Nuclear power offers the advantage of massive energy production on a small area of land, giving it a high W/skm rate. The ideal solution probably lies in the intelligent combination of several powering solutions depending on the zone type, energy demand and area coverage...
Hrm... And the ideal solution for the most efficient internet would have been dumb terminals and one gigantic mainframe like the first computer engineers thought we'd only need a handful.
But exactly the opposite happened. We got computers on every desk, phone, and other device imaginable not being as efficient as it could have been since each device uses more energy and there is more latency between servers.
But it worked and that's why we use it... Why?
Because of private ownership and distribution decentralized model.
No matter how deregulated the nuclear power industry could be, its not going to be deregulated enough to compete with private enterprise ability to generate revenue with micro-generation.
Well... I suppose the US Government could create and subsidize a nuclear monopoly (or monopolies) but as some pointed out that ends up being the French model with too much overhead because of lack of efficiency and competition.
I'm not saying nuclear power is a bad or evil technology, it is just that small businesses and investors can't build them in your back yard like they could do a solar or wind plant. This leads to a lack of liquidity of investors big and small into American nuclear.
Would you want to put your money into something that is that highly regulated by the government when it comes to profits? At the same time, would the American public accept a completely unregulated nuclear industry? The answer is no to both questions and were not going to see nuclear get the private funding that solar is getting now.
In a perfect world, we'd have all the humans live together in one big city, with one big reactor, with the world's nicest public transportation system (kind of like Tokyo), but we don't live in a perfect efficient world and we're going to find it easier to live with a power generation system that is distributed and decentralized.
Its not an issue of technology but an issue of politics and economics which we aren't not going to overcome on the nuclear question.
Besides, in lieu of owning a nuclear reactor in your basement, a solar panel installation system is the next coolest thing any nerd could own on their home. What is not cool about never having to money (well mostly "that much money") to the power company ever again.
Maybe 3D animators, but I've known a few of those, and they were pretty on the ball in general. I mean, I see a 12-core Mac Pro and think back to the Mac Pro we had mixed in with the HP and Sun workstations in the FEL control room when I did an internship back in 2002, I don't think "web designer" or "philosophy major." Just saying.
If the web designer or philosophy major worked heavily with video editing, then yes... Yes, they can use all 12 cores and wish they had more.
I remember back in the day I had Final Cut Pro 3 on a PowerPC Mac. Basically, to render a 5 minute video usually involved me taking a 2 hour break. For some longer projects I would just leave the computer on overnight.
Of course, its not so bad these days... But you're still waiting on the computer a lot of times when you want to render.
Oh and Photoshop is always a beast no matter how much computer resources you throw at it...
That idea bothers the statisticians. There's no particular reason to believe we would be first, and in fact, there are many reasons to think that should not be the case (as one example, earth is orbiting a relatively young star... why didn't any of the tens of billions of older stars in this galaxy get lucky?)
Maybe tens of billions of stars is not enough... Not only did the planet have to be in the correct position and size, but also the correct chemcial composition.
Oh and a moon to create tides, a working magnetic tides, a large planet like Jupiter to keep it from being hit by meteors so often... Oh but not enough that we get hit every now and then to wipe out the large non-space faring creatures which evolution favors in by which mammals were not only able to rise but get to a point where they start considering being able to space travel.
Right but the very fact that they are wealthy and advanced enough to create multi-generational colony ships makes me wonder why they would want to. The only obvious one is population growth exceeding the capacity of their world, but look at our world (as we naturally must for all such predictions):
Any civilization technologically advanced enough to travel to other stars, most likely does not have a need for wealth in our capitalistic sense (think replicators and halodecks in StarTrek) or population control for that matter (think Matrix).
I'm not saying it isn't possible. I'm saying that the answer to the Fermi "Paradox" could be as simple as: Maybe the assumption that civilizations will engage in exponential galactic colonization endeavors is wrong.
Why? It only takes one civilization to do so.
And it only takes one misguided civilization that feels the need to seek out all sentient life in the universe and assimilate or destroy them.
Think of it this way... If by the time humans are able to travel the stars (if we are around by then), all it takes is one group of hell bent humans starting a religion that decides they need to colonize the entire galaxy. If this cult (or religion) goes out of its way and achieves this, then that doesn't answer the Fermi paradox.
