You know, it's funny. The reason I was confused was that when I was growing up (not that long ago, to be honest) the word 'gank' meant 'to steal rudely, with force or disrespect.' It's interesting how word meanings migrate due to time and change of context.
It's a method of interpretation, and a fairly well-respected one at that. Its only failing, so far as I can see, is its difficulty dealing with unenumerated rights, and to be perfectly honest while I understand the original intent of the ninth amendment I can't think of a particularly elegant mechanism for determining exactly what they hell some of those unenumerated rights are. Should a government take an expansive view of what rights are retained by the people? You bet! Should a court enforce a made-up constitutional interpretation based upon a poorly worded amendment (which doesn't provide a judge even the slightest clue how to apply it)? It's not so clear.
I'll let you guess at the answer to the last one. Just for reference, I would have accepted either "Green Drazi" or "Purple Drazi" as alternate answers.
Though I freely admit nearly complete ignorance about WoW and its special linguistic argot ('gank'? WTF?) I get the general sense of it from your timely Babylon 5 reference. Special props! And people say watching sci-fi is a waste of time.
The difference is huge. One (socialism) is an economic system that can be married with any of several political systems, such as Representative Democracy in Sweden or Fascism in the former USSR. The other (fascism) is a political system that can be married to any economic system, such as Syndicalism (Nazi Germany) or Command Socialism (USSR, again).
Now, since you were being flippant, and I have no idea what your personal economic and political proclivities are, I can only assume (making a wild and unjustified guess to give you the benefit of the doubt) that you are some form of Libertarian, since that is the only ideology that would view those two disparate systems as functionally equivalent (according to Libertarians, private property is the guarator and the basis of freedom, since it provides its owner with the means to exist). Me, I tend to agree, when it comes right down to it (though Libertarians tend to sound a bit doctrinare about it, and don't tend to make room for the rare but obvious exceptions).
And, leaving aside for a moment the fact that I just completely mangled that last sentence all to hell, I think the commenters below covered very effectively the other reasons why its silly to deny the vote to felons.
They aren't treated as less than human beings. They are treated as less than citizens. Voting is not an intrinsic right.
You imply an included middle that doesn't exist. I agree that according to prevailing legal theory the exercise of the franchise is a divestible right (i.e. a privilege), and not intrinsic, I have to extend the argument that just because that is so it doesn't follow that it should be so. The franchise is the fundamental quantum of political power, and divesting a person of the power to vote is tantamount to removing them from the decision making process of society. So, your assertion that there is any real difference between 'less than citizens' and 'less than human beings' is naive; people without political power can, and often are, stepped on with impunity. Treating them as incapable of exercising the franchise is tantamount to saying, in essence, 'this society has nothing for you, you are not afforded the dignity of any other human who happens by virtue of birth or naturalization to exist as part of this country'.
And, for the most part, this is in fact exactly how most ex-cons are treated. Most localities allow an employer to request that a person disclose their status as a felon, which I will concede makes some practical sense in narrowly construed circumstances, but certainly doesn't make any sense overall. This is a mechanism by which society creates permanent second-class citizens. The only justification for maintaining such second-class citizens is by someohow coming to the conclusion that they are not worth having a voice in how their lives (and everyone else's) is run.
It should almost go without saying (but it really, really doesn't these days) that just because a thing is so does not make it right for it to be so. Yaeh, more than half of US states treat ex-cons as less than human beings with rights...does this mean this is the way it should be? I find most of the arguments in favor of curtailing voting rights and liberties to be spurious, contrary to the principles of the law (though obviously not to the law itself) and at best a childishly simplistic way to interpret the concept of social contract. This is my opinion of course, and there are arguments on the other side, but my point is simply the fact that it is so does not mean it is right. I wish people would stop relying on that to supoport their arguments.
Someone may justifiably bitch when adverbs are used indiscriminately. Fortunately, that disease is mostly restricted to journalists who write sophomorically to communicate effectively to the childishly demented general public.
I think, though, that the 'uncanny valley' phenomenon is not simply a novelty reaction. I think, much like other animals, humans have an 'avoid corpses!' instinct (or perhaps a more general 'avoid unhealthy looking human-like objects!' instinct). Many people are creeped out by full-body mannequins no matter how much they are exposed to them, which I imagine is why most clothing shops have switched over to partial torso/bust mannequins.
