So when presidents unilaterally start wars and when they commit crimes that undermine the system of justice they are charged with upholding, what can Congress do if impeachment is "beside the point"?
Not sure where you're going with that. Sure, Nixon was involved in inter-party politics from start to end. Clinton's motives were more personally selfish but his party's reaction was clearly partisan. Nixon was dropped by his party. Clinton was protected by his party.
In addition to the Clinton's violating the law regarding court testimonies, he also launched an illegal war in Serbia (for a good cause, perhaps, but he still should have followed the Constitution). Bush started making "signing statements". Obama launched an illegal war in Lybia. And Congress does nothing to protect their role as a check on the president.
Do you enjoy beating up on strawmen? I never said Castro and Kim Jung-un own the UN. I said each of their votes is counts counts about a billion times as much as the vote of a typical Indian, and infinitely more than the votes of a typical Cuban or North.
America created the internet and made it availablr for others to connect to. It was entirely voluntary to do so and it is entirely voluntary if they choose to disconnect.
The way you describe it, there is no bat and ball to take away. America created an internet. Others connected to it and in doing so created self-sustaining portions of portions of a larger internet. If they want to disconnect they are free to do so. The American internet will still remain and thrive even if everyone else leaves to create their own internet.
Nearly all politicians lie. Very few are caught lying under oath as Clinton was. Even fewer politicians whose duties include law enforcement survive politically after being caught lying under oath.
The senates vote in which the Democrats decide to ignore the law and protect their own was disgusting. Not a single Democratic senator voted to uphold the law. Not one.
Well as a democracy the U.S. is showing the same traits as those dictators you are concerned about.
The two I referenced were Kim Jong-un and Castro. America has faults - it's made up of people after all. But if you think America acts like those two then you don't need anything more to smoke.
The point is that the U.S.'s concerns are not the same as the concerns of the rest of the world. So the U.S. has to make sure it doesn't push the envelope too far.
It doesn't because, unlike a dictatorship, American leaders are kept in check by the American people who have a culture that values things like charity, freedom (although we see with recent election that they value freedom less than they used to), and life. Americans can be selfish like anyone, but they're mostly not sociapaths.
And the rest of the world can take the internet, the root servers, off the U.S. anytime they want, i hope you realise.
That's fine with me. No one told them they had to use the American internet in the first place. They joined voluntarily and were welcomed, and they're also free to leave voluntarily.
It's scary how much president's get away with doing unilaterally these days.
It is the inevitable result of a party based political system - parties function to circumvent the seperation of powers between executive and legislative branches and to a slightly lesser extent the judical branch too. They put the welfare of the party ahead of the welfare of the nation.
It apparently didn't used to be that way. When Nixon needed to go it was Republicans that told him he needed to go. But when Clinton lied under oath the Democrats did everything they could to defending. Something had changed.
I think the problem would be mitigated if we at least had a robust multi-party system where parties had to form coalitions in order to ever get a majority. At least then there would be some sort of accountability outside of a single party.
Could be. Although having many parties creates different problems.
I would rather have America control it because America is a democracy. That means the leadership is chosen by a lot of normal people. We still end up picking power-mad people, but those power-mad people at least have to answer to us which constrains their behavior somewhat. So it isn't "one dictaor", it is a population of normal people. These normal people are very different from the kind of people who rise to power in places where there is no democracy. And the power-mad nuts that reach power in those countries aren't constrained by democracy.
If we had a UN composed of only democracies I might not mind letting them have the internet. But instead the UN is composed of mostly power-mad dictators. I would rather put pretty much any democracy in charge of the internet than have the UN run it. I would even take France over the UN.
"right"
At least in America, that word doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. Here the people on the "right" are usually the one's calling for limits on government power. And neither party has been very good about that. The Republicans talk a good game about limited government but don't seem to mean it while Democrats laugh at the idea of limited government (Nancy Pelosi literally laughed at it when someone asked her about the Constitutionality of the health care law). We have two parties on the left, none on the right.
