@GenjiKilpatrick - Just to clarify, for me it's not a matter of treating police brutality as acceptable. It's a matter of being prepared and reacting the best possible way for self-preservation given the reality of the situation.

It's not that you should comply with unreasonable requests or brutal behavior because it's acceptable. It's unacceptable (morally) that so many officers act that way, but rebelling against such officers won't improve your situation and will likely end up with your face slammed into the floor or similar.

Where black and white is used so much, black and white rules.
I dont like it either, I wish it was different. But saying I am a hypocrite because I describe black and white with... black and white and calling it unreasonable (do you even have a bit of an analytical mind? Did you ever have history in school?), is audacious, to put it friendly.
Nice try, though.

...

That's a pretty black and white, unreasonable description of the world.

In context with the surrounding conversation im sure many of these, if not most of these quotes don't sound unreasonable.

Two reasons.
1. If you don't exorcize your rights, you lose them. My forefathers fought and died to procure my (and his) rights, it's unthinkably disrespectful to not avail myself of them every-single-time. In this case, an unreasonable search.
2. Complying often does not avoid escalation.

Joyce is an ex farmer and one of the National party contributions to the Liberal/National coalition government at the moment. Blunt is probably a mild way to describe him. Another way would be remove the "bl" and replace with "c"... ; )

But yeah, this is another storm in a teacup caused by some dickhead saying something perfectly reasonable in the most creepy and unreasonable way possible.

A simple statement such as: "Mr Depp brought two dogs in without observing Australian quarantine regulations and has been notified that if he doesn't remove them within the next 50 hours, the dogs will be confiscated and unfortunately will need to be destroyed."

Taadaa, crisis fucking averted...

Joyce isn't sucking up to constituents, he's just being his usual charming self. The Nats are borderline irrelevant in this country now apart from making up the balance so the Liberals can actually manage to go toe to toe with Labor (the leftist party). Most Australian's saw this as Joyce being a colossal douche even while recognising that Depp did the wrong thing.

ps. Oliver is also completely wrong about the baby koala. You see those cold black eyes, dolls eyes? And you know how everything over here basically wants to murder the shit out of you in horrible ways? Tread warily lest you wake the sleeping giant...

Yes, I was being extreme, over simplifying, and exaggerating to try to prove my point....but I still don't think this man was a 'deadly threat' requiring homicide to stop, because moving slowly away or shutting a door would have kept the officer 100% safe. Why is that not reasonable? Please, I do mean that as a real question, not a smarmy remark.

I agree with your point about them shooting a suspect that has them cornered, but not when they can simply walk backwards slowly and stay safe. The cop need not risk his life, I just want them to TRY to not kill people, instead of jumping at any excuse to do so. If they have a reasonable way out, which he did, I want them to use that every time...as long as that doesn't put them or others in deadly peril.
I continue to contend, he could have retreated or closed his door and been safe, and backup was there seconds afterwards to ensure that safety. If you think either of those is unreasonable, I would be interested in knowing why. Perhaps you would convince me I'm totally wrong.
Now, had the man actually been armed, I would change my position completely.

EDIT: Because I'm apparently in the extreme minority in my estimation, I changed the title.

Second Edit: I don't call that de-escalation. :-)

Here's a hint: in order to create life, you don't need a seven. If you did you wouldn't be reading this. We exist, therefore by definition life in the universe is possible.

That's simply the fallacy of false equivalence. Yes, life in the Universe is possible, but that doesn't mean your favored theory about how life arrived in the Universe is possible.

Now, I'm perfectly willing to grant that it might be extraordinarily improbable.

The probability has been calculated, more often than not, at many, many times greater than the number of atoms in the Universe. There has been no scientific proof provided showing that abiogenesis is possible. It is simply a faith that many scientists and atheists have that it *must* have happened that way because of evolution. Abiogenesis because evolution is not a theory of origins, it is blind faith.

