What do you call it when both the size and power of government are growing AND the degree of corporate influence over government is growing? What do you call it when our most powerful politicians also tend to be officers of corporations and/or own large monied interests in them (like Cheney and Halliburton to give an easy example)? It's like a revolving door, with the same individuals switching from time to time between corporations and government.
The old models of "fascism" in the sense of corporations running government, or "statism" in the sense of government running corporations (and individual life) assume that corporate interests and government interests are distinct (with some overlap). When they are no longer distinct, when the same people are heavily involved in both, when both continue to grow unchecked, there is no longer a meaningful distinction between corporatism and statism. It's not a matter of one being in the service of the other, as though it lost a power struggle and has become subjugated. It's a matter of each realizing that cooperating to consolidate their power means that both can grow and together they can dominate you and me. If they opposed each other this would be less inevitable.
Minimal government is what got us this disaster. The valves to close this leaks as soon as it started exist, the USA just does not require the companies to use them, so they don't.
You're marching in ordered regularity to a keyword, just like clockwork. It's rather tiresome to be honest with you. What am I talking about? I'll explain.
A "minimum" or a description of "minimal" means it is just enough to effectively do the job. If it is too little and that causes it to be ineffective or otherwise fail to do the job, then it is less than minimal. Less than minimal is not minimal. Now, you'd think "minimal" would be a commonly-understood three-syllable word. It's not exotic or unheard-of, and in case its definition is unknown, your presence on Slashdot tells me you can also access dictionary.reference.com. Yeah, I know that isn't very nice of me, but please forgive me for that, since explaining this every single time a discussion remotely like this takes place is not so nice either.
Now, the more immediate discussion to which you responded talked about the political parties and the way they run our government. Those are far in excess. You can add a federal regulation that requires oil companies to take safeguards against this kind of disaster. That's +1 regulation. You can then remove literally thousands of laws that a stable civilized society does not require. That's - (several thousand) regulations. Combine those and what do you end up with? A net reduction of the size and power of government. This is also known as a minimal government. It's what I was advocating.
In fact, one could argue that all the micromanagement of daily life in which the federal government has become engaged drastically hinders its ability to take care of common-sense regulations that are properly its job. Off-shore oil drilling has to be such an area of regulation.
Pick the most "conservative" political candidate and pick the most "liberal" political candidate. Then do some research and look at their list of sponsors. See all the names they have in common? Why, it's almost as though the people who bankroll campaigns don't care who wins...
It's called hedging or "safe betting". Here's an example of how it can work: Assume there is two candidates. Assume that your contribution pays itself back at least two-fold. You invest (contribute) in both candidates and the beauty is that you don't really care who wins, your investment is safe either way.
Which wouldn't work if there were real variety and truly significant philosophical differences between the two candidates. If that were the case, only one of them would take actions favorable to your particular business because he believes in governing that way.
The huge mistake you make is in assuming that all forms of calamity can be warded off with proper planning. It's true that there's a heck of a lot that can be avoided with foresight and preparation. But a well-placed hurricane, bullet, love affair, or metastatic tumor can annihilate every one of those plans.
I suspect you're the kind of personality that thrives on feeling like you're in control and have the moral high ground. And that's all very well and good up to a point, but:
"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!"
(Robert Burns)
No matter how carefully you plan, it can all go to shit in an instant. And there's nothing you can do about it. EVER.
So if your worldview depends on cognitive errors like the just-world fallacy, or blaming the victim...well, then you're almost guaranteed to spend your last days in a state of abject terror and despair. Good luck with that.
Actually I don't see your post and my previous one as incompabitle. Not in the slightest. You plan for everything you can control and then you accept the rest. Things work out surprisingly well this way. It's amazing how few "emergencies" you have when you do this correctly. Sometimes shit does happen and there's nothing anyone could have possibly done to prevent it. You'll find, however, that this is relatively rare.
It's not a matter of whether I feel in control or whether I think I have some sort of high ground. It's a matter of whether I take good care of the things within my control and then accept the things that aren't, knowing that I have at least some influence over the vast majority of things that could ever occur in my life.
What is now called "right" wants to expand government for the purposes of defense and national security. What is now called "left" wants to expand government for the purposes of social engineering and entitlements. The result is the same and the two ideologies are little more than excuses or justifications.
How are are the results "the same"? The US government already spends some 41.5% of the world's military expenditures, and probably has the best traditional (meaning, for nation-versus-nation wars) forces. It also spends a lot of money on social security, medicare, and soon health care, and the results of those programs are people who might survive job loss, illness, or old age. Now, which one you care about more depends on your political views, but it does matter where the government is big.
They're the same because the federal government is looking for growth areas and will exploit them wherever they are found. Any benefit to me as a taxpayer is indicental.
You mention Social Security and health care. If I could, I would opt out of Social Security entirely. I'm in my mid-20s. If I cannot figure out on my own, without assistance, that I will one day grow old and wish to retire, and that the time to start saving up and preparing for that is right now, why should somebody else be forced to pay for my lack of foresight? Morally speaking, I don't know how to justify that one. That is, I cannot tell you why my failure to plan ahead should become someone else's emergency. I certainly cannot tell you a good reason why the Baby Boomers could not have felt the same way as I do, why they prefer to burden their children and grandchildren instead of working to make sure they have a better life then they had. As far as I am concerned, they are the most selfish group to ever exercise suffrage.
It's likewise with health insurance. I pay a monthly premium for my health insurance. I see it this way: I pay an insurance premium so that I am prepared in the event of a medical disaster, or I risk bankruptcy. I chose to pay the insurance premium. Other people will have to weigh the cost-benefit analysis as they see fit. So long as they don't dip into my wallet to make up for their shortcomings, I have no problem with this.
Where the government is so big is precisely where people don't want to use some foresight and plan ahead and take personal responsibility for their situation. There's nothing politicians love more than a crisis to solve. The problem is, a "crisis" that involves adults who could not properly plan for inevitabiltiies is not actually a crisis at all. Those adults deserve to be left to their own devices. If they succeed, uphold them as examples of good planning. If they fail, use them as examples of why one should think of these things ahead of time. Yet that's not good enough for big government, and it's apparently big business to protect people from their own poor decision-making.