It's scary how much president's get away with doing unilaterally these days. They start wars (Libya, Serbia) without congressional authorization. They unilaterally put into effect laws that they couldn't get passed through congress (like the DREAM act). Congress has become so cowed that the only tool they have against the president, impeachment, is pretty much a dirty word.
I wish both parties in congress would start defending their institution more. Congress is supposed to be the source of laws and an obstacle to actions they deem appropriate. The president is supposed to make sure the laws are followed out, not make the laws himself.
California has 38 million people per 2 senators. Wyoming has 0.5 million people per 2 senators. So in the Senate a Wyominger(?)'s vote 76 times as much weight as a Californian's. Sounds bad. Of course that difference does get ameliorated by California's large number of representatives and electoral votes for President. But still, we can work with the number 76.
Now let's consider Kim Jong-un and an Indian. India has elections and a billion people choose their government which in turn chooses their UN ambassador. Kim Jong-un chooses his ambassador. So an Indian has 1/1000000000 of a vote, while Kim has one vote. That ration is 1 billion. That 76 isn't looking so bad. Now let's consider the typical Cuban who doesn't get to choose his government at all, and therefor has no say in selecting the UN ambassador. The Cuban has no vote nor even a portion of a vote in the UN. He has 0 votes. Let's see, one divided by zero... whoah! Yeah, that 76 is looking pretty good now.
So no, it isn't "Just like North Dakota gets more senators per person than California". It is more than a billion times worse than that.
I agree with most of what you say but would point out that the "good" Chinese were pretty bad too. They arrived in Taiwan and massacred the intellectual elite (the 2-28 incident), introduced common corruption into an economy that had been largely free of it, and kept the local population subdued under martial law (enforced by poitical killings and imprisonment) for 40 years. And they didn't "form" Taiwan they occupied it.
Chiang's stubborness when he lost the China seat in the UN is why Taiwan didn't get a "Taiwan" seat and why today it is so lacking in international recognition.
No, but better one of those than the UN. Think about that. I'm an American and I would rather have France in charge of the internet than have the UN in charge.
My parents got a color TV in 1976. They kept that thing for 29 years. It worked with one of the early Pong games. It worked with an Atari 2600. It worked with an Atari 800. Later it was connected to cable TV (with remote control that was connected by wire to a box on top of the TV). It worked with VCRs and DVD players. Near the end of its life it was using satellite TV. That old thing went through a lot. Halfway through its life the channel changers on it were largely forgotten. That was a good television.
When I bought my first VCR I bought the same brand assuming that they made good stuff. I had to replace it within a couple months and ended up buying a Japanese brand:P
Qualified agreement, but exactly how/what do you mean?
I think your method would throw the baby out with the bathwater, I would think "no govt interference in free market" would limit some good things:
Ability for courts to establish a level playing field ( to do so is simply intrusive ).
Ability for the executive/legislature to tax ( I don't think I need to go on with that ),
establish some kinds of foreign relations ( anything having to do with economics would seem overreaching there ),
ability to establish reasonable working conditions ( the argument would be that the workers should do that, but we have seen where that goes already )
Probably more I cant think of now.
Human nature is ugly, people have and will abuse those less powerful than they ( otherwise, we could both argue for anarchy ).
Some level of regulation is required, or we might as well just go straight for "man with biggest virtual club sets the rules" and fight it out.
There are reasons I didn't say "no govt interference in free market" but instead wrote "reduce the amount of government interference in the free market ".
Basically the government should get involved to
1. keep things people and protect rights (such as property rights meaning the right to your own property, not the right to take someone else's property)
2. allow unions to form (once they've formed they can take care of themselves)
3. create transparency (one of the assumptions that leads to the wonders of a model free market is that people have enough information to make good choices)
4. prevent monopolies (another assumption is that there is competition)
5. Dealing with tragedies of of commons (like the problem of overfishing)
Giving subsidies doesn't help any of those goals. Telling companies who they can fire and hire doesn't do that either. Requiring that companies provide health care to employees doesn't do any of those things. The American government currently does thousands of things that have nothing to do with any of those goals.
Remove the ability for corporations to donate to political campaigns/politicians at all, this problem goes away.
Limit personal contributions also, so the "heads" of these corporations cant just continue to buy elections.
