It never caught up in US either until Colt retired as a peacemaker.
American culture remains largely a culture of cowboys: decency of speech is based on the threat of violence if you spoke offensively. That's why Texans are still very polite.
I like this part of the culture. I wish liberals understand that if they have retain the right to insult me, I am retaining the right to respond in a manner suitable for a man.
I think you're missing something. It is an important part of American culture to say "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me". When a man is insulted, he brushes it off as something that he, as a man, can endure like water off a duck's back.
The right of a man to respond is reserved not for an insult to a man, but for an insult to the man's wife, girlfriend, or female relative. Legally I'm pretty sure there is no longer such a right, but to the extent that the culture recognizes a right to respond it is for defending a woman, not for a thin-skinned selfish retaliation.
Too much reliance on a decimal point that is easily mistaken for a fleck of dirt.
Then tendency to use decimals where fractions work better.
Long names that sound too much alike (try shouting "10 centimeters!" vs "10 inches!" in a crowded work environment. Not only do you have to keep your voice elevated longer for the metric measurements, the listener is far likely to have trouble distinguishing "centimeters" from "millimeters" than "inches" from "feet". This applies even across different measurements: Did he say "5 liters" or "5 meters"?
Imperial units have useful rules of thumb - an inch is about the width of a man's thumb. A foot is pretty close to the length of my foot. A teaspoon is about the size of a teaspoon. A tablespoon is...
A relative free market reigns in some parts of the economy, but not in all. And different parts of the economy have different levels of freedom. My point was that the parts of the economy that are more free are often able to adapt to the difficulties presented by the non-free portions. Of course that happens less and less as the amount of freedom decreases.
One of the good things about a free market is its ability to tolerate imperfections. You can add things to a free market - social welfare systems and truth in advertising laws for example - and the market will do a pretty good job of coping. This allows you to try various methods to correct the free market's imperfections. Indeed in America we tax ourselves pretty heavily and the government spends such a huge portion of our wealth and so heavily regulates are daily lives that it is hardly fair to call it a "free market" anymore. Yet the free market that does still exist is so adaptable that it still continues to produce the new wealth and provide for the needs of our citizens.
My initial reaction was the same, but having read some of the discussion I think there is a subtle distinction that needs to be made.
You have a right to broadband but not an entitlement to broadband.
That is, if the government makes it illegal to have broadband - then it is violating your natural right to be left alone, and your political right to freedom of speech (since broadband is a method of speech like the printing press).
However, you do not have a right to have the government or anyone else provide the broadband for you. If you want to use broadband it is your responsibility to either build it yourself or to find someone who is willing to do it for you (perhaps in exchange for some form of payment).
In recent years the distinction has become muddied by the constant mis-use of the term "right" such as when people claim that a refusal to pay for someone's contraception somehow violates that person's right to contraception.
Communism is not theoretically sound because it fails to account for the basics of human nature.
1. Many (most) people are lazy and work only because they have to do so to survive and/or live a comfortable life.
2. Many (most) people are selfish and won't work up to their full ability just for the benefit of society
3. Many (most) people are selfish and that includes the leaders. If everyone is truly equal and there are no leaders, the more capable people will find a way to make themselves leaders.
Free markets have many deficiencies - including the built in fact that some members of society end up at the bottom, but in it's chaos the free market is inherently stable because while individuals may move up and down the ladder, companies rise and fall, the system provides the framework within which companies and people adapt to changes.
Communism is inherently unstable because it enforces a condition that those most capable of causing change are not happy with. The instability can only be contained and suppressed for any period of time by a brutal police state. That's why communist societies are always either very small or very brutal.
From what I've seen people usually ignore evidence that the worst is coming. People assume good things will continue as they have been in their limited lifetime.
I wanted to take a programming class and had done quite a bit of playing around with Basic at home. I asked one of my math teachers for some advice - should I take Basic for the easy A or would there be some benefit to learning Pascal? What was the difference? She told me Pascal is "just a different language." She sure made it sound like there was no point to taking it. So I didn't. Of course Pascal was a language being used by professionals - Pascal had quite a few significant differences from Basic that were useful to learn - and I wasted a semester because the Basic we learned so easier than what I'd been doing at home.
