Actually, my view is a bit more nuanced than that.
Civil Unions, Gay marriage. I don't care, its all the same thing to me. I don't really see the difference. However, the anti-gay marriage crowd is a false coalition precisely because of this absolute stupidity.
Frankly, I think the people who say "Civil Unions not marriage" and the crowds who say "Marriage not civil unions" are equally stupid.
However here in MA it made a big difference. We legalized gay marriage. There was a stink about bringing it to the people. There were attempts to put an a question on the ballot. Thats when it broke down.
It turned out that the "Majority against gay marriage" couldn't agree on what question to put before the people, because they were a false coalition formed by opposition and not pushing positively in any direction.
However, I think the issue does bring up important questions.
Homosexuals want recongized marriage so that their partners can be recogized and recieve benefits... for the same reason that regular straight married couples do. Company insurance plans allow spouses on the plan. Why? Well you could just point to the law, but the reality is, a spouse in medical distress will cause disruption to a persons life, and often affect their ability to work. It simply makes sense to allow them to put spouses on.
Well, all those reasons are the same for gay couples. So domestic partnership became recognized by many companies. Well I look at my girlfriend and realize that I am now in the boat the homosexuals in my state were in.
I mean sure we could get married, but now we have to get married to have ANY recognition of our relationship and the interdependance of our lives? There is no way to grant her the rights to see me in the hospital? No way to get her on my insurance plan so that, should something happen to her, we can have doctors to help her, and hopefully not have them lose an employee because he has to take care of someone who has become gravely ill over something that could have been taken care of?
It seems our systems are designed very narrowly at times.
Still anyway, this is why my advice doesn't change. Its far better to argue about whether or not civil unions are better or specific policy than to make it about gay marriage, to avoid the false coalition caused by peoples semantic idiocy.
I really think that this is one of those places where the real question is not whether or not we need the ammendment. The question is "What is the harm?"
Who is harmed? How are they harmed? If Adam and Bob get married, how does this, in any way harm, Donna and Eric?
Do they seriously believe that more people will be attracted to same sex coupling if its ok to get married? IS there really some belief that there are people who turn away from the "homosexual lifestyle" simply because it doesn't offer them the ability to get married?
Never frame the discussion where they can weasel out, nail them on specifics and let their foolishness shine.
The simple fact is they are a false coalition. Its a good opposition issue because its something many people can band together and be "against gay marriage" but.... make them support something "civil unions instead" etc and you find there is NO real opposition, you have a bunch of people who don't agree.
So bring the discussion to what divides them. Make it about homosexuals as individuals, make them bring out the beliefs that divide them because when it comes down to it... gay marriage can be opposed by someone who "supports civil unions". The thing to do is to break the coalition between them and the people who say "gays are sinful and should be punished".
> Do we really need this politicized to have a discussion about the topic at > hand? Which is thoughtless employees snooping around where they have access but > apparently no ethics or morals. Something not even close to the situation with > warrentless wiretapping, and in no way related? Do we really need this, Taco?
Right, whereas in the other case we have thoughtful employees snooping arounf where they have access but apparently no ethics or morals - like the ethics and morals involved in keeping your customers data private in the face of random inqueries from third parties with no authority of law.
Without a warrent, there is no difference between the federal government or any of its agents and any other third party. Certainly if sprint sales asked a verizon employee for specific customer data or access to his voice data, that would be a HUGE violation for him to comply with that request.
How is a federal employee with NO WARRENT any different from ANY other third party who was asking?
You can control a whole plane full of people with a few razor blades if everyone thinks that they are going to make it out alive either way. Everyone was familiar with the concept of the hijacking. The plane is brought somewhere, demands are made... hostages get released or rescued.
Nobody has any reason to risk their lives for the group, because, the general consensus is that this situation still can resolve itself without the hostages taking such risks.
Doesn't work so well when you remove the possibility of peaceful outcomes.
Humans aren't so different from other animals. Take a cat... cats want no fight with a person. They know they can't win. They will run and hide and take any out from a fight.... but back them into a corner, and you will find far less hesitation in their fight.
As the Mahareeshi Hashish Yogi said "Many heros were cowards who ran the wrong way".
Whatever, if I have to boot the computer to do my job, then doing it is part of my job and I should be paid. Even if I chat and fix my hair as it happens, its still not like I have the option to come in 10 mins later, and punch in without having to sit aroud ad wait.
If I have to be there, I should be paid. If you are unhappy with how i use my time... thats a seperate issue entirely.
Its not my fault if the equipment that you provide for me to do my job isn't ready for me when I arrive. Just as much as it is my job to get my work done, its my employers job to be ready for me to do my job for him.
Of course they make increasing unfair demands... its part of negotiation!
