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Re: 15 million fools

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  Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2015-12-30 22:19 -0500
    Re: 15 million fools James Hogg <Jas.Hogg@gOUTmail.com> - 2015-12-31 09:22 +0100
      Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2015-12-31 17:12 +0000
        Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2015-12-31 22:00 -0500
          Re: 15 million fools Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> - 2016-01-01 17:47 +1100
            Re: 15 million fools musika <mUs1Ka@NOSPAMexcite.com> - 2016-01-01 08:16 +0000
              Re: 15 million fools Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> - 2016-01-01 19:30 +1100
            Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-01 14:58 +0000
              Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-01 21:52 -0500
                Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-02 20:42 +0000
                  Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-02 21:54 -0500
                    Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-03 16:09 +0000
            Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-01 21:47 -0500
              Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-02 20:42 +0000
          Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-01 14:57 +0000
            Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-01 21:54 -0500
              Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-02 20:44 +0000
                Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-02 21:55 -0500
                  Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-03 16:10 +0000
                    Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-03 17:32 -0500
                      Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-04 00:25 +0000
                        Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-04 11:56 -0500
                          Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-04 17:21 +0000
                            Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-04 17:44 -0500
                              Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-04 23:38 +0000
                                Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-04 23:12 -0500
                                  Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-05 22:16 +0000
                                    Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-05 22:04 -0500
                                      Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-06 20:09 +0000
    Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2015-12-31 17:11 +0000
      Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2015-12-31 22:36 -0500
        Re: 15 million fools Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> - 2016-01-01 18:12 +1100
          Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-01 22:17 -0500
        Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-01 11:00 +0000
          Re: 15 million fools GordonD <g.davie@btinternet.com> - 2016-01-01 19:46 +0000
            Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-01 19:54 +0000
          Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-01 22:41 -0500
            Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-02 20:46 +0000
              Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-02 21:52 -0500
                Re: 15 million fools RH Draney <dadoctah@cox.net> - 2016-01-02 22:03 -0700
                Re: 15 million fools Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> - 2016-01-03 17:34 +1100
                Re: 15 million fools Janet <nobody@home.org> - 2016-01-03 11:31 +0000
                  Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-03 17:40 -0500
                    Re: 15 million fools Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> - 2016-01-04 10:13 +1100
                      Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-05 16:43 -0500
                        Re: 15 million fools Tony Cooper <tonycooper214@gmail.com> - 2016-01-05 17:36 -0500
                Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-03 18:36 +0000
                  Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-03 17:54 -0500
                    Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-04 00:27 +0000
                      Re: 15 million fools Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> - 2016-01-04 17:58 -0500
                        Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-04 23:40 +0000
              Re: 15 million fools GordonD <g.davie@btinternet.com> - 2016-01-04 09:06 +0000
                Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-04 19:15 +0000
        Re: 15 million fools Charles Bishop <ctbishop@earthlink.net> - 2016-01-02 17:29 -0800
          Re: 15 million fools "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> - 2016-01-03 16:09 +0000

Page 2 of 3 — ← Prev page 1 [2] 3  Next page →

#23251

On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 22:32:07 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:

> On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 16:10:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 02:55:55 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 02 Jan 2016 20:44:09 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sat, 02 Jan 2016 02:54:33 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 14:57:35 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 03:00:40 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:12:47 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 08:22:33 -0000, James Hogg <Jas.Hogg@goutmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Mr. B1ack wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 19:23:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:58:53 -0000, Dr. Jai Maharaj <alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> In article <op.yagzluoy86ebyl@red.lan>,
>>>>>>>>>>>> "Mr Macaw" <n...@spam.com> posted:
>>>>>>>>>>>>> 15 million people have spelt length as lenght on the
>>>>>>>>>>>>> internet, and they actually think it's correct, not just
>>>>>>>>>>>>> a typo!
>>>>>>>>>>>> "spelt"
>>>>>>>>>>>> about 12,700,000 search results.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> "spelled"
>>>>>>>>>>>> about 50,500,000 search results.
>>>>>>>>>>> Those are both words, with a subtle difference not many people care about.  In my example, lenght is not a word.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>    "Spelt" is English english. "Spelled" is more the American version.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>    "Pleaded" and "runned" are American 'Blinglish' ... the slow death
>>>>>>>>>>    of the irregular verb.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Some American dove in and rescued it.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I'm never sure if I'd rescue someone from drowning.  If I do, it shows
>>>>>>>> I'm braver than all the other pathetic people stood watching.  But.... the
>>>>>>>> guy drowning should have learnt to swim properly, so why should I
>>>>>>>> save him?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>    Tisk ... all about YOU .......
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>    Seems you were never schooled in the Golden Rule, the
>>>>>>>    foundation of ethics - empathy 101.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do you have empathy for an idiot ?
>>>>>
>>>>>    Actually, idiots need the MOST empathy ...
>>>>
>>>> Nobody needs empathy.
>>>>
>>>>>> If you see someone deliberately doing something stupid and
>>>>>> about to kill himself, would you stop him?  Why?
>>>>>
>>>>>    Because there's hope for improvement.
>>>>
>>>> Improvement is getting rid of the idiots.  If they want to do that themselves, then why don't you have a jolly good laugh while they're doing it, then enjoy life without them in future?
>>>>
>>>>>> Why does the world need him alive?
>>>>>
>>>>>    Because he has moral worth.
>>>>
>>>> Morals achieve nothing.
>>>
>>>    I'll mark you down as a Donald Trump voter.
>>
>> I would if I was in America.  It's almost 50% voting for him in the polls I looked at.
>
>
>    Mussolini was popular too.
>
>    Blend nationalism, xenophobia, paranoia and
>    "simple solutions" together and you too can
>    become the next Great Dictator.
>
>    Oh, and that's 50% IN HIS POLITICAL PARTY.
>    It remains to be seen if that'd translate into
>    50% in the general election.
>
>    An added kink is that US elections aren't won by
>    direct popular vote ... entire states are won or lost
>    and then  contribute their share of "electoral votes"
>    (cast by special reps called "electors"). Our "big"
>    states ... California, New York, Florida ... have so
>    many electoral votes that they are "must wins" for
>    anybody seeking the presidency.
>
>    California and New York are pretty damned "left-
>    wing". Trump is not.
>
>    So, it is possible to get the majority of the popular
>    votes yet still lose the election. I think this happened
>    to Al Gore when he ran against (GW) Bush.
>
>    This "electoral college" system was implemented at
>    the very beginning because so many in the 1780s were
>    illiterate, ill-informed, uneducated, easily-misled
>    farmhands and the idea was to insert a layer of
>    smarter people between them and whomever would
>    be president. It also increased the political clout of
>    a few "important" states.
>
>    An 'elector' doesn't HAVE to abide by the popular vote ...
>    so they are a sort of emergency device to block would-be
>    Mussolinis riding a wave of irrational public zeal.
>
>    Americans are STILL suboptimally-literate, ill-informed,
>    under-educated and easily misled ... though far less
>    likely to be farmhands. If Trump wins the popular vote
>    this may be the first time since the Founding that the
>    electors actually intervene in a serious manner. It
>    would cause chaos though of course, maybe even
>    some sort of coup.
>
>    We shall see.
>
>    As horrible as Trump is though, he's STILL preferable
>    to Mrs. Clinton. The march of ultraleft idiocy has gone
>    too far and Trump would send it crying home to mama.
>    Of course, add 25 years or so, and the right-wing idiocy
>    level will become objectionable once again ..... nobody
>    seems happy with the sensible center.

In another words, America is no more of a democracy than the UK.  Who has the right to say the majority of the population isn't clever enough to vote?  The majority MUST decide what happens, or it's not a democracy.  Those people "inserting a layer of smarter people" just THINK they're smarter.

-- 
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. -- Seneca the Younger 4 b.c.- 65 a.d.

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#23254

On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:25:00 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:

>On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 22:32:07 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 16:10:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 02:55:55 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sat, 02 Jan 2016 20:44:09 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, 02 Jan 2016 02:54:33 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 14:57:35 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 03:00:40 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:12:47 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 08:22:33 -0000, James Hogg <Jas.Hogg@goutmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Mr. B1ack wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 19:23:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:58:53 -0000, Dr. Jai Maharaj <alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> In article <op.yagzluoy86ebyl@red.lan>,
>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Mr Macaw" <n...@spam.com> posted:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 15 million people have spelt length as lenght on the
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> internet, and they actually think it's correct, not just
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> a typo!
>>>>>>>>>>>>> "spelt"
>>>>>>>>>>>>> about 12,700,000 search results.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> "spelled"
>>>>>>>>>>>>> about 50,500,000 search results.
>>>>>>>>>>>> Those are both words, with a subtle difference not many people care about.  In my example, lenght is not a word.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>    "Spelt" is English english. "Spelled" is more the American version.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>    "Pleaded" and "runned" are American 'Blinglish' ... the slow death
>>>>>>>>>>>    of the irregular verb.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Some American dove in and rescued it.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I'm never sure if I'd rescue someone from drowning.  If I do, it shows
>>>>>>>>> I'm braver than all the other pathetic people stood watching.  But.... the
>>>>>>>>> guy drowning should have learnt to swim properly, so why should I
>>>>>>>>> save him?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>    Tisk ... all about YOU .......
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>    Seems you were never schooled in the Golden Rule, the
>>>>>>>>    foundation of ethics - empathy 101.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Do you have empathy for an idiot ?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    Actually, idiots need the MOST empathy ...
>>>>>
>>>>> Nobody needs empathy.
>>>>>
>>>>>>> If you see someone deliberately doing something stupid and
>>>>>>> about to kill himself, would you stop him?  Why?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    Because there's hope for improvement.
>>>>>
>>>>> Improvement is getting rid of the idiots.  If they want to do that themselves, then why don't you have a jolly good laugh while they're doing it, then enjoy life without them in future?
>>>>>
>>>>>>> Why does the world need him alive?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    Because he has moral worth.
>>>>>
>>>>> Morals achieve nothing.
>>>>
>>>>    I'll mark you down as a Donald Trump voter.
>>>
>>> I would if I was in America.  It's almost 50% voting for him in the polls I looked at.
>>
>>
>>    Mussolini was popular too.
>>
>>    Blend nationalism, xenophobia, paranoia and
>>    "simple solutions" together and you too can
>>    become the next Great Dictator.
>>
>>    Oh, and that's 50% IN HIS POLITICAL PARTY.
>>    It remains to be seen if that'd translate into
>>    50% in the general election.
>>
>>    An added kink is that US elections aren't won by
>>    direct popular vote ... entire states are won or lost
>>    and then  contribute their share of "electoral votes"
>>    (cast by special reps called "electors"). Our "big"
>>    states ... California, New York, Florida ... have so
>>    many electoral votes that they are "must wins" for
>>    anybody seeking the presidency.
>>
>>    California and New York are pretty damned "left-
>>    wing". Trump is not.
>>
>>    So, it is possible to get the majority of the popular
>>    votes yet still lose the election. I think this happened
>>    to Al Gore when he ran against (GW) Bush.
>>
>>    This "electoral college" system was implemented at
>>    the very beginning because so many in the 1780s were
>>    illiterate, ill-informed, uneducated, easily-misled
>>    farmhands and the idea was to insert a layer of
>>    smarter people between them and whomever would
>>    be president. It also increased the political clout of
>>    a few "important" states.
>>
>>    An 'elector' doesn't HAVE to abide by the popular vote ...
>>    so they are a sort of emergency device to block would-be
>>    Mussolinis riding a wave of irrational public zeal.
>>
>>    Americans are STILL suboptimally-literate, ill-informed,
>>    under-educated and easily misled ... though far less
>>    likely to be farmhands. If Trump wins the popular vote
>>    this may be the first time since the Founding that the
>>    electors actually intervene in a serious manner. It
>>    would cause chaos though of course, maybe even
>>    some sort of coup.
>>
>>    We shall see.
>>
>>    As horrible as Trump is though, he's STILL preferable
>>    to Mrs. Clinton. The march of ultraleft idiocy has gone
>>    too far and Trump would send it crying home to mama.
>>    Of course, add 25 years or so, and the right-wing idiocy
>>    level will become objectionable once again ..... nobody
>>    seems happy with the sensible center.
>
>In another words, America is no more of a democracy than the UK.

