Exactly. If they don't want to fight this legally, then open the damn lab up. It is UCLA for the love of Christ. It's one of the largest universities in the nation. It can't staff the media lab on weekends?
They are not a punishment, true. But something about your statement that they are an obligation doesn't sit right with me. Taxes are the way the government controls your activity, plain and simple. Every time they want you to do something, they lower or eliminate the tax on it. Every time they want you to stop or decrease some activity, they raise (or apply) tax on it. The complicated tax code is evidence enough that taxes are there to get you to do this and not that. Plus they want money.
With respect to Ron Paul, you could not possibly be more wrong even if you tried 1,000,000 times to best yourself in how wrong you are about his views on government-mandated abortion rights.
Hrm, where can I sign up to join you in the Young Totalitarians? Sounds like a blast! I bet it's fun telling people what's practical or impractical for them.
Heh, adding this type of restriction is like spitting into the ocean. You don't think the government doesn't already restrict what you can and cannot purchase? Try buying absinthe legally in the U.S. Do I think they should control absinthe distribution? No I don't. Do I think they should have more reasonable, sane requirements (restrictions, controls, whatever you want to call them) for automobiles? Yes, because YOUR personal car buying purchase affects all of us in aggregate--so it's not just a purely personal experience. It's the same thing as no-smoking laws in restaurants. I'm all for it, so I guess it makes me part of the Young Anti-Smoker Fascists, just because I don't want someone else's habit blown right into my face as a statement of their right-to-do-as-they-please-because-this-is-America . I can see your an auto-nut from your website and apparently this hits close to your car-purchasing heart. So go ahead and sling around words like totalitarian as if you actually knew what it meant.
If there's something you want to buy but can't (rather than something you want others to buy who won't)
The improvements I'm talking about are coming from the other direction. There are products available today that you SHOULDN'T be able to buy--take GM H2's for instance. Impractical, and disproportionately unhealthy for the environment.
But keep in mind that others refusal to take up your pet technology right away may have more to do with their more complete analysis of the total cost and total environmental costs and discovering it's not worth it to retool or rebuild before plant EOL
I have no pet technology. I see private and government sector inefficiencies that could be reduced, but are hard (because getting governments and large businesses to change is hard) to reduce. It's not a question of phasing out technologies and replacing them with better ones as they come online--because that's only happening some of the time. The issue is not allowing entities to replace old plants utilizing old technologies with new plants using old technologies just because it's cheaper and will turn a 1000% profit, instead of a 900% profit.
I do agree with you on the nuclear power plant issue.
Ultimately, I just don't agree that people/companies/governments are doing what they can in the best spirit of the matter. Most of the time they're doing as little as humanly possible to maintain their current level of comfort/profit/constituencies--it's not human nature to do the right thing now, but it is human nature to do as little as possble until it's absolutely necessary to change. Unfortunately, this often leads to cases where not enough change can be effected at the end game stage, and the pain is far worse for the procrastination.
So we make the changes we can, adopt the new technologies as they become available, and encourage frugality. Which is exactly what we're doing now.
We can change more faster, the technologies have been available and are not being used, and who, exactly, is encouraging frugality? American industry is not encouraging frugality--they are encouraging as much consumption as possible, and the government does not seem to have its heart in it either. These are the two players that can have the most effect on this issue. Ultimately, I agree that a phased transition is the right approach, but we appear to be stuck at phase 0 for an inordinately long time.
Since we have no idea how the climate in general works, probably our best bet on that front is to not dump shittons of CO2 into the air.
This is the smartest posting of all. It's completely irresponsible to say we might as well do as we please because the climate is going to hose us anyways. Maybe it will. But maybe it won't right itself as it always has in the past due to all the crap we've spewed. I watched an interesting Nova a few months back that supported the notion that we are in effect causing global cooling (through particulate matter emissions) and global warming (through CO2 emissions) at the same time, and because of the offsetting effects we've not noticed a huge change. The program also noticed the unsustainability of this, and that one the tipping point was reached, it would get very uncomfortable for us--and quickly. I'd like to leave the planet thinking we haven't completely screwed it for all time. I'm much more comfortable with a major asteroid wiping out life than the short-sightedness of humans.
That's what Hitler and IBM said to the German Jews.... sort of. But if you're going to put your newly acquired crypto hardware info to use in a situation that displeases W. -- say, including drivers in your free hippie-communist Linux distro, OpenBSD -- one might worry that they'd be quietly extradited to a little island in the caribbean.
*WooWooWoo!* Conspiracy Theorist Proximity detectors at level FIVE due to flagged 'Dubya mentioning' out of context. Shutting down reasonable conversation mode now to conserve energy.
How about someone who owns a boat and needs to tow it to a lake, so he needs a big V-8 or V-10? Should these people "feel the pain" when despite owning gas guzzlers, are driving vehicles they need?
Well, ultimately the American consumer is responsible for buying the next-model year truck or luxury sports sedan because the '07 model has a 6,000 hp V8 over the '06 model which only has 4500 hp. The new Infiniti's, Lexus's, etc all have 250-300+ HP engines. The trucks are getting up into the mid 300's. The Ford F150 in the mid 90's had an option for a straight 6 with 150 HP. It had plenty of torque. So did the bigger 3/4 and 1 ton trucks from the early 90's. No one needs a V10. No one even needs a 300 HP car. There was plenty of power in these decade-old trucks to allow someone pull whatever they needed (especially the diesels) whose power stats are nothing like what trucks (and cars for that matter) have now. They did not perform well, except for pulling performance, but if it's a work/tow vehicle, then fast quarter mile times are not really necessary are they? If consumers demanded gas mileage over power, we'd have cars and trucks with the same HP as 10 years ago and double the gas mileage. The "need" for these gas guzzlers is really a need for vehicles that can perform such duties as towing. Such duties do not need 300HP engines, no matter which way you cut it. European diesel engine technology is really advanced, but you don't see such vehicles here. You should--they have impressive engines. It's silly to think that effective work vehicles need the horsepower they have now, or that it is technologically infeasible to have effective workhorse vehicles with MUCH better MPG than they have now (in the U.S).
