Reason Morning Links: Debt-Cutting Super Committee Is Super Stuck, Cook County Pols Call for Pot Decriminalization, Congress Declares War on the Internet
- Atlantic Wire: "With less than a month to go before the deadline to produce a debt deal, it appears that the Congressional deficit-reduction committee is nowhere close to a deal."
- Cook County commissioner and Chicago aldermen propose decriminalizing small amounts of pot in Chicago and surrounding towns.
- GigaOm: "The Stop Online Piracy Act would give governments and private corporations unprecedented powers to remove websites from the internet on the flimsiest of grounds, and would force internet service providers to play the role of copyright police."
- Eight congress critters now calling for Attorney General Eric Holder's resignation.
- President Obama breaks his pledge not to accept money from lobbyists to the tune of $5 million in campaign donations.
- Occupy evictions in San Diego and (soon) London.
- D.C. cops rob two legal head shops.
- Catholic liturgy to undergo huge change, sparking fears of "ritual whiplash."
New at Reason.tv: "Peter Schiff Speaks for 1 Percent at Occupy Wall Street"
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AHHHH!
did you just fahhhhrt in a jar?
It's catholic liturgy.
HAAAA!
SO, I hate Pro L and Epi and the ver late cap l (et tu heller?). I get a solid hour of crap for a missing E but Groovus is looking at thongs...
I have no more Tim for this.
The guy who invented the thong is right up there with the guy who invented the see through yoga pants that are so popular today, the guys who created the internet. True heroes of mankind.
I met Vint Cerf. He was wearing a thong.
Pro'L Dib, you are aware that one cannot rise to the level of Reverend Mother unless permanent thongship is achieved.
Mentats wear tightie-whities, and graduates of the Suk go kommando.
I don't think Cerf was a Reverend Mother. Though he may have survived the spice trance.
I enjoy a certain and distinct level of panache and quietude.
The appropriate response was, of course, "Back off, man. I'm a scientist."
How DARE you correct me! Now, you have...GON TUFAR!
Here, put your hand in this box.
This is second time you tried this: is this your version of "pull my finger?"
I didn't gnaw off my leg, arm or any other member caught in a trap. I PASSED DAMMIT! I'm HUMAN!
[Pokes the Suk in the neck with the Gon Tufar.]
I am genuinely confuse by this sentence:
Are they going to decrim pot and then bringin the razor wire?
And I thought the online article actually said Stop Online Privacy...not far from the truth there.
And I want to stab the asshole who comes up with PROTECT-IP and E-PARASITE and PIPA names for this stupid shit. I seriously think that they are makeing fun of the american voter when they spend all night making a cute acronym fit.
FUCK...two cups already this morning.
I thought it was two girls and one cup...
Amendment XXVIII (proposed)
Section 1
Congress shall make no law, the commonly used name of which is a self-supposedly clever acronym.
Section 2
Violation of this article is to be punishable by death via premature burial.
"With less than a month to go before the deadline to produce a debt deal, it appears that the Congressional deficit-reduction committee is nowhere close to a deal."
"And then, a miracle happens."
"Lobbyists! Bring us more lobbyists!"
Skeksis!!! Gelfling!!!
Why do I think that the deal will be 796 pages with only two days to review it before the vote?
I guess they'll just have to pass it in order to know what's in it.
This is the government, not Moral Orel
Can mandatory social media service save America?
?We require every 18-year-old in America to participate in mandatory social media service as part of a daily or weekly routine for one year.
?We assign our young adults to a racially diverse online social group comprised of 12 people from different regions, backgrounds, income brackets. (Google+ is a potential platform.)
?We present each group with a social challenge ? obesity, jobs, poverty, high cost of education, even the problem of young men getting their sex education from watching online porn ? and we ask them to solve the problem.
No doubt there are details to work out.
Uh, huh.
Sorry, they quoted Robert Reich about two paragraphs in. I can't read anything by that idiot. Whenever his prickish little voice comes on NPR, I go straight to AM radio as a protective reflex.
I can't decide whether his Marxism is pure or just some sort of new wave version.
like Gang of Four?
Yeah, maybe. I need more data before I can come to a definite conclusion.
Add me to the list of passionate Reich haters. Been hating that fucker since the Clinton years.
I also hate Reich, but only on an amateur basis.
Yeah -- Marxist Place is almost listenable until Reich shows up.
I can't put a name to this, but it irritates me to no end.
I think the term you are looking for is "supertardifuckalicious moronaliatrocious."
Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious?
Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious?
"Girl, do you know you got bangin' halitosis?"
I have this weird, von Trappy feeling. Like I'm going to break into song. Good thing there isn't much in the way of hills around here.
Maybe like the hills around Dunwich...
We require every 18-year-old in America to participate in mandatory social media service as part of a daily or weekly routine for one year.
. . .
We present each group with a social challenge ? obesity, jobs, poverty, high cost of education, even the problem of young men getting their sex education from watching online porn ? and we ask them to solve the problem.
You want enslaved 18-year-olds to solve social challenges? A lot of these kids can't make it to their 8am classes and you want them to what? A lot of these rubber-faced neanderthals are too busy permanently drawing on themselves to flush the toilet or wash their hands and you want them to what?
Here's an idea for the very first mandatory social group:
Challenge 1: How do we keep assholes from dreaming up stupid shit to make mandatory for everyone?
We present each group with a social challenge ? obesity, jobs, poverty, high cost of education, even the problem of young men getting their sex education from watching online porn ? and we ask them to solve the problem.
Because putting a bunch of emotionally regressed 18-year-olds in charge of public policy is always a recipe for success!!
Brittney Spears likes cheeseburgers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs.....-tour.html
I clicked. Wished I hadn't - need the brain bleach now.
Some things can't be unseen.
Muahahahaha!
Yeah, but dude! I just got back from Kanawha Canal Park and my Occupy the Occupiers breakfast. They're giving out free food down there and now it... isn't sitting so well.
Strangely, they didn't like me getting free food. Telling them that I was "gamboling through the wilds of Richmond gathering the free edibles of the land" didn't help.
They actually reacted better to the news that the Tea Party rallies there had had better food.
Oh Britney. No honey, just no.
Wait, what? Aren't you more sexy the more skin you show?
If she would get a better fashion adviser and strap herself in to some better outfits, she wouldn't look that bad. But as it is she is what 30 years old now? And she is trying to pull off outfits she would have been lucky to pull off when she was 15 or only a professional dancer with a professional dancer's body could pull off.
Like many women from the South, Brittany's looks peaked at about 17.
At the start of this tour she looked a little worse than she does now.
A couple months in she was quite fit.
Now she's back on the cheeseburger diet.
I guarantee you that a lot of the women you see dressed well and think are attractive would look just as bad in those outfits. A woman has to have a flawless figure to look good dressed like that. And to have that she is either a professional dancer who starves herself and works out all of the time or is 16.
She's on tour right now. That means she's getting paid big bucks to sing and dance.
I think that qualifies her as a professional dancer.
A professional dancer who likes cheeseburgers.
😉
A professional dancer who likes cheeseburgers.
You can't be that. You cease to be a dancer and become a cow who gets paid to dance.
I'd say she's still pretty far from cow. The outfits are all wrong, but her body looks just fine to me.
Cheeburgercheeburgercheeburgercoke!
She's going the Elvis route. They'll find her dead in the toilet with a box of twinkies and some quaaludes in a couple of years.
She better get working on adding the Jungle Room to her mansion then.
It would be a shame if she croaked and her posthumous fans were denied the thrill of seeing the Jungle Room when they toured her house.
Oh, and shag carpet on the ceiling as well. I loved that on my tours of Graceland.
It's scary to think of what over-the-top stuff Elvis might have indulged in if Colonel Parker hadn't ripped him off of so much money and had he lived longer. Graceland in the 1980s would have looked like a drug kingpin's palace.
Why is she peeing on that Nazi?
Notice that the chicks that are dancing with her are beefy too. Not an accident.
Why Economic Models Are Always Wrong
State treasurer of MA absolutely shreds RomneyCare, which "has nearly bankrupted the state" and is surviving solely because of federal aid
Are all perfect, because they've never been tried.
Why haven't they been tried?
Funny how libertarian economists predicted our current recession while Keynesian clowns were taken completely by surprise.
Models only work if you have a physical understanding of the underlying mechanics of the system. Since we don't, the models will always fail outside a narrow range of states, even inside that range, the calibration required just to keep them accurate leads to constant manipulation of the data.
This is why Wall Street has been successful at HFT, but they still make loser bets over the long term. Their models are accurate over very short periods of time and they can make successful bets on that. But they still make loser bets like selling CDS's against Greece debt over the long term because their overarching understanding of the economic system sucks.
The sad part is that these guys are highly motivated to get it right, yet they still get it wrong. And Congress, which is largely made up of a bunch of people who weren't successful at anything other than sucking up to voters and special interests, still tries to micromanage the economy.
Poor Tim Cahill. He knows he'll never get elected governor in MA but he's gonna keep on trying. He's saying the exact opposite of what the majority of voters want to hear from their elected officials.
Not all economic models are wrong
Question for the class. You know those burglar bar doors, the metal ones that open out that you see in the classiest neighborhoods?
How do cops do no-knock raids when facing one of them? I can't imagine getting thru one of those quickly enough to surprise anyone inside.
Armored vehicles.
HE
Dude, why would you no knock in one of those neighborhoods? The likelyhood of meeting some form of resistance could put officers in danger. It is best to only do those raids to the elderly and suburban folks with small children.
and dogs, duh
Cops don't do raids like that in classy neighborhoods.
Those people are likely to be able to afford a lawyer.
It's better to do raids on poor people because they can't defend themselves in court.
Which is why Thomas Kelly died for your sins.
For the love of money [property values] is the root of all evil [police brutality.]
[updated]
Do you gambol?
Read my stupid muthafukkas! READ IT!
The problem with many of those burglar bars is that while they may be strong, where they attach to the house is often much weaker. Unless you have reinforced concrete walls, most homes have just 2/4 wooden studs so either using a battering ram or hooking up a rope to the bars and a vehicle you can pull them out or use a jaws of life to break the connection between the bars and the house. It does slow them down a bit but if they are prepared then they will still get in pretty quickly.
If they are unprepared it will stop them for a while, but they will just surround the house and you aren't going anywhere. Also don't get into a gun battle if you are out gunned, most home walls are not bullet proof, even the brick ones these days are just veneer
You know, I don't need to go anywhere. Its my goddamned house. If they'd just ring the doorbell, there would be no need for this shit. But OMG, I might flush drugs down the toilet, so it best they destroy part of my home just in case.
The drug war is a boon to assholes, thats what it is.
If they're worried about people flushing drugs, why not cut off water to the house first? If you have so little drugs that they can be take care of in one flush, then it's hardly worth a raid, anyway.
Obviously, you know nothing about the plumbing of a toilet.
I think he's right.
Shutting of the water at the meater would leave only enough for a single flush. The tank would not refill.
As he said, "If you have so little drugs that they can be take care of in one flush...".
The people who don't understand plumbing are the one's who think you can shut off the sewer line.
In West Philly, pretty much every house has burglar bars. I once had a chance to ask a fire-fighter if it slowed them down. "only a few seconds" he said.
Is it humanly possible to read "West Philadelphia" without thinking of a certain 90's sitcom?
Yes. I have no idea what 90's sitcom you're referring to.
Yes.
Yes.
The one with Tatyana Ali and Alfonse Ribeiro.
Still drawing a blank.
Are you parent? That might explain why you just don't understand.
*a parent
Ah yes. The Fresh Prince aka Will Smith.
Never liked that show.
Mad About You?
"Its always sunny..." wasn't made in the 90's
Nor is it set in West Philly. That's a South Philly bar.