Oh and lastly... Due to entropy and the death of solar systems due to solar expansion etc, civilizations have to move someday or they will be wiped out. (Maybe thats what happened to all the other civilization who were too lazy to get up and move)
Personally... I'd argue the simplest argument to the Fermi paradox is that we are either first or pretty close to the first (say few thousand years) where they just haven't go that far. After all perhaps life is common in the universe... Just not intelligent life able to travel between stars.
No. What's going to happen is the self-righteous goody-goody people in our society who never drink, never screw, never do anything wrong at all are going to get even worse about judging those of us who know how to have a good time.
Yeah... Those are the people that always get caught with a male hooker.
Seriously, why do the uptight people usually have more to hide than the people they berate?
How many times do you hear a statement like, "he never drinks," being used as a euphemism for, "he is a moral and upstanding citizen" or something to that effect?
You know who never drinks or smokes... Hitler. That's who.
Didn't mean to goodwin this but sometimes I'd like to point out that moral behavior sometimes has nothing to do with alcohol use.
If you honestly think weapons have some sort of artistic value you can visit the shooting range.. or join the army.
Argubly the biggest counter-argument to your point would be the MG42.
Which they don't use in the army anymore or very easily acquired at the shooting range.
And I would put forth as an engineering work of art which many collectors treasure (if they can get their hands on an original).
Another thing that people have to remember that there is a core group that want realism which is why an indie game hit it big (relative to an indie game) called Red Orchestra which attempted to create a realist WW2 game as possible including no crosshairs, unstable firing without support, no ammo counts etc etc.
It wasn't a Halo, but they are making a sequel with added realism etc.
Actually, we say that Detroit autoworkers were overpaid and got way too many benefits for their unskilled labor due to inflexible, corrupt unions - sort of the opposite thing to what we're saying about offshored labor. But who's counting?
Did the Detroit autoworkers install malware in their cars?
Your little do-good buggy will a) in fact slow me down on the highway causing me to get there slower and b) cause road rage in someone that will drive that little piece of shit off the road, taped or not.
Don't worry. By the time this technology comes out, cars will be federal mandated to have automatic speed regulators... Oh I'm sorry... Speed reporting units that will automatically have the local authorities send you a ticket.
Remember, speed limits and laws are selective enforcing to increase revenue. I wouldn't put it past them to eventually just charge people every time they drive over the posted limit.
They'll also make it easy like a toll system. No jailtime or points involved. Just more revenue.
there's a reason to make big power plants, and that's for efficiency, and since you don't seem to know thermodynamics, get the fuck out.
If we were aiming for economic and or technological efficiency, we would be better under Fascism or National Socialism.
The point he was trying to make is that, American power companies aren't known for their ability to pass the savings along to the consumer. After all, after deregulation, many consumer's power bill went up even if they consumed the same or less before with new power plants also being opened.
If this were say... France... Where they have good regulation of corporate oversight, then nuclear power is great (which they do have).
In the US... Not so much. I mean after all. These are public companies that own the power plants. They are to make a profit first and fix the energy problem second.
Sure it would be great if we had a perfect world with everyone doing good for the sake of humanity with one gigantic commune powerplant where everyone gets their energy according to their needs, but I'd feel much better if the system was decentralized with microgeneration.
Nuclear energy is probably the best chance we have are breaking our addiction to oil. Nuclear energy is also relatively clean. I don't know why the government doesn't just fund the development of a bunch of nuclear power plants and put them on the coast or on the ocean somewhere.
I have nothing against nuclear energy, but the key issue is that it is quite a centralized method of providing energy and still requires a company to sell the energy.
In France this is fine because they have their government quite under the thumb of regulation and expectation of energy prices, but in the US it would not work so well due to the fact the energy companies (as deregulation has shown) usually does not pass the savings to the consumer.
Not that I should complain too much because I have stocks of a few energy companies in the US, but for an ideal solution for the US way of things you need decentralization.
That's why, given the choice, I'd prefer everyone own their own solar panels on the rooftop and bypass the power companies all together first.
Unless they legalize the private owning of reactors in your back yard... Which I'd be all for.
