User:Woozle/tabdump/2011

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2011-12-31

Apparently I lost 12/30 links when the disk crashed

2011-12-29

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2011-10-07

Better terminology for "circles":

  • "viewscreen" or "viewport": people you can see
  • something like "stage" or "audience": who can see you

2011-10-06

2011-10-05

2011-10-04

2011-10-03

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2011-10-01

2011-09-30

2011-09-29

My comment, in case it disappears: 

This isn't about demonizing the guy in the elevator. I never got the sense that RW wanted us to hate him or even particularly dislike him. What I heard was "guys, don't do this".

I'm also not seeing the irrationality, but (as I said in the other thread) maybe I missed something.

edit: At a glance, the Depleted Cranium piece seems to be a misrepresentation of RW's position. She never claimed elevator rape was common, but only that the situation made her feel in danger -- and that therefore this was not a great situation for a pick-up.

2011-09-28

2011-09-27

2011-09-26

*Will Robots Steal Your Job? - no, the people who *own* the robots will

2011-09-25

2011-09-24

2011-09-23

2011-09-22

2011-09-21

2011-09-20

2011-09-18

2011-09-17

part two

part one

2011-09-16

2011-09-15

2011-09-14

2011-09-13

2011-09-11

Did not post:

A nitpick: The word "cowardly" has always seemed inappropriate to me in this context. I can't think how the hijackers were in any sense cowardly. Others who participated in the plot, especially those who did so without traveling to the US, might be labeled "cowardly"... but knowing the retaliation they would surely face, I have a hard time believing this either.
The attacks were heinous, brutal, wrongheaded, reprehensible, violent, abhorrent, horrendous, callous, monstrous, heartless, fanatical, insane, senseless... but cowardly?

2011-09-10

2011-09-09

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2011-08-20

The What-Should-I-Do Poll: https://plus.google.com/u/0/102282887764745350285/posts/7XqgbSJUUHX

2011-08-19

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2011-08-11

- http://www.eschatonblog.com/2011/08/quiet-riot.html -- read comments to see if this is worth saving... is there a video clip anywhere?

2011-08-09

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2011-07-29

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2011-06-15

My math on this -- at $3.65/gallon and driving about 12500 miles annually:

  • car A, 20 MPG, $2280/year
  • car B, 50 MPG, $912/year
  • Save ~$1370 / year
  • car B costs ~$20k to buy (CarMax)
  • after 15 years of ownership, added fuel economy starts paying.
  • as price of gas goes up, this time gets shorter

Looked at another way:

  • car A takes 50 gallons to drive 1000 miles - $182.50
  • car B takes 20 gallons to drive 1000 miles - $73.00
  • break-even comes at (182.5-73=) $20000/109.5 thousand miles = 182,000 miles
  • more generally, where $P = purchase cost:
    • 1/MPGA - 1/MPGB = gallons saved per mile
    • ... x $gal = money saved per mile
    • ... / $PB = number of miles of driving needed to recoup purchase price of new car
    • final formula: (1/MPGA - 1/MPGB) x $gal/$PB = break-even point, in miles

This assumes, of course, that you don't pay any interest.

2011-06-14

  • 2010-11-04 Justice for Some by Joseph E. Stiglitz: the mortgage crisis and the rule of law

2011-06-13

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2011-05-21

me

It sounds like Portland's experiment with public financing was very poorly implemented, and a poorly-implemented trial doesn't really say much (positive or negative) about the system it is intended to test. Ask any scientist.

Surely there are other examples where it was done right, so we could see whether it works or not. The Wikipedia article mentions attempts in several states, but it sounds like they had implementation problems as well... for instance, the loophole that allows a well-funded candidate to opt out is a total ringer, rendering the whole idea moot in practice.

That said, if I could choose one simple thing to change about the election system, it would be some form of penalty for lies or distortions in political campaigns -- e.g. for each lie or distortion about an opponent, the opponent gets twice as much time to respond (minimum 30 seconds per point). If the candidate lies about their own record, then all opponents get that much time.

Has anything like *that* ever been tried properly?

M. Workhoven

I'm not sure how that would work. Distortions are often in the eye of the beholder, and there might be First Amendment issues. Lawyers would argue that people have a constitutional right to be full of shit, and they'd have a point. However, if the candidates voluntarily agreed to abide by the rulings of a bipartisan truth commission, and if they're found to be wrong, have sit in a penalty box or whatever, I think that would be hilarious. But I don't think they'd agree to that. Negative campaigning is too effective.

You're right that opting out of public financing renders to the whole idea moot. But controlling private money is like trying to stop the tide from coming in, it always finds a way. If donators can't give money directly to the candidates, then they'll just put ads on TV themselves on behalf of whoever they want to win. And the Supreme Court says they can.

So instead of trying to control the money, I thought it would be better to just make the campaigns cheaper. Make 'em shorter and give the candidates free but equal air time. Air time is the most expensive part of any campaign, so maybe that would eliminate the need for politicians to spend all their time fundraising. And don't let 'em opt out!