   Correct ... especially when it comes to electing
   a president. 

   The legislative branches ... those representatives
   are choosen by direct, simple, majority vote. No
   one senator or congresscritter has as much 
   authority as the president however, so I suppose
   it's "safe" to do a straight-up vote for them. John
   McCain cannot order the armed forces to bomb
   Iran no matter HOW much he'd like it to happen.

   There are no "pure democracies" in the world. Even
   the classical Athenian experiment with that didn't
   last very long. Plato was correct when he called
   democracy a "degenerate system" - it's is a very
   bad idea to give the uninformed rabble direct
   and detailed control. 

   Our respective "representative" systems are intended
   to alleviate the potential problems of "pure" democracy ... 
   but I think they  introduce new routes of abuse/corruption.
   Also, since the invention of the instant opinion poll, 
   representative systems tend to manifest some of the
   problems of "pure" democracy as politicians try to please
   all the people all of the time. 

>Who has the right to say the majority of the population
>isn't clever enough to vote ?

   In our case it was the Founders themselves. They
   were very clever men ... and I think honest about
   their citizens and wise about human nature. The
   more power vested in an individual, the more layers
   of insulation required between him and Joe Citizen.

   Now in the UK style of government the position of
   the PM is not anything the citizens get to vote on
   directly, if I understand correctly. They elect reps
   from their favorite parties and the reps of the 
   majority party select a PM from their ranks. This
   makes those party reps somewhat equivalent
   to our "electors" ... an extra layer of indirection
   between citizen and highest executive. 

>The majority MUST decide what happens, or it's not
>a democracy. 

   As I pointed out, there ARE NO "democracies" ...
   variants of "republics" instead. 

>Those people "inserting a layer of smarter people"
>just THINK they're smarter.

   In the 1780s "electors" really WOULD have been
   choosen from the "smarter", better-educated, 
   subportion of the population. With a broader,
   more worldly view and likely training in "liberal
   arts" - including logic, philosophy and maybe
   theology - when it came to running a country
   properly, they would be the better choice. 

   In the 2000s ... um .... I still too often see where
   Joe Citizen is lacking. Even worse it's become a
   much "bigger world", a much more politically and
   economically complicated world, since the 1700s.
   Joe Citizen has not risen to the challenge. Even
   the internet hasn't helped ... simply added a larger
   volume of mis/dis-information. 

   Alas the "better" people you would want to be your
   representatives, presidents and electors also have
   fallen behind the proverbial curve. Statesmen are
   few ... self-serving, self-absorbed, myopic pinheads
   are far more common. There is little difference
   now between "better" and the rabble and thus
   bad decisions have increased. 

   Thinking about it all, clearly there IS NO "perfect"
   system, no "perfect" form or shape of government.
   Nothing even close to "perfect". We get a choice
   between "horrible" and "not QUITE so horrible". 
   A large part of this problem is inescapable - it
   is *people* - 8 billion constantly-mutating notions
   of the way things ought to be. We are a species
   that actually enjoys congitive dissonance and
   believing six impossible things before breakfast.

   So, until the Robot Overlords arrive, we're just stuck.

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#23255

On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:56:05 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:25:00 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 22:32:07 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 16:10:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 02:55:55 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, 02 Jan 2016 20:44:09 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sat, 02 Jan 2016 02:54:33 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 14:57:35 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 03:00:40 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:12:47 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 08:22:33 -0000, James Hogg <Jas.Hogg@goutmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Mr. B1ack wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 19:23:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:58:53 -0000, Dr. Jai Maharaj <alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> In article <op.yagzluoy86ebyl@red.lan>,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Mr Macaw" <n...@spam.com> posted:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 15 million people have spelt length as lenght on the
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> internet, and they actually think it's correct, not just
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> a typo!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "spelt"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> about 12,700,000 search results.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "spelled"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> about 50,500,000 search results.
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Those are both words, with a subtle difference not many people care about.  In my example, lenght is not a word.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>    "Spelt" is English english. "Spelled" is more the American version.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>    "Pleaded" and "runned" are American 'Blinglish' ... the slow death
>>>>>>>>>>>>    of the irregular verb.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Some American dove in and rescued it.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I'm never sure if I'd rescue someone from drowning.  If I do, it shows
>>>>>>>>>> I'm braver than all the other pathetic people stood watching.  But.... the
>>>>>>>>>> guy drowning should have learnt to swim properly, so why should I
>>>>>>>>>> save him?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>    Tisk ... all about YOU .......
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>    Seems you were never schooled in the Golden Rule, the
>>>>>>>>>    foundation of ethics - empathy 101.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Do you have empathy for an idiot ?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>    Actually, idiots need the MOST empathy ...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Nobody needs empathy.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> If you see someone deliberately doing something stupid and
>>>>>>>> about to kill himself, would you stop him?  Why?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>    Because there's hope for improvement.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Improvement is getting rid of the idiots.  If they want to do that themselves, then why don't you have a jolly good laugh while they're doing it, then enjoy life without them in future?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Why does the world need him alive?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>    Because he has moral worth.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Morals achieve nothing.
>>>>>
>>>>>    I'll mark you down as a Donald Trump voter.
>>>>
>>>> I would if I was in America.  It's almost 50% voting for him in the polls I looked at.
>>>
>>>
>>>    Mussolini was popular too.
>>>
>>>    Blend nationalism, xenophobia, paranoia and
>>>    "simple solutions" together and you too can
>>>    become the next Great Dictator.
>>>
>>>    Oh, and that's 50% IN HIS POLITICAL PARTY.
>>>    It remains to be seen if that'd translate into
>>>    50% in the general election.
>>>
>>>    An added kink is that US elections aren't won by
>>>    direct popular vote ... entire states are won or lost
>>>    and then  contribute their share of "electoral votes"
>>>    (cast by special reps called "electors"). Our "big"
>>>    states ... California, New York, Florida ... have so
>>>    many electoral votes that they are "must wins" for
>>>    anybody seeking the presidency.
>>>
>>>    California and New York are pretty damned "left-
>>>    wing". Trump is not.
>>>
>>>    So, it is possible to get the majority of the popular
>>>    votes yet still lose the election. I think this happened
>>>    to Al Gore when he ran against (GW) Bush.
>>>
>>>    This "electoral college" system was implemented at
>>>    the very beginning because so many in the 1780s were
>>>    illiterate, ill-informed, uneducated, easily-misled
>>>    farmhands and the idea was to insert a layer of
>>>    smarter people between them and whomever would
>>>    be president. It also increased the political clout of
>>>    a few "important" states.
>>>
>>>    An 'elector' doesn't HAVE to abide by the popular vote ...
>>>    so they are a sort of emergency device to block would-be
>>>    Mussolinis riding a wave of irrational public zeal.
>>>
>>>    Americans are STILL suboptimally-literate, ill-informed,
>>>    under-educated and easily misled ... though far less
>>>    likely to be farmhands. If Trump wins the popular vote
>>>    this may be the first time since the Founding that the
>>>    electors actually intervene in a serious manner. It
>>>    would cause chaos though of course, maybe even
>>>    some sort of coup.
>>>
>>>    We shall see.
>>>
>>>    As horrible as Trump is though, he's STILL preferable
>>>    to Mrs. Clinton. The march of ultraleft idiocy has gone
>>>    too far and Trump would send it crying home to mama.
>>>    Of course, add 25 years or so, and the right-wing idiocy
>>>    level will become objectionable once again ..... nobody
>>>    seems happy with the sensible center.
>>
>> In another words, America is no more of a democracy than the UK.
>
>    Correct ... especially when it comes to electing
>    a president.
>
>    The legislative branches ... those representatives
>    are choosen by direct, simple, majority vote. No
>    one senator or congresscritter has as much
>    authority as the president however, so I suppose
>    it's "safe" to do a straight-up vote for them. John
>    McCain cannot order the armed forces to bomb
>    Iran no matter HOW much he'd like it to happen.
>
>    There are no "pure democracies" in the world. Even
>    the classical Athenian experiment with that didn't
>    last very long. Plato was correct when he called
>    democracy a "degenerate system" - it's is a very
>    bad idea to give the uninformed rabble direct
>    and detailed control.

What a stupid viewpoint.  You're basically saying "don't let other peoples' votes count because they aren't as clever as me".  Nobody has the right to say that.

>    Our respective "representative" systems are intended
>    to alleviate the potential problems of "pure" democracy ...
>    but I think they  introduce new routes of abuse/corruption.
>    Also, since the invention of the instant opinion poll,
>    representative systems tend to manifest some of the
>    problems of "pure" democracy as politicians try to please
>    all the people all of the time.
>
>> Who has the right to say the majority of the population
>> isn't clever enough to vote ?
>
>    In our case it was the Founders themselves. They
>    were very clever men ... and I think honest about
>    their citizens and wise about human nature. The
>    more power vested in an individual, the more layers
>    of insulation required between him and Joe Citizen.

Hmph!  Founders indeed.  You wrote a decent constitution, then completely ignored it by amending it several times!

>    Now in the UK style of government the position of
>    the PM is not anything the citizens get to vote on
>    directly, if I understand correctly. They elect reps
>    from their favorite parties and the reps of the
>    majority party select a PM from their ranks. This
>    makes those party reps somewhat equivalent
>    to our "electors" ... an extra layer of indirection
>    between citizen and highest executive.

Yip, a right farce.  What's worse is the number of representatives (MPs) is often nothing like the number of people that voted for that party.  For example UKIP got three times the number of votes as SNP, yet SNP got fifty times more MPs!

>> The majority MUST decide what happens, or it's not
>> a democracy.
>
>    As I pointed out, there ARE NO "democracies" ...
>    variants of "republics" instead.

There should be.

>> Those people "inserting a layer of smarter people"
>> just THINK they're smarter.
>
>    In the 1780s "electors" really WOULD have been
>    choosen from the "smarter", better-educated,
>    subportion of the population. With a broader,
>    more worldly view and likely training in "liberal
>    arts" - including logic, philosophy and maybe
>    theology - when it came to running a country
>    properly, they would be the better choice.
>
>    In the 2000s ... um .... I still too often see where
>    Joe Citizen is lacking. Even worse it's become a
>    much "bigger world", a much more politically and
>    economically complicated world, since the 1700s.
>    Joe Citizen has not risen to the challenge. Even
>    the internet hasn't helped ... simply added a larger
>    volume of mis/dis-information.
>
>    Alas the "better" people you would want to be your
>    representatives, presidents and electors also have
>    fallen behind the proverbial curve. Statesmen are
>    few ... self-serving, self-absorbed, myopic pinheads
>    are far more common. There is little difference
>    now between "better" and the rabble and thus
>    bad decisions have increased.
>
>    Thinking about it all, clearly there IS NO "perfect"
>    system, no "perfect" form or shape of government.
>    Nothing even close to "perfect". We get a choice
>    between "horrible" and "not QUITE so horrible".
>    A large part of this problem is inescapable - it
>    is *people* - 8 billion constantly-mutating notions
>    of the way things ought to be. We are a species
>    that actually enjoys congitive dissonance and
>    believing six impossible things before breakfast.
>
>    So, until the Robot Overlords arrive, we're just stuck.