Corporations are part of capitalism, and have been integral to it for 150 years.
Yes, but a cozy relationship between government and corporations is not integral and it should not be part of it. However when government obtains for itself the power to micromanage corporations - deciding which ones get funding, which ones are heavily regulated, which ones get waivers from those regulations, etc., gaining control over the government is a necessary and natural part of the corporations self-defence mechanism.
You're confused if you think communism and facism are opposites or that either is related to the American right. Facism, like communism, puts the focus of people's lives on the government. The left in America is the party that wants to make the state the center of our lives. As was said at the Democratic convention, "Government is the only thing we all belong to". Obama is calling us to "economic patriotism" meaning we should give our money to the government. It is the Democrats who try to solve all our problems through government intervention.
Well we haven't really had much choice in the matter. The Republicans promise a small government that the corporations would have little incentive to take over, but when they get in power they break their promise.
The Democrats promise a big government that corporations will need to take over if they want to survive, and unlike the Republicans the Democrats keep their promise.
So should we vote for the vote for the parties that says it will do good but lies, or vote for the party that promises evil and follows through?
Why wouldn't a party that opposes logic and reason want a person who does exactly that on committees that are most highly focused on the biggest logic/reason branches of human activity?
So you're saying that's why the Dems don't object to him being placed on the committee. Makes sense to me.
Hell, it would give us something to start beaming signals at like mad in the hope of a return at the very least.
You should be careful what you ask for. There are things you really shouldn't poke with a stick -- Bears for one, large cats, wasp nests, hives of locusts... Aliens advanced and hungry enough for raw energy (and materials) to build Dyson spheres.
Usually I'm with the crowd that says we ought to be careful about how we contact alients, but in this case I think your reason is wrong: why would any aliens advanced and hungry enough for raw energy to build Dyson spheres want to bother us? Certainly not for our energy. There is nothing on earth that has the energy to compare with what they could get from any random star. Nor for our raw materials - again we're nothing special in terms of raw materials and if they're capable of manufacturing a Dyson sphere then there is nothing in terms of improved materials we could offer them either.
Probably the bigger danger is that they would want to send scientists to put us in cages and study us or worse, get rid of us before we become as advanced as they are (admittedly that would take a long time, but if the aliens were far away they would know the round trip time for our signal to reach them and for their killing squads to reach would be long enough to allow us a lot of advancement).
Aren't there strict rules against candidates coordinating with SuperPACs? I thought the reason the SuperPACs could raise so much money was because they are considered independent speech spending. If that's the case then you can't hold the candidate responsible.
Of course the cynic in my has to wonder if the candidate and the SuperPAC coordinated in secret so that the candidate could get the best of both worlds. The damage of the attack is done, but the incumbent gets to look all righteous for rejecting the attack. And because of the rules against coordination the attacked person can't even make the case that the should put a stop to it.
If the laws were followed very strictly, I would think the incumbent could theoretically be breaking the law by rejecting the attacks.
Let's take a simple but core measurement like taxing and spending.
Conservative: Someone who wants the government to tax less and spend less.
Liberal: Someone who wants the government to tax more and spend more.
Now look at the pattern over the last 40 years. Sometimes we tax more, sometimes we tax lesss. Tax rates go up and down. But spending only goes one way: up. In my lifetime spending has never decreased. Sometimes we have Democratic leadership that gets what it wants and we get higher taxes and higher spending. Sometimes we see compromise and get something even worse: lower taxes and higher spending. When we finally got some Republicans in control of the Congress and White House, they spent even more!
Frankly we're fed up. We manage to get a few congressmen elected who are serious about not raising spending, and they're called "extremists". What is so extreme about asking the other side to compromise occassionally? We've compromised and compromised so that spending is outrageous. But when we ask for a compromise in return, not even lower spending but just to stop raising spending, we're called extremists. Come on - meet us half way and keep spending from growing for once. Stop calling us extremists because we're trying to hold you to an 11-89 split instead of a 10-90 split.
