Um... one thing. What's with the accent? Did they have such a strong American accent back in the late 18th century?

Are you familiar with the concept that the world belongs to the living and not the dead? Sure, the US Constitution has some good stuff in it, built upon the collective reason of several previous centuries' of legal thought.

What I'm trying to figure out is why anyone would think that there hasn't been any rational thought on the subject in the last two centuries.

Yogi is right - the Constitution is no more sacred than the paper I wipe my ass with. It certainly holds no magic that renders it invulnerable to time. It is a document written for people living in the 18th century. This is not unlike the Old Testament being largely obviated by the New Testament. The Ten Commandments are meaningless in the face of Christ's sacrifice. The same is true of the laws of man. Yeah, much of what they were saying still makes sense in a narrowly defined way, but ultimately, those laws are useless in our current context.
In reply to this comment by bobknight33:
You dumb ass piece of shit. You typify the losers who are ruining this country. The constitution is what this country is founded on. It is the most document this country has. Its what separates us from dictatorships and other evil forms of governments. How stupid can you be?

Just because our leaders have wiped their asses with it does not make it less important. The words in the document are powerful. Did you ever read it? Or are you some flunky useless member of society?

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^bobknight33:
There is no room in government for Democrats or Republicans. Only those who obey the principles of the constitution. They do take an oath to obey and uphold the constitution but then quickly do as they want for self political gain.
I would say that less then 10% of elected officials truly desire to follow the oath they take.

Who is to blame, the elected officials or are they just the reflection of society?

The constitution is a piece of crap paper that doesn't mean anything. We're a race of highly evolved monkeys clinging to a rock that's hurtling through space and dying. Fuck off with your stupid piece of shit paper and die already.

Rubbish. It's stuff like that that makes religious people dislike atheists.

I'm not an atheist--but neither am I Christian. Nonetheless, I think it's worth pointing out some serious flaws in the argument here.

First, the literal interpretation of the Bible has never really been primary. Actually, this is almost universally the case for sacred writings. The Greek myths were to be understood as metaphor, and the Koran is considered by many Muslims to be a repository of spiritual truths which are not necessarily on the surface, and which require study to glean from the text.

Interpreting the Bible as non-literal--as metaphorical, analogical, etc.--goes back more than 2000 years. One of the first writers on the Old Testament, the Jewish scholar Philo, wrote a treatise that regarded the sacred books as almost entirely non-literal. He viewed it as encoded with revelations about Platonic truths, the structure of the spiritual world, and not necessarily a history book.

This viewpoint was carried through to the Christian period. The Church Father Origen famously interpreted the book non-literally. The 4th century Church Father St. Augustine even wrote a tract called "On the literal interpretation of Genesis," in which he excoriated the Creationists of the day, who believed the world to be flat and the sky to be a literal blue dome--and who believed, contrary to all observation, that the world was only a few thousand years old, when anyone with eyes could tell that it was clearly much older. Augustine cautioned the Christians against such interpretations because they were clearly wrong, and because they made Christians look like idiots.

Augustine instead proffered the interpretation that the world had been made all at once, in one instant. The "days" referred to in Genesis he instead took as referring to the distinct logical elements of the instantaneous act of Creation. Incidentally, Augustine claimed that this was, indeed, a "literal" interpretation--the term "literal" meant something very different in those days.

Of course, the ancients also viewed the world in a very different way. In those days, it made perfect sense to see an actual, physical object as also metaphorical or analogical in some way. A temple or a statue of a god could be, in a very real way, the instantiation of the god in the physical world. According to Aristotle, every object had its natural goal, its "telos." An object fell because it was its "telos" to be at its natural resting point on the ground. And so on. There was no such thing as dead matter, devoid of an intimate relationship to mind or spirit, in the view of the ancients.

It was not until the rise of the scientific worldview in the 17th and 18th centuries that the literal interpretation of the Bible became popular. Matter came to be viewed in Cartesian or corpuscularian terms, as pure mathematical extension in space, entirely passive unless moved from the outside. In Cartesian terms, things like the "telos" were unthinkable for physical objects.

Seeing the popularity and utility of this new viewpoint, the Protestant preachers began devising literalist interpretations of the Bible. Their goal was to vindicate the Bible in scientific terms. Their effort might have been laudable, but it became occasionally silly. Some theologians argued that Jesus hadn't actually died on the cross--he had just fainted, and then woke up in the tomb later and walked out.

Nonetheless, their efforts were genuinely honest and took the newest and best science to heart as they worked on their interpretations. Some of these theologians were scientist in their own right, making important contributions to biology and geology. However, as time went on, their efforts proved ultimately futile, leading the best theologians to gradually abandon the literalist approach the Bible.

Unfortunately, there are still a number of Christians who cling to 19th century literalist approach. So-called "creation science" comes out of this tradition, for instance. It should be remembered, though, that these Christians are not only rejecting genuine science--they are also rejecting centuries-old traditions within their own religion.