And you expect me to know the difference? You really are a smartass.
born and raised
On the playground is where I spent most of my days.
Chillin' out nights and relaxin' all cool...
Now it's stuck in my head.
Not possible for me. And I hardly even watched the show when it was on.
What is "After M*A*S*H"?
They hook a chain to them and rip them right out of the wall using a vehicle pull. I'm sure one of the SWAT teams shows has a sample on YouTube.
Alternately, I'm willing to bet a Halligan will pop one just as quick as it will a regular door.
probably rip up my lawn too.
Colin Farrell already solved this in SWAT, c'mon!
Jerry Pournelle on Federal Spending:
http://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=2862
You can promise all you want, you can pass a law, you can even chisel it in stone if you like, but if there's no money there's no money.
Not that this is any surprise or anything new, but it's clear that everyone in Washington values the election eleventy billion times more than they do the economic health of this nation.
Won't work.
Capitalism is in collapse, just like Communism, and for the same reason (concentration of wealth and power into too few elite hands) as communism collapsed.
Communism collapsed because people were expected to work without actually being paid.
Sort of like what OWS wants society to be.
Work without pay?
That's Crapitalism/Communism for ya.
Wal-Mart to pay $54 million to settle suit over unpaid work ...
http://www.startribune.com/business/35819094.html
Last week, my wife interviewed for a waitress job at an ethnic restaurant near our house in Maryland. The owner told my wife that, before they would start paying her, she would have to go through a 'training period,' during which time she would come in and work, just as a regular employee, but not get paid anything, not even tips.
Here's a Tip: No Work Without Pay
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....01167.html
You mad, bro? Maybe your wife should get a waitressing job, you know, somewhere else?
...pull the same shit as Xian Fundamentalists.
"Why are you angry at God?"
"Did another Christian hurt you?"
"Maybe you need to attend church somewhere else."
That's religio-economic faith for ya.
Fucking freedom, how does it work?
When do we de-regulate the artificial lines drawn on the land to restrict the free movement of people to freely gather and hunt?
Oh, you're not really much into freedom, are you, Restoras?
You're into whitewashed aggression.
Read my stupid muthafukkas! READ IT!
When do we resist the urge to gainsay others for their snarky intellectual romps on blogs?
Oh, you're not really much into gamboling, are you, WI?
You're into whitewashed repression and authoritarianism.
Gamboling is illegal, because of Capitalist aggression restricting the free movement of people.
To call capitalism free is to whitewash aggression.
Gamboling is not strictly a physical activity, as advanced cultures understand.
To characterize all gamboling as illegal is to whitewash censorship and thought control.
That would be primarily because of the minimum wage laws. When the option is between paying nothing and more than what the job should pay, employers will take the first option if at all possible. Particularly since putting someone on the payroll obligates the employer to other benefits like unemployment if the person doesn't work out.
Of course, when you have inflation and low unemployment, this situation doesn't come up as much. But since we don't, the unfortunate side effects of all that employment law are coming to the forefront.
...have the same repetitive catechism as Xian Fundamentalists.
That would be primarily because of the minimum wage laws.
Like a fucking broken record.
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Just like the Communists did when Communism fell.
Slogans aren't going to help much.
Oh great, another sockpuppet
Rather's insanity is obvious from the first post she makes under one of her infinite number of handles.
You can say that again!
Rather's insanity is obvious from the first post she makes under one of her infinite number of handles.
Insanity? My ass.
Was it a middle eastern restaurant? 'cause I heard they treat their womenz like crap over there. Did she have to pay for her own veil?
I will call my own post racist before anyone else does.
Actually, if you examine these Wal-Mart "work without pay" cases what you'll usually find is this:
Wal-Mart expands vast HR and Compliance resources trying to get their workers to properly clock in and out for breaks, and the workers refuse to, sometimes because they're just morons, and sometimes because they're bad workers who can't complete assigned tasks within their shift and sneak back during assigned break times to finish their work so they don't get fired for incompetence.
Last week, my wife interviewed for a waitress job at an ethnic restaurant near our house in Maryland. The owner told my wife that, before they would start paying her, she would have to go through a 'training period,' during which time she would come in and work, just as a regular employee, but not get paid anything, not even tips.
Sounds like a bad offer.
Don't take it.
Problem solved.
Too bad I wouldn't be able to solve the problem of OWS' redistribution demands the same way.
Mr. Cobb and several other workers interviewed about lock-ins were plaintiffs in lawsuits accusing Wal-Mart of forcing them to work off the clock, for example working several hours without pay after their shifts ended.
Workers Assail Night Lock-Ins By Wal-Mart
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The New York Times
Published: January 18, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01.....all&src=pm
Fluffy, you've lost all of what little credibility you had.
That case sounds like exactly what I was talking about.
Wal-Mart has systems in place to prevent local supervisors and workers from doing things like this, and the workers don't use them, because as soon as they use them, the fact that they aren't finishing their assigned work within their assigned time will be revealed.
Or they're so afraid of two-bit $11 an hour assistant managers that they won't complain to corporate when rules are broken.
I can't help ya if you won't pick up the phone. Blaming Wal-Mart because these people won't pick up the phone is like blaming the police for not solving crimes people refuse (for one reason or another) to report.
"Or they're so afraid of two-bit $11 an hour assistant managers that they won't complain to corporate when rules are broken.
I can't help ya if you won't pick up the phone. Blaming Wal-Mart because these people won't pick up the phone is like blaming the police for not solving crimes people refuse (for one reason or another) to report."
WTF? How about blaming the managers that were breaking Wal-Mart's rules and the law? And employers don't have some diligence duty to oversee wheter that is going on in their own stores? All the responsibility is on the worker? WTF? That's like saying that if I crap on your lawn it's your fault for not calling the cops to make me stop...It's my fault dude. And if someone else is responsible for overseeing me, it's partly their fault.
Then target the managers responsible, not the shareholders. It's impossible to police everyone all the time (your dreams of utopia not withstanding).
And frankly, the entire "unjust overtime" argument includes all sorts of assumptions about the employer / employee relationship that I don't accept anyway.
An hourly wage for work is only one way to organize the purchase of labor.
I pay the guys who landscape my yard a set fee to complete certain tasks. The actual amount of time it takes them to complete that task is irrelevant to me.
I do the same thing when I pay someone to do my taxes.
Or when I pay someone on Guru to write some code.
Are all of those relationships "work for no pay"? Of course not.
If I hired 10 guys to clean my store for a particular fee, I'd expect them to stay until the store was clean.
The entire paradigm of the hourly wage is a relatively recent phenomenon in economic history, and it's entirely possible to envision a capitalist system that didn't include it.
Frankly, it's a little ridiculous for you to complain about supposed iniquities in the wage system when if your preferred economic arrangements were achieved there'd be no such thing as a wage and ALL economic exchanges would be piecework exchanges (of a sort).
Don't come to me with bitchy claims about local Wal-Mart managers establishing off-the-clock piecework systems (in defiance of corporate policy) when you openly advocate reducing ALL economic exchanges to barter and piecework.
...is so free market.
Stop feeding the troll please
...inside your "free market" business.
Because if you can't leave voluntarily, you know what that is.
When do you join Shackbrah Gamboling Nation? Plenty of open space out there for you, you know.
"Sounds like a bad offer.
Don't take it.
Problem solved."
That's how restaurants work. You have to actually try out for your job.
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"John Kenneth Galbraith"
An uncle of mine via marriage.
Though no longer alive.
Communism doesn't work because the economy is too complex to be managed by the government.
Capitalism works just fine when the government leaves the economy alone.
Our economy is failing because the government is trying to manage it.
Can you make a big poster of that, with sincere faces of captialist workers looking into the glorious future?
...in libertarian science fiction novels.
But not in reality.
Ah. But the "mixed economy" doesn't even work well in fiction.
...it's reality.
And libertarian fantasy is fantasy, just like tales of animated corpses.
It's time that conjuring economic fantasies like "pure capitalism" or "pure communism" be regarded as silly as conjuring Zombies.
Libertarianism is yet another form of WORD MAGIC.
Hocus pocus!
Free market in focus!
Capitalist locus!
Just let us toke-us!
We're a nation of cowards.
We are the domesticated descendents of a once brave and free people.
If only we had the bravery to shoot Mr. Holder.
Four Reasons Keynesians Keep Getting It Wrong
http://online.wsj.com/article/.....n_newsreel
Austrians beating up on Keynesians is like a Witch Doctor telling a Magician he's doing it all wrong.
They're all doing it all wrong.
What a fucking funny show to watch: incompetent religio-economic faith adherents critiquing incompetent religio-economic faith adherents.
That and farting in a jar.
They're all doing it all wrong.
Economics has no substance to it at all. It is total BS.
So who do you prefer? Marxists? Anarchists? Chartalists? Or are you just trolling?
Trolling? I haven't seen him at any of the meetings.
You do realize that the Austrian school takes the position the economy is incredibly difficult to model because it is subject to unpredictable things like human nature.
So the Austrians are incredibly wary of "doing" anything with the economy and would prefer to observe the economy "in the wild" instead of trying to force the economy to fit the mold of various models.
But I guess it feels nice to say "everybody's wrong!" and smugly continue on with your day.
"in the wild"
Nice, I wish the market was free to gambol.
C + I + G + (X - M) fails for a few reasons.
For one it assumes G can be increased without affecting C or I.
But since increasing G requires corresponding taxes, debt or currency devaluation, C and I must decrease.
Additionally X - M does not account for increased I as money used to purchase imports comes back to the country as capital investment.
GDP is a fallacy and a fraud whose sole purpose is to give politicians an excuse to spend other peoples' money.
+999 999 999
If those guys don't put together a budget deal, we'll all have to learn Arabic.
Because those defense cuts will leave us helpless in the face of the Caliphate.
The stories on the supercommittee seem to say that if a deal is not reached there will be automatic cuts in military spending and entitlements. By the latter do they mean things like raising eligibility ages and means testing? If so then bring on those automatic cuts!
Prolly just means a smaller COLA. Cut everything across the board - it's the easiest way.
Since the only justification for government involvement here is as social insurance I would think means testing should be tried before across the board COLA cuts...
Yeah, but you're an honest liberal. You think the point of SS is to take care of those who need help.
The people who are in charge of SS care about their own power. They won't means test it, because that means they will lose power. Cutting the COLA gets everyone riled up about "their" benefits being cut.
It's the same reason that municipal government always cuts teachers and firefighters rather then education bureaucrats or useless office drones.
no -- provider cuts. changes directly to beneficiaries are not part of sequestration.
the medicare part is just lower doctor reimbursments if i remember correctly.
They probably mean increasing the budget by 15% instead of the requested 25%, and calling it a 10% cut.
It does almost seem as if the automatic cuts would be really the best outcome one could realistically expect from this. I can see that SS is probably not going to disappear and I agree that means testing would be a good place to start. They really need to stop pretending that is is some sort of retirement plan and not just a welfare program that sends checks to rich people out of habit.
Everyone Bails Out Everyone
European deal has something for everyone, except the real problem.
linky: http://online.wsj.com/article/.....oveLEFTTop
The biggest accomplishment is the agreement to impose a voluntary 50% write-down on private holdings of Greek debt.
Emphasis added. We are so ... you know.
Also, notice the word "private"? As in, "public" holders won't be taking a haircut?
Are you insane? That would lead to total chaos!
The "voluntary" wording is key. It's an effort to avoid the banks having to pay out on all those CDS's they sold.
impose a voluntary
If it's imposed, it ain't voluntary, now is it?
The CDS holders are saying the same thing, but something tells me they won't be getting their way because they're not as politically connected as the big banks.
Speak for yourself, Holder.