The real debate should not be whether global warming is occuring or not, but what humanity should be doing if it was the case that global warming was occuring. The science of complex systems appears to be best investigated by simulations, and simulations require assumptions. Depending on those assumptions, one can get vastly different results--as complex systems respond greatly to small changes. If you then take into consideration that correctly predicting the future is still (last time I checked) imperfect at best, then would it not be prudent to assume that humanity's actions w/r to utilizing the world's resources by burning them, processing them, consuming them, and chemically changing them could result in a change to the system, and that maybe these sentinel events that appear to be cropping up more regularly are not just cyclic events? Maybe they are, but there comes a point when the slew of data should start to skew the viewpoint towards an assumption that, yeah, we're changing the environment.
We as a species have been happy in this environment as we know it, and if we change it to something else, it is reasonable to assume that, as a species, we won't be as happy with what it changes to. From a living systems perspective, the environment could not really improve for us. So regardless of what is happening to the environment as a result of human interference, it behooves us all to make changes that don't necessarily negatively impact our qualities of life if we institute them, but that could vastly improve our qualities down the road--even if it takes another 100 years to realize the prudence of decisions made now about this situation. The aphorism "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is particularly applicable in this case.
Despite the fact you basically brought Iraq to a civil war....
This is some of the most short-sighted, knee jerk reasoning I've seen in a long time.
If everything would have gone as expected, i.e. the Iraqis saw us for what we were, a country coming and giving them a chance to have a better future (regardless of our true motives), there would have been much less death and destruction on all sides and we wouldn't be there anymore. Unfortunately, the Iraqis (except the Kurds, who are doing well because they are reasonable people with leaders who want things to get _better_) themselves decided to listen to despots like Muqtada al Sadr. It's warlords like him that are causing the strife--along with a little help from other regimes like Iran, and terrorist groups who would love to stir up problems for any reason if it weakens the U.S. The place is a cobbled together country anyways with groups who have hated each other for centuries. I fault the U.S. for not seeing what a chaotic mess the whole place is to begin with, and not having some sort of alternative for post-combat maintenance of peace and order. To imply that the soldiers of the U.S. military are uncaring individuals because they continue to fight rather than lay down their arms in protest is, well, I don't know what it is, but it isn't the correct way to look at it, that's for sure.
First, it wasn't an ad hominem attack; it was an attack. I attacked you, period for your crass statement; I didn't attack you to further my position.
If you want to just say that is an attack for attack's sake rather than attack to make some sort of rhetorical point, then agreed, it wasn't ad hominem. Beyond that, examples are not meritless because they are ridiculous. Ridiculous similes and metaphors speak volumes in literature. I'm not trying in any way to associate homosexuality with pedophelia other than to try to make the point that someone has to draw a line somewhere. Who gets to and why do they get to? Is it because they are a majority viewpoint? Or is it because they claim to know "what's right and fair?"
Your action of trolling a topic on nuclear power gives me reason to believe you have an agenda.
As a pretty much completely non-religous person, I was still offended by the way in which another poster decided to respond to the issue based on their moronic sig and insults to someone who brought up their moronic sig. I didn't dive into the article looking to get into an argument on gay marriage. I felt it would only be right to push on the statements of someone whose obviously thinks that he has the keys to the universe. I guess I just had a generally non-slashdot view since I don't agree that Republicans are mass murdering sick fucks. So of course, I would be the one trolling... I'm not passing judgement on you, per se, and I don't feel in any way superior to you, so I don't agree that I'm on some high horse. I would argue that a simple debate on a matter of law does not put me here. If you want to debate, stick to the facts and leave the hyperbole.
I'm just taking a vibe from your first response to my post. It was accusing me of several things. I'm a pretty liberal guy, and I don't take kindly to being called these things because I happen to post what amounts to playing devil's advocate. I should have expected it though.
This illustrates my position on this matter: 2, 3 or 5 - it doesn't affect me. So where does any right I might claim to tell you which number should work for you stem from? When it starts to affect me, then I have a valid case for ethically asserting some law should exist to govern this interaction between your family and mine.
That is incorrect. First of all, your family may be affected in indirect ways. You may not even be aware of the underlying causes. There may very well be long term consequences of altering social fabrics in this way. You can't necessarily say that a law shouldn't exist because you haven't personally experienced the effects that the law would seek to control. Don't berate me for bringing up another ridiculous example because there is a valid parallel. Here it is: I haven't been personally robbed by someone armed with an AK-47. That doesn't mean that any attempts on my part to limit the types of guns that people can have is a part of some left-wing conspiracy to limit a person's right to bear arms. But you can bet your ass NRA members would start crying discrimination and that I and others like myself are oppressing their freedoms. After all, it's in the Constitution. What right do I have to engage in this debate? I don't own a gun. I've never been directly involved in an issue regarding such guns. Who am I to claim that "a right to bear arms" doesn't include machine guns or bazookas. They're not hurting me. Guns don't kill people, people kill people, etc etc. Well, I think that the Constitution gives me the right to dissent on an issue in spite of my lack of direct involvement with it. I am indeed drawing a personal line at "machine gun" when it comes to a right to bear arms. So the same is with those against gay marriage. It still boils down to someone having to make a definition. I ask when does it stop, and all I ever hear is that my examples are ridiculous--not, "well, I think it should stop here. This is the point where I s
You can xenophobically *feel* that homosexuality is wrong, but to compare it to pedophilia only shows you as a crass person. Who is the victim in a consenual sexual relationship? Are they scarred for life? As someone who's worked with victims, it makes my skin crawl to hear bigots make this comparison. You will never hear a victim make this comparison - only bigots who could never understand.
