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At 1/24/09 05:22 PM, Tancrisism wrote:

At 1/24/09 05:20 PM, Al6200 wrote: I don't disagree with the big picture of what you're saying here, but one has to remember that how we define the institution of marriage has a huge impact on the broader function of our society that forces us to approach any potential change to our definition of marriage from a conservative angle.

I don't see how this is relevant though.

The relationship between social institutions and a functional society is complex, and likewise it is difficult to predict what impacts will occur when one changes the social order.

The sexual revolution of the 60's is a good example of this. While there were many positive changes in the areas of women's rights and civil liberties that came about in this time period, there was also an increase in the percentage of children born out of wedlock and a decline in the percentage of people who married. Being married significantly affects one's probability of having several negative social outcomes (controlling for factor's like one's parents SES), such as living below the poverty line.

These homosexual relationships already exist, and they already adopt children. Extending the right of marriage to them will hardly change society except to make it more accepting.

I don't disagree with those points, nor do I disagree with gay marriage. Homosexuality is as old as humanity itself (actually it is quite a bit older depending on how one defines it), and one can point to several sucessful societies which accepted homosexual behaviour. All I am saying is that the burden of proof should lie upon the people who are trying to change long standing social institutions.

I don't disagree with the big picture of what you're saying here, but one has to remember that how we define the institution of marriage has a huge impact on the broader function of our society that forces us to approach any potential change to our definition of marriage from a conservative angle.

At 1/23/09 10:35 PM, Freedomblades wrote: Is there really a "Perfect" government? Because when i look at communism, i see problems, when i look at socialism, i see problems, when i look at democracy, i see problems. Would the best government be a mix between the 3 or maybe a totally revolitionary new type. Lets hear your side.

There's always going to be trade-offs, and unless you only value one specific outcome, there can be no perfect government. For example, if you care mostly about freedom, capitalism is a good system. But if you care more about a large social safety net, socialism is better.

--Paradox 1--

This is indeed a really interesting topic. One wonders if Zeno could have developed some rudimentary calculus, or at least some of the theory of limits. The idea of differentiation is just that as some function's inputs change by an amount that approaches zero, the change in the output approaches the derivative of the function. Integration is just the idea that you can approximate the area of a shape by filling it with rectangles, and that if one uses an infinite number of infinitely small rectangles the approximate volume becomes identical to the real volume.

It is really just a rigorous expression of Zeno's paradox.

--Paradox 2--

I don't see how this is a paradox. If the position change of the arrow is given by a function f(Time + change in Time) - f(Time), then it will be zero if the change in time variable is zero. But time is progressing, so the change in time variable is not zero. That's why the arrow moves.

--Paradox 3--

I can't say I understand the whole thing about points. It seems like there are an infinite number of points, but it depends on how far apart they are.

----

Anyway, nice topic. Very interesting stuff.

The data seems somewhat inconclusive on the link between intelligence and religion, largely because it's hard to express religious views in a fine gradient. Some people are more religious than others. But how do we measure this? Church attendance is a good metric, but there are some people who are quite Christian who don't attend church regularly. You could ask people to rate how religious they are, but it's likely that people will judge their religiosity in the context of their peers, which would skew the data toward the extremes.

But, just to give us a general idea of the relationship between religiosity and intelligence, I took the GSS variable for views on the bible and Wordsum scores (which are considered a proxy for IQ). I also looked at the GSS variable for church attendance and strength of religious affiliation, and they only had a small relationship with IQ, but I have a feeling that there are a lot of people who attend or don't attend church for social reasons that don't reflect their actual values.

The graph is interesting. Intelligent people are much less likely to hold fundamentalist views about the bible, while more intelligent people are more likely to see the bible as the inspired word of God (a pretty mainstream viewpoint) or as a book of fables (I think that there are some people who identify as Christian who see the bible as a book of fables).

