Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Maelstrom

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5
46
It's naive to expect, say, that you can destroy hundreds of thousands of terrorists without losing at least tens of thousands of your own troops.  We may have a great military and great technology, but *bodies* count for something, especially when our current enemy (insurgents) have the element of surprise to boot.  As large and developed as our country is, we can't just steamroll through one country after another, when the enemy within each country is scattered and hidden all over the place.  Wars like these entail real sacrifices, and as others have mentioned, Iraq was marketed as an easy feel-good story that had no hope of living up to those expectations, even if there were WMDs to be found (I saw that Daily Show interview, too, and I wouldn't doubt him; he's just too lovable).  In particular, we were not prepared for the struggle with preserving order after getting Saddam out.  Half-hearted efforts will just get your ass handed to you.

We absolutely had to go after Osama when 9/11 happened, but al Qaeda should have remained our focus until we achieved victory against them.  Going after terrorism is general, without international support, is like throwing rocks at a bee hive or hornets' nest.  We're not going to do any major damage, and we're just going to incite them towards more aggression, particularly towards us.

As weak as it may sound, sometimes you just have let some things play out.  It wasn't until just over 140 years ago that the United States got rid of slavery, and then around 40 years ago we got over rampant racial discrimination.  Women couldn't vote (nationwide) until 86 years ago and have been fighting for more rights since.  Even if we had the military capacity 150 years ago to get rid of today's Saddam, we would have been moral hypocrites to do it (we, enslavers of blacks and tyrants of indians).  Considering how long humanity has been around, it may not be the worst thing if some of these countries are only lagging 100 - 250 years behind us.  And they will feel a lot prouder when they overcome obstacles (largely) on their own.  Some will be disappointed that we aren't improving human life across the world as much then, but we would then gain a greater ability to improve life *here*, in term developing us better ambassadors of justice and democracy in the future (when we are less discriminatory and more sensitive to cultural).

I don't want to harp on the economic side of things too much, but if we don't adhere to fiscal responsibility (like through controlling the national debt), we may lose power to intervene in the rest of the world in the future.  As such, we can't spend so much money fighting marginally effective wars while simulatenously granting large (sometimes no-bid) contracts to rebuild these countries.  For a couple interpretations of how much debt we have, I give these graphs:

Inflation-adjusted debt (blue bar graph): http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html
As percentage of GDP: http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

The first graph is adjusted for inflation, but it doesn't take into account whether the economy is growing enough to keep up (population growth affects total GDP as well).  Still, it's more useful than getting scared by the red graph (which doesn't adjust for inflation), and it gives us an accurate assessment of what *value* of debt we are talking about.

If you want to get an accurate interpretation of how *constraining* the national debt is (and how hard it would be to pay it off), look at the second one.  This one is complicated a bit by the strength of the economy, but considering we are judging our government on the strength of our economy (GDP) as well, it's really not so bad.  Obviously we have been through worse, but we are clearly heading in the wrong direction at the moment.  Furthermore, we risk taking a GDP hit when those baby boomers retire (fewer workers), so it would be wise to turn things around now, so we can afford to absorb that hit later.

47
General Discussion / Open Source
« on: March 30, 2006, 11:40:16 am »
Firefox
Thunderbird

I would be using OpenOffice, but I got a (cheap) student copy of MS Office.

48
General Discussion / Writing pet peeves
« on: March 29, 2006, 11:11:12 am »
* Overbearing avertising
* Anyone smoking in the general vicinity of anywhere I need to go
* People who want everything they believe is wrong, minus the things they personally want to do, to be illegal (bigots?)
* On that note, hypocrites
* People who BS and believe BS

49
General Discussion / The Abortion Thread Ex Ultra!
« on: March 29, 2006, 10:57:51 am »
Quote from: Burning Zeppelin
Phew! I thought, when you gave that reply, that you were probably red in the face, shattered wine glass all over the floor, animals giving warning signs for a hurricane...luckily I replied quick  :D


He's on edge about that, I presume, because he believes women and men alike should be treated equally (what a novel idea!)  As such, if you're going to call a woman some names because she does certain things, then you better be doing the same to a man who does the same/reciprocal things.  Of course, many people don't do this and thus put out a double standard.  He *really* hates it.