And as for god? Well, we know for certain that life exists, so it's not unreasonable to assume it might exist elsewhere. But we have zero empirical evidence for god. None, zip, zilch, nada. Does that mean god definitely doesn't exist? No, I can't prove that.

You know that life exists but what you don't know is how or why. To rule out at the least a possible designer is simply personal bias; there isn't a logical reason to do so. There is plenty of positive evidence for Gods existence, there isn't any for abiogenesis. Faith in God is reasonable, faith in abiogenesis is simply blind faith.

Is it probable that god exists? No, it would violate everything we know about the universe. That doesn't mean we're not wrong, but you'd think that something as powerful as a literally omnipotent entity would leave some evidence of it's existence.

As Dawkins said when asked what he would say if he died and met god, "why did you go to such trouble to hide yourself?"

A God existing does not violate anything we know about the Universe. I think you're confusing mechanism with agency. Just because we understand the mechanics of something does not rule out an agency behind it. It would be like taking apart a car and then saying that because we understand how the car is put together that gasoline does not exist.

The bible says that everyone is provided evidence of Gods existence, and that people suppress the truth because they love their sin. It's not really about evidence; I know atheists who have had out of body experiences who deny they have a soul.

No. Not everyone thinks like a theist.

I have no idea whether life exists on other planets or not. I can theorise about the probability of it, but that's as far as I'm willing to commit.

As for the nonsense "roll a seven on a six sided die" argument... I really don't know if you're trolling or just genuinely have no understanding of logic, math, probability, statistics, etc.

Here's a hint: in order to create life, you don't need a seven. If you did you wouldn't be reading this. We exist, therefore by definition life in the universe is possible.

Now, I'm perfectly willing to grant that it might be extraordinarily improbable. The video tells us that the latest evidence is that there are around 20,000,000,000 sun size stars and probably about 4,000,000,000 earth like planets. Now, the video gives the odds of life on each one at 0.1% (and then somehow comes up with 1 million instead of 4 million, but I digress).

So we have 4 billion planets that might possibly have earth like life. But let's say that abiogenesis is really, really improbable. In fact, let's say, it's 1 in 4 billion. We've been testing out the various abiogenesis theories for a while now, but I doubt we've conducted anything like 4 billion separate experiments, so it's really no surprise that we haven't observed it.

But it might be even more unlikely. Maybe it's 1 in 400 billion! Seems pretty unlikely, but let's roll with it. There are still 200 billion galaxies out there. Even if only 1% of them are like the milky way that's still 8 billion billion potential life bearing planets. I don't think it's a stretch to say that some of them could have life.

You don't need a seven, but maybe you do need an edge, or a corner!

Do you understand the difference between what I think is probable based on observed facts and "taking something on faith"?

And as for god? Well, we know for certain that life exists, so it's not unreasonable to assume it might exist elsewhere. But we have zero empirical evidence for god. None, zip, zilch, nada. Does that mean god definitely doesn't exist? No, I can't prove that. Is it probable that god exists? No, it would violate everything we know about the universe. That doesn't mean we're not wrong, but you'd think that something as powerful as a literally omnipotent entity would leave some evidence of it's existence.

As Dawkins said when asked what he would say if he died and met god, "why did you go to such trouble to hide yourself?"

Holy fuckin jesus man, how do you not get that this is unacceptable behavior? In no way was this conduct justified. If the suspect ended up pointing the gun in the cops direction then you may have an argument for the cops using force on this person. This was completely the result of person that had no ability to reason how to handle the situation. (the cop by the way in case you wanted to try and turn this statement into a pithy reply) That is their JOB. Having the ability to reason when faced with unreasonable situations.

If you are indeed affiliated with law enforcement, YOU are the reason people should be justifiably suspicious of the ability of law enforcement personnel to make reasoned decisions.

I enjoyed it. I don't understand many of the criticisms - it's a film, were we somehow expecting to have our humanity validated by it? A scientifically accurate description of a mission would be boring - they'd almost certainly die in the wormhole.