I garauntee for every example of a union making unreasonabe demands, there is an equally egregious example of company management doing it...whether there is a union in place or not...and if there isn't, then good luck.
Externalities work in all directions. When Sr management deicedes an entire group needs to move to a new building without enough parking, and add 2 hours to everyones commute, thats lots of unpaid man hours that everyone else needs to now make up. It *IS* a defacto pay cut by the hour, but its an externality to them.
We see stuff like that all the time.
I am a libertarian too. However, I see no problem with very very strict laws regulating labor in the current environment for one reason: companies aren't people. They are legal fictions with limited liability. Legal fictions get or lose rights at the people's whim. Everything they do is a privilege.
In other news, Ralph Nader has brought a suit against the Jedi Council for negligence in the design of proper safety features in such a dangerous device.
Repeatedly he has brought to their attention several design flaws which they have consistently refused to take action on. Specifically the introduction of the timed dead man's switch to comply with EU regulations was done hastily and without forethought and has created a false sense of safety and resulted in more accidents with people who felt it was now safer to throw their lightsabers.
Nader is asking that the Light Saber's safety devices be "Beefed Up" in a few simple ways. First, the removal of the timer from the safety switch. Clearly one who is force adept and capable of guiding a light saber, can use a little extra concentration and keep the kill switch depressed with his force power, while guiding the saber to its target and back.
More controversial, is his request to move the switch entirely inside the light saber. This would effectively make it impossible for those who are not force adept to even activate a light saber, as constant force power would be required to keep the switch closed.
The Lobbying group Galactic Lightsaber Buyers and Trainers Association (GLBTA) has come out against Mr Nader's recomendations citing that it would prevent law abiding citizens from obtaining a useful tool, and leaving them only in the hands of criminals.
Because far too often at least one of the parties doesn't really want to be there. And is 'consenting' to something out of financial desperation/outright fear. That isn't how business transactions are supposed to be conducted.
So society has decided there are a few things you just can't sell, because it leads to extreme exploitation/harm. So, you can't sell your organs or sex.
Does this -really- bother you? If so, you are in the distinct minority.
Society has decided? Maybe, but I don't remember being asked. It bothers me a little, but mostly because I don't think its a proper use of government power. It seems that a proper regulatory scheme could fix many of the problems with it without going to the extreme of prohibition.
Now I may be in the minority, like the grandparent's author, but, I have floated this by a few people, and most at least agree that its a futile effort, and are willing to entertain that it may cause more harm to prohibit than what it helps.
Has anyone been doing comprehensive surveys of how people feel on this issue?
Thats right, first post, just delete all the lines before this one.
The ability to do any operation on a subset of lines, itself, is so useful. I was working with a n00b showing him some tips to polish up a script that he wrote. Of course he used the same string like 20 different times, and it contained a version number.
So I showed him how to break it out into a variable at the top then moved to the next line and:.,$s/foobar35/$dirname/g
Or when dealing with a log file with lots of useless information using:g/pattern/d to remove all of the lines that don't have any use can really make the problem just pop right out at you
I agree. I would also add, being offended is how you feel. Your feelings are yours, nobody elses and how you respond to them is your choice.
If we are talking about dating, or relationships, feelings matter, matter big time, and your an asshole for violating someones feelings in some situations.
This is, as I pointed out, the law we are talking about. My feelings, your feelings, these are not relevant and should not be relevant in this domain.
The other problem I have is this concept of obscenity only works if you don't think about it too hard. Whats wrong with fuck? What makes it "vulgar"? What makes being vulgar bad?
Teen pregnancy didn't become normal until... oh wait... thats right... it was always normal. Its not getting pregnant until later thats a new development. A good one if you ask me but...
teens having sex is well... pretty much them doing exactly what they are "supposed to do" from any reasonable biological standpoint.
We can put all the morality around it we want.... the human animal hasn't really changed much in the past few tens of thousands of years.
All this shows is that you believe something is harmful. Belief does not equal objective reality. What are the standards for the harm? What are the effects?
If I say "fuck" in front of your child. Please explain how your child is harmed. Do multiple people saying fuck harm him or her in an additive way? Does each one do equal harm?
What is the effect of this harm? How is your child going to be prevented from living a full and productive life by that harm?
I mean, if you said slicing his fingers off with a knife caused harm, I would agree completely. I have yet to see any proof of harm by any individual word regardless of its context.
My mother believed that lots of things would harm me that are easily demonstrated didn't and couldn't. She was deathly afraid of the harm that could be caused by me using a 9 volt battery to split water into H2 and O2 into small containers when I was 13.
So... you will have to excuse me if simply "I am a parent and I say its harmful" doesn't hold much water for me when we are talking about the proper use of the full force of my countries legal system.