Yeah, it's gone up, but most of that has been due to autopilots put in place decades ago (mostly social security and medicare expanding faster than inflation). I don't see much actual support for new policies among politicians.
What do you call the government-sponsored bailouts of various financial companies, or government expanding into the health-care insurance market? Or a few years prior to that, the federalization of airport security into the TSA, or the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, or the Patriot Act? If these are not (relatively) new policies I don't know what would qualify.
It seems that, if anything, it's swung away from statism. In the post-WW2 but pre-Reagan era, both parties were in favor of a whole range of statist approaches that now often struggle to get support among even the nominally "left" party. For example, Nixon imposed price controls, created the EPA, and was in favor of a national healthcare program, and was seen as right-wing at the time.
I define "statist" in terms of the size and power of the federal government. Currently its size as measured by dollars is around 35% of GDP. Compare that to just ten years ago and you'll quickly see my point. Note that the relative size of government measured as a percentage of GDP should be inherently self-adjusting for inflation.
He's a corporatist. If you think he is left wing, you really have guzzled the Flavor-Aid.
Both Left and Right are corporatist. They are merely two different brands of corporatism that use different approaches to achieve the same goal of statism. Pick the most "conservative" political candidate and pick the most "liberal" political candidate. Then do some research and look at their list of sponsors. See all the names they have in common? Why, it's almost as though the people who bankroll campaigns don't care who wins...
The bickering about Left vs. Right is designed to distract attention away from what is actually happening. I wish I could recall and attribute the eloquent quote about our politics becoming more polar as our political parties become more homogeneous, for it's an accurate one. The distraction is all about divide and conquer. Like "bread and circus" or "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" it's an age-old tactic used by rulers and governments throughout history for the simple reason that it's effective. Here's why it works: the more time we waste blaming "the other party" for society's ills the less time we spend demanding more freedom in the form of minimal government.
I think the supporters of offshore drilling, at least the intelligent ones, and I am not saying the "Drill Baby Drill" crowd was knew there would be serious accident eventually. Its just a common sense no matter what precautions you take if you engage in a fundamentally dangerous activity often enough eventually the odds will catch up with. Skiers break bones, drivers have accidents, nuclear reactors melt down or leak, coal mines collapse, drillers have spills, these things happen.
We should do our best to learn what went wrong and our best to avoid it in the future but we must accept that this is a consequence of the life style we enjoy the rest of the time. Experience with other major spills shows us the environment will recover eventually. This is a tragedy and its going to impact some of us more than others. I bet though for every Gulf Coast fisherman or tour operator that gets put out of business there was AT LEAST one who was/is making a comfortable living in oil and gas. I think you also have to consider all the good in terms of quality of life cheap petroleum and energy in general has done our nation as whole and will no doubt continue to do. When you look at this in broad objective terms its hard for me to conclude it was not worth it. Maybe when all the consequences are known I will change my mind but for now lets be sensible and keep in mind the old saying "no pain no gain."
There is something wrong with a lot of people that prevents them from accepting that we are mortal beings and the world, in many ways, is a dangerous place. It's like they want to live a modern lifestyle directly or indirectly involving such things as cars, other heavy machinery, electricity, oil, prepared foods, medicine, aviation and lots of other things but do not want to acknowledge the non-zero risk associated with them. Unfortunate events like this oil spill are considered newsworthy because they are so rare despite the vast multitude of things that can potentially go wrong, which is nothing other than an engineering triumph.
On a mundane level, we need and want oil so it's a question of where it will come from, not whether we will have it. Apparently it's more acceptable to some to pay foreigners to do the drilling for us than it is to also use our own resources. It's as though birds and fish in oceans in other parts of the world wouldn't suffer from an oil spill as much as the animals affected by this one, as though foreign oil workers killed by an explosion wouldn't be just as dead as our domestic oil workers who were killed by this one.
On a more philosophical level, we are mortal. One can deal with that by fearing every little thing that might bring harm. In that case, you should not drive and you probably shouldn't stay home either since many accidents happen there. Good luck having any real quality of life if you spend such a great deal of time worrying about the end of life. Or one can deal with this by taking reasonable precautions and then viewing mortality in a different light, as an incentive to taste life to the dregs and enjoy every moment you have and every person you know as much as possible during the time you have. The problem with media sensationalism and politics is that fear sells and there is little profit and political power to be had by seeing it this way. The one strong advantage this gives is that anyone who holds this viewpoint does it genuinely as an individual choice since it's exactly the opposite of what we are daily encouraged to believe.
Then why are you posting anonymously?
When Nixon signed all the current environmental laws in the 1970s, it was because pollution was so bad that it could not be denied as a figment of liberal media. And here comes another such event. Welcome to your worst nightmare. And mine.
Am I alone in viewing comments like this as an attempt to steer the discussion away from the statements that were made and towards the irrelevant personal decisions of the speaker? Had he not posted AC, would you bring up the way his username is spelled and consider it relevant? It's just a weak (as in lesser) form of ad-hominem. It's only really appropriate when the AC makes a post talking about their belief in the uselessness of anonynimity and privacy, which is not what happened here.
It is sad that the US has swung so far to the right, with such extreme abuses of power that Nixon now comes across as a relatively honest moderate.
It's swung so far in the direction of statism that "left" and "right" have become devoid of any real meaning. Both used to mean a set of political principles. Now they're just two different approaches to the same goal of expanding government. What is now called "right" wants to expand government for the purposes of defense and national security. What is now called "left" wants to expand government for the purposes of social engineering and entitlements. The result is the same and the two ideologies are little more than excuses or justifications.
The two-party system has done to politics what a reasonable person would expect a duopoly to do to a market. The former fails to serve the interests of the voter just like the latter fails to serve the interests of the customer. In both scenarios the voter and the customer are viewed as a means of maintaining power.
