That wouldn't happen. Sure, a small number of people would push it too far just like they do now. But most people do not have a death wish. You're simply setting up a straw man.
What would happen is that a lot of records would get set, a lot of people would do a lot better in the sport, and a lot of uptight purists would be unhappy.
Most doping is not disallowed because it will kill or even hurt the user. Doping is disallowed because of a purist attitude that people should just stick with the luck of their genes. It's like trying to apply aristocracy to sports. Only those with the luck of birth are allowed to compete at the highest levels.
That's your opinion about what the appeal is. That's not how I see it. The appeal for me is to see the maximum limits to which the human body and mind can be pushed.
These are high end freaks. It's a freak show just as much as a circus sideshow is a freak show. We like to look at certain types of freaks. If they want to dope then I say let them dope.
The major difference is that I don't want thieves to steal my stuff. But, I sure as hell want all athletes doping as much as possible.
We're not talking about high school sports. We're talking about high end freaks strutting their stuff. Why should some lucky freaks get to be the winners just because they were born with some special trait? Doping levels the playing field.
The only major differences between me now and me 10 years ago are that I'm a better programmer, I have better Halloween costume making abilities, play slightly fewer videogames per year, and have a girlfriend.
But how can we tell? There are a large number of seemingly normal but truly crazy people in the world. There are still people who believe the moon landings are a conspiracy and that Bush is a good person, etc. If someone is a truly dedicated Flat Earth Troll instead of just a truly dedicated Flat Earther, then it would be very tricky to figure out what they truly believed. Perhaps it doesn't matter.
My car is worse than Hitler. My boss is a nazi. Having Blu-Ray players forced on us is worse than genocide.
My friend's 2 year old kids are sociopathic evil monsters. Being forced to sit through Sex and the City with my girlfriend was the worst form of torture ever. When I was growing up my parents treated me like a slave when I was forced to mow the lawn once a week.
I nearly died when I had to sit through the terrible dialogue in Transformers. My friend nearly gave me a heart attack when he said he was actually going to eat vegetables voluntarily. If Uwe Boll makes one more movie I'm going to blind myself with a fork.
I don't know how much time the jvm adds to the startup of a blu-ray player, but it probably isn't the problem. My HDDVD player takes 90 seconds to start up despite the fact that HDDVD does not use a jvm.
The IRA bombed London for 25 years, and no one stopped riding the tube. Even when Islamic terrorists bombed the tube, no one stopped riding it.
I don't understand this statement. Why would an IRA bombing be less scary than an Islamic bombing? Did they fill the bombs with a lovely rose scented aroma so that survivors would feel better in the aftermath of the blast?
If I am presented with a choice between two likelihoods and choose one of them based on the flip a coin, that does not mean I was right to make that choice even if it turns out I am correct. I would deserve no accolades for getting lucky.
Even creationists, astrologers, and scientologists are correct some of the time.
We know he's guilty now. Heck, most of us thought it was likely he was guilty. I strongly suspected he was guilty. But that doesn't change the facts as they existed before. Her other boyfriend was a known murderer. That puts a lot of reasonable doubt in my mind.
Even if they believed they had sufficient evidence to convict him of murder, I still do not believe that premeditated murder has been proved.
What evidence has been presented that he planned the killing at all? Didn't he buy a book on murder AFTER she was killed? That's not what you do if the murder is premeditated.
I'm sure many people here think they arrived at the conclusion he was guilty based on logic. You may be right. I wasn't there at the trial and many of you probably paid much closer attention to this who affair than I did. But, given the evidence I've heard I do not applaud anyone who "knew" he was guilty.
While I agree the setting of precedent is kinda scary, I think the woman should be punished as a criminal in every way possible to punish her for directly driving a girl to suicide.
And that is why we have so many bad laws. You're essentially saying "I want blood and I don't care what the wider effect on society is."
Sometimes the first person to commit a particular type of crime will simply need to be left unpunished. The proper thing to do is to pass a new law that specifically targets the bad behavior without catching normal behavior in a dragnet.
Allowing prosecutors to stretch an existing law so that it can target largely harmless behavior is not a good idea.
If you like that sort of behavior then why not just pass a law that says "prosecutors are allowed to punish anyone with 5 years imprisonment for any reason" and then allow them to selectively punish people whenever they do something nasty that isn't illegal. What could possibly go wrong?
