generally a good rule of thumb. Unfortunately, it can take decades to effect change that way, and sometimes the incumbent really is far superior to the challenger. You do need to ensure that you're moving in the correct direction, and not just moving.
Yet, even with this strategy, you still wind up electing evil. It just tends over the long run to be lesser to the original two choices.
It's called Duverger's law. Basically, we have so many people voting for the lesser of two evils that it reinforces the two party system. Real candidates stop running third party because they know they can't win, and they don't want to become "spoiler" candidates. That leaves the rest of us to either vote for the lesser of two evils, or waste it on a protest vote.
... all of the things Obama has personally done to screw up integrity in our government such as... keeping the Federal Reserve rather than abolishing it,...
You sound like a Ron Paul nut. That would just move the power/responsibility elsewhere in the Federal bureaucracy. What's needed is to make the Fed more open and accountable. Besides, the president alone couldn't abolish it. It would take a major push through Congress - probably harder than the healthcare bill.
I know it won't make you feel any better, but those of us living (and voting) here in the US feel the same way. When all you have to vote for is the lesser of two evils, you still wind up with electing evil. Not every political race deserves such a jaded attitude, but enough of them do to bork the system.
If Dodd were a Republican, the investigation would have been complete long ago...
I was with you till this point. It would have been more likely, but only very slightly. Nobody wants to start chucking the corruption grenade around. It might bounce back and bite them.
Weddings are for the bridge and groom.
Wedding receptions are for the friends and family.
Ever wonder why people get upset about not getting invited to a wedding?
Anthropologically speaking, weddings are about changing fundamental social constructs. The wedding is about the idea of the marriage. Not only does it (ideally) solidify the commitment between the bride and groom, but it also helps other members of the social order (family, friends, etc) accept the idea. There was a specific, definable event that signified a change. Everyone was there. Everyone saw it. It doesn't just affect the couple, it affects how society treats them. It wasn't just a personal event, it was a community event.
So, while I believe that weddings should entirely suit the couple getting married, the guest are more than just an afterthought.
But no one brings money to the table for the reception (I've honestly never heard of it being done in the US). Bride and Groom foot the reception/food/drink.
It might not be the norm, but it happens all the time. I've seen it half a dozen times so far.
The president doesn't have "full authority" over vast portions of the federal government. I mean, take the Federal Reserve, your example, for instance. The president nominates someone to lead the organization, congress confirms them, and then all the president can do is beg. He has little more control over the fed than he does the supreme court.
If you are under 60 and not chronically ill you can save thousands every year by making use of a HSA & extremely high deductable policy
Nice of you not to buy insurance when you don't need it. Or don't think you need it. Most people I know don't plan on getting ill. It's not something that is on the calendar for "next year". But keep rolling the dice if you like.
Dude, really? Did you not read what he wrote? Or are you being obtuse on purpose? A health savings account and a cheep policy is hardly uninsured. Granted, it only works if you are emotionally capable of saving a bit of every paycheck (and use some discrimination when picking the policy).
Huh? Each Solstice is on its own day, half a year apart on either side. They're not on the "same" day.
Unless you're saying that the events are on the days that they are on. For instance, today is on the same day as today, regardless of what date you assign it. ("A rose by any other name...")
(Please note: You made a blanket statement, and that elicited my initial response without regard to the greater context. I responded exactly to the statement that I quoted, and nothing more.)
It's always true when the one off app was written by a kid who's working as a digital janitor.
It's usually true. It depends on actual man hours saved / actual man hours cost. It's extremely difficult not to overestimate savings.
He is talking about 'help desk' software. Nothing new, just reinventing the wheel. Another data point on the kids competence (which isn't looking good from here).
That's not entirely clear from the summary. That might be true.
Also mySQL? What happens when an index blows on 'incident'? Never for important data.
That's criticism without a recommendation. What would you suggest? PostreSQL? SQLite? No SQL (pick any)? OOo Base? What is it that you would trust with "important data"? What is the threshold for "important"? What is your criteria for acceptance?
