padren

From what I can gather it sounds like he was expected to have a moral obligation to tow the party line. Like, how if you are a PR rep for a company, you are expected to not make statements that embarrass the company. I think that's it, either that or since the government is trying to protect us from drugs by scaring us about them, he hurt us by telling everyone that scientifically, they aren't as scary as some other substances.

I think you are making a mistake in your analysis: you see a person as having "energy" when alive and see how all their potential disappears when they die, and you ask "where does it go?" It's no different than a machine - take a giant ocean liner for instance. It's powerful, with giant roaring engines and is exceptionally impressive. It has the potential to circle the world. It hits one lousy ice burg, and it vanishes from sight, all the noise and heat and activity is silenced by one little rip in the hull. Where does that energy go? Quite simply, it's our subjective view that causes the conundrum - we place value on the ship in working condition, once it's torn up, we place less value on it, as it now longer has the potential to do the great things we want to see it do. It's the same thing with humans, and it's easy to identify powerful yet abstract patterns, and project tangible values within our mental models of how the world works. It helps us understand money to think of it as tangible when it's just ones and zeros on a digital storage device. It's helpful to think of a building as a Library when everyone else does too - but it's still a social construct and if everyone changed their mind, it wouldn't be a library anymore. It's an idea - one we project as tangible, because it's useful in organizing how we view the world. The idea of "life energy" is the same way. We create the idea because it's easier to assign that as a "label" to a complex system, than identify it as a collection of factors that results in that potential. It's a model of convenience, not a literal one.

With all the facts we know today, it could probably have been avoided. I don't know the nuances of all the facts, but if you want to argue Truman made the right decision, you can use the ambiguity of the situation as support. In that case, all you have to do is demonstrate is based on the facts Truman had, and all the unknowns, it was the safe bet to drop the bombs.

Personally I think it's dangerous to make people in advisory roles to have to second guess scientific facts they refer to simply for the sake of their jobs. If he was distorting scientific facts or mischaracterizing their veracity to push an agenda I could see that being cause, but I did not see this as anything but his admitting the science does not support the political line. To me, it's no different than firing people who do a study on environmental impacts because they release a report counter to the political desire to drill in a national park. As for cost to society, we have lots of things that cost society we overlook. Lots of people are injured skiing and other recreational athletic activities - pushing all our health insurance costs up. Should we ban those for the greater good? Encouraging youth to engage in art, music and literature in schools leads to a lot of failed attempts at careers in the arts who then end up on welfare. Perhaps we should ban those classes - they are clearly gateways to economic underachievement. Lets not forget all the accidents that cost society as a result of people driving long distances on vacation, boating accidents, all the things that end up adding to our national burden. A lot of non-profit organizations do unpopular work and yet they don't have to pay their fair share to society, so maybe we should repeal tax exempt status for non-profits and churches while we are at it. When you start taking generalized statistics for various cross sections of people, you invariably are able to identify "increased costs" associated with that generalized group. Does that mean each person in that group is costing society? Of course not - but if you want to talk about generalizing groups and assume it's safe to consider them all "guilty by association" of weighing down society we have a long way to go to "engineer" the perfect society. Of course, who's "vision" is used as a template for that society becomes the real hot issue. (Not to mention whether anyone has the right to unduly force their vision on others.) Based on your posts so far, it sounds like you endorse the "hysteria induced semi-democratic mob rule" vision that suppresses scientific facts that contradict the mob's preconceptions. What a wonderful vision for a society that sounds like.

Maybe there is some important information left out, but it doesn't sound like it so far. So far, it sounds like they were being kids and didn't think about people behind them. For the record, cops can remind people to be courteous to others and issue a warning - which is common in cases of inconsiderate behavior due to obliviousness. Now, for all I know the order taker asked them to order normally after the last round and they got belligerent - that would be an understandable reason to call the police, and they could have taken off after the police were called. That however, requires pulling facts out of the thin air so at best it's an explanation of what could have happened. If all that happened are the facts already given then I'd say the drive-through op really could have solved it by saying "That's great guys, but unless you can tell me clearly what you want exactly, I'll have to just put you down for the cheeseburger - we gotta get to the people in line behind you." They would probably have been fine with it. Teens take longer to order half the time due to random giggling fits - their teens. Teens often loiter but usually you can tell them to move along and not call the cops.

Who isn't inconvenienced by kids being kids? But at the same time, who hasn't been a kid? No need for the cops to get involved. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged For clarification - where they arrested, or ticketed? I am confused on whether they were arrested (dragged off and charged) or issued a citation.

