Actaeon

Most business I've dealt with are pretty lenient about long lunches and leaving early on election day, but yeah, I could see that working. There's also, you know... mail in. (Although it can cause some frustration for the traditionalists, who still expect to turn up at the Town Hall without their ballots and just vote). The best of all works would be something electronic and internet based, but I understand that it would be a security nightmare (even if there was a central database checking SSNs).

I proposed this (as well as a topic on water rights) sort of in jest, but I actually would like to hear this community's thoughts. Vast sections of forest throughout the west are standing dead. The Aspens aren't handling the temperature changes terribly well, either. According to an article in the New York Times a while back, it's not just here. Trees as far away as Australia and Africa are feeling the heat. Last time I touched on this topic, I encouraged avoidance of the main issue: climate change. This time, I'm considering it natural topic drift. But first... beetle kill. Can it be stopped? Mitigated? Can we use the lumber? Should anyone in the urban West or outside the mountains and Boreal forest even care? (Edit: This IS more interesting than water rights to the Easterners and Europeans here, right?) (Postedit... I'm not sure what to make of starting a topic with the number of the beast.)

... I wish we could have a "Western Issues" topic, with stuff like water rights and beetle kill. I think the rest of you would be bored to death just skimming it, though.

I had some problems with editing, so I'll respond to Kelandon here: Originally Posted By: Kelandon Originally Posted By: Actaeon In a related note, could someone explain why deregulation of drugs and deregulation of firearms are on opposite ends of the political spectrum? Because there's a difference between harming other people and harming yourself. Point taken. I don't think drugs are entirely off the hook for harming others, though. Many drugs can result in agression or violence, while almost any drug inhibits your ability to pilot an automobile or care for a child. Obviously our society isn't terribly concerned with that fact, as one of the leading substances in both cases is legal. I'm actually not entirely sure how we decide these things. I, for one, prefer potheads to alcoholics (though I am neither). In an unrelated note... are firearms really that political most places? Most of the gun owners I know are democrats. Edit: Okay, so SOMEONE saw the old edit. I'm terribly confused and am going to just leave things alone before I make them worse. However, to respond: I don't think society would go all to hellI DO think we've come to rely on the government to tell us what is safe. If something is legal, many people will assume it is appropriate to use for that reason. Other drugs may not necessarily be worse than alcohol, but they each come with their own risks, and they're not mutual exclusive. With respect to gun control? I didn't realize the right was arguing against concealed carry permits and trigger locks. That seems like common sense to me.

I'm not really concerned about the actual prevalence of litigation. What I'm responding to is the energy our society puts in to avoiding it. We ban tree climbing, remove merry go rounds from parks, label hot drinks as hot and require extensive waivers for the most mundane activities. I don't believe I claimed we were any worse than other places or times. Unless those societies have chosen to completely deregulate drugs, they're irrelevant to my point (which is, to reiterate, that our society isn't ready to remove its training wheels). Edit: Wow... my first edit severely screwed this up... see my comments later on.

Our society is quite used to being told how to behave. I am not confident that, as a whole, we still have the ability to discern between what is right and what is legal. We're forced to weave intricate webs of legality just to keep people from suing everyone else for their own mistakes. That's not to say there aren't some drugs that are overregulated or regulated imperfectly. In a related note, could someone explain why deregulation of drugs and deregulation of firearms are on opposite ends of the political spectrum?

There is such a thing as the tyranny of the masses. A fully democratic society is entirely capable of precipitating terrible injustice on the 49% if it's sufficiently in their interests. With regards to the presidency, I don't think that would be a terrible risk. If you started putting everything to a popular vote, however, a series of minorities outside the classic range would quickly become apparent. For starters, I am reasonably confident that the majority on the other side of the 100th meridian would be far more friendly to extractive industry in the West than those of us who live here.

Wikipedia will eventually contain all the knowledge of mankind. Rather, wikis in general (including, in this case, Ermarian and its ilk), will slowly come to dominate our puny world, then destroy mankind to prevent the creation of new information. (Actual answer: no, and yes) (Actual actual answer: Wikipedia does actually have some standards about relevance. Occasionally, I have known classmates to create articles as school projects. Several have been deleted due to general superfluousness.)

There's a reason I usually prefer to ask questions rather than making statements. My opinions are, while not precisely parroted, usually based on little better than a laypersons's understanding and assessment. I have my hand in too many pots, probably. (insert Anthropology joke here) I state my perception in the hope that those better informed than me will correct and enhance it. In this case, I guess that I would rather believe that our government was deceptive than that it was petty and inept. The "megalomaniac" theory seems hard to swallow. And, if our leaders are really that inept, it's a bad sign for our long term trajectory.

I think that when most people make negative remarks about 4chan, what they're REALLY talking about is /b.

AND if we could take over Canada, we could stop paying them! ... Actually a North American republic (or even just an EU equivalent) could be really beneficial to a lot of parties.

I clearly should have stuck around for that confused period of transition. Instead, I burnt out on all the changes and began my longest absence to date.

NeoOffice (a mac native port of OpenOffice) and Google Earth, respectively. Edit: While we're on the topic of applications... does anyone here still fiddle with TerraGen?

... I agree with point one and the first half of point two. I DO think Iraq was beneficial to US interests, both strategically and in terms of resources. This is, I'll admit, a view espoused by a large percentage of liberals, plus Ron Paul. But hey, at least I'm not ranting about 9/11 being an inside job.

But we're allied with the Saudis. We don't need to invade them to get their oil. And "of no more... resource value than Saudi Arabia" is like "of no more post count than Alorael".

Okay... why does Synergy's smiley have a full on semicircle grin? It looks a little maniacal. I'm assuming there's an explanation, but unlike the fact that everyone pre 2008 apparently registered at the same time of day (due to the UBB update, I assume), I cannot quite understand what it is.

I have to admit, I fail to see the point of an electoral college that, rather than actually buffering against an uniformed populous (which I gather was the intent), just skews things enough to deprive us of a sense of control. I am under the impression that many of these issues stem from a time when the individual right of the states had a good deal more emphasis than it does today (that is to say, before the Civil War put an end to the notion that the states could be relatively autonomous).

Speaking of Canada... any interesting and potentially less screwed up election build ups going on abroad?

Originally Posted By: Smuggling ideas over the borders —Alorael, who is already a Luddite. He doesn't have an iPad himself, nor does he really want one. He doesn't Facebook, Twitter, or even reddit. And he plays Angband. To me, this could be a topic of its own. I'm a Wikipedia addict and am unhealthily attached to my laptop, but cannot get in line with modern tablets, ereaders, or the idea of web based computing that's rendered nonfunctional without an internet connection. (I also have been known to dip into roguelikes between Spiderweb releases, and own a typewriter and gramophone. Obviously, I'm not an ideal representative of my generation.) Edit: If he wanted to be really hipster about it, he'd have drawn it in Kidpix.

I gather we're pretty well agreed that it's a less than ideal group of candidates. But can any of them actually defeat Barack Obama?

One could make the argument that the advent of touch technology has actually reversed age-associated technophobia somewhat. Many people who previously had trouble with tiny buttons and complex interfaces have found that the new suite of devices are within their learning curve.

I have nothing to apologize for.

Continuing my recent tradition of citing webcomics: http://xkcd.com/282/

My wallpaper is always a season off. I think I posted that picture in the photo thread, but I suppose you can all critique me on the applications in my dock or something.

There's also a fair amount of fear associated with genetic engineering. And nukes haven't exactly gone away... (Also: http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2071) (Also also: I am afraid I cannot separate fear of Nanotechnology from "Prey", which makes it marginally harder to take seriously.)