Even better would be removing the ability of politicians to donate tax money to corporations. Also reduce the amount of government interference in the free market and you'll remove the reasons that corporations donate to political campaigns/politicians.
While our governments are busy interfering in health care, hiring and firing practices, agricultural funding and a million things the market would manage - here we have Tragedy of the Commons problem custom-made for government solutions but our governments don't seem very interested in doing something about it.
If a variable had only one meaning and one value it wouldn't be a variable, it would be a constant.
In computer programming, something is usually called a constant only when the value is known before the program is run (at compile time). However it is possible that a variable will have only one value from the time it is allocated to the time it is de-allocated, but that the value will know be know until the program runs.
I'm not sure whether this applies to spacecraft or not, but when it comes to old structures, particularly bridges, roads and buildings that are hundreds or thousands of years old, it might be that the engineers simply didn't know how to safely reduce costs while ensuring the item built didn't collapse in their lifetime. Put yourself in the place of an engineer who is figuring out how much stone you have to use and how long it will take to build. You really don't have any idea since there's no such thing as materials science yet. You do know that if you ask for too much time and labor your boss/king/pharoah/ceasar will be very annoyed, but if you ask for too little and the thing collapses on some people you'll end up paying with your life. So the tendency would be to engineer something that just won't fall down - ever.
And then theirs the natural selection thing - the ancient buildings and bridges we see today are the ones that lasted, not the ones that collapsed early.
I wish I knew more about functional programming than I do. In reading the article I found the concept of a language the limits mutable variables interesting. In using Java I find that making most variables "final" is helpful to me for a number of reasons. I can easily find where the variable got its current value. If I write a line of code that changes the wrong variable it is immediately obvious. It keeps me from re-using variables that shouldn't be re-used (generally a variable should have one meaning and one value). It helps me keep variable scope narrow.
Is this article suggesting that most functional languages make their variables the similar the Java "final" or am I way way off?
Speaking from experience I don't believe it is the same to the viewer. When I was a kid watched many movies in which involved killings. I watched war movies, westerns, Get Smart, etc.. Then one day when I was about 11 a reporter was killed in Central America at a military checkpoint. The morning news show decided to show it. The reporter got out of the car, walked over to the guards. They ordered him to lie face down with his hands on his head. Then they shot him. His body shook. I remember the details because it had a big impact on me. I hardly remember the countless killings that were fake, but I remember the one real one.
I also have different reactions to clothes coming off when I know it really happened vs when I know it was faked.
Regardless of your political views, I think huge majority of people could agree that if they watched some of Obama's speeches from 2008 elections, he was extremely charismatic speaker. That's completely out of proportion to how sexually attractive that 47-years old career politician was. Actually, most people would probably agree that he appeared a lot more charismatic in 2008 than in 2012 though there is very little apparent reason why either his intelligence or his sexual attractiveness would have decreased that significantly. Similarly, I know a lot of people who I consider both attractive and intelligent but would never call charismatic.
Charisma is your force of personality, which does certainly have a positive effect on your sexual attractiveness but doesn't depend on it.
I never did get the claim that Obama was a charismatic speaker. He spoke haltingly and because he never managed to get around to saying anything of substance I found his speeches extremely boring. I could see the charm in Bill Clinton (though I disagreed with him most of the time), but I don't see any charm in Obama.
First, I don't remember anyone going crazy about The Watchmen. Apparently it wasn't a big enough deal for me to hear about. Second, it doesn't really contradict what I'm saying. For situations where the real thing is filmed, the rules are stricter. But even when what's going on is fake there are still rules. When there is a lot of fake violence in movies it still gets an R rating. Real violence would likely get an NC-17.
Second, I don't think it is just an American thing. Even in Europe in the middle ages you weren't allowed to walk around without your clothes on, but executions were done in public before audiences. It's a human thing. You might argue that Europe in abandoning concerns about what people wear or don't wear in public, or how people satisfy their hormonal desires on the screen, has "grown" or become more "mature", but I would argue that Europe has abandoned the wisdom of centuries of experience.