>> ^ptrcklgrs:

Ok, you clearly didn't understand what i said because you responded exactly how I warned.
"Oil Production" does not equal "Domestic Energy"
"Oil Production" does not equal "Domestic Energy"
Solar power doesn't fuel my car. We could triple our "domestic energy" production with nuclear power plants, but that wouldn't do shit for my car and gas prices. Do you not understand that? He is responding intentionally with misleading points.

Which would be a great point if it were true.

Let's look at some data.

Ok, let's see. In 2010 (last year we have data for) oil production was equivalent to 11669000000000000 BTUs or (12311.4467 yottajoules for those of us not living in the 18th century). Seems like a lot to me, and in fact it turns out this was the highest oil production since 2003!

So yeah, you're just plain wrong.

Frankenstein is -so- 18th century... Can't we get a new story?

He's conflating a lot of stuff by the end of this.

Knowing "where the pickle barrel is" has not "always been the harder problem". In the fleet battles of the 18th century, they often had a very good idea where there opponents were for weeks or months. They knew where enemy shipyards were, just like the Allies in WWII knew where that chemical plant was - they just couldn't strike them effectively. Modern weaponry would have insta-won lots of historic conflicts as there would have been no problem finding stuff to blow up. It's not like Norden was trying to solve the wrong problem, he just didn't have the right solution.

Sometimes stuff doesn't work in the field - sometimes it does. There's interesting lessons there, but they're unrelated to the next thing he talks about, which is:

Sometimes you can't use your great tech effectively. They can hide the SCUDs. The Taliban is not going to all get together like a Napoleonic army or try to make a big Hannibal pincer. They make themselves harder to be found.

But that doesn't mean the weapon is ineffective - it's very effective, it limits your opponents possible tactics. And those limited tactics are one reason why direct American casualties are so low in modern wars - the enemy can't ever really show in force, and thus only has a limited set of tactics available.

Sometimes your equipment or strategy is going to directly work, sometimes it's going to work less directly. Every action you take could provide a reaction, and sometimes those could be very bad. Hunting with drones might create a terror attack across the world. There's interesting ideas there, but again you can't just conflate it all together as "technology and war... something something... Norden bombsight".

And it certainly doesn't reason into: War is often a bad idea. Obviously that's true, but it doesn't follow from the story. Sure, sometimes having good tech can make war seem more attractive than it would if we had less tech. You get the illusion of clean war.

Interesting. But the fact that the above is true - that Americans can kill thousands of dirty foreigners while suffering few casualties - is kind of the opposite lesson from the Norden bombsight. If the Americans had a bunch of "Norden bombsight" style ineffective weapons, they wouldn't have nearly the success they do in slaughtering people who were born in the wrong place and maybe the US would end up in less wars.

So maybe that's the lesson? It's better to have complex, works-in-the-lab-only tech, because otherwise it'll be too easy to kill people? Or something?

Anyways, the base story is interesting - his attempts to supply the moral at the end are much less so.

The interaction between tech and war goes lots of different ways, and I'd say sometimes the "Norden"s of the world are right and their war technology does reduce aggregate suffering. For example, I think it's at least arguable that the tech race prevented the Cold War from ending in a total war scenario that would have killed millions. (Note: if you plan on telling me that I'm crazy and the Cold War was all some kind of fraud or illusion or power consolidation for the elite or that Russia was never a threat or whatever, don't feel bad if I don't bother to answer - it's probably because I'm intimidated by the great arguments you made.)

I think the main liberal commentary is that the Tea Party thinks the Boston Tea Party was some sort of conservative anti-government protest against taxes levied on tea.

What it was actually a protest against was the 18th century equivalent of tax breaks for oil companies.

Now, if the modern day teabaggers wanted to earn the kind of rich ideological history they pretend they have, they'd actually be applauding centrist proposals from Obama that would close those kinds of loopholes to raise revenue and help reduce the deficit.

Instead they just mostly go around saying racist shit about Obama and talking about armed insurrection against their own government.

There is an actual historical predecessor for the teabaggers, but it's not the Tea Party -- it's the Confederacy.

Searching religion and cats got me this sad piece of knowledge:

Beginning in the 11th century, tolerance for cats began to decrease in Europe for religious reasons, and “by the 13th century the church viewed witches as real and cats as instruments of the devil” (Lynnlee, p. 20). Dante (1265–1321), for example, mentioned cats only once in his work and compared them to demons. From the 14th century well into the 18th century, cats were regularly killed on specific religious holidays. “By the late 15th century the persecution of cats and witches was a mainstay of European society. . . . The 15th and 16th centuries are almost devoid of any cat literature and art. . . . During this period the cat still was used to control rodents, but it was rarely seen as a pet, for if so its existence and that of its owner were in jeopardy” (Lynnlee, p. 21). Cats became especially associated with heretical religious sects, such as the Waldensians and Manichaeans, and members of these sects were accused of worshiping the Devil in the form of a black cat.

