HOPE KILLS: Susan G Komen Foundation Would Rather Be Associated With A Handgun Than Planned Parenthood

2000man · 1 day

What does that have to do with fighting breast cancer? Unlike, for instance, donating to an organization doing screenings for breast cancer?

snkys · 1 day

Not sure what you're referencing - are you claiming that Bernanke is handing out the new money to poor people?

snkys · 2 days

Of course, the absolute simplest, "braindead" way of achieving the desired goal would be for the central bank to print the money, then simply split it equally among everyone in the country. That would help with poverty & increase demand for goods & services (since poor people pretty much spend anything they get), plus inflation is almost guaranteed (since all that extra money would actually go into buying real goods & services).

Of course, you'd get all the people screaming about socialism & lazy-ass-poor-people-who-don't-deserve-free-money, but it still would probably do more direct good for the economy than just giving the new printed money to the banks.

Vacseiled · 2 days

I was thinking about old legends where if you see a doppleganger, that is a sign that you will die soon. Kind of like the banshee myths.

But Highlander would make for a better dramatic moment.

Vacseiled · 2 days

If you ever meet, one of you will die.

Stthads · 4 days

Vote-by-mail is convenient, but it doesn't meet the requirements for a secure anonymous ballot procedure.

For proper secure anonymous voting, you need a private space where the voter can fill out their ballot without worrying about anyone looking over their shoulder.

Rearden_Steel · 4 days

I suppose a tax on stupidity would be regarded as partisan by both parties. Might end funding woes forever though.

rogers8290 · 7 days

Considering that in the U.S. servers are often paid below minimum wage & expected to make it up through tips, I think worrying about tips is a perfectly reasonable reaction.

maxwellhill · 7 days

They deserve to receive payment for every copy of their product that is out there.

No, they don't. The only reason they can expect to get paid for each copy is because of the special legislation that protects them.

The justification for such legislation is that allowing content creators such special protection will somehow provide a net societal benefit - it's NOT because content creators somehow morally "deserve" more privileges than any other class of goods/service provider.

The question becomes: when the implementation of IP starts looking like it is no longer providing a net societal benefit (for instance, when it benefits a small # of very well-off people instead of maximizing the amount of "art" available to the society), then what reason is there for the general society to continue supporting that system?

It's really hard to frame this in a form of what is right and wrong, because i find myself reading what i write thinking it sounds like i'm against it when i'm for it.

It's because you're not sure which viewpoint you're looking from. Are you looking from the viewpoint of the current entertainment industry? Obviously, in their case, the current system of copyright is good.

Are you looking from the viewpoint of a small artist/performer? Copyright may or may not be good for you depending on how good you are at using the legal system to protect yourself from the big guys. Considering that the legal system has been pretty much built up to protect them, and not you, good luck with that.

Are you looking from a "total societal good" viewpoint? That would take a bunch of controlled studies to say with any degree of confidence of whether there is a "net benefit" to allowing IP protection (or if there is some level of protection that provides the most good), and there is a severe lack of such studies available.

My personal opinion is that IP laws have passed the threshold where, if they weren't hurting society, were at least not harming society, and have gone into the territory where they are starting to cause net societal harm - they are being used as a legal weapon to reduce the total amount of art & new content that becomes available to the general public.

I admit that this opinion is based mainly on the many anecdotes of IP abuse that I read about on a regular basis, so if a decent controlled study appears (that isn't paid for by the entertainment industry) which shows that my preconceptions are wrong, then I will reevaluate my position at that time.

maxwellhill · 7 days

They "deserve" what a free market is willing to pay them for their product or service. If they can't get more than that without special protective legislation, then that means their product wasn't worth as much as they thought it was.

maxwellhill · 7 days

When did certain people start to "deserve" revenue? If they want to keep getting money, then they should keep working for it like any other craftsperson, rather than on insisting on special legal advantages.

daewoolanos · 8 days

What usually happens to me is that the bubbles from the boiling water keep knocking my eggs around into each other & the sides of the pot until they crack, then the water starts filling up with strings of cooked egg white as it escapes through the cracks in the eggs. Dunno why this seems to happen to me more often than other people I know.

anutensil · 8 days

And oddly enough, none of that will probably occur unless the gas prices start trending steadily upward...

daewoolanos · 8 days

Water can hold a LOT of heat, even when the burner is off. Once the water has reached the boiling point, it doesn't take much longer for the eggs to be fully cooked (and much less likely to break & spew their insides all over the inside of the pot).

DrJulianBashir · 9 days

Higher fossil fuel prices will also spur the market to invest further and further into the newer technologies.

All of which cost a lot more (esp. for the switch), and which generally are not as efficient at holding & transporting energy (otherwise they would have been used rather than oil a long time ago).

None of your statements gets around the idea that energy prices are going to go up once the oil gets tough to pay for. Can economies which are based on such cheap prices adapt fast enough, and will the adaptations still allow us to live the way we have been?

DrJulianBashir · 9 days

Using up the entire universe's reserves? That's a scary civilization.

LukesRightHand · 10 days

This is a discussion about morality, not about legality. If you can easily redefine words to mean anything to win a moral argument, then the words become meaningless.

LukesRightHand · 10 days

Execution is not murder.

Hahaha, that is such hypocrisy. Execution is the ultimate example of premeditated killing. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's not murder.

Capital punishment is my shit-test for my fundie relatives. If they're against abortion, but for capital punishment, then they're not pro-life - they're anti-choice.

DrJulianBashir · 11 days

Anyone trusting ANY large organization for the long-term is asking for heartache.

ado010 · 11 days

That's expensive. Better make them work to pay for their own housing & board while they're in jail.

MykoDaShmo · 14 days

I think the "nuts" believe that particular amendment didn't meet the Constitutional requirements to become an amendment, so that it isn't really valid.

corttana · 14 days

Wouldn't correctly-functioning Long Fall Socks(tm) kind of ruin the bravado of parkour?

wang-banger · 15 days

Nah, it would take at least a couple of years before they got tired of perusing their porn stash. By then, however, their fetishes would have grown to make Lovecraft scenarios look tame.

MadMan2012 · 15 days

The mods add a LOT of flavor to the games (and a lot of crashes as well...)

sh0rtSt4ck · 16 days

Uh...what part of "intellectual property" is anti-government?

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