The "masses" must have more choice, it's that simple.

-- 
If you refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to liquor, you may be a Muslim.

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#23257

On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 17:21:12 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:56:05 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>
> [bandwidth snip]
>
>>    Iran no matter HOW much he'd like it to happen.
>>
>>    There are no "pure democracies" in the world. Even
>>    the classical Athenian experiment with that didn't
>>    last very long. Plato was correct when he called
>>    democracy a "degenerate system" - it's is a very
>>    bad idea to give the uninformed rabble direct
>>    and detailed control.
>
>What a stupid viewpoint. 

   No, it's the intellegent - and realistic - viewpoint.

>You're basically saying "don't let other peoples' votes count
>because they aren't as clever as me".  Nobody has the right
>to say that.

   Our Founders said it ... and I think they were correct,
   at least as far as electing presidents go. "Mob logic"
   can be a terrible thing - and you don't want it when
   deciding, or electing someone who can decide, to
   push the big red button. 

   It's not always an issue of "smartness" either, it's
   an issue of crowd behavior. There was a line in a
   movie some years back ... "A person is smart ;
   PEOPLE are dumb panicky dangerous animals". 

   We may not LIKE to believe this but it's always been
   true (and exploited). Certain safeguards are necessary
   and the more money, power and tangible force involved
   in the equation the stronger the safeguards must be. 

   There are some kinds of people who should never be
   allowed to become a US president even if 99.99% of
   the voters absolutely LOVE the guy. "Democracy" ?
   Nice idea in the abstract, but there are times to be
   coldly practical. 

   The world has endured meglomaniacs, psychotics,
   sociopaths and outright lunatics elevated to positions
   of great power far too often. It was a very bad thing
   pre-industrial and these days is a literal world-ending
   threat. 

>>    Our respective "representative" systems are intended
>>    to alleviate the potential problems of "pure" democracy ...
>>    but I think they  introduce new routes of abuse/corruption.
>>    Also, since the invention of the instant opinion poll,
>>    representative systems tend to manifest some of the
>>    problems of "pure" democracy as politicians try to please
>>    all the people all of the time.
>>
>>> Who has the right to say the majority of the population
>>> isn't clever enough to vote ?
>>
>>    In our case it was the Founders themselves. They
>>    were very clever men ... and I think honest about
>>    their citizens and wise about human nature. The
>>    more power vested in an individual, the more layers
>>    of insulation required between him and Joe Citizen.
>
>Hmph!  Founders indeed.  You wrote a decent constitution,
>then completely ignored it by amending it several times

   The amendments, the first 10 anyway, were part of
   the deal. No constitition without explicitly spelling out
   certain rights. I think that's the only thing that kept
   the USA from becoming another Russia or another
   Reich. Our 'leaders' labor endlessly to find ways of
   reasoning around those enumerated rights - showing
   us what the USA would have become if nobody had
   bothered writing them down. The will to absolute
   power is ALWAYS there. 

>>    Now in the UK style of government the position of
>>    the PM is not anything the citizens get to vote on
>>    directly, if I understand correctly. They elect reps
>>    from their favorite parties and the reps of the
>>    majority party select a PM from their ranks. This
>>    makes those party reps somewhat equivalent
>>    to our "electors" ... an extra layer of indirection
>>    between citizen and highest executive.
>
>Yip, a right farce.  What's worse is the number of representatives
>(MPs) is often nothing like the number of people that voted for that
> party.  For example UKIP got three times the number of votes as
>SNP, yet SNP got fifty times more MPs!

   Ok ... that's really weird ............

   How do they justify that ? Size of represented area ?
   Sheer number of voters per area ? Traditional 
   importance of area ? Nothing to do with area or
   population ? Average penis dimensions ??? 

>>> The majority MUST decide what happens, or it's not
>>> a democracy.
>>
>>    As I pointed out, there ARE NO "democracies" ...
>>    variants of "republics" instead.
>
>There should be.


   Would go down the tubes in no time at all ... 
   and the larger and more sophisticated the
   country the faster it would collapse. 

   There are an unspeakable number of *details*
   in running a country. No citizen can have a
   useful grasp of all the issues involved in 
   all endeavours. As such their votes are akin
   to donning a blindfold and being handed a dart.
   Most likely to wind up embedded in somebodys
   arse than hit the target. 

   A hundred million wrong opinions do not add up
   to a single Truth.

   So ... we set up decision-making heirarchies and
   spend lots of money so the higher-ups can have
   research teams and investigative resources that
   can actually deliver correct answers to specific
   issues ("correct" sometimes being "politically
   correct" of course). It's not "perfect", but it's
   "better". 
  

>>> Those people "inserting a layer of smarter people"
>>> just THINK they're smarter.
>>
>>    In the 1780s "electors" really WOULD have been
>>    choosen from the "smarter", better-educated,
>>    subportion of the population. With a broader,
>>    more worldly view and likely training in "liberal
>>    arts" - including logic, philosophy and maybe
>>    theology - when it came to running a country
>>    properly, they would be the better choice.
>>
>>    In the 2000s ... um .... I still too often see where
>>    Joe Citizen is lacking. Even worse it's become a
>>    much "bigger world", a much more politically and
>>    economically complicated world, since the 1700s.
>>    Joe Citizen has not risen to the challenge. Even
>>    the internet hasn't helped ... simply added a larger
>>    volume of mis/dis-information.
>>
>>    Alas the "better" people you would want to be your
>>    representatives, presidents and electors also have
>>    fallen behind the proverbial curve. Statesmen are
>>    few ... self-serving, self-absorbed, myopic pinheads
>>    are far more common. There is little difference
>>    now between "better" and the rabble and thus
>>    bad decisions have increased.
>>
>>    Thinking about it all, clearly there IS NO "perfect"
>>    system, no "perfect" form or shape of government.
>>    Nothing even close to "perfect". We get a choice
>>    between "horrible" and "not QUITE so horrible".
>>    A large part of this problem is inescapable - it
>>    is *people* - 8 billion constantly-mutating notions
>>    of the way things ought to be. We are a species
>>    that actually enjoys congitive dissonance and
>>    believing six impossible things before breakfast.
>>
>>    So, until the Robot Overlords arrive, we're just stuck.
>
>The "masses" must have more choice, it's that simple.

   I'd back more choice for *some* things ... "lifestyle
   issues" and other minimally-dangerous individual-
   centered items. *Dangerous* things however - big
   money, military force, international relations - better
   to leave things as they are. 

   Joe Citizen doesn't have the time nor inclination to
   study the facts and details of almost anything the
   State is doing. He doesn't have the resources to
   do a good job of it even if he was so-inclined. He
   cannot be a chemist and physicist and engineer
   and biologist and ecologist and geologist and
   economist and foreign-policy insider and .... well ...
   if he voted correctly it would be by pure accident.

   So instead he gets to vote for people who "seem
   trustworthy" (often aren't), more of a "gut" reaction,
   personality-appraisal - can be done with fewer
   resources/info/training. Besides, all his "choices"
   will have been vetted by the Big Money people,
   not much difference between them. 

   Plato offered the idea of a "philosopher king" who
   could comprehend the issues of the day and 
   issue a plan of action. I'm sure that seemed 
   reasonable to a philosopher. For Athens 550-BC
   maybe it would have worked. For New York City
   or any whole modern 1st-world nation not even
   a philosopher king could cope - the sheer scale
   and depth of even where to put a hydroelectric
   project would be far FAR beyond the abilities of
   any human or smallish group of humans. 

   So, in a nutshell, "pure democracy" isn't a
   a good approach to governing a nation - and
   neither is an all-powerful dictator. Those 
   annoying heirarchies and odd mixtures of
   "democratic", "oligarchic" and "authoritarian"
   are the best we can do. "People-management"
   is not anything for which Nature provides a
   convenient, calcuable, "law". We have to
   make it up as we go along - balancing fact
   and feeling as best we can in a dynamic
   social and physical environment. 

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#23259

On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 22:44:47 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 17:21:12 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:56:05 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>
>> [bandwidth snip]
>>
>>>    Iran no matter HOW much he'd like it to happen.
>>>
>>>    There are no "pure democracies" in the world. Even
>>>    the classical Athenian experiment with that didn't
>>>    last very long. Plato was correct when he called
>>>    democracy a "degenerate system" - it's is a very
>>>    bad idea to give the uninformed rabble direct
>>>    and detailed control.
>>
>> What a stupid viewpoint.
>
>    No, it's the intellegent - and realistic - viewpoint.
>
>> You're basically saying "don't let other peoples' votes count
>> because they aren't as clever as me".  Nobody has the right
>> to say that.
>
>    Our Founders said it ... and I think they were correct,
>    at least as far as electing presidents go. "Mob logic"
>    can be a terrible thing - and you don't want it when
>    deciding, or electing someone who can decide, to
>    push the big red button.
>
>    It's not always an issue of "smartness" either, it's
>    an issue of crowd behavior. There was a line in a
>    movie some years back ... "A person is smart ;
>    PEOPLE are dumb panicky dangerous animals".
>
>    We may not LIKE to believe this but it's always been
>    true (and exploited). Certain safeguards are necessary
>    and the more money, power and tangible force involved
>    in the equation the stronger the safeguards must be.
>
>    There are some kinds of people who should never be
>    allowed to become a US president even if 99.99% of
>    the voters absolutely LOVE the guy. "Democracy" ?
>    Nice idea in the abstract, but there are times to be
>    coldly practical.
>
>    The world has endured meglomaniacs, psychotics,
>    sociopaths and outright lunatics elevated to positions
>    of great power far too often. It was a very bad thing
>    pre-industrial and these days is a literal world-ending
>    threat.

But who gets to decide which people say who is a psychotic?  It's all about your point of view.  The ONLY fair way is to allow EVERYONE to vote evenly.  What you think is mad someone else may think is sensible.  If more people think a particular thing is sensible than mad, then it should be deemed sensible.

>>>    Our respective "representative" systems are intended
>>>    to alleviate the potential problems of "pure" democracy ...
>>>    but I think they  introduce new routes of abuse/corruption.
>>>    Also, since the invention of the instant opinion poll,
>>>    representative systems tend to manifest some of the
>>>    problems of "pure" democracy as politicians try to please
>>>    all the people all of the time.
>>>
>>>> Who has the right to say the majority of the population
>>>> isn't clever enough to vote ?
>>>
>>>    In our case it was the Founders themselves. They
>>>    were very clever men ... and I think honest about
>>>    their citizens and wise about human nature. The
>>>    more power vested in an individual, the more layers
>>>    of insulation required between him and Joe Citizen.
>>
>> Hmph!  Founders indeed.  You wrote a decent constitution,
>> then completely ignored it by amending it several times
>
>    The amendments, the first 10 anyway, were part of
>    the deal. No constitition without explicitly spelling out
>    certain rights. I think that's the only thing that kept
>    the USA from becoming another Russia or another
>    Reich. Our 'leaders' labor endlessly to find ways of
>    reasoning around those enumerated rights - showing
>    us what the USA would have become if nobody had
>    bothered writing them down. The will to absolute
>    power is ALWAYS there.

WTF are you on about "part of the deal"?  Obviously an amendment means you changed it.  The whole point of the constitution is that it should never be tampered with.  Why have laws if they only work until somebody deletes them?