It's a pet peeve of mine as well, so I understood what was happening as that sequence of posts unfolded.

***

There are reasons for abstaining that are more "sane" than religion.  Sex outside of a committed relationship does entail a degree of risks: your partner may carry STDs and may not let you know about them (not necessarily out of deceit; sometimes they just don't know), and a condom, even when it works, won't protect against everything.  Similarly, unless you stay away from vaginal sex, you've got to remember condoms break, and men can't verify their partners are properly using other contraception (which rarely can still fail as well).  For people who believe abortion is wrong (whether or not they expect the law to enforce it), a woman may find that risk to be unacceptable, and a man does not want to risk putting that burden of choice on his partner (and it's even worse when she has no choice).

When you get into a committed relationship, then you're reasonably sure neither of you have had sex lately, so any STDs you have should show up in testing.  So you get tested, and then you can engage when you're ready for that.

Besides, if your relationship can't hold up for, let's say, at least six months without sex, what makes you think it can hold up sixty years *with* sex?

 :roll:

50
General Discussion / The Abortion Thread Ex Ultra!
« on: March 27, 2006, 10:22:11 pm »
I don't like the idea of abortion, but there's two angles where it undeniably gets hairy.  My first case...

Woman's risk: There's often the situation where there's a strong/certain chance the mother will die if she tries to continue her pregnancy to term, combined with a negligible, strong, or certain chance the unborn would die as well.  There obviously has to has to be some instances where abortion would need to be legal (where both risks of death are certain or nearly certain), but if you still want abortion illegal in general, then you are going to have to come up with some risk threshold/cutoff.  It's going to be hard to come up with a fair criteria that doesn't give doctors considerable leeway.

Of course, that may not be enough to make you give up, so let's consider my other angle.  The following quote was thrown around: "If you didn't want the baby, you shouldn't have had sex in the first place."  This retort neglects one serious case...

Rape: It's the scenario where the "choice" of whether to have sex is taken away, and often violently.  It's problematic because...

1) Rape is common.  You can't just say we will handle it on a case-by-case basis.

2) There would need to be, at a minimum, a rape exception.  Without it, all women face the fear of having their career/economic status damned at any moment.  Furthermore, rapists would be even more encouraged to continue their practice: their desire of rape isn't to have sex, but to excercise power over someone else, and the lack of a rape exception would give them more room to do damage.

3) You actually have to enforce that rape exception somehow.  In particular, you have to decide what strength of evidence there needs to be.  I'll open a couple subsections for this:

A) The strongest policy would be to require a rape convinction.  Unfortunately, this is impractical for several reasons: One, rape is *hard* to prove in court, and many legit cases will not result in convinction (since you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and the evidence simply may not be there; not only do you need physical evidence, but you need to prove that the sex wasn't consensual).  Even more, because you do have a rape exception, then the man can use the argument of "It was consensual; she's just accusing me because she wants an abortion," and it'll be hard to disprove it.  Rape will become *nearly impossible* to prove, so nearly none of these raped woman will get their abortion.

Also, many criminal cases take a lot time to put together.  The baby may already be well-developed or even delivered before the case concludes, and many will argue that you are committing a worse crime by aborting a five month fetus compared to a five day fetus.

B) A weaker threshold would not require the woman to acquire a convinction.  Unfortunately, if she doesn't need a convinction, then there's inevitably going to be scenarios where a woman (possibly with accomplices with testimony) that wasn't raped could put together enough evidence to get the abortion but of course would not necessarily need to get anyone convincted in the process.  In other words, it's just a matter of putting together a decent rape story/conspiracy to get the abortion without losing any friends.

