Your quotation is apt. I am routinely frightened by how badly informed (and worse, deliberately misinformed) many of my representatives are.
Another point to consider is that many politicians have only one or two areas that they really care about. Often they do a very good job within these areas and a piss-poor job in others. As soon as policy makers begin keeping score and forget that they are granted power solely to manage the country's affairs for the benefit of the citizenry, the process of corruption begins.
As I see it, gerrymandering and partisanship reinforce one another. In an excessively partisan environment, it isn't worth the risk to derail your allies pork-barrel spending because you require the financial support of the party to win. As you cannot expect to win as an independent because of gerrymandering, you must toe the line painted by the senior politicians of your particular party.
I agree that the voters within a state see the benefits of pork projects and will vote for pork-providers. However, there are 100 senators, and we can expect that ninety-eight of them should resist pork spending. And yet we don't see the resistance we should expect. Therefore, my solution (as indicated above) would be to vote for candidates who resist pork barrel spending.
P.S. You are completely right that gerrymandering did not gain Stevens his position, and I wasn't trying to directly imply that.
The problem with pork is that it is wealth redistribution with the sole purpose of benefiting those in power. Federal funds are collected from the taxes of citizens of every state (and via printing money as you point out). However, federal funds are not distributed equally to every state, and pork is by definition a frivolous expense.
I certainly hope it is only a matter of time before some clean politicians get voted in. Since Democrats and Republicans share blame for pork-pushing, I don't know of a solution beyond knowing about the candidates for whom you vote. Unfortunately I can't see systemic changes without an end to gerrymandering. Incumbents are the only ones benefited, hence there is no motivation to eliminate it.
It seems to me that politics in the United States is becoming more of a farce each election.
I've played WarCraft 3 and you've got your facts mixed up unless they've done significant revisionist history in WoW. Arthos is the leader of the Scourge. He was never the leader of the Forsaken, which is the branch of undead that players of WoW create characters of. The Scourge is regarded as the enemy of both the undead Forsaken and the Alliance.
You may enjoy the Fallout series. They are comedy-RPGs set in the future. If you do, you might also like the Monkey Island series. These are comedy-puzzle solving games.
Most RTS games can be played in 15-30 minute chunks. I recommend the classics: Command and Conquer, C&C Red Alert, Starcraft, and the entire Warcraft series.
My favorite computer game of all time is no longer published, but if you can get your hands on a copy, then Stars! is a fantastic turn-based, dynamically customizable strategy game.
I've read here about the evil thing called 'Steam'...
I personally really like Steam. Unlike competitors, I don't have to put in a CD for any game on Steam. I don't have to configure anything for the mods, unlike HL1. It automatically pushes me updates, which I can cancel if I want to. Steam is not a game, but rather a distribution system.
My understanding is that Steam was developed to give Valve more leverage against their distributor Vivindi. Valve only makes a few of the games being distrubuted on Steam; clearly there is a lot of appeal for a distribution system that actually prevents piracy and cuts out the middle man.
I think the more significant portion of this idea is the control of information rather than enlarging the criminal population. Most are looking at this from the customer's view--as an infringment of privacy. But from the government's point of view, by disrupting the privacy of convicted but rehabilitated criminals they can negatively affect those persons' access to information.
I'm sure you aren't trying to imply that guns and books are equally dangerous. The day that books are banned because they are considered to be as deadly as assault rifles will be a sad day indeed.
I don't see a lot of benefit from plugging supermarkets or bookstores into a crime database; their products are uncontrolled and their employees are not trained for apprehending or detaining suspects. The danger in proposals such as this is the so-called "cooling effect" that it has citizens. It begins a drift away from "presumed innocent." Instead, a book-purchaser is considered possibly criminal by default. In the same way that racial profiling causes minorities to mistrust police, so policies like this will (along with the inevitable screw-ups and abuses of information that will occur) will cause a mistrust of bookstore employees and the government.
The job of the government is to serve the people, not to make its own job easier.
The bookstore cited in the summary would not want to know about your speeding tichets. They would undoubtedly implement a filter to narrow down the information they display.
Plus, I didn't RTFA, but it seems unlikely to me that the system would actually be structured in such a way that all information could be pulled with the same weight. I'd think that personal information would require a higher access level. However, in the US, traffic citations are public record, and a bookstore could pull them in if they wanted to.