Occasionally seeing disturbing images is not a problem for most people, but if you spend 40 hours a week, every week, looking at all sorts of disturbing crap, your mind will become twisted.
Are you saying our soldiers in the middle east are twisted for witnessing violent situations on a daily basis?
Most people are good, most of the time. I wasn't raised that way, I've observed this to be the case.
Do you live in a major city? Secondly, do you live in a impoverished area? If not, then go do so and get back to us. I'm not saying poor people are evil, but the area does seem to have more crime than others (hint, I live near a drug dealer and chalk lines of a murder scene)
There is, most of the time. The existence of exceptions doesn't negate the rule, and certainly doesn't justify giving up.
The drug dealers are still there. I could buy crack if I wanted, but I rather not. Also I'm pretty sure no one ever caught the person that got shot the person standing on the corner. Ok. This maybe anectodale, but I could pull up a website with our city (hell I could pull up detroit's or camdem's statstics) and you'll see most crimes are unpunished.
This is a tough one. Many authority figures can be trusted, but not unconditionally. Any authority figure should be open to question and monitored closely. The problem isn't that someone with authority can't be trusted most of the time, it's what happens when they stray and the trust is misplaced. Even if rare, the ramifications are great.
Hrm... Corruption is quite large in the cities. Not as bad as it used to be, but they nailed a few city officials back in the day.
Generally true. You may not like the reason, but cause and effect seems to affect most things that happen, in my experience.
Not so. Irattionality has a lot more to do with the universe than it lets on. Secondly (more of a philosophy point) if there was cause and effect to the extreme then there would be no room for free will as everything has already been caused.
They aren't convenient lies. Believing in good, justice, trust and reason are things to be aspired to, because if you don't, you have given in to evil, injustice, distrust and unreason. The existence of the latter does not necessarily make the former "lies".
The GP is right in ways... But my argument is this... Move to a high crime, impoverished area and get back to you opinion. I live simply because its where I am. I am used to the crime and corruption. You would be too if you lived here. Maybe if I had a wealthy family and lived in the suburbs I'd be less cynic.
If you can watch that and be completely unaffected, well then congratulations - you're an asshole!
Let's say your a CIA agent tasked to the review of watching the tens if not hundreds of beheading videos around the world (trust me... between the ones in Thailand on the monks, the Russians getting beheaded by the Chechen etc) then you would eventually get desensitized by it. You could be a nice or moral guy as the next person but if you watch enough, you will get desensitized.
Some people can't take it, but some people have to go through it. There are plenty of case studies during WWII where average persons would just be completely ok with atrocities they see if it happens every day.
It is human nature.
I'm not saying its moral or right, but just a fact of life.
See enough of violence. You will be fine with it eventually or you will have killed yourself (as some German soldiers in the concentration camps did).
And sorry, but the "real world" does not involve frequent beheadings. Being unable to see another human being brutally murdered without being disturbed isn't a result of living "sheltered".
But if it did, people would get desensitized to it...
I mentioned in other posts about a memoir of a German solider in WWII where he was at first disturbed by the fact he killed someone in say 1940, but by the 1945, he was simply witnessing atrocities left and right without really thinking much about it. He also noted that civilians gave dead people the same attitude as he did simply because if they did not ignore the mass amount of dead people they saw in their daily lives they would go insane.
Perhaps if you lived in Afghanistan and saw beheading on a regular basis then it would not really bother you that much.
Its simply a part of human nature. If you witness or partake in it on a regular basis then you get desensitized to it.
I would advise anybody who thinks they're not one of those "overly sensitive" people to give it some serious thought before they decide to watch something like that, much less get a job doing it all day long. Some things you just cannot un-see - although you'll certainly wish you could.
I don't know. I remember reading the memoirs of a German soldier where he said that at first, seeing dead people rather bothered him but after the 5th year of World War II, he hardly noticed stepping over dead bodies. He only noticed this after he was watching a bread line of people in Berlin where a Russian artillery shell decimated the people standing in line and then the people still alive pulled the bodies to the side and got back in line again waiting for bred.
He surmised that after a while all humans are desensitized to death no matter who they are are and what class of people they were brought up in.