you have no idea what I feel about homesexuality being right or wrong. I make the comparison because it's absolutely valid to wonder at what point marriage loses its meaning. Apparently you think its fine for two people to get married regardless of sex. What about three people? They can all definitely be in love and everything is consensual. Is this a valid form of marriage? Do you think this should be condoned by society in general? Where do YOU draw the line? When you come to it, tell me why everyone else should draw the line at the same place. Tell me then that people who don't draw the line in the same place are being bigoted.
Stop making ad hominem attacks in the name of objectivity. Why don't you give me a definition for marriage that is non-discriminatory that fits your view of the world, and I'm sure I can find a group that isn't included and who's relationship could be considered harmless.
Feel that homosexuality is choice all you want, but those folks who live it might just know a little better, and to say you know better shows you as a crass person pushing a personal agenda.
I've got so no agenda on this issue you don't even know. Furthermore, don't push your objectivism philosophy on me. I agree with you on the topics of abortion and religion in school. I probably come down on your side of the issues in most instances. Just because I don't want to be forced to call a gay union "marriage" doesn't make me anything other than someone who feels that the original word should retain its meaning. I don't care if the government gets rid of the word marriage and all civil procedures are called unions and ONLY the religious portion is called marriage. That wouldn't bother me a bit. I don't care if in a conversation with me a gay person refers to themselves being married. I just don't want a minority (in the political sense) to push their view on a majority, not get their way, and then use all these inflammatory terms which aren't even appropriate. By necessity, there is always a group who will come down on one side or the other of any law-based decision. It isn't always the case that ones on one side are being discriminated against. Sometimes the decision is applying a term or definition and others simply fall outside of that defintion. They can't automatically cry discrimination because of this. Especially if their being outside of an "accepted" defintion does not result in any actual loss of freedoms. I completely agree that gays should have all the rights that heterosexuals have when it comes to relationships in terms of government-related benefits and recognition. Get off your high horse, PUHLEASE.
It's possible that there are a few non religious people here and there who agree with the idea, but it is driven primarily by religious people for religious reasons which have no place whatsoever in the laws of this country.
It is patently wrong to state that religion plays no part in the laws of our country. The fundamental basis for our law is common law which gets its entire philosophical outlook from the Judeo-Christian ethic. No, you just gave them as examples of "similar" things when there is nothing similar about them.
They're absolutely similar. There's a good chance that if you were legally allowed to marry your dog, no harm would come of it. Does it mean that the rest of the country should accept that marriage? Absolutely not! Does it mean that there has to be a line drawn somewhere between acceptable and unacceptable marriages? Yes! Mormons cannot legally practice bigamy and it was a huge part of their religion? Do you think that should be allowed too? Ridiculous examples are meant to illustrate a point. You are missing it. Great. Real nice guy you are.
Generally, that's what I hear from friends, family, and strangers. Nothing. Decide whatever you want. Keep bigotry out of my constitution. That's what I have a problem with.
It's not your constitution. There is no bigotry in it, and there wouldn't be even if there was a marriage amendment. Hopefully it never comes to that, because this is ultimately a states' rights issue. In fact I can. What harm could it possibly cause? None. Exactly.
Wow, that clarified it for me. Good examples of how. That isn't even the point. It isn't the gays pushing their morals on other people.
Oh yeah, they appear to be pushing pretty hard from where I'm standing. They're pushing an assumed right to marriage on everyone else who doesn't agree. They're pushing the morality of "If you don't like what I'm doing, you must be a religious hatemonger bigot discriminator cock man oppressor." When "society" chooses to exercise its "authority" in order to activelyt restrict the rights of a select group based on no reasonable basis whatsoever,
There are no damn rights being restricted. Who the f*** says, and where the f*** is it written that you have any right to participate in gay marriage? You think it is a fundamental human right? Is it in the Declaration of Independence or the constitution somewhere? Did the U.N. bestow this right on you? You want to consider yourself married that's fine. You want to force other people to accept it, get over it! Try living near one of the more anti-gay small towns and see how they do there. They still get murdered. What an idiotic response. Durrrrr. Well when there are a lot of them together everything seems ok.
People get murdered every day everywhere for plenty of reasons. You're never going to get rid of all the assholes. It's called human nature. Do you see swathes of shanty-towns where gays huddle without power or money, barred from education or employment, whipped for disrespecting their masters? Do you even see them make less than their heterosexual counterparts in their jobs? Do you see the state actively keeping gays from cohabitating, or talking to each other. Do you see any of this? No. Why? Because it turns out that this country you apparently hate and whose ideals you twist to suit your own, is pretty damn tolerant, and the "gay predicament" as we'll call it is nothing like the plight of blacks and of women in the history of this country. Those were really issues. This is playtime stuff. Yeah, sure, civil unions would handle that. So would marriage since it is solely a *civil* institution as far as anything related to the topic is concerned. It also specifically creates an underclass.
