Logical fallacy. Argument from ignorance. You assume that regulation must be a binary action, in that it can (and thus, must) either be done by a) The financial institution itself, or b) The Government.
Is there a third option? Unknown. But from your post, it seems you ASSUME it must be one or the other. Neither the banking industry NOR the Government have historically been that successful in this sort of regulation, especially long-term. Perhaps a third option should be explored as not just the most beneficial, but as a necessity for long-term stability.
I didn't like McCain, but at least I knew who he was and what he stood for. His rhetoric was backed up by more than a "Present" voting record.
Never been much for Congressmen being President anyways. Governers have historically had a better idea of how to run a budget and work with a legislative & judicial branch. All Senators know how to do is spend taxes and proclaim themselves ipso facto kings.
Many throughout human history have had Imperial ambitions. Even in the private sector, empire is the ultimate goal of most corporate interests.
Most of these entities (whether it be a national interest or a private sector entity) have had short-term goals. And short-term goals inevitably fall without a long-term vision.
I think a good question to ask is: Why is China beginning to dominate the world, both in industry and as a nation?
If we view China from a long-term historical perspective, the nation has had some of the longest enduring Imperial dynasties in human history. Why is China so successful at the Empire game? Perhaps its because China has had and will continue to have a long-term vision.
I know its hard for the average Westerner with cultural ADD to grasp but think about it for awhile. The concept may end up blowing your mind, if you can concentrate on it for longer than a 30 second sound-bite.
The sad thing is, they protest the film made by one anonymous "American" that stereotypes Islamic faith principles by stereotyping all Americans as thinking the same thing, and taking it out on people who had nothing to do with the film's production.
Fanaticism in any form is dangerous. And atrocity has no justification. A sad, sad day for the world as a whole.
It's a circular argument. Either you accept a religion or philosophy or you reject it. It is not up to God to prove his existence or non-existence. You either feel a calling or you don't.
Why people fight and argue so strenuously about it never ceases to amaze me.
Lay your egos down for a minute and just breathe in and out for a minute, and realize that you are alive and that THAT is the point. Now, isn't that just a feeling of such unmitigated joy? Where does that joy come from?
Everybody has a different answer for that. But the source is the same.
Its not as simple as an A or B choice. Every partisan in the world would like people to think this is the case. Vote (insert party of choice) and all your problems will be solved.
What they fail to mention is: Nobody has all the answers. Life is too complex and intricate for simple rhetoric to provide real solutions, and you can appoint all the czars/cut all the taxes you want (notice my fair and balanced approach here? ) and reality will defy easy solutions every time.
The problem with most Americans is what I call the Pill-popping addiction. You want an easy pill (or policy line) to solve your weight problems (or your economic problems) when the real truth is that our problems are holistic. Our behaviors dictate our weight problems (or our economic ones) and the only solutions are to CHANGE OURSELVES and what we do. Stop feeding the beast. Make sacrifices. Above all: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY!
End of rant. We now return the thread to the same hopeless back and forth that the two party system depends on in dragging our country further into the gutter.
I stop in regularly but rarely post anymore. I don't see the point. I don't fancy preaching to the choir, and I lost my idiot-to-english dictionary, so posting my opinion only to to be discounted is a waste of my time.
People ask writers all the time where they get their ideas.
Writers can wax philosophical and go on about brainstorming, word association, lightning strikes of inspiration, or we can be honest and tell the truth:
"I don't know."
Perhaps this should be titled "A little ball of IDK". I'm going with my working title at this point though.
was a brilliant idea. But it didn’t last. A firefly zooming off the lawn; a spark, here, and then gone. He tried to catch it; bright sand, it slipped through his hands. “Are you hungry?” She asked, poking her head through the study door. “Dinner’s almost ready.” His response was angry, but she didn’t deserve that. It was his fault or nobody’s. “Sorry.” He said, and meant it. “What are you cooking?” “Meatloaf.” She replied. “With carrots, potatoes, and salad.” Oh, yes. He was hungry. There was a fire, somewhere in his brain; but it needed fuel. Maybe, if he stoked it, the idea would come back. Maybe it would stay. “Did you want a drink with dinner?” “No!” He cried, afraid it would extinguish the fire, and then, softer, “Maybe later.” “Well, I’m going to open a bottle of wine.” She said. “Come to the table. Maybe with a bite, you’ll change your mind.” What’s on the table? Was it a small slice of infinity, perhaps? Nevertheless, everything on the table could be named, Bread, meat, vegetables; words describing things. There were no words for the idea. It was dangerous. He left his keyboard, the idea unfinished; staggered from his study under the weight of the idea, into the dining room. Here was the table with…what was it she said? Meatloaf; it was food for thought. Did ideas fit into food groups? He didn’t know. The idea may have been dessert for all he could tell. Heavy with sugar, and yet light like a meringue. “Rosalie called.” She told him while he chewed. “She wants to know if she can bring a friend along for Christmas dinner.” Who was Rosalie? Oh. She was their daughter, who was