"And now I have a question: can anybody think of the right search terms to find out if the number of labor actions (strikes and so on) is rising, falling, or staying steady by some comprehensible measure?"
Labor economists pay attention to such things; my suggestion would be find one and ask her; UCSC ought to have some.
Lucy, or moved to Oregon, maybe. :~)
"The best lack all conviction/The worst are full of passionate intensity."
Lucy, here in Oregon we have a lot of the sort of doctrinaire left that renders itself impotent through its ideological purity--the kind of ideologue that is so pure it refuses to dirty its hands by associating with a political party that might actually win an election. Is it different where you are?
Sars, the problem is that Dobson's group is a focus for abusers, and in a nation of 300 million, he can find 1-2 million people who beat their children. In like manner, Fox News is a focus for right-wing extremists. It does not actually have that large of an audience, but in a nation of 300 million, that's still a lot of people.
It's old sf flashback day: I am put in mind of Pohl & Kornbluth's observation (old ad-men, both of the) that in a large enough population, you can find any sort of crazy.
A few notes, coming rather late:
1. Hitting with a paddle or a switch is not spanking; these are paddling and caning. James Dobson, in abuser style, calls them spanking.
2. Caning and paddling children risks injury to the children, since canes and paddles do not have a sense of touch. It may be that Dobson himself advocates the use of canes and paddles because doesn't want to feel he is hitting children; he may also just be afraid of pain himself. In any event, his advocacy of the use of objects is dissociative and makes me wonder how he would feel if he were to shoot someone--would he feel that the gun had shot them?
3. I wonder about Dobson's upbringing and sexuality.
4 . I wonder that Dobson has not been arrested; it seems likely to me he is a criminal.
5. James Dobson is a major advocate of home schooling, apparently partly because he believes that brutality is an appropriate part of education.
6. Focus on the Family has become a magnet for abusers. Probably, some of this audience are potentially violent in other ways.
More seriously, that damn banner and enough wind might just pull of parts of the building, depending on the wind and how it's attached.
...so does Tor start work on its own corporate HQ? :-)
Sister/Brother Sword of Desirable Mindfulness
or perhaps
Brother/Sister Chain Gun of Loving Humanitarianism
It's not only ugly, it's dangerous...but <archisnooty>I'd call it surface decoration rather than spatial design</archisnooty>
"I'm also optimistic that a younger, more vital man will be willing to take responsibility for the sex-abuse scandals in the U.S."
Isn't excusing such scandals is an old story in the church? I would think it would take a very radical pope to act on those scandals.
"[...] all the hopes of progressive at the moment seem to be pinned on two South American candidates[...]"
It is all very much like a royal succession, isn't it? Except that so far no-one has threatened violence. Of these people, one will be chosen as the ruler of the souls of Catholics without most of them having any say in the matter and they can only hope this will be a compassionate person who truly cares about them. And yet the reality is that no single person could live up to all the hopes for the next pope, or justify all the fears of that person; it would take a god to do that.
Why do so many of us look for a spiritual ruler outside their own hearts?
"If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will go before you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will go before you."
HP, as I see it, public service announcements are for things like "don't drink and drive", not to build support for causes like the UN landmine treaty, which is a political purpose. I very much support that treaty, but if political ads can run as public service announcements then the public service announcement system becomes just one more way to distribute political propaganda, which I would very much prefer not to see.
Because it's a political advertisment, which probably isn't appropriate as a public service announcement? I 100% agree with the ad, and I hope it gets on television, but I really, really, really don't want to see PSAs politicized.
Randolph, wearing his conservative hat, for once.
I think the basic reason Guckert thought he could get away with it is that a lot of right-wing media figures are getting away with it. 'twasn't the other reporters that caught him out, after all--it was the bloggers. And, at that, if his pecadillo hadn't been something so unpopular with the radical right, we might see the right of the blogosphere all rushing to defend him.
Patrick, Lucy--I was thinking more that the widespread availability of sales information might have weakened the negotiating position of agents--there doesn't have to be a simple pricing formula for that to happen.
"Speaking for 'prospective publishers,' I must point out that how much the author got for their last book is, for me, distinctly secondary in importance to how well that book sold. And, today, that information is generally easily obtained."
Would you say, then, agents are less useful to authors than they used to be?
It seems to me that the established author with an agent is the beneficiary of keeping contract terms secret; it puts the agent in a much better negotiating position if prospective publishers do not know how much the author got for the last book.
It also seems to me that agents perform a very important function as brokers in the relationship of author and publisher; they know the prices that a number of authors get, so they have a sense of what they can get from publishers, and (if they are honest) keep their authors secrets, so that the publisher does not know how low authors will go.
Senate Judiciary Committee members.
But since it's passed out of committee, write your Senator--let's see how many Senators we can get to vote against torture. Contact information at Project Vote Smart.
Mitch, Laz is getting his information from the US mass media--the same ones we are cursing for giving such a short shrift to liberal viewpoints. Just about everything he's said--except possibly the material about oil and religion--has already been said here.
Are we going to wait until it all comes home to be ashamed of them Bush, et al? Because make no mistake about it, it is going to come home. And it's going to hurt.
"But I do think that the artist and his/her heirs should have a say in things, get some money if there is some for a solid amount of time."
But artists don't have these rights now. How is supporting Bill Gates, Disney, et al going to get them for artists? It is against their financial interests! The Berne Convention has a very modest gesture towards the enduring rights of the artist, called "moral rights", but even that doesn't say anything to economic rights, only a right to control how the work is used.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 22 |
| 2004 | 89 |
| 2003 | 103 |
| 2002 | 14 |
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