This is why you don't hire criminals, ex or otherwise. Pretty much by definition, they don't have normal social controls in their heads that make them worthwhile employees.
The difference between criminals and average people is that the criminals believed that they had a payoff combined with a low chance of getting caught and/or they believe they have nothing to lose. Otherwise, most average non-criminals don't have much of an internal morality, set of ethical principles, or enlightened self-interest that guide their actions. What they have is a fear of consequence and the sense that they have a great deal to lose by going to jail. They're not trying to be particularly good or ethical or moral, so "decent" is a good description of them. This is, of course, a puerile concern for the self and not a concern for how one's actions may adversely impact others. If you have ever noticed how inconsiderate and oblivious most folks are, who drive/walk/shop as though other people don't exist and could not possibly be inconvenienced by their carelessness, this is part of it.
One explanation of such is Kohlberg's stages of moral development, if you feel like you need a more formal, psychology-based description to appreciate this observation. In a much more intuitive sense, it also reminds me of the quote from Aristotle: "I have gained this by philosophy; that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law."
pirates like putting h.264 video in MKV containers. It's pretty obvious why Microsoft or anyone else has little interest in supporting it.
Pirates also use formats like.mp3,.avi, and less frequently.mpg. Oh, and pirate video games include.exe files. We should discontinue all support for these formats at once!
The difference is that authorized publishers also use.mp3,.avi, and.vob (a renamed.mpg). Publishers have tended not to use.mkv; only format-shifters and pirates do that.
Clearly there was no sarcasm or other humor in my post, necessitating this serious response of yours.
Oh, and format-shifting is a legitimate non-piracy use.
MKV has nothing in particular to do with h.264, except that pirates like putting h.264 video in MKV containers. It's pretty obvious why Microsoft or anyone else has little interest in supporting it.
Pirates also use formats like.mp3,.avi, and less frequently.mpg. Oh, and pirate video games include.exe files. We should discontinue all support for these formats at once!
For a portable device like this tablet if you start with an Intel Atom and add Windows 7 then performance will be poor, costs will be high, battery life will be short. The customer experience will be unsatisfactory because W7 isn't designed for tablet use and Microsoft won't let HP customize it sufficiently to make it useful.
So no, HP didn't screw this up - it was a dumb idea from the start. Its failure was built-in. But they had to show something to try and head off the iPad.
If you think you where being rational, go back and look at the reasons you gave for a woman to be a single mother.
Go on. Ill wait. Seriously it's relevant.
All of them point to a problem with the woman.
how about:
1) Rape,
2) Father left
3) father died
4) failed birth control
I mean, really.
Sorry for a second reply to your post, but I just came up with a simpler way to illustrate what I am saying.
Did you know that there really is such a thing as virgin birth? It's incredibly rare but it does happen. I'm not talking here about the Bible. I'm talking about real, medically/scientifically documented cases of actual virgins becoming pregnant and giving birth. If I recall, I think the children had DNA very similar or even identical to the mothers.
Now, I didn't mention virgin births in my post about single mothers. If you want to avoid contradicting yourself, then you should be just as upset about that as you are about the fact that I didn't mention rape victims. After all, they too became single mothers through no fault of their own, so unless you are hypocritically playing favorites, you need to object to that also.
At some point it becomes absurd. Again I remind you that I never made the claim that what I said applied to every possible case. You can see all of this and try to come up with ways to portray me as negatively as you possibly can, since you dislike what I said and in your mind that means I must be the bad guy right? Or you can realize that given the choice between covering the vast majority of cases versus doing a full dissertation on every possible exception or edge case or rare event, I chose to cover the vast majority.
That's your choice. How you choose that doesn't tell me anything about what I said, for I already knew I was generalizing and I made no secret of it. What you seem to want is for me to attach a list of disclaimers (i.e. reminders of things I did not claim, reminders that generalizations have exceptions, etc) to my post that would be longer than the post itself. I'm supposed to do that why, because you might get offended and upset if I don't and clutch at straws in an effort to mischaracterize me? I am supposed to be intimidated by that and try to appease your sensibilities to prevent it? The truth is, how you handle speech you don't like and didn't even understand is not my problem.
Besides, none of the disclaimers I could have added would tell you anything that reading comprehension of my post wouldn't, or anything you wouldn't learn from the ability to look up "generalization" and "exception" in a dictionary.
The fact is, the vast majority of single mothers are not rape victims and are not giving virgin birth. Instead, they made choices that either directly led to their situation or indirectly left it to chance. You better believe that the choices a woman makes, the lifestyle she lives, and whether she demonstrates the ability to take control of her own life does indeed influence whether I want to be in a serious relationship with her. I make no apologies for that. What it does not influence is whether I treat her with kindness and respect, whether I would be a close friend, or whether I would care about her a great deal. In other words, I reserve the right to have the final say when it comes to whom I would date and I cannot be concerned with whether you would approve, though I'm sure it'd be a huge boost to your ego if I were.
If you think you where being rational, go back and look at the reasons you gave for a woman to be a single mother.
Go on. Ill wait. Seriously it's relevant.
All of them point to a problem with the woman.
how about:
1) Rape,
2) Father left
3) father died
4) failed birth control
I mean, really.
"Rational" would be the realization that I did not say "this list is exhaustive and without exceptions" and along with it, the appreciation that I chose not to say that; it was not a coincidence or product of chance that no such claim appears in my post. Generally, the Slashdot crowd is really great at noticing the fine details of everything you say and terribly unskilled at noticing that what you didn't say or didn't claim is at least as important.
I covered your items 2, 3, and 4 by saying "especially if she has never been married to the father". Marriages sometimes fail despite the best efforts of those involved. Now that you (in a roundabout way) ask, I will answer that I do draw a distinction between a single mother who at least waited until she was in a serious, stable relationship before having a child versus a single mother who was irresponsible and did not even consider whether she wanted to become pregnant. I wouldn't want to be in a sexual relationship with either one, but certainly one person is being a lot more responsible than the other.