At 1/22/09 02:59 AM, MattTheParanoidKat wrote: Seriously, fuck this guy. I know this is rather old news, because Bill Hicks got to this about 14 years ago; but honestly, who likes this arrogant cunt? I mean, he's either has some great trolling abilities or he's a fucking idiot. Possibly both, especially the latter because he flunked school, and only had interests in being a total dick daily to every one who doesn't share his views. Shame on the egotist who thinks only on himself. God, 3 women have married this loser, this con artist, this tool who munches the scat of his Lords of the far right. I mean, what woman finds this dude appealing? Aside from the demon Ann Coulter.

What kind of writing is this? This is the politics forum. I think it's an expectation that you should use sources and evidence instead of making baseless character attacks.

His ideals seem to only satisfy himself, only satisfies his bloated ego, and like a parasite, feeds off the premeditated bullshit he has said, growing more and more fat and bloated with his archaic ideas.

Which ideals only satisfy himself? How is his ego bloated? How are his ideas archaic?

His views, are not of any one he claims to represent, or those of this current generation.

Reagen said that Limbaugh was the number one voice for conservatism in the US.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1 282/is_n17_v45/ai_14293009

Given that Reagen won the presidency by one of the largest margins in modern history, with a very diverse coalition - it is no stretch to say that Rush Limbaugh is in line with mainstream American values.

His listeners are either too foolish to see past his scat munching ways or they listen because his idiocy entertains.

That's probably one of the cheapest, lowest insults that I've seen in a while.

We'll never really know, or understand because people usually have their reasons for liking anything. Now, some might say it's wrong to wish death on anyone, regardless of who it is. I'd agree with them, but for people like Rush have to be the exception to the rule, because I don't think anyone right or left can agree with his fascist ideals, or antics.

If you'd give some examples of his antics or ideals that you don't like, then maybe I'd respect your opinion. But all you've done thus far is make tasteless and shallow insults about "eating scat".

His recent claims only seem to prove that his life is expendable. Now, I understand he says this garbage to attract attention, and piss people off to comfort his self esteem and ego, because he really is a troll. But, holy shit is he a fucking lunatic. If any form of hell actually existed, I'd hope he ended up in the 8th circle of Dante's Hell, for rather obvious reasons. All he really doesn't is act like a pathetic tool, a complete and utter failure on existence and yet I must take pity that THIS is all he knows. He has nothing to live for except to antagonize, and annoy. Even though he does have freedom of speech, and can say whatever the fuck he likes, no matter how stupid.

What recent claims are you talking about?

But Rush, you need to stop, you aren't funny, you aren't proving anything, you are a pathetic scat-munching egotist who needs to fade away from existence.

For everyone who shares my opinion on this topic watch this video.

You need to actually tell us what you dislike about Rush Limbaugh, rather than making wild and baseless accusations about his character.

At 1/22/09 05:12 PM, Drakim wrote:

"I, the almighty machine, have done an analysis of you before you entered the room. I found out which of these two options you are going to pick, even factored into that I'm making this statement to you right now. All I'm telling you is this: If I predicted that you were going to take both boxes, then I will not have placed the 1 000 000$ in box B. If I predicted that you were going to pick only box B, then I will have placed the 1 000 000$ in box B. That is all"

Now....which of your two options do you pick? Think about this carefully.

It's a recursive loop. I think the fallacy with his "paradox" is that the machine can predict which box you will choose after you have been told that it is not in the box that you will choose. In predicting, it too should get stuck in a recursive loop just as you did.

Anywho the best bet would probably be to use something arbitrary (like if the 15th digit of Pi is greater than 4) because the machine couldn't predict that ahead of time.

At 1/22/09 12:59 AM, Dawnslayer wrote:

Personally, I think the right-left system oversimplifies politics. A candidate should run on their individual platform, not what a majority party thinks they should do.

The thing is that people are more powerful when they work together than when they each run on their own individual views. The US was not designed to have political parties, but they naturally formed because they allow a group similar-minded of people to wield a lot of power.

Ideologically, I'm closer to Obama; however, I felt ideology was of less consequence than use of executive powers. That said, I chose Obama; not because I felt McCain was incompetent, but because I felt Sarah Palin was entirely so.

That's a very sensible reason for choosing Obama. And he will probably end up weakening the executive branch; today he signed an executive order to close down Guantanamo Bay.

Is this close to what you had in mind? 'Cause that's the one I'm working on.