We are talking about public policy and law. I trust you understand that your personal feelings for your family are different from justification for the use of force of law to restrict what others can do, outside of your home.
I hope they would... it would be utterly tangential in a case about the banning of specific words in any context they might be used in.
Prove that the word "fuck", in all contexts, can actually cause harm to a person. Prove that for each of the words in question.
Prove harm, show the scope of harm. Isn't it up to those claiming harm to prove harm? So prove it, how can it be so much to ask to just prove that your not making stuff up and talking out your ass?
I mean, my mother believed that sitting too close to the TV was bad for kids eyes. Any eye doctor will tell you that its an old wives tale and kids sit so close really cuz their eyes are perfectly capable of focusing comfortably at that distance.
So... I would argue my mothers old wives tale belief doesn't prove harm, even in absence eye doctors professional opinions. Why? because its not based on data, its based on conjecture.
These arguments used by the FCCs supporters sound no more concrete to me.
Ginsberg said that there is an elephant in the room: The First Ammendment.
As I read it, I see another one:
The solicitor general was unswayed. When "celebrities use particularly graphic, vulgar, explicit, indecent language as part of the comedic routine," he said, there is "potentially greater harmful impact on children."
Potential Harmful impact? Ok... PROVE HARM.
Thats all, prove harm. Even prove potential for harm. Whats the scope of this supposed "harm"? How does this "harm" happen? How do we even know its real?
Just ask Jack, he will be happy to tell you that Atheism is actually a sham started by the Catholic church. We are all secretly satan worshippers and doing his bidding here on earth.
I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but just yesterday I dropped off the secret D&D dungeon manual to a new group of teenyboper D&Ders, I imagine that their GM is working up a storyline based on it right now...
Of course the deamonic summoning ritual that we slipped in there under the guise of opening a portal to another world is going to be far too tempting for them, and I should be harvesting their souls for the Dark Lord by next weekend if all goes well.
Chick just sent out a new email too. I get them all of course... you know he has an entire set of full size comic books? I ordered the box set a while back (which were followed up by lots of free tracts) and have been getting his crackpot emails ever since.
I may be an athiest, but having been raised catholic makes it all so especially amusing. Especially since I now know the truth: The Catholic church was founded by satan, and is simply a front for his work here on earth. Also Islam was founded by the catholic church.
No lie, Jack can tell you all about it, while his comics save your soul from dangers as diverse as D&D and Rock music to Catholicism and Islam.
Well I bring them up because reading some of the founding documents is something that has given me a severe distaste for many practices. I seriously dislike that there are federal laws which reach directly into peoples lives. I think the war on drugs, for example is nothing less than a tragic mususe of our system beyond what it was ever intended to be used for, and in a manner totally against its very principals.
The government exists in no more basic way than the violence which the state is willing to back its decrees with. This is true of any government, in ours, we vote for representatives, and they decide how the government will use its force. That is a great responsibility and it sickens me to see it used so calously and egregiously in my name.
I find this use of force so absolutely vile that if a family member had been entrusted with such power and used it as such, I would tell them my mind and not further associate with them until they changed their absolutely wicked ways such as throwing people in cages like animals for matters that are the buisness of nobody but a person and his doctor and or family.
Normally I am happy to talk of compromise, and gray areas of policy and what seems silly but may be cheaper in the long run. I am all for consumer protection. I love the FDA. I want to see the government get more power for dealing with scam artists like the Enzyte parasites.
However, thats it. I am all for proper use of power, I am all for regulation. I am all for anything that lets people live their lives and conduct their personal affairs without interference, and their public buisness with honesty and fairness.
Guns? hell yes, let people have them. Welfare? Hell yes, its cheaper than the alternative. You wont hear me bitch about taxes, or the cost of social security. You will hear me bitch about how we are running our country like an absolute credit fiend. 1/3 of our budget goes to paying the debt? Holy shit. I mean shit.... I am paying off a hefty mortgage (I live in boston), and while 1/3 of my expenses may actually be in interest on my debt... at least I will have mine paid off in 27 more years!
You know if it wasn't for the interest, we wouldn't even have budget shortfalls. You know... I knew people in that situation. When you have so much debt that you are borrowing to cover your interest over your expenses.... you are in a very very bad situation. That is our government, yay.
You know... I am pretty sure that my bank would consider it a much better investment to take out a loan to improve my home than to fund a full scale assault on a household 6 towns away.... just a thought... but hey... until a couple of years ago, we have been under control of the party thats touted as being the champions of fiscal responsibility.
Which I guess they are... if you think applying for new credit cards with higher limits and low intro rates to transfer balances to is the foundation of sound money management.
Of course, actual fiscal responsibility means hard decisions and doesn't fit well into sound bites.