Slashdot Mirror
So when presidents unilaterally start wars and when they commit crimes that undermine the system of justice they are charged with upholding, what can Congress do if impeachment is "beside the point"?
It was a Zenith. How'd you do that?
Not sure where you're going with that. Sure, Nixon was involved in inter-party politics from start to end. Clinton's motives were more personally selfish but his party's reaction was clearly partisan. Nixon was dropped by his party. Clinton was protected by his party.
In addition to the Clinton's violating the law regarding court testimonies, he also launched an illegal war in Serbia (for a good cause, perhaps, but he still should have followed the Constitution). Bush started making "signing statements". Obama launched an illegal war in Lybia. And Congress does nothing to protect their role as a check on the president.
Do you enjoy beating up on strawmen? I never said Castro and Kim Jung-un own the UN. I said each of their votes is counts counts about a billion times as much as the vote of a typical Indian, and infinitely more than the votes of a typical Cuban or North.
America created the internet and made it availablr for others to connect to. It was entirely voluntary to do so and it is entirely voluntary if they choose to disconnect.
The way you describe it, there is no bat and ball to take away. America created an internet. Others connected to it and in doing so created self-sustaining portions of portions of a larger internet. If they want to disconnect they are free to do so. The American internet will still remain and thrive even if everyone else leaves to create their own internet.
Nearly all politicians lie. Very few are caught lying under oath as Clinton was. Even fewer politicians whose duties include law enforcement survive politically after being caught lying under oath.
The senates vote in which the Democrats decide to ignore the law and protect their own was disgusting. Not a single Democratic senator voted to uphold the law. Not one.
Well as a democracy the U.S. is showing the same traits as those dictators you are concerned about.
The two I referenced were Kim Jong-un and Castro. America has faults - it's made up of people after all. But if you think America acts like those two then you don't need anything more to smoke.
The point is that the U.S.'s concerns are not the same as the concerns of the rest of the world. So the U.S. has to make sure it doesn't push the envelope too far.
It doesn't because, unlike a dictatorship, American leaders are kept in check by the American people who have a culture that values things like charity, freedom (although we see with recent election that they value freedom less than they used to), and life. Americans can be selfish like anyone, but they're mostly not sociapaths.
And the rest of the world can take the internet, the root servers, off the U.S. anytime they want, i hope you realise.
That's fine with me. No one told them they had to use the American internet in the first place. They joined voluntarily and were welcomed, and they're also free to leave voluntarily.
It's scary how much president's get away with doing unilaterally these days.
It is the inevitable result of a party based political system - parties function to circumvent the seperation of powers between executive and legislative branches and to a slightly lesser extent the judical branch too. They put the welfare of the party ahead of the welfare of the nation.
It apparently didn't used to be that way. When Nixon needed to go it was Republicans that told him he needed to go. But when Clinton lied under oath the Democrats did everything they could to defending. Something had changed.
I think the problem would be mitigated if we at least had a robust multi-party system where parties had to form coalitions in order to ever get a majority. At least then there would be some sort of accountability outside of a single party.
Could be. Although having many parties creates different problems.
I would rather have America control it because America is a democracy. That means the leadership is chosen by a lot of normal people. We still end up picking power-mad people, but those power-mad people at least have to answer to us which constrains their behavior somewhat. So it isn't "one dictaor", it is a population of normal people. These normal people are very different from the kind of people who rise to power in places where there is no democracy. And the power-mad nuts that reach power in those countries aren't constrained by democracy.
If we had a UN composed of only democracies I might not mind letting them have the internet. But instead the UN is composed of mostly power-mad dictators. I would rather put pretty much any democracy in charge of the internet than have the UN run it. I would even take France over the UN.
"right"
At least in America, that word doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. Here the people on the "right" are usually the one's calling for limits on government power. And neither party has been very good about that. The Republicans talk a good game about limited government but don't seem to mean it while Democrats laugh at the idea of limited government (Nancy Pelosi literally laughed at it when someone asked her about the Constitutionality of the health care law). We have two parties on the left, none on the right.
I guess I shouldn't have used math. It confuses some people.