True enough, and if only life were that simple. The reality is, however, at least in America, when you have an industry, like the above Airline example, which is so heavily and thoroughly subsidized to the point where it is impossible to tell where the corporation ends and the FAA begins, it is very hard to make the distinction between public and private. The Airline is a particularly good example because the airline is a public trust, in the sense that the American economy and goodly other chunks of our society heavily depend on its contined functioning; if an individual has information that the corporation has breached that public trust, isn't the attendant speech associated with exposing that breach protected? (Obviously not under the First Amendment; free personal speech is not the only class of protected speech. Whistle-blowers have a different kind of protection provided by state and federal statute).
As an aside, come to think of it there is a way to tell where the airline stops and the FAA begins. The airline is where your ticket money goes. The FAA is where your tax money takes a pit stop, before it goes on to its final home, the airline.
Perhaps (and I'm just wildly speculating here) the Arthas story isn't so attactive because as a main character, he just plain sucks, and his character arc is positively depressing. Let's see, powerful and hotheaded young scion of a kingdom, trying to flee out from underneath daddy's shadow and prove himself, get the girl, and oppress the local orcs (teenaged angst...ugh!) whose shallow plans are disturbed by demons commanding dead bodies, in response to which all he can think of is revenge. Oh, and did I mention he can't see but two plot inches in front of his face?
He was much more interesting after his fall.
Now, this should not be taken as a criticism of Warcraft III's story; far from it, I found it quite entertaining. I'm just saying that Arthas was whiny and had it coming, and is entirely too unsympathetic a main character to support a feature-length movie.
While I do agree that the Uncanny Valley is often invoked inappropriately (particularly the FF movie, which suffered from ill-conceived plot more than it did creepy animation), I have trouble with your premise that the Uncanny Valley would disappear with increased familiarity.
Just because we have learned to overcome, through repetitive conditioning, a particular instinct, it does not follow that the instinct just disappears or does not have an impact. Rather, it gets buried into the subconscious. And Freud only knows what it does when it gets stuck there!;)
But seriously, other things aside, who knows, if the uncanny valley turns out to be a real effect, what effect it would have if we were constantly exposed to uncanny stimuli. After all, we train soldiers to block out the horrors of war, and yet a solid percentage of those who actually see combat develop nervous conditions as a result of facing stimuli that the human mind is ill-equipped to handle. I shudder to think what an entire populace with low-grade PTSD would be like.
I would have a hard time calling such a life 'successful'. Especially in these interesting times, where paradigm shifts come a dime a dozen; the ability to adapt to adversity brought about by unforseen changes is (as it always really has been) is a critical skill, and one of its general side-effects is that such a prepared person is not 'dull'.
That's why I generally don't bother anymore. I just skip to the synopsis, which, while often containing lies, damned lies, distortions, exaggerations, editorial, and occasionally even statistics, is usually nevertheless not gibberish. Why spend ten seconds confused when you could be spending twenty seconds disgusted?
by the way, are you a naturalized citizen? They are the only ones that actually take an oath to uphold the constition.
I suppose one could, if they chose, take it upon themselves to swear such an oath. Nah, strike that; people taking on responsibilities that aren't required? Not in a million years.;)
Oh yes and let's not forget the weird ass 18/00 - 18/99, none of which are as burly as 19. And then 25 isn't 25% buffer than 20... it's a cloud giant compared to an orc or something.
The best part for me was that the extrodinary strength scale went not from 18/00 -18/99, but rather from 18/01 - 18/00. (A really, really, REALLY stupid notation artifact, IMHO).
Although I found the 'pornotexty' neologism really funny, as a point of pedantry, the word pornography comes from the greek words that literally mean 'to write about prostitutes'. The first media that had the label pornography attached to it was in fact written work.
If you watch the movie carefully, Obi-Wan does NOT meet Anakin until after he has WON the pod race. Prior to that, all interaction with the stranded folks from Naboo was through Qwi-Gon, the Queen, and (ugh) Jar-Jar. Obi-Wan stayed behind on the ship to help with repairs. Since Anakin is the only human to EVER compete successfully, much less win, a pod-race (at six years old, no less), he is indeed a "great pilot" (not 'accomplished pilot').
