Even if we never hear from Jack Thompson again, it won't be long before there's another lawyer trying to make a name for himself by attacking video games. Unfortunately, it seems to be pretty easy for these types to get media attention. Let's hope that the next one in line makes as big an ass of himself as Jack did.
My response to the upcoming expansion has been to greatly reduce my time spent playing. It just seems like the current game has lost some of it's charm now that a chunk of new content is on the way. I'm sure that when the expansion hits I'll spend a huge amount of time playing it, but until then I'll focus my spare time on other entertainment options.
This Congress has been very active even though all the important legislation has been vetoed.
All the important legislation? There have only been 11 vetoes in this congressional term (12 total for Bush) 4 of which have been overridden. Of those vetoes, there have been a couple of vetoes on bills whose earlier versions were vetoed (stem cell research, 2007 farm bill and the SCHIP bills). There were also a couple of vetoed bills that were adjusted and then passed without a new veto. Did you misspeak? Or if you believe that those 11 bills are the only important legislation, would you say congress spends too much time on minutia?
Perhaps one of the most likely to be overlooked lines comes at the end of page 57, where Scalia writes: "Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."
How long will it be before Mayor Fenty finds a psychiatrist willing to sign off on paperwork declaring all residents of DC to be mentally ill?
Why aren't ALL states voting at the same time, like in the national election? It sucks that candidates that would be more viable to the country as a whole are kicked to the curb early on before the rest of the country gets to vote for them to represent their party.
On the other hand, candidates who determine they have overestimated their viability have an opportunity between primaries to endorse another candidate.
The governor of New Jersey? He's probably too busy speeding down the highway at 90 mph without his seatbelt on so he can get to meetings and make sure that nobody's feelings are hurt by washed-up radio personalities. There's no way he has enough time to deal with political corruption!
In fact, knowing early results before voting is closed will affect the results, and is not desirable.
Giving voters the information from some initial machine count after they vote wouldn't cause any additional effect on the results beyond what we already have. Remember that there are already exit polls.
There are two likely reasons that Democrats are not taking any firm stands.
First, they may be afraid that if they stand up to Bush and fail to stop him on whatever issue, they will look impotent. I think that failing to take a stand makes them look impotent anyway, but maybe some of them really are that scared.
Second, they probably believe that a Democrat will be in the presidency after next year's election. They might believe that Republicans will take all of the blame for what has gone wrong in the past few years despite their complacency and hope that whoever is in the White House can use the expanded powers with impunity by saying "it's for the common good and they did it first anyway."
Perhaps the most troubling part of the whole saga is that the house passed a resolution condemning the advert 341-79, and the senate 71-29 (With all 49 republicans, and 22 democrats voting in favor). The president even got in on the action.
Back on topic, that means they could get around the trademark issue by putting out an ad referring to MoveOn not by name, but as "an organization whose actions have been condemned by a large bipartisan coalition in Congress". That might be more effective for them anyway.
I have to say I am enjoying your post's up and down ride on the moderation rollercoaster. I guess Slashdot's moderators are pretty evenly split today, ideologically.
I was under the impression that filibusters didn't happen anymore; that we have a de facto 60 vote requirement to pass a bill in the senate. My impression is that even with all the filibuster threats and cloture votes that occur, all that usually happens is the threat is made and the bill is completely forgotten so something else can be worked on. In other words, most debate in the senate seems to be mere grandstanding by senators on contentious issues. At any rate, you say it was a vote to end a threatened filibuster and not an actual filibuster. I am curious, how much debate occurred on this amendment to the defense spending bill? The linked article doesn't say.
I like the idea of politicians only being able to garner financial support in an election from their constituents, but people outside of the district/state who have a stake in the election will interfere in whatever way they can. The federal government's power has become so large that each senator or representative has a huge effect on Americans other than their constituents (if you think the floor votes are not very significant, then consider also committee votes). Therefore, I think we will not be seeing any elections decided solely by constituents except in expected landslides.
Thanks for the answers. I'm kind of surprised that services like VoIP haven't caught on in the US, but for now I guess it's up to us to try and demand them from providers. I have however heard of some municipal governments (Philadelphia or Pittsburgh is one, but I can't quite remember which) trying to roll out a citywide public access Wifi program.
-I notice (taking stats from the OECD) that in 2001 we had half the broadband penetration of Canada, but now are at ~80%. Does Canada have a much lower amount of regulation than we do?