Point is, any rape exception you may make is going to either be inadequate (A) or loophole-ridden (B).

.
.
.

Seeing as a rape exception (and medical exception) can't be both sufficient and not manipulable, and that not allowing abortions in those cases leads to a terrifying culture for women, we have no choice but to settle for a more relaxed abortion policy.  This means uninhibited access to abortion (at least early-term).  A moderate ruling based on this idea is Roe v/ Wade: Access is easy early on, but states have the right to make abortion harder late in the pregnancy (if it's in the last trimester, you can just induce an early delivery if you really need to).

Now, some may argue that we should make late-term abortions harder.  However, it's worth pointing out they are pretty rare already:

Time in gestation of (legal) abortion:
0-8 weeks: 58% (avg of 7.25% per week)
8-12 weeks: 30% (avg of 7.50% per week)
12-20 weeks: 10.5% (avg of 1.31% per week)
20 weeks - birth (typically ~39 weeks): 1.5% (average of 0.08% per week)

Source, but this data is presented in sentences.

As such, people in practice generally do not take late-term abortion lightly, and legislating a time threshold won't have a major impact; in fact, it may just lead to those people getting their abortions earlier, and you may very well see an *increase* in abortions.  Some women that otherwise may go on to deliver may panic and abort out of fear, afraid that something may go wrong during the remainder of the pregnancy and  that they won't have that abortion lifeline to save them.

As such, I think our current setup is fine.  It's not going to be satisfying, but making it any more restrictive is just going to make things suck.

"Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!"

It's perfect if you think about it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of course, there is still a way to reduce abortions without making them illegal: educate teenagers about birth control, and get them access to contraceptives.  Studies generally support that this helps.  Teaching good communication / relationship skills and otherwise empowering teenagers to take control and responsibility in their lives can't hurt either (if you don't address their problems, you allow them to become depressed and more vulnerable to unhealthy/unsafe relationships, which often involve *unprotected* sex).

The fact *many* (albeit far from all) conservatives fight comprehensive sex education shows you that they aren't interested in reducing the number of abortions, but that they absolutely must have their religious dogma enforced by the government.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And in response to Hadriel, that's hilarious.  As for the legal rammifications of sex'ing a robot, I think you may be in the clear as long as the robot remains strictly a program that hasn't crossed the "uncanny valley" that gives the robot the ability to really "think" for itself.  After that, it gets hard, because you get into all kinds of sticky "consent" issues.

*grumble*

51
Spot on.

You're tired of sensalization, panic (any important long-term decision we make can wait a few months), prophecies, conspiracies (and theories), hype, propoganda, and the kind of garbage (be it related to science, morality, or any other field) that clutter the pipeline and distract and tire us, often to make a buck (to sell their book, to make money off speeches, protect their interest/business, etc) or gain prestige.  At the same time, you hate it when people give up and let all that crap defeat them and stop thinking and caring (become disinterested in improving their understanding or doing anything about it).

Or, if you'd like a summary, you hate it when people put out "BS," and you hate it when people buy into it.

No doubt, it's hard to fight it all, but you just can't give up.  None of us can.  And that's what you believe.

Right?

52
Reducing our own impact on global warming does not necessarily lead society to socialism.  It's only an aspect of socialism, and not everything about socialism is bad, nor is every aspect of capitalism good.  Ultimately, your society ought to find some compromise between the two, because "pure" versions of each are really bad (see Gilded Age in the late 19th century, and "communist" Russia/China).  After all, people in neither system are free: communism because no one has wealth, and capitalism because the many are at the mercy of the few.

53
Ah yes, that's the big question, isn't it?  What will/can we actually do about global warming or any other issue?

Presumably we can let this issue *affect* (not necessarily decide) who we vote for, but obviously that will upset those conservative types (even if it is their party's fault they don't stand ecological responsibility).

Another is to petition our representatives and/or corporations to have higher standards adhered to, although there's a nice perception that neither will respond to us, and the latter will probably harvest any personal information you include and use it in their marketing.