Not really. It's not so much that I want to weaken the government, it's more that I want to give the populace more control over legislation and less control over the implementation of laws.

At 1/21/09 06:11 PM, Armake21truth wrote:

I don't have any statistics on me, but I have to question this one point for 1 big reason. TV and phone companies use satellites all the time, and the payout would be far greater for microwave power companies than for them. So what would make these particular satellites so expensive that the payout would not be worth it?

I'm not an expert on microwave power, but a few big problems that I could see coming up:

1. It's never been done before on a commercial scale, so there might be technical issues that we can't anticipate now.

2. The satellite would probably have to be quite large to get significant amounts of power, making it logistically different than

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/
ast13nov_1.htm

The ISS only generates 110 kW of power. A new nuclear plant often generates about 800 MW. To say that you'd need to make a large solar array for microwave power would be quite an understatement.

3. Even if it did work exactly as planned, what would make it a better option than nuclear power?

At 1/21/09 04:50 PM, AntiangelicAngel wrote:

And anyone else who disagrees with their party on any single issue.
So, in summary of the introduction, this is in support of anyone capable of thinking for themselves.

Abortion is an interesting issue. It's one of those issues that pits the wealthy elite against the masses. The majority of Americans oppose completely legalized abortion, but wealthy people tend to support it. Part of this might be explained by the propensity of the very rich to live in cities, where liberal social values are more common.

I personally lean in the Pro-Life direction, and while I respect those of pro-life and pro-choice views, I'm very bothered by people who want easy answers and not necessarily correct ones. Consider the people who say that a fetus is "Just a lump of cells", or the people who will say that life begins at conception.

Both of those positions are very convenient, but they ignore the reality that a fetus is neither a full person nor a non-person. It is the gray zone between life and non-life, and because of that abortion is a complex and morally challenging issue to discuss.

However, if you attack me on an issue of my party, I will likely defend it or counter-attack, even if I disagree with the issue. It's human nature, people don't take well to attacks.

This is an interesting point. Does the voter registration system make voters more dogmatic by (effectively) requiring them to identify with a party?

That being said, I voted for Barack Obama. I have no regrets, I don't think I made the wrong decision. However, I am not responsible for his excessive spending, his stance on gun control, his ultra pro-choice views. However, I do not believe America as we know it will come to an end due to Obama's presidency, nor did I believe that about McCain. I think anyone that states that it will for either side was a fool.

That's pretty much the same as my stance. Ideologically, I'm closer to McCain than Obama. But I saw that Obama was much more competent and prepared for the job then McCain, so I voted for him.

I am not responsible for his "stimulus package" to come with tax returns. I am not responsible for however he handles Israel. My representative represents a composite of the portion of the electorate that voted for him. A composite average does not mean we all hold the same views on any given issues. It is entirely likely that you and I could have voted for competing representatives, and, if you're capable of free-thinking, we could agree on many issues.

I've thought about constructing a hypothetical government in which people vote for policy initiatives directly, but elect the people who implement the law by voting for electors who vote on a secret ballot. People directly elect ombudsman who can appoint supreme court justices as they retire or die off.

The idea is that the people control the general nature of government action, but technical experts are responsible for actually implementing the policy. I don't know think it would work very well though. Creating a democracy which does not devolve into either dictatorship or mob rule is quite a tricky thing.

At 1/19/09 12:49 PM, SonicSheep wrote:

The middle and upper class became rich. The poor became poorer.

The rich get richer, the poor get poorer

I don't agree with this. Before the industrial revolution, people spent the vast majority of their wealth on food, and when they lost some amount, people starved. At the turn of 20th century, wealthy countries spent only a small fraction of their wealth on food and were therefore able to weather economic hardship without widespread starvation.

One could even argue that a very poor person today is better off than an aristocrat in the medieval era. Even the poor have video games, the internet, TV, indoor plumbing, and other such basic luxuries.