>>>    Now in the UK style of government the position of
>>>    the PM is not anything the citizens get to vote on
>>>    directly, if I understand correctly. They elect reps
>>>    from their favorite parties and the reps of the
>>>    majority party select a PM from their ranks. This
>>>    makes those party reps somewhat equivalent
>>>    to our "electors" ... an extra layer of indirection
>>>    between citizen and highest executive.
>>
>> Yip, a right farce.  What's worse is the number of representatives
>> (MPs) is often nothing like the number of people that voted for that
>> party.  For example UKIP got three times the number of votes as
>> SNP, yet SNP got fifty times more MPs!
>
>    Ok ... that's really weird ............
>
>    How do they justify that ? Size of represented area ?
>    Sheer number of voters per area ? Traditional
>    importance of area ? Nothing to do with area or
>    population ? Average penis dimensions ???

"First past the post", the stupidest voting system ever.  The UK is divided into sections, and an MP is voted in by residents of each section.  The party that gets in is the one with the most MPs.  So if as in the case of UKIP, they have a decent vote throughout the whole country, but spread out, then they get fuck all MPs.  But SNP has them all concentrated in one area, so they get more MPs with less votes.  If an area has a small number of votes for party X, then that party doesn't get their MP there, and those votes are completely wasted.

>>>> Those people "inserting a layer of smarter people"
>>>> just THINK they're smarter.
>>>
>>>    In the 1780s "electors" really WOULD have been
>>>    choosen from the "smarter", better-educated,
>>>    subportion of the population. With a broader,
>>>    more worldly view and likely training in "liberal
>>>    arts" - including logic, philosophy and maybe
>>>    theology - when it came to running a country
>>>    properly, they would be the better choice.
>>>
>>>    In the 2000s ... um .... I still too often see where
>>>    Joe Citizen is lacking. Even worse it's become a
>>>    much "bigger world", a much more politically and
>>>    economically complicated world, since the 1700s.
>>>    Joe Citizen has not risen to the challenge. Even
>>>    the internet hasn't helped ... simply added a larger
>>>    volume of mis/dis-information.
>>>
>>>    Alas the "better" people you would want to be your
>>>    representatives, presidents and electors also have
>>>    fallen behind the proverbial curve. Statesmen are
>>>    few ... self-serving, self-absorbed, myopic pinheads
>>>    are far more common. There is little difference
>>>    now between "better" and the rabble and thus
>>>    bad decisions have increased.
>>>
>>>    Thinking about it all, clearly there IS NO "perfect"
>>>    system, no "perfect" form or shape of government.
>>>    Nothing even close to "perfect". We get a choice
>>>    between "horrible" and "not QUITE so horrible".
>>>    A large part of this problem is inescapable - it
>>>    is *people* - 8 billion constantly-mutating notions
>>>    of the way things ought to be. We are a species
>>>    that actually enjoys congitive dissonance and
>>>    believing six impossible things before breakfast.
>>>
>>>    So, until the Robot Overlords arrive, we're just stuck.
>>
>> The "masses" must have more choice, it's that simple.
>
>    I'd back more choice for *some* things ... "lifestyle
>    issues" and other minimally-dangerous individual-
>    centered items. *Dangerous* things however - big
>    money, military force, international relations - better
>    to leave things as they are.

Bullshit!  We are currently throwing away money bombing countries when most of us don't want to!

>    Joe Citizen doesn't have the time nor inclination to
>    study the facts and details of almost anything the
>    State is doing. He doesn't have the resources to
>    do a good job of it even if he was so-inclined. He
>    cannot be a chemist and physicist and engineer
>    and biologist and ecologist and geologist and
>    economist and foreign-policy insider and .... well ...
>    if he voted correctly it would be by pure accident.
>
>    So instead he gets to vote for people who "seem
>    trustworthy" (often aren't), more of a "gut" reaction,
>    personality-appraisal - can be done with fewer
>    resources/info/training. Besides, all his "choices"
>    will have been vetted by the Big Money people,
>    not much difference between them.

Those "trustworthy" folk have biases.  Putting it to the vote of the masses would be way better.

-- 
Peter is listening to "Ministry of Sound - The Sound of Dubstep 4"

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#23263

On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 23:38:14 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 22:44:47 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 17:21:12 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:56:05 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> [bandwidth snip]
>>>
>>>>    Iran no matter HOW much he'd like it to happen.
>>>>
>>>>    There are no "pure democracies" in the world. Even
>>>>    the classical Athenian experiment with that didn't
>>>>    last very long. Plato was correct when he called
>>>>    democracy a "degenerate system" - it's is a very
>>>>    bad idea to give the uninformed rabble direct
>>>>    and detailed control.
>>>
>>> What a stupid viewpoint.
>>
>>    No, it's the intellegent - and realistic - viewpoint.
>>
>>> You're basically saying "don't let other peoples' votes count
>>> because they aren't as clever as me".  Nobody has the right
>>> to say that.
>>
>>    Our Founders said it ... and I think they were correct,
>>    at least as far as electing presidents go. "Mob logic"
>>    can be a terrible thing - and you don't want it when
>>    deciding, or electing someone who can decide, to
>>    push the big red button.
>>
>>    It's not always an issue of "smartness" either, it's
>>    an issue of crowd behavior. There was a line in a
>>    movie some years back ... "A person is smart ;
>>    PEOPLE are dumb panicky dangerous animals".
>>
>>    We may not LIKE to believe this but it's always been
>>    true (and exploited). Certain safeguards are necessary
>>    and the more money, power and tangible force involved
>>    in the equation the stronger the safeguards must be.
>>
>>    There are some kinds of people who should never be
>>    allowed to become a US president even if 99.99% of
>>    the voters absolutely LOVE the guy. "Democracy" ?
>>    Nice idea in the abstract, but there are times to be
>>    coldly practical.
>>
>>    The world has endured meglomaniacs, psychotics,
>>    sociopaths and outright lunatics elevated to positions
>>    of great power far too often. It was a very bad thing
>>    pre-industrial and these days is a literal world-ending
>>    threat.
>
>But who gets to decide which people say who is a psychotic?
>It's all about your point of view.

   Uh oh ... now you're getting all philosophical - reality
   is what the collective We decide it is. 

   Sometimes true, sometimes not. 

   And anyone attempting to be objective can spot a loonie
   at 50 paces .... yet any large GROUP may not. Interesting.

   Now if you wish to discuss the extended meanings of
   Platos allegory of the cave or the Buddhas remark that
   reality is illusion, those are the hair-splitting quantum-
   mechanics of the universe and our situation within it
   and should be in another thread, probably another
   group entirely. It's not really stuff humans can use
   in their everyday lives anyway ... 

>The ONLY fair way is to allow EVERYONE to vote evenly.

   "Fair" got Hitler into power ... another crowd-pleasing maniac.

   "Fair" IS usually good. Not always good however. You are
   looking for an otrhogonal system to govern a species with
   decidedly unorthogonal behavior set - just won't work all of
   the time. People are just *nuts* sometimes, but that's no
   excuse to enshrine it in law, or in actions you can't take back.

>What you think is mad someone else may think is sensible.

   Means they're mad too  :-) 

>If more people think a particular thing is sensible than mad,
>then it should be deemed sensible.

   Um ... no ... never. Votes do not create Truths, quantity is
   not quality. 

>>>>    Our respective "representative" systems are intended
>>>>    to alleviate the potential problems of "pure" democracy ...
>>>>    but I think they  introduce new routes of abuse/corruption.
>>>>    Also, since the invention of the instant opinion poll,
>>>>    representative systems tend to manifest some of the
>>>>    problems of "pure" democracy as politicians try to please
>>>>    all the people all of the time.
>>>>
>>>>> Who has the right to say the majority of the population
>>>>> isn't clever enough to vote ?
>>>>
>>>>    In our case it was the Founders themselves. They
>>>>    were very clever men ... and I think honest about
>>>>    their citizens and wise about human nature. The
>>>>    more power vested in an individual, the more layers
>>>>    of insulation required between him and Joe Citizen.
>>>
>>> Hmph!  Founders indeed.  You wrote a decent constitution,
>>> then completely ignored it by amending it several times
>>
>>    The amendments, the first 10 anyway, were part of
>>    the deal. No constitition without explicitly spelling out
>>    certain rights. I think that's the only thing that kept
>>    the USA from becoming another Russia or another
>>    Reich. Our 'leaders' labor endlessly to find ways of
>>    reasoning around those enumerated rights - showing
>>    us what the USA would have become if nobody had
>>    bothered writing them down. The will to absolute
>>    power is ALWAYS there.
>
>WTF are you on about "part of the deal"?

   Just as I said ... without those amendments the delegation
   would not have signed the constitution and there would have
   been many "states of America" - probably emulating europe
   and constantly at war with each other - rather than one
   balanced union. 

>Obviously an amendment means you changed it. 

   Yes, and also in this case no. The main body of the document
   was written and presented - and then amended - but strictly
   speaking there was no constitution UNTIL everybody signed
   on the line. So the original 10 amendments weren't to the
   constitution, only to the proposed draft. Still get CALLED
   "amendments" of course, but actually #11 was the first
   true amendment to the US constitution  :-) 

>The whole point of the constitution is that it should never be
>tampered with.  Why have laws if they only work until
>somebody deletes them?

   The US constitution contains a protocol for amending the
   constitution. The Founders understood that they could
   not anticipate EVERY important future issue. 

   Especially the one big thing they intentionally left OUT
   of the constitution ... the issue of slaves. Just as they
   had to make those 10 amendments to the draft to
   get everyone to sign they also had to leave OUT any
   end to slavery even though they KNEW it would
   crop up more and more as time passed. 

   However they made it very DIFFICULT to amend the
   constitution ... and the first 10 "amendments" are 
   considered to be root basic civil rights for free men
   in a free republic and thus pretty much off-limits. 
   The integrity of the document lies in the difficulty of
   changing it. It isn't perfect protection - there was
   that amendment banning boooze, followed by one
   about ten years later un-banning booze, so extreme
   instances of righteous zeal CAN mar the document -
   and a later return to sanity can fix it. 

>>>>    Now in the UK style of government the position of
>>>>    the PM is not anything the citizens get to vote on
>>>>    directly, if I understand correctly. They elect reps
>>>>    from their favorite parties and the reps of the
>>>>    majority party select a PM from their ranks. This
>>>>    makes those party reps somewhat equivalent
>>>>    to our "electors" ... an extra layer of indirection
>>>>    between citizen and highest executive.
>>>
>>> Yip, a right farce.  What's worse is the number of representatives
>>> (MPs) is often nothing like the number of people that voted for that
>>> party.  For example UKIP got three times the number of votes as
>>> SNP, yet SNP got fifty times more MPs!
>>
>>    Ok ... that's really weird ............
>>
>>    How do they justify that ? Size of represented area ?
>>    Sheer number of voters per area ? Traditional
>>    importance of area ? Nothing to do with area or
>>    population ? Average penis dimensions ???
>
>"First past the post", the stupidest voting system ever.  The UK is
>divided into sections, and an MP is voted in by residents of each section.

   Ok ... so far like a US "voting district", or individual states
   when it comes to voting for president .... 

>The party that gets in is the one with the most MPs. 

   Pretty much like our Republicans -vs- Democrats. 

>So if as in the case of UKIP, they have a decent vote
>throughout the whole country, but spread out, then they
>get fuck all MPs.

   Sounds like our "3rd parties" like the Libertarians or
   Tea Party .... a decent number nationwide but not
   enough in any ONE place to win an election. VERY
   rare for 3rd-party candidates to be seen in the
   federal legislature, Rand Paul may be the only one
   at present. 


>But SNP has them all concentrated in one area, so they
>get more MPs with less votes. 

   Understood. 

   The by-population -vs- by-state issue plagued our Founders
   as well. It is why we have a Senate and Congress - the fix
   was to do it both ways  :-) 

   However elections for both are STILL regional ... so widely-
   dispersed 3rd party adherents don't add up to butts in the
   seats. 