away at college. A friend? “What kind of friend?” He said, suspicious. A boyfriend? He wondered. How quickly life moves past us sometimes. He remembered changing her diapers like it was, well…yesterday. Yesterday? That was a category. Time was a food group wasn’t it? No, that wasn’t right… “His name is Steve.” She said. “I told her it would be fine. Someone to watch TV with you…you know…football.” “Yeah. Okay, fine.” He said; his mind was drifting. Drifting…As he finished up eating the idea came again. There was a shadow on it this time. He loved football. But it wouldn’t do to watch it with a stranger. Unknown allegiances; no guarantee they would not be hostile to his team, to the idea of a Super bowl shot this year. “Thanks for dinner.” He said, and poured himself a glass of wine, there would be no danger of it putting out the idea this time. The fire was much hotter, even with the shadow of Christmas dinner casting a pall over his mind. “Wait.” She protested, as he rose from his chair, intending to head back to the study. “Don’t you want dessert?” “What?” He said, his mind torn from the dessert forming in his mind, the baked Alaska of ideas; a contradiction, the impossibility that, nevertheless, was alive. “I baked a pie.” She said. “Mmm.” He wanted something sweet, all of a sudden. The air was sour in his mind, there was too much room, and it was filled to capacity. “Sure. What kind of pie?” The Virgin Mary, in a crust; held to her son’s fate by the power of faith. It must be. The metaphors were running amok in his mind, and he was sacrificing his sanity to hold on to the immensity of the idea. “Mince-meat pie with graham cracker crust.” She replied. A fitting metaphor for what was in his mind, and he remembered a joke he once heard and it summed up the idea quite well. Question: What did the Buddhist monk order on his hot dog? Answer: A little of everything. He ate his pie, and went back to his study to write a little ball of everything, trapping infinity onto a white page, using words like manacles to hold a muse hostage to understanding. He looked at the result, and deemed it good. Or as good as it could be. Art was never finished, merely abandoned. He was a writer. He took inspiration, nailed it to a cross, and then left it there to die a slow death.
Eradication of poverty would entail the eradication of the species. As long as you have humans, you have human nature, and for one reason or another, there will always be the poor.
Reducing poverty leads to co-dependence between the client and the state. For education we must, in turn pay taxes to educate our children, and they are taxed to educate their children, etc. ad nauseum.
The only way to reduce poverty without making the solution worse than the cure is: Evolution.
We were made this way for a reason, but a boat doesn't drive on land, and a car sinks. Everything changes, and the nature of a thing must change with everything else to survive. There are more poor people on Earth at this exact moment than have ever existed in the history of the species. At this point in our history (7 billion people globally) its either change what we are, or let Nature go with the next species for a try.
I'm personally rooting for the cockroach since I have very little faith left in the species, in our elite, or the following herds.
The need for bias and division exists and has existed in Dude's polls since he first began.
He's never given us a fair and balanced set of choices or a third option. Either you're smart and liberal or stupid and conservative. Period. Which is an insult to any real thinking person's intelligence.
It's also why I rarely participate in these charade polls anymore, as I do actually think, and don't parrot either sides rhetoric. I find Dude to be confrontational without substance to back up his claims other than links from HuffPost, ThinkProgress, and numerous other yellow journalist rags that have nothing of value to contribute other than gotcha journalism, and edited soundbites that remove real context from their content and prove nothing.
"Read this and learn something" ? I'd rather read science fiction. At least that has the remote possibility of someday being Science FACT.
That's the narrative humanity always seeks; purpose.
A drive. Something grander than oneself that gives context to our birth, the valley we call life, and the next peak called death.
Fiction writing can be summed up in one sentence minus the details of plot, setting, character, conflict, and resolution: "They went on a journey." If there's no movement within a story, then the story attracts no audience.
I've long since gotten over the requirement for movement within my own personal narrative. I stand as the center, the fulcrum, the eye of the storm, and the world, and life, moves by.
Cord: How long have you been blind? Blind Man: How long have you been blind? Cord: I'm not blind. Blind Man: Am I? Cord: Do you answer every question with a question? Blind Man: Do you question every answer? Cord: Aww, talking to you is like talking to a wall. Blind Man: Buddha once sat before a wall, and when he arose he was enlightened. Cord: Do you compare yourself with Buddha? Blind Man: (chuckles) No. Only to the wall.
-Circle of Iron (1978)
Blind Man: Cord... each moment that passes changes you. You do not... cannot possess even yourself. How can you hope to possess anyone or anything else? - -Circle of Iron (1978)
Without antibiotics, they're far more dangerous to any slight injury than anything mentioned so far. You may survive the injuries of a wild animal but you will not survive the infection afterward if you don't get to civilization quick enough.
Again, my point is, it's contextual. If our life is a series of causes, the meaning of those causes are entirely dependent on the effects they produce. Meaning and life are interwoven into a narrative, wherein "meaning" means nothing without the narrators interpretations, the life these effects spring forth from, and the larger framework upon which these effects ripple forth into.