If I read you right, you mean "involved in this project" being the singularity or the AI that would bring it about? If so, the technological singularity is an emergent property produced by ongoing research that has a rate of increasing returns due to the output of any research cycle becoming input for the next research cycle - but there is no single project. As far as protecting us from the dangers - Bascule says it right with "not much" though as he also says that's the short answer. I am not too worried, because honestly the biggest reason to be afraid of the singularity is that it posses dangers we cannot begin to understand... and yet as we continue up the curve we will be learning ways to adapt we cannot yet comprehend. That's the whole reason we call it a singularity - all measurements and estimates and predictions fall apart once it hits a steep enough curve. That doesn't mean however, that we don't be involved along the way, and we will be using tools we cannot currently conceive of to safeguard against threats we cannot currently understand. If you think the singularity is scary now, just wait till the threats we cannot current conceive of come up - that will be really interesting. All in all the only thing we can do now to give us the best chance then is to try to be the best society we can be right now. No single person can shape the whole of society but we all can influence it for the better, which will put the best qualities going in as we climb the curve and offer the best chance of better output.

Honestly I'd like to see a "Godwin Index" of all the news agencies, throughout the various Administrations. Just a good ol running tally of each agency and their use of Hitler/Holocaust references, and the party affiliation they are characterizing. Maybe some good secondary references for Stalin and Orwellian references too. That would take some compilation work for sure, but I think it would be pretty telling. I'd be willing to bet $100 that Fox News has already Godwinned Obama more times since the election than the rest of the MSM has Godwinned Bush during his full eight years combined.

Syntho-sis: How is calling Fox News out for what they are, paramount to censorship? No one is saying they have to be pulled off the Networks. Also, no one needs to make the allegation they create news in order to report on it - that's a proven fact with the 9-12/tea-bagger deals.

Just a few thoughts: One, Fox actually sponsors and creates political rallies, then goes on to cover them as grassroots events. Two, they have a much worse track record on accuracy - which has been pointed out before. Their accuracy issues always favor the right. Three, I don't think it's entirely fair to call the rest of the media "left" when they really seem to be more pandering to the broader national mood. I am sure everyone remembers just how bad every MSM outlet covered the Bush years - as of 9/11 it became unpopular to question the administration. They all did a poor job asking questions. Exceptions were rare. The entire media is guilty of pandering. Most media try to pander to the national mood, or whatever they happen to think that is at the moment. Fox panders to just their target demographic, and does so with far more abandon to the point of outright inaccuracies.

Well, I do understand your hesitation without proof, and that the allegations I am alleging are not trivial. Personally in my experience they behave consistently in a manner that makes me distrust them (and I do trust many opposing partisans) much the same way I would be skeptical of a con artist. I guess the key thing I want to convey, is just because they call themselves a News Agency and have investigative reporters, does not mean they are a News Agency as they can just as easily (and in my opinion are) a shill. That doesn't mean they are conclusively a shill - I can understand why some would feel like giving the benefit of the doubt in that regard. Perhaps there is enough evidence to prove they are and I just don't have the energy or collated facts to be an effective advocate for that case... I won't assert that they are conclusively a shill since I am not in the position to argue that effectively. It's the view I hold, but it's also far more like deciding if someone is lying to you - it's hard to distill all the little things that add up to an overall opinion.

Important to remember that a wolf in sheep's clothing is not just a "pretty bad sheep" that tends to eat the other sheep - it's a bloody wolf. I can't remember the name of the organization that was an industry shill for Big Tobacco that did "medical research" about tobacco use and health impacts... but it comes to mind: They did medical research, they used labs, but they were definitely a completely different animal than any other medical lab doing research into the health impacts of smoking. They were funded by the tobacco companies to produce very specific results that went far beyond the conventional definition of bias. I see Fox News as the same sort of entity. Now, we could break down our differences to a matter of semantics: Is an organization such as that tobacco research company just a "bad" medical research company that was created with being "sold out" as a part of it's founding criteria, or is it fair to label the entity as something different due to the nature of it's purpose? We could be arguing over whether Fox News is a rogue news agency (because the only times it actually reports news accurately is when it's convenient, nearly without exceptions) or whether or not it should be called a news agency at all. It's my opinion, but I would not call Fox a news agency. They only report news at all as a means to an ends that has nothing to do with reporting news. To me, that warrants a different classification. It's fair to evaluate a news agency as good to bad on the criteria of a news agency and there are many shades of gray. But when something is a wolf, you need to know to treat it as a wolf. Perhaps to me the biggest thing is the behavior of Fox News is more consistent with a different type of animal that is already clearly defined - a shill. While they exhibit many traits of a news agency, they exhibit more traits of a shill. A shill will often pose customer of a product - and even buy it, and rave about it. A dictionary definition would show they do satisfy the definition of a customer, but wouldn't it be dangerous to simply label such a participant in a con as a "bad customer" and not a shill?

