Pebble Blog Configuration
1. Enablng email notifications.
2. Long Post names (names that include the title of the post -- which is much better for search engines (ie Google).
See http://www.laliluna.de/blog/2007/02/01/blogs_pebble_tomcat_installation.html for help on #1.
For #2. Under Configurations ... plugins .... Permalink Provider ... change the default
net.sourceforge.pebble.permalink.DefaultPermalinkProvider
to
net.sourceforge.pebble.permalink.TitlePermalinkProvider
Triangle FreeThinkers Challenge
the owner of "TriangleFreeThinkers.org" has offered to donate the domain to TriangleFreeThinkers provided they step up to specific challenge. The Board of TriangleFreeThinkers are considering whether to accept the challenge, and have asked that the challenge be spelled out in precise detail.
Read about the challenge at trianglefreethinkers.org.
In my opinion, stepping to this challenge is no more than doing the job that TriangleFreeThinkers have assumed for themselves. For extra credit, they could
- Make the timing of the meeting convenient for Bill Maher's visit to Raleigh in February 2010, and get him to attend and speak on the motion, or just make fun of both sides. (In which case they should charge for admission).
- Get a famous or notorious religious person to speak for (or against?) the motion.
I think this challenge is a constructive exercise, but I am prepared to change my mind in the face of evidence and reason. You can discuss the challenge, and perhaps change my mind, by adding comments in this blog.
The Human population explosion may turn out not to be that bad.
The Perfect Storm
Global warming? – don't worry about it. Human technological ingenuity will fix that. If we can put a man on the moon, we can put mirrors in space to reflect the sun's rays. If we can Air Condition a Shopping Mall, we can Air Condition the Air – suck all that CO2 back out and put it back into the ground.
Our booming economy will drive the pace of technology development as well as the growth in wealth of everyone including the poorest people.
“Peak-Oil” – and the exhaustion of fossil fuels supplies – may not be that much of a problem either, as long as that human ingenuity delivers. May be we wont be reflecting the sun's rays away with mirrors in space, but focusing them down to earth as an energy source. Of course that would exacerbate global warming, but then we could really Air Condition the atmosphere, with heat pumps to push the excess heat out into space. There's nothing technologically wrong with that – all it needs is power to run the heat pumps, which just means collecting more solar rays.
We've got it made. A beautiful positive feedback mechanism in which wealth makes things better for everyone, even the poorest, and generates yet more wealth through an economic boom, which fuels technological advances that not only generate yet more wealth, but also provides the solutions to the problems we are creating. We can find more energy, not only to power the wealth boom, but to power the solutions to the problems created by using more energy. .... to infinity and beyond!
But the dark side of feedback mechanisms is that they work both ways.
What happens if we stumble? Let's suppose the unthinkable happens and the economic boom falters and, for inconceivable reason, the world economy falls into a 1930's like depression. Let's suppose it happens right now – just as we seem to have passed the world's “Peak Oil” production. The silver lining is that the the depression takes the pressure of oil demand. It also takes the eyes off global warming – and starts to eliminate the means to fix it – technologists are going to get laid off too; businesses aren't going to invest – particularly not it the most speculative areas. The beautiful positive feedback mechanisms start to look less beautiful when they work in the other direction.
But may be we will glide to a nice soft landing – like a plane guiding into the Hudson after it loses both engines.
The problem is that there's some feedback mechanisms that aren't going to go into reverse for a long time. The CO2 we have already dumped into the atmosphere is going to cause the temperature to rise for hundreds of years even if we stopped adding more right now. The babies who might have not be born if their parents were wealthier have already been born. We chose not to fix global warming or oil exhaustion problems when the economy was booming, and we might not be able to afford it in a depression. We chose not to fixed problems when they were foreseeable and fixable.
At least we fixed one problem. When the economy was booming we made sure that plenty of the new wealth ended up in the hands of the poorest people, and that those same people saw the benefits of modern medicine and received the best education, so that they would see a future that needed less children to be born. -- Oh no, we didn't do that either. We've had a boom in concentrating wealth into the hands of the richest and most powerful people.
So when there was plenty, the rich hoarded it for themselves. In a depression, the rich are going to use their power to protect their wealth – they are going to be even less likely to allow wealth to go to the poorest people. So there's goes the dream of a stabilized human population.
But never mind, all of these problems will get fixed. People will die. The universe has no use for humans. It will survive without them.
Humans Are Not Responsible For The Population Explosion
The methodology used to show that Humans aren't responsible for global warming works for the population explosion too.
Graphs of historic global temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations show that they both go up and down in a matching pattern – but the temperature goes up before the CO2 level goes up. This is conclusive proof that we have nothing to worry about. Emissions of CO2 aren't causing the temperature to rise – it's the other way around. Global Warming is not our fault.
Applying the same logic to human population, we can draw graphs of the historic population of babies and compare it with the population of Adults. We discover that the the population of babies goes up first! Therefore, human adults are not responsible for the population explosion!
The Second [Amendment] Protects the Rest
What does this mean?
“I will get my way by logical, reasoned argument based on a civil processes taking account of the interests of all people, whom I recognize as equals with their own rights and opinions. But If that doesn't work, I'll shoot them.”