Kids can't read or do math, but they all know about global warning, the rape of the planet, BP and other evil corps, how this land was stolen from the natives, how we ALL used to have slaves... It is a disgrace. Then people wonder why people have no civic pride.
But the land was stolen from the natives and the US and European economy was directly tied to the benefits of slavery regardless if you owned them or not.
Remember, patriotism is only a violent action away from racism and nationalism.
Hrm.... I just encountered it in the Wrath of the Lich King (slightly), I completed this mission north of the Icecrown Citadel and I went back and then noticed the whole zone changed which kind of shocked me as I never noticed the load time or anything changing in the open world.
I'm not sure what other players were seeing but it is possible to manipulate open world MMORPGs to where just the player making the change sees them.
Of course you are rail roaded into it eventually, but it actually suprised me.
That story was true for virtually all of the Founders.
What? What?
In the 1700's if you owned more than one slave you were considered wealthy by the people of the time.
Frankly, I'm not sure why people modded you informative other than the last part.
But the truth of the matter is that American merchants did agitate the revolution in the beginning and the UK responded in most likely the worst possible way by warrentless searches, soldier quartering, etc etc in which the founding fathers objected too.
In that regard, I do believe Thomas Jefferson would have no liked the idea of state monopolies we have have with comcast, as it does seem a bit like the British East India company.
I do agree with you there, but this does bring up a valid point about violation of civil liberties through proxy.
Currently, corporations are becoming even more wealthy than some smaller countries themselves and often blur the line of where the corporation ends and government begins with lobbying.
Eventually we might see larger corporations actually censor and violate rights guaranteed by the constitution and those who are repressed by it can not do anything because they are black listed.
Lets say, you said something that a corporation didn't like and they put you on a black list where they wouldn't hire you or service you in their stores. That is usually fine and dandy, except when they are so large or in alliance with other corporations that you can no longer shop anywhere or get a job either because you are globally black listed.
Now this is a dystopian idea of mine, but perhaps it won't be so farfetched in 10 to 20 years.
If nothing else it causes a chilling effect on freedoms today as some people won't say things to upset their employer.
It would be my suggestion that the bill of rights apply to corporations as well so that people can still enjoy their rights when someday corporations are in fact more powerful than the legal bodies that run this nation or are rather in their pocket.
It's been said before, and I'll say it again. You should ban anyone buying a stock and then selling it within timeframe x (where is 1 week/6 months/1 year). Anything to cut down on the insane bullshit.
I just lost a few mod points retro-actively by saying this but...
Don't you mean like bonds?
Seriously... I like bonds better than I do as of stocks.
Least you know what you are getting into down the road even if you can't sell them right away.
I completely agree with you here. These are students being taught for their future and will need the skills required for their future jobs. Pushing the Mac platform is a horrible idea and a form of playing russian roulette with their computer skills and future job possibilities.
Why? I'd be because the IT admins at the school didn't want to spend hundreds of man hours per week cleaning up spyware and malware off the kids laptops when they break.
I don't say this because I am a mac fan, I say this because I worked at a corporate environment where people got into all sorts of trouble on their windows laptops.
Usually the excuses was they let their kids play with it. We suspected otherwise.
Sure, OS X isn't 100% secure from malware, but its harder to get into trouble with it.
It does not and will not include nukes (etc.) because it is the state's prerogative to protect you in those contexts... hence, nukes are not included in the RKBA. In other words, it is not automatically wrong for somebody to say you can't have a nuke.
From my understanding, the spirit of the amendment was to have wording that would allow the state and local militias to overthrow any foreign or domestic threat (their own central government included) or at least prevent the government from disarming the people in such a way that it could prevent any forceful removal.
At the time, it was a concern that the state militias would be disbanded and a centralized military would simply enforce power over the states, striping them of their rights.
In that regard, I would assume the founders would have thought states owning nuclear weapons ok, but not individuals.
Considering what happened during the civil war and modern day chain of command with national guards, it would be highly unlikely this would ever be allowed.
Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear power offers the advantage of massive energy production on a small area of land, giving it a high W/skm rate. The ideal solution probably lies in the intelligent combination of several powering solutions depending on the zone type, energy demand and area coverage...
Hrm... And the ideal solution for the most efficient internet would have been dumb terminals and one gigantic mainframe like the first computer engineers thought we'd only need a handful.