On feast days all over Europe, as a symbolic means of driving out the Devil, they were captured and tortured, tossed onto bonfires, set alight and chased through the streets, impaled on spits and roasted alive, burned at the stake, plunged into boiling water, whipped to death, and hurled from the tops of tall buildings, all in an atmosphere of extreme festive merriment. (Serpell JA, The domestication and history of the cat, in Turner DC and Bateson P, eds, The Domestic Cat, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 156).

"At Metz, for example, on “cat Wednesday” during Lent, 13 cats were placed in an iron cage and publicly burned; this ritual took place each year from 1344 to 1777" (Kete K, The Beast in the Boudoir, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, p. 119).

(http://www.stanleyresearch.org/dnn/LaboratoryofDevelopmentalNeurovirology/ToxoplasmosisSchizophreniaResearch/IAllaboutCats/tabid/173/Default.aspx)


Great, as if we needed more reasons to hate religion...

@NetRunner: agreed that it's not the worst, nor is my anecdote...

and certainly odd changes in policy and illogical requirements do increase bureaucracy... but i'm not certain that i can agree that there isn't any valid reason for change...

think back through the last 11 years of us elections, in particular the previous three presidential elections... claims of voter fraud, hanging chad, dead rolls, acorn, etc -- now, i don't know if or what impact wisconsin's regulatory changes have on that... but that's the nature of government: we expect incompetence, and success is generally just a fortunate coincidence

from my tale, our overseas missions weren't always as i described... they changed, radically so, post 9-11 -- i used to be able to phone my nation's consular services and be shown respect and have my questions answered... help was given freely and easily, as one should expect

not so anymore - now we're herded in like infected cattle and treated as a possible terrorist - the 'help' has morphed into a hindrance... but are the reasons for such valid? how can we say...

and no, i wasn't dealing with the department of immigration... just my embassy in filing a consular report of birth abroad (CRBA), and those policies have changed recently too... for no apparent reason

i'm an american citizen, not an immigrant - there wasn't one iota of reason to suspect my not being a citizen... and soooo many reasons to accept that i was...

my family came to north america in the early 18th century... i'm tall, blond, and blue-eyed... i speak perfect american english with a non-regional accent... i served my country for six years in the usmc and am a veteran of the persian gulf war... and this is in addition to all the documentation i presented...

instead, i was treated as 'suspect' by a foreign- and indifferent-looking woman speaking to me in broken english... quite rudely questioning ME regarding something i have always assumed was fundamental: my being a us citizen

i guess my point is that videos like this present the particular situation as being 'scandalous' ... when in fact it's commonplace... and while annoying, it's not really insulting -- try visiting a us consular mission abroad and then complain about the bureaucracy, invasion of privacy, and being treated in a demeaning way

honestly, watching the domestic situation in my home country from overseas for the last 15-odd years is amazing... the partisanship is ridiculous, and so are most of their claims -- it's like having your body (the nation) infested with two distinct groups of intestinal parasites--like an old-south, grangerford-shepherdson blood-feud--the attacks from both left- and right-leaning tapeworms have risen to the level of threatening the very health and life of the host

videos and other seeming vitriol like this appear to me as symptomatic of such an unhealthy bent: a bloody feces-laden discharge

Here's more info from their official site (their clip is the same as above) - five late 17th- or early 18th-century Chinese carved rhinoceros horn cups.

I would assume they are keeping the whole clip off the internet so they can air it in full on TV next year.

And here I thought this process was reserved for vampires that live in 18th century homes... I'm glad to see that you do not have to be undead to get the job done!

>> ^chilaxe:

Yeah, it's not necessarily a very high priority to reduce subsidization of postal rates, but I think inefficiencies like the USPS' low rates in rural areas are an unavoidable negative, rather than a positive, as it was initially referred to in this thread.

Looking back through the conversation, I'd still say the universal service obligation part is a positive. This "inefficiency" critique is a pretty highly theoretical, and narrowly economic argument, and it's an attack leveled at flat rates, not the universal service obligation itself.

Besides, maximizing economic efficiency != maximizing human welfare.

We've reaped huge benefits from ensuring that everyone in the US could stay in touch with one another, even back in the 18th century, via a nationwide, federally subsidized, communication network.

I can't tally up the benefits in a ledger and prove the benefits were greater than the costs, but I think it was worth it, and was an overall positive.

Not many realize that Australians are native to England and merely introduced to Australia, along with the Cane Toad, Koala, Panther and Dingo during the wave of British colonization throughout the world in the mid 18th Century.

Not many realize that Ostriches are native to Poland and merely introduced to Australia, along with the Cane Toad, Koala, Panther and Dingo during the wave of Polish colonization throughout the world in the mid 18th Century.