It's scary how much president's get away with doing unilaterally these days. They start wars (Libya, Serbia) without congressional authorization. They unilaterally put into effect laws that they couldn't get passed through congress (like the DREAM act). Congress has become so cowed that the only tool they have against the president, impeachment, is pretty much a dirty word.
I wish both parties in congress would start defending their institution more. Congress is supposed to be the source of laws and an obstacle to actions they deem appropriate. The president is supposed to make sure the laws are followed out, not make the laws himself.
California has 38 million people per 2 senators. Wyoming has 0.5 million people per 2 senators. So in the Senate a Wyominger(?)'s vote 76 times as much weight as a Californian's. Sounds bad. Of course that difference does get ameliorated by California's large number of representatives and electoral votes for President. But still, we can work with the number 76.
Now let's consider Kim Jong-un and an Indian. India has elections and a billion people choose their government which in turn chooses their UN ambassador. Kim Jong-un chooses his ambassador. So an Indian has 1/1000000000 of a vote, while Kim has one vote. That ration is 1 billion. That 76 isn't looking so bad. Now let's consider the typical Cuban who doesn't get to choose his government at all, and therefor has no say in selecting the UN ambassador. The Cuban has no vote nor even a portion of a vote in the UN. He has 0 votes. Let's see, one divided by zero... whoah! Yeah, that 76 is looking pretty good now.
So no, it isn't "Just like North Dakota gets more senators per person than California". It is more than a billion times worse than that.
I agree with most of what you say but would point out that the "good" Chinese were pretty bad too. They arrived in Taiwan and massacred the intellectual elite (the 2-28 incident), introduced common corruption into an economy that had been largely free of it, and kept the local population subdued under martial law (enforced by poitical killings and imprisonment) for 40 years. And they didn't "form" Taiwan they occupied it.
Chiang's stubborness when he lost the China seat in the UN is why Taiwan didn't get a "Taiwan" seat and why today it is so lacking in international recognition.
No, but better one of those than the UN. Think about that. I'm an American and I would rather have France in charge of the internet than have the UN in charge.
My parents got a color TV in 1976. They kept that thing for 29 years. It worked with one of the early Pong games. It worked with an Atari 2600. It worked with an Atari 800. Later it was connected to cable TV (with remote control that was connected by wire to a box on top of the TV). It worked with VCRs and DVD players. Near the end of its life it was using satellite TV. That old thing went through a lot. Halfway through its life the channel changers on it were largely forgotten. That was a good television.
:P
When I bought my first VCR I bought the same brand assuming that they made good stuff. I had to replace it within a couple months and ended up buying a Japanese brand
Qualified agreement, but exactly how/what do you mean? I think your method would throw the baby out with the bathwater, I would think "no govt interference in free market" would limit some good things: Ability for courts to establish a level playing field ( to do so is simply intrusive ). Ability for the executive/legislature to tax ( I don't think I need to go on with that ), establish some kinds of foreign relations ( anything having to do with economics would seem overreaching there ), ability to establish reasonable working conditions ( the argument would be that the workers should do that, but we have seen where that goes already ) Probably more I cant think of now.
Human nature is ugly, people have and will abuse those less powerful than they ( otherwise, we could both argue for anarchy ). Some level of regulation is required, or we might as well just go straight for "man with biggest virtual club sets the rules" and fight it out.
There are reasons I didn't say "no govt interference in free market" but instead wrote "reduce the amount of government interference in the free market ".
Basically the government should get involved to
1. keep things people and protect rights (such as property rights meaning the right to your own property, not the right to take someone else's property)
2. allow unions to form (once they've formed they can take care of themselves)
3. create transparency (one of the assumptions that leads to the wonders of a model free market is that people have enough information to make good choices)
4. prevent monopolies (another assumption is that there is competition)
5. Dealing with tragedies of of commons (like the problem of overfishing)
Giving subsidies doesn't help any of those goals. Telling companies who they can fire and hire doesn't do that either. Requiring that companies provide health care to employees doesn't do any of those things. The American government currently does thousands of things that have nothing to do with any of those goals.
Remove the ability for corporations to donate to political campaigns/politicians at all, this problem goes away. Limit personal contributions also, so the "heads" of these corporations cant just continue to buy elections.