However, there are people who do not feel that the industrial revolution improved people's standard of living. Theodore Kaczynski (known more for his terrorist career as the unabomber more than his career in academia) argued that the industrial revolution reduced people's standard of living by:

1. Taking control of day to day survival away from the individual. For example, a farmer could grow corn by his own hands, and eat his own crops. However there is no such connection in an industrial society. A man who works as a computer programmer might make a program that manages a company's warehouses, and earns a paycheck that buys his food, does not feel any direct connection between their labor and fulfillment of their physical needs.

2. Creating social institutions that engineer people's psychology so that they can function in an industrial society. For example, one cannot be a good office clerk if they can't sit at a desk all day. However it is not in human nature to sit at a desk all day, it is human nature to move around and use one's body. This disparity between a person's nature and the conditioning of society leads to deep emotional problems.

3. Disconnecting the satisfaction of one's basic physical needs from one's own effort and exertion. A farmer may set a goal that he wants to grow more grains next year (to meet his physical need to have food), and set goals for doing it. An average person today, however, gets their food and water without physical exertion. To compensate for this, humans create artificial goals and activities that fulfill our basic need to exert effort and meet a goal. Kaczynski called these "Surrogate Activities".

At 1/19/09 07:52 AM, Alphabit wrote:

Nice one, but your equation doesn't take into account the types of people you know; knowing a single wealthy businessman is way better than knowing 100 hobbos.

So in effect:
NET-work = Money^(x*y), where x>1 and directly proportional to the people you know & y>=0 and represents the summed average influence/power index of all the people you know.

It shouldn't actually be that hard to calculate how well that equation works.

At 1/19/09 12:32 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

So my question is this, How much worse was life in an industrial tenement to Rural life, and if the former was worse than the latter why did so many people set out to destroy their lives by living in them?

1. There is a great deal of literature that discusses life in Europe before the industrial revolution. I personally recommend Cipolla, "Before the Industrial Revolution", as it has a lot of hard data that illuminates on life before the industrial revolution.

2. We have much more data about life after the industrial revolution, simply because life was easier and there were more people who had the free time to compile information and reflect on their living conditions. An illiterate peasant in medieval France would've had neither the interest nor the means to write a book about the peasent's day to day life. In contrast, there were people during the industrial revolution who had enough free time to write about how bad their living conditions were.

Statistics were compiled about living conditions in pre-medieval Europe, however they are scarcer and of lower quality than the data that was gathered after the industrial revolution.

3. The industrial revolution dramatically improved the lives of most people. In the pre industrial world, nearly one in five people were destitute beggars (this is by the rough estimation of the day). Average families spent in excess of 80% of their income on food (which indicates an incredible degree of poverty). In contrast, in the 1950s the US only spent 22% of its wealth on food.

At 1/18/09 11:01 AM, glomph wrote:

That is a problem I agree, but I am not sure magnet schools would be better. How would you insure it was intelligent kids and not educated ones? How does one measure intelligence? (please don't say IQ)

Aptitude tests and grades would probably be the best form of admissions. One could probably even take the data that the tests were centered on, see how much income effects the predictive validity of the scores, and then scale them accordingly. (Basically a kid who gets a high score gets their score increased if their parents are poor).

Also I think that secondary magnet schools should have admissions systems that allow kids from lower level primary schools to get in if they show strong performance and interest.

Also lots of kids from poor backgrounds would feel uncomfortable / incapable of going to a magnet school.

Why?

If you provide a free, open and improved system of education for ALL regardless of ability, equality of education is closer to being offered. If the rich all move to the suburbs, well one would fund suburb schools only in till there education system matched intercity.

Today (at least in the US), school districts are mostly funded through property taxes, so the suburban schools have better resources.

And let's not pretend that it's just a matter of funding. You could fund two schools equally, and one could still be preferable because of the students who attend it. Even if you allocated school funding nationally, people would still want to send their kids to suburban schools.

Hopefully in the UK(where we have had a Labour government so surly cant have such elitist class system) we have less of an elitist group of people so rich people wouldn't mind mixing so much.

Do kids in inner city London really go to the same schools as kids from rich upper class communities? I'd doubt it.

I disagree that 'smarter' people deserve better education. They deserve the same standard but a different level of difficulty.

That's just not realistic. People who are going to get a job at McDonalds don't need to know calculus or geometry. They need to know civics, how to communicate in the real world, and some understanding of business/management.