Actually I think the article had some very good comments towards the end of it:
"It's not the violence per se that's the problem, it's the context and goals of the violence," said Olson, citing past research on TV violence and behavior.
So correct violence is not a problem, its the intended use of violence. Violence for play, violence to defend from badly intended violence....good. Violence to intimidate or influence... bad.
I was told similar things once.... by an off duty cop.
When I took "Driver's Ed" the instructor was a police officer. He was a very good instructor. When it came to drunk driving he made an interesting aside. He told us "I would never submit to a voluntary breathalyser, I would take the 90 day loss of license instead, whether I was drunk or not"
His reasoning was very simple. The police officer who pulls you over is NOT there to help you. He is there for one job and one job only: to gather evidence against you. Why would you EVER help him gather evidence against you? (remember, we are talking about the specific case of you, as a driver, being pulled over)
Seriously, even if your innocent... in this situation YOU are under investigation and he is there to gather evidence against you, as you are the subject of his current investigation. You are under no obligation to help him, so why do it?
Give him the opportunity, and he will be rummaging through your trunk, and anything he finds is fair game once you said ok. So why take the chance? If just say no ever meant anything to anyone.... just say no to cooperation.
Like you point out, if you say no, there are very strict limits on their powers. If you say yes, they can disrupt your life for hours on end.
In its front-page coverage of the Carlie Brucia murder, the St. Petersburg Times included this sidebar inside the paper, under the headline "A rare crime":
According to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 58,200 children in the United States were abducted by nonrelatives in 1999, the most recent data available. In the vast majority of cases, the children were released unharmed. Only 115 abductions were classified as the most dangerous kind, where the child was kept overnight, held for ransom, or killed. In those instances, 69 children were returned safely, and 46 were killed.
All this in a country of 300 million people.
Absolutely horrible, despicable crimes. The people who commit them deserve harsh punishment. However, with those numbers, compared to the population. Do these extremely rare crimes really warrent the media attention, and legal attention? Does it warrent a system like "amber alerts"?
Frankly, with those numbers, the idea of kidnapping and raping childen should be one of those things that you bring up and people say things like "Yah, I heard about that happening once". Instead, its something everybody knows about and thinks about.
THAT is the skewed perception that I am talking about.
I had a martial arts instructor once who said it best "We don't hit people in our everyday life because it gets us into trouble. Most people aren't as open minded about it as we are here."
As I grow older I find my views refining, and its taken me a while to see this but, I blame the human minds own inability to properly assess complex risks at the heart of much of this "wussification" as you see it.
The creation of television has taken these little embers of a problem, and poured gasoline all over everything!
Its like Bruce Schneier pointed out: If its in the news, its probably not an issue. Car accidents are too common to make the news except for big ones that are local. Heart attacks? You never hear about them on the news. Its just too common.
Murder? Rape? Hey, if it bleeds it leads! Child kidnapping. How many kids were kidnapped last year by strangers? I can tell you its not many, how do I know? Because its on the news. Though look at parents...ask them to rate how big of a risk that is.
SO year after year, we have a feedback loop thats throwing our perceptions of danger further and further out of whack, and we create laws. Some girl gets raped in some horrrible way... we pass a law. A few years down the road, something else happens, we pass another law....
next thing you know, we have signs by the highway, alerts going out in txt messages.... im not saying finding kidnapped kids is bad, or that its a horrible waste of money.... but.... in the grand scheme of problems in our society.... it was never that big of a rational concern.
Is it stupidity? I don't think so. Its far worst. Its simply a matter of skewed perception. Its a matter of people failing to do something that people really are not very good at, and doing it on a massive scale.
I would be willing to bet, dollars to donuts, that if you took all of the money spent on amber alerts, and used it to fund better in school education on nutrition and healthy eating.... it would have a far greater impact on far more childrens lives.
The store that says "this is a manufacturing defect and you have to take it up with them" compared to a store which takes the item back, replaces it and deals with the manufacturer themselves. It's an insignificant action but it allows you to say something about store's customer service.
Actually, at that point I remind them that we are in MA, and unless they would like to test the case law surrounding product returns within a reasonable time frame, then they had better honor my return or indicate before the sale that all sales are final.
Aside from that, I see what you are saying. However, I think the real problem here is ignorance and stupidity.
I stopped putting my hand over my heart and saying the pledge when I was in school.
Was it because I was unamerican? Was it because I disliked some core value? Well... maybe you should ask me why I made my decision rather than ascribing your guess as to what it means to me.
Saying the pledge, wearing the pin, its all going with the crowd. Its something people do by wrote. No thought, just do it. When someone goes against the group, its usually for their own personal reasons, and you can't always determine those reasons just by looking at the act.