True, but not conforting. Treaties are negotiated between the parties (sometimes with an intermediary like the UN). Then, each party goes through whatever its ratifying process is; in the US case, ratification requires the consent of the Senate, for example (and do you really think they wouldn't?). Once it is ratified, it is law. Now, there is some disagreement amongst scholars (notably Akhil Amar as a famous dissenting voice) as to whether treaties under US law should be considered superior, equvalent, or subordinate to Federal law when they conflict, but most agree that treaty obligations make treaty items enforceable by US courts under most circumstances.
And even if not, I imagine if we haven't descended into a new dark age by then, in one hundred years we'd have the capability to reverse engineer the play device from a decent collection of data cartridges, especially if we had partial records (as we almost certainly would) of what the end product ought to look like. And any copy protection would be trivial in any case. After all, most game CP is meant to foil the average consumer, almost none are aimed for long-term encryption facing a concentrated effort to extract them. And even if they were, all it would take is time.
Indeed. Teddy Roosevelt, just for another fun example, was well-known as a pot-an-hour sort of fellow (no exaggeration!), and he was anything but suggestable. Perhaps he too was self-medicating after a fashion.
His point, I imagine, is that under Sharia the Jews, for example, have legal protections that heathens do not, including importantly having the protection of the law. There is in fact a very small community of Jews that lives in Iran, and in their parliament (analogue) there are a small number of seats set aside for them. You are right when you say (and quote) that just because they have legal protection and status, they do not necessarily have respect; I would only say that that is an entirely different issue, as important as it may be.
How about Alex Kozinski? Only judge I've seen who, just to make a point, wrote a dissenting opinion as a one-act play for the sole purpose of shaming the government into dropping their obviously stupid case. He succeeded. And, as a bonus, the play was hilarious.
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You know, it's funny. The reason I was confused was that when I was growing up (not that long ago, to be honest) the word 'gank' meant 'to steal rudely, with force or disrespect.' It's interesting how word meanings migrate due to time and change of context.
It's a method of interpretation, and a fairly well-respected one at that. Its only failing, so far as I can see, is its difficulty dealing with unenumerated rights, and to be perfectly honest while I understand the original intent of the ninth amendment I can't think of a particularly elegant mechanism for determining exactly what they hell some of those unenumerated rights are. Should a government take an expansive view of what rights are retained by the people? You bet! Should a court enforce a made-up constitutional interpretation based upon a poorly worded amendment (which doesn't provide a judge even the slightest clue how to apply it)? It's not so clear.
Sooooo....it's only a matter fo time before either God or Rome burns it all to the ground. ;)
I'll let you guess at the answer to the last one. Just for reference, I would have accepted either "Green Drazi" or "Purple Drazi" as alternate answers.
Though I freely admit nearly complete ignorance about WoW and its special linguistic argot ('gank'? WTF?) I get the general sense of it from your timely Babylon 5 reference. Special props! And people say watching sci-fi is a waste of time.
The difference is huge. One (socialism) is an economic system that can be married with any of several political systems, such as Representative Democracy in Sweden or Fascism in the former USSR. The other (fascism) is a political system that can be married to any economic system, such as Syndicalism (Nazi Germany) or Command Socialism (USSR, again).
Now, since you were being flippant, and I have no idea what your personal economic and political proclivities are, I can only assume (making a wild and unjustified guess to give you the benefit of the doubt) that you are some form of Libertarian, since that is the only ideology that would view those two disparate systems as functionally equivalent (according to Libertarians, private property is the guarator and the basis of freedom, since it provides its owner with the means to exist). Me, I tend to agree, when it comes right down to it (though Libertarians tend to sound a bit doctrinare about it, and don't tend to make room for the rare but obvious exceptions).
Cheers.
And, leaving aside for a moment the fact that I just completely mangled that last sentence all to hell, I think the commenters below covered very effectively the other reasons why its silly to deny the vote to felons.
They aren't treated as less than human beings. They are treated as less than citizens. Voting is not an intrinsic right.