The science wasn't unreasonable. It was a lot closer to reality than anything in star trek or star wars. Anne Hathaway's character muses on the power of love and suddenly it's a force of the universe? My memory might be flawed, but i don't remember hearing anyone confirm that or discuss it - in fact, the state her "lover" was in was kind of contrary to the opinion she gave and certainty to how she felt. We really do have no idea about black holes, either, so for all we know it could be manipulated by some future technology. The tesseract "library" was an interesting take on time travel/time manipulation.

The only thing that broke my suspension of disbelief was the bit when they said they thought they had years of good readings from the water planet due to time dilation. But that doesn't make any sense, because the number of signal pulses sent from the surface must equal the number of signal pulses received in orbit. My best guess is that the pulses would be elongated and have their wavelength shifted, possibly, but one thing i am certain of is that the total number can't be different.

The problem is, the older you get, the more you know about science, the less faith you have to put in films to give you a mind-bending experience that works on so many levels. None of it is plausible, so why rule it out based on what Hathaway thinks about the nature of love, or anything else?

Good film! And funny video. Someone's got to defend it though!

+ a central bank whose mandate is limited to inflation
+ the lack of a treasury
+ the lack of a harmonized tax system
+ the crippling deficits in democratic control that make it very hard to turn the will of the people into policy
+ etc

The last point is of particular interest if you look at Greece as a shock & awe induced suspension of democracy. Many nations are held in a permanent state of emergency through the war on terror, while Greece's permanent state of emergency was imposed through debt.

Previous governments did what they were told by troika officials, with parliament left aside and judicial decisions left ignored. The return of democracy into some parts of the system caused rather vicious reactions from both the press and European officials. Just look at what Martin Schulz or Jeroen Dijsselbloem said about Syriza officials in the last few days.

Debt is a tool powerful enough to suspend democracy in a heartbeat, even quicker than our famous war on/of terror.

Parliamentary decisions are superceded by transnational treaties and obligations. And if you take the thought one step further, you end up at TTIP/TTP/CETA/TISA. If Greece demonstrates that democratic decisions at a national level still overrule transnational treaties, governments lose a scapegoat for unpopular decisions ("treaty X demands it of us"). Should Syriza manage to end the state of emergency, to return control over the decision back to the elected bodies, it will become infinitely harder to impose draconian or even just highly unpopular measures.

But I digress. Twin Euro blocks (South/North) were part of the discussion, just like parallel currencies in troubled nations. A German exit is still being discussed as well, but I don't think its advocates within Germany thought it through. Switzerland just uncoupled its Swiss Francs from the Euro and it did a real number on their exports. A new DM would appreciate like a Saturn V, instantly shattering German exports. Without a massive increase in wages to compensate through domestic demand, Germany would bleed jobs left, right and center. A fullblown recession.

I'd say it would take very little to stabilise the union, even in its currently flawed configuration. Krugman had a piece this morning, calling one of Syriza's core demands reasonable. And judging by what I have read over the last five years or so, it is. He said Germany would be crazy if they demanded payment on full, no reliefs. And that's where it shows that he cannot follow the media or the political discussions in Germany to any meaningful degree, language barrier and all. Public discussion on economics in Germany stands completely separate from the rest of the world.

Ignorance, stubbornness, cultural bias, a feedback-loop of media and politics, group pressure -- we have everything. And the fact that Germany has been comparatively successful in the face of this crisis makes it practially impossible to pierce this bubble. We're doing fine, our way must be correct, everyone else is wrong.

@RedSky

Selling assets and, to a certain degree, the reduction of public employment is an unreasonable demand. There's too much controversy about the effects it has, with me being clearly biased to one side.

Privatisation of essential services (healthcare, public transport, electricity, water) is being opposed or even undone in significant parts of Europe, since it generally came with worse service at much higher costs and no accountability whatsoever. Therefore I see it as very reasonable for Syriza to stop the privatisation of their electricity grid and their railroad. There are, of course, unessentials that might be handed over to the private sector, but like Varoufakis said, not in the shape of a fire sale within a crisis. That'll only profit the usual scavengers, not the people.