I've been unimpressed with MySQL, but this criticism seems quite shallow.
The cost of maintaining the one off custom software will far exceed the cost of buying the canned software.
This is usually true, but not always. For one, it assumes a comparable product already exists on the market. Perhaps the available product doesn't have competent development, good customer support, company longevity, etc. Sometimes a custom project on an open source framework can have fewer drawbacks. Yes, it's rare, but it does happen.
60+ years hasn't been long enough to "figure out how to make it work right"?
No. Not in our current climate of fear. It's a political third rail. Investors don't give nuclear a second thought. Scientists and engineers have limited funding. Many of our best minds avoid the field altogether as a dead end career. Who wants to be working in nuclear? The future is elsewhere.
(personal position: nuclear power could certainly be safe, but I've yet to find an organization I'd trust to not cut corners on something so expensive and dangerous. I've also yet to find a regulatory agency with better attention to detail than your average grade schooler.)
A good question. My guess is no. This one rolled. So heavy round things hurled with extreme directed force should be avoided at this range (in other words, cannons).
It does raise questions, though. I'd like to see cops answer this one.
Dude, they were at a police bomb range, under police supervision. Nobody's getting arrested (though some wrists are going to be slapped). The biggest question is whether or not they'll be permitted to keep using the range.
Slashdot Mirror
Please remember that it wasn't so much religion as it was political/economic control through abusing religion.
Contrariwise, if you're not careful, you'll throw the baby out with the bathwater. We're entering an amoral atheistic society. You'll keep the worst parts of religious history (under the guise of political parties) and throw out the best parts (work ethic, taking responsibility, golden rule, family values, etc).
Worshiping at the altar of non-religion is still worshiping.
That's a nice little sound-bite, but it really does not stand up to even trivial scrutiny. You cannot worship non-belief. There are simply too many things not to believe in.
What you object to is dogmatically sticking to ones beliefs, to the insensitivity of others (or worse, persecution). That rationale is very easy for atheists to fall for. It can be said that they stick to it religiously. They zealously promote non-religion with the misguided sense that they are helping others. It is highly hypocritical. Because they dogmatically stick to the false premise that all religion must persecute others, they become the persecutors.
I have something valuable to say.
"Don't feed the trolls."
Well the U.S. controls the DNS system, so that puts pretty much the entire world under US jurisdiction...
Only if they tried to reclaim a ccTLD to enforce their will. THAT wouldn't be tolerated, and would cause the DNS system to be immediately forked.
So, no. The entire world isn't under US jurisdiction for that cause alone. (only so far as the world let's our leaders bully them around.)
The lions in your refrigerator are microscopic. The elephants hiding behind your couch are invisible, and you actually are a dead zombie. You just don't realize it, because of a psychological hallucination that you are not actually dead.
In which case you actually can't prove anything at all... ever. For instance, the entire world (yourself included) could be figments of my imagination. Or maybe we're both characters in a book, and just don't know it.
If you can prove anything, you can prove some negatives. Of course, you do need to accept some axioms on faith, or you'll be checked into a mental institution. (no offence intended)
???
You can have one evil that is far superior to another (competence, ideological honesty, etc). It happens every once in a while in elections. It almost always happens in primaries. (Granted, there are rarely any incumbents in primaries.)
Not necessarily. If the incumbent is far superior to the challenger, let them stand. You CAN move backwards if you don't.
Take term limits, for example. They haven't fixed anything in California. If anything, they've made things worse. Blindly replacing incumbents doesn't lead to better politicians any more than blindly reelecting incumbents for decades.
No, we should make incumbents really work at earning reelection, and we need to keep the truly insane out of public office.
Some of your arguments are absolutely true and valid. Intentional sustained inflation is theft. It is a tax that goes, not to the government, but to the financial sector (granted, some of it offsets the national debt).