Rape would be a special case indeed. It also happens not to apply to the person I was responding to, who described a "gold digger" whose primary concern was collecting child support money. He did not describe a rape victim, so my response didn't cover this subject. Context is important that way.
Basically the objections you raise there would be covered by a reasonable amount of benefit of doubt. Since you dislike what I say you're playing the hostile audience where everything I say, including the fact that I neither intended to cover all possible cases nor claimed to have done so, will be used against me. That's fine, and tells me a bit about how you can't or won't dispassionately handle a controversial issue, but it doesn't address the points I made.
It's rather obvious that I was making a generalization. The thing that is well-understood about generalizations is that there is such a thing as exceptions. I wish public schools would emphasize these basic things so they'd stop being stumbling blocks in conversations. Any actual individual person I meet is going to be treated on what you may call a "case by case" basis, as there's no other way of knowing whether my generalization applies to that specific individual. That's because general rules are, well, general, and I fully understand what that means. If you don't, that reflects on your understanding and not on my statements. Sorry to put that bluntly but it's the straight truth.
No, it means people who claimed to have used them as directed to the best of their knowledge saw a 2% failure rate. See the flaws with that?
That's all the more reason to use your own form of protection (i.e. condoms) so that you can personally make sure it's used correctly. Bringing a child into the world is a very serious responsibility even for people who are prepared to do so. Things far less serious than this warrant a prudent level of caution.
This is one reason (of many) why it's unwise to date single mothers...
Right. Romance is dead... it was bought out by an aggressive takeover by hallmark and then sold off piece by piece. In other news, you're a jaded asshat who's trying to reduce the enormous complexity and diversity of human relationships into some neat little rule of "all single mothers are SATAN." Baka...
I don't think you realize or appreciate how many men are in that guy's position. Note I told him he was not a victim. If he was a victim, that would have been her fault, as in something she did to him. It really wasn't. He made a decision without understanding what he was signing up for and he got screwed. That's his fault.
I made no claims to have summed up all of human relationships, and that's for a reason, so please put aside your emotional visceral hyperbole. I didn't say single mothers were "satan" or anything of the sort. I said that they are generally not the best match for a single man to have either casual sex or a serious relationship with and proceeded to give reasons for that. I never said they should be treated as second-class citizens, I never said it's wrong to care a great deal about them, to be friends with them, etc. Only that having a sexual relationship with them is a lot more complexity and comes with more risk than most men are bargaining for, and that men need to seriously consider this instead of being so thoughtless or trying to play the victim.
I'm saying men need to do a better job of taking responsibility for their decisions, such as whom they choose to be with. If you are a woman who disagrees with that, I'd wager you are in a tiny minority.
Romance is far from dead, though as a man I can tell you that the number of women who appreciate it is lower than one would think, for the simple reason that "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" is (falsely) viewed by many of them as more manly. That's beside the point, however. It's pretty obvious to me that the original poster was thinking with his penis and it got him into trouble. I don't find anything particularly romantic about that, so no, romance was not what I wrote about. I think you're capable of realizing that on your own but your irritated emotional reaction required you to find some fault with me and created the need for me to point this out.
If you'd like to stop calling me names and falsely characterizing both me and what I wrote, I'd be willing to have a rational discussion about this with you, but you need to know that those techniques are useless on me and anyone else who isn't in the business of winning your approval. I've had discussions with you before and from those I know that you normally adhere to a higher standard than this. That usually makes it a pleasure to hear what you have to say. If you still need to demonize me because I said something you dislike then unfortunately a rational discussion is going to be rather difficult. But, my offer stands and that choice is yours.
Off topic I know, but to address your stereo-type.
You're way off, on an old stereo type that doesn't exist anymore. They are White, and get their income through child support, by having babies by as many people as they can to ostensibly, spread the load. Now they just use the system to juice the unlucky victims and have medicaid.
We don't give out money unless they are working or trying to find work.
I know this, because I am one of those victims.
- Dan.
This is one reason (of many) why it's unwise to date single mothers, especially if they have never been married to the father(s) of their children. They have a way of being quite fertile.
You also have to wonder why a man who was involved with her enough to have a child with her did not want to stay with her. It means one of three things: she has poor taste in men, she dates decent men but doesn't treat them well, or the act of creating life is so meaningless to her that she'll allow herself to become pregnant by a man who's a casual sex partner and has no interest in a serious relationship (I bet she thinks that's a matter of "luck" too). All of those are red flags! You're thinking with the wrong head if you believe you can ignore them without regretting it.
Another reason is that parenting is a full-time job. If you are a single man with no dependents you can afford to invest a lot of time and energy into a relationship that a single mother could not possibly match. That sort of one-way relationship where there is a lack of reciprocity tends to be unstable. This is another red flag that you ignore at your own peril.
You call yourself a "victim". Unless you are claiming that this woman raped you, then you're not a victim and you're not "unlucky". You just engaged in poor decision-making. That is what made you vulnerable to someone who decided to use you for her own selfish needs. I'll go one further and say that you probably have some kind of dissatisfaction with life or other personal issues, otherwise a woman like that would not have been attractive in your eyes or otherwise appealed to you.
If it's truly benign then I would not call it neglect. Sometimes doing nothing and leaving well enough alone is truly your best option (not that politicians want to understand this). The wisdom to know when this is the case versus situations you really should be taking direct control over is also not what I would call neglectful. Neglect would be failing to consider these things and act accordingly.
Never use personal equipment at work. They have every right to fully review your equipment at any time to decide if their data is on your person equipment.
I disagree that they automatically have every right to do that. I will say that they'd be foolish not to make that a written agreement that must be signed before a job offer is made, if they plan to permit personal equipment to connect to their networks. In the absence of such an agreement, I don't recognize anyone's right to go through someone's personal equipment merely because they connected it to a network with permission to do so.
They need to think about these things before such permission to use their networks is given. What's unacceptable is retroactively deciding "oops, we made the mistake by allowing you to use your equipment on our network without a written agreement, so now we deserve access to your property and your data." That's just incompetence and a failure to plan ahead. It'd be the wrong way to deal with even data far less sensitive than medical records.