It's an imperfect system, and definitely being abused at the moment by the large 'rights holders', who have engaged in a maelstrom of litigation in reaction to their imminent demise.
That reminds me of the rules about nukes in Dune. In order to prevent their use against others there was a rule that anyone who uses nukes on other humans would have their entire planet nuked (by the spacing guild I think).
OTOH, if a group had no option but to use nukes they could invoke an option where they give all their nukes to the guild in exchange for protection.
Perhaps the government could institute a rule that if a maelstrome of litigation is used against other humans then the entire organization would be disbanded and the members all forced to pay restitution to the world.
In this case, since the RIAA has no other option, they could invoke the rule and let the government public domain all their assets in exchange for some fat payouts to the criminals at the top of those organizations.
(Feel free to correct me if I've got the Dune rules incorrect. It's been a while.)
I'm getting sick of Einstein's theories continually being proved right.
We already know that there is something wrong with it on the quantum end of the scale. When are we going to get some tests which prove it wrong in a way that will help us refine it? Doesn't anyone have any tests they can do that will give us that information?
Hold on now. Your first example was of a company killing its workers with asbestos exposure that the workers were not aware of.
Tobacco products are totally optional. No one is forced to take them. There is broad public knowledge that smoking is bad for you. Smoking is mostly banned from public areas.
The two aren't even remotely close. Only the first example is similar to the telecoms (except Qwest, who everyone should praise for following the law).
That's a good question. I don't think there is a good line. I also don't think I'd be happy with someone else choosing that line if I ended up on the wrong side of it.
My opinion is that embryo selection is a natural extension of choosing one's mate. If a smart guy purposely chooses a smart woman (or vice versa) to have children with then he is effectively choosing a set of smart embryos.
I see no problem with allowing further selection of those embryos on an embryo by embryo basis using any criteria which makes sense to the potential parents. I just don't see any moral issues there at all which aren't present when choosing who to have children with.
Any argument against embryo selection is, in my view, an argument against selective dating.
Handsome superficial men already prefer to marry pretty superficial women. Thus they select for pretty children.
If you want to go along the road of worrying about how parents will select their embryos then I posit that this is not morally different from telling people that they must not marry because the stupid+stupid combo would produce children of unacceptable stupidity.
However, if we do go down the road of banning embryo selection then I'm all for going the final mile and preventing idiots from having children. Any system that would have prevented Bush from being born is a system that I would be very enthusiastic about.
I don't know what I was modded a troll. It's a perfectly reasonable response to anyone who claims the Democrats aren't to blame because they don't have a 60% majority.
The GP's point seems to be that subliminal advertising is no more effective than normal advertising. It isn't magical mind control. It's just annoying. If I'm in a movie I don't want to be reminded that I'm hungry because then I'll have to leave the movie to go buy overpriced food.
You can't limit abuse. FISA is a good example of that. You can only spread power around to a sufficiently large number of diverse groups so that abuse will be sought out and punished by other groups.
I dearly wish that it was possible for individuals to sue political officials (and other government employees) for violation of the constitution. They clearly have no intention of policing themselves.
Personally, I don't want activity. I want them to stop passing fucking awful laws. You only need 40% to do that. They have 40% and yet they are still passing fucking awful laws.
There is a difference though. While nearly 100% of the Republicans vote for these fucking awful laws, only 50%-80% of the Democrats do, so that's an improvement right? Pfft.
Many projects are mundane, but I love doing creative personal projects. That's where the fun is.
For instance, my latest site has all kinds of crazy comparisons. A new one I'm working on now involves sneeze propulsion. In order to do it I need to figure out how much force is in a sneeze.
To figure that out I'm going to put a ping pong ball into a tube then videotape myself sneezing into the tube. Using the video I'll be able to figure out how fast the ball comes out and from there I'll calculate the force of the sneeze.
In order to make the site I get to dabble in all kinds of technologies.
Some people say that getting paid for doing a hobby will suck all the fun out of it. I don't think that's true. It may not be as fun at work as it is at home, but all that time at work results in refined abilities that can make home projects even more fun.
The key is to not let work limit what you do with your skills.
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That wouldn't happen. Sure, a small number of people would push it too far just like they do now. But most people do not have a death wish. You're simply setting up a straw man.
