It isn't that I think Caesar was unwilling to use that much violence, it's just that I don't think he had the means.
You know how they say the pen is mightier than the sword? Keep in mind that all we have for evidence of the prosecution of the Gallic Wars are Caesar's own words, written to be sent back to Rome as essentially political advertisements.
Parallels to media coverage of more current wars are left as an exercise.
I have seen multiple yellow ribbons that say "Support the Troops -- Bring Them Home."
In Celebration of Talk Like Dr. Stephen Maturin Day
Mike... this is astonishing. Bravo.
The moon would be a great site for astronomy. Craters provide natural shapes for large dishes, and if you build them on the far side, you're shielded from the earth's visual light and radio pollution. It would be easier to service than the Hubble.
[Disclaimer: This might work better told visually. You'll see. Or rather, you won't.]
A Catholic priest and a rabbi find themselves sharing a train compartment. They fall into conversation about religion, each professing the belief that their path is the One True Way.
There's a horrid metal rending sound, and the train is thrown from the tracks, hurling the two men head-over-heels. After the train stops moving, the priest helps the rabbi to his feet. To the priest's astonishment, the rabbi crosses himself.
"Rabbi! Has our miraculous survival convinced you to join the Mother Church?"
The rabbi looks blank for a moment and then says, "Oh, no, I was just checking that nothing was damaged: wallet, watch, spectacles, testicles."
keep our share in a safety keep.
Is that more like a border keep or more like a safety dance?
And, your bonus link for the day:
http://www.junkscience.com/
Oh, wonderful, recycling Steve Milloy, about whose book The Skeptical Inquirer said:'The real problem is that Milloy, as judged from his writing, simply doesn't understand statistical techniques well enough to be able to write cogent criticisms of the poor statistical techniques used to support various health scares." and "The numerous serious flaws in the logic and coverage of this book render it essentially useless as a guide to the detection of junk science."
See: Correcting myths from Steven Milloy.
Milloy is quite literally a former PR flack for Philip Morris. He is funded by tobacco companies and oil and gas companies. (See SourceWatch). Can you seriously say with a straight face that you'd believe his obviously phony astroturf PR bullshit over the near unanimous opinion of actual practicing climate scientists? If so, you and I have no common reality in which to have a discussion.
When someone says "government is made up of incompetents", is it reasonable to construe that as meaning teachers, police officers, garbage collectors, and such folk?
Yes, and especially firefighters, because as Ben helpfully points out, governments are of no help in emergencies.
This is a true story. In 1996, I was campaigning for Harvey Gantt, the Democrat running against Jesse Helms. On election day, I was at a polling place handing out literature. Standing next to me was Ray Ubinger, the Libertarian party candidate for Senate running against Helms. We talked fairly amicably.
Someone walked by with an unleashed dog, and Ray said, "I got bit by a dog once, and since then I've been in favor of leash laws." And that, my friends, encapsulates my entire opinion of liberterianism.
Holy contradictions Batman! So, the gov't did it's job (in your opinion) by predicting this disaster, and didn't do it's job by not dragging those who didn't want to leave out by their hair?
Its = possessive.
It's = contraction of "it is."
The government (more specifically, the National Weather Service) did its job in predicting and monitoring the storm. FEMA failed in its job in RUSHING EMERGENCY SUPPLIES, and in fact ACTIVELY PREVENTED EMERGECNY SUPPLIES FROM REACHING VICTIMS.
I'm not sure how I feel about weather satellites, since I haven't given it much thought up to this point.
Must... stop... ad hominem... attack...
However, it does bear pointing out that there are indeed commercial weather satellites
There are?
and much of the weather data processing is done commercially.
It is? Actually, NWS does a vast amount of weather prediction and analysis, especially the stuff offcoast which doesn't have an obvious local commercial agency (like TV stations) interested.
Who do you think more people heard Katrina predictions from; ABC, CBS, and NBC or the NOAA?
Irrelevant. Those networks are repeating data produced by NWS.
I don't think if the NOAA went away as a source of raw data we'd stop seeing weather reports on the ten o'clock news.
Weather reports, no, although they'd be of much lower quality and produced at higher aggregate cost to industry. But hurricane reports would be reduced to hours notice.
But this is all incidental to your central fallacy. You keep claiming that government is unable to successfully function at anything, and that's demonstrably false.