You imply an included middle that doesn't exist. I agree that according to prevailing legal theory the exercise of the franchise is a divestible right (i.e. a privilege), and not intrinsic, I have to extend the argument that just because that is so it doesn't follow that it should be so. The franchise is the fundamental quantum of political power, and divesting a person of the power to vote is tantamount to removing them from the decision making process of society. So, your assertion that there is any real difference between 'less than citizens' and 'less than human beings' is naive; people without political power can, and often are, stepped on with impunity. Treating them as incapable of exercising the franchise is tantamount to saying, in essence, 'this society has nothing for you, you are not afforded the dignity of any other human who happens by virtue of birth or naturalization to exist as part of this country'.
And, for the most part, this is in fact exactly how most ex-cons are treated. Most localities allow an employer to request that a person disclose their status as a felon, which I will concede makes some practical sense in narrowly construed circumstances, but certainly doesn't make any sense overall. This is a mechanism by which society creates permanent second-class citizens. The only justification for maintaining such second-class citizens is by someohow coming to the conclusion that they are not worth having a voice in how their lives (and everyone else's) is run.
It should almost go without saying (but it really, really doesn't these days) that just because a thing is so does not make it right for it to be so. Yaeh, more than half of US states treat ex-cons as less than human beings with rights...does this mean this is the way it should be? I find most of the arguments in favor of curtailing voting rights and liberties to be spurious, contrary to the principles of the law (though obviously not to the law itself) and at best a childishly simplistic way to interpret the concept of social contract. This is my opinion of course, and there are arguments on the other side, but my point is simply the fact that it is so does not mean it is right. I wish people would stop relying on that to supoport their arguments.
Someone may justifiably bitch when adverbs are used indiscriminately. Fortunately, that disease is mostly restricted to journalists who write sophomorically to communicate effectively to the childishly demented general public.
I think, though, that the 'uncanny valley' phenomenon is not simply a novelty reaction. I think, much like other animals, humans have an 'avoid corpses!' instinct (or perhaps a more general 'avoid unhealthy looking human-like objects!' instinct). Many people are creeped out by full-body mannequins no matter how much they are exposed to them, which I imagine is why most clothing shops have switched over to partial torso/bust mannequins.
True enough, and if only life were that simple. The reality is, however, at least in America, when you have an industry, like the above Airline example, which is so heavily and thoroughly subsidized to the point where it is impossible to tell where the corporation ends and the FAA begins, it is very hard to make the distinction between public and private. The Airline is a particularly good example because the airline is a public trust, in the sense that the American economy and goodly other chunks of our society heavily depend on its contined functioning; if an individual has information that the corporation has breached that public trust, isn't the attendant speech associated with exposing that breach protected? (Obviously not under the First Amendment; free personal speech is not the only class of protected speech. Whistle-blowers have a different kind of protection provided by state and federal statute).
As an aside, come to think of it there is a way to tell where the airline stops and the FAA begins. The airline is where your ticket money goes. The FAA is where your tax money takes a pit stop, before it goes on to its final home, the airline.
Perhaps (and I'm just wildly speculating here) the Arthas story isn't so attactive because as a main character, he just plain sucks, and his character arc is positively depressing. Let's see, powerful and hotheaded young scion of a kingdom, trying to flee out from underneath daddy's shadow and prove himself, get the girl, and oppress the local orcs (teenaged angst...ugh!) whose shallow plans are disturbed by demons commanding dead bodies, in response to which all he can think of is revenge. Oh, and did I mention he can't see but two plot inches in front of his face?
He was much more interesting after his fall.
Now, this should not be taken as a criticism of Warcraft III's story; far from it, I found it quite entertaining. I'm just saying that Arthas was whiny and had it coming, and is entirely too unsympathetic a main character to support a feature-length movie.
While I do agree that the Uncanny Valley is often invoked inappropriately (particularly the FF movie, which suffered from ill-conceived plot more than it did creepy animation), I have trouble with your premise that the Uncanny Valley would disappear with increased familiarity.