Honestly, I see blind allegiance as antiethical to the fundamental ideals of the founding fathers, and truely believe we could probably power the entire country simply by the motions of the founding fathers spinning in their graves at the sight of what we have done to it. (as truely as one can believe a silly metaphor)
Interesting. I saw some random TV show that talked about cat vs dog meat, and said that cat meat was quite stringy and often used in dishes like meatballs.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, my view is a bit more nuanced than that.
Civil Unions, Gay marriage. I don't care, its all the same thing to me. I don't really see the difference. However, the anti-gay marriage crowd is a false coalition precisely because of this absolute stupidity.
Frankly, I think the people who say "Civil Unions not marriage" and the crowds who say "Marriage not civil unions" are equally stupid.
However here in MA it made a big difference. We legalized gay marriage. There was a stink about bringing it to the people. There were attempts to put an a question on the ballot. Thats when it broke down.
It turned out that the "Majority against gay marriage" couldn't agree on what question to put before the people, because they were a false coalition formed by opposition and not pushing positively in any direction.
However, I think the issue does bring up important questions.
Homosexuals want recongized marriage so that their partners can be recogized and recieve benefits... for the same reason that regular straight married couples do. Company insurance plans allow spouses on the plan. Why? Well you could just point to the law, but the reality is, a spouse in medical distress will cause disruption to a persons life, and often affect their ability to work. It simply makes sense to allow them to put spouses on.
Well, all those reasons are the same for gay couples. So domestic partnership became recognized by many companies. Well I look at my girlfriend and realize that I am now in the boat the homosexuals in my state were in.
I mean sure we could get married, but now we have to get married to have ANY recognition of our relationship and the interdependance of our lives? There is no way to grant her the rights to see me in the hospital? No way to get her on my insurance plan so that, should something happen to her, we can have doctors to help her, and hopefully not have them lose an employee because he has to take care of someone who has become gravely ill over something that could have been taken care of?
It seems our systems are designed very narrowly at times.
Still anyway, this is why my advice doesn't change. Its far better to argue about whether or not civil unions are better or specific policy than to make it about gay marriage, to avoid the false coalition caused by peoples semantic idiocy.
-Steve
I really think that this is one of those places where the real question is not whether or not we need the ammendment. The question is "What is the harm?"
Who is harmed? How are they harmed? If Adam and Bob get married, how does this, in any way harm, Donna and Eric?
Do they seriously believe that more people will be attracted to same sex coupling if its ok to get married? IS there really some belief that there are people who turn away from the "homosexual lifestyle" simply because it doesn't offer them the ability to get married?
Never frame the discussion where they can weasel out, nail them on specifics and let their foolishness shine.
The simple fact is they are a false coalition. Its a good opposition issue because its something many people can band together and be "against gay marriage" but.... make them support something "civil unions instead" etc and you find there is NO real opposition, you have a bunch of people who don't agree.
So bring the discussion to what divides them. Make it about homosexuals as individuals, make them bring out the beliefs that divide them because when it comes down to it... gay marriage can be opposed by someone who "supports civil unions". The thing to do is to break the coalition between them and the people who say "gays are sinful and should be punished".
-Steve
> Do we really need this politicized to have a discussion about the topic at
> hand? Which is thoughtless employees snooping around where they have access but
> apparently no ethics or morals. Something not even close to the situation with
> warrentless wiretapping, and in no way related? Do we really need this, Taco?
Right, whereas in the other case we have thoughtful employees snooping arounf where they have access but apparently no ethics or morals - like the ethics and morals involved in keeping your customers data private in the face of random inqueries from third parties with no authority of law.
Without a warrent, there is no difference between the federal government or any of its agents and any other third party. Certainly if sprint sales asked a verizon employee for specific customer data or access to his voice data, that would be a HUGE violation for him to comply with that request.
How is a federal employee with NO WARRENT any different from ANY other third party who was asking?
-Steve
Wasn't this the basic dynamic of 9/11?
You can control a whole plane full of people with a few razor blades if everyone thinks that they are going to make it out alive either way. Everyone was familiar with the concept of the hijacking. The plane is brought somewhere, demands are made... hostages get released or rescued.
Nobody has any reason to risk their lives for the group, because, the general consensus is that this situation still can resolve itself without the hostages taking such risks.
Doesn't work so well when you remove the possibility of peaceful outcomes.
Humans aren't so different from other animals. Take a cat... cats want no fight with a person. They know they can't win. They will run and hide and take any out from a fight.... but back them into a corner, and you will find far less hesitation in their fight.
As the Mahareeshi Hashish Yogi said "Many heros were cowards who ran the wrong way".
-Steve
Whatever, if I have to boot the computer to do my job, then doing it is part of my job and I should be paid. Even if I chat and fix my hair as it happens, its still not like I have the option to come in 10 mins later, and punch in without having to sit aroud ad wait.