For years you kick us in the head, punch is in the nose, slash our tendons, and spit in our faces. We put up a tiny hand to lessen the next blow and we're "extremists".
Lower spending. That's it. It's not extreme. It's the perfectly normal thing you do when you're running a huge deficit. Just lower spending a bit.
I don't trust PDF so I'm not eager to download that paper. But assuming it does solidly disprove the hypothesis that there are mental differences between males and females - why didn't they just answer his question? Instead it became a media firestorm and he lost his job. The fact that his question was already had a settled answer wasn't the problem. Scientists are wrong all the time. Quite often they disagree over who is wrong even after reading the same research. And occasionally even settled science is found to be incorrect (but only when people are allowed to ask questions about the settled science). The problem wasn't that he hadn't read the latest research or that he was pushing a belief that was widely discredited. All he did was ask a question. The problem was that his question was politically incorrect. He was punished for suggesting a possibility be discussed.
If he had merely suggested they discuss whether the moon landing was faked he would have kept his job.
"cheap out"? So I'm assuming you don't take every deduction available to you but instead you volunteer more than you legally owe?
BTW, I haven't read Romney's tax returns. How much were his taxes reduced by charitable deductions? I hear it was significant. (That would be nice - a politician who prefers to his own money to help the poor instead of using other people's money)
So you're saying it's like anyone else who uses email whether it be businessmen, families, politicians or public servants. I certainly agree that the ability to subpoena can be abused, but I think that applies to everyone not just to scientists. We should be careful to respect everyone's privacy, not just scientists.
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It's not just a job; it's an indenture.
It never caught up in US either until Colt retired as a peacemaker.
American culture remains largely a culture of cowboys: decency of speech is based on the threat of violence if you spoke offensively. That's why Texans are still very polite.
I like this part of the culture. I wish liberals understand that if they have retain the right to insult me, I am retaining the right to respond in a manner suitable for a man.
I think you're missing something. It is an important part of American culture to say "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me". When a man is insulted, he brushes it off as something that he, as a man, can endure like water off a duck's back.
The right of a man to respond is reserved not for an insult to a man, but for an insult to the man's wife, girlfriend, or female relative. Legally I'm pretty sure there is no longer such a right, but to the extent that the culture recognizes a right to respond it is for defending a woman, not for a thin-skinned selfish retaliation.
If America converts to metric 13 years from now - well, I'm not sure I would want to live in such a world.
Hands up all Americans who hate metric but own a 9mm handgun.
Hands up all Frenchmen who hate imperial units but have feet and use teaspoons.
Too much reliance on a decimal point that is easily mistaken for a fleck of dirt.
Then tendency to use decimals where fractions work better.
Long names that sound too much alike (try shouting "10 centimeters!" vs "10 inches!" in a crowded work environment. Not only do you have to keep your voice elevated longer for the metric measurements, the listener is far likely to have trouble distinguishing "centimeters" from "millimeters" than "inches" from "feet". This applies even across different measurements: Did he say "5 liters" or "5 meters"?
Imperial units have useful rules of thumb - an inch is about the width of a man's thumb. A foot is pretty close to the length of my foot. A teaspoon is about the size of a teaspoon. A tablespoon is...
A relative free market reigns in some parts of the economy, but not in all. And different parts of the economy have different levels of freedom. My point was that the parts of the economy that are more free are often able to adapt to the difficulties presented by the non-free portions. Of course that happens less and less as the amount of freedom decreases.
One of the good things about a free market is its ability to tolerate imperfections. You can add things to a free market - social welfare systems and truth in advertising laws for example - and the market will do a pretty good job of coping. This allows you to try various methods to correct the free market's imperfections. Indeed in America we tax ourselves pretty heavily and the government spends such a huge portion of our wealth and so heavily regulates are daily lives that it is hardly fair to call it a "free market" anymore. Yet the free market that does still exist is so adaptable that it still continues to produce the new wealth and provide for the needs of our citizens.