   This MAY have been intentional - a "stabilizing" function 
   to ensure change didn't come TOO quickly. 

>If an area has a small number of votes for party X, then that
>party doesn't get their MP there, and those votes are completely
>wasted.

   Mine would be completely wasted if I voted for an obscure
   candidate. 

   Sounds like you want a whole-country proportional system
   instead of the regional structuring. I think you'd find though
   that regions are regions because the people there share
   common history, traditions, beliefs. They are "special" and
   want a system that recognizes their specialness. Our
   Senate gives equal power to each individual state, thus
   adding clout to their "specialness" - which many states
   are very proud of. We are the "United STATES" after
   all ... not the "State of America". 

   So, despite differences in titles and names, the current
   UK system isn't THAT much different from the USAs. 
   You DO seem to get a lot more "3rd parties" in there
   than we do however ... a "coalition government" of
   cooperating small parties is nothing we are familiar with. 
   As I said somewhere, Americans like things black & white ...
   two clear choices. The only big change was LONG ago
   when the Republicans displaced the Whigs. 

>>>>> Those people "inserting a layer of smarter people"
>>>>> just THINK they're smarter.
>>>>
>>>>    In the 1780s "electors" really WOULD have been
>>>>    choosen from the "smarter", better-educated,
>>>>    subportion of the population. With a broader,
>>>>    more worldly view and likely training in "liberal
>>>>    arts" - including logic, philosophy and maybe
>>>>    theology - when it came to running a country
>>>>    properly, they would be the better choice.
>>>>
>>>>    In the 2000s ... um .... I still too often see where
>>>>    Joe Citizen is lacking. Even worse it's become a
>>>>    much "bigger world", a much more politically and
>>>>    economically complicated world, since the 1700s.
>>>>    Joe Citizen has not risen to the challenge. Even
>>>>    the internet hasn't helped ... simply added a larger
>>>>    volume of mis/dis-information.
>>>>
>>>>    Alas the "better" people you would want to be your
>>>>    representatives, presidents and electors also have
>>>>    fallen behind the proverbial curve. Statesmen are
>>>>    few ... self-serving, self-absorbed, myopic pinheads
>>>>    are far more common. There is little difference
>>>>    now between "better" and the rabble and thus
>>>>    bad decisions have increased.
>>>>
>>>>    Thinking about it all, clearly there IS NO "perfect"
>>>>    system, no "perfect" form or shape of government.
>>>>    Nothing even close to "perfect". We get a choice
>>>>    between "horrible" and "not QUITE so horrible".
>>>>    A large part of this problem is inescapable - it
>>>>    is *people* - 8 billion constantly-mutating notions
>>>>    of the way things ought to be. We are a species
>>>>    that actually enjoys congitive dissonance and
>>>>    believing six impossible things before breakfast.
>>>>
>>>>    So, until the Robot Overlords arrive, we're just stuck.
>>>
>>> The "masses" must have more choice, it's that simple.
>>
>>    I'd back more choice for *some* things ... "lifestyle
>>    issues" and other minimally-dangerous individual-
>>    centered items. *Dangerous* things however - big
>>    money, military force, international relations - better
>>    to leave things as they are.
>
>Bullshit!  We are currently throwing away money bombing
>countries when most of us don't want to!

   Maybe "most" in the UK .... but most Americans COULD
   be convinced to send waves of B-52s across the entire
   middle east until nothing was left. A few more ISIL-related
   terror incidents is all it would take. It doesn't bother us too
   much if our poor folks and gangsters kill each other ... but
   if some OUTSIDE entity does it then we get seriously
   bent out of shape and vengance crusades get authorized.

>>    Joe Citizen doesn't have the time nor inclination to
>>    study the facts and details of almost anything the
>>    State is doing. He doesn't have the resources to
>>    do a good job of it even if he was so-inclined. He
>>    cannot be a chemist and physicist and engineer
>>    and biologist and ecologist and geologist and
>>    economist and foreign-policy insider and .... well ...
>>    if he voted correctly it would be by pure accident.
>>
>>    So instead he gets to vote for people who "seem
>>    trustworthy" (often aren't), more of a "gut" reaction,
>>    personality-appraisal - can be done with fewer
>>    resources/info/training. Besides, all his "choices"
>>    will have been vetted by the Big Money people,
>>    not much difference between them.
>
>Those "trustworthy" folk have biases.  Putting it to the vote of the masses would be way better.

   Everybody has biases ... and so can "the masses". 
   Neither is better than the other. As I said, quantity
   is not quality - a million fools in lockstep do not
   create wisdom. 

   Sorry, no good fixes to this stuff. Would have been
   discovered a hundred thousand years ago if there
   was. Human affairs are just plain MESSY. 

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#23265

On Tue, 05 Jan 2016 04:12:16 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 23:38:14 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 22:44:47 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 17:21:12 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:56:05 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> [bandwidth snip]
>>>>
>>>>>    Iran no matter HOW much he'd like it to happen.
>>>>>
>>>>>    There are no "pure democracies" in the world. Even
>>>>>    the classical Athenian experiment with that didn't
>>>>>    last very long. Plato was correct when he called
>>>>>    democracy a "degenerate system" - it's is a very
>>>>>    bad idea to give the uninformed rabble direct
>>>>>    and detailed control.
>>>>
>>>> What a stupid viewpoint.
>>>
>>>    No, it's the intellegent - and realistic - viewpoint.
>>>
>>>> You're basically saying "don't let other peoples' votes count
>>>> because they aren't as clever as me".  Nobody has the right
>>>> to say that.
>>>
>>>    Our Founders said it ... and I think they were correct,
>>>    at least as far as electing presidents go. "Mob logic"
>>>    can be a terrible thing - and you don't want it when
>>>    deciding, or electing someone who can decide, to
>>>    push the big red button.
>>>
>>>    It's not always an issue of "smartness" either, it's
>>>    an issue of crowd behavior. There was a line in a
>>>    movie some years back ... "A person is smart ;
>>>    PEOPLE are dumb panicky dangerous animals".
>>>
>>>    We may not LIKE to believe this but it's always been
>>>    true (and exploited). Certain safeguards are necessary
>>>    and the more money, power and tangible force involved
>>>    in the equation the stronger the safeguards must be.
>>>
>>>    There are some kinds of people who should never be
>>>    allowed to become a US president even if 99.99% of
>>>    the voters absolutely LOVE the guy. "Democracy" ?
>>>    Nice idea in the abstract, but there are times to be
>>>    coldly practical.
>>>
>>>    The world has endured meglomaniacs, psychotics,
>>>    sociopaths and outright lunatics elevated to positions
>>>    of great power far too often. It was a very bad thing
>>>    pre-industrial and these days is a literal world-ending
>>>    threat.
>>
>> But who gets to decide which people say who is a psychotic?
>> It's all about your point of view.
>
>    Uh oh ... now you're getting all philosophical - reality
>    is what the collective We decide it is.
>
>    Sometimes true, sometimes not.
>
>    And anyone attempting to be objective can spot a loonie
>    at 50 paces .... yet any large GROUP may not. Interesting.
>
>    Now if you wish to discuss the extended meanings of
>    Platos allegory of the cave or the Buddhas remark that
>    reality is illusion, those are the hair-splitting quantum-
>    mechanics of the universe and our situation within it
>    and should be in another thread, probably another
>    group entirely. It's not really stuff humans can use
>    in their everyday lives anyway ...

No, you're the one being philosophical.  And you were correct in your first sentence, the collective decides what is wrong.  All of them, not just the few that think they're better than the rest.  In fact take any group of people and they'll always think they're better than the rest.  So you can't pick any group and say they're correct.  You must allow everyone an equal vote.

>> The ONLY fair way is to allow EVERYONE to vote evenly.
>
>    "Fair" got Hitler into power ... another crowd-pleasing maniac.

Hitler was a bloody good leader.  If we hadn't stopped him, the world would have been cleaned up quite a bit.

>    "Fair" IS usually good. Not always good however. You are
>    looking for an otrhogonal system to govern a species with
>    decidedly unorthogonal behavior set - just won't work all of
>    the time. People are just *nuts* sometimes, but that's no
>    excuse to enshrine it in law, or in actions you can't take back.

If most people want to be nuts, then nuts should be the rule.

>> What you think is mad someone else may think is sensible.
>
>    Means they're mad too  :-)

Only in your opinion.

>> If more people think a particular thing is sensible than mad,
>> then it should be deemed sensible.
>
>    Um ... no ... never. Votes do not create Truths, quantity is
>    not quality.

If more people think X is good, than people (including you) who think X is bad, then you are simply wrong.

>>>>>    Our respective "representative" systems are intended
>>>>>    to alleviate the potential problems of "pure" democracy ...
>>>>>    but I think they  introduce new routes of abuse/corruption.
>>>>>    Also, since the invention of the instant opinion poll,
>>>>>    representative systems tend to manifest some of the
>>>>>    problems of "pure" democracy as politicians try to please
>>>>>    all the people all of the time.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Who has the right to say the majority of the population
>>>>>> isn't clever enough to vote ?
>>>>>
>>>>>    In our case it was the Founders themselves. They
>>>>>    were very clever men ... and I think honest about
>>>>>    their citizens and wise about human nature. The
>>>>>    more power vested in an individual, the more layers
>>>>>    of insulation required between him and Joe Citizen.
>>>>
>>>> Hmph!  Founders indeed.  You wrote a decent constitution,
>>>> then completely ignored it by amending it several times
>>>
>>>    The amendments, the first 10 anyway, were part of
>>>    the deal. No constitition without explicitly spelling out
>>>    certain rights. I think that's the only thing that kept
>>>    the USA from becoming another Russia or another
>>>    Reich. Our 'leaders' labor endlessly to find ways of
>>>    reasoning around those enumerated rights - showing
>>>    us what the USA would have become if nobody had
>>>    bothered writing them down. The will to absolute
>>>    power is ALWAYS there.
>>
>> WTF are you on about "part of the deal"?
>
>    Just as I said ... without those amendments the delegation
>    would not have signed the constitution and there would have
>    been many "states of America" - probably emulating europe
>    and constantly at war with each other - rather than one
>    balanced union.

So it's a watered down compromise.

>> Obviously an amendment means you changed it.
>
>    Yes, and also in this case no. The main body of the document
>    was written and presented - and then amended - but strictly
>    speaking there was no constitution UNTIL everybody signed
>    on the line. So the original 10 amendments weren't to the
>    constitution, only to the proposed draft. Still get CALLED
>    "amendments" of course, but actually #11 was the first
>    true amendment to the US constitution  :-)

Ok, so 11 onwards are wrong.

>> The whole point of the constitution is that it should never be
>> tampered with.  Why have laws if they only work until
>> somebody deletes them?
>
>    The US constitution contains a protocol for amending the
>    constitution. The Founders understood that they could
>    not anticipate EVERY important future issue.

Let's take "freedom of speech".  Where has that gone?  You deleted it.

>    Especially the one big thing they intentionally left OUT
>    of the constitution ... the issue of slaves. Just as they
>    had to make those 10 amendments to the draft to
>    get everyone to sign they also had to leave OUT any
>    end to slavery even though they KNEW it would
>    crop up more and more as time passed.

Slavery is a bloody good idea, I'd love a slave.

>    However they made it very DIFFICULT to amend the
>    constitution ... and the first 10 "amendments" are
>    considered to be root basic civil rights for free men
>    in a free republic and thus pretty much off-limits.
>    The integrity of the document lies in the difficulty of
>    changing it. It isn't perfect protection - there was
>    that amendment banning boooze, followed by one
>    about ten years later un-banning booze, so extreme
>    instances of righteous zeal CAN mar the document -
>    and a later return to sanity can fix it.