What would happen is that a lot of records would get set, a lot of people would do a lot better in the sport, and a lot of uptight purists would be unhappy.
Most doping is not disallowed because it will kill or even hurt the user. Doping is disallowed because of a purist attitude that people should just stick with the luck of their genes. It's like trying to apply aristocracy to sports. Only those with the luck of birth are allowed to compete at the highest levels.
That's your opinion about what the appeal is. That's not how I see it. The appeal for me is to see the maximum limits to which the human body and mind can be pushed.
These are high end freaks. It's a freak show just as much as a circus sideshow is a freak show. We like to look at certain types of freaks. If they want to dope then I say let them dope.
The major difference is that I don't want thieves to steal my stuff. But, I sure as hell want all athletes doping as much as possible.
We're not talking about high school sports. We're talking about high end freaks strutting their stuff. Why should some lucky freaks get to be the winners just because they were born with some special trait? Doping levels the playing field.
The only major differences between me now and me 10 years ago are that I'm a better programmer, I have better Halloween costume making abilities, play slightly fewer videogames per year, and have a girlfriend.
I used to think that maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I no longer do. Good people don't advocate all the terrible things that he advocates.
However, that's besides the point (and also presumably the reason why I was modded flamebait although I think the modder is being overly sensitive).
The question remains, how can we tell if someone is dedicated to the joke or just plain unwilling to recognize obvious evidence?
But how can we tell? There are a large number of seemingly normal but truly crazy people in the world. There are still people who believe the moon landings are a conspiracy and that Bush is a good person, etc. If someone is a truly dedicated Flat Earth Troll instead of just a truly dedicated Flat Earther, then it would be very tricky to figure out what they truly believed. Perhaps it doesn't matter.
My car is worse than Hitler. My boss is a nazi. Having Blu-Ray players forced on us is worse than genocide.
My friend's 2 year old kids are sociopathic evil monsters. Being forced to sit through Sex and the City with my girlfriend was the worst form of torture ever. When I was growing up my parents treated me like a slave when I was forced to mow the lawn once a week.
I nearly died when I had to sit through the terrible dialogue in Transformers. My friend nearly gave me a heart attack when he said he was actually going to eat vegetables voluntarily. If Uwe Boll makes one more movie I'm going to blind myself with a fork.
I don't know how much time the jvm adds to the startup of a blu-ray player, but it probably isn't the problem. My HDDVD player takes 90 seconds to start up despite the fact that HDDVD does not use a jvm.
There may have been unmarried men who responded too. Also, hippies.
Perhaps the person in a wheelchair is a business owner who is interested in making a bulk purchase for their fitness club?
I don't understand this statement. Why would an IRA bombing be less scary than an Islamic bombing? Did they fill the bombs with a lovely rose scented aroma so that survivors would feel better in the aftermath of the blast?
But was he guilty of premeditated murder? That's what he was convicted of.
If I am presented with a choice between two likelihoods and choose one of them based on the flip a coin, that does not mean I was right to make that choice even if it turns out I am correct. I would deserve no accolades for getting lucky.
Even creationists, astrologers, and scientologists are correct some of the time.
We know he's guilty now. Heck, most of us thought it was likely he was guilty. I strongly suspected he was guilty. But that doesn't change the facts as they existed before. Her other boyfriend was a known murderer. That puts a lot of reasonable doubt in my mind.
Even if they believed they had sufficient evidence to convict him of murder, I still do not believe that premeditated murder has been proved. What evidence has been presented that he planned the killing at all? Didn't he buy a book on murder AFTER she was killed? That's not what you do if the murder is premeditated.
I'm sure many people here think they arrived at the conclusion he was guilty based on logic. You may be right. I wasn't there at the trial and many of you probably paid much closer attention to this who affair than I did. But, given the evidence I've heard I do not applaud anyone who "knew" he was guilty.
And that is why we have so many bad laws. You're essentially saying "I want blood and I don't care what the wider effect on society is."
Sometimes the first person to commit a particular type of crime will simply need to be left unpunished. The proper thing to do is to pass a new law that specifically targets the bad behavior without catching normal behavior in a dragnet.
Allowing prosecutors to stretch an existing law so that it can target largely harmless behavior is not a good idea.