Then you're arguing they are one in the same. Since you don't have a religious attachment to the word, why don't you take the state-granted ci
People are taking an *immoral* stance of discriminiation based purely on religious based bigotry. There is no moral basis for their stance. That's the fundamental problem with it.
Why is it immoral? Must you continue to assert that religion is the evil culprit in this and those people must see it your way? You have proven yourself to be typical of the type of asshat who holds that position. Oh no, gays are the same as baby raping pedophiles and bestialitists. That's entirely dishonest
I never said they are the same. I said why do you feel that you get to draw the line and choose when something is not the same? Show me yours that give you the right to decide what isn't. You're the one trying to force things on people, not me. Quit pretending it's otherwise.
I never said I had any credentials. But I do think that society has the authority until someone proves that it is an *immoral* stance. With exceptions, most Americans hold a more traditional view, one that you consider immoral. Again, you have a fundamental problem with your reasoning. I'm not asking society to toe anything. All I'm asking it to do is not act in an aggreessive manner against people who are merely minding their own business and not doing any sort of harm whatsoever to others or to society.
Whatever. What is agressive about deciding that a historical, traditional pact should stay as it is? I think you have the problem. I agree that gays in relationships should have all the social rights bestowed by governments (taxes, health benefits, powers of attorney). Beyond that, the federal government should not _assert_ that people have to recognize gay marriages as legit. The fact is that some things cause harm to others. Murder, rape, robbery. This is the job of government to prevent. Things that cause no harm to anybody are not the place of the government and they sure as hell are none of *your* fucking business.
I don't give a rat's ass what you or anyone else does on your own time. You can jump out of an airplane without a parachute while smoking crack. The fact is you can't tell me that changing a historical precedent such as marriage in a fundamental way is not harmful. Again, you're choosing what's harmful and what's not. I'm not saying I know. I'm saying that the collective knowledge and history of humanity has settled on this for a long time. It's going to take a lot more than your rantings to prove to me that society has got it wrong. No, no, no. You're the one trying to discriminate with no valid reasons. You're the one who needs to justify imposing your will on other people. You'll note that the whole issue revolves around *anti* gay marriage proposals. It's the people who are in no way involved with the actual issue that are trying to force their bigotry into the laws.
I only care in that I'm an American and no matter what you think, I'm glad my vote on these issues can cancel yours out. I only responded because your comments were just aggravating in their ignorance. Relationships are none of the government's business. Marriages are contracts bestowed by the government and another thing entirely. They've provided an out anyways: civil unions. If civil unions provide all of the rights of standard marriages, then why should you care so much about semantics? I live near one of the gayest neighborhoods in America. On a Saturday night, I don't see them suffering under the oppression that I imagine when people throw around words like bigotry and discrimination.
Here is one of your attempts at logic. You can marry anyone you love. A gay person can not. So, they do not have the same rights. That is horrendously discriminatory since it is you through the power of the state telling another person who it is ok for them to love.
Look buddy, you can't have it both ways at once. Either you believe that there is an objective concept of right and wrong, or you don't. In the first case, you shouldn't bitch about someone taking a moral stance on an issue on the basis that they are being discriminatory. Discrimination is built into every level of the human experience, and most of it is good and necessary. Do you think you should be able to marry anything you love? Your dog? Your sister? your childhood security blanket? Your new car? Your own children? All of the above at the same time (I mean, hey, we can't discriminate against those who want to marry multiple things they love). Do you support a pedophile marrying a two year old because he's "in love?" These are all enforced as not legal through the "power of the state." Do you support the legalization of murder as well?. Legal prohibition is an assertion of the "power of the state" over a minority. After all, some people don't have any moral objection to it. Why does society have to toe your line? Because you happen to be one and society is the many, and therefore not agreeing with your view is necessarily "tyranny of the majority." Silly. Show me the credentials that give you the right to decide on your whims what is morally acceptable for society?
On the other hand, you don't believe that there is a real objective concept of right and wrong, and that everyone gets to decide this on their own, without respect to society. There's no arguing with you in that case. The best thing to do is treat your views as irrelevant.
Truth be told, I'd be willing to listen to why you think society should be forced to accept gay marriage, if you did not prance about wagging your finger at everyone with an air of self-righteousnes and superiority.
You're either a hypocrite, or dishonest and manipulative in your arguments. Probably both.
There are a slew of programs that the government could divert money from to pay for this. You chose to bring up the Iraq war. There is a segment of the population who will use any topic to bring up the Iraq war/how Dubya was deputized by Satan himself. Just look at all the ridiculous comments about the war/Bush brought up in the context of the Coretta Scott King funeral. The comment on bringing the Iraq war into this discussion is completely on point. The point is that the Iraq war speaks to more issues and is a much more explosive topic than your simple comment on its costs, and because everyone has strong feelings on the Iraq war one way or another, you are implicitly diverting the focus from the article. I mean, it is obvious. The first response to your comment was not about the costs, but about the fact you brought the war up.
so 1 acre of Algae farming could replace around 2000 barrels of oil. Sounds good, but the US uses 20 million barrels each day.