People who are going to be physicists at NASA need decades of schooling. Researchers generally go to four years of undergraduate schooling and an additional 4 years to get their Ph. D. That's a huge investment of resources, that should only be invested in people who are going to go into certain fields.

Also to add to my solution to the rich getting richer I would say increase inheritance tax a LOT.

I don't oppose this. I also support a negative income tax (basically you give everyone in the country $10,000, and then raise taxes).

At 1/18/09 01:16 AM, BrianEtrius wrote: Well, now from a business standpoint, who is Best Buy's competitor? That's what I want to know.

The alternative to Best Buy is either buying electronics online (which is what I imagine most people do) or getting the simpler electronics at Wal Mart.

Or maybe people have less disposable income so the market for luxury electronics is just shrinking.

It could be a combination of any of those three things that did Circuit City in.

At 1/18/09 08:37 AM, glomph wrote:

Increase Taxation in till more economic equality exists. Increase spending on free education and welfare for all ( possibly abolishing private education as it ruins opportunity for those less well off), so that opportunity and standards of living become more equal. Enforce workers rights. Enforce anti discrimination laws on employers. Have more state run industry.

The problem is that if you abolish private schools, all that you'll do is force more rich people to flee the cities to suburbia. As the system works today, the cities are largely the domain of the poor and the rich. The middle class have mostly left because they cannot afford private schools and because they do not want their kids to go to school with poor kids.

A better way to spread opportunity would be to create magnet schools, where kids who are intelligent can go to good schools no matter what their parent's background is.

At 1/17/09 03:50 PM, EKublai wrote:

California, although every individual's vote might have the least amount of sway in the state and general election, comes out in floods to the voting booths because the state has 55 electoral votes to give out. A huge incentive. So really when it comes down to it, in the eyes of the rest of the nation, a particular vote from California could represent a single vote in a country of a much smaller size. Californians have always had power in teh electoral college because of that 55 number and that's why they consider their vote to be important.

Voting is a straight up Nash Equillibreum. There is really no chance that one invidual will change the outcome of an election, but if everyone uses that mentality then the system doesn't work.

For missouri, a record number of voters turned out because while they don't have as many electoral votes as some of the other states (though 11 is nothing to scoff at) they were a Swing State and in a dead heat which is something that cannot be declared until the votes have been counted. The incentive in Missouri to vote comes way before election day, when campaigns start pouring ludicrous amounts of money into advvertising there. the people of missouri see that they're in teh national spotlight, and they say "my vote counts" and it did.

Also, I kept referencing the lottery because people gamble their money on something where the odds are so out of their reach and the factors so uniform, that to gamble away your vote by not voting in something as uncertain as an election.... just doesn't make sense.

/mathematical rant

Nice work, but just a minor nitpick. You use 270 (the total number of electoral votes needed to win) as the basis of bigvote, but don't use the total number of popular votes as the basis for swing.

Unless there's something I'm not seeing, it would make sense to set SWING as:

1 / (Number of Votes Needed to win state)

and bigvote as:

1 / (Number of State Electoral Votes needed to win country)

Then bigvote * SWING could be considered one's proportional share of creating a victory for their candidate.

At 1/16/09 10:07 PM, Jollesax wrote:

That's what I call innovation and similar to the US. Let us take a look at the list :
- reinforced concrete : this technique is used today still to make concrete more robust.
- fast curing cement. Can you imagine building stone houses without it?
Ambient heating. Cool idea, no?
Scissors apparently too. The magnifying glass, floating around in US sattelites, lasers, microscopes,...

Well, I didn't say that the Romans didn't invent anything. I said that the source of Roman strength and hegemony was their ability to organize and apply existing technology, and not their ability to create new technology. The arch and reinforced concrete are two exceptions to this general characteristic of the Roman Empire, but they're only exceptions. The Roman chain of command, organized government, and well developed cities played a more integral role in their success as an empire.

The postal system, how about that? Basically, Rome invented the concept of a city society, including appartement blocks (another invention), public sanitaries and swimming pools, sports with hooliganism, in short, everything that is a US city.