Really though the best way to handle this is to authorize onlly company-issued laptops and other company equipment for use with company networks.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you call it when both the size and power of government are growing AND the degree of corporate influence over government is growing? What do you call it when our most powerful politicians also tend to be officers of corporations and/or own large monied interests in them (like Cheney and Halliburton to give an easy example)? It's like a revolving door, with the same individuals switching from time to time between corporations and government.
The old models of "fascism" in the sense of corporations running government, or "statism" in the sense of government running corporations (and individual life) assume that corporate interests and government interests are distinct (with some overlap). When they are no longer distinct, when the same people are heavily involved in both, when both continue to grow unchecked, there is no longer a meaningful distinction between corporatism and statism. It's not a matter of one being in the service of the other, as though it lost a power struggle and has become subjugated. It's a matter of each realizing that cooperating to consolidate their power means that both can grow and together they can dominate you and me. If they opposed each other this would be less inevitable.
Minimal government is what got us this disaster. The valves to close this leaks as soon as it started exist, the USA just does not require the companies to use them, so they don't.
You're marching in ordered regularity to a keyword, just like clockwork. It's rather tiresome to be honest with you. What am I talking about? I'll explain.
A "minimum" or a description of "minimal" means it is just enough to effectively do the job. If it is too little and that causes it to be ineffective or otherwise fail to do the job, then it is less than minimal. Less than minimal is not minimal. Now, you'd think "minimal" would be a commonly-understood three-syllable word. It's not exotic or unheard-of, and in case its definition is unknown, your presence on Slashdot tells me you can also access dictionary.reference.com. Yeah, I know that isn't very nice of me, but please forgive me for that, since explaining this every single time a discussion remotely like this takes place is not so nice either.
Now, the more immediate discussion to which you responded talked about the political parties and the way they run our government. Those are far in excess. You can add a federal regulation that requires oil companies to take safeguards against this kind of disaster. That's +1 regulation. You can then remove literally thousands of laws that a stable civilized society does not require. That's - (several thousand) regulations. Combine those and what do you end up with? A net reduction of the size and power of government. This is also known as a minimal government. It's what I was advocating.
In fact, one could argue that all the micromanagement of daily life in which the federal government has become engaged drastically hinders its ability to take care of common-sense regulations that are properly its job. Off-shore oil drilling has to be such an area of regulation.
It's called hedging or "safe betting". Here's an example of how it can work: Assume there is two candidates. Assume that your contribution pays itself back at least two-fold. You invest (contribute) in both candidates and the beauty is that you don't really care who wins, your investment is safe either way.
Which wouldn't work if there were real variety and truly significant philosophical differences between the two candidates. If that were the case, only one of them would take actions favorable to your particular business because he believes in governing that way.
The huge mistake you make is in assuming that all forms of calamity can be warded off with proper planning. It's true that there's a heck of a lot that can be avoided with foresight and preparation. But a well-placed hurricane, bullet, love affair, or metastatic tumor can annihilate every one of those plans. I suspect you're the kind of personality that thrives on feeling like you're in control and have the moral high ground. And that's all very well and good up to a point, but: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!" (Robert Burns) No matter how carefully you plan, it can all go to shit in an instant. And there's nothing you can do about it. EVER. So if your worldview depends on cognitive errors like the just-world fallacy, or blaming the victim...well, then you're almost guaranteed to spend your last days in a state of abject terror and despair. Good luck with that.
Actually I don't see your post and my previous one as incompabitle. Not in the slightest. You plan for everything you can control and then you accept the rest. Things work out surprisingly well this way. It's amazing how few "emergencies" you have when you do this correctly. Sometimes shit does happen and there's nothing anyone could have possibly done to prevent it. You'll find, however, that this is relatively rare.
It's not a matter of whether I feel in control or whether I think I have some sort of high ground. It's a matter of whether I take good care of the things within my control and then accept the things that aren't, knowing that I have at least some influence over the vast majority of things that could ever occur in my life.
How are are the results "the same"? The US government already spends some 41.5% of the world's military expenditures, and probably has the best traditional (meaning, for nation-versus-nation wars) forces. It also spends a lot of money on social security, medicare, and soon health care, and the results of those programs are people who might survive job loss, illness, or old age. Now, which one you care about more depends on your political views, but it does matter where the government is big.
They're the same because the federal government is looking for growth areas and will exploit them wherever they are found. Any benefit to me as a taxpayer is indicental.
You mention Social Security and health care. If I could, I would opt out of Social Security entirely. I'm in my mid-20s. If I cannot figure out on my own, without assistance, that I will one day grow old and wish to retire, and that the time to start saving up and preparing for that is right now, why should somebody else be forced to pay for my lack of foresight? Morally speaking, I don't know how to justify that one. That is, I cannot tell you why my failure to plan ahead should become someone else's emergency. I certainly cannot tell you a good reason why the Baby Boomers could not have felt the same way as I do, why they prefer to burden their children and grandchildren instead of working to make sure they have a better life then they had. As far as I am concerned, they are the most selfish group to ever exercise suffrage.
It's likewise with health insurance. I pay a monthly premium for my health insurance. I see it this way: I pay an insurance premium so that I am prepared in the event of a medical disaster, or I risk bankruptcy. I chose to pay the insurance premium. Other people will have to weigh the cost-benefit analysis as they see fit. So long as they don't dip into my wallet to make up for their shortcomings, I have no problem with this.
Where the government is so big is precisely where people don't want to use some foresight and plan ahead and take personal responsibility for their situation. There's nothing politicians love more than a crisis to solve. The problem is, a "crisis" that involves adults who could not properly plan for inevitabiltiies is not actually a crisis at all. Those adults deserve to be left to their own devices. If they succeed, uphold them as examples of good planning. If they fail, use them as examples of why one should think of these things ahead of time. Yet that's not good enough for big government, and it's apparently big business to protect people from their own poor decision-making.