An Italian is testing his cold fusion reactor today to much fanfare. There are still no reports of what excuses he plans to use for the test's failure.
...work, or this is all coming to a tragic end.
Got reasonfaith?
It already works.
The relative cost of renewable sources we already have pretty much sucks relative to fossil fuels, but you know what?
It's not so terrible cost-wise that we're talking about the end of technological civilization if we end up thrown back upon those energy sources.
People would be poorer, temporarily, until new capital investments were made. Big whoop.
One really good thing about the higher cost of renewables is that it's front-loaded. The big cost is upfront capital outlay. But that means that after a period of adjustment where you have to reduce consumption to save enough to make those capital investments, you pass through the bottleneck and your cost situation is manageable on the other side.
If you're counting on fossil fuel depletion to give you back a world of hunter-gathering, keep hoping.
Ever here of the Law of Diminishing Returns?
Oh, right, fusion already works, according to Fluffy the Liar, and we'll have power to cheap to meter real soon now.
I can smell the desperation as your attempts to rile up the commentariat are failing to elicit a significant number of responses. I suggest Zoloft, it will bring those bipolar swings into moderation.
No.
According to Fluffy, when fossil fuels are depleted energy will be more expensive, and available in forms that are less efficient for certain tasks, but it won't be completely absent.
We're surrounded by opportunities for solar, wind, and hydro generation that require only capital to realize.
Right now it makes little economic sense to do so because the upfront capital expenditure makes those power sources too expensive relative to the ones we already have.
But even if they aren't currently economically sensible, those opportunities still exist. And as fossil fuels are depleted and the price of energy rises, those opportunities will all become economically competitive.
Fusion or vacuum energy or other sci-fi crap is not required. We already know how to stick a water wheel in a creek.
I fully advocate burning it all up so we are forced to move to the next thing.
...Diminishing Returns?
NO? Never had a freshman economic class in college?
Anyway, your "no" explains much of your ignorance.
Da internetz, dey wonderful:
Tainter begins by categorizing and examining the often inconsistent explanations that have been offered for collapse in the literature.[4] In Tainter's view, while invasions, crop failures, disease or environmental degradation may be the apparent causes of societal collapse, the ultimate cause is an economic one, inherent in the structure of society rather than in external shocks which may batter them: diminishing returns on investments in social complexity. For contrast, Jared Diamond's 2005 book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, focuses on environmental mismanagement as a cause of collapse.
Joseph Tainter: Diminishing Returns
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Joseph_Tainter#Diminishing_returns
"Jared Diamond's"
He went to Jarod!?
"Mama mia! That-a reactor, she-a too spicy!"
LOL
RACIST!
Bigotry...so funny...love it
+1
Holy shit, I spit coffee everywhere.
I've got one, preserved.
Not to worry, in case of failure the Pope will just declare that it works.
You joke, but that's probably how this is going to play out. Through a series of odd coincidences, the Vatican will own and control a workable model for fusion.
Pope Teilhard I approves.
They have already that from the Templars who found the Lost Ark on the Temple Mount which was a working fusion reactor. They did need to wait about hundred and fifty years before Da Vinci was able to reverse engineer it.
If that is a proposal for a bestseller, you sir have an advance!
We're on the Libra-Scorpio cusp, and that screws with the fundamental forces of physics as we know them.
That explains everything!
At the point where he couldn't model what he had done using math, I just tuned out. The probability of randomly building a cold-fusion machine based on scientishic feelings is low enough that I feel okay about being dismissive.
I dunno. I can, and have, design and build things I can't accurately model. They still work.
Empiricism is really the basis behind alot of scientific discoverys. Seeing something happen before reverse engineering WHY it happened.
However, in the case of this, more than likely the results seen will probably have some fatal flaw once looked at with more scrutiny. I imagine its a bit more difficult to accidently stumble upon workable cold fusion.
Maybe he prayed to the Emperor to revive its Machine Spirit?
Pshaw. If he were a real Tech-Priest he'd dress better. And have more cyborg parts.
Two good second amendment cases reported from Volokh:
A pre-2009 Washington state law, under which Yasin Ibrahim was convicted, required aliens to get a license . (A new statute sets up a different licensing scheme for alien gun owners, but that statute wasn't involved in this case.) Ibrahim was prosecuted under the old law, for having an unlicensed gun. Today's State v. Ibrahim (Wash. Ct. App.) holds that the old law violated the Equal Protection Clause by unconstitutionally discriminating against noncitizens. And in the process the court says that the law did this "by denying [legal aliens'] Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms."
And
Richard Fallon on Law Professor Amicus Briefs
Orin Kerr ? October 27, 2011 10:01 pm
An interesting essay, via Prawfs. If I were a law clerk, I would ignore the names of professors who are signatories but not authors of amicus briefs. In my experience, some of the professors who sign on to amicus briefs don't even bother to skim the briefs filed in their name. Those who read the briefs sometimes have serious reservations about their content, and others simply don't know enough about the area of law to determine if the brief is accurate. Caveat scriba, you might say. More from Ward Farnsworth here.
Categories: Legal professor 4 Comments
Second Amendment Protects Felon Whose Convictions Were 30 Years Ago
So held a North Carolina trial court in Johnston v. State (Oct. 24, 2011). Richard Johnston had been convicted of "felonious receipt of stolen property and conspiracy to commit grand larceny" in 1978, and pled no contest "to fraudulent setting fire, conspiracy, false statement to procure, and conspiracy to receive, receiving, conspiracy to commit larceny and accessory before the fact" in 1981. (The underlying crimes occurred in 1976, and "did not involve either violence or the use of a firearm.") Since then, Johnston has apparently led a law-abiding life, setting aside "routine traffic citations and two hunting citations, one of which was dismissed"; he is now 69 years old.
The trial court concluded that, when Heller said that bans on felon possession of guns were "presumptively valid," this presumption could be rebutted, and in this case it was rebutted, given the age of Johnston's conviction and his apparently blameless life since then. The court also suggested that its analysis might also apply to people whose last convictions were as recent as seven years ago, especially when the convictions were for nonviolent crimes; but it didn't have occasion to issue any specific holding on that point.
"Fraudulent setting fire"?
It was one of those TV screen fireplaces.
I would guess insurance fraud.
Just like Twin Peaks. And looked what happened to that.
I liked Twin Peaks. Midgets that talk backwards, what's not to like?
You would, MNG. You are the Britta of Hit and Run!
The English translations that were done after Vatican II were horrifically bad. It is amazing that one, they managed the fuck up the translations in the first place. And two that it took them this long to fix them. All bureaucracies are the same I guess.
Infallibility ain't what it used to be.
I've attended Latin Mass a few times in my life (and Polish mass). A full, traditional Latin mass is really beautiful and when you read the translations, it's very different from the post V-II language. I was wondering if the Church was going back to Latin when I saw the headline.
I'm having a crisis of faith and conscience lately and am considering returning to the Church, but don't know if I could give it 100%; therefore, I'd be a hypocrite and it wouldn't be worth it anyway.
and with the new language, all of the responsorials I've internalized since I was 3 years old will have changed. It would be like learning religion all over again, in some ways.
Of course, according to traditional Catholocism, women are supposed to cover their heads and be silent in Mass. So I wouldn't have to worry about the new phraseology anyway.
I love the Latin Mass. If they would go back to it I could almost become a Papist.
John is religious for purely aesthetic reasons.
I said "almost". But yeah, aesthetics count.
If it's the pope who bothers you, become an Episcopalian. It's pretty much the same thing, sans pope.
They are not the same although they should be. The Episcopalians are the worst about selling out to liberal big government and PC bullshit. Well maybe second to the Presbyterians. A hundred years ago, that is probably what I would have been or more probably a Lutheran. But not today.
The Episcopalians are the worst about selling out to liberal big government and PC bullshit.
I'll see your Episcopelians and raise you on the Jesuits.
Methodists: The Democratic Party's Protestant Branch
Jesuits are a diverse bunch. Remember John Dennis, the guy who ran against Pelosi in 2010? He claims to have been hugely influenced by a classically liberal Jesuit at Fordham. (At least, I think it was Fordham. One of those Jesuit colleges that aren't BC or Georgetown.) A few Central American Marxists do not an entire order define.
The PCUSA denomination sold out. Not the PCA.
The few times I've attended mass, I couldn't help but wonder when the sacrificial goat was going to be brought out. The whole experience just seemed a little more pagan than my old CRC-days.
However, as a whole, Catholics seem to have more fun. I married one after all.
One of the things I loved about the ceremonials was the very pagan nature of them. It had an element of universality about it because it adopted rituals from many cultures (not according to the church, but according to social historians. Maybe they are being revisionist, I don't know).
I could almost go back to church, too. . . Last week, my mom & my sister were having a talk about the new changes. Imagine how my mom must feel: she's got so many new words to learn! And at 72! (and my dad too, but he won't have such a hard time with it & would get into the history aspect of it all).
I never had the chance to attend a Latin Mass, but we had several songs during HS years that were all latin & along with some other parts of the service. I just take the nature of Catholic mass as a "given" and it seems like the way you do it, which is why it would be weird to go to church that _wasn't_ catholic.
That being said, the few times I have gone to CRC churches (a funeral, so OK, one time) I had the urge to become born again because the pastor was so good! Also, I worked for a UCC church for a while & was surprised at how focused on the scriptures they were.
Yeah, I grew up in the Presbyterian church, but have been attending UCC churches since college and the scriptrual focus is what I really like.
My wife was raised Catholic and she says the same thing about Catholic Mass is a "given". I can't stand the Catholic church, and I told her that when we started dating, so she's been coming more and more with me to UCC and it's grown on her.
The bullshit bureaucracy in the Catholic Church is what pissess me off, and the autonomy of each UCC congregation is probably what I appreciate the most - unless, like right now, the church is trying to find a new minister. Then it's just old people shouting, all the way down.
There's a lot of magic going on in Catholic Mass. The first time I had to go I was extremely confused.
That's why Catholics have "Priests" and other Christian religions just have "Pastors"
Catholics like their apparent superpowers. Throw in some vestal virgins and a few animal symbols and we'd be right at home in ancient rome.
The ancient Romans didn't always like it. According to Tacitus, the Emperor Nero sewed up the Christians in canvas bags and sold them to the Purina company.
Just kidding about the Purina Company!
MB, I urge you to honestly evaluate what your needs are in this. If it's the theatricality of the mass, then you can find that in high-church episcopalian congregations, or one of the schisms. And you avoid the moral dilemma of giving cover to an international pedo gang.
But please, also consider freeing yourself from the chains of religion. Sure, it's a little scary at first but you'll be much happier for it. Atheism is to religion what libertarianism is to communism.
I think (thought?) I am/was free. I've been doing a lot of reading and know that I cannot accept Catholic dogma and doctrine, so I cannot be considered Catholic. If you're going to be religious, you can't half-ass it.
I believe I can be a good and moral person without a religious compass. But for so long I had religion as the reason for being "good" and it's hard to imagine a context for good behavior outside of that. Early programming really does stay with you.
And religion, at the end of the day, is personal and if it helps you be good and just that's fine. I find the rituals beautiful and comfortable, but perhaps not comforting, and that is what I really want, I think: some confirmation that I'm living well and an ability to teach my kiddoes to be good people and to keep some moral bearing. So, first instinct is to go back to church, where it all started for me.
I know I can do good things and raise good kids without it, but I falter in my faith in myself a lot. I suppose this comes from watching my oldest daughter become more aware of people and life, and wanting her to be a bit conservative and kind and not run about like a raging whore with thong panties by the time she's seven. I know, I have control over that - but I personally find it sad that what mom's think is giving their girls' "power" by dressing sexy is really just turning them into mini-whores. Self-respect is important and I'm not sure that other girls or boys are learning it in our girl-power society.