No "man" is an island, in fact he's not even a peninsula, region, or continent, To view oneself as a piece of land is in error, because we are not that stable. Rather wer are but a wave in much larger sea, which is the narrative of humanity as a whole.
The narrative is what gives reality any sort of meaning. For centuries the Western narrative was dominated by a Hellenistic narrative, or classical. Then came the dominance of a Christian narrative. Followed by the Enlightenment and the dominance of Classical Mechanics. Now the narrative is quantum. As life has evolved, so does its narrative, the context within which it operates, the meaning from which it springs, all is flux.
What comes after the quantum narrative I wonder? How shall humanity cope with a meaning that is a coin-flip away from being oblivion? Schrodingers Cat has flipped meaning on its head, and the slithy toves do thus gyre.
Post-modernism focuses on the narrative. The "meaning" is within the context of the question. One could ask: "What is meaning?" and it would be just as relevant. Since "meaning" is based on "context", then we begin to see the ultimate issue, and paradox, with how you phrase your question.
We have several definitions of "life" within the scientific community, and so far as we know, the only "life" that seeks "meaning" is humanity.
Semantically, we could ask "What does life mean?". Within that framework, several options begin to appear. We don't currently classify rocks and minerals as "alive". However, they do exist, as a good clout to the head with a sizable chunk of granite will illustrate.
Do rocks and minerals have meaning? Do they seek meaning? They exist, but do they care? And if they do, how are we to judge their views on such an absurd concept, as to them it must seem, that which we currently qualify as "alive"?
A virus, by the current scientific definitions, is not alive. It does, however, affect that which is defined as "alive", so by definition, it has context, and should be considered alive, in the sense that its meaning affects larger contexts than itself.
So, ultimately, as the above illustrates, meaning is context dependent, and as such, life is a quid pro quo of that context. Meaning is derived from the context, and that context is living. We affect the larger framework (the "narrative" in Post-modernism), we have significance, but as to meaning, that is a philosophical exercise in futility.
The US Government is who is allowing this to happen. The last time I checked the USDA was part of the government.
Are you a recent addition to CS? You would know I'm not a big fan of Obama if you've been around for awhile. Or did you read the posts and assume a bunch of things about the people posting, based on the subject matter?
As for corporations, when they are held accountable for their actions in the same way as the Sole Proprietor of a small business, I will stop bashing them. Their lack of liability has led this country to the brink of dictatorship, because they always privatize gains and socialize losses. In other words, they keep the profits, and we, the people, pay the tab when they screw up.
I think people should share the load no matter what it is. Cooking, cleaning, minding the children, bringing home the bacon, its all part of the package, and if its a real relationship, then its a PARTNERSHIP, not a division of labor.
In light of all the food recalls lately, how can we trust these corporations to feed us? The USDA says its safe to eat? Safe? Okay. So we've now got soylent Pink. So, how far away are we from Soylent Green?
Organ cloning? Cui bono? Not the poor. Not the sick, or the infirm. Unless you have billions of dollars, and already think you're god on earth, then this technology will be out of your reach.
I'm against Public funds being spent for this research because it is of little benefit to anyone but the top 1%. They want it, they can spend their own money to fund it. Because I know right now that they won't allow Main Street to have access to it, but they sure would like us to pay for it.
I have a strong mind because I use it; I'm not afraid of large numbers or ideas that seem too heavy to grasp at first glance.
I have a strong heart because I care, and am not afraid to show it. Paradoxically I often care enough not to care.
I have a strong spirit because I always seek the deeper meanings, and am not afraid that the answer may be too profound to understand; understanding is not as important as the journey inward to the place where heart and mind cease and spirit begins. In that place, knowledge has no meaning, words cease to be, numbers are imaginary, but everything still is. Lifting the weight of the universe by shifting perspective, I strengthen my spirit, I release reality from my need for definitions, and let it BE. Am I the muscle or the dumbbell?
Perhaps I am both.
Those are my strengths. Perhaps I have the wisdom of a fool, or am foolish in my wisdom, but it works for me.
Ok let me rephrase that. I have a high quantum probability of existing. But that could all be just a conglomeration of low uncertainties coexisting within a larger fiction that is a holographic universe.
Their home wifi seems to be working out really well. Much better than Cricket. We were very frustrated with their service, in addition to it being a single chip we'd have to take turns using.
With Clear we can both be on at the same time, and we can do things such as streaming video. For $20 cheaper, no less.
Galactic_bodhi Forum Posts (9,196)
) and reality will defy easy solutions every time.
to those who don't. 
RE: Has The West FAILED? Are we doomed? Part 2
Logical fallacy. Argument from ignorance. You assume that regulation must be a binary action, in that it can (and thus, must) either be done by a) The financial institution itself, or b) The Government.Is there a third option? Unknown. But from your post, it seems you ASSUME it must be one or the other. Neither the banking industry NOR the Government have historically been that successful in this sort of regulation, especially long-term. Perhaps a third option should be explored as not just the most beneficial, but as a necessity for long-term stability.
JMHO.