I think that poor spelling and grammar derives from a lack of reading. Most people I know spend more time watching television than reading, and it shows in their written narrative abilities. I believe that IM, blogging and forums show the effects of the problem, rather than being the affecters of the problem. I've read some forum posts that were incomprehensible due to a numbing union of horrific spelling, abbreviation, zero punctuation, and ommitted grammar.
I was homeschooled from K-12. I can personally attest that everything you hear from both sides of the homeschooling debate are true in isolated cases. Yes, some children get an inferior education. Yes, some children have social problems. Yes, some children get straight-As and learn seven languages.
However, homeschooling has the advantage of rewarding the effort invested. If a kid wants to learn, they are going to learn more about what they like when given the freedom and support to do so. All to often I see homeschooling used as a solution for failing students. In a few cases, this works, but in most cases, the damage of popular culture and public schooling has already been done--the child no longer wants to learn. If the child doesn't want to learn, homeschooling will never work as it is intended to.
I belonged to a rural homeschool coop with approximately 30 regular attendees. Even so, I feel that I was socially stunted along with many of the others in the coop. In my opinion, interacting with others once or twice a week doesn't bring enough exposure to strange situations. I'm a moderately outgoing extrovert, but when I arrived at college I did have trouble making close friends at first because I tried too hard--I didn't realize that it wasn't normal to be starved for interaction and attention. It took me a couple years, but I feel that I've recovered from the social problems. (Though coming into college I would have said I didn't have any.) On the flip side, an homeschooled introvert has the opportunity to completely close themselves off from the world, leaving them with an inability to relate to strangers.
That being said, I do not regret being homeschooled. I wouldn't make the same decision for my children should they ever come, but I absolutely got a first-rate education. Learning the subtlety and patience to engage with others later in life than most has made me a good listener although it is contrary to my nature. For every negative, there can be a benefit, just as for every benefit there are negatives. Like everything else in life, homeschooling is a trade off that is right for some but not for all.
Re:2 F's down, 1 to go!
on
Futurama Returns
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'd be pretty comfortable with Wash and Sheperd magically reappearing without explanation.
Sir, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You see, in His wisdom, the FSM has touched my life with his noodly appendage...
Slashdot Mirror
Your quotation is apt. I am routinely frightened by how badly informed (and worse, deliberately misinformed) many of my representatives are.
Another point to consider is that many politicians have only one or two areas that they really care about. Often they do a very good job within these areas and a piss-poor job in others. As soon as policy makers begin keeping score and forget that they are granted power solely to manage the country's affairs for the benefit of the citizenry, the process of corruption begins.
As I see it, gerrymandering and partisanship reinforce one another. In an excessively partisan environment, it isn't worth the risk to derail your allies pork-barrel spending because you require the financial support of the party to win. As you cannot expect to win as an independent because of gerrymandering, you must toe the line painted by the senior politicians of your particular party.
I agree that the voters within a state see the benefits of pork projects and will vote for pork-providers. However, there are 100 senators, and we can expect that ninety-eight of them should resist pork spending. And yet we don't see the resistance we should expect. Therefore, my solution (as indicated above) would be to vote for candidates who resist pork barrel spending.
P.S. You are completely right that gerrymandering did not gain Stevens his position, and I wasn't trying to directly imply that.
The problem with pork is that it is wealth redistribution with the sole purpose of benefiting those in power. Federal funds are collected from the taxes of citizens of every state (and via printing money as you point out). However, federal funds are not distributed equally to every state, and pork is by definition a frivolous expense.
I certainly hope it is only a matter of time before some clean politicians get voted in. Since Democrats and Republicans share blame for pork-pushing, I don't know of a solution beyond knowing about the candidates for whom you vote. Unfortunately I can't see systemic changes without an end to gerrymandering. Incumbents are the only ones benefited, hence there is no motivation to eliminate it. It seems to me that politics in the United States is becoming more of a farce each election.
I've played WarCraft 3 and you've got your facts mixed up unless they've done significant revisionist history in WoW. Arthos is the leader of the Scourge. He was never the leader of the Forsaken, which is the branch of undead that players of WoW create characters of. The Scourge is regarded as the enemy of both the undead Forsaken and the Alliance.
He should have put watching eyes on the donation box. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/2 8/1220207
You may enjoy the Fallout series. They are comedy-RPGs set in the future. If you do, you might also like the Monkey Island series. These are comedy-puzzle solving games.