But if it's less conversational and more mysterious, it's pretty much got to be less accurate.
The Mass is supposed to be the re-enactment of the last Passover supper between Jesus and the Apostles, which means that if you want it to be accurate, it should be half "Jewish Family Holiday Dinner" and half "Hippie Booze Party".
Not in 1st century Judea. And they kind of knew things were going to end badly. More like Christmas where dad is on the run from the authorities and will face the chair when caught.
...and which apostle were you John?
I just read the accounts later. They knew the authorities were looking for him and would probably whack him when they got him.
There are alot of accounts. At this point, its probably safer bet that you accept the gist and not get tied up in the details, because you will be wrong through someone's interpretation.
There are really only four accounts that matter. I don't buy for a moment the conspiracy theories of the real truth being suppressed later.
Beyond that, he was a religious heretic causing trouble in Roman Judea. That never ended well for anyone. He wasn't the first or last claimed Messiah to end up on the cross. What shocked the Romans and the Jews the most is that killing him didn't end his movement.
There is a great remark in Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome talking about Christians being killed at the games. The gist of it is Tacitus puzzlement of how these people keep dying for their faith when its leader is dead. That is just how things worked back then. The state and people in general were terrified of instability and religious wars. So anyone rocking the state authorized religious boat wasn't going to last long.
John, I hate to break it to ya bud, but the codification of those 4 "important" accounts and the lack of inclusion of, say, the gnostic or Coptic gospels (a few of which predate John, which is generally agreed to be the latest written some 100 to 150 years after Jesus died) was ENTIRELY political. Council of Nicea and all that. They weren't trying to hide the truth, Da Vinci Code style, but they most certainly were trying to codify the religion, its central tenets and beliefs, and resolve some pretty major theological issues (was Christ divine, human, or both?).
This is why I can never take Bible Literalists seriously, especially the ones who hate the Catholic Church. They are working from the same goddamn assumptions of the Catholics. It's the Catholics world, and the Protestants are largely just living in it.
I am not a literalist. But I think they got the right accounts. And the Gnostic Gospels were shit. They were totally at odds with every other piece of writing on the subject. They are a complete outlier. They completely conflict with the letters of Paul that we know are legit. And no one at the Council determined doctrine, not which books were included in the Bible. That is a myth. And further, it was a debate about Arianism. Gnosticism wasn't even considered because everyone knew that it was crap.
Hate to break it to you, but the Divinci Code was fiction.
You misread what he said, to wit:
They weren't trying to hide the truth, Da Vinci Code style, but they most certainly were trying to codify the religion...
And John version we have now was written down later. The Q version from which it came was written much earlier. You can see that through linguistic analysis. No one, not the Eastern Orthodox, not the medievals, not the most radical Protestants of the reformation, not anyone at the time when people could actually remember when these things were written has ever considered the Gnostic gospels anything but crap. God, I wish that dumb ass book had never been written.
I was using the gnostics as an example (who were really part of an older religious movement that had jack shit to do with Christianity). I think that the more relevant ones would be things like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. It really doesn't contradict a think in the other Gospels, but it does show a really weird and different side of Christ as a pissant god child who straight up killed people because they pissed him off... but it does kind of make sense that a kid with godlike powers would do that. The Coptic Gospels are also interesting, although I am inclined to believe the Gospel of Mary Magdelene(where the Da Vinci Code got its dumbass, "Jesus had a kid!" thing from).
It's interesting you use the letters of Paul as a source of authority, because they kind of typify my argument that the Bible is just as much a political as a religious document. What do a number of the early letters from Paul focus on? Well, it's often shit like people circumcising themselves or keeping kosher. From those letters it is pretty clear to me at least that in the beginning of Christianity there was a fairly serious debate going on over whether Jesus was just another prophet in a long line of Jewish prophets (and therefore converts to his teachings were also converts to Judaism and thus subject to that religion's rules) or whether this was an entirely new covenant with god and thus a new religion was a pretty active debate. Paul's side won, and that is why Christianity is a major world religion, but it could have gone the other way. Also bolstering the idea of the Bible as political is that fact that even long after Paul's death we have letters from "Paul" addressing the governance of various churches and the practices that they had. Clearly, there was a large debate on the practices and beliefs of Christianity early on, and I just personally can not believe that it was all guided by the divine as opposed to man.
Hell, look at the earliest gospel, Mark. From that Gospel, Christianity comes off as a very end-times focused religion where the arrival of The Son of Man is imminent and the arrival of the Son of Man (depending on your translation never directly stated to be Jesus but heavily implied) is going to completely change the world as people know it. The later Gospels of Matthew and Luke have less of an emphasis on these imminent end times, because by the time they had been written the end times had not actually arrived.
Also, the Q Gospel is not John- it's Matthew and Luke. And given that we have never found a shred of a written Q Gospel, I think that the "gospel", such as it was, was a shared oral tradition as opposed to a written document.
And yeah, the Da Vinci Code sucks because it reduces a pretty cool subject (the actual historical record of the Bible) to a stupid and kinda anti-Catholic conspiracy theory.
And by "inclined to believe the Gospel of Mary Magdelene" I meant to end that sentence with "is full of shit"
They weren't trying to hide the truth, Da Vinci Code style, but they most certainly were trying to codify the religion, its central tenets and beliefs, and resolve some pretty major theological issues
Constantine and his position as Pontifex Maximus had something to do with that big powwow.
This is why I can never take Bible Literalists seriously, especially the ones who hate the Catholic Church.
Nor should you and it's one of the major points of contention in Biblical exegesis. The Papists say certain parts of the Bible are 100% word-for-word literal, the Protestants say, no they aren't.
...and which apostle were you John?
I see what you did there.
The "beloved" one.
Would they have served the jaguar's earlobes and wolf nipple chips before or after the salad course?
SEX RITES: The Origins of Christianity
The Ritual Use of Sex, Drugs, and Human Sacrifice
http://ancientmeme.blogspot.com/
Ack, ignore the Kerr post, my bad.
Republicans Nationwide Are Similar in Composition to 2008
http://www.gallup.com/poll/150.....-2008.aspx
But in 2008 they were scared they were going to lose and now they are confident they are going to win. In the latter situation they tend to go for purity.
So they aren't made of adamantium and unobtanium nowadays?
Others, including clergy, have protested that the new translation replaces ones approved by the U.S. bishops.
Perhaps the most basic change will be when the priest says: "The Lord be with you." The congregation will no longer say "And also with you." The new response is "And with your spirit."
Un be liev able! That is going to really screw things up!
The priests are just hinting for better cigars now that access to better boys is being curtailed.
http://www.smokes-spirits.com/
sure, fuck up the rhyming just for the sake of correctness. I used to be able to go to mass with 90% of my bodily functions shutdown. Not that it matters anymore, but it will make the whole process now even farther away from my reality.
YOU AND YOU DO NOT RHYME! THEY ARE JUST THE SAME WORD, GODDAMNIT!
What about the "It is right to give Him thanks and praise" part? A few hundred people mumbling that like automatons always just weirded me out.
Kind of like that human microphone thing.
I-580 reopens after bus driver arrested for intentionally ramming, killing Hells Angel biker
Well, he should have a good time in prison.
It will be short.
Oh, come on, he can join the Outlaws, Aryan Nation, Black Gorilla Family or Mexican Mafia for protection.
Should be Black 'Guerrilla' Family. Please don't shoot me, guys!
It's OK. You're immune to being racist, unless you start talking bad about Jews. I think. Is that how it works?
I believe this is correct. And you know why, right?
It's because of the Zionist Bankers?.
He'll last maybe a week or two, unless they put him in protective custody.
Won't help. The Angels have COs on their payrolls. Somebody will get to this guy.
Damn!
Did you see the bit about dragging the bike several miles?
Exclusive: Bill Daley, unplugged
http://www.politico.com/news/s.....67043.html
All he has to do is declare himself God Emperor and he will be just fine.
So sayeth the representative of the biggest family of thieves Chicago has ever had.
Bill Daley will save us.
This whole, "Major Democratic official calls for less Congressional oversight of Obama, more power to the President" is getting downright scary. We need another Watergate soon just so Congress can regrow a goddamn pair.
So, he'll start assassinating his opponents with drone strikes?
But they were terrorists! Obama had secret evidence and everything that proves they were!
He wouldn't lie to you! Not like that lying liar who lied, Dubya!
You never loved Barack! You never tried!
*runs away sobbing*
OK I missed the discussion last night about that new Justin Timberlake movie, but I want to start my own this morning.
As far as I can tell from reading the reviews, Justin Timberlake is the villain in this movie.
Let's say somebody invented a way to give people eternal youth at age 25.
If that guy said, "OK, I'm giving all this extra time out for free to my friends. Anyone else who wants eternal youth has to pay me for it," would that be morally wrong?
I don't see how.
If anyone who didn't want eternal youth could hang out and age normally and die normally, I don't see a problem with that. No one is made any worse off than they already are by his decision. All that happens is that every person is given an entirely new opportunity for additional youth that they wouldn't otherwise have had.
And if the initial decision he makes to sell "youth" leads to a transformation of economics so that time is the new currency, I also don't see how that's a problem. If some guy invented something that made me 25 for an extra 40 or 50 years, I don't see how that isn't a huge gigantic win for me, even if other people get to be 25 for 100 or 200 years or more. I'm still hugely better off.
So if Timberlake in the course of his chase film is trying to destroy that system or somehow end it or wreck it, I don't see how he's not the villain of the film.
I'M BRINGIN AGIN BACK
He was the bad guy in Social Network...
Were there any good guys in that movie?
"The only winning strategy is not to play..."
I don't see how it does either. And it would be something that would be purchased just like any other asset. I am quite sure the Indianapolis Colts would be purchasing some for Payton Manning. I have no doubt other employers would do the same for their valuable employees and scientists. Look at it this way, if you told me you could make the world's best cancer researcher 25 for the next 100 years so that he doesn't die and he remains at the top of his game, I am say yes even if I don't get any of the youth stuff.
And lastly, living forever might turn out to be a bit overrated. A couple hundred years would be interesting. But at some point things might start to get very boring. And of course there is no guarantee there wouldn't be ghastly side effects. So some people wouldn't want to risk it.
A couple hundred? Nah, more like a couple million. There's so much in the world to experience, it would take a loooong time to do it all, especially since more new stuff would keep coming. In fact, it's probably true that you would continue to have more and more things to do. I'd definitely want to be around at least long enough to travel to another planet or meet aliens. A couple hundred is chump change.
Well, as we mentioned in yesterdays discussion about relative shares, libertarians don't seem to share what cognitive science and human experience show that most people do, an idea of fairness that exists apart from "No one is made any worse off than they already are."
The idea that a handful of people can buy eternal life while many cannot afford it offens many people's moral sense, just like the idea that a handful of people become stinking rich while most do not share in it, though the latter may not be "worse off"
If this seems so alien to you try this: Halloween is coming up soon. When a group of trick or treaters comes to your door give the first one a single candy bar and then give the second one like fifty candy bars and then proceed to give the rest only one.
When they give you that look that most normal people would feel, calmly explain that any anger is unwarranted because they are all made better off than before and noone has been made worse off.
Did the one that gets fifty bars, like, wash my windows or invent a cure for cancer? 'Cause that might impact my feelings.
You guys really have trouble with the entire concept of a thought experiment, huh?
But yeah, of course there are lots of factors, I've only ever claimed that relative shares is one of the factors that normal people consider.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Weren't you the one talking about libertarians' allegedly cognitive differences concerning fairness?
...alleged...
I'm not sure those cognitive differences should make abstract thought so challenging...
I'd say you're living proof.
I honestly wouldn't care that some dude got 50. I'd be glad I got my one.
Oh, for fuck's sake, APOG!