And if outside groups want to buy ad space for 501 ads, then legally you have to let 'em. But at least force them to announce who they really are. So instead of hearing, "This ad was paid for by the group 'Citizens who care about small children and puppies for Candidate John Smith,'" The audience would hear, "This ad paid for by the BP Oil Company for John Smith," which would probably do more harm than good. Right now, they can hide behind some fictional citizens group with a name they just made up, and that's inherently dishonest.

me

It's not the most elegant solution, but it would stop a lot of the nonsense that is happening now.

Seems to me that "free speech" at some point needs to be balanced by a freedom of protection from bad information, if someone can show that damage has been done by the bad information (or will be done if the information is not corrected) -- especially if the remedy is to correct the information, rather than to exact some kind of punitive fine. There is precedent for this, e.g. libel, defamation of character, truth-in-advertising. (Truth-in-advertising laws *surely* should apply to paid political announcements.)

I'd go even further and suggest that political speech should be considered a form of contract, with all the legal repercussions.

M. Workhoven

Hmmm. Maybe there's an enterprising lawyer out there who can make a test case for this. I'd love to see a dishonest politician sued for libel and slander.

But politics is weird, because you can't sue the government, or by extension a government employee, for defamation that causes loss of income over some law they passed, as long as the law is constitutional. If you could, then Wall Street could sue the president over every new business regulation, arguing that he broke a campaign promise to strengthen business and the economy. If they could, every politician would go to jail!

Unlike a product on TV that advertises you can cure herpes with magnets or whatever, politics is a very subjective thing. It's practically a politician's job to present a distorted picture to the voters to make themselves look as good as possible and their opponent look as bad as possible. As Mark Twain said, "There are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics." It's one thing for them to say that they have evidence their opponent worships Satan. But as long as their carefully cherry-picked statistics are technically true, then what can you do? Especially when politicians have underlings who can secretly start a whisper campaign that their opponent worships Satan. And then say something like, "I think many voters in my district think it's a legitimate question whether my opponent worships the Dark Lord, but other than that I have no comment."

me

I doubt that such standards could be applied *now*, under present laws. Hypothetically, however...

1. A politician running for office is not yet a government employee, so I don't think the "suing the government" argument applies. I would extend that to incumbents as well, since they're not yet in the term of office for which they are offering you promises.

2. I'm not suggesting that suits could be filed over *any* harm, just harm that resulted specifically from inaccurate statements made and discovered while campaigning. (Other laws theoretically come into play when a politician lies while in office -- impeachment, recalls, and so forth -- though that hasn't been working so well lately, which is another problem.)

At the very *least*, we should be seeing some serious time and energy spent explaining why campaign promises were broken, and trying to convince us not to sue for breach of promise.

3. My whole point is that it should *not* be in a politician's best interest to present a distorted view in order to manipulate people. That is a huge part of what is wrong with the system right now.

4. All too often, "we" (or enough of "us" to decide the election) swallow facts that are not just distorted but *factually untrue*, because they sound believable. This should matter. This should be very, very harmful to a candidate when it is discovered, and provide steep incentive for them to avoid doing it at all costs. It should be so harmful that they would even avoid technically-true distortions, lest the court find that the "common understanding" of what was said was factually wrong.

2011-05-20

2011-05-19

2011-05-18

2011-05-17

2011-05-16

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2011-05-11

posted on Facebook: Reasons why I'm angry about gas prices (although it's not really one of my top issues):

  • Because the govt *didn't* start taxing it stiffly back in the 1970s, when it should have been obvious to everyone that we had become too dependent, to help pay for development of new fuels to replace it.
  • Because the govt pays subsidies to petroleum companies
  • Because the govt heavily subsidizes petroleum companies *instead of* alt fuels, and we should have had affordable electric cars 20-30 years ago; instead I'm stuck driving beasts that now cost $100-200 in gas per month
  • Because Republicans keep cutting funds for public transportation, while supporting subsidies for yet more roads and highways
  • Because the few govt subsidies for alt fuels go mainly to the wrong ones, like corn-based ethanol, and actually cause more problems than they solve

Also, the "dollar prices" are misleading. A dollar may be worth about half a Euro, leading to 1 Euro of gas costing $1.50+ for a visiting tourist, but if you look at earning power (average wages) the dollar and the Euro are more on a par with each other -- $2.50 isn't twice as hard to earn in England as $1 is here. The exchange rate sucks because of our trade deficit, not because dollars represent less labor than Euros.

So people in Europe aren't as upset about gas prices for two reasons: (1) the prices actually aren't that much higher, and (2) they have more public transportation (and a social safety net, so there's less worry of falling off a financial cliff when you can't make ends meet).