That's a way of organizing technology and resources, not a technology in and of itself.

Let me kindly point out that the mathematics for most of this is actually still based on that of the ancient greeks, preluded and followed by hords of European, Arabic and Asian mathematicians. But this then applied to new use.

Well, that's sort of my point.

I agree immediately that the US has produced some great technology. Yet, the interaction with scientists from over the whole world should not be underestimated. And it does not differ from Rome in that respect too much. The inventions of Rome were also often based on military needs. Let that be one of the strongest points of the US...

And on a side, some Romans also believed firmly they went to "educate" the primitive tribes...

The US might not be the new Rome, simply because it is a different world. Yet, they do not differ too much.

Well, I have to agree. There are important similarities between America and Rome, but I still think that the US is fundamentally an Empire of innovation and technological progress, while Rome was more fundamentally an Empire of organization and discipline.

It seems like the smartest course of action would be to just use the euro (or dollar) as an official currency or just peg their currency to the dollar/euro.

Of course, that's what any sensible leader would do, not what we should expect from Mugabe.

At 1/16/09 07:43 PM, JoS wrote: I am talking about things like the Nation and other such publications, not academic journals like Nature. Nature is not media, its research and academia.

Ah. I've never really gotten into the ideological stuff like Mother Jones or Rolling Stone, because it's generally rubbish. In fact, I barely made it through one paragraph of a Mother Jones article before I realized how low-quality the research was. It wasn't just that they weren't subject matter experts, it was that they had almost just printed out their superstition and hear say instead of doing real research.

As far as reporters nto knowing what they are talking about, thats not exactly true. Especially with print media, journalists usually have a set of expertise or a field and stay within that field of reporting. Example, Stewart bell is a reporter for the nAtio9nal Post and considered by many an expert on terrorism. He reports only on issues surrounding security and terrorism.

That's good. To be honest I was thinking more of Newsweek or Time, where a lot of the articles seem to be written by people with no knowledge of the subject matter.

Of course when you have reporters on TV that is different, as they have 30 seconds to explain something, so they aren't experts but people who have good communication skills and aren't fat and ugly. But newspaper writers generally have a clue about what they are talking about.

That's interesting. There is definitely some quality stuff in the newspapers, but there's also a lot of trash.

The problem with mainstream news is that the people doing the reporting aren't subject matter experts. To write stories, they pretty much have to regurgitate what experts tell them is the truth, and explain it as well as they can to the audience.

The advantage to this is that the reporters have no personal stake in what they're writing about, and therefore are less likely to only support one side of the story.

The disadvantage is that the information is often misleading, if not outright garbage.

Specialized, alternative media is better than mainstream media in the sense that the people writing the articles actually know something about the topic they're discussing. The problem with this is that in turn the people who are writing the articles have a connection to the topic, and are not going to be as neutral as the reporters who has no background.

Consider a topic like stream ecology. The advantage to mainstream media is that the person writing the article is not an ecologist, and does not care one way or another what happens. They'll probably write the story with quotes from both ecologists and stream haters. A journal like Nature, however, will probably have a pro-stream bias because the person writing an article about streams has probably devoted a great deal of their life to studying streams.

At 1/15/09 09:26 PM, AntiangelicAngel wrote: Now, I'm curious about something. And I've read a little Marx, a little Adam Smith, and some other economic theories. I have a question or two about labor.

Do people who work harder get paid for their hard work? It seems to me, if I work at a factory, and I can do my job 20% faster than everyone else, and take on more work, I get paid the same hourly wage. But if I can produce more product or service, my employer makes more money, I don't. Would that be an accurate statement?

Yes, but that's the nature of the beast. People who do work harder do get rewarded, but the rewards and punishments for strong/poor performance are much cushier at the higher levels.

I'm not suggesting profit sharing or Marxism or socialism or any such nonsense. All I want to know is how do we justify paying people the same for varied work. Doesn't that compel people to do the least possible? Beyond that, is the notion of taking pride in work dead (in America)?

In most service jobs (at least the ones I've worked at), productive employees are given promotions to become supervisors and then managers. The promotions bring exponentially larger returns.