My initial reaction was the same, but having read some of the discussion I think there is a subtle distinction that needs to be made.
You have a right to broadband but not an entitlement to broadband.
That is, if the government makes it illegal to have broadband - then it is violating your natural right to be left alone, and your political right to freedom of speech (since broadband is a method of speech like the printing press).
However, you do not have a right to have the government or anyone else provide the broadband for you. If you want to use broadband it is your responsibility to either build it yourself or to find someone who is willing to do it for you (perhaps in exchange for some form of payment).
In recent years the distinction has become muddied by the constant mis-use of the term "right" such as when people claim that a refusal to pay for someone's contraception somehow violates that person's right to contraception.
Communism is not theoretically sound because it fails to account for the basics of human nature.
1. Many (most) people are lazy and work only because they have to do so to survive and/or live a comfortable life.
2. Many (most) people are selfish and won't work up to their full ability just for the benefit of society
3. Many (most) people are selfish and that includes the leaders. If everyone is truly equal and there are no leaders, the more capable people will find a way to make themselves leaders.
Free markets have many deficiencies - including the built in fact that some members of society end up at the bottom, but in it's chaos the free market is inherently stable because while individuals may move up and down the ladder, companies rise and fall, the system provides the framework within which companies and people adapt to changes.
Communism is inherently unstable because it enforces a condition that those most capable of causing change are not happy with. The instability can only be contained and suppressed for any period of time by a brutal police state. That's why communist societies are always either very small or very brutal.
There won't be any advertising, or brands. People will consume only white-label products and be perfectly happy about it.
Obama may not be perfect, but do really think he won't step down when his 8 years are over?
And quite often they're right.
From what I've seen people usually ignore evidence that the worst is coming. People assume good things will continue as they have been in their limited lifetime.
If America converts to metric 13 years from now - well, I'm not sure I would want to live in such a world.
I wanted to take a programming class and had done quite a bit of playing around with Basic at home. I asked one of my math teachers for some advice - should I take Basic for the easy A or would there be some benefit to learning Pascal? What was the difference? She told me Pascal is "just a different language." She sure made it sound like there was no point to taking it. So I didn't. Of course Pascal was a language being used by professionals - Pascal had quite a few significant differences from Basic that were useful to learn - and I wasted a semester because the Basic we learned so easier than what I'd been doing at home.
Corporations are part of capitalism, and have been integral to it for 150 years.
Yes, but a cozy relationship between government and corporations is not integral and it should not be part of it. However when government obtains for itself the power to micromanage corporations - deciding which ones get funding, which ones are heavily regulated, which ones get waivers from those regulations, etc., gaining control over the government is a necessary and natural part of the corporations self-defence mechanism.
You're confused if you think communism and facism are opposites or that either is related to the American right. Facism, like communism, puts the focus of people's lives on the government. The left in America is the party that wants to make the state the center of our lives. As was said at the Democratic convention, "Government is the only thing we all belong to". Obama is calling us to "economic patriotism" meaning we should give our money to the government. It is the Democrats who try to solve all our problems through government intervention.
Well we haven't really had much choice in the matter. The Republicans promise a small government that the corporations would have little incentive to take over, but when they get in power they break their promise.
The Democrats promise a big government that corporations will need to take over if they want to survive, and unlike the Republicans the Democrats keep their promise.
So should we vote for the vote for the parties that says it will do good but lies, or vote for the party that promises evil and follows through?
"secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square."
- Barack Obama
And yet Obama does not just ask, but orders under penalty of law, that believers leave their religion at the door when they enter the marketplace.
Why wouldn't a party that opposes logic and reason want a person who does exactly that on committees that are most highly focused on the biggest logic/reason branches of human activity?
So you're saying that's why the Dems don't object to him being placed on the committee. Makes sense to me.
Hell, it would give us something to start beaming signals at like mad in the hope of a return at the very least.
You should be careful what you ask for. There are things you really shouldn't poke with a stick -- Bears for one, large cats, wasp nests, hives of locusts... Aliens advanced and hungry enough for raw energy (and materials) to build Dyson spheres.