Now you're better than the UK, allowing weed.

>>>>>    Now in the UK style of government the position of
>>>>>    the PM is not anything the citizens get to vote on
>>>>>    directly, if I understand correctly. They elect reps
>>>>>    from their favorite parties and the reps of the
>>>>>    majority party select a PM from their ranks. This
>>>>>    makes those party reps somewhat equivalent
>>>>>    to our "electors" ... an extra layer of indirection
>>>>>    between citizen and highest executive.
>>>>
>>>> Yip, a right farce.  What's worse is the number of representatives
>>>> (MPs) is often nothing like the number of people that voted for that
>>>> party.  For example UKIP got three times the number of votes as
>>>> SNP, yet SNP got fifty times more MPs!
>>>
>>>    Ok ... that's really weird ............
>>>
>>>    How do they justify that ? Size of represented area ?
>>>    Sheer number of voters per area ? Traditional
>>>    importance of area ? Nothing to do with area or
>>>    population ? Average penis dimensions ???
>>
>> "First past the post", the stupidest voting system ever.  The UK is
>> divided into sections, and an MP is voted in by residents of each section.
>
>    Ok ... so far like a US "voting district", or individual states
>    when it comes to voting for president ....
>
>> The party that gets in is the one with the most MPs.
>
>    Pretty much like our Republicans -vs- Democrats.
>
>> So if as in the case of UKIP, they have a decent vote
>> throughout the whole country, but spread out, then they
>> get fuck all MPs.
>
>    Sounds like our "3rd parties" like the Libertarians or
>    Tea Party .... a decent number nationwide but not
>    enough in any ONE place to win an election. VERY
>    rare for 3rd-party candidates to be seen in the
>    federal legislature, Rand Paul may be the only one
>    at present.

So your system is completely unfair too.

>> But SNP has them all concentrated in one area, so they
>> get more MPs with less votes.
>
>    Understood.
>
>    The by-population -vs- by-state issue plagued our Founders
>    as well. It is why we have a Senate and Congress - the fix
>    was to do it both ways  :-)
>
>    However elections for both are STILL regional ... so widely-
>    dispersed 3rd party adherents don't add up to butts in the
>    seats.
>
>    This MAY have been intentional - a "stabilizing" function
>    to ensure change didn't come TOO quickly.

We need lots of change.  There are so many things wrong with the government (in the UK and the US).

>> If an area has a small number of votes for party X, then that
>> party doesn't get their MP there, and those votes are completely
>> wasted.
>
>    Mine would be completely wasted if I voted for an obscure
>    candidate.

And that's another thing, you get people "tactically voting".  There may be for sake of example 100,000 people in a voting area.  The last election saw 50,000 Conservative, 40,000 Labour, and 10,000 Green.  So this time nobody votes Green because they won't get in.  Of course they won't get in, because the 50,000 tactical voters who could have voted Green didn't!  There was some kind of plan to stop tactical voting by having TWO votes.  In the first one you vote for who you really want, then we all get to see the numbers, and can change or minds to pick one that will be more likely to get in.

>    Sounds like you want a whole-country proportional system
>    instead of the regional structuring.

We keep trying to, but the problem is the party in power got in through the seats system and won't change it because it'll ruin their chances of getting in next time.

>    I think you'd find though
>    that regions are regions because the people there share
>    common history, traditions, beliefs. They are "special" and
>    want a system that recognizes their specialness.

I doubt it, they're just geographical areas, and in fact the party in power is allowed to move the borders to suit themselves!

>    Our Senate gives equal power to each individual state, thus
>    adding clout to their "specialness" - which many states
>    are very proud of. We are the "United STATES" after
>    all ... not the "State of America".

Your system of State laws and Federal laws would confuse the hell out of me.  You can be doing something legal, drive 2 miles, then be breaking the law.  Or you could be breaking a Federal law but not a State one etc.

>    So, despite differences in titles and names, the current
>    UK system isn't THAT much different from the USAs.
>    You DO seem to get a lot more "3rd parties" in there
>    than we do however

I think the US system requires lots more money to stand for election.

>    ... a "coalition government" of
>    cooperating small parties is nothing we are familiar with.

That coalition was a bloody stupid idea.  The Liberals are left wing and the Conservatives are right wing.  The Liberals didn't have much influence on the Conservative Government, they just shot themselves in the foot and helped them to get in.  Needless to say nobody votes Liberal any more.

>    As I said somewhere, Americans like things black & white ...
>    two clear choices. The only big change was LONG ago
>    when the Republicans displaced the Whigs.

We used to have a party called Whigs, they were the predecessors of the Conservatives.  Before I was born though.  Wikipedia has an article on it somewhere.

>>>>>> Those people "inserting a layer of smarter people"
>>>>>> just THINK they're smarter.
>>>>>
>>>>>    In the 1780s "electors" really WOULD have been
>>>>>    choosen from the "smarter", better-educated,
>>>>>    subportion of the population. With a broader,
>>>>>    more worldly view and likely training in "liberal
>>>>>    arts" - including logic, philosophy and maybe
>>>>>    theology - when it came to running a country
>>>>>    properly, they would be the better choice.
>>>>>
>>>>>    In the 2000s ... um .... I still too often see where
>>>>>    Joe Citizen is lacking. Even worse it's become a
>>>>>    much "bigger world", a much more politically and
>>>>>    economically complicated world, since the 1700s.
>>>>>    Joe Citizen has not risen to the challenge. Even
>>>>>    the internet hasn't helped ... simply added a larger
>>>>>    volume of mis/dis-information.
>>>>>
>>>>>    Alas the "better" people you would want to be your
>>>>>    representatives, presidents and electors also have
>>>>>    fallen behind the proverbial curve. Statesmen are
>>>>>    few ... self-serving, self-absorbed, myopic pinheads
>>>>>    are far more common. There is little difference
>>>>>    now between "better" and the rabble and thus
>>>>>    bad decisions have increased.
>>>>>
>>>>>    Thinking about it all, clearly there IS NO "perfect"
>>>>>    system, no "perfect" form or shape of government.
>>>>>    Nothing even close to "perfect". We get a choice
>>>>>    between "horrible" and "not QUITE so horrible".
>>>>>    A large part of this problem is inescapable - it
>>>>>    is *people* - 8 billion constantly-mutating notions
>>>>>    of the way things ought to be. We are a species
>>>>>    that actually enjoys congitive dissonance and
>>>>>    believing six impossible things before breakfast.
>>>>>
>>>>>    So, until the Robot Overlords arrive, we're just stuck.
>>>>
>>>> The "masses" must have more choice, it's that simple.
>>>
>>>    I'd back more choice for *some* things ... "lifestyle
>>>    issues" and other minimally-dangerous individual-
>>>    centered items. *Dangerous* things however - big
>>>    money, military force, international relations - better
>>>    to leave things as they are.
>>
>> Bullshit!  We are currently throwing away money bombing
>> countries when most of us don't want to!
>
>    Maybe "most" in the UK .... but most Americans COULD
>    be convinced to send waves of B-52s across the entire
>    middle east until nothing was left. A few more ISIL-related
>    terror incidents is all it would take. It doesn't bother us too
>    much if our poor folks and gangsters kill each other ... but
>    if some OUTSIDE entity does it then we get seriously
>    bent out of shape and vengance crusades get authorized.

Well if most Americans want to, then you should.  But most UK citizens don't want to spend all that money doing it.  We're a smaller country remember, it hits our economy worse to bomb the same amount.

>>>    Joe Citizen doesn't have the time nor inclination to
>>>    study the facts and details of almost anything the
>>>    State is doing. He doesn't have the resources to
>>>    do a good job of it even if he was so-inclined. He
>>>    cannot be a chemist and physicist and engineer
>>>    and biologist and ecologist and geologist and
>>>    economist and foreign-policy insider and .... well ...
>>>    if he voted correctly it would be by pure accident.
>>>
>>>    So instead he gets to vote for people who "seem
>>>    trustworthy" (often aren't), more of a "gut" reaction,
>>>    personality-appraisal - can be done with fewer
>>>    resources/info/training. Besides, all his "choices"
>>>    will have been vetted by the Big Money people,
>>>    not much difference between them.
>>
>> Those "trustworthy" folk have biases.  Putting it to the vote of the masses would be way better.
>
>    Everybody has biases ... and so can "the masses".

But since there are so many of them, the biasses will average out.

-- 
Pat Glenn, weightlifting commentator - "And this is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning and it was amazing!"

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#23267

On Tue, 05 Jan 2016 22:16:58 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 05 Jan 2016 04:12:16 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 23:38:14 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 22:44:47 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>

>>>>    The world has endured meglomaniacs, psychotics,
>>>>    sociopaths and outright lunatics elevated to positions
>>>>    of great power far too often. It was a very bad thing
>>>>    pre-industrial and these days is a literal world-ending
>>>>    threat.
>>>
>>> But who gets to decide which people say who is a psychotic?
>>> It's all about your point of view.
>>
>>    Uh oh ... now you're getting all philosophical - reality
>>    is what the collective We decide it is.
>>
>>    Sometimes true, sometimes not.
>>
>>    And anyone attempting to be objective can spot a loonie
>>    at 50 paces .... yet any large GROUP may not. Interesting.
>>
>>    Now if you wish to discuss the extended meanings of
>>    Platos allegory of the cave or the Buddhas remark that
>>    reality is illusion, those are the hair-splitting quantum-
>>    mechanics of the universe and our situation within it
>>    and should be in another thread, probably another
>>    group entirely. It's not really stuff humans can use
>>    in their everyday lives anyway ...
>
>No, you're the one being philosophical.  And you were correct in your
>first sentence, the collective decides what is wrong.

   They DO get to decide what's "right" and "wrong" for
   their fellow humans .... but they don't get to dictate
   what's real or not. Salt will be sodium chloride even
   if every human is convinced it's made of compressed
   pixies. 

>All of them, not just the few that think they're better than
>the rest.

   Um ... do you have recurrent episodes where lots
   of people say they're better than you ?  :-) 

>In fact take any group of people and they'll always think they're
>better than the rest.

   There you go again ... maybe you should have that
   looked into. Oh wait, the doc would probably think
   he's better at medicine than you ..........

>So you can't pick any group and say they're correct.
>You must allow everyone an equal vote.

   No. Not always. Experts on a subject get more
   votes than those ignorant of the subject. 

   "Equal" is a laudable GOAL, but sometimes there
   are people who are "more equal" on some specific
   set of issues. A few walking Googles are "more
   equal" at pretty much everything. Alas they rarely
   run for public office .... 

>>> The ONLY fair way is to allow EVERYONE to vote evenly.
>>
>>    "Fair" got Hitler into power ... another crowd-pleasing maniac.
>
>Hitler was a bloody good leader.  If we hadn't stopped him,
>the world would have been cleaned up quite a bit.

   The plot thickens .... 

>>    "Fair" IS usually good. Not always good however. You are
>>    looking for an otrhogonal system to govern a species with
>>    decidedly unorthogonal behavior set - just won't work all of
>>    the time. People are just *nuts* sometimes, but that's no
>>    excuse to enshrine it in law, or in actions you can't take back.
>
>If most people want to be nuts, then nuts should be the rule.

   And now it's solidified hard as diamond ..... 