-Japan passed us in broadband penetration in the beginning of 2003. Since then, we fell to about 2.3% beneath them in 2004 and have since nearly caught up. Did our amount of regulation rebound during election season and in the beginning of Bush's second term? That seems quite unlikely to me. Perhaps the bursting of the tech bubble had a slowing effect on our broadband growth?
-According to the OECD data, we had 2.5 more broadband users per 100 people than Germany at the end of 2006, contrary to the editorial. That is larger than the 2 users per 100 people difference in 2001.
-In the Business Week article Krugman mentions, it states that ~52% of French broadband connections are used for VoIP, and he states that they also use it for internet TV. How is cell phone usage in France? Are people using VoIP in place of cell phones? Are they using their connections for TV in place of another provider? It sounds like they use their connections for more than we do. Did the companies start offering these services only after the country was wired or did the broadband penetration increase after companies started offering these services? The answer is not clear from the Business Week article. If it's the latter then it seems that it was the broadband companies' innovation that increased broadband usage, not any particular regulatory activity. That is, the broadband usage would have increased at a similar rate when their monopoly saw its growth drop off and started providing new services.
As for the quality issue, I haven't found any data yet. I have been fairly happy with both the speed and cost of the various connections I've had over the past few years as I've moved across the country. However, I don't think that Krugman has made a convincing case that lax regulation is all that is keeping us from wiring up a significantly larger portion of our population.
His comments on secondhand smoke include fast-appearing effects not limited to carcinogens, and imply that exposure to secondhand smoke is considerably more dangerous than actually smoking. That seems like hyperbole to me.
As for your second point, I might not have voiced my concern clearly. What I am worried about is that if the guy is a bumbling incompetent and speaks on all of these issues, then his statements all have extra weight due to his position. His statements are NOT the only way to know what's going on. There are many other sources of information for health issues.
This is the same surgeon general who said that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Isn't the primary concern when measuring the toxicity of a chemical the dose at which adverse effects appear? If that's true, then he isn't very good at his job. Are we sure we want this guy speaking about important issues?
This student set up a website for the sole purpose of slinging mud at one journalist. Losing a sum of money in court might be something he should get used to.
If the Congress is attempting to pass legislation related to the wiretapping program and the White House is delaying by withholding documents related to the program, why can't the Senate committee then simply state that they are erring on the side of liberty, passing the legislation and explicitly outlawing the program until the documents are provided?
Maybe we could set up a new system by which the votes of individual Americans are considered to be "suggestions" rather than actual statements of desire.
Sometimes a member of the electoral college votes differently than pledged. That is, a faithless elector.
The study indicates that the subjects were quarantined and presumably they undertook the same activities during the experiment, but I also wonder if outside of the experiment those with more positive attitudes have habits that further increase the difference between chances of illness as opposed to a positive attitude just causing better health. For example, someone with a negative attitude may have difficulty sleeping well, weakening the immune system further relative to the person with positive attitude.
You say that it is in their interest to suppress or interfere with certain fields. However from my reading of the linked opinion piece and other sources I could find, it looks like the DVD offer was intended for K-12 teachers to use in their classrooms. My experience in public school was that all students took the same science courses until high school. In high school the students divided themselves into two groups; one which took every science course available (in varying orders and with some students taking AP courses) and one which took the bare minimum required to graduate. The latter group isn't relevant to the point we are discussing, because they likely won't be scientists anyway. Therefore, which courses are required would not be very important to these companies. The segregation of scientists into different fields didn't really take place until students were ending high school and beginning college.
It would seem to me that if they wanted to divert the career paths of scientists away from disciplines which threaten their profits, one of their best bets would be to pump a lot of money into general science programs allowing for a better variety of science courses (and more opportunities to divert potential climatologists). Or they could give donations that allow for more interesting classes (which would probably be easier in physics, chemistry or biology than ecology or climatology due to the abilities to hold demonstrations and allow students to conduct simple experiments). If they are pumping money into science education and it significantly increases the total number of students who pursue scientific careers at the expense of a decrease in climatologists, I don't think I would get angry about that. Especially since it would be nearly impossible to use high school donations to prevent scientists from pursuing careers in alternative energy research.
Besides, if a teacher is angry that the NSTA rejected these DVDs, couldn't that teacher cancel membership and use the saved dues to purchase the DVD?
With the divided government we are looking at, I am wondering not how much will be done, but how much will be undone. We're already in a war and have had our liberties infringed, I think we'll be looking at some raised taxes soon, and it's not like there aren't regulations and obstacles to growth and prosperity already in place. With the exception of laws that have some sort of time limit built in, do you think any law affecting those issues will be repealed?