Usually I'm with the crowd that says we ought to be careful about how we contact alients, but in this case I think your reason is wrong: why would any aliens advanced and hungry enough for raw energy to build Dyson spheres want to bother us? Certainly not for our energy. There is nothing on earth that has the energy to compare with what they could get from any random star. Nor for our raw materials - again we're nothing special in terms of raw materials and if they're capable of manufacturing a Dyson sphere then there is nothing in terms of improved materials we could offer them either.
Probably the bigger danger is that they would want to send scientists to put us in cages and study us or worse, get rid of us before we become as advanced as they are (admittedly that would take a long time, but if the aliens were far away they would know the round trip time for our signal to reach them and for their killing squads to reach would be long enough to allow us a lot of advancement).
He wasn't picking on Republicans and the Tea Party, he was complimenting them. I'm glad to here there are some liberals who favor freedom too.
Aren't there strict rules against candidates coordinating with SuperPACs? I thought the reason the SuperPACs could raise so much money was because they are considered independent speech spending. If that's the case then you can't hold the candidate responsible.
Of course the cynic in my has to wonder if the candidate and the SuperPAC coordinated in secret so that the candidate could get the best of both worlds. The damage of the attack is done, but the incumbent gets to look all righteous for rejecting the attack. And because of the rules against coordination the attacked person can't even make the case that the should put a stop to it.
If the laws were followed very strictly, I would think the incumbent could theoretically be breaking the law by rejecting the attacks.
Let's take a simple but core measurement like taxing and spending.
Conservative: Someone who wants the government to tax less and spend less.
Liberal: Someone who wants the government to tax more and spend more.
Now look at the pattern over the last 40 years. Sometimes we tax more, sometimes we tax lesss. Tax rates go up and down. But spending only goes one way: up. In my lifetime spending has never decreased. Sometimes we have Democratic leadership that gets what it wants and we get higher taxes and higher spending. Sometimes we see compromise and get something even worse: lower taxes and higher spending. When we finally got some Republicans in control of the Congress and White House, they spent even more!
Frankly we're fed up. We manage to get a few congressmen elected who are serious about not raising spending, and they're called "extremists". What is so extreme about asking the other side to compromise occassionally? We've compromised and compromised so that spending is outrageous. But when we ask for a compromise in return, not even lower spending but just to stop raising spending, we're called extremists. Come on - meet us half way and keep spending from growing for once. Stop calling us extremists because we're trying to hold you to an 11-89 split instead of a 10-90 split.
For years you kick us in the head, punch is in the nose, slash our tendons, and spit in our faces. We put up a tiny hand to lessen the next blow and we're "extremists".
Lower spending. That's it. It's not extreme. It's the perfectly normal thing you do when you're running a huge deficit. Just lower spending a bit.
I don't trust PDF so I'm not eager to download that paper. But assuming it does solidly disprove the hypothesis that there are mental differences between males and females - why didn't they just answer his question? Instead it became a media firestorm and he lost his job. The fact that his question was already had a settled answer wasn't the problem. Scientists are wrong all the time. Quite often they disagree over who is wrong even after reading the same research. And occasionally even settled science is found to be incorrect (but only when people are allowed to ask questions about the settled science). The problem wasn't that he hadn't read the latest research or that he was pushing a belief that was widely discredited. All he did was ask a question. The problem was that his question was politically incorrect. He was punished for suggesting a possibility be discussed.
If he had merely suggested they discuss whether the moon landing was faked he would have kept his job.
That already happens. Remember Lawrence Summers?
"cheap out"? So I'm assuming you don't take every deduction available to you but instead you volunteer more than you legally owe?
BTW, I haven't read Romney's tax returns. How much were his taxes reduced by charitable deductions? I hear it was significant. (That would be nice - a politician who prefers to his own money to help the poor instead of using other people's money)
So you're saying it's like anyone else who uses email whether it be businessmen, families, politicians or public servants. I certainly agree that the ability to subpoena can be abused, but I think that applies to everyone not just to scientists. We should be careful to respect everyone's privacy, not just scientists.