Twitter is a medium, and reporters do use twitter, phones, internet, television, and printed word as mediums to relay their acquired information but the medium is not the news agency.

1) That criteria sounds like it's open to all kinds of abuse. Let's not give Stephen Colbert anymore ideas of how to mess with Wikipedia, shall we? Decoys can talk like a duck, convincingly enough to lure ducks, and it is not physically impossible to mimic ground locomotion, just unnecessary for their purpose. A decoy will never completely match the description of an actual duck, only enough to function within the scope of it's primary purpose. In the same way, Fox News mimics certain traits of a News agency, but it is no more a news agency than a decoy is a duck - it only resembles a News organization within the scope of it's primary purpose, which is not to report the news.

Does that mean the only standard for a News organization is they have the word "News" in their name, and some people call them that? In that case, what does it take for a hunting decoy to actually be a duck?

You do realize, you claimed that most likely he had surveillance and infrared goggles, while I don't have hard statistics on dedicated "flashers" who try to get seen from inside their homes I am pretty sure this level of setup would be fairly rare. Don't you think the simplest explanation - that he couldn't see out when they passed through his yard and it was unintentional - would be the most likely? I think they have a razor for that.

http://news.aol.com/article/eric-williams-charged-with-indecent/730688 At about 1:05 into the video it says they were "cutting a path through his yard" when they happened to look back up and over at his house, and saw him through his window. The reporter says the description is pieced together from police information and Eric's statements, so it may not be 100% accurate but it's not just Eric's version. It also describes the event as 5:30am, and also describes it as dark out. If you have lights on in your house and it's dark out, it's pretty much impossible to know if someone is right out there. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Considering how jumpy and prudish we are as a nation, that really doesn't happen - what does happen is sometimes there is not enough evidence to prosecute due, and it boils down to he-said/she-said like many sexual assault cases. It would be nice to put more guilty people away for sexual assault crimes. That's still no excuse to charge one as the other though.

For the record, even if it is your private property, you can't go outside in your front yard and play with yourself in front of the kids waiting for their school bus. I am sure no one is making that claim. Second, I don't think anyone is saying you can stand in your front window and do the same in front of kids getting on the bus, but what is a little ambiguous and worth clarification. I don't know where it falls legally but I would personally consider it at least "proper social etiquette" to be aware that if people in high traffic public areas can see you naked at ground level, the courteous thing to do is put on clothes or draw the curtains. What I find annoying is 99.9% of the time it's just some dude that hasn't put clothes on who may not care if they are seen but isn't trying to be seen - and they get treated by the same laws that deal with sex offenses. Some guy in the window playing with himself staring at kids getting on the bus would be understandably disturbing to the kids and would need to be addressed by police. However, the only reason a kid would be disturbed by some absentminded fellow making coffee who didn't realize someone was cutting through his backyard is if mommy broke down on the spot and began cursing the sobbing crying about how cruel fate and that demon-man robbed her poor snowflake of ever having a normal life. There's a nude beach where I live and people bring their kids there with no fuss. Hell, it's technically a public beach that just happens to be secluded, that no puritans happen to care about. Naked != sexual. It's an important distinction. Technically if that woman lived here and happened down to the water there and found a whole bunch of naked people everyone could be arrested - it's a city paid public park/beach after all! Maybe even sued for all the years of therapy her traumatized youngster would have to endure. Anyway, I can't wait for the next article about some burglar suing his victim who came out of their bedroom naked while he was trying to teach his kid the family business.

Did you miss the part where I explicitly stated that if he was viewed from his own private property then there would be no case, and went on to say if he was accidentally viewed from a public place it would be considered negligence?

If they saw the man from public I would agree. If they saw him from their own private property, then possibly. If they saw him from his own private property than she has absolutely no case, IMO. It's also worth noting that she alleged he exposed himself on purpose. We don't actually know that, he very well may have, but she could also have misconstrued that conclusion. For all we know it could have been too light inside and he may not have even seen her. He could have been half asleep and not very aware of his surroundings. If he intentionally exposed himself to her and/or her kid and they were on his property, they are both in the wrong but he has the right to be nude on his property. If he intentionally exposed himself viewable from public areas than he very much is in the wrong. If he unintentionally exposed himself from a public viewpoint than he's probably just careless, a case of negligence, not maliciousness. If he unintentionally exposed himself from a viewpoint on his property he is completely in the clear and she is in the wrong. What bothers me is not only could it go either way depending on where it happened, but there is a huge difference between exposing yourself intentionally in public and doing so accidentally. However, that is probably not going to factor and someone who wakes up and hasn't realized the blinds are open gets charged just the same as someone who intentionally streaks a children's busstop.