...That requires 10,000 acres of land per day--or 3,650,000 acres of algae to support the U.S.'s oil consumption for the year. It is an area about 6 times the size of Rhode Island. It is a lot of land, but there are counties in the U.S. bigger than Rhode Island whose planted crop of x is 150,000 acres or more http://www.usda.gov/nass/graphics/county04/crpmap0 4.htm. Dedicate twenty of these counties (assuming weather conditions permit) to algae, and (roughly) there you go. Just to feed all the cows we eat most likely requires corn production on this scale. Some serious rearranging of the U.S. agricultural system would be required, but it would also be completely doable, and probably entirely worth it--if your numbers are correct. Besides, there are most likely large swaths of land in the U.S. that are not currently used for agriculture, but could be if sufficient need arose.
50+ people and 2+ years is about 100,000 hours of work for normal hours and a normal year of work for 50 people. Get a thousand people and each contributing a 100 hours over of their time for one year, and you have the work output necessary. Don't know about the money, it would come out to 8 grand per person...
Seems improbable, but not impossible if it catches a lot of peoples' interest.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. If they don't want to fight this legally, then open the damn lab up. It is UCLA for the love of Christ. It's one of the largest universities in the nation. It can't staff the media lab on weekends?
Exterminating cool things (directly or indirectly) every year all the while piling up trash and replicating like viruses.
They are not a punishment, true. But something about your statement that they are an obligation doesn't sit right with me. Taxes are the way the government controls your activity, plain and simple. Every time they want you to do something, they lower or eliminate the tax on it. Every time they want you to stop or decrease some activity, they raise (or apply) tax on it. The complicated tax code is evidence enough that taxes are there to get you to do this and not that. Plus they want money.
Write it in LaTeX, and output it as a PDF, e.g. pdftex or ps2pdf. Employers should be ok with that.
If you are a scientist and don't want to typeset, use LaTeX.
With respect to Ron Paul, you could not possibly be more wrong even if you tried 1,000,000 times to best yourself in how wrong you are about his views on government-mandated abortion rights.
Hrm, where can I sign up to join you in the Young Totalitarians? Sounds like a blast! I bet it's fun telling people what's practical or impractical for them.
a . I can see your an auto-nut from your website and apparently this hits close to your car-purchasing heart. So go ahead and sling around words like totalitarian as if you actually knew what it meant.
Heh, adding this type of restriction is like spitting into the ocean. You don't think the government doesn't already restrict what you can and cannot purchase? Try buying absinthe legally in the U.S. Do I think they should control absinthe distribution? No I don't. Do I think they should have more reasonable, sane requirements (restrictions, controls, whatever you want to call them) for automobiles? Yes, because YOUR personal car buying purchase affects all of us in aggregate--so it's not just a purely personal experience. It's the same thing as no-smoking laws in restaurants. I'm all for it, so I guess it makes me part of the Young Anti-Smoker Fascists, just because I don't want someone else's habit blown right into my face as a statement of their right-to-do-as-they-please-because-this-is-Americ
If there's something you want to buy but can't (rather than something you want others to buy who won't)
The improvements I'm talking about are coming from the other direction. There are products available today that you SHOULDN'T be able to buy--take GM H2's for instance. Impractical, and disproportionately unhealthy for the environment.
But keep in mind that others refusal to take up your pet technology right away may have more to do with their more complete analysis of the total cost and total environmental costs and discovering it's not worth it to retool or rebuild before plant EOL
I have no pet technology. I see private and government sector inefficiencies that could be reduced, but are hard (because getting governments and large businesses to change is hard) to reduce. It's not a question of phasing out technologies and replacing them with better ones as they come online--because that's only happening some of the time. The issue is not allowing entities to replace old plants utilizing old technologies with new plants using old technologies just because it's cheaper and will turn a 1000% profit, instead of a 900% profit.
I do agree with you on the nuclear power plant issue.
Ultimately, I just don't agree that people/companies/governments are doing what they can in the best spirit of the matter. Most of the time they're doing as little as humanly possible to maintain their current level of comfort/profit/constituencies--it's not human nature to do the right thing now, but it is human nature to do as little as possble until it's absolutely necessary to change. Unfortunately, this often leads to cases where not enough change can be effected at the end game stage, and the pain is far worse for the procrastination.
So we make the changes we can, adopt the new technologies as they become available, and encourage frugality. Which is exactly what we're doing now.
We can change more faster, the technologies have been available and are not being used, and who, exactly, is encouraging frugality? American industry is not encouraging frugality--they are encouraging as much consumption as possible, and the government does not seem to have its heart in it either. These are the two players that can have the most effect on this issue. Ultimately, I agree that a phased transition is the right approach, but we appear to be stuck at phase 0 for an inordinately long time.
Since we have no idea how the climate in general works, probably our best bet on that front is to not dump shittons of CO2 into the air.
This is the smartest posting of all. It's completely irresponsible to say we might as well do as we please because the climate is going to hose us anyways. Maybe it will. But maybe it won't right itself as it always has in the past due to all the crap we've spewed. I watched an interesting Nova a few months back that supported the notion that we are in effect causing global cooling (through particulate matter emissions) and global warming (through CO2 emissions) at the same time, and because of the offsetting effects we've not noticed a huge change. The program also noticed the unsustainability of this, and that one the tipping point was reached, it would get very uncomfortable for us--and quickly. I'd like to leave the planet thinking we haven't completely screwed it for all time. I'm much more comfortable with a major asteroid wiping out life than the short-sightedness of humans.
That's what Hitler and IBM said to the German Jews. ... sort of. But if you're going to put your newly acquired crypto hardware info to use in a situation that displeases W. -- say, including drivers in your free hippie-communist Linux distro, OpenBSD -- one might worry that they'd be quietly extradited to a little island in the caribbean.