Damn it, CN, people with Phds who probably make more than you are trying to have an adult conversation with substance.
Seriously, what if the dude that got 50 had cancer and this was his last halloween. Wouldn't that make MNG's theoretical people feel like douches afterwards.
Oh, for fuck's sake, LIT!
Citizen, you're not what people call a "smart" man, are you?
I thought you worked on a newspaper. What, do you deliver them?
Come on CN, Its not like MNG is a troll, just Joe III.
CN has been all gay-porn butthurt over me as of late. Maybe a liberal-owned dog bit him on his route?
LIT-I've already said "of course some other factor if in play might make this different."
But more importantly here is the problem I have with posts like yours. They are like this:
MNG: Do you think it is better to have a good quaterback or a good running back? I think it is better to have a good running back because time of possession is key.
LIT: Well, what if the quarterback is the best runner in the NFL?
See the problem?
LIT-I've already said "of course some other factor if in play might make this different."
But more importantly here is the problem I have with posts like yours. They are like this:
MNG: Do you think it is better to have a good quaterback or a good running back? I think it is better to have a good running back because time of possession is key.
LIT: Well, what if the quarterback is the best runner in the NFL?
See the problem?
well at this point, you seem to concede that your premise is bullshit, because any factor at all could play in to your thought experiment that immediately derails it.
As for your quarterback questions, WTF is your problem. Your assumptions are fucked up because you're making the assumption that the quarterback is a terrible runner and expecting me to answer based on that assumption. Thus, you've assumed the premise and answer of your question.
Yes, the problem is you're a dolt.
Look, the purpose of a thought experiment is often to abstractly isolate one principle, other things being equal, to refute some absolutist claim (here that any concern about relative shares when noone is made worse off is bunk). It's not derailed at all by including other factors unless the person who made the absolutist claim is arguing those other factors are always present.
Take the football example. It's purpose is clearly to ask "other things being equal, is a good running attack better than a good passing attack." By positing a quaterback who can run better than any running back you've hardly 'derailed' things, you've jumped the track by doing an end run around the "all other things being equal" premise implied, you've sort of conceded the point that a running game is better (because you just created a running quarterback) and amazingly at the same time missed the point (because you seem to think it has something to do with just the positions named).
See?
Shorter MNG
"I assume I'm right, ergo I am"
Well I should be fair. All other things being equal with nothing other than my own "assholishness" coming into play, giving 50 pieces of candy to one kid is inordinate to giving 1 piece of candy to all the other kids. The assumption by the other kids then would be that I am an asshole for non-equal distribution, an assumption given no other reason for inequal distribution may be correct. But without any motive for giving one kid 50 peices of candy vs. the other kids, WHY AM I AN ASSHOLE?
But all things are *not* equal in the world. The thought experiment is useless since guy who designs jet engine != guy who drums at protest. One activity is worth more to some people than the other.
Art, I like you but you're either full of shit here or you are veeery different than most people in how they would feel about that. If you don't believe me run your own experiment along these lines Monday night.
Are you suggesting that if kids are upset about random, unfair distribution of Halloween candy, then necessarily wealth redistribution is the only feasible path for humanity?
Or are you suggesting that people want more of the things they want? Because the free market has that pretty well covered, to the benefit of everyone.
If I want to buy a new TV, I have to provide some product or service to someone that is equal to (or accumulates to) the value of that TV.
Under centrallized systems, I have to petition the government to convince them that I deserve to have a new TV.*
Which one of these systems is better at generating wealth (in terms of goods and services that improve quality of life)? Resources are scarce, and therefore must in some way be divided up. We already know beyond a shadow of a doubt that government is not as efficient as the free market in doing this.
Should we divide up limited resources based on who complains the loudest? Or to whomever provides the most benefit to humanity. That's the debate. It's not about "fair".
Isn't it self-evident that a system which rewards people for providing things that other people need, is good?
*additionally, the government-made TV has only 3 channels, all of which are pro-government propaganda, and may explode when you turn it on
You guys really have trouble with the entire concept of a thought experiment, huh?
Thought experiments are nothing more than mental masturbation.
I make the litte fuckers rake my lawn before I start doling out my hard won candy.
WTF, why do I need to explain anything to them. Its free fucking candy. I could have given nothing to no one and in theory they would have felt better.
You fuckers just don't understand. It's a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT, crystalline in its purity!
Because if we disagree, it means we just don't get it.
Now it is Richie Rich for a libertarian here to say that!
But even by the stupid, asinine, and immoral Rawls system you were defending the other day, this arrangement would still be just, because the worst-off person would be no worse off than they already are.
an idea of fairness that exists apart from "No one is made any worse off than they already are."
If you can't explain it and justify it using anything other than a feeling, it's crap.
Tell me HOW it's not fair.
When they give you that look that most normal people would feel, calmly explain that any anger is unwarranted because they are all made better off than before and noone has been made worse off.
By participating in the Halloween trick-or-treating ritual I am effectively making these visitors my guests, albeit for a very short length of time.
Since the people involved are children, I wouldn't expect them to understand why I would be so rude as to treat one of my guests so much better than my other guests.
But this still wouldn't be injustice. It would only be a minor rudeness.
If trick-or-treaters came to my door and I gave them each a Hershey bar, and one of them piped up and said, "This sucks, you're an asshole, you gave your kid an X-box and your wife a car and you paid the guy who painted your house 6 grand, and all you give us is a lousy Hershey bar?" I'd tell the little bastard to go fuck himself. And if somebody gave me "the look that normal people would feel", I'd tell them to fuck off too.
"If you can't explain it and justify it using anything other than a feeling, it's crap"
Now THAT'S crap. As Hume and the intuitionists like Smith have pointed out moral principle is pretty much feeling alone. When you come on here outraged by some "statist" oppression you're not just flexing your reason, you're moral sense has been outraged.
"Tell me HOW it's not fair."
Because it is a basic principle of fairness to most normal people that unequal shares without a good reason are unfair. There's no need to be more specific than that, any more than there is a need for you to be more specific when you lament the forcible taking of property as wrong because it is unjust.
"But this still wouldn't be injustice. It would only be a minor rudeness."
This is King Quibble at his best here. Tell me, is it a matter of degree here or principle that separates the two, and if the latter, what is it? Try to do this withough assuming the very libertarian axioms we may be debating.
You know what, since you've become such Chief of the Pedantic Word and Phrase Police in your literalistic phase I'm not going to even let you off that easy.
The word "rude" means "discourteous or impolite, especially in a deliberate way." TO have been rude would have been to chuck the candy in the back gruffly and told the kids to get lost. No one giving you "that look" (which I see you don't deny would be the normal response btw) for politely giving out disparate shares of candy for no reason would think you had been "rude", they would think you had done something "unfair" or unjust. This is because, for normal people who have not warped their moral sentiments to fit inside of a goofy libertarian framework, disparate shares given arbitrarily strike one as unfair.
THIS is what is behind the concern people have with inequality that seems to befuddle you guys (much, I would suggest, like all the talk of colors strikes the color blind as strange and unwarranted). Disparate shares for good reasons are usually fine for people, of course there is some difference about what a good reason is, though I submit many would not find mere possession or even voluntarily gained possession to satisfy this. What concerns people is that even in Libertopia while much disparity in wealth may be totally justified (people worked harder or longer for it) there will be cases where the disparity seems to be too arbitrary to be fair.
Matthew 20
1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.
2 And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
3 And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace,
4 And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.
5 Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.
6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?
7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.
8 So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.
9 And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.
10 But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny.
11 And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house,
12 Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
13 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?
14 Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.
15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?
16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.
Because it is a basic principle of fairness to most normal people that unequal shares without a good reason are unfair. There's no need to be more specific than that, any more than there is a need for you to be more specific when you lament the forcible taking of property as wrong because it is unjust.
You're still making assumptions about motive, which is to say you assume libertarians will give to some people rather than other because of some specific "bad" motive without naming it so that we can refute it.
Libertarians don't disagree with all forcible takings (to protect life and liberty), so no it is not always unjust. But most of the motivations for forcible takings we see (so that one person can possess anothers without compensation or permission, or to meet some bureaucratic goal of redistribution) is heinous to us.
Because it is a basic principle of fairness to most normal people that unequal shares without a good reason are unfair.
The good reasons are:
1. It's my candy.
2. The people getting it are getting it for free.
This is King Quibble at his best here.
No, it's not.
People showing up at your door and getting things for free have absolutely no basis for claiming that their share is unjust.
It would be socially awkward because it's rude. The conventions of the event - which is essentially a town-wide party for children - call for participants to show kindness to children. I also wouldn't hand out zucchini or cans of spinach. But that has nothing to do with justice.
If you can't understand the difference between justice and rudeness, I can't help you. If you have an ugly wife and bring her to my house, it wouldn't be unjust for me to tell her she's an ugly sow. But it would definitely be rude, and if I did it you'd probably look at me funny.
And despite your dispute in the 10:53 post, yeah, giving out unequal candy shares would be rude. In the context of the social expectations of the event, I would be singling out specific children for insult.
Tell me, is it a matter of degree here or principle that separates the two, and if the latter, what is it?
Well, in the example of me calling your wife an ugly sow, the difference in principle would be that she can't object on the basis of justice or fairness if my statement is true - but it would still be an unpleasant and unnecessary way to treat a guest, so it would be rude.
In the Halloween candy example, no one can object on the basis of fairness because everyone is getting free candy they didn't have before. They can object on the basis of rudeness because they brought their kid to my house expecting that I was participating in a festival of good will, and once they got to my house I provided them with a deliberate insult that was unpleasant and unnecessary.
they would think you had done something "unfair" or unjust
Then they would be douchebags.
When you come on here outraged by some "statist" oppression you're not just flexing your reason, you're moral sense has been outraged.
The moral intuitioninsts are wrong.
I feel "feeling of deprivation" when someone denies me a political right, AND when supermodels don't come to my house to give me head.
My reason tells me that in one context the feeling is appropriate and a basis for action and in the other it's not.
If a tyrant imposed his rule on the United States, my reason would tell me that he had no basis for his presumption in elevating himself to such a position, and it would be just to kill him for that presumption, and for the tangible impact of his actions on myself and others. My emotions would only make me enjoy killing him. There's a difference.
I understand that some people are bothered by things like that. The point is that it doesn't matter and they have no good reason to feel that way. People would be happier if they didn't think that way and just appreciated what they do have rather than worrying about what others have.
I have a few friends who are quite rich. From time to time I think that it would really be cool if one of them decided to give me a million dollars. But not because I think it would be more fair if we had closer to the same wealth, but because if I had a million dollars I could quit my job and do what I want to without the stress of financial uncertainty.
It's yet another "rich peepul r bad mkay" movie.
Seems like the supply is artificially controlled through violence, which does make it much harsher. But it seems more like a criticism of artificial scarcity of the sort Hollywood bribes the government into enforcing, rather than natural scarcity.
"With less than a month to go before the deadline to produce a debt deal, it appears that the Congressional deficit-reduction committee is nowhere close to a deal."
Reason commenters are shocked.
Shocked...SHOCKED...I tells ya
"Ritual whiplash."
A sure sign of intelligence
Ron Paul Does Not Rule Out A Third-Party Run
From his appearance on Fox News, it's mostly a tease, but intriguing nonetheless. He was reported as not having ruled out a third party run in 2008 as well, and that came to nothing.
Dollars to doughnuts he will NEVER run third party again.
You never know. But I am not sure what it would buy him. Maybe he figures he could fuck the Republicans and then that would scare them into nominating his son in 2016. But
Well it's now or never. Even his most ardent supporters have got to realize running for president in your 80s is a non-starter.
Unless the GOP implodes due to infighting during his first term in office and he does so for his second term.