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#23268

On Wed, 06 Jan 2016 03:04:37 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 05 Jan 2016 22:16:58 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 05 Jan 2016 04:12:16 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 23:38:14 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 22:44:47 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>>
>
>>>>>    The world has endured meglomaniacs, psychotics,
>>>>>    sociopaths and outright lunatics elevated to positions
>>>>>    of great power far too often. It was a very bad thing
>>>>>    pre-industrial and these days is a literal world-ending
>>>>>    threat.
>>>>
>>>> But who gets to decide which people say who is a psychotic?
>>>> It's all about your point of view.
>>>
>>>    Uh oh ... now you're getting all philosophical - reality
>>>    is what the collective We decide it is.
>>>
>>>    Sometimes true, sometimes not.
>>>
>>>    And anyone attempting to be objective can spot a loonie
>>>    at 50 paces .... yet any large GROUP may not. Interesting.
>>>
>>>    Now if you wish to discuss the extended meanings of
>>>    Platos allegory of the cave or the Buddhas remark that
>>>    reality is illusion, those are the hair-splitting quantum-
>>>    mechanics of the universe and our situation within it
>>>    and should be in another thread, probably another
>>>    group entirely. It's not really stuff humans can use
>>>    in their everyday lives anyway ...
>>
>> No, you're the one being philosophical.  And you were correct in your
>> first sentence, the collective decides what is wrong.
>
>    They DO get to decide what's "right" and "wrong" for
>    their fellow humans .... but they don't get to dictate
>    what's real or not. Salt will be sodium chloride even
>    if every human is convinced it's made of compressed
>    pixies.

We're talking about votes to change legal laws, not physics.

>> All of them, not just the few that think they're better than
>> the rest.
>
>    Um ... do you have recurrent episodes where lots
>    of people say they're better than you ?  :-)

Everybody thinks they're better than everyone else, which is precisely why your stupid idea of having the sensible folk make the choices doesn't work, because everybody thinks they are sensible.

>> In fact take any group of people and they'll always think they're
>> better than the rest.
>
>    There you go again ... maybe you should have that
>    looked into. Oh wait, the doc would probably think
>    he's better at medicine than you ..........

I'm not talking about myself.

>> So you can't pick any group and say they're correct.
>> You must allow everyone an equal vote.
>
>    No. Not always. Experts on a subject get more
>    votes than those ignorant of the subject.

They shouldn't.  Experts can be catastrophically wrong, just look at all the morons that believe in global warming.

>    "Equal" is a laudable GOAL, but sometimes there
>    are people who are "more equal" on some specific
>    set of issues. A few walking Googles are "more
>    equal" at pretty much everything. Alas they rarely
>    run for public office ....

Are you Russian or something?

>>>> The ONLY fair way is to allow EVERYONE to vote evenly.
>>>
>>>    "Fair" got Hitler into power ... another crowd-pleasing maniac.
>>
>> Hitler was a bloody good leader.  If we hadn't stopped him,
>> the world would have been cleaned up quite a bit.
>
>    The plot thickens ....

Why do you hate Hitler?

>>>    "Fair" IS usually good. Not always good however. You are
>>>    looking for an otrhogonal system to govern a species with
>>>    decidedly unorthogonal behavior set - just won't work all of
>>>    the time. People are just *nuts* sometimes, but that's no
>>>    excuse to enshrine it in law, or in actions you can't take back.
>>
>> If most people want to be nuts, then nuts should be the rule.
>
>    And now it's solidified hard as diamond .....

What have you got against being nutty?  If 99% of the population wants to be crazy, and 1% wants to be sane, why should the 1% deny the 99% their fun?

-- 
I go fishing; I catch nothing.  I go to orgies; I catch everything.

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#23213

On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:19:07 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 19:23:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:58:53 -0000, Dr. Jai Maharaj <alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>> In article <op.yagzluoy86ebyl@red.lan>,
>>> "Mr Macaw" <n...@spam.com> posted:
>>>>
>>>> 15 million people have spelt length as lenght on the
>>>> internet, and they actually think it's correct, not just
>>>> a typo!
>>>
>>> "spelt"
>>> about 12,700,000 search results.
>>>
>>> "spelled"
>>> about 50,500,000 search results.
>>
>> Those are both words, with a subtle difference not many people care about.  In my example, lenght is not a word.
>
>    "Spelt" is English english. "Spelled" is more the American version.

No.  Plenty friends here in the UK use spelled and say it's "correct".  It's a different form of the word to spelt, like burned and burnt.  But I only acknowledge ONE past tense.

>    "Pleaded" and "runned" are American 'Blinglish' ... the slow death
>    of the irregular verb.

I've never heard anyone say "runned".  I've also never heard anyone say "pled" if that's even a word.  What would you say instead of pleaded?

A word that annoys me is "dove".  Not dove the bird, but dove as in past tense if dive, pronounced like cove.

-- 
We used to mock the Americans' litigiousness, political correctness, health & safety obsessions and the like.
Now Britain is full of lazy lard buckets who'll sue for everything they can get if they even stub their toe on something.
I need to find a new country to live in.

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#23217

On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:11:41 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:19:07 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 19:23:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:58:53 -0000, Dr. Jai Maharaj <alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In article <op.yagzluoy86ebyl@red.lan>,
>>>> "Mr Macaw" <n...@spam.com> posted:
>>>>>
>>>>> 15 million people have spelt length as lenght on the
>>>>> internet, and they actually think it's correct, not just
>>>>> a typo!
>>>>
>>>> "spelt"
>>>> about 12,700,000 search results.
>>>>
>>>> "spelled"
>>>> about 50,500,000 search results.
>>>
>>> Those are both words, with a subtle difference not many people care about.  In my example, lenght is not a word.
>>
>>    "Spelt" is English english. "Spelled" is more the American version.
>
>No.  Plenty friends here in the UK use spelled and say it's "correct". 

   If you bring up an American news source, look for stories
   about people who were arrested by the police, you will 
   almost always see the word "pleaded" - guilty or innocent -
   when he appeared before the judge. The use of "pled" is
   increasingly rare. 

   Our dictionaries say "pleaded" and "pled" are both correct. 

   But I don't think so. 

>It's a different form of the word to spelt, like burned and burnt.  But I only acknowledge ONE past tense.

   The tree burned - active, present tense (even if describing
   a past incident as if you were actually there as a witness).

   The tree burnt - probably should be "was burnt" - passive,
   static, the aftermath. 

   The difference is subtle. The difference may also be irrelevant
   to the future of the language. In an age of handwritten letters
   and literature most often written by the upper classes for the
   upper classes readers had the time to muse on the more
   subtle aspects of language and grammar. Todays world is
   overloaded with communications and there is an emphasis
   on transmitting the most data in the least time. The 1800's,
   quality, the 2000's, quantity. I suppose TextSpeak is the
   ultimate example of this trend. 

   Expect subtly different words like "burned" -vs- "burnt" or
   "pled" -vs- "pleaded" or "spelt" -vs- "spelled" to disappear
   as the trend towards a simpler, more standard, more
   compact, version of the language continues. 

>>    "Pleaded" and "runned" are American 'Blinglish' ... the slow death
>>    of the irregular verb.
>
>I've never heard anyone say "runned".  I've also never heard anyone

   I hear it more and more - and from more 'educated' people - as
   time goes on. It's "Blinglish' ... American "Black English", a sort
   of pigin where non-speakers learned a language quickly and
   skipped the more subtle rules. That which did happen often has
   "-ed" at the end, so "run"/"runned", "sit"/"sitted" ... the simple
   rule applied to everything. Mass exposure then leads to mass
   usage. 

>say "pled" if that's even a word.  What would you say instead of pleaded?

   "Mr. Fracas was brought before a judge and pled 'not guilty'
   to the charges ..... " 

   In 1960s America that would have been the most common way
   of stating that in the news. Today it's "pleaded". 

>A word that annoys me is "dove".  Not dove the bird, but dove as in past tense if dive, pronounced like cove.

   You want "dived" ? 

   "Dove" is another irregular verb ... that's going away. 

   But if you want to sound smart you say "dove"  :-) 

   50 years from now however, will anybody even understand
   if you say "dove" ? It may be like the language of the Bard,
   pretty but obsolete. Can you really appreciate Hamlet if
   you cannot follow the meter and rhythm and play of his
   obsolete words ??? Those were far richer plays to even
   the common folk of his day than they are to the educated
   class of today. 

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#23219

On 2016-Jan-01 14:36, Mr. B1ack wrote:
>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:19:07 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:

>>>    "Spelt" is English english. "Spelled" is more the American version.

[...]

>> It's a different form of the word to spelt, like burned and burnt.  But I only acknowledge ONE past tense.
> 
>    The tree burned - active, present tense (even if describing
>    a past incident as if you were actually there as a witness).
> 
>    The tree burnt - probably should be "was burnt" - passive,
>    static, the aftermath. 

[...]

>    Expect subtly different words like "burned" -vs- "burnt" or
>    "pled" -vs- "pleaded" or "spelt" -vs- "spelled" to disappear
>    as the trend towards a simpler, more standard, more
>    compact, version of the language continues. 

I have the impression that strong verbs -- those that decline via vowel
changes, as opposed to those that use the weak verb "-ed" suffix -- are
gradually disappearing from English, but it's hard to be sure because
new forms like "dove" appear now and then. I have a feeling that
childish declensions like bring/brang/brung are also moving into the
mainstream, little by little.

The "-t" suffix, as seen in swept, burnt, dreamt, and so on, will
probably last a lot longer. Why? Because a [t] also exists in the spoken
language. Even those people who say "sweeped" are likely to pronounce it
[swipt], i.e. the final consonant is unvoiced. As long as we have past
forms that end in an unvoiced consonant, there will be pressure to make
the written form consistent with the spoken form.

Here I'm talking about my own (Australian) version of English, but the
reasoning probably also works for most BrE dialects. American English is
a different matter. American pronunciation appears to have evolved in
the direction of blurring the distinction between final /t/ and /d/.
Thus, Americans are less likely to perceive a difference between the
"-t" and "-ed" past tense suffixes, and therefore more likely to choose
the "-ed" form on the grounds of regularity.

-- 
Peter Moylan                           http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

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#23230

On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 18:12:21 +1100, Peter Moylan
<peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>On 2016-Jan-01 14:36, Mr. B1ack wrote:
>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:19:07 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>
>>>>    "Spelt" is English english. "Spelled" is more the American version.
>
>[...]
>
>>> It's a different form of the word to spelt, like burned and burnt.  But I only acknowledge ONE past tense.
>> 
>>    The tree burned - active, present tense (even if describing
>>    a past incident as if you were actually there as a witness).
>> 
>>    The tree burnt - probably should be "was burnt" - passive,
>>    static, the aftermath. 
>
>[...]
>
>>    Expect subtly different words like "burned" -vs- "burnt" or
>>    "pled" -vs- "pleaded" or "spelt" -vs- "spelled" to disappear
>>    as the trend towards a simpler, more standard, more
>>    compact, version of the language continues. 
>
>I have the impression that strong verbs -- those that decline via vowel
>changes, as opposed to those that use the weak verb "-ed" suffix -- are
>gradually disappearing from English, but it's hard to be sure because
>new forms like "dove" appear now and then. I have a feeling that
>childish declensions like bring/brang/brung are also moving into the
>mainstream, little by little.
>
>The "-t" suffix, as seen in swept, burnt, dreamt, and so on, will
>probably last a lot longer. Why? Because a [t] also exists in the spoken
>language. Even those people who say "sweeped" are likely to pronounce it
>[swipt], i.e. the final consonant is unvoiced. As long as we have past
>forms that end in an unvoiced consonant, there will be pressure to make
>the written form consistent with the spoken form.
>
>Here I'm talking about my own (Australian) version of English, but the
>reasoning probably also works for most BrE dialects. American English is
>a different matter. American pronunciation appears to have evolved in
>the direction of blurring the distinction between final /t/ and /d/.
>Thus, Americans are less likely to perceive a difference between the
>"-t" and "-ed" past tense suffixes, and therefore more likely to choose
>the "-ed" form on the grounds of regularity.