The reason the Continental Currency failed so badly was severalfold. (1) Congress at the time was even worse at managing monetary policy than the Fed is now. (hardly an argument for or against the Fed) They were basically being treated as a bond redeemable when paying taxes. Bonds during wartime tend to fall bellow face value, as risk of non-payment rises. (2) The colonies were already flooded by foreign currency. You didn't need to gamble about whether the British or the colonist would win. You just traded in Spanish coin. Besides, the British empire wasn't going to go away. The British pound sterling was still going to have value. (3) British counterfeiting further propelled inflation. (Strangely enough, this is what the Nazis were preparing to do at the end of the war.) Both sides were paying for the war by printing Continentals. How could the currency not fail? Even if it had been backed by gold, they would have become worthless.
Further, even currencies backed by gold have failed, leading to government default. Spain did this repeatedly. Tying to the gold standard doesn't remove the politicians and their antics, but it does expose you to additional foreign problems. It just makes mismanagement harder to prevent, and makes government fraud easier to hide. (harder to perpetrate, but easier to hide == more attractive to fraud)
Wealth is too big of a thing to place in the hands of bureaucrats. Direct accountability means abolishing the federal reserve.
Yet, you haven't explained where the authority would go, or why specifically it would be better. Surely you don't want it to go to Congress, which has a pervasive history of corruption. You wouldn't be increasing transparency nor accountability, I can tell you that right now.
Because you know, heaven forbid that we actually have a real check on the monetary supply or -gasp- a meaningful currency rather than just meaningless variables on a computer screen and worthless pieces of paper and junk metal tokens.
And you mean gold isn't? They both have value specifically because people place value in them as money. (exchangeable stores of perceived value) They are both worthless otherwise. True, "precious" metals have some industrial and aesthetic value, but not nearly enough to support any prices that we've ever seen. (same with the metals in fiat coin, if you think about it)
And as for having a real check on monetary policy, it's really hard to devise. The makeup and rules of the FOMC should probably be adjusted. Fed actions and rational need to be openly published. Somebody outside the Fed needs veto power. Etc. Just abolishing the Fed only serves to move the problems somewhere else. It's easier to fix them where they stand. (in other words, extremely hard but possible)
That's generally a good rule of thumb. Unfortunately, it can take decades to effect change that way, and sometimes the incumbent really is far superior to the challenger. You do need to ensure that you're moving in the correct direction, and not just moving.
Yet, even with this strategy, you still wind up electing evil. It just tends over the long run to be lesser to the original two choices.
It's called Duverger's law. Basically, we have so many people voting for the lesser of two evils that it reinforces the two party system. Real candidates stop running third party because they know they can't win, and they don't want to become "spoiler" candidates. That leaves the rest of us to either vote for the lesser of two evils, or waste it on a protest vote.
The people running for your local school board probably aren't all evil.
No, not all of them. ;)
(I do live in CA after all.)
... all of the things Obama has personally done to screw up integrity in our government such as... keeping the Federal Reserve rather than abolishing it, ...
You sound like a Ron Paul nut. That would just move the power/responsibility elsewhere in the Federal bureaucracy. What's needed is to make the Fed more open and accountable. Besides, the president alone couldn't abolish it. It would take a major push through Congress - probably harder than the healthcare bill.
I know it won't make you feel any better, but those of us living (and voting) here in the US feel the same way. When all you have to vote for is the lesser of two evils, you still wind up with electing evil. Not every political race deserves such a jaded attitude, but enough of them do to bork the system.
If Dodd were a Republican, the investigation would have been complete long ago...
I was with you till this point. It would have been more likely, but only very slightly. Nobody wants to start chucking the corruption grenade around. It might bounce back and bite them.
Weddings are for the bridge and groom. Wedding receptions are for the friends and family.
Ever wonder why people get upset about not getting invited to a wedding?