From engineersalary.com, I plotted the salaries of electrical engineers at various promotion levels, ranging from entry level engineer to CEO of a 250-1000 person firm. If you look at the graph, you can see that there are financial advantages to moving up, but the financial advantages become exponentially larger the farther you advance within the company.

At 1/15/09 08:15 PM, heroicspatula wrote:

taxes should be raised exactly the way Obama said: over 250,000(or 150,000 or whatever the most recent one was). If the increase/decrease any other way, people will flip shit on him. Just a thought on why politicians should never make promises.

People who make 150k a year definitely have money to spare, and they should be paying higher taxes to help curb the deficit. Even people making 100k probably have spare money. The point about putting money into the economy is essentially moot, because all people will either spend money or put money into stock.

Taxes should be raised on anyone who can afford to pay higher taxes (that means middle/upper classes) to fix the budget deficit.

At 1/15/09 01:14 PM, Tancrisism wrote: This sounds like it could very well be true. Perhaps it will change in the future, but at the moment it seems like the blue states largely stay blue and the red states largely stay red.

Yes, and unfortunately a lot of the recent flips haven't been to the effect of turning solid red states into solid blue states. Rather, light red states (Florida and Ohio come to mind) have been pushed over into light blue territory.

In contrast, Reagen was able to win in states like Massachusetts and California, something that most Republicans wouldn't even dream of today.

Are American voting patterns stagnating?

To answer this question, I used the data from 270towin.com for historical state voting patterns, and plotted how many states appointed their electors differently than in the last election from the years 1976 to 2008. For example, if Alabama went Republican in 1992, and Democratic in 1996, I'd put down one tally in 1996.

I found that there was a -0.54 correlation between the year of the election and the number of state's which cast their electors differently than the last election.

The 70's and 80's were turbulent, with Jimmy Carter winning the southern states in 1976, and Reagen winning across the board in 1980 and 1984. The 90's and 2000's were considerably more stagnant, with Clinton more or less setting the election map. Most of the chances after 1992 have been to the effect of consolidating the Republican's dominance of the South and the Democrat's hold on the North. I'd imagine that this is because Republicans and Democrats largely win these regions with social values, which don't change very much from election to election.

A stagnant electoral map is a bad thing. It means that candidates are being judged more on social and regional issues, rather than the quality of their administration - which means that politicians will have less of a motivation to do good things for the country and more of a motivation to pander to regional interests.

At 1/14/09 06:24 PM, MultiCanimefan wrote:

Credit goes to James Watt, a Scotsman, and Englishman Richard Trevithick.

A lot of the technology has been developed through cooperation and competition between companies and individuals in the US and Europe, yes. But the importance of US innovation in the industrial revolution (which made the US a world power) is undeniable.

Constructed on U.S. soil, but built in the minds of Europeans.

The vast majority of the US population is from Europe, so I don't see exactly what your point is.

At 1/14/09 05:05 PM, Tancrisism wrote:

At 1/14/09 04:34 PM, Al6200 wrote:
America is NOT the new Rome.

Ah, so those three details that catalogue only a very small, minute factors of both nations shows that there are no striking resemblances. I see.

How is are the sources of a nation's wealth and strength "minute factors"?

The whole point of my message was to show that there is a fundamental difference between the United States and Rome. The United States gained its wealth through innovation and technological creation, while Rome's dominance mostly came from its ability to organize and manage technology that they borrowed from other civilizations.

At 1/14/09 05:49 PM, Imperator wrote:

Interesting.

You're clearly much more of an expert on this topic than I am, but I must say that the issue is fascinating. It tells us a lot about how different civilizations contribute to the grand tapestry of human progress in unique ways.

Rome barely created any new technology at all. Their military tactics were similar to those of ancient Greeks, they made little progress in mathematics, and their economy was built on massive slave labor.

False on first count. While the Romans did have a phalanx system for the first few hundred years of their existence, the maniple and cohort systems, coupled with the Marian reforms in all their glory led to a complete revolution in how their army operated, and in fact how all armies operated. Marius is sometimes credited with the creation of the "first professional army", legitimacy notwithstanding, the idea of standardized equipment, professional army careers open to the masses, and state supplied equipment (if not to say of the division of the legion into smaller, more mobile units) were all key innovations of the Roman military.