Maybe some of the pro-Austrian camp people can clarify a few questions for me on that school of thought: 1) How does the difficulty in modeling economics due to the complexity of individual "actors" translate to deregulation? While I can definitely agree that regulation will stifle economic growth, that fact does not negate the need for regulation nor provide an alternative solution regulation. Mostly what I hear is "the busts will correct themselves in time" but without regulation you can't ensure that isn't being abused to profit off the boom/bust cycle. 2) Since the Austrian school of thought appears to define regulation as government interference in favor of laissez faire - what is the difference between a government and a strong private union? Most people who favor laissez faire economics seem to dislike unions, though I am not sure if it is a principle of Austrian economics to as a rule be anti-union. But what is any union - of workers or legislators - other than a strong bargaining group? In short, any coalition can demand certain terms by contract in any business arrangement with a partner, and the size of the coalition may make it worth it to that partner to agree to the terms. What is the difference between a private coalition, and a government (coalition of citizens) saying "you must agree to x,y,z" for us to bank with you? The distinction seems arbitrarily defined to me as they both seem laissez faire. 3) What's the deal with the water-paradox? I'm not familiar with any economic models that claim water and diamonds have two distinctly set values under all conditions of scarcity and utility to all people - and any that would I could hardly suspect would be in use by any economist. It's common sense that if you are dying of thirst, water is worth far more than diamonds, and if you are drowning, you'll be happy to give it away for free. I can understand if it was a conundrum for people a long time ago but it's pretty common sense. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedFirst, I hope someone can help me answer the questions above, so I am not posting to distract from them - but I had some other thoughts this morning. The first is, resource production under a laissez faire system at it's most fundamental level seem to always come back to the need for society-wide contracts, which are effectively regulation: this is because resource acquisition is rarely a direct result solely of the land or labor owned by the purveyor. In other words - most resources cannot be harvested without effecting that which is outside the producer's scope of ownership, well tapping effects the water table, as done tapping river water if you are fortunate enough to have land next to a river. Hunting and providing meat or producing leather products from game on your property reduces the habitat in a much wider area since the resource wanders around - at times migrating huge distances. Fishing depletes or otherwise adversely effects the ecosystem in oceans and lakes. In each of the cases the user is depleting a resource that exceeds their own territorial claims and takes from everyone else who is trying to do the same thing. Under a laissez faire model the only way to gain an advantage is to out-harvest the competitors to acquire stores before the coming rarity forces costs to go up. You could say that buffalo pelts were a great example of laissez faire economics in practice. Generally people will call this an example of "hidden cost" being passed on to people outside the transaction - the producer and consumer agree to a price, but third parties pay the cost for future rarity - and if that cost was involved in the transaction it would not lead to the exhaustion of the resources. Now, that could be the case, but that is effectively regulation and it is no longer laissez faire. How does this not become a regulated system under Austrian Economics? How are these issues addressed? The next factor aside from resource extraction, is side effect impacts on the community. Under a true laissez faire system, if a bunch of people produced and sold electricity from coal fired plants, if the community got fed up with the smog, they would embrace whatever electric company promised clean air plants and it would all regulate itself. However, that implies the almost fatal flaw that information is objective. In the real world, one plant producer may be absolutely certain that health risks associated with smog only arise if it is burned at too low of a temperature - claim their system is safe and everyone else is poisoning the population. Another may increase the pressure of the exhaust to shoot it straight up higher, claiming the wind carries it further and it disperses to safe levels before settling at human altitudes so they are safe and it's the other guys. The problem here is (A) neither is a scientist, (B) neither has an unbiased assessment. Maybe they would both be wise to hire scientists to investigate their own plants to certify their safety or implement recommendations should it fail the inspection. A laissez faire model allows for such self -correction, however all it is doing is attempting to acquire objective information. As we all know, any scientist can have their reputation called into question, make mistakes or have biases, or be picked from a wide range of scientists for their bias. Now, before you say "picking a scientist for their bias is fraud, not an example of a working free market" remember that "bias" is not a black and white term. Each plant owner has a right to be skeptical of just any old scientist, and they need to be vetted to be free of bias. However, if a plant is fundamentally flawed, any scientist who is objective will say outright "I can look at your plant, but I am sure the temperatures you use cannot help reduce health risks." because they are objective. If the plant's actually sound and the scientist is biased, they may just say the exact same thing because they are not objective. You get in a mess because in a laissez faire self-regulating model, everyone has a short-term incentive to bias the facts. The more directly involved with the facts, the better you understand them and the better you can regulate that industry. At the same time, the more directly involved you are with the facts, the less likely you will regulate them effectively, due to personal bias even free from malice. Not evil bias, or conniving, just the simple bias of being so up close to the system, and spending so much time trying to figure it out you have already used selective sampling to identify patterns - some accurate, some flawed - that you are certain about and don't even realize it. The only solution I see, which is my admitted bias, is to regulate as a society because it is the passions due to direct involvement that make those involved the worst people for the job. Nobody is as dispassionate as a government employee. (okay, they often are, it's a joke) It is correct to say such regulation will interfere with even healthy transactions and hinder innovation, however, I cannot help but to see it as more stable over time. It is still corruptible, but it is far more resistant to corruption because it is so much farther removed. It's the trade off of precision and accuracy - those in the industry can be more precise but they won't always be accurate and when they are inaccurate they will be way off, creating booms and busts. Regulations may be less precise, but they are more likely to be aimed at the right general area - to be accurate. What I don't understand is how regulation is considered alien to an economy under laissez faire economics. In resource acquisition, the actions of the one effect the whole. In processing, the same still applies. In Wall Street style trading, the money being traded belongs to the people who put their money in those banks and invested with those firms. Everyone has an interest, and everyone has the right to use their own special kind of leverage to see their concerns addressed. When big companies do it, it's markets being markets and they're capitalizing on their market share. When citizens do it, it's labeled dirty populist politics and stagnating regulation. When you take citizen's money and put it in your bank, why wouldn't you have to come to a contractual agreement on the terms? Should those terms involve good-faith inspections by a third party (federal agency) than those are the terms demanded. A car rental agreement may be draconian and inhibit me from doing perfectly reasonable things, but it's their right to insist on my accepting of their generalized contract.