Yeah, it's gone up, but most of that has been due to autopilots put in place decades ago (mostly social security and medicare expanding faster than inflation). I don't see much actual support for new policies among politicians.
What do you call the government-sponsored bailouts of various financial companies, or government expanding into the health-care insurance market? Or a few years prior to that, the federalization of airport security into the TSA, or the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, or the Patriot Act? If these are not (relatively) new policies I don't know what would qualify.
Ideally they would be one and the same.
It seems that, if anything, it's swung away from statism. In the post-WW2 but pre-Reagan era, both parties were in favor of a whole range of statist approaches that now often struggle to get support among even the nominally "left" party. For example, Nixon imposed price controls, created the EPA, and was in favor of a national healthcare program, and was seen as right-wing at the time.
I define "statist" in terms of the size and power of the federal government. Currently its size as measured by dollars is around 35% of GDP. Compare that to just ten years ago and you'll quickly see my point. Note that the relative size of government measured as a percentage of GDP should be inherently self-adjusting for inflation.
He's a corporatist. If you think he is left wing, you really have guzzled the Flavor-Aid.
Both Left and Right are corporatist. They are merely two different brands of corporatism that use different approaches to achieve the same goal of statism. Pick the most "conservative" political candidate and pick the most "liberal" political candidate. Then do some research and look at their list of sponsors. See all the names they have in common? Why, it's almost as though the people who bankroll campaigns don't care who wins...
The bickering about Left vs. Right is designed to distract attention away from what is actually happening. I wish I could recall and attribute the eloquent quote about our politics becoming more polar as our political parties become more homogeneous, for it's an accurate one. The distraction is all about divide and conquer. Like "bread and circus" or "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" it's an age-old tactic used by rulers and governments throughout history for the simple reason that it's effective. Here's why it works: the more time we waste blaming "the other party" for society's ills the less time we spend demanding more freedom in the form of minimal government.
I think the supporters of offshore drilling, at least the intelligent ones, and I am not saying the "Drill Baby Drill" crowd was knew there would be serious accident eventually. Its just a common sense no matter what precautions you take if you engage in a fundamentally dangerous activity often enough eventually the odds will catch up with. Skiers break bones, drivers have accidents, nuclear reactors melt down or leak, coal mines collapse, drillers have spills, these things happen.
We should do our best to learn what went wrong and our best to avoid it in the future but we must accept that this is a consequence of the life style we enjoy the rest of the time. Experience with other major spills shows us the environment will recover eventually. This is a tragedy and its going to impact some of us more than others. I bet though for every Gulf Coast fisherman or tour operator that gets put out of business there was AT LEAST one who was/is making a comfortable living in oil and gas. I think you also have to consider all the good in terms of quality of life cheap petroleum and energy in general has done our nation as whole and will no doubt continue to do. When you look at this in broad objective terms its hard for me to conclude it was not worth it. Maybe when all the consequences are known I will change my mind but for now lets be sensible and keep in mind the old saying "no pain no gain."
There is something wrong with a lot of people that prevents them from accepting that we are mortal beings and the world, in many ways, is a dangerous place. It's like they want to live a modern lifestyle directly or indirectly involving such things as cars, other heavy machinery, electricity, oil, prepared foods, medicine, aviation and lots of other things but do not want to acknowledge the non-zero risk associated with them. Unfortunate events like this oil spill are considered newsworthy because they are so rare despite the vast multitude of things that can potentially go wrong, which is nothing other than an engineering triumph.
On a mundane level, we need and want oil so it's a question of where it will come from, not whether we will have it. Apparently it's more acceptable to some to pay foreigners to do the drilling for us than it is to also use our own resources. It's as though birds and fish in oceans in other parts of the world wouldn't suffer from an oil spill as much as the animals affected by this one, as though foreign oil workers killed by an explosion wouldn't be just as dead as our domestic oil workers who were killed by this one.
On a more philosophical level, we are mortal. One can deal with that by fearing every little thing that might bring harm. In that case, you should not drive and you probably shouldn't stay home either since many accidents happen there. Good luck having any real quality of life if you spend such a great deal of time worrying about the end of life. Or one can deal with this by taking reasonable precautions and then viewing mortality in a different light, as an incentive to taste life to the dregs and enjoy every moment you have and every person you know as much as possible during the time you have. The problem with media sensationalism and politics is that fear sells and there is little profit and political power to be had by seeing it this way. The one strong advantage this gives is that anyone who holds this viewpoint does it genuinely as an individual choice since it's exactly the opposite of what we are daily encouraged to believe.
Then why are you posting anonymously? When Nixon signed all the current environmental laws in the 1970s, it was because pollution was so bad that it could not be denied as a figment of liberal media. And here comes another such event. Welcome to your worst nightmare. And mine.
Am I alone in viewing comments like this as an attempt to steer the discussion away from the statements that were made and towards the irrelevant personal decisions of the speaker? Had he not posted AC, would you bring up the way his username is spelled and consider it relevant? It's just a weak (as in lesser) form of ad-hominem. It's only really appropriate when the AC makes a post talking about their belief in the uselessness of anonynimity and privacy, which is not what happened here.
It is sad that the US has swung so far to the right, with such extreme abuses of power that Nixon now comes across as a relatively honest moderate.
It's swung so far in the direction of statism that "left" and "right" have become devoid of any real meaning. Both used to mean a set of political principles. Now they're just two different approaches to the same goal of expanding government. What is now called "right" wants to expand government for the purposes of defense and national security. What is now called "left" wants to expand government for the purposes of social engineering and entitlements. The result is the same and the two ideologies are little more than excuses or justifications.
The two-party system has done to politics what a reasonable person would expect a duopoly to do to a market. The former fails to serve the interests of the voter just like the latter fails to serve the interests of the customer. In both scenarios the voter and the customer are viewed as a means of maintaining power.
Everyone knows Nixon was a sissy liberal. He met Elvis and his evil gyrating hips.