*WooWooWoo!* Conspiracy Theorist Proximity detectors at level FIVE due to flagged 'Dubya mentioning' out of context. Shutting down reasonable conversation mode now to conserve energy.
Well, ultimately the American consumer is responsible for buying the next-model year truck or luxury sports sedan because the '07 model has a 6,000 hp V8 over the '06 model which only has 4500 hp. The new Infiniti's, Lexus's, etc all have 250-300+ HP engines. The trucks are getting up into the mid 300's. The Ford F150 in the mid 90's had an option for a straight 6 with 150 HP. It had plenty of torque. So did the bigger 3/4 and 1 ton trucks from the early 90's. No one needs a V10. No one even needs a 300 HP car. There was plenty of power in these decade-old trucks to allow someone pull whatever they needed (especially the diesels) whose power stats are nothing like what trucks (and cars for that matter) have now. They did not perform well, except for pulling performance, but if it's a work/tow vehicle, then fast quarter mile times are not really necessary are they? If consumers demanded gas mileage over power, we'd have cars and trucks with the same HP as 10 years ago and double the gas mileage. The "need" for these gas guzzlers is really a need for vehicles that can perform such duties as towing. Such duties do not need 300HP engines, no matter which way you cut it. European diesel engine technology is really advanced, but you don't see such vehicles here. You should--they have impressive engines. It's silly to think that effective work vehicles need the horsepower they have now, or that it is technologically infeasible to have effective workhorse vehicles with MUCH better MPG than they have now (in the U.S).
We as a species have been happy in this environment as we know it, and if we change it to something else, it is reasonable to assume that, as a species, we won't be as happy with what it changes to. From a living systems perspective, the environment could not really improve for us. So regardless of what is happening to the environment as a result of human interference, it behooves us all to make changes that don't necessarily negatively impact our qualities of life if we institute them, but that could vastly improve our qualities down the road--even if it takes another 100 years to realize the prudence of decisions made now about this situation. The aphorism "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is particularly applicable in this case.
We want to urge all system builders -- indeed, all Partners -- not to supply naked PCs. It is a risk to your customers and a risk to your business
Puritans!
This is some of the most short-sighted, knee jerk reasoning I've seen in a long time.
If everything would have gone as expected, i.e. the Iraqis saw us for what we were, a country coming and giving them a chance to have a better future (regardless of our true motives), there would have been much less death and destruction on all sides and we wouldn't be there anymore. Unfortunately, the Iraqis (except the Kurds, who are doing well because they are reasonable people with leaders who want things to get _better_) themselves decided to listen to despots like Muqtada al Sadr. It's warlords like him that are causing the strife--along with a little help from other regimes like Iran, and terrorist groups who would love to stir up problems for any reason if it weakens the U.S. The place is a cobbled together country anyways with groups who have hated each other for centuries. I fault the U.S. for not seeing what a chaotic mess the whole place is to begin with, and not having some sort of alternative for post-combat maintenance of peace and order. To imply that the soldiers of the U.S. military are uncaring individuals because they continue to fight rather than lay down their arms in protest is, well, I don't know what it is, but it isn't the correct way to look at it, that's for sure.
First, it wasn't an ad hominem attack; it was an attack. I attacked you, period for your crass statement; I didn't attack you to further my position.
If you want to just say that is an attack for attack's sake rather than attack to make some sort of rhetorical point, then agreed, it wasn't ad hominem. Beyond that, examples are not meritless because they are ridiculous. Ridiculous similes and metaphors speak volumes in literature. I'm not trying in any way to associate homosexuality with pedophelia other than to try to make the point that someone has to draw a line somewhere. Who gets to and why do they get to? Is it because they are a majority viewpoint? Or is it because they claim to know "what's right and fair?"
Your action of trolling a topic on nuclear power gives me reason to believe you have an agenda.
As a pretty much completely non-religous person, I was still offended by the way in which another poster decided to respond to the issue based on their moronic sig and insults to someone who brought up their moronic sig. I didn't dive into the article looking to get into an argument on gay marriage. I felt it would only be right to push on the statements of someone whose obviously thinks that he has the keys to the universe. I guess I just had a generally non-slashdot view since I don't agree that Republicans are mass murdering sick fucks. So of course, I would be the one trolling...
I'm not passing judgement on you, per se, and I don't feel in any way superior to you, so I don't agree that I'm on some high horse. I would argue that a simple debate on a matter of law does not put me here. If you want to debate, stick to the facts and leave the hyperbole.
I'm just taking a vibe from your first response to my post. It was accusing me of several things. I'm a pretty liberal guy, and I don't take kindly to being called these things because I happen to post what amounts to playing devil's advocate. I should have expected it though.
This illustrates my position on this matter: 2, 3 or 5 - it doesn't affect me. So where does any right I might claim to tell you which number should work for you stem from? When it starts to affect me, then I have a valid case for ethically asserting some law should exist to govern this interaction between your family and mine.