If I have to be there, I should be paid. If you are unhappy with how i use my time... thats a seperate issue entirely.
Its not my fault if the equipment that you provide for me to do my job isn't ready for me when I arrive. Just as much as it is my job to get my work done, its my employers job to be ready for me to do my job for him.
-Steve
Of course they make increasing unfair demands... its part of negotiation!
I garauntee for every example of a union making unreasonabe demands, there is an equally egregious example of company management doing it...whether there is a union in place or not...and if there isn't, then good luck.
Externalities work in all directions. When Sr management deicedes an entire group needs to move to a new building without enough parking, and add 2 hours to everyones commute, thats lots of unpaid man hours that everyone else needs to now make up. It *IS* a defacto pay cut by the hour, but its an externality to them.
We see stuff like that all the time.
I am a libertarian too. However, I see no problem with very very strict laws regulating labor in the current environment for one reason: companies aren't people. They are legal fictions with limited liability. Legal fictions get or lose rights at the people's whim. Everything they do is a privilege.
-Steve
In other news, Ralph Nader has brought a suit against the Jedi Council for negligence in the design of proper safety features in such a dangerous device.
Repeatedly he has brought to their attention several design flaws which they have consistently refused to take action on. Specifically the introduction of the timed dead man's switch to comply with EU regulations was done hastily and without forethought and has created a false sense of safety and resulted in more accidents with people who felt it was now safer to throw their lightsabers.
Nader is asking that the Light Saber's safety devices be "Beefed Up" in a few simple ways. First, the removal of the timer from the safety switch. Clearly one who is force adept and capable of guiding a light saber, can use a little extra concentration and keep the kill switch depressed with his force power, while guiding the saber to its target and back.
More controversial, is his request to move the switch entirely inside the light saber. This would effectively make it impossible for those who are not force adept to even activate a light saber, as constant force power would be required to keep the switch closed.
The Lobbying group Galactic Lightsaber Buyers and Trainers Association (GLBTA) has come out against Mr Nader's recomendations citing that it would prevent law abiding citizens from obtaining a useful tool, and leaving them only in the hands of criminals.
-Steve
Society has decided? Maybe, but I don't remember being asked. It bothers me a little, but mostly because I don't think its a proper use of government power. It seems that a proper regulatory scheme could fix many of the problems with it without going to the extreme of prohibition.
Now I may be in the minority, like the grandparent's author, but, I have floated this by a few people, and most at least agree that its a futile effort, and are willing to entertain that it may cause more harm to prohibit than what it helps.
Has anyone been doing comprehensive surveys of how people feel on this issue?
-Steve
Thats right, first post, just delete all the lines before this one.
The ability to do any operation on a subset of lines, itself, is so useful. I was working with a n00b showing him some tips to polish up a script that he wrote. Of course he used the same string like 20 different times, and it contained a version number.
So I showed him how to break it out into a variable at the top then moved to the next line and :.,$s/foobar35/$dirname/g
Or when dealing with a log file with lots of useless information using :g/pattern/d to remove all of the lines that don't have any use can really make the problem just pop right out at you
-Steve
I agree. I would also add, being offended is how you feel. Your feelings are yours, nobody elses and how you respond to them is your choice.
If we are talking about dating, or relationships, feelings matter, matter big time, and your an asshole for violating someones feelings in some situations.
This is, as I pointed out, the law we are talking about. My feelings, your feelings, these are not relevant and should not be relevant in this domain.
The other problem I have is this concept of obscenity only works if you don't think about it too hard. Whats wrong with fuck? What makes it "vulgar"? What makes being vulgar bad?
-Steve
Teen pregnancy didn't become normal until... oh wait... thats right... it was always normal. Its not getting pregnant until later thats a new development. A good one if you ask me but...
teens having sex is well... pretty much them doing exactly what they are "supposed to do" from any reasonable biological standpoint.
We can put all the morality around it we want.... the human animal hasn't really changed much in the past few tens of thousands of years.
-Steve
All this shows is that you believe something is harmful. Belief does not equal objective reality. What are the standards for the harm? What are the effects?
If I say "fuck" in front of your child. Please explain how your child is harmed. Do multiple people saying fuck harm him or her in an additive way? Does each one do equal harm?
What is the effect of this harm? How is your child going to be prevented from living a full and productive life by that harm?
I mean, if you said slicing his fingers off with a knife caused harm, I would agree completely. I have yet to see any proof of harm by any individual word regardless of its context.
My mother believed that lots of things would harm me that are easily demonstrated didn't and couldn't. She was deathly afraid of the harm that could be caused by me using a 9 volt battery to split water into H2 and O2 into small containers when I was 13.