Joe M,
Wasn't he on the ballot in two or three states at least? I seem to remember that.
I believe he was available as a write-in candidate in a few places. I remember Louisiana in particular.
I think a Paul/Johnson indie ticket would be awesome. Sorry, I'm not voting for Obama or Romney anyway. I'd hope most fans of those two wouldn't either. If the GOP nominates Romney, which is probably about 80% likely, they don't deserve to win. At least we might have divided government if the Republicans can take both houses of Congress. Maybe the best possible outcome, and Paul/Johnson would not be a straight spoiler anyway, if they pull votes from Obama's Left.
Woman, 60, stabs boyfriend for cheating at Monopoly.
I would stab that damn Uncle Pennybags. He claims to be a libertarian but has neither top hat nor monocle. What kind of plutocrat does that, I ask you?
When cops arrived at Chavez's building, she was sitting under the porch "covered with suspected blood." Asked if the blood was Smith's, she answered, "Yes, I fucked him up."
If Smith was the banker, I say "Right on, Chavez."
well it is Monopoly.
In our house, we don't play certain games like Stratego or Chess, because tempers have been known to flare.
Three words: Settler of Cataan. That game has the power to end lives, I tells ya
Risk. Risk destroys friendships and furniture.
Preach it. Children learn alot about betrayal and rent seeking from that one little game.
Preach it. Children learn alot about betrayal and rent seeking from that one little game.
Not to mention monopolization of a limited, yet productive resource (Australia region breakout strategy, I'm looking at you)
That's why I always take out the australasian groups first, or atleast deny them papua new guina.
Pinochle is the cursing game.
Been into Dominion lately, i like its ability to change. Settlers is awesome and violent...usually because it takes 2 fucking hours. Whoever put 30 minuites on that box was high on bath salts.
Dominion is fun because unlike Settlers your asshole friend doesn't take 20 minutes to place his goddamn city.
^^^^^THIS
Ticket to Ride is basically the Longest Road portion of settlers...i klind of like it since I am always compelled to get longest road.
argh!, Settlers is easy to win, if you get the good city locations. Even when I do, the dice never seem to roll the common numbers.
Pictionary is the big one in our house. You can't have angry people wielding sharp pencils.
Pictionary is also the game that someone will think is a fun idea for couples night, and by the end every single romantic relationship in that room is on the verge of a breakup.
My family can turn any board game into an undeclared war. Yep, Pictionary and Scrabble were both top contenders. Family games, HAH.
It comes from having an entire family of Type A personalities. Except for my stepmom, and she doesn't play anymore, the coward.
Monopoly was a euphemism for sex in my peer group when I was a teenager. My girlfriend and I played Monopoly all the time.
The 8 Reasons Kids back in the day had cooler toys than you.
Yes, even those who had lawn darts. Dude, they used to sell toys that spit out fire, because fuck it, Junior has to learn about internal combustion sometime.
man, those are awesome. In my 1970s childhood, we only had model rockets, flour-powered flamethrowers, M80s, gasoline, wristrockets, and BB guns. Oh an my best friend had a great chemical set where we would mix up flammable powders.
I used to shoot real guns when i was ten. Alone. I miss those days.
Damn - sounds like my childhood. We also had a friend whose dad liked to load his own ammo, so we would steal his cans of gunpowder and make pipe bombs and blow shit up in the woods.
Two words.
Model. Rockets!
My brother and I revisited model rockets maybe six years ago. Those things go way up the power ladder--far past what kids usually mess around with.
We had one rocket--a two-stager--that went nearly 3,000 feet up. And that's just a relatively low-power rocket.
Oh yeah, my brother and I had a blast with our dad back in the day with those. We went through maybe a dozen altogether, half of which were those little "Mosquito" rockets that went so high and far and were so tiny, you launched them once and never found em.
Absolutely. My friends and I used to shoot the rocket engines (taped to 12" dowels) at each other through wrapping paper cardboard tubes. Good times.
I loved my Gilbert chemistry set.
You could blow up a city with one of those.
I want all of those. Especially the train, but ESPECIALLY the atomic energy lab.
That's why we made greater strides in the hard sciences back in the day. Because kids were operating unlicensed nuclear reactors in their basements.
How else do you think the Ghostbusters would have figured out the underlying technology of their ghost containment field?
Okay, it's official: Steigerwald/Gillespie 2012!
I like that I'm apparently the president on that ticket. But nominate my Dad instead. He's old enough and all.
Holy crap you are not even 35...
I may be the youngest of all on the magazine side, but do you realize that at least half of us aren't old enough to president?
AHHHHH!!!!!!!!
CALM DOWN! YOU WERE PROBABLY TOO YOUNG TO BE PRESIDENT AT SOME POINT!
The other half are too old. Poor Prolib.
I don't think she's even 25.
Next year, then all my car rental dreams come true.
I had a robot building kit that came with liquid plastic and heat sink molds for you to custom design the shapes you put the gears in.
I had a few of those Powermite power tools. And they were awesome.
Tea Party to Mayor: Make 'Occupy Richmond' Pay Up
http://washington.cbslocal.com.....nd-pay-up/
The only answer to this, ultimately, is to decide that if there's no law for them, there's no law for you.
That's a big step, though, so I understand why people don't do it.
This is how the Nazis and the Communists operated. They rigorously applied the law to opponents and totally ignored it themselves. And then called their opponents lawless for not obeying the laws they themselves were ignoring.
This is how the [Capitalists and. Nazis and the Communists operated. They rigorously applied the law to opponents and totally ignored it themselves. And then called their opponents lawless for not obeying the laws they themselves were ignoring.
An Example Of What Should Lead To Handcuffs
The Market Ticker ? - Commentary on The Capital Markets
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-.....st=2758910
Annoying troll is well annoying.
Still the truth.
No its not. It is just annoying rambling.
He's a rambling, gamboling man.
1. I was glad to see that the small-ish Occupy presence in my city had left Wednesday.
2. Also the park they were in has "caution" tape around the light posts so you can't stand in it. It does have a retaining wall (about 18 inches) around parts of it, so maybe they are afraid of people falling. Or maybe they wanted to make sure no one used the park.
3. The "we are the 99%" phrase bugs me, because I am being "herded" into being one of them, even though I am not really included in their way of thinking or doing things. I did not want to be co-opted into their "movement."
Agree with this. I am in the so-called 99%, and I do not subscribe to the OWS newsletter. I wish they'd stop implying they speak for the group.
Well, they are the 99 percent.
Not if they're homeless.
That's an interesting angle I had not thought of before.
They should just make the city cough up money for violating their civil rights.
I don't know if any Reasonid CFB fans have been following conference realignment, but this week things have gone full retard.
Basically, Big 12 gives WVU a verbal acceptance, but the news leaks out early. Louisville alum Mitch McConnell doesn't want his alma mater left behind, so he starts calling presidents, governors, big boosters like T. Boone Pickens to change their votes and back Louisville. Suddenly, WVU no longer has an offer. So naturally, both US Senators from WV decide to get involved. Now we've got Joe Manchin calling for a Senate investigation if WVU doesn't end up in the Big 12.
These are the people running the country! We are so fucked.
Well it is not like their is a war or a depression on or anything. A Senator has to do something with his time.
Honestly, at this point, I want the NCAA to step in, eliminate the traditional named conferences, and just stick teams into conferences by geographical location. Don't like it? Tough shit, you brought it on yourselves by being assholes.
They can't do that. If they did, the top 60 or so football schools would just leave the NCAA and form their own organization taking those billion dollar TV contracts with them.
Ugh. You're right, but it just makes no damn sense for, say, WVU to be in the Big 12. Or for us to have the Big 10 become the Big 16. And so on.
Also, kind of tired of schools, whose job it is to be, ya know, schools, to devote so much bullshit to athletics. Just make competent minor leagues for basketball and football and be done with this shit already.
Honestly, at this point, I want the NCAA to step in, eliminate the traditional named conferences, and just stick teams into conferences by geographical location.
Better yet, just eliminate the conference system altogether and let each school schedule who they want to on a year to year basis.
This shit is so mind-numblingly idiotic. College is for fucking learning, not a place to watch minor sports.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2nQP1ohLZQ
Eric Cartman explains how the NCAA is basically slavery.
The whole thing has been verging on full retard for months. I'm not surprised something finally kicked it over the edge.
I went to Texas and the wife is a Houston alum for both degrees. Somebody asked me last night if Houston would be better off in the Big 12. That's like joining the Southwest Conference in '95. The whole mess is set to implode, and this just makes it funnier.
I thought that too for while. Now I think it is going to stay together. No one but the Big 12 is going to put up with Texas' shit. And Texas can't go independent. And Oklahoma can't leave the conference Texas is in without killing its recruiting. I think the force of that and picking up other schools will keep it together.
The irony of the whole thing is if the Southwest Conference hadn't cheated so much in the 1980s and gotten SMU the death penalty and run Arkansas out of the conference, the old SWC would be a viable BCS conference right now. They didn't have to kill the SWC.
Well, Oklahoma and OK State are a package deal, apparently. And nobody wants both teams. You don't get invited to parties when you have to bring your little brother.
Texas, with the Longhorn Network, has absolutely killed the chances of another conference taking them. So it's either stay Big 12 or go independent. If any school can pull off going independent, it's Texas. But I think we'd take a helluva hit for doing so.
Well considering the Oklahoma State has pounded Texas the last two years in Norman and is currently number three in the BCS, I would be careful who you call a little brother.
OSU has a half a billion dollars worth of facilities and maybe the best coach in the country not named Nick Sabin. They are going to be good for a very long while I think. And yes, they are a package deal with Oklahoma. And the PAC 10 was happy to take them both. But they wanted Texas. And Texas couldn't bring its network and that killed the deal.
And I think Texas would be SOL as an independent. The other Texas schools would kill it in recruiting. And it would have to join some lousy conference for its other sports, so its baseball and basketball programs would probably suffer greatly.
Make that Austin, not Norman.
Fuck UofH.
- Rice Alum
http://media.avclub.com/images.....le_q85.jpg
Bitter about the 73-34 game last night? Although UH Fan needs to STFU already about how great the Coogs are and how they belong in a BCS bowl. Pretty much every team below them in the top 25 would beat the living shit out of UH, considering the Cougars don't play defense.
I like the idea of John's 60-team super league for college football. With playoffs at the end. Let everyone else get back to the business of educating students, instead of being football and basketball facilities with a few ancillary classrooms.
Oh, so I just finished the Kindle version of Snuff by Terry Pratchett. Dude has still got it. And for those of you wondering, the old boy has still got it, and is doing as well as one could expect for someone with early onset Alzheimer's.
AND... now I'm sad. Damn it, Terry Pratchett, I am gonna miss you when your gone. Luckily, Ray Bradbury is still not dead yet, somehow, but he is like 90... so, still sad.
Of all the many people I've interviewed over the years, Ray Bradbury is still the one I look back on with most fondness. (Of course, most of those interviewees were scumbag politicians. But, for some reason, I really liked George McGovern, too. But that was well after he could do any real damage.)
Dude, story. I really wanna hear about this.
Boy, 14, dies following double lung transplant after smoking synthetic marijuana out of PEZ candy dispenser
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....juana.html
This article is just a horrible jumble. Yeah, it's horribly tragic that he died, but the piece never makes it clear that it was probably the burning plastic that ruined his lungs, not the fake pot. Also, it conflates that in with a bunch of other crap about the fake speed "body salts" business. A very sad story, but the hyperventilating coverage helps nothing.
Yes...and?...
No one should click on this link. The video attached is very disturbing. It is NSFW.
The imagery haunts me. I've been thinking about it for days, trying to decide if I should post it.
Blocked for me, luckily. Dig deep, SF, and try to describe what you saw. Show us on the doll where the video touched you.