That is incorrect. First of all, your family may be affected in indirect ways. You may not even be aware of the underlying causes. There may very well be long term consequences of altering social fabrics in this way. You can't necessarily say that a law shouldn't exist because you haven't personally experienced the effects that the law would seek to control. Don't berate me for bringing up another ridiculous example because there is a valid parallel. Here it is: I haven't been personally robbed by someone armed with an AK-47. That doesn't mean that any attempts on my part to limit the types of guns that people can have is a part of some left-wing conspiracy to limit a person's right to bear arms. But you can bet your ass NRA members would start crying discrimination and that I and others like myself are oppressing their freedoms. After all, it's in the Constitution. What right do I have to engage in this debate? I don't own a gun. I've never been directly involved in an issue regarding such guns. Who am I to claim that "a right to bear arms" doesn't include machine guns or bazookas. They're not hurting me. Guns don't kill people, people kill people, etc etc. Well, I think that the Constitution gives me the right to dissent on an issue in spite of my lack of direct involvement with it. I am indeed drawing a personal line at "machine gun" when it comes to a right to bear arms. So the same is with those against gay marriage. It still boils down to someone having to make a definition. I ask when does it stop, and all I ever hear is that my examples are ridiculous--not, "well, I think it should stop here. This is the point where I s
You can xenophobically *feel* that homosexuality is wrong, but to compare it to pedophilia only shows you as a crass person. Who is the victim in a consenual sexual relationship? Are they scarred for life? As someone who's worked with victims, it makes my skin crawl to hear bigots make this comparison. You will never hear a victim make this comparison - only bigots who could never understand.
you have no idea what I feel about homesexuality being right or wrong. I make the comparison because it's absolutely valid to wonder at what point marriage loses its meaning. Apparently you think its fine for two people to get married regardless of sex. What about three people? They can all definitely be in love and everything is consensual. Is this a valid form of marriage? Do you think this should be condoned by society in general? Where do YOU draw the line? When you come to it, tell me why everyone else should draw the line at the same place. Tell me then that people who don't draw the line in the same place are being bigoted.
Stop making ad hominem attacks in the name of objectivity. Why don't you give me a definition for marriage that is non-discriminatory that fits your view of the world, and I'm sure I can find a group that isn't included and who's relationship could be considered harmless.
Feel that homosexuality is choice all you want, but those folks who live it might just know a little better, and to say you know better shows you as a crass person pushing a personal agenda.
I've got so no agenda on this issue you don't even know. Furthermore, don't push your objectivism philosophy on me. I agree with you on the topics of abortion and religion in school. I probably come down on your side of the issues in most instances. Just because I don't want to be forced to call a gay union "marriage" doesn't make me anything other than someone who feels that the original word should retain its meaning. I don't care if the government gets rid of the word marriage and all civil procedures are called unions and ONLY the religious portion is called marriage. That wouldn't bother me a bit. I don't care if in a conversation with me a gay person refers to themselves being married. I just don't want a minority (in the political sense) to push their view on a majority, not get their way, and then use all these inflammatory terms which aren't even appropriate. By necessity, there is always a group who will come down on one side or the other of any law-based decision. It isn't always the case that ones on one side are being discriminated against. Sometimes the decision is applying a term or definition and others simply fall outside of that defintion. They can't automatically cry discrimination because of this. Especially if their being outside of an "accepted" defintion does not result in any actual loss of freedoms. I completely agree that gays should have all the rights that heterosexuals have when it comes to relationships in terms of government-related benefits and recognition. Get off your high horse, PUHLEASE.
It's possible that there are a few non religious people here and there who agree with the idea, but it is driven primarily by religious people for religious reasons which have no place whatsoever in the laws of this country.
It is patently wrong to state that religion plays no part in the laws of our country. The fundamental basis for our law is common law which gets its entire philosophical outlook from the Judeo-Christian ethic.
No, you just gave them as examples of "similar" things when there is nothing similar about them.
They're absolutely similar. There's a good chance that if you were legally allowed to marry your dog, no harm would come of it. Does it mean that the rest of the country should accept that marriage? Absolutely not! Does it mean that there has to be a line drawn somewhere between acceptable and unacceptable marriages? Yes! Mormons cannot legally practice bigamy and it was a huge part of their religion? Do you think that should be allowed too? Ridiculous examples are meant to illustrate a point. You are missing it.
Great. Real nice guy you are.
Generally, that's what I hear from friends, family, and strangers.
Nothing. Decide whatever you want. Keep bigotry out of my constitution. That's what I have a problem with.
It's not your constitution. There is no bigotry in it, and there wouldn't be even if there was a marriage amendment. Hopefully it never comes to that, because this is ultimately a states' rights issue.
In fact I can. What harm could it possibly cause? None. Exactly.
Wow, that clarified it for me. Good examples of how.
That isn't even the point. It isn't the gays pushing their morals on other people.
Oh yeah, they appear to be pushing pretty hard from where I'm standing. They're pushing an assumed right to marriage on everyone else who doesn't agree. They're pushing the morality of "If you don't like what I'm doing, you must be a religious hatemonger bigot discriminator cock man oppressor."
When "society" chooses to exercise its "authority" in order to activelyt restrict the rights of a select group based on no reasonable basis whatsoever,
There are no damn rights being restricted. Who the f*** says, and where the f*** is it written that you have any right to participate in gay marriage? You think it is a fundamental human right? Is it in the Declaration of Independence or the constitution somewhere? Did the U.N. bestow this right on you? You want to consider yourself married that's fine. You want to force other people to accept it, get over it!
Try living near one of the more anti-gay small towns and see how they do there. They still get murdered.
What an idiotic response.
Durrrrr. Well when there are a lot of them together everything seems ok.
People get murdered every day everywhere for plenty of reasons. You're never going to get rid of all the assholes. It's called human nature. Do you see swathes of shanty-towns where gays huddle without power or money, barred from education or employment, whipped for disrespecting their masters? Do you even see them make less than their heterosexual counterparts in their jobs? Do you see the state actively keeping gays from cohabitating, or talking to each other. Do you see any of this? No. Why? Because it turns out that this country you apparently hate and whose ideals you twist to suit your own, is pretty damn tolerant, and the "gay predicament" as we'll call it is nothing like the plight of blacks and of women in the history of this country. Those were really issues. This is playtime stuff.