But exactly the opposite happened. We got computers on every desk, phone, and other device imaginable not being as efficient as it could have been since each device uses more energy and there is more latency between servers.
But it worked and that's why we use it... Why?
Because of private ownership and distribution decentralized model.
No matter how deregulated the nuclear power industry could be, its not going to be deregulated enough to compete with private enterprise ability to generate revenue with micro-generation.
Well... I suppose the US Government could create and subsidize a nuclear monopoly (or monopolies) but as some pointed out that ends up being the French model with too much overhead because of lack of efficiency and competition.
I'm not saying nuclear power is a bad or evil technology, it is just that small businesses and investors can't build them in your back yard like they could do a solar or wind plant. This leads to a lack of liquidity of investors big and small into American nuclear.
Would you want to put your money into something that is that highly regulated by the government when it comes to profits? At the same time, would the American public accept a completely unregulated nuclear industry? The answer is no to both questions and were not going to see nuclear get the private funding that solar is getting now.
In a perfect world, we'd have all the humans live together in one big city, with one big reactor, with the world's nicest public transportation system (kind of like Tokyo), but we don't live in a perfect efficient world and we're going to find it easier to live with a power generation system that is distributed and decentralized.
Its not an issue of technology but an issue of politics and economics which we aren't not going to overcome on the nuclear question.
Besides, in lieu of owning a nuclear reactor in your basement, a solar panel installation system is the next coolest thing any nerd could own on their home. What is not cool about never having to money (well mostly "that much money") to the power company ever again.
Maybe 3D animators, but I've known a few of those, and they were pretty on the ball in general. I mean, I see a 12-core Mac Pro and think back to the Mac Pro we had mixed in with the HP and Sun workstations in the FEL control room when I did an internship back in 2002, I don't think "web designer" or "philosophy major." Just saying.
If the web designer or philosophy major worked heavily with video editing, then yes... Yes, they can use all 12 cores and wish they had more.
I remember back in the day I had Final Cut Pro 3 on a PowerPC Mac. Basically, to render a 5 minute video usually involved me taking a 2 hour break. For some longer projects I would just leave the computer on overnight.
Of course, its not so bad these days... But you're still waiting on the computer a lot of times when you want to render.
Oh and Photoshop is always a beast no matter how much computer resources you throw at it...
That idea bothers the statisticians. There's no particular reason to believe we would be first, and in fact, there are many reasons to think that should not be the case (as one example, earth is orbiting a relatively young star ... why didn't any of the tens of billions of older stars in this galaxy get lucky?)
Maybe tens of billions of stars is not enough... Not only did the planet have to be in the correct position and size, but also the correct chemcial composition.
Oh and a moon to create tides, a working magnetic tides, a large planet like Jupiter to keep it from being hit by meteors so often... Oh but not enough that we get hit every now and then to wipe out the large non-space faring creatures which evolution favors in by which mammals were not only able to rise but get to a point where they start considering being able to space travel.
Otherwise known as:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_theory
Right but the very fact that they are wealthy and advanced enough to create multi-generational colony ships makes me wonder why they would want to. The only obvious one is population growth exceeding the capacity of their world, but look at our world (as we naturally must for all such predictions):
Any civilization technologically advanced enough to travel to other stars, most likely does not have a need for wealth in our capitalistic sense (think replicators and halodecks in StarTrek) or population control for that matter (think Matrix).
I'm not saying it isn't possible. I'm saying that the answer to the Fermi "Paradox" could be as simple as: Maybe the assumption that civilizations will engage in exponential galactic colonization endeavors is wrong.
Why? It only takes one civilization to do so.
And it only takes one misguided civilization that feels the need to seek out all sentient life in the universe and assimilate or destroy them.
Think of it this way... If by the time humans are able to travel the stars (if we are around by then), all it takes is one group of hell bent humans starting a religion that decides they need to colonize the entire galaxy. If this cult (or religion) goes out of its way and achieves this, then that doesn't answer the Fermi paradox.