Anthropologically speaking, weddings are about changing fundamental social constructs. The wedding is about the idea of the marriage. Not only does it (ideally) solidify the commitment between the bride and groom, but it also helps other members of the social order (family, friends, etc) accept the idea. There was a specific, definable event that signified a change. Everyone was there. Everyone saw it. It doesn't just affect the couple, it affects how society treats them. It wasn't just a personal event, it was a community event.
So, while I believe that weddings should entirely suit the couple getting married, the guest are more than just an afterthought.
But no one brings money to the table for the reception (I've honestly never heard of it being done in the US). Bride and Groom foot the reception/food/drink.
It might not be the norm, but it happens all the time. I've seen it half a dozen times so far.
The president doesn't have "full authority" over vast portions of the federal government. I mean, take the Federal Reserve, your example, for instance. The president nominates someone to lead the organization, congress confirms them, and then all the president can do is beg. He has little more control over the fed than he does the supreme court.
If you are under 60 and not chronically ill you can save thousands every year by making use of a HSA & extremely high deductable policy
Nice of you not to buy insurance when you don't need it. Or don't think you need it. Most people I know don't plan on getting ill. It's not something that is on the calendar for "next year". But keep rolling the dice if you like.
Dude, really? Did you not read what he wrote? Or are you being obtuse on purpose? A health savings account and a cheep policy is hardly uninsured. Granted, it only works if you are emotionally capable of saving a bit of every paycheck (and use some discrimination when picking the policy).
Huh? Each Solstice is on its own day, half a year apart on either side. They're not on the "same" day.
Unless you're saying that the events are on the days that they are on. For instance, today is on the same day as today, regardless of what date you assign it. ("A rose by any other name...")
(tongue firmly in-cheek)
(Please note: You made a blanket statement, and that elicited my initial response without regard to the greater context. I responded exactly to the statement that I quoted, and nothing more.)
It's always true when the one off app was written by a kid who's working as a digital janitor.
It's usually true. It depends on actual man hours saved / actual man hours cost. It's extremely difficult not to overestimate savings.
He is talking about 'help desk' software. Nothing new, just reinventing the wheel. Another data point on the kids competence (which isn't looking good from here).
That's not entirely clear from the summary. That might be true.
Also mySQL? What happens when an index blows on 'incident'? Never for important data.
That's criticism without a recommendation. What would you suggest? PostreSQL? SQLite? No SQL (pick any)? OOo Base? What is it that you would trust with "important data"? What is the threshold for "important"? What is your criteria for acceptance?
I've been unimpressed with MySQL, but this criticism seems quite shallow.
The cost of maintaining the one off custom software will far exceed the cost of buying the canned software.
This is usually true, but not always. For one, it assumes a comparable product already exists on the market. Perhaps the available product doesn't have competent development, good customer support, company longevity, etc. Sometimes a custom project on an open source framework can have fewer drawbacks. Yes, it's rare, but it does happen.
60+ years hasn't been long enough to "figure out how to make it work right"?
No. Not in our current climate of fear. It's a political third rail. Investors don't give nuclear a second thought. Scientists and engineers have limited funding. Many of our best minds avoid the field altogether as a dead end career. Who wants to be working in nuclear? The future is elsewhere.
(personal position: nuclear power could certainly be safe, but I've yet to find an organization I'd trust to not cut corners on something so expensive and dangerous. I've also yet to find a regulatory agency with better attention to detail than your average grade schooler.)
If you [...] without being prepared for the possibility of a kid coming out nine months later, I think you're kinda irresponsible.
What? The most important decision in the lives of those to whom you owe your most fundamental moral duty?
I really hope that's dry wit. It's not "kinda irresponsible". It's epic irresponsible.
(And for those who would argue the point: epics have been written with that as a fundamental plot element.)
A good question. My guess is no. This one rolled. So heavy round things hurled with extreme directed force should be avoided at this range (in other words, cannons).
It does raise questions, though. I'd like to see cops answer this one.
Dude, they were at a police bomb range, under police supervision. Nobody's getting arrested (though some wrists are going to be slapped). The biggest question is whether or not they'll be permitted to keep using the range.