A third method is to find others who agree with your concerns and stage a protest.  (Of course, this is why it is important to make others aware this is a problem; you need numbers to stand out, after all).  Sizable protests have a little more hope of bringing about change, but there are obviously risks/costs at play.

1) Protests take more work that voting responsibly or sending petitions.  This includes planning and recruiting, but you also have to consider the toll (economic, energy, and whatnot) it will take on your fellow protestors.
2) Be ready for bad things: People will be hostile to you, typically out of ignorance or out of feeling threatened.  They will call you hippies (whatever), unpatriotic (untrue, you're the ones actually giving a damn about your country's future), and terrorists (just idiotic).
3) Be ready for really bad things: Others may try to incite your group to become violent, or there may be wolves in sheep'ss clothing (or is it the other way around?) that may try to sabotage your protest.

Regarding #2 and #3, obviously there are fears to overcome, but just as we should not give in to the terrorists of al Qaeda, we shouldn't give in to those here, that would terrorize us into tolerating the status quo, either.

54
Quote from: Lord J esq
You're either paying a dollar for twelve ounces of water, or you're with the terrorists.


Heh.

Of course, you don't have to measure overall air temperature to realize we are screwing with the environment.  Actual greenhouses show that increasing CO2 will result in temperature increases, and we are releasing CO2 into the environment, so while there may be disputes about the scale of our damage, it's silly to say we are doing no damage.

55
General Discussion / Quote Digest
« on: March 23, 2006, 11:54:30 pm »
No book alone can tell you what the truth is.

To even have a hope of finding truth, you must pay each resource out there an appropriate level of respect, whether it be books, life experiences, whatever.  Try to wrap your mind around everyone's reality and try to assimilate all their ideas, hopes, and dreams, as well as your own.  Be patient in resolving contradictions, and be open to creative solutions.

This approach is likely not sufficient, but something along these lines is necessary if you want the wisdom to have any hope of finding and recognizing some answers.

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning, but without understanding." - Justice Louis Brandeis

56
I do now.

(submitted)

And... posted!

57
It's a concept hack that was initially designed to circumvent the quirky nature of magic defense and other stats by removing the level-up entirely.  After changing character and enemy stats, I mainly tried to learn to do more things with the ROM and improve the game's balance by tweaking more and more components of the game, even tweaking/adding a few minor events.  While all these changes meant making certain battles more difficult, it also meant making the game more forgiving in other regards.

Level Zero v0.7c (formerly Frozen in Time)
Edit: Main Readme

For those who may have seen Frozen in Time v0.6, this patch is a major update.

While this is not explicitly a hardtype hack, it is probably is a bit on the difficult side, so if you'd like to play Chrono Trigger with a bit of an edge, Level Zero is worth a go.

I've tested it over and over again, and I'm at the point I could really use some feedback.

So, give me your best shot.

Thanks very much,

-Maelstrom

58
Kajar Laboratories / Major Chrono Crisis Update
« on: March 23, 2006, 08:39:45 am »
Nice job.

It's a shame sprites take that much work.

59
Kajar Laboratories / Chain's of Fate's Birthday =D
« on: March 23, 2006, 08:37:30 am »
This is belated, but happy b-day.

Thanks for making me feel old.

60
Quote from: Daniel Krispin
Excuse my ignorance if this sounds stupid... but couldn't causality be seen as a form of fate? After all, if all things are cause and effect, that would imply that they've been set into causal motion since the Big Bang - as such, things now have been predetermined since the beginning. Wouldn't that be fate in and of itself? Maybe I just mis-interpreted that, though.


If you believe in fate, you can't deny that some of are destined to improve things and prepare for the future.  You can say we are fated to some end, but it'll be because of the actions of all people, conservatives (in the inaction sense, not the political one) and activists alike.

Even if it is all predetermined, it doesn't mean we can't cast blame, give credit, and take responsibility.

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5