So... you will have to excuse me if simply "I am a parent and I say its harmful" doesn't hold much water for me when we are talking about the proper use of the full force of my countries legal system.
-Steve
Thats fine in your family.
We are talking about public policy and law. I trust you understand that your personal feelings for your family are different from justification for the use of force of law to restrict what others can do, outside of your home.
-Steve
I hope they would... it would be utterly tangential in a case about the banning of specific words in any context they might be used in.
Prove that the word "fuck", in all contexts, can actually cause harm to a person. Prove that for each of the words in question.
Prove harm, show the scope of harm. Isn't it up to those claiming harm to prove harm? So prove it, how can it be so much to ask to just prove that your not making stuff up and talking out your ass?
I mean, my mother believed that sitting too close to the TV was bad for kids eyes. Any eye doctor will tell you that its an old wives tale and kids sit so close really cuz their eyes are perfectly capable of focusing comfortably at that distance.
So... I would argue my mothers old wives tale belief doesn't prove harm, even in absence eye doctors professional opinions. Why? because its not based on data, its based on conjecture.
These arguments used by the FCCs supporters sound no more concrete to me.
Urban legends have no place in public policy.
-Steve
Ginsberg said that there is an elephant in the room: The First Ammendment.
As I read it, I see another one:
Potential Harmful impact? Ok... PROVE HARM.
Thats all, prove harm. Even prove potential for harm. Whats the scope of this supposed "harm"? How does this "harm" happen? How do we even know its real?
-Steve
Just ask Jack, he will be happy to tell you that Atheism is actually a sham started by the Catholic church. We are all secretly satan worshippers and doing his bidding here on earth.
I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but just yesterday I dropped off the secret D&D dungeon manual to a new group of teenyboper D&Ders, I imagine that their GM is working up a storyline based on it right now...
Of course the deamonic summoning ritual that we slipped in there under the guise of opening a portal to another world is going to be far too tempting for them, and I should be harvesting their souls for the Dark Lord by next weekend if all goes well.
Hail Satan!
-Steve
Chick just sent out a new email too. I get them all of course... you know he has an entire set of full size comic books? I ordered the box set a while back (which were followed up by lots of free tracts) and have been getting his crackpot emails ever since.
I may be an athiest, but having been raised catholic makes it all so especially amusing. Especially since I now know the truth: The Catholic church was founded by satan, and is simply a front for his work here on earth. Also Islam was founded by the catholic church.
No lie, Jack can tell you all about it, while his comics save your soul from dangers as diverse as D&D and Rock music to Catholicism and Islam.
-Steve
Well I bring them up because reading some of the founding documents is something that has given me a severe distaste for many practices. I seriously dislike that there are federal laws which reach directly into peoples lives. I think the war on drugs, for example is nothing less than a tragic mususe of our system beyond what it was ever intended to be used for, and in a manner totally against its very principals.
The government exists in no more basic way than the violence which the state is willing to back its decrees with. This is true of any government, in ours, we vote for representatives, and they decide how the government will use its force. That is a great responsibility and it sickens me to see it used so calously and egregiously in my name.
I find this use of force so absolutely vile that if a family member had been entrusted with such power and used it as such, I would tell them my mind and not further associate with them until they changed their absolutely wicked ways such as throwing people in cages like animals for matters that are the buisness of nobody but a person and his doctor and or family.
Normally I am happy to talk of compromise, and gray areas of policy and what seems silly but may be cheaper in the long run. I am all for consumer protection. I love the FDA. I want to see the government get more power for dealing with scam artists like the Enzyte parasites.
However, thats it. I am all for proper use of power, I am all for regulation. I am all for anything that lets people live their lives and conduct their personal affairs without interference, and their public buisness with honesty and fairness.
Guns? hell yes, let people have them. Welfare? Hell yes, its cheaper than the alternative. You wont hear me bitch about taxes, or the cost of social security. You will hear me bitch about how we are running our country like an absolute credit fiend. 1/3 of our budget goes to paying the debt? Holy shit. I mean shit.... I am paying off a hefty mortgage (I live in boston), and while 1/3 of my expenses may actually be in interest on my debt... at least I will have mine paid off in 27 more years!
You know if it wasn't for the interest, we wouldn't even have budget shortfalls. You know... I knew people in that situation. When you have so much debt that you are borrowing to cover your interest over your expenses.... you are in a very very bad situation. That is our government, yay.
You know... I am pretty sure that my bank would consider it a much better investment to take out a loan to improve my home than to fund a full scale assault on a household 6 towns away.... just a thought... but hey... until a couple of years ago, we have been under control of the party thats touted as being the champions of fiscal responsibility.
Which I guess they are... if you think applying for new credit cards with higher limits and low intro rates to transfer balances to is the foundation of sound money management.