Even better would be removing the ability of politicians to donate tax money to corporations. Also reduce the amount of government interference in the free market and you'll remove the reasons that corporations donate to political campaigns/politicians.
While our governments are busy interfering in health care, hiring and firing practices, agricultural funding and a million things the market would manage - here we have Tragedy of the Commons problem custom-made for government solutions but our governments don't seem very interested in doing something about it.
If a variable had only one meaning and one value it wouldn't be a variable, it would be a constant.
In computer programming, something is usually called a constant only when the value is known before the program is run (at compile time). However it is possible that a variable will have only one value from the time it is allocated to the time it is de-allocated, but that the value will know be know until the program runs.
I'm not sure whether this applies to spacecraft or not, but when it comes to old structures, particularly bridges, roads and buildings that are hundreds or thousands of years old, it might be that the engineers simply didn't know how to safely reduce costs while ensuring the item built didn't collapse in their lifetime. Put yourself in the place of an engineer who is figuring out how much stone you have to use and how long it will take to build. You really don't have any idea since there's no such thing as materials science yet. You do know that if you ask for too much time and labor your boss/king/pharoah/ceasar will be very annoyed, but if you ask for too little and the thing collapses on some people you'll end up paying with your life. So the tendency would be to engineer something that just won't fall down - ever.
And then theirs the natural selection thing - the ancient buildings and bridges we see today are the ones that lasted, not the ones that collapsed early.
That helps. Thank you!
I wish I knew more about functional programming than I do. In reading the article I found the concept of a language the limits mutable variables interesting. In using Java I find that making most variables "final" is helpful to me for a number of reasons. I can easily find where the variable got its current value. If I write a line of code that changes the wrong variable it is immediately obvious. It keeps me from re-using variables that shouldn't be re-used (generally a variable should have one meaning and one value). It helps me keep variable scope narrow.
Is this article suggesting that most functional languages make their variables the similar the Java "final" or am I way way off?
Speaking from experience I don't believe it is the same to the viewer. When I was a kid watched many movies in which involved killings. I watched war movies, westerns, Get Smart, etc.. Then one day when I was about 11 a reporter was killed in Central America at a military checkpoint. The morning news show decided to show it. The reporter got out of the car, walked over to the guards. They ordered him to lie face down with his hands on his head. Then they shot him. His body shook. I remember the details because it had a big impact on me. I hardly remember the countless killings that were fake, but I remember the one real one.
I also have different reactions to clothes coming off when I know it really happened vs when I know it was faked.
Regardless of your political views, I think huge majority of people could agree that if they watched some of Obama's speeches from 2008 elections, he was extremely charismatic speaker. That's completely out of proportion to how sexually attractive that 47-years old career politician was. Actually, most people would probably agree that he appeared a lot more charismatic in 2008 than in 2012 though there is very little apparent reason why either his intelligence or his sexual attractiveness would have decreased that significantly. Similarly, I know a lot of people who I consider both attractive and intelligent but would never call charismatic.
Charisma is your force of personality, which does certainly have a positive effect on your sexual attractiveness but doesn't depend on it.
I never did get the claim that Obama was a charismatic speaker. He spoke haltingly and because he never managed to get around to saying anything of substance I found his speeches extremely boring. I could see the charm in Bill Clinton (though I disagreed with him most of the time), but I don't see any charm in Obama.
First, I don't remember anyone going crazy about The Watchmen. Apparently it wasn't a big enough deal for me to hear about. Second, it doesn't really contradict what I'm saying. For situations where the real thing is filmed, the rules are stricter. But even when what's going on is fake there are still rules. When there is a lot of fake violence in movies it still gets an R rating. Real violence would likely get an NC-17.
Second, I don't think it is just an American thing. Even in Europe in the middle ages you weren't allowed to walk around without your clothes on, but executions were done in public before audiences. It's a human thing. You might argue that Europe in abandoning concerns about what people wear or don't wear in public, or how people satisfy their hormonal desires on the screen, has "grown" or become more "mature", but I would argue that Europe has abandoned the wisdom of centuries of experience.