Oh and lastly... Due to entropy and the death of solar systems due to solar expansion etc, civilizations have to move someday or they will be wiped out. (Maybe thats what happened to all the other civilization who were too lazy to get up and move)
Personally... I'd argue the simplest argument to the Fermi paradox is that we are either first or pretty close to the first (say few thousand years) where they just haven't go that far. After all perhaps life is common in the universe... Just not intelligent life able to travel between stars.
No. What's going to happen is the self-righteous goody-goody people in our society who never drink, never screw, never do anything wrong at all are going to get even worse about judging those of us who know how to have a good time.
Yeah... Those are the people that always get caught with a male hooker.
Seriously, why do the uptight people usually have more to hide than the people they berate?
How many times do you hear a statement like, "he never drinks," being used as a euphemism for, "he is a moral and upstanding citizen" or something to that effect?
You know who never drinks or smokes... Hitler. That's who.
Didn't mean to goodwin this but sometimes I'd like to point out that moral behavior sometimes has nothing to do with alcohol use.
If you honestly think weapons have some sort of artistic value you can visit the shooting range.. or join the army.
Argubly the biggest counter-argument to your point would be the MG42.
Which they don't use in the army anymore or very easily acquired at the shooting range.
And I would put forth as an engineering work of art which many collectors treasure (if they can get their hands on an original).
Another thing that people have to remember that there is a core group that want realism which is why an indie game hit it big (relative to an indie game) called Red Orchestra which attempted to create a realist WW2 game as possible including no crosshairs, unstable firing without support, no ammo counts etc etc.
It wasn't a Halo, but they are making a sequel with added realism etc.
Actually, we say that Detroit autoworkers were overpaid and got way too many benefits for their unskilled labor due to inflexible, corrupt unions - sort of the opposite thing to what we're saying about offshored labor. But who's counting?
Did the Detroit autoworkers install malware in their cars?
Your little do-good buggy will a) in fact slow me down on the highway causing me to get there slower and b) cause road rage in someone that will drive that little piece of shit off the road, taped or not.
Don't worry. By the time this technology comes out, cars will be federal mandated to have automatic speed regulators... Oh I'm sorry... Speed reporting units that will automatically have the local authorities send you a ticket.
Remember, speed limits and laws are selective enforcing to increase revenue. I wouldn't put it past them to eventually just charge people every time they drive over the posted limit.
They'll also make it easy like a toll system. No jailtime or points involved. Just more revenue.
there's a reason to make big power plants, and that's for efficiency, and since you don't seem to know thermodynamics, get the fuck out.
If we were aiming for economic and or technological efficiency, we would be better under Fascism or National Socialism.
The point he was trying to make is that, American power companies aren't known for their ability to pass the savings along to the consumer. After all, after deregulation, many consumer's power bill went up even if they consumed the same or less before with new power plants also being opened.
If this were say... France... Where they have good regulation of corporate oversight, then nuclear power is great (which they do have).
In the US... Not so much. I mean after all. These are public companies that own the power plants. They are to make a profit first and fix the energy problem second.
Sure it would be great if we had a perfect world with everyone doing good for the sake of humanity with one gigantic commune powerplant where everyone gets their energy according to their needs, but I'd feel much better if the system was decentralized with microgeneration.
Because people aren't nice by default sometimes.
Nuclear energy is probably the best chance we have are breaking our addiction to oil. Nuclear energy is also relatively clean. I don't know why the government doesn't just fund the development of a bunch of nuclear power plants and put them on the coast or on the ocean somewhere.
I have nothing against nuclear energy, but the key issue is that it is quite a centralized method of providing energy and still requires a company to sell the energy.
In France this is fine because they have their government quite under the thumb of regulation and expectation of energy prices, but in the US it would not work so well due to the fact the energy companies (as deregulation has shown) usually does not pass the savings to the consumer.
Not that I should complain too much because I have stocks of a few energy companies in the US, but for an ideal solution for the US way of things you need decentralization.
That's why, given the choice, I'd prefer everyone own their own solar panels on the rooftop and bypass the power companies all together first.
Unless they legalize the private owning of reactors in your back yard... Which I'd be all for.
Occasionally seeing disturbing images is not a problem for most people, but if you spend 40 hours a week, every week, looking at all sorts of disturbing crap, your mind will become twisted.
Are you saying our soldiers in the middle east are twisted for witnessing violent situations on a daily basis?