And "Elvis" is an anagram of "evils". How much more proof do you need?
The difference between criminals and average people is that the criminals believed that they had a payoff combined with a low chance of getting caught and/or they believe they have nothing to lose. Otherwise, most average non-criminals don't have much of an internal morality, set of ethical principles, or enlightened self-interest that guide their actions. What they have is a fear of consequence and the sense that they have a great deal to lose by going to jail. They're not trying to be particularly good or ethical or moral, so "decent" is a good description of them. This is, of course, a puerile concern for the self and not a concern for how one's actions may adversely impact others. If you have ever noticed how inconsiderate and oblivious most folks are, who drive/walk/shop as though other people don't exist and could not possibly be inconvenienced by their carelessness, this is part of it.
One explanation of such is Kohlberg's stages of moral development, if you feel like you need a more formal, psychology-based description to appreciate this observation. In a much more intuitive sense, it also reminds me of the quote from Aristotle: "I have gained this by philosophy; that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law."
pirates like putting h.264 video in MKV containers. It's pretty obvious why Microsoft or anyone else has little interest in supporting it.
Pirates also use formats like .mp3, .avi, and less frequently .mpg. Oh, and pirate video games include .exe files. We should discontinue all support for these formats at once!
The difference is that authorized publishers also use .mp3, .avi, and .vob (a renamed .mpg). Publishers have tended not to use .mkv; only format-shifters and pirates do that.
Clearly there was no sarcasm or other humor in my post, necessitating this serious response of yours.
Oh, and format-shifting is a legitimate non-piracy use.
MKV has nothing in particular to do with h.264, except that pirates like putting h.264 video in MKV containers. It's pretty obvious why Microsoft or anyone else has little interest in supporting it.
Pirates also use formats like .mp3, .avi, and less frequently .mpg. Oh, and pirate video games include .exe files. We should discontinue all support for these formats at once!
But.. nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft!
If you think you where being rational, go back and look at the reasons you gave for a woman to be a single mother.
Go on. Ill wait. Seriously it's relevant.
All of them point to a problem with the woman.
how about: 1) Rape, 2) Father left 3) father died 4) failed birth control
I mean, really.
Sorry for a second reply to your post, but I just came up with a simpler way to illustrate what I am saying.
Did you know that there really is such a thing as virgin birth? It's incredibly rare but it does happen. I'm not talking here about the Bible. I'm talking about real, medically/scientifically documented cases of actual virgins becoming pregnant and giving birth. If I recall, I think the children had DNA very similar or even identical to the mothers.
Now, I didn't mention virgin births in my post about single mothers. If you want to avoid contradicting yourself, then you should be just as upset about that as you are about the fact that I didn't mention rape victims. After all, they too became single mothers through no fault of their own, so unless you are hypocritically playing favorites, you need to object to that also.
At some point it becomes absurd. Again I remind you that I never made the claim that what I said applied to every possible case. You can see all of this and try to come up with ways to portray me as negatively as you possibly can, since you dislike what I said and in your mind that means I must be the bad guy right? Or you can realize that given the choice between covering the vast majority of cases versus doing a full dissertation on every possible exception or edge case or rare event, I chose to cover the vast majority.
That's your choice. How you choose that doesn't tell me anything about what I said, for I already knew I was generalizing and I made no secret of it. What you seem to want is for me to attach a list of disclaimers (i.e. reminders of things I did not claim, reminders that generalizations have exceptions, etc) to my post that would be longer than the post itself. I'm supposed to do that why, because you might get offended and upset if I don't and clutch at straws in an effort to mischaracterize me? I am supposed to be intimidated by that and try to appease your sensibilities to prevent it? The truth is, how you handle speech you don't like and didn't even understand is not my problem.
Besides, none of the disclaimers I could have added would tell you anything that reading comprehension of my post wouldn't, or anything you wouldn't learn from the ability to look up "generalization" and "exception" in a dictionary.
The fact is, the vast majority of single mothers are not rape victims and are not giving virgin birth. Instead, they made choices that either directly led to their situation or indirectly left it to chance. You better believe that the choices a woman makes, the lifestyle she lives, and whether she demonstrates the ability to take control of her own life does indeed influence whether I want to be in a serious relationship with her. I make no apologies for that. What it does not influence is whether I treat her with kindness and respect, whether I would be a close friend, or whether I would care about her a great deal. In other words, I reserve the right to have the final say when it comes to whom I would date and I cannot be concerned with whether you would approve, though I'm sure it'd be a huge boost to your ego if I were.
If you think you where being rational, go back and look at the reasons you gave for a woman to be a single mother.
Go on. Ill wait. Seriously it's relevant.
All of them point to a problem with the woman.
how about: 1) Rape, 2) Father left 3) father died 4) failed birth control
I mean, really.
"Rational" would be the realization that I did not say "this list is exhaustive and without exceptions" and along with it, the appreciation that I chose not to say that; it was not a coincidence or product of chance that no such claim appears in my post. Generally, the Slashdot crowd is really great at noticing the fine details of everything you say and terribly unskilled at noticing that what you didn't say or didn't claim is at least as important.
I covered your items 2, 3, and 4 by saying "especially if she has never been married to the father". Marriages sometimes fail despite the best efforts of those involved. Now that you (in a roundabout way) ask, I will answer that I do draw a distinction between a single mother who at least waited until she was in a serious, stable relationship before having a child versus a single mother who was irresponsible and did not even consider whether she wanted to become pregnant. I wouldn't want to be in a sexual relationship with either one, but certainly one person is being a lot more responsible than the other.
Rape would be a special case indeed. It also happens not to apply to the person I was responding to, who described a "gold digger" whose primary concern was collecting child support money. He did not describe a rape victim, so my response didn't cover this subject. Context is important that way.
Basically the objections you raise there would be covered by a reasonable amount of benefit of doubt. Since you dislike what I say you're playing the hostile audience where everything I say, including the fact that I neither intended to cover all possible cases nor claimed to have done so, will be used against me. That's fine, and tells me a bit about how you can't or won't dispassionately handle a controversial issue, but it doesn't address the points I made.