Just because we have learned to overcome, through repetitive conditioning, a particular instinct, it does not follow that the instinct just disappears or does not have an impact. Rather, it gets buried into the subconscious. And Freud only knows what it does when it gets stuck there! ;)
But seriously, other things aside, who knows, if the uncanny valley turns out to be a real effect, what effect it would have if we were constantly exposed to uncanny stimuli. After all, we train soldiers to block out the horrors of war, and yet a solid percentage of those who actually see combat develop nervous conditions as a result of facing stimuli that the human mind is ill-equipped to handle. I shudder to think what an entire populace with low-grade PTSD would be like.
I would have a hard time calling such a life 'successful'. Especially in these interesting times, where paradigm shifts come a dime a dozen; the ability to adapt to adversity brought about by unforseen changes is (as it always really has been) is a critical skill, and one of its general side-effects is that such a prepared person is not 'dull'.
Why can't you do all those things and this as well? I am...I mean (deniability is great), I would if I wanted to!
That's why I generally don't bother anymore. I just skip to the synopsis, which, while often containing lies, damned lies, distortions, exaggerations, editorial, and occasionally even statistics, is usually nevertheless not gibberish. Why spend ten seconds confused when you could be spending twenty seconds disgusted?
by the way, are you a naturalized citizen? They are the only ones that actually take an oath to uphold the constition.
I suppose one could, if they chose, take it upon themselves to swear such an oath. Nah, strike that; people taking on responsibilities that aren't required? Not in a million years. ;)
Oh yes and let's not forget the weird ass 18/00 - 18/99, none of which are as burly as 19. And then 25 isn't 25% buffer than 20... it's a cloud giant compared to an orc or something.
The best part for me was that the extrodinary strength scale went not from 18/00 -18/99, but rather from 18/01 - 18/00. (A really, really, REALLY stupid notation artifact, IMHO).
Although I found the 'pornotexty' neologism really funny, as a point of pedantry, the word pornography comes from the greek words that literally mean 'to write about prostitutes'. The first media that had the label pornography attached to it was in fact written work.
But you are right. It's legal. ;)
If you watch the movie carefully, Obi-Wan does NOT meet Anakin until after he has WON the pod race. Prior to that, all interaction with the stranded folks from Naboo was through Qwi-Gon, the Queen, and (ugh) Jar-Jar. Obi-Wan stayed behind on the ship to help with repairs. Since Anakin is the only human to EVER compete successfully, much less win, a pod-race (at six years old, no less), he is indeed a "great pilot" (not 'accomplished pilot').
True, but not conforting. Treaties are negotiated between the parties (sometimes with an intermediary like the UN). Then, each party goes through whatever its ratifying process is; in the US case, ratification requires the consent of the Senate, for example (and do you really think they wouldn't?). Once it is ratified, it is law. Now, there is some disagreement amongst scholars (notably Akhil Amar as a famous dissenting voice) as to whether treaties under US law should be considered superior, equvalent, or subordinate to Federal law when they conflict, but most agree that treaty obligations make treaty items enforceable by US courts under most circumstances.
And even if not, I imagine if we haven't descended into a new dark age by then, in one hundred years we'd have the capability to reverse engineer the play device from a decent collection of data cartridges, especially if we had partial records (as we almost certainly would) of what the end product ought to look like. And any copy protection would be trivial in any case. After all, most game CP is meant to foil the average consumer, almost none are aimed for long-term encryption facing a concentrated effort to extract them. And even if they were, all it would take is time.
Indeed. Teddy Roosevelt, just for another fun example, was well-known as a pot-an-hour sort of fellow (no exaggeration!), and he was anything but suggestable. Perhaps he too was self-medicating after a fashion.
His point, I imagine, is that under Sharia the Jews, for example, have legal protections that heathens do not, including importantly having the protection of the law. There is in fact a very small community of Jews that lives in Iran, and in their parliament (analogue) there are a small number of seats set aside for them. You are right when you say (and quote) that just because they have legal protection and status, they do not necessarily have respect; I would only say that that is an entirely different issue, as important as it may be.
How about Alex Kozinski? Only judge I've seen who, just to make a point, wrote a dissenting opinion as a one-act play for the sole purpose of shaming the government into dropping their obviously stupid case. He succeeded. And, as a bonus, the play was hilarious.