Most RTS games can be played in 15-30 minute chunks. I recommend the classics: Command and Conquer, C&C Red Alert, Starcraft, and the entire Warcraft series.
My favorite computer game of all time is no longer published, but if you can get your hands on a copy, then Stars! is a fantastic turn-based, dynamically customizable strategy game.
I've read here about the evil thing called 'Steam'...
I personally really like Steam. Unlike competitors, I don't have to put in a CD for any game on Steam. I don't have to configure anything for the mods, unlike HL1. It automatically pushes me updates, which I can cancel if I want to. Steam is not a game, but rather a distribution system. My understanding is that Steam was developed to give Valve more leverage against their distributor Vivindi. Valve only makes a few of the games being distrubuted on Steam; clearly there is a lot of appeal for a distribution system that actually prevents piracy and cuts out the middle man.
I think the more significant portion of this idea is the control of information rather than enlarging the criminal population. Most are looking at this from the customer's view--as an infringment of privacy. But from the government's point of view, by disrupting the privacy of convicted but rehabilitated criminals they can negatively affect those persons' access to information.
I'm sure you aren't trying to imply that guns and books are equally dangerous. The day that books are banned because they are considered to be as deadly as assault rifles will be a sad day indeed.
I don't see a lot of benefit from plugging supermarkets or bookstores into a crime database; their products are uncontrolled and their employees are not trained for apprehending or detaining suspects. The danger in proposals such as this is the so-called "cooling effect" that it has citizens. It begins a drift away from "presumed innocent." Instead, a book-purchaser is considered possibly criminal by default. In the same way that racial profiling causes minorities to mistrust police, so policies like this will (along with the inevitable screw-ups and abuses of information that will occur) will cause a mistrust of bookstore employees and the government.
The job of the government is to serve the people, not to make its own job easier.
The bookstore cited in the summary would not want to know about your speeding tichets. They would undoubtedly implement a filter to narrow down the information they display. Plus, I didn't RTFA, but it seems unlikely to me that the system would actually be structured in such a way that all information could be pulled with the same weight. I'd think that personal information would require a higher access level. However, in the US, traffic citations are public record, and a bookstore could pull them in if they wanted to.
You would have found it if you'd dropped the plural: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=affecter. Better luck next time.
I think that poor spelling and grammar derives from a lack of reading. Most people I know spend more time watching television than reading, and it shows in their written narrative abilities. I believe that IM, blogging and forums show the effects of the problem, rather than being the affecters of the problem. I've read some forum posts that were incomprehensible due to a numbing union of horrific spelling, abbreviation, zero punctuation, and ommitted grammar.
On one hand, I would love a robot. On the other hand, I'll bet they are expensive. On the gripping hand, Moties aren't available for purchase.
I was homeschooled from K-12. I can personally attest that everything you hear from both sides of the homeschooling debate are true in isolated cases. Yes, some children get an inferior education. Yes, some children have social problems. Yes, some children get straight-As and learn seven languages.
However, homeschooling has the advantage of rewarding the effort invested. If a kid wants to learn, they are going to learn more about what they like when given the freedom and support to do so. All to often I see homeschooling used as a solution for failing students. In a few cases, this works, but in most cases, the damage of popular culture and public schooling has already been done--the child no longer wants to learn. If the child doesn't want to learn, homeschooling will never work as it is intended to.
I belonged to a rural homeschool coop with approximately 30 regular attendees. Even so, I feel that I was socially stunted along with many of the others in the coop. In my opinion, interacting with others once or twice a week doesn't bring enough exposure to strange situations. I'm a moderately outgoing extrovert, but when I arrived at college I did have trouble making close friends at first because I tried too hard--I didn't realize that it wasn't normal to be starved for interaction and attention. It took me a couple years, but I feel that I've recovered from the social problems. (Though coming into college I would have said I didn't have any.) On the flip side, an homeschooled introvert has the opportunity to completely close themselves off from the world, leaving them with an inability to relate to strangers.
That being said, I do not regret being homeschooled. I wouldn't make the same decision for my children should they ever come, but I absolutely got a first-rate education. Learning the subtlety and patience to engage with others later in life than most has made me a good listener although it is contrary to my nature. For every negative, there can be a benefit, just as for every benefit there are negatives. Like everything else in life, homeschooling is a trade off that is right for some but not for all.
I'd be pretty comfortable with Wash and Sheperd magically reappearing without explanation.
Sir, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You see, in His wisdom, the FSM has touched my life with his noodly appendage...