Yeah, sure, civil unions would handle that. So would marriage since it is solely a *civil* institution as far as anything related to the topic is concerned. It also specifically creates an underclass.
Then you're arguing they are one in the same. Since you don't have a religious attachment to the word, why don't you take the state-granted ci
People are taking an *immoral* stance of discriminiation based purely on religious based bigotry. There is no moral basis for their stance. That's the fundamental problem with it.
Why is it immoral? Must you continue to assert that religion is the evil culprit in this and those people must see it your way?
You have proven yourself to be typical of the type of asshat who holds that position.
Oh no, gays are the same as baby raping pedophiles and bestialitists.
That's entirely dishonest
I never said they are the same. I said why do you feel that you get to draw the line and choose when something is not the same?
Show me yours that give you the right to decide what isn't. You're the one trying to force things on people, not me. Quit pretending it's otherwise.
I never said I had any credentials. But I do think that society has the authority until someone proves that it is an *immoral* stance. With exceptions, most Americans hold a more traditional view, one that you consider immoral.
Again, you have a fundamental problem with your reasoning.
I'm not asking society to toe anything. All I'm asking it to do is not act in an aggreessive manner against people who are merely minding their own business and not doing any sort of harm whatsoever to others or to society.
Whatever. What is agressive about deciding that a historical, traditional pact should stay as it is? I think you have the problem. I agree that gays in relationships should have all the social rights bestowed by governments (taxes, health benefits, powers of attorney). Beyond that, the federal government should not _assert_ that people have to recognize gay marriages as legit.
The fact is that some things cause harm to others. Murder, rape, robbery. This is the job of government to prevent.
Things that cause no harm to anybody are not the place of the government and they sure as hell are none of *your* fucking business.
I don't give a rat's ass what you or anyone else does on your own time. You can jump out of an airplane without a parachute while smoking crack. The fact is you can't tell me that changing a historical precedent such as marriage in a fundamental way is not harmful. Again, you're choosing what's harmful and what's not. I'm not saying I know. I'm saying that the collective knowledge and history of humanity has settled on this for a long time. It's going to take a lot more than your rantings to prove to me that society has got it wrong.
No, no, no. You're the one trying to discriminate with no valid reasons. You're the one who needs to justify imposing your will on other people. You'll note that the whole issue revolves around *anti* gay marriage proposals.
It's the people who are in no way involved with the actual issue that are trying to force their bigotry into the laws.
I only care in that I'm an American and no matter what you think, I'm glad my vote on these issues can cancel yours out. I only responded because your comments were just aggravating in their ignorance. Relationships are none of the government's business. Marriages are contracts bestowed by the government and another thing entirely. They've provided an out anyways: civil unions. If civil unions provide all of the rights of standard marriages, then why should you care so much about semantics? I live near one of the gayest neighborhoods in America. On a Saturday night, I don't see them suffering under the oppression that I imagine when people throw around words like bigotry and discrimination.
You can marry anyone you love. A gay person can not. So, they do not have the same rights. That is horrendously discriminatory since it is you through the power of the state telling another person who it is ok for them to love.
Look buddy, you can't have it both ways at once. Either you believe that there is an objective concept of right and wrong, or you don't. In the first case, you shouldn't bitch about someone taking a moral stance on an issue on the basis that they are being discriminatory. Discrimination is built into every level of the human experience, and most of it is good and necessary. Do you think you should be able to marry anything you love? Your dog? Your sister? your childhood security blanket? Your new car? Your own children? All of the above at the same time (I mean, hey, we can't discriminate against those who want to marry multiple things they love). Do you support a pedophile marrying a two year old because he's "in love?" These are all enforced as not legal through the "power of the state." Do you support the legalization of murder as well?. Legal prohibition is an assertion of the "power of the state" over a minority. After all, some people don't have any moral objection to it. Why does society have to toe your line? Because you happen to be one and society is the many, and therefore not agreeing with your view is necessarily "tyranny of the majority." Silly. Show me the credentials that give you the right to decide on your whims what is morally acceptable for society?
On the other hand, you don't believe that there is a real objective concept of right and wrong, and that everyone gets to decide this on their own, without respect to society. There's no arguing with you in that case. The best thing to do is treat your views as irrelevant.
Truth be told, I'd be willing to listen to why you think society should be forced to accept gay marriage, if you did not prance about wagging your finger at everyone with an air of self-righteousnes and superiority.
You're either a hypocrite, or dishonest and manipulative in your arguments. Probably both.
This post shows a rare depth of thought.
There are a slew of programs that the government could divert money from to pay for this. You chose to bring up the Iraq war. There is a segment of the population who will use any topic to bring up the Iraq war/how Dubya was deputized by Satan himself. Just look at all the ridiculous comments about the war/Bush brought up in the context of the Coretta Scott King funeral. The comment on bringing the Iraq war into this discussion is completely on point. The point is that the Iraq war speaks to more issues and is a much more explosive topic than your simple comment on its costs, and because everyone has strong feelings on the Iraq war one way or another, you are implicitly diverting the focus from the article. I mean, it is obvious. The first response to your comment was not about the costs, but about the fact you brought the war up.
Seems improbable, but not impossible if it catches a lot of peoples' interest.
IANAA, but, you do NOT get taxed when receiving a gift, which a birthday present would be. You get taxed if you GIVE a gift over a certain amount. http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id= 98968,00.html#gift