Most people are good, most of the time. I wasn't raised that way, I've observed this to be the case.
Do you live in a major city? Secondly, do you live in a impoverished area? If not, then go do so and get back to us. I'm not saying poor people are evil, but the area does seem to have more crime than others (hint, I live near a drug dealer and chalk lines of a murder scene)
There is, most of the time. The existence of exceptions doesn't negate the rule, and certainly doesn't justify giving up.
The drug dealers are still there. I could buy crack if I wanted, but I rather not. Also I'm pretty sure no one ever caught the person that got shot the person standing on the corner. Ok. This maybe anectodale, but I could pull up a website with our city (hell I could pull up detroit's or camdem's statstics) and you'll see most crimes are unpunished.
This is a tough one. Many authority figures can be trusted, but not unconditionally. Any authority figure should be open to question and monitored closely. The problem isn't that someone with authority can't be trusted most of the time, it's what happens when they stray and the trust is misplaced. Even if rare, the ramifications are great.
Hrm... Corruption is quite large in the cities. Not as bad as it used to be, but they nailed a few city officials back in the day.
Generally true. You may not like the reason, but cause and effect seems to affect most things that happen, in my experience.
Not so. Irattionality has a lot more to do with the universe than it lets on. Secondly (more of a philosophy point) if there was cause and effect to the extreme then there would be no room for free will as everything has already been caused.
They aren't convenient lies. Believing in good, justice, trust and reason are things to be aspired to, because if you don't, you have given in to evil, injustice, distrust and unreason. The existence of the latter does not necessarily make the former "lies".
The GP is right in ways... But my argument is this... Move to a high crime, impoverished area and get back to you opinion. I live simply because its where I am. I am used to the crime and corruption. You would be too if you lived here. Maybe if I had a wealthy family and lived in the suburbs I'd be less cynic.
If you can watch that and be completely unaffected, well then congratulations - you're an asshole!
Let's say your a CIA agent tasked to the review of watching the tens if not hundreds of beheading videos around the world (trust me... between the ones in Thailand on the monks, the Russians getting beheaded by the Chechen etc) then you would eventually get desensitized by it. You could be a nice or moral guy as the next person but if you watch enough, you will get desensitized.
Some people can't take it, but some people have to go through it. There are plenty of case studies during WWII where average persons would just be completely ok with atrocities they see if it happens every day.
It is human nature.
I'm not saying its moral or right, but just a fact of life.
See enough of violence. You will be fine with it eventually or you will have killed yourself (as some German soldiers in the concentration camps did).
And sorry, but the "real world" does not involve frequent beheadings. Being unable to see another human being brutally murdered without being disturbed isn't a result of living "sheltered".
But if it did, people would get desensitized to it...
I mentioned in other posts about a memoir of a German solider in WWII where he was at first disturbed by the fact he killed someone in say 1940, but by the 1945, he was simply witnessing atrocities left and right without really thinking much about it. He also noted that civilians gave dead people the same attitude as he did simply because if they did not ignore the mass amount of dead people they saw in their daily lives they would go insane.
Perhaps if you lived in Afghanistan and saw beheading on a regular basis then it would not really bother you that much.
Its simply a part of human nature. If you witness or partake in it on a regular basis then you get desensitized to it.
I would advise anybody who thinks they're not one of those "overly sensitive" people to give it some serious thought before they decide to watch something like that, much less get a job doing it all day long. Some things you just cannot un-see - although you'll certainly wish you could.
I don't know. I remember reading the memoirs of a German soldier where he said that at first, seeing dead people rather bothered him but after the 5th year of World War II, he hardly noticed stepping over dead bodies. He only noticed this after he was watching a bread line of people in Berlin where a Russian artillery shell decimated the people standing in line and then the people still alive pulled the bodies to the side and got back in line again waiting for bred.
He surmised that after a while all humans are desensitized to death no matter who they are are and what class of people they were brought up in.
Kids can't read or do math, but they all know about global warning, the rape of the planet, BP and other evil corps, how this land was stolen from the natives, how we ALL used to have slaves... It is a disgrace. Then people wonder why people have no civic pride.