Similarly, public employment. There's good public employment (essential services, administration) and "bad" public employment. Troika demands included the firing of cleaning personnel, who were replaced by a significantly more expensive private service. And a Greek court decision ruled the firing as flat out illegal. For Syriza to not hire them back would not only have been unreasonable financially as well as socially, it would have been a violation of a court order. Same for thousands of others who were fired illegally, according to a ruling by the Greek Supreme Court.

Troika demands are all too often against Greek or even European law, and while the previous governments were fine with being criminals, Syriza might actually be inclined to uphold the law.


On the issue of reforms, I would argue that the previous governments did bugger all to establish working institutions. Famously, the posts of department heads of the tax collection agency were auctioned for money, even under the last government. Everything is in shambles, with no intent of changing anything that would have undermined the nepotic rules of the five families. Syriza's program has been very clear about the changes they plan to institute, so if it really was the intent of the troika to see meaningful reform the way it is being advocated to their folks at home, they would be in support of Syriza.

Interventions by the troika have crashed the health care system, the educational system and the pension system. Public pension funds were practically wiped out during the first haircut in 2012, creating a hole of about 20 billion Euros in the next five years.

I would like to address the issue of taxation specifically. Luxembourg adopted as a business model to be an enabler of tax evasion, even worse than Switzerland. In charge at that time was none other than Jean-Claude Juncker, who was just elected President of the European Commission. He's directly involved in tax evasion on a scale of hundreds of billions of Euros every year. How is the troika to have any credibility in this matter with him in charge?

Similarly, German politicians are particularly vocal about corruption and bribery in Greece. Well, who are the biggest sources of bribery in Greece? German corporations. Just last week there was another report of a major German arms manufacturer who paid outrageous bribes to officials in Greece. As much as I support the fight against corruption and bribery, some humility would suit them well.


As for the GDP growth in Greece: I think it's a fluke. The deflation skewers the numbers to a point where I can't take them seriously until the complete dataset is available. Might be growth, might not be. Definatly not enough to fight off a humanitarian crisis.

Surpluses. If everyone was a zealous as Germany, the deficit would in fact be considerably narrower, which is a good thing. Unfortunatly, it would have been a race to the bottom. Germany could only suppress wage growth, and subsequently domestic demand, so radically, because the other members of the Eurozone were eager to expand. They ran higher-than-average growth, which allowed Germany to undercut them without going into deflation. Nowadays, Germany still has below-target wage growth, so the only way for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to gain competetiveness against Germany is to go into deflation. That's where we are in Europe: half a continent in deflation. With all its side effects of mass unemployment (11%+ in Europe, after lots of trickery), falling demand, falling investment, etc. Not good. Keynes' idea of an International Clearing Union might work better, especially since we already use similar concepts within nations to balance regions.

Bond yields of Germany could not have spiked at the same time as those of the rest of the Eurozone. The legal requirements for pension funds, insurance funds, etc demand a high percentage of safe bonds, and when the peripheral countries were declared unsafe, they had nowhere to go but Germany. Also, a bet against France is quite a risk, but a bet against Germany is downright foolish. Still, supply of safe bonds is tight right now, given the cuts all over the place. French yields are at historic lows, German yield is negative. Even Italian and Spanish yields were in the green as soon as Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it takes.

The current spike in Greek yields strikes me as a bet that there will be a face-off between the troika and Greece, with very few positive outcomes for the Greek economy in the short run.

QE: 100% agreement. Fistful of cash to citizens would not have solved any of the core issues of the Eurozone (highly unequal ULCs, systemic tax evasion, tax competition/undercutting, no European institutions, etc), but it would have been infinitely better than anything they did. If they were to put it on the table right now as a means to combat deflation, I'd say go for it. Take the helicopters airborne, as long as it's bottom-up and not trickle-down. Though to reliably increase inflation there would have to be widescale increases in wages. Not going to happen. Maybe if Podemos wins in Spain later his year.