2011-05-09

2011-05-08

2011-05-05

2011-05-04

2011-05-03

2011-05-01

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2011-04-19

  • Was Mary Surratt a Lincoln Conspirator? (video) Where was the discussion about Booth's landlady being hung as a conspirator? This should probably go with that (but watch the video first; haven't done that yet).
  • 2011-04-15 Ten Enduring Myths About the U.S. Space Program: most of these are irrelevant, but some -- the ones about NASA's budget (currently less than 0.5% of spending), popular support, and motivations -- seem useful.
  • 2011-02-24 Ex BP cleanup worker speaks: people are sick and dying in the Gulf
  • 2011-04-18 Cost Of Tax Cuts For America's Rich Exceeds Value Of Budget Cuts "The estimated cost to the government of that portion of the tax deal, $42 billion this fiscal year, exceeds the stated $38 billion value of the savings from the federal budget cuts lawmakers approved last week."
  • 2011-04-18 S&P: US Needs to Get Its Act Together on the Debt: She ends with the conclusion that we need to be willing to compromise on budgetary issues or else face worse consequences down the road (i.e. credit downrating). On the face of it, this seems innocently reasonable enough -- but I see it coming back later with a new paint job: we *liberals* need to be willing to compromise -- on taxing the rich. I do not think we should compromise on that. There should be absolutely no question that tax breaks for the rich are a luxury we can't afford right now. (Dang, where's that other McArdle piece I saw that was similarly snakey?)

2011-04-18

2011-04-15

2011-04-13

  • http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-Start-Wearing-Pink.html
  • wikipedia:Aberfan disaster -- the patterns of denial-and-coverup are startlingly clear here: "When he eventually reached Aberfan, Robens told a TV reporter that nothing could have been done to prevent the slide, attributing it to 'natural unknown springs' beneath the tip, a statement which the locals knew to be false * the NCB had in fact been tipping on top of springs that were clearly marked on maps of the neighbourhood..." ("Who could have foreseen this?") "...he refused to allow Coal Board funds to be used for the removal of the remaining tips above Aberfan, instead appropriating a substantial sum from the public disaster relief fund to pay for the work." (immunity from consequences)
    • 2011-04-13 Shake-up time for Japanese seismology "For the past 20 years or so, some seismologists in Japan have warned of the seismic and tsunami hazards to the safety of nuclear power plants, most notably Katsuhiko Ishibashi, now professor emeritus at Kobe University. Their warnings went unheeded. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the magnitude-9.1 earthquake that struck Tohoku on 11 March, pundits could be found on many Japanese TV stations saying that it was *unforeseeable*."

2011-04-12

2011-04-09

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2011-03-17

For development of law scraper:

  • North Carolina General Statutes
    • Chapter 1: Civil Procedure
      • The actual text is available both for individual sections and the whole chapter. I'm inclined to put each section on a separate wiki page but display them together by default, with links to each section. Each section would have a link back to the source, as would the chapter. Maybe there should also be a "compare" link so regular users can tell if the text has changed since it was last scraped.

2011-03-15

2011-03-14

2011-03-13

2011-03-12

2011-03-11

2011-03-09

2011-03-08

2011-03-07

2011-03-06

2011-03-05

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2011-03-01

2011-02-26

2011-02-25

2011-02-23

2011-02-20

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO0sCs8jI4k Asimov on the Greenhouse Effect, global environmentalism, and the need for world government (did I already file this?)
  • Jury 2.0
  • http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/007911.html -- debate about space elevators vs. laser-driven rockets; we agree on the short-term conclusion, but the others in the dialogue seem to be overlooking a lot of important considerations and focusing in on just the one about radiation, which is really kind of trivial and has multiple solutions.

2011-02-19

2011-02-08

2011-02-07

details of the chemical/physical evidence for demolition

2011-02-02

2011-02-01

  • http://www.ethosthemovie.com/filmdownload.html - show to Swinger. I disagree with the final conclusion, at least without a layer of coordination; personal experience has proved that "responsible buying" as an individual makes no difference at all, or at least doesn't make enough difference to offset the accelerating pace of damage.
  • Taking Marriage Private "WHY do people * gay or straight * need the state*s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn*t, because marriage was a private contract between two families."

2011-01-31

2011-01-29

2011-01-24

2011-01-23

2011-01-19

  • PayPal alternatives:
    • AlertPay
    • Revolution MoneyExchange (not accepting new accounts at the moment)
    • discontinued:

2011-01-16

  • American Underground "American Underground is an entrepreneur*s dream -- offering a unique mix of world class amenities and clustered resources positioned in the heart of one of the nation*s best places to live and work." Looks a bit financially high-powered.
  • War Is Business
  • 2011-01-11 The case for mental health
  • 2009-07-14 How Doctor Who Made Me A Liberal
  • 2011-01-11 A rant on the evolution of religion "We have mental biases, that make us want to do certain things. We make culture, and we make culture that appeals to and works with our mental biases."
  • OpenTradeMark: rather poorly-written post with some interesting facts... and using the term "open trademark", which I wanted to use... need to figure out if they're talking about the same thing.
  • wikipedia:Asset-based community development "The first step in the process of community development is to assess the resources of a community ... to determine what types of skills and experience are available to a community organization. The next step is to consult with the community and find out what improvements the residents would like to make. The final step is to determine how the residents' skills can be leveraged into achieving those goals."

2011-01-12

2011-01-11

2011-01-10

2011-01-09

2011-01-07

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2011-01-03

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Apparently Blip.TV is no more: https://www.videoproc.com/resource/what-happened-to-blip-tv.htm
wiki file: https://hypertwins.org/mw/index.php?title=User:Woozle/tabdump/2011&oldid=25161