It's rather obvious that I was making a generalization. The thing that is well-understood about generalizations is that there is such a thing as exceptions. I wish public schools would emphasize these basic things so they'd stop being stumbling blocks in conversations. Any actual individual person I meet is going to be treated on what you may call a "case by case" basis, as there's no other way of knowing whether my generalization applies to that specific individual. That's because general rules are, well, general, and I fully understand what that means. If you don't, that reflects on your understanding and not on my statements. Sorry to put that bluntly but it's the straight truth.
No, it means people who claimed to have used them as directed to the best of their knowledge saw a 2% failure rate. See the flaws with that?
That's all the more reason to use your own form of protection (i.e. condoms) so that you can personally make sure it's used correctly. Bringing a child into the world is a very serious responsibility even for people who are prepared to do so. Things far less serious than this warrant a prudent level of caution.
This is one reason (of many) why it's unwise to date single mothers...
Right. Romance is dead... it was bought out by an aggressive takeover by hallmark and then sold off piece by piece. In other news, you're a jaded asshat who's trying to reduce the enormous complexity and diversity of human relationships into some neat little rule of "all single mothers are SATAN." Baka...
I don't think you realize or appreciate how many men are in that guy's position. Note I told him he was not a victim. If he was a victim, that would have been her fault, as in something she did to him. It really wasn't. He made a decision without understanding what he was signing up for and he got screwed. That's his fault.
I made no claims to have summed up all of human relationships, and that's for a reason, so please put aside your emotional visceral hyperbole. I didn't say single mothers were "satan" or anything of the sort. I said that they are generally not the best match for a single man to have either casual sex or a serious relationship with and proceeded to give reasons for that. I never said they should be treated as second-class citizens, I never said it's wrong to care a great deal about them, to be friends with them, etc. Only that having a sexual relationship with them is a lot more complexity and comes with more risk than most men are bargaining for, and that men need to seriously consider this instead of being so thoughtless or trying to play the victim.
I'm saying men need to do a better job of taking responsibility for their decisions, such as whom they choose to be with. If you are a woman who disagrees with that, I'd wager you are in a tiny minority.
Romance is far from dead, though as a man I can tell you that the number of women who appreciate it is lower than one would think, for the simple reason that "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" is (falsely) viewed by many of them as more manly. That's beside the point, however. It's pretty obvious to me that the original poster was thinking with his penis and it got him into trouble. I don't find anything particularly romantic about that, so no, romance was not what I wrote about. I think you're capable of realizing that on your own but your irritated emotional reaction required you to find some fault with me and created the need for me to point this out.
If you'd like to stop calling me names and falsely characterizing both me and what I wrote, I'd be willing to have a rational discussion about this with you, but you need to know that those techniques are useless on me and anyone else who isn't in the business of winning your approval. I've had discussions with you before and from those I know that you normally adhere to a higher standard than this. That usually makes it a pleasure to hear what you have to say. If you still need to demonize me because I said something you dislike then unfortunately a rational discussion is going to be rather difficult. But, my offer stands and that choice is yours.
Off topic I know, but to address your stereo-type. You're way off, on an old stereo type that doesn't exist anymore. They are White, and get their income through child support, by having babies by as many people as they can to ostensibly, spread the load. Now they just use the system to juice the unlucky victims and have medicaid. We don't give out money unless they are working or trying to find work. I know this, because I am one of those victims. - Dan.
This is one reason (of many) why it's unwise to date single mothers, especially if they have never been married to the father(s) of their children. They have a way of being quite fertile.
You also have to wonder why a man who was involved with her enough to have a child with her did not want to stay with her. It means one of three things: she has poor taste in men, she dates decent men but doesn't treat them well, or the act of creating life is so meaningless to her that she'll allow herself to become pregnant by a man who's a casual sex partner and has no interest in a serious relationship (I bet she thinks that's a matter of "luck" too). All of those are red flags! You're thinking with the wrong head if you believe you can ignore them without regretting it.
Another reason is that parenting is a full-time job. If you are a single man with no dependents you can afford to invest a lot of time and energy into a relationship that a single mother could not possibly match. That sort of one-way relationship where there is a lack of reciprocity tends to be unstable. This is another red flag that you ignore at your own peril.
You call yourself a "victim". Unless you are claiming that this woman raped you, then you're not a victim and you're not "unlucky". You just engaged in poor decision-making. That is what made you vulnerable to someone who decided to use you for her own selfish needs. I'll go one further and say that you probably have some kind of dissatisfaction with life or other personal issues, otherwise a woman like that would not have been attractive in your eyes or otherwise appealed to you.
And of course, you can use the leaves for poke salad. With a lot of boiling...
Not meaning to sound like a dick, but it's poke salat. There was even a song about it way back in the day, Poke Salat Annie.
Don't ask me what salat means, though. I have no idea.
It's a German word that roughly translates to "Google me to learn what I mean in about ten seconds".
Sometimes the best thing to do is benign neglect.
If it's truly benign then I would not call it neglect. Sometimes doing nothing and leaving well enough alone is truly your best option (not that politicians want to understand this). The wisdom to know when this is the case versus situations you really should be taking direct control over is also not what I would call neglectful. Neglect would be failing to consider these things and act accordingly.
I disagree that they automatically have every right to do that. I will say that they'd be foolish not to make that a written agreement that must be signed before a job offer is made, if they plan to permit personal equipment to connect to their networks. In the absence of such an agreement, I don't recognize anyone's right to go through someone's personal equipment merely because they connected it to a network with permission to do so.
They need to think about these things before such permission to use their networks is given. What's unacceptable is retroactively deciding "oops, we made the mistake by allowing you to use your equipment on our network without a written agreement, so now we deserve access to your property and your data." That's just incompetence and a failure to plan ahead. It'd be the wrong way to deal with even data far less sensitive than medical records.
Really though the best way to handle this is to authorize onlly company-issued laptops and other company equipment for use with company networks.