Same for the last paragraph. The ECB could have stuffed the EIB to the brim, which in return could have funded highly beneficial and much needed projects, like a proper European electricity grid. Won't happen though. Debt is bad, even monetised debt during a deflation used purely for investments.

While I know that parents have an enormous influence to empower their children to be able to think for themselves I always think of this, from Mr. Philip K. Dick, when I think about advertisement and the such:

"The power of spurious realities battering at us today—these deliberately manufactured fakes never penetrate to the heart of true human beings. I watch the children watching TV and at first I am afraid of what they are being taught, and then I realize, They can't be corrupted or destroyed. They watch, they listen, they understand, and, then, where and when it is necessary, they reject. There is something enormously powerful in a child's ability to withstand the fraudulent. A child has the clearest eye, the steadiest hand. The hucksters, the promoters, are appealing for the allegiance of these small people in vain. True, the cereal companies may be able to market huge quantities of junk breakfasts; the hamburger and hot dog chains may sell endless numbers of unreal fast-food items to the children, but the deep heart beats firmly, unreached and unreasoned with. A child of today can detect a lie quicker than the wisest adult of two decades ago. When I want to know what is true, I ask my children. They do not ask me; I turn to them. "

from 'How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart In Two Days'

My post is not hyperbole, but actual personal observation.



You also have to factor in cost+ funding.

On one hand, it's necessary. Because you don't know how much something truly new will cost - you haven't done it before. You'll discover as you go.
It would be unfair to bind a company to a fixed cost, when nobody knows what the cost will be. It's mathematically unreasonable to entertain a fixed cost on new technologies.

(Granted, everyone gives silly lowballed best-case estimates when bidding. Anyone that injects a sense of reality into their bid is too costly and doesn't get the contract).

On the other hand, cost+ means that you make more money by spending more money. So hiring hordes of nobodies for every little task, making 89347589374 different position titles, is only gonna make you more money. There's no incentive to save.



F35 wise, like I said, it's not designed for any war we fight now.
It's designed for a war we could fight in the future.
Because you don't start designing weapons when you're in a war, you give your best effort to have them already deployed, tested, and iterated into a good sustainable state, before the onset of a conflict that could require them.

F35 variations are not complicated. The VTOL variation is the only one with any complexity. The others are no more complex than historical variations from early to late blocks of any given airframe.

The splitting of manufacturing isn't in itself a complication ridden approach. It's rather normal for different companies to work on unrelated systems. Airframe will go somewhere, avionics elsewhere, engine elsewhere, etc. That's basically a given, because different companies specialize in different things.

Keep in mind that the large prime contracts (Lockheed/GD/etc) don't actually "make" many things. They are systems integrators. They farm out the actual development for most pieces (be it in house contractors or external contractors - because they are easy to let go after the main dev is over), and they themselves specialize in stitching the pieces together. Connecting things is not difficult when they are designed with specified ICDs from the get-go. The black boxes just plug up to each other and go.

The issues that arise are often a matter of playing telephone. With one sub needing to coordinate with another sub, but they have to go through the prime, and the prime is filtering everything through a bunch of non-technical managers. Most problems are solved in a day or two when two subs physically get their engineers together and sort out any miscommunications (granted, contracts and process might not allow them the then fix the problem in a timely and affordable manner).

The F22 and F35 issues are not major insurmountable tasks. The hardest flaws are things that can be fixed in a couple months tops on the engineering side. What takes time is the politics. Engineers can't "just fix it". There's no path forward for that kind of work.

Sure, in a magic wonderland you could tell them "here, grab the credit card, buy what you need, make any changes you need, and let us know when you're done" - and a little while later you'd have a collection of non-approved, non-reviewed, non-traceable, non-contractually-covered changes that "just fix the damn thing"... and you'd also have to incur the wrath of entire departments who were denied the opportunity to validate their existence. The 'high paid welfare' system would be all over your ass.

-scheherazade