They have the viewership they have because there is an entire demographic that has such an absolute discord with reality they can only find self-reaffirmation from Fox News and conservative radio. The rest of the news world-wide reports a reality too strange and unfamiliar for them to find believable.

The printed currency isn't the problem. The problem is: when you print more money, you add it into circulation and it becomes legal tender. Once it is in the system, you can replace bills or whatever, but how do you spend a $20 bill that expires tomorrow? If you plan ahead, you still have to give it to someone, who will end up stuck with it on the day it expires, and they'll effectively loose $20. So, getting currency in: easy. Getting it out: Someone will have to part with it to get it out and not gain something of equal value. Trade the expired note in for gold? How then is the gold acquired? With a non-expired $20 bill. The government may as well just as well taken it's own $20 out of the system, which came in via taxes. You could destroy some percentage of collected tax, but it would be hard to justify to tax payers why they are paying extra taxes to have it literally burned. That's why I was thinking the "drug seizure" option since we already seize those funds anyway. Of course, then that will be effectively pulling it from DEA agents etc, who would be miffed.

People definitely have different views, biases and it is very hard to nail things down in an objective manner - especially in politics, and that's just something we all have to live with. However, I honestly think Fox News takes it to another level, to the point of abusing that fact by intentionally scripting every word without any regard for accuracy for the sole purpose of manipulating their audience. I have more respect for close minded fools (of which, I am sure there are many of those at Fox too) than people to use craft words to mimic information that is completely unsound and to a singular end. I don't think that's a hyperbole - I honestly think they take in a lot of information, then decide on what to use and how to spin it to manipulate their viewers, and discard everything else without any concern for what is important, newsworthy, or in any way relevant or even honest. Keep in mind when I say "manipulate" I don't mean anything specific or even more than keeping their base watching and fearful of anything else. I wouldn't be surprised though in the least if it was found that they intentionally exacerbate the discord between themselves and "the mainstream news" to increase their viewers' skepticism of non-Fox News sources - even when it means being outright deceptive. I can respect blowhards that think they are right and the world is wrong, but this goes beyond that. They may believe the ends justify the means, but I honestly don't think they actually believe what they are saying is factually sound. They may believe it's what needs to be said, but I don't think they believe it's what's true. That's what sickens me

Ohhhhhkaay