Of course, actual fiscal responsibility means hard decisions and doesn't fit well into sound bites.
-Steve
Actually I think the article had some very good comments towards the end of it:
So correct violence is not a problem, its the intended use of violence. Violence for play, violence to defend from badly intended violence....good. Violence to intimidate or influence... bad.
-Steve
I was told similar things once.... by an off duty cop.
When I took "Driver's Ed" the instructor was a police officer. He was a very good instructor. When it came to drunk driving he made an interesting aside. He told us "I would never submit to a voluntary breathalyser, I would take the 90 day loss of license instead, whether I was drunk or not"
His reasoning was very simple. The police officer who pulls you over is NOT there to help you. He is there for one job and one job only: to gather evidence against you. Why would you EVER help him gather evidence against you? (remember, we are talking about the specific case of you, as a driver, being pulled over)
Seriously, even if your innocent... in this situation YOU are under investigation and he is there to gather evidence against you, as you are the subject of his current investigation. You are under no obligation to help him, so why do it?
Give him the opportunity, and he will be rummaging through your trunk, and anything he finds is fair game once you said ok. So why take the chance? If just say no ever meant anything to anyone.... just say no to cooperation.
Like you point out, if you say no, there are very strict limits on their powers. If you say yes, they can disrupt your life for hours on end.
-Steve
BTW to answer my own rhetoric.... the numbers:
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=61001
The link quotes another article:
All this in a country of 300 million people.
Absolutely horrible, despicable crimes. The people who commit them deserve harsh punishment. However, with those numbers, compared to the population. Do these extremely rare crimes really warrent the media attention, and legal attention? Does it warrent a system like "amber alerts"?
Frankly, with those numbers, the idea of kidnapping and raping childen should be one of those things that you bring up and people say things like "Yah, I heard about that happening once". Instead, its something everybody knows about and thinks about.
THAT is the skewed perception that I am talking about.
-Steve
I had a martial arts instructor once who said it best "We don't hit people in our everyday life because it gets us into trouble. Most people aren't as open minded about it as we are here."
As I grow older I find my views refining, and its taken me a while to see this but, I blame the human minds own inability to properly assess complex risks at the heart of much of this "wussification" as you see it.
The creation of television has taken these little embers of a problem, and poured gasoline all over everything!
Its like Bruce Schneier pointed out: If its in the news, its probably not an issue. Car accidents are too common to make the news except for big ones that are local. Heart attacks? You never hear about them on the news. Its just too common.
Murder? Rape? Hey, if it bleeds it leads! Child kidnapping. How many kids were kidnapped last year by strangers? I can tell you its not many, how do I know? Because its on the news. Though look at parents...ask them to rate how big of a risk that is.
SO year after year, we have a feedback loop thats throwing our perceptions of danger further and further out of whack, and we create laws. Some girl gets raped in some horrrible way... we pass a law. A few years down the road, something else happens, we pass another law....
next thing you know, we have signs by the highway, alerts going out in txt messages.... im not saying finding kidnapped kids is bad, or that its a horrible waste of money.... but.... in the grand scheme of problems in our society.... it was never that big of a rational concern.
Is it stupidity? I don't think so. Its far worst. Its simply a matter of skewed perception. Its a matter of people failing to do something that people really are not very good at, and doing it on a massive scale.
I would be willing to bet, dollars to donuts, that if you took all of the money spent on amber alerts, and used it to fund better in school education on nutrition and healthy eating.... it would have a far greater impact on far more childrens lives.
However, fat doesn't bleed, so it doesn't lead.
-Steve
Actually, I talked with someone recently who just added the tri-tone beep to their outgoing message. He said its absolutely worked wonders.
-Steve
Actually, at that point I remind them that we are in MA, and unless they would like to test the case law surrounding product returns within a reasonable time frame, then they had better honor my return or indicate before the sale that all sales are final.
Aside from that, I see what you are saying. However, I think the real problem here is ignorance and stupidity.
I stopped putting my hand over my heart and saying the pledge when I was in school.
Was it because I was unamerican? Was it because I disliked some core value? Well... maybe you should ask me why I made my decision rather than ascribing your guess as to what it means to me.
Saying the pledge, wearing the pin, its all going with the crowd. Its something people do by wrote. No thought, just do it. When someone goes against the group, its usually for their own personal reasons, and you can't always determine those reasons just by looking at the act.
Honestly, I see blind allegiance as antiethical to the fundamental ideals of the founding fathers, and truely believe we could probably power the entire country simply by the motions of the founding fathers spinning in their graves at the sight of what we have done to it. (as truely as one can believe a silly metaphor)
-Steve
Interesting. I saw some random TV show that talked about cat vs dog meat, and said that cat meat was quite stringy and often used in dishes like meatballs.
-Steve