I'll think about it for days, trying to decide if I should click it.
You're awful for that. God why do I click?
Thanks to reasonable, it previews in chrome.
Several spit-takes later...
That is the funniest and most disturbing music video ever.
You owe me new keyboard. Logitech and coffee don't get along.
You too? I've been watching that constantly for two days now. My brain hurts.
After the Britney link that sarcasmo posted there's no effin' way I'm clicking this one.
You know you want to. I highly recommend it.
I can't. I'm still catatonic, drooling into a cup and babbling incoherently after seeing Fatney in HD.
Big, Bad, Wolf
I don't click on anyone's links around here, unless there's some indication that the destination is Puppy Bowl.
Puppy Bowl is the best! Well, except for Lingerie Bowl, which leads my close friends and I to overuse, "We'll have to bring in the Fridge" for any situation where overwhelming force is required.
Requires an account to login. Too bad Bug Me Not doesn't work anymore.
No login link
"Some changes are more controversial. The line that said Jesus died on the cross "for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven" will change to "for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.""
I am no longer Christian but I once was and understand why this is controversial - from the perspective of Christians it SHOULD be. One of the things I do appreciate about Christianity is the universalistic nature of it. One of the most integral parts of the faith is the idea that he died for all mankind to go from "for all" to "for many" changes that concept significantly. Who is left out?
Jesus died for you, and for most others, but not for the gays.
I guess. Catholic Mass is a really weird thing to me. (I was raised without religion.)
I was thinking it was more like Jesus died for the sins of everyone regardless of religious domination, but now he only died for the Christians.
Kill the 33 year old virgin already! Skygod demands it!
He died for anyone, but they have to accept the gift. If you reject his gift, then he didn't die for you. It just means Christianity is not universalism.
Did you know Hell isn't in the Bible? At least honest translations don't have it, like Young's Literal Translation.
Hell is the Norse goddess of the underworld, inserted into many versions to scare the shit out of gullible European readers.
Wait, are you suggesting mythologies cross-pollinate? Nooooooooo...
That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/40/5.html
It doesn't mention fallen angels and all of the fun stuff from Milton. You are confused.
We need the Time Cube guy to weigh in on this important theological issue.
Who is left out?
Da joooooooos
If there is a heaven, they'll have to segregate the whole thing, because there will be so many pissed off that "so and so" got in.
It's my understanding of Catholicism that Jesus died for the sins of Catholics, not other Christians.
If you are aware of the Catholic Church, and have rejected it, you have rejected God's grace. I don't know if any other Protestant faiths have that same clause.
Are there any learned Catholics on here that can clear this up for me?
I'm not learned, but one would assume that Mr. Christ was a practical person and those who accepted his salvation would be good regardless of the specifics of accepting the trinity or not (the holy ghost is such an amorphous concept that I imagine he'd probably give it a pass) and for those that practice the "ignorant religions", I think they get a trip to purgatory and the reeducation camps therein before they burn if I remember some vague passages correctly.
As for the jooooos, well, not sure on his grudge holding.
I kid though. I don't buy any of it anymore and will drink and whore my way because hell seems like to energy intensive an operation to operate forever (conservation of energy and all that).
Feminist deal breaker: Man with low self esteem(MWLSE)
This shit is just too rich:
A fucking feminists, the people who need trigger warning when you talk about weight loss or else they'll start binging and purging is bitching about someone else's low self esteem? Jesus H, people.
Sounds like the guy is damned if does, damned if he doesn't with regard to having self-esteem. Since men can only have esteem through the power of the Male Gaze.
The old double-bind. Preferred tool of psychlogical/emotional abusers.
Wanna bet this woman ends up with shriveled eggs, three cats, and a ficas tree in her UWS apartment? And will COMPLAIN about it?
at least I have my blog!
And I don't fart in a jar.
Wanna bet this woman ends up with shriveled eggs, three cats, and a ficas tree in her UWS apartment? And will COMPLAIN about it?
I swear this is going to happen to one of my Facebook friends, an extremely strident Type A liberal lawyer with a fetish for drag queens. Her last relationship with some goofy, estrogen-afflicted beta ended sometime after she posted that she and this guy argued like a couple of old, gay men.
At the time, I was busy running a major feminist website
Gee, what could be better for his low self esteem than dating her?
That was written by one of those feministing 'tards, I think.
The editor in chief, in fact. Then again, as I point out downthread, feminists (okay, can we get a new word? I feel bad to insult feminists when both Cathy Young and Magnu-Ward have identified as feminists... but they aren't the stupid, ungodly leftist kind. Given that neither mucks it up here in comments... Matt Welch? Tim? Lucy? Some editor resolve this one for us) seem adverse to proper, real English words, so I don't know how one "edits" them.
The lack of self-awareness displayed by the left-wing feminist never ceases to amaze. These mewling betas are EXACTLY the type of men they said they wanted, yet she's complaining that she can't find a man with actual balls.
She needs the big bad wolf
Why American Youth doesn't fight back against "the Man", man.
I wish this were satire, but it is, instead, full on retard. The reasons, for those to lazy, are (from 1 to 8):
1.Student Loan Debt.
2.Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance
3.Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Democracy
4."No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top." Okay... I have to quote this one
Back to the list:
5.Shaming Young People Who Take Education?But Not Their Schooling?Seriously.
6.The Normalization of Surveillance.
7.Television.
8.Fundamentalist Religion and Fundamentalist Consumerism.
Now, not all of these are fundamentally wrong. Our school system isn't big into free thinkers. But this list has so many errors. Want to know what really drove the "Education over Schooling" thing? Rule by experts from places like Harvard who had the right letters after their names. Like, I dunno, the current occupant of the White House and most of his top staff.
The imagery haunts me. I've been thinking about it for days, trying to decide if I should post it.
"Something something... briar patch... "Don't go in there!"
I had internalized the belief that strong women scare men, and I was compensating for my big, bad success by doling out chance after chance after chance.
In some ways I'm pretty traditional, and am very comfortable with traditional gender roles. If she's recognized she's "internalized" some tradition, she needs to just break it if that's what she wants. Or, if she's comfortable with her empowered-woman status, she should just tell the guy that she'll be the breadwinner and he can stay home and do the domestic stuff. If that hurts a guy's self esteem, then find another guy who won't be hurt by it and shut up.
On a side note, the backlash of the MRA community is so delicious to watch.
I know it is a small sample. But I have known three or four couples who tried the whole woman work guy do the Mr. Mom thing and every single one of them ended up divorced within five years.
I think biology makes that pretty hard to pull off. In the end, women want to stay home with their kids and end up resenting the man for being able to do it.
You cannot outwit genetics. The more I learn about genetics and biology, the more I am convinced that, aside from a few outliers on each side, we are wired from the start to exhibit not only physicial but behavioral characteristics specific to our gender. Trying to swim against the tide of biology is futile and leads to unhappiness.
This is not an argument for sending women back to the kitchen. It's more about recognizing that you have strengths that you need to play to, and more often than not those strengths are determined by our biology.
I've found I feel rather more "liberated" by staying home with the kids and following my instincts than by having a career where I have to compete socially and professionally with other women who are just a bunch of bitchy social strategists looking to garner attention from each other and favor from bosses. I've never had a female boss I could stomach working with, and the stress I experienced in any job was never worth the pay in the long run.
I'm far more comfortable and "free" running the household and caring for my lovelies, and being the partner my hard-working husband needs and deserves; he gives me the gift of not working and I give him a well run house. If some feminists see that as a step backwards, then EFFF THEM.
After my son was born, I did the Mr. Mom thing for the first six months. It was rough exactly because I was a male. It wasn't like I could go hang out with other mothers for play dates, because of the possible sex/cheating angle. Heck, I also felt weird even going to the library or the mall. Being the only father in a sea of mothers was weird. So I mostly stayed at home with my son, slowly going stir-crazy. It was a relief when I got my current job.
Ten years on and I'm more willing to give it another try. My hobbies and little side business(s) are now more than enough to keep me busy.
I think men can do it and be happy. It is the women who get jealous and resentful. The fact is that the feminists sold women a bill of goods. Staying at home is great and work generally sucks.
My parents did that and it worked great. But my dad still worked (taking us along when he had to work out of the house) and my mom was a teacher, so she still got plenty of time to be at home.
On the other hand, I do have some friends who are getting divorced after having that sort of arrangement for a while. So maybe my family is just weird.
Why the Youth in America does not revolt.
I'd post the complete list, but reason is being a bitch, so I'll just take one excerpt.
Oh, fine, make it two:
I will go on to say that certain points on the list, like public education sucks and teaches compliance, are necessarily wrong, but the proposed solutions and ideas for change typically are.
Whatever. They don't revolt because they are not oppressed. Start treating them like say people in Syria are treated and I bet they would get real radical real quick.
I doubt it. The OWS crowd is a bunch of pussies.
They wouldn't be the ones revolting. There is a lot of younger kids who are not. They just don't do stupid shit like the OWS crowd, so you don't hear about them.
The OWS crowd would be training at the secret police academy and snitching on their families.
"When we get piled up in great cities we will become as corrupt as Europe." ~Thomas Jefferson
Having spent a good part of my life around farms, I can tell you they are not what Jefferson cracked them up to be.
You didn't have people to do all the work for you, leaving you to concentrate on your many hobbies.
You are right about the false image of rural life. But I do think he had a point. It is not random chance that big cities tend to be pretty well dominated by busy-body liberal statists.
Farming is back-breaking, life-shortening, dangerous work. No coincidence that people prefer almost any other type of employment.
I know that this is true, but being around modern farm equipment (and seeing the farmers come in to my bank with million dollar deposits) kind of dulled me to the fact.
Then this morning, I got word that one of the guys on the banks board of directors lost his hand in a farm accident yesterday, and it's really driving the point home.
The few (fruit) farmers that I met are all land-rich but cash poor.
The OWS crowd would be training at the secret police academy and snitching on their families.
Probably true, which implies a corollary that the OWS protesters general failure in life is not an indictment of our system but rather proof that it works.
Oh, come on! I know it got a bit wall-of-text-y there, but no one is going to take a swing at the idea that it's all because of TV that we aren't banding together to resist authority? Or that they equate the use of a laptop, which is interactive and allows us glibertarians to band together and bitch about shit, to TV?
THE MAN IN THE 600 DOLLAR BANANA SUIT? COME ON!
The idea that youth would revolt if not for TV is pretty damn stupid. But I do agree that people (kids in particular) watch too much TV and that watching movies or TV shows on your computer is the same thing.
But I don't have kids and I don't want to tell anyone else what to do, so I guess it's really none of my business. But if I did have kids, I wouldn't let them spend 8 hours a day staring at screens. I didn't even use the Internet until I was in college and I am plenty comfortable with technology. Go the fuck outside. Get off my lawn!
A nice editorial from Ron Paul in USA Today (!) about the media being a bunch of bitches, basically.
It's a fair cop.
In my budget, Social Security, Medicare, ? and yes, student loans ? are not cut in any way for those currently receiving such services or for those who will be in the near future.
The guy who wrote that is obviously a sellout! That's why we need Ron Paul!
I know right. What a flip-flopper.
Some important news from the Houston Chronicle:
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/1.....feds-warn/
Blasts at oil and gas tanks killing children, feds warn
Intrigued, I read on to discover that 40 of our children have been killed in 23 incidents since 1983 (alternative headling: Oil and Gas tanks slaughtering children at 2 to 1 clip). Clearly this is an alarming number of deaths. What is the cause of these accidents? Well almost all of them are caused by children smoking on the tanks (alternative headline: Oil and Gas tanks kill 2 tards with 1 fag). But don't worry, there has been A call for swift steps and the fed are on the case. Apparently we need safer tank design and more regulation. Our fearless leader of the Chemical Safety Board points out that "these sites are dangerous and the people who live and work in these communities should be properly protected." I guess we need a law: "those tanks also are exempt from security requirements in the Clean Water Act and risk-management mandates in the Clean Air Act." Those evil oil and gas tanks are skirting the regulations!