Even though I think it is easy to get information about the candidates running for office these days, I still felt a little unprepared once I looked at the sample ballot sent a few days before the election. There were a few ballot questions listed that seemed almost esoteric. The questions are along the lines of "if we currently have a tax on gasoline and we are required to allocate part of the revenue to a specific program, should we raise the requirement?" Even a relatively informed voter may not understand or consider all of the consequences of questions like that.
In any case, if I am not sure of my answer to a public question, I usually vote against it.
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Even if we never hear from Jack Thompson again, it won't be long before there's another lawyer trying to make a name for himself by attacking video games. Unfortunately, it seems to be pretty easy for these types to get media attention. Let's hope that the next one in line makes as big an ass of himself as Jack did.
My response to the upcoming expansion has been to greatly reduce my time spent playing. It just seems like the current game has lost some of it's charm now that a chunk of new content is on the way. I'm sure that when the expansion hits I'll spend a huge amount of time playing it, but until then I'll focus my spare time on other entertainment options.
All the important legislation? There have only been 11 vetoes in this congressional term (12 total for Bush) 4 of which have been overridden. Of those vetoes, there have been a couple of vetoes on bills whose earlier versions were vetoed (stem cell research, 2007 farm bill and the SCHIP bills). There were also a couple of vetoed bills that were adjusted and then passed without a new veto. Did you misspeak? Or if you believe that those 11 bills are the only important legislation, would you say congress spends too much time on minutia?
What you describe as psuedo-skepticism sounds to me like confirmation bias.
The governor of New Jersey? He's probably too busy speeding down the highway at 90 mph without his seatbelt on so he can get to meetings and make sure that nobody's feelings are hurt by washed-up radio personalities. There's no way he has enough time to deal with political corruption!
There are two likely reasons that Democrats are not taking any firm stands.
First, they may be afraid that if they stand up to Bush and fail to stop him on whatever issue, they will look impotent. I think that failing to take a stand makes them look impotent anyway, but maybe some of them really are that scared.
Second, they probably believe that a Democrat will be in the presidency after next year's election. They might believe that Republicans will take all of the blame for what has gone wrong in the past few years despite their complacency and hope that whoever is in the White House can use the expanded powers with impunity by saying "it's for the common good and they did it first anyway."
I have to say I am enjoying your post's up and down ride on the moderation rollercoaster. I guess Slashdot's moderators are pretty evenly split today, ideologically.
I was under the impression that filibusters didn't happen anymore; that we have a de facto 60 vote requirement to pass a bill in the senate. My impression is that even with all the filibuster threats and cloture votes that occur, all that usually happens is the threat is made and the bill is completely forgotten so something else can be worked on. In other words, most debate in the senate seems to be mere grandstanding by senators on contentious issues. At any rate, you say it was a vote to end a threatened filibuster and not an actual filibuster. I am curious, how much debate occurred on this amendment to the defense spending bill? The linked article doesn't say.
I like the idea of politicians only being able to garner financial support in an election from their constituents, but people outside of the district/state who have a stake in the election will interfere in whatever way they can. The federal government's power has become so large that each senator or representative has a huge effect on Americans other than their constituents (if you think the floor votes are not very significant, then consider also committee votes). Therefore, I think we will not be seeing any elections decided solely by constituents except in expected landslides.
Thanks for the answers. I'm kind of surprised that services like VoIP haven't caught on in the US, but for now I guess it's up to us to try and demand them from providers. I have however heard of some municipal governments (Philadelphia or Pittsburgh is one, but I can't quite remember which) trying to roll out a citywide public access Wifi program.
-I notice (taking stats from the OECD) that in 2001 we had half the broadband penetration of Canada, but now are at ~80%. Does Canada have a much lower amount of regulation than we do?
-Japan passed us in broadband penetration in the beginning of 2003. Since then, we fell to about 2.3% beneath them in 2004 and have since nearly caught up. Did our amount of regulation rebound during election season and in the beginning of Bush's second term? That seems quite unlikely to me. Perhaps the bursting of the tech bubble had a slowing effect on our broadband growth?
-According to the OECD data, we had 2.5 more broadband users per 100 people than Germany at the end of 2006, contrary to the editorial. That is larger than the 2 users per 100 people difference in 2001.