And seriously, you haven't explained why you haven't moved to Somalia, since it embodies your ideal government. Oh, wait, I know why.
While we're at it, Ben Stein's paragraph on global warming is full of outright lies. Global warming -- the fact that average global mean temperature is increasing -- is a recorded fact. The link between CO2 and increased temperature is basic chemistry and has been known for more than a century. Increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations are undisputed by anyone. That CO2 is definitely known to come from human combustion of fossil fuels.
Warmer oceanic surface temperatures increase the strength of tropical storms.
The United States is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and produces more than twice number two China. India is number 5, and Brazil is number 18. Why does Ben Stein hate Brazil?
Mary Kay: Nothing personal intended - I know not all the higher brackets support the white elephants, and not all the lower brackets support the donkeys. But the probabilities run that way....
This is a problem I have with the Thomas Frank school of criticizing the working poor for "voting against their economic interest." (I am, in general, a fan of Frank's.) To pick a counter-example, Jews tend to have a higher median income than the general population, and vote about 75%-25% Democratic. They, too, are voting their cultural/social priorities over their economic interest, but no one is claiming that they're misled.
We shouldn't focus on whether people are voting against their economic interest - that's actually a noble thing. We should focus on whether people's votes are fully informed. And that's where I think much of the working poor support of Republicans falls down.
Well, Alex, we're talking about natural disasters
Right. A natural disaster predicted and analyzed by government studies. A hurricane observed by satellites designed, launched, and operated by government research. A hurricane analyzed by government meteorologists using government equipment. In a libertarian utopia, none of those things would have happened. (Unless Somalia has launched some weather satellites of which I'm unaware. I suppose it's possible.)
There's no question that this government failed the people of New Orleans now. But that's no argument that all governments always fail the people, as much as you'd like it to be. Because your point seems to be that governments can not help but fail, and that's demonstrably false.
Since government will always be made up of incompetents...
a) This is demonstrably false and logically untenable.
b) To the extent to which there are more incompetents in government than in private organizations, this problem is exacerbated by your anti-government hate speech.
c) Speaking as a former government employee and current elected official, fuck you.
bureaucracy can't help you more than you can help yourself
Damn right. No government could, you know, build an interstate highway system better than you, personally, could. No government could fund the research for things like, I dunno, the internet better than inventors in their garage. No government could inspect food, or set efficiency standards, or define the basis of contract law, or investigate crimes, or run air traffic control better than an individual.
Are you completely blind? Government works except when it is actively prevented from doing so by malice or utter incompetance.. This has been proven over and over again in case after case for centuries.
Don't like it? Move to Somalia, that utopia of self-reliance.
Two words: Eminent Domain.
I have been thinking this, too. The Keno decision was quite timely for this: they can seize drowned New Orleans by eminent domain, and turn it over to a private commercial interest.
"A federal appeals court ruled today that the president can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil in the absence of criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital to protect the nation from terrorist attacks." Washington Post story.
I just have to keep reminding myself that the Bush clan and retainers are American citizens, too, and so deserve a fair trial.
So fiction can teach you about itself.
Okay, maybe there is some common ground here.
But it's not just that reading fiction helps you learn to read fiction - it helps you learn to read anything. Fiction and non-fiction share a language, right? So by reading fiction, one can learn the skill of reading. And that reading can apply to reading non-fiction, or reading letters or emails from other people, or reading the news, and on and on. (Yes, fiction by itself is not sufficient for this.)
And it's more than the simple process of turning symbols into meaning: it's reading to comprehend larger structures, detecting hidden meanings, understanding explicit and implicit conflict, etc.
That all sounds pretty useful for serving as a fulfilled citizen in a society.
There's a ten-year old boy with cancer, and as his dying wish he wants you to buy his self-published novel. If enough people buy it, one of the traditional publishers will pick it up!
I really do think that nobody actually learns anything other than opinion and writing skills from fiction, and that the former learning is so unreliable as to be worthless unless corroborated.
I really don't want to engage in the larger debate, because I don't have the heart for it. But certainly, Dave, you would admit that by reading fiction one can learn reading skills? When I read books, especially when I did so as a child, I learned (in an incremental way, of course) how to parse increasingly complex sentences, I learned new vocabulary, I learned to process and comprehend larger issues of plot and conflict and arc, etc. Right?
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