But the land was stolen from the natives and the US and European economy was directly tied to the benefits of slavery regardless if you owned them or not.
Remember, patriotism is only a violent action away from racism and nationalism.
It doesn't work in MMORPGs,
Hrm.... I just encountered it in the Wrath of the Lich King (slightly), I completed this mission north of the Icecrown Citadel and I went back and then noticed the whole zone changed which kind of shocked me as I never noticed the load time or anything changing in the open world.
I'm not sure what other players were seeing but it is possible to manipulate open world MMORPGs to where just the player making the change sees them.
Of course you are rail roaded into it eventually, but it actually suprised me.
That story was true for virtually all of the Founders.
What? What?
In the 1700's if you owned more than one slave you were considered wealthy by the people of the time.
Frankly, I'm not sure why people modded you informative other than the last part.
But the truth of the matter is that American merchants did agitate the revolution in the beginning and the UK responded in most likely the worst possible way by warrentless searches, soldier quartering, etc etc in which the founding fathers objected too.
In that regard, I do believe Thomas Jefferson would have no liked the idea of state monopolies we have have with comcast, as it does seem a bit like the British East India company.
You would need either two or 3 cams to pass the 3d test.
Actually that would get past the photo issue, but you'd need to put the cameras on other end of the laptop corners.
Name one civil liberty that apple has raped.
I do agree with you there, but this does bring up a valid point about violation of civil liberties through proxy.
Currently, corporations are becoming even more wealthy than some smaller countries themselves and often blur the line of where the corporation ends and government begins with lobbying.
Eventually we might see larger corporations actually censor and violate rights guaranteed by the constitution and those who are repressed by it can not do anything because they are black listed.
Lets say, you said something that a corporation didn't like and they put you on a black list where they wouldn't hire you or service you in their stores. That is usually fine and dandy, except when they are so large or in alliance with other corporations that you can no longer shop anywhere or get a job either because you are globally black listed.
Now this is a dystopian idea of mine, but perhaps it won't be so farfetched in 10 to 20 years.
If nothing else it causes a chilling effect on freedoms today as some people won't say things to upset their employer.
It would be my suggestion that the bill of rights apply to corporations as well so that people can still enjoy their rights when someday corporations are in fact more powerful than the legal bodies that run this nation or are rather in their pocket.
It's been said before, and I'll say it again. You should ban anyone buying a stock and then selling it within timeframe x (where is 1 week/6 months/1 year). Anything to cut down on the insane bullshit.
I just lost a few mod points retro-actively by saying this but...
Don't you mean like bonds?
Seriously... I like bonds better than I do as of stocks.
Least you know what you are getting into down the road even if you can't sell them right away.
Suppose I were the parent of an underprivileged child.
Suppose I were the parent of no children?
Should I pay for your laptop? If so, I'd want to school to get them a $300 netbook. No offense.
But in terms budget and economic crisis these days, schools aren't really getting their money from anywhere decent.
I completely agree with you here. These are students being taught for their future and will need the skills required for their future jobs. Pushing the Mac platform is a horrible idea and a form of playing russian roulette with their computer skills and future job possibilities.
Why? I'd be because the IT admins at the school didn't want to spend hundreds of man hours per week cleaning up spyware and malware off the kids laptops when they break.
I don't say this because I am a mac fan, I say this because I worked at a corporate environment where people got into all sorts of trouble on their windows laptops.
Usually the excuses was they let their kids play with it. We suspected otherwise.
Sure, OS X isn't 100% secure from malware, but its harder to get into trouble with it.
It does not and will not include nukes (etc.) because it is the state's prerogative to protect you in those contexts... hence, nukes are not included in the RKBA. In other words, it is not automatically wrong for somebody to say you can't have a nuke.
From my understanding, the spirit of the amendment was to have wording that would allow the state and local militias to overthrow any foreign or domestic threat (their own central government included) or at least prevent the government from disarming the people in such a way that it could prevent any forceful removal.
At the time, it was a concern that the state militias would be disbanded and a centralized military would simply enforce power over the states, striping them of their rights.
In that regard, I would assume the founders would have thought states owning nuclear weapons ok, but not individuals.
Considering what happened during the civil war and modern day chain of command with national guards, it would be highly unlikely this would ever be allowed.