This was on the front page, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
I am sorry, but if you are old enough to be trespassing and smoking, you are not a child.
John, how are the reporters at the chronicle going sensationalize a non-story without making us think of the children?
40 people in 28 years. Obviously an epidemic.
Why are we fighting natural selection so much?
cause if we didnt congress wouldnt exist.
In the April 26, 2010, New London incident, an exploding tank flew 48 feet after one of the two victims lit a cigarette while climbing a stairway on the site, where an isolated road ended in a forest clearing.
The site, which was in operation for at least 80 years, had three interconnected 1,000-barrel capacity tanks at the time of the accident. The tank that exploded had not stored hydrocarbons for at least a year and half before the incident. A graffiti-covered sign posted at the site warned against smoking, matches or open flames.
I suppose in order to encourage maximum employment, we should hire a unionized security guard at every installation to watch for morons.
Fear forces students and teachers to constantly focus on the demands of test creators; it crushes curiosity, critical thinking, questioning authority, and challenging and resisting illegitimate authority.
Wait- we're talking about UNION teachers, right?
RWA = RIGHT WING AUTHORITARIANS
Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Rather, hon,
Nobody here wants to have sex with you. Getting angry and insulting them will not improve the situation.
How about if I let one fly?
Apropos of nothing, except that it makes me very, very happy (and perhaps of "ritual whiplash"): I just got my reading copy of Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery and will be reviewing it for my fishwrap. (Our regular freelance reviewer gave up on it.)
I hope it's more Foucault's Pendulum than it is Baudolino.
Oh, oh, oh! I almost forgot!
I'll be reading it on a beach near Apalachicola, where I'll also be attending the annual Oyster Festival -- on the company dime of course.
Bwahahahahah!
When is that? I should get myself to Apalach for that. Best oysters in the US.
Week from today, I believe. Look for an awesome bald guy in an Aloha shirt and use the password -- The Jacket sent me.
This sounds like I how I tell people to find me at the RenFest: look for the drunk in the kilt.
A bald guy in an Aloha shirt? Yeah, there won't be any of those besides you, will there?
I don't know. Is Apalachicola a hotbed of Aloha-wear? I haven't been there, but in Destin I didn't see much.
True, though. I usually stand out more in places like Ft. Wayne and Harrisburg. (I've found that dressing like a clown -- a carefree clown -- can be very liberating.)
(Our regular freelance reviewer gave up on it.)
"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Where the bitches be at in the OWS protests.
Hey, let's play "Spot the fake feminist word" in two paragraphs:
Feminists, I will say this once: USE REAL GODDAMN WORDS!!!
Shakespeare, Hemmingway, Vonnegut, and yes, even Austen, are rolling in their graves right now.
I got that bitch some made-up words. Bitches love made-up words.
Thus the necessity for seemingly complicated word structure, to avoid patriarchal implications.
The Big bad wolf?
Two abortion clinic employees plead guilty to murder
(Reuters) - Two employees of a Philadelphia abortion clinic where live, viable babies were allegedly killed and a patient died after being given on overdose of painkillers pleaded guilty on Thursday to murder.
Guilty pleas to third-degree murder were entered by Adrienne Moton, 34, and Sherry West, 52, who both worked for Dr. Kermit Gosnell at what prosecutors have described as a decrepit and unsanitary clinic known as Women's Medical Society in West Philadelphia.
Due to a court-issued gag order, attorneys declined to comment on reports that no plea agreement was reached in the case.
Sentencing was set for December 2 by Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner. The maximum penalty for third-degree murder is 40 years in prison.
Seven more defendants face charges in the case, including Gosnell, who a grand jury in January said, "killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy -- and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors."
The grand jury said that a clinic co-worker of Moton's testified that a woman gave birth to a large baby at the clinic, delivering the child into a toilet. The jurors identified the newborn as "Baby D."
The jurors said the co-worker told them that the baby was moving and looked like it was swimming.
"Moton reached into the toilet, got the baby out and cut its neck," the grand jury said in its report.
http://www.reuters.com/article.....GK20111027
"Moton reached into the toilet, got the baby out and cut its neck,"
That takes a really special kind of person, doesn't it.
"Person" is a stretch. I prefer to use the term "stain on humanity."
Any human that does that does not deserve to live one moment longer.
Why did you have to post that? I really shouldn't be weeping at work.
terribly sad. I couldn't even read a few sentences.
laws working for you now?
The 1989 Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act upheld by the Supreme Court was one of the first comprehensive sets of abortion restrictions in the country...
Got consequences, right wing nuts?
And those laws are responsible for this how?
Trololololololololol
In West Philadelphia,
Born and Raised.
Abortion isn't murder.
Perform one and then get back to me.
What was described in the article didn't sound like abortions. They sounded like deliveries of living viable babies from full of near full term pregnancies.
Babies which were then killed.
The problem is that there is no regulation of the abortion industry, because the pro-choice zealots say it would be too burdensome. If it were regulated, shit like this would be discovered before some woman has to die.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
"Gee, Spoonman., you weren't planning on eating lunch today, were you?"
My wife's pretty adamantly pro-choice, but she cried when she read that story.
WARNING: KRUGMAN CONTENT AHEAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10.....taken.html
It truly takes an extra special kind of total asshole to quote oneself in one's own article.
Best line in the San Diego article:
"Protesters have vowed to remain in the downtown area until their demands are met or at least sincerely considered. Those demands include ending joblessness, poverty and political corruption."
http://www.10news.com/news/29612019/detail.html
Then they'll be there 'til the cows come home. And unlike with their brethren in New York, winter isn't anywhere in sight.
Winter lasts about two weeks in San Diego, and it's often milder than spring in New York.
I think CA is the only hope to see these Occupy protests continue, but in a few months they just may be mistaken for CA's large homeless population
End political corruption in San Diego?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Did anyone else see the rash of "Hillary would kill all the Republicans in the general election" polls this morning? If these polls continue and Obama's numbers keep going down, how long before Hillary and Bill shank Obama? Seriously, what is the point of taking this polls if not to turn the Dems against Obama?
The story I saw was from Time and Ron Paul was not even mentioned once. They probably did not even bother to ask a Hillary vs. Dr. Paul question.
The blackout of Ron Paul continues ...
That's so ridiculous. She's not been impressive as SoS. Over half the country is fucking tired of the Clintons. She has some serious dirt on her that would come out again in the general. And, of course, she's part of the administration that's being blamed for the economic trouble. Not to mention the resentment a significant percentage of the party would have over the ditching of Obama.
Now as a Republican nominee--well, that's a different story.
I think people are stupid enough to believe electing her would be the same as electing Bill. It would be an appeal to return to the 1990s. The problem is that I think it would destroy the Dems in Congress because people would ticket split and try to really return to the 90s. But the Dems in the Senate are probably dead anyway and the ones in the House don't count now.
I wouldn't under estimate her. It would all depend on how gently Obama went into that good night. If Obama put up a fight, God knows the kind of dirt he has on her. Someone mentioned yesterday that all of the people involved with Fast and Furious are Clinton people not Chicago people. And Hillary has always been a big supporter of the police state. I wonder if maybe Obama might try to pin Fast and Furious on her.
Just as long as they destroy each other, I would be happy.
+1
BANDIT PREDICTION (remember, they are almost always wrong): Obama MUST resign, no way Hill' gets anywhere in a primary. If Obama resigns there is no other choice but Hill'. Dems would rally but still lose the election.
I can't imagine a set of circumstances where he resigns. Can you?
If he had any sense of shame, maybe.
Whatever they might be, they immediately crash headlong into The Ego and fall by the wayside.
He does have a sense of sham, however.
please note I am not saying he will resign just that it would be required for hill to movfe forward.
Not much of a prediction then, is it?
That would be one hell of a popcorn movie.
If Hillary doesn't stop eating all those cheesburgers, she is going to end up being the size of Ted Kennedy.
I'm still hoping that she'll enter the Republican primary.
Hillary would kill all the Republicans
ELIMINATIONIST. RHETORIC.
Ron Paul Should Run 3rd Party
Sure it would be fun. But how would that do anything but re-elect Obama. If liberals cared about civil rights or anything except winning, Paul would have a chance. But they don't. So, Obama is getting a solid 40% in any election. That leaves at most 60% for Paul and Romney to fight over. Paul would have to get at least two thirds of that to win. Forget it, he wouldn't. There are too many people who would just mindlessly vote Republican for that to happen.
I mostly agree, but there are two other things to consider:
1) Democrat voter enthusiasm is very low, and crappy turnout could limit Obama's total, no matter what the polls say. We already know Republicans always outperform the polls.
2) A Paul candidacy could get a lot of first time voters to go to the polls. A lot. So it's a case of the pie getting bigger, instead of fighting of the smaller pie.
I will believe in those first time voters when I see them. And there are still a solid 25% or so of the electorate who would refuse to vote for Paul on foreign policy and national security grounds. And another five or ten who would vote against him out of spite for going third party. The brand of a major party alone gets even a horrible candidate like Romney 35%. That totally screws Paul and re-elects Obama.
Pure fantasy.
Paul running third party is Obama's dream scenario.
I think Paul is just hedging in order to get leverage over the platform. If he gives up the threat of a third party run, he has no leverage. If he keeps it, he can get some real concessions on the platform.
Yeah, that's another big part of why I don't think he'd run third party. He's lose the growing influence he has on GOP policy. He's gotten a little traction on foreign policy, but a hell of a lot more on economic policy, or rhetoric more precisely. I read somewhere that the Dems have some super conspiracy to try to piss him off enough to run third party to split the conservative vote.
I'd like to see Paul be head of the Tea Party Coalition or something to start putting some serious backing to the coalition of liberty minded republicans in the house and senate. He'd be a great godfather figure to an organization like that and seriously challenge the RNC (basically create an interrepublican splinter party).
He's retiring. What does he care about the Republican Party's future if they are unwilling to accept reality?
Judging from past experience, Obama winning with a Republican House and Senate would be a better outcome than Romney winning with a Republican House and Senate. I have no desire for single-party rule for either establishment party. Thus if Ron Paul messes up the GOP's presidential chances, who cares as long as they win the Senate and keep the House?
You want Obama to be choosing Scalia's and Kennedy's replacements on SCOTUS?
A hard left majority on SCOTUS would roll back all the progress on gun rights and political speech we've seen, pretty much immediately.
No, Paul should note to the party leadership that Republicans aren't enthusiastic about most of the candidates right now, and hang the possibility of a split conservative vote over their heads so that they get behind him. Once they do that, the media won't have any choice.
"Imagine a general-election debate between Obama, Romney and Ron Paul!"
Dear Brent Budowsky,
You are employed as a professional writer at the Hill. Please consult either your Style Manual or a copy of Strunk % White regarding the difference between "between" and "among".
Thank you,
A concerned reader.
STRUNK&WHITE; FAIL!
Shit happens when you start laying off copy editrs.
Occupy Wall Street protesters tired of the moochers.
Thanks, I didn't see this the other 10 times it was posted this week.
It's official. America is the new Rome.
Damnit, why couldn't we be byzantium!!!
Rome didn't become Byzantium in a day.
Reason was mentioned here in John Bussey's WSJ article today: http://online.wsj.com/article/.....TopStories
Nobody mentioned the amazing game last night? Sucks that my Rangers lost though. Hopefully tonight they'll get it done.
Interessant ,das h?tte ich so nicht erwartet , 😉
thanks