Battle tactics were also rather different from their Greek counterparts, which is why the Romans were able to defeat Pyrrhus, Mithridates, and all of Alexander's other successors with relative ease. The Phalanx operates on a very rigid structure, while cohorts are more independent and mobile. This proved so significant an advantage that the relative structure of the Roman army remained unchanged for some 400 years after Marius' death. And the Roman military only truly became threatened by outside forces when barbarian tribes started adopting these tactics and creating replica legions of their own.

That's interesting. But it does sort of agree with my main point that the Romans were powerful because they were good at organizing and managing old technology, and not creating new technology.

1.) If by sophisticated form of government you are referring to the Republic, this would be a rather odd statement considering the Republic failed. If you are referring to the Empire, the form was actually rather standard as far as Imperial powers go.

Well, I was referring to the chain of command in their military and in their civil government. I honestly don't know how advanced this practice was in other governments of the time.

2.) The structure for Empire actually relied mainly on the Principate and Marius' reforms, both of which allowed Rome to actually govern the territories, true. However, Alexander's fell apart simply because he died and his generals divided it with in-fighting, rather than an unstable structure of rule.
The entire process of Hellenization is a testament to that fact.
Perhaps a better example would be the Athenian or Spartan empires, as in each case they managed to screw themselves into oblivion.

Yeah, that's the idea that I was trying to get across. The Romans power did not come from technological creativity or ingenuity, it came from the ability to organize and manage in an efficient way.

They are not as devoid of advancement as you might think.

That's interesting. Aside from the arch though, most of those advancements seem to be applications of existing technologies or small incremental improvements - rather than dramatic new technologies.

America is NOT the new Rome, from the standpoint of ingenuity. However, the technological level comparative to neighbors is virtually the same. The difference is that while America does seem to invent most of its own innovations that define it, the Romans simply borrowed the best parts of their subjects.

Hmmm... Yes.

What makes Rome aptly different from other empires is the cultural influence worked both ways on a grand scale. Rome pressed its own culture rather lightly on its subjects, and ironically seemed more at the will of their subjects' culture rather that vice versa. However, this meant local customs remained intact, and allowed Rome to operate within already established systems, rather than trying to create a whole new system (the irony about it all is some very good 2000 year old lessons probably could have saved us a lot of trouble in Iraq). The West was Latin, the language of the East was Greek.

While I agree we may not be the "new Rome" for a variety of reasons, innovation being one, I would say that America certainly has a lot of Rome in her. You see (and use) far too much of it on a daily basis to say otherwise (although I know you haven't actually said that, just making a general point).

Are you talking about immigration? Or corruption?

This message brought to you by the forum "expert" on ancient crap.

Indeed. That was very interesting.

We're not. Even though the influence and military dominance of the US rivaled that of ancient Rome, the US was fundamentally different than Rome in one key way- innovation. Rome barely created any new technology at all. Their military tactics were similar to those of ancient Greeks, they made little progress in mathematics, and their economy was built on massive slave labor.

What made Rome so powerful was its organization and sophisticated form of government. Their mathematics was no better than that of the Greeks, but they had the discipline to use it to build giant aqueducts. The Greeks had developed the Phalanx formation, but the Romans had the military structure to build an Empire (yes, Alexander did create an Empire, but it fell apart immediately).

The US on the other hand has gained nearly all of its power through innovation and ingenuity. Electricity, the internal steam engine, the atomic bomb, and the computer are all US primarily inventions. The US has excelled in creating new technology and applying it to increase productivity.

America is NOT the new Rome.

At 1/14/09 07:59 AM, Elfer wrote:

At 1/13/09 11:15 PM, Memorize wrote: And let's not forget that the biggest serial murderers of the last half century happened to be atheist dictators, LOL!

Damn that atheist doctrine!

No, the conclusion you should be drawing is "People attribute violent crimes to religions, but in reality people commit crimes with or without a religious doctrine. Sometimes the lack of a religious doctrine can correlate with higher rates of violence".