PO: No Representation without Taxation
Observations on the Electoral College Debates
I find the arguments on the Electoral College amusing. Everyone seems to know:
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Why they should have a disproportionate vote in the choice of President.
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That someone who was president was a better president than someone who never was (but would have been had the system they are objecting to been in place).
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That democracy is bad.
To those who feel is is right that they should have a disproportionate vote, then we should at least consider that correspondingly disproportionate taxation should be in order. Those who think it should be a federal system, with each state having equal say, should expect each state to bear and equal share of the burden of government. Alaskans – who have 50 times more representation, per person, in the Senate than Californians, should expect to bear 50 times more taxation per person. If the Federal government instigates conscription, Alaskans should expect to be 50 times more likely to be conscripted than Californians.
If you feel that your choice of President is better than the misguided decision of the people, why don't we skip pretending to give people a vote and go straight to the oracle. You should choose the President – and you will no doubt choose yourself – just as every dictator chooses himself as the rightful ruler.
The electoral college, as it operates today, takes the choice of the people, according to the popular vote, and adjusts it according to a factor determined by the randomness of the distribution of the votes across states. Those who feel that this randomness served them in delivering their choice of president instead of the choice of the majority of the people argue that this randomness is good. But if choosing the President by a process that is effectively random is good, let's just go with the toss of a coin. It's a lot cheaper and just as fair and democratic.
There are those that argue that a close vote would require and long drawn out recount. If we don't think the decision is important enough to be worth actually counting the votes, and prefer a system where is easier to count them, let's skip giving millions of people the pretense of a vote. How about just 9? Let the Supreme Court choose the president. Wait, we tried that in 2000, and they gave us Bush. But it's such a nice cozy arrangement where the president appoints the judges and the judges appoints the president. Just think, in a couple of generations everybody in government could be named Bush.
There's just one sensible point I have seen in recent debates: We don't want a system where the president can be determine by, say, 30% of the vote. Personally, I don't see why we should tolerate any circumstance where the president is someone that more than 50% of the people don't want to be their president. That should certainly apply on Election day, but also every day thereafter.
But we already have a system where the president can elected by 30% of the vote ... the Electoral College, particularly when combined with the two party system. The only reason why any president gets more than 50% of the votes (electoral or people's votes) is that the two party system forced the choice down to two. When there's a third party candidate who gets more than a handful of votes, the result of the election is truly random. The process for narrowing down the choice to two isn't designed by reason nor specified by the constitution; it is largely at the whim of the parties and determined mainly by the desire for the president to come from their party.
Even with just two candidates, the winner-take-all system for allocating state's electoral votes means that a candidate needs only 51% of the vote in a state to get 100% of their electoral votes. A president can win a majority in the Electoral College with 51% of the votes in 51% of the states and zero votes in 49% of the State. Therefore he can win with just 25% of the popular vote, if the randomness of voter distribution breaks his way. The more candidates there are, the lower the percentage of the votes required to win.
The same person who argues against electing a president on 30% of the votes, also argues the 100% of State's electoral votes should go the candidate with the most votes in his state – even if that's only 30% of the votes.
Are those who think it right that 51% of the people in their state should determine 100% of their state's contribution to the presidential decision, willing to put their money behind their mouth. How about if the 51% who get nearly two votes pay nearly twice the taxation, and the 49% who get zero votes pay none? “Oh no,” I'm sure they would say, “that would be unfair”.
Moreover all the arguments that say “look the electoral college got it right; the popular vote got it wrong” (because I know who was the right choice), overlook the fact that we don't know who won the real popular vote. How many people didn't vote at all because they already knew that their vote would make no difference because the result for their state was already certain. 3 million people in California voted for Obama but their vote had no effect because he already had a majority. How many millions just stay at home and achieved exactly the same zero effect. How many Californian Republicans didn't bother to vote for McCain because they knew that their voted wouldn't count. How many people would have voted for Nader in Florida 2000 if they thought he had a chance, but instead voted for Gore in the vain hope of preventing a worse evil stealing the election? No one will ever know.
The arguments about the Electoral College seem to me to represent the worst things about this country. The preference for self-serving arguments (no matter how stupid) that lead to the inability to get the simplest thing right.
Electing a president whose actions are likely to effect everyone equally should be done by a process in which everyone gets an equal say. Not because I think that's going to give the best answer (ie my choice) but because the alternative is worse. In the end we humans have found only two ways to resolve disagreements: the exertion of force or a majority decision. I don't believe the majority will make the right decision, but I don't believe I have the right to force my decision on them. I'm happy with a rule that says no one can be president when the majority are again him being president. If that means “No President” until someone can rally more than 50% of the people in their support, that's fine with me. (See Nobody would have been a better President than George W Bush) It cannot be any worse than many of the decisions taken either by the majority or the random selection process using the Electoral College ... and if it does turn out to be worse the incentive to rally 50%+ support for one individual will be so much greater. There's a thought, “The people” might actually have to learn how to govern themselves .. we could call it “Government of the People, for the People, by the People.”
'Consumer Rights': Who decides What Goes into Windows?
Discussion of a Q&A by Mark Da Cunha (February 5, 1999) . The original is here
A: No one has a right to buy whatever they wish, one only has the right to buy what others choose to voluntary sell to them. ...
This answer is, quite literally, a “half-truth” ...