-In the Business Week article Krugman mentions, it states that ~52% of French broadband connections are used for VoIP, and he states that they also use it for internet TV. How is cell phone usage in France? Are people using VoIP in place of cell phones? Are they using their connections for TV in place of another provider? It sounds like they use their connections for more than we do. Did the companies start offering these services only after the country was wired or did the broadband penetration increase after companies started offering these services? The answer is not clear from the Business Week article. If it's the latter then it seems that it was the broadband companies' innovation that increased broadband usage, not any particular regulatory activity. That is, the broadband usage would have increased at a similar rate when their monopoly saw its growth drop off and started providing new services.
As for the quality issue, I haven't found any data yet. I have been fairly happy with both the speed and cost of the various connections I've had over the past few years as I've moved across the country. However, I don't think that Krugman has made a convincing case that lax regulation is all that is keeping us from wiring up a significantly larger portion of our population.
Unfortunately, ever since Wickard v. Filburn (1942) the Interstate Commerce Clause means any damn thing the federal government wants it to mean.
His comments on secondhand smoke include fast-appearing effects not limited to carcinogens, and imply that exposure to secondhand smoke is considerably more dangerous than actually smoking. That seems like hyperbole to me.
As for your second point, I might not have voiced my concern clearly. What I am worried about is that if the guy is a bumbling incompetent and speaks on all of these issues, then his statements all have extra weight due to his position. His statements are NOT the only way to know what's going on. There are many other sources of information for health issues.
This is the same surgeon general who said that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Isn't the primary concern when measuring the toxicity of a chemical the dose at which adverse effects appear? If that's true, then he isn't very good at his job. Are we sure we want this guy speaking about important issues?
This student set up a website for the sole purpose of slinging mud at one journalist. Losing a sum of money in court might be something he should get used to.
If the Congress is attempting to pass legislation related to the wiretapping program and the White House is delaying by withholding documents related to the program, why can't the Senate committee then simply state that they are erring on the side of liberty, passing the legislation and explicitly outlawing the program until the documents are provided?
Sometimes a member of the electoral college votes differently than pledged. That is, a faithless elector.
The study indicates that the subjects were quarantined and presumably they undertook the same activities during the experiment, but I also wonder if outside of the experiment those with more positive attitudes have habits that further increase the difference between chances of illness as opposed to a positive attitude just causing better health. For example, someone with a negative attitude may have difficulty sleeping well, weakening the immune system further relative to the person with positive attitude.
You say that it is in their interest to suppress or interfere with certain fields. However from my reading of the linked opinion piece and other sources I could find, it looks like the DVD offer was intended for K-12 teachers to use in their classrooms. My experience in public school was that all students took the same science courses until high school. In high school the students divided themselves into two groups; one which took every science course available (in varying orders and with some students taking AP courses) and one which took the bare minimum required to graduate. The latter group isn't relevant to the point we are discussing, because they likely won't be scientists anyway. Therefore, which courses are required would not be very important to these companies. The segregation of scientists into different fields didn't really take place until students were ending high school and beginning college.
It would seem to me that if they wanted to divert the career paths of scientists away from disciplines which threaten their profits, one of their best bets would be to pump a lot of money into general science programs allowing for a better variety of science courses (and more opportunities to divert potential climatologists). Or they could give donations that allow for more interesting classes (which would probably be easier in physics, chemistry or biology than ecology or climatology due to the abilities to hold demonstrations and allow students to conduct simple experiments). If they are pumping money into science education and it significantly increases the total number of students who pursue scientific careers at the expense of a decrease in climatologists, I don't think I would get angry about that. Especially since it would be nearly impossible to use high school donations to prevent scientists from pursuing careers in alternative energy research.
Besides, if a teacher is angry that the NSTA rejected these DVDs, couldn't that teacher cancel membership and use the saved dues to purchase the DVD?
With the divided government we are looking at, I am wondering not how much will be done, but how much will be undone. We're already in a war and have had our liberties infringed, I think we'll be looking at some raised taxes soon, and it's not like there aren't regulations and obstacles to growth and prosperity already in place. With the exception of laws that have some sort of time limit built in, do you think any law affecting those issues will be repealed?
Even though I think it is easy to get information about the candidates running for office these days, I still felt a little unprepared once I looked at the sample ballot sent a few days before the election. There were a few ballot questions listed that seemed almost esoteric. The questions are along the lines of "if we currently have a tax on gasoline and we are required to allocate part of the revenue to a specific program, should we raise the requirement?" Even a relatively informed voter may not understand or consider all of the consequences of questions like that.
In any case, if I am not sure of my answer to a public question, I usually vote against it.