If you like that sort of behavior then why not just pass a law that says "prosecutors are allowed to punish anyone with 5 years imprisonment for any reason" and then allow them to selectively punish people whenever they do something nasty that isn't illegal. What could possibly go wrong?
That reminds me of the rules about nukes in Dune. In order to prevent their use against others there was a rule that anyone who uses nukes on other humans would have their entire planet nuked (by the spacing guild I think).
OTOH, if a group had no option but to use nukes they could invoke an option where they give all their nukes to the guild in exchange for protection.
Perhaps the government could institute a rule that if a maelstrome of litigation is used against other humans then the entire organization would be disbanded and the members all forced to pay restitution to the world.
In this case, since the RIAA has no other option, they could invoke the rule and let the government public domain all their assets in exchange for some fat payouts to the criminals at the top of those organizations.
(Feel free to correct me if I've got the Dune rules incorrect. It's been a while.)
I'm getting sick of Einstein's theories continually being proved right.
We already know that there is something wrong with it on the quantum end of the scale. When are we going to get some tests which prove it wrong in a way that will help us refine it? Doesn't anyone have any tests they can do that will give us that information?
Hold on now. Your first example was of a company killing its workers with asbestos exposure that the workers were not aware of.
Tobacco products are totally optional. No one is forced to take them. There is broad public knowledge that smoking is bad for you. Smoking is mostly banned from public areas.
The two aren't even remotely close. Only the first example is similar to the telecoms (except Qwest, who everyone should praise for following the law).
That's a good question. I don't think there is a good line. I also don't think I'd be happy with someone else choosing that line if I ended up on the wrong side of it.
My opinion is that embryo selection is a natural extension of choosing one's mate. If a smart guy purposely chooses a smart woman (or vice versa) to have children with then he is effectively choosing a set of smart embryos.
I see no problem with allowing further selection of those embryos on an embryo by embryo basis using any criteria which makes sense to the potential parents. I just don't see any moral issues there at all which aren't present when choosing who to have children with.
Any argument against embryo selection is, in my view, an argument against selective dating.
Handsome superficial men already prefer to marry pretty superficial women. Thus they select for pretty children.
If you want to go along the road of worrying about how parents will select their embryos then I posit that this is not morally different from telling people that they must not marry because the stupid+stupid combo would produce children of unacceptable stupidity.
However, if we do go down the road of banning embryo selection then I'm all for going the final mile and preventing idiots from having children. Any system that would have prevented Bush from being born is a system that I would be very enthusiastic about.
I don't know what I was modded a troll. It's a perfectly reasonable response to anyone who claims the Democrats aren't to blame because they don't have a 60% majority.
The GP's point seems to be that subliminal advertising is no more effective than normal advertising. It isn't magical mind control. It's just annoying. If I'm in a movie I don't want to be reminded that I'm hungry because then I'll have to leave the movie to go buy overpriced food.
You can't limit abuse. FISA is a good example of that. You can only spread power around to a sufficiently large number of diverse groups so that abuse will be sought out and punished by other groups.
I dearly wish that it was possible for individuals to sue political officials (and other government employees) for violation of the constitution. They clearly have no intention of policing themselves.
Personally, I don't want activity. I want them to stop passing fucking awful laws. You only need 40% to do that. They have 40% and yet they are still passing fucking awful laws.
There is a difference though. While nearly 100% of the Republicans vote for these fucking awful laws, only 50%-80% of the Democrats do, so that's an improvement right? Pfft.
Many projects are mundane, but I love doing creative personal projects. That's where the fun is.
For instance, my latest site has all kinds of crazy comparisons. A new one I'm working on now involves sneeze propulsion. In order to do it I need to figure out how much force is in a sneeze.
To figure that out I'm going to put a ping pong ball into a tube then videotape myself sneezing into the tube. Using the video I'll be able to figure out how fast the ball comes out and from there I'll calculate the force of the sneeze.
In order to make the site I get to dabble in all kinds of technologies.
Some people say that getting paid for doing a hobby will suck all the fun out of it. I don't think that's true. It may not be as fun at work as it is at home, but all that time at work results in refined abilities that can make home projects even more fun.
The key is to not let work limit what you do with your skills.
I don't understand. What are these bigger and better things which are more enjoyable than software engineering?
Software engineering is the top of the mountain. You can't go up from the top. (unless you stand on a stack of cows)