   Exactlly ... "regularity" .... the most common rule will be applied
   to ALL words. 

   The USA is a different case than Oz or NZ because it was never
   even close to an "all-English" population and culture. A great deal
   of French, Spanish and local Amerindian influences early on and
   then waves of european (and some Chinese) immigration later.

   So there was early corruption/blending followed by large numbers
   of immigrants (and slaves) who had to learn the lingo QUICKLY.
   The most common rule was applied to the abovemented words
   and, although it grated on the educated ear, was adequate for
   purposes of employment and social functions. Over time, the
   "wrong" words became embedded in the wider population. 

   "American english" is not just a pidgin but a polylingual
   pidgin. Also, it is still evolving as the balance of subcultures
   varies and new groups are thrown into the mixing pot. 
   I am constantly amazed that newcomers can learn 
   Amerenglish at all, it's a mess ... although also a linguistic
   "Swiss army knife" that can be easily bent to server any
   need or purpose. You can mis-speak Amerenglish in a
   large number of ways and STILL be understood. 

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#23222

On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 03:36:45 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:11:41 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:19:07 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 19:23:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:58:53 -0000, Dr. Jai Maharaj <alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In article <op.yagzluoy86ebyl@red.lan>,
>>>>> "Mr Macaw" <n...@spam.com> posted:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 15 million people have spelt length as lenght on the
>>>>>> internet, and they actually think it's correct, not just
>>>>>> a typo!
>>>>>
>>>>> "spelt"
>>>>> about 12,700,000 search results.
>>>>>
>>>>> "spelled"
>>>>> about 50,500,000 search results.
>>>>
>>>> Those are both words, with a subtle difference not many people care about.  In my example, lenght is not a word.
>>>
>>>    "Spelt" is English english. "Spelled" is more the American version.
>>
>> No.  Plenty friends here in the UK use spelled and say it's "correct".
>
>    If you bring up an American news source, look for stories
>    about people who were arrested by the police, you will
>    almost always see the word "pleaded" - guilty or innocent -
>    when he appeared before the judge. The use of "pled" is
>    increasingly rare.
>
>    Our dictionaries say "pleaded" and "pled" are both correct.
>
>    But I don't think so.

Pled is rare because it isn't a word, any more than I jamp over the wall.

>> It's a different form of the word to spelt, like burned and burnt.  But I only acknowledge ONE past tense.
>
>    The tree burned - active, present tense (even if describing
>    a past incident as if you were actually there as a witness).
>
>    The tree burnt - probably should be "was burnt" - passive,
>    static, the aftermath.
>
>    The difference is subtle. The difference may also be irrelevant
>    to the future of the language. In an age of handwritten letters
>    and literature most often written by the upper classes for the
>    upper classes readers had the time to muse on the more
>    subtle aspects of language and grammar. Todays world is
>    overloaded with communications and there is an emphasis
>    on transmitting the most data in the least time. The 1800's,
>    quality, the 2000's, quantity. I suppose TextSpeak is the
>    ultimate example of this trend.
>
>    Expect subtly different words like "burned" -vs- "burnt" or
>    "pled" -vs- "pleaded" or "spelt" -vs- "spelled" to disappear
>    as the trend towards a simpler, more standard, more
>    compact, version of the language continues.

As far as I'm concerned, the subtle difference is so small that it's completely unimportant.  Not worth stopping to think which it is.

>>>    "Pleaded" and "runned" are American 'Blinglish' ... the slow death
>>>    of the irregular verb.
>>
>> I've never heard anyone say "runned".  I've also never heard anyone
>
>    I hear it more and more - and from more 'educated' people - as
>    time goes on. It's "Blinglish' ... American "Black English", a sort
>    of pigin where non-speakers learned a language quickly and
>    skipped the more subtle rules. That which did happen often has
>    "-ed" at the end, so "run"/"runned", "sit"/"sitted" ... the simple
>    rule applied to everything. Mass exposure then leads to mass
>    usage.

 From someone who doesn't speak much English, someone here on holiday maybe, but I don't expect it from anyone who speaks English everyday.

>> say "pled" if that's even a word.  What would you say instead of pleaded?
>
>    "Mr. Fracas was brought before a judge and pled 'not guilty'
>    to the charges ..... "
>
>    In 1960s America that would have been the most common way
>    of stating that in the news. Today it's "pleaded".

If someone said pled now I'd fall about laughing.  In fact my newsreader has underlined it in red.

>> A word that annoys me is "dove".  Not dove the bird, but dove as in past tense if dive, pronounced like cove.
>
>    You want "dived" ?
>
>    "Dove" is another irregular verb ... that's going away.
>
>    But if you want to sound smart you say "dove"  :-)
>
>    50 years from now however, will anybody even understand
>    if you say "dove" ? It may be like the language of the Bard,
>    pretty but obsolete. Can you really appreciate Hamlet if
>    you cannot follow the meter and rhythm and play of his
>    obsolete words ??? Those were far richer plays to even
>    the common folk of his day than they are to the educated
>    class of today.

Isn't dove an Americanism like aluminum?

-- 
ADULT: A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle.

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#23225

On 01/01/2016 11:00, Mr Macaw wrote:
> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 03:36:45 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:11:41 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:19:07 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 19:23:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:58:53 -0000, Dr. Jai Maharaj
>>>>> <alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> In article <op.yagzluoy86ebyl@red.lan>,
>>>>>> "Mr Macaw" <n...@spam.com> posted:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 15 million people have spelt length as lenght on the
>>>>>>> internet, and they actually think it's correct, not just
>>>>>>> a typo!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "spelt"
>>>>>> about 12,700,000 search results.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "spelled"
>>>>>> about 50,500,000 search results.
>>>>>
>>>>> Those are both words, with a subtle difference not many people care
>>>>> about.  In my example, lenght is not a word.
>>>>
>>>>    "Spelt" is English english. "Spelled" is more the American version.
>>>
>>> No.  Plenty friends here in the UK use spelled and say it's "correct".
>>
>>    If you bring up an American news source, look for stories
>>    about people who were arrested by the police, you will
>>    almost always see the word "pleaded" - guilty or innocent -
>>    when he appeared before the judge. The use of "pled" is
>>    increasingly rare.
>>
>>    Our dictionaries say "pleaded" and "pled" are both correct.
>>
>>    But I don't think so.
>
> Pled is rare because it isn't a word, any more than I jamp over the wall.
>
>>> It's a different form of the word to spelt, like burned and burnt.
>>> But I only acknowledge ONE past tense.
>>
>>    The tree burned - active, present tense (even if describing
>>    a past incident as if you were actually there as a witness).
>>
>>    The tree burnt - probably should be "was burnt" - passive,
>>    static, the aftermath.
>>
>>    The difference is subtle. The difference may also be irrelevant
>>    to the future of the language. In an age of handwritten letters
>>    and literature most often written by the upper classes for the
>>    upper classes readers had the time to muse on the more
>>    subtle aspects of language and grammar. Todays world is
>>    overloaded with communications and there is an emphasis
>>    on transmitting the most data in the least time. The 1800's,
>>    quality, the 2000's, quantity. I suppose TextSpeak is the
>>    ultimate example of this trend.
>>
>>    Expect subtly different words like "burned" -vs- "burnt" or
>>    "pled" -vs- "pleaded" or "spelt" -vs- "spelled" to disappear
>>    as the trend towards a simpler, more standard, more
>>    compact, version of the language continues.
>
> As far as I'm concerned, the subtle difference is so small that it's
> completely unimportant.  Not worth stopping to think which it is.
>
>>>>    "Pleaded" and "runned" are American 'Blinglish' ... the slow death
>>>>    of the irregular verb.
>>>
>>> I've never heard anyone say "runned".  I've also never heard anyone
>>
>>    I hear it more and more - and from more 'educated' people - as
>>    time goes on. It's "Blinglish' ... American "Black English", a sort
>>    of pigin where non-speakers learned a language quickly and
>>    skipped the more subtle rules. That which did happen often has
>>    "-ed" at the end, so "run"/"runned", "sit"/"sitted" ... the simple
>>    rule applied to everything. Mass exposure then leads to mass
>>    usage.
>
>  From someone who doesn't speak much English, someone here on holiday
> maybe, but I don't expect it from anyone who speaks English everyday.
>
>>> say "pled" if that's even a word.  What would you say instead of
>>> pleaded?
>>
>>    "Mr. Fracas was brought before a judge and pled 'not guilty'
>>    to the charges ..... "
>>
>>    In 1960s America that would have been the most common way
>>    of stating that in the news. Today it's "pleaded".
>
> If someone said pled now I'd fall about laughing.  In fact my newsreader
> has underlined it in red.
>
>>> A word that annoys me is "dove".  Not dove the bird, but dove as in
>>> past tense if dive, pronounced like cove.
>>
>>    You want "dived" ?
>>
>>    "Dove" is another irregular verb ... that's going away.
>>
>>    But if you want to sound smart you say "dove"  :-)
>>
>>    50 years from now however, will anybody even understand
>>    if you say "dove" ? It may be like the language of the Bard,
>>    pretty but obsolete. Can you really appreciate Hamlet if
>>    you cannot follow the meter and rhythm and play of his
>>    obsolete words ??? Those were far richer plays to even
>>    the common folk of his day than they are to the educated
>>    class of today.
>
> Isn't dove an Americanism like aluminum?
>

How about "shined"?
-- 
Gordon Davie
Edinburgh, Scotland

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#23226

On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 19:46:34 -0000, GordonD <g.davie@btinternet.com> wrote:

> On 01/01/2016 11:00, Mr Macaw wrote:
>> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 03:36:45 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:11:41 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:19:07 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 19:23:21 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:58:53 -0000, Dr. Jai Maharaj
>>>>>> <alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In article <op.yagzluoy86ebyl@red.lan>,
>>>>>>> "Mr Macaw" <n...@spam.com> posted:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 15 million people have spelt length as lenght on the
>>>>>>>> internet, and they actually think it's correct, not just
>>>>>>>> a typo!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "spelt"
>>>>>>> about 12,700,000 search results.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "spelled"
>>>>>>> about 50,500,000 search results.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Those are both words, with a subtle difference not many people care
>>>>>> about.  In my example, lenght is not a word.
>>>>>
>>>>>    "Spelt" is English english. "Spelled" is more the American version.
>>>>
>>>> No.  Plenty friends here in the UK use spelled and say it's "correct".
>>>
>>>    If you bring up an American news source, look for stories
>>>    about people who were arrested by the police, you will
>>>    almost always see the word "pleaded" - guilty or innocent -
>>>    when he appeared before the judge. The use of "pled" is
>>>    increasingly rare.
>>>
>>>    Our dictionaries say "pleaded" and "pled" are both correct.
>>>
>>>    But I don't think so.
>>
>> Pled is rare because it isn't a word, any more than I jamp over the wall.
>>
>>>> It's a different form of the word to spelt, like burned and burnt.
>>>> But I only acknowledge ONE past tense.
>>>
>>>    The tree burned - active, present tense (even if describing
>>>    a past incident as if you were actually there as a witness).
>>>
>>>    The tree burnt - probably should be "was burnt" - passive,
>>>    static, the aftermath.
>>>
>>>    The difference is subtle. The difference may also be irrelevant
>>>    to the future of the language. In an age of handwritten letters
>>>    and literature most often written by the upper classes for the
>>>    upper classes readers had the time to muse on the more
>>>    subtle aspects of language and grammar. Todays world is
>>>    overloaded with communications and there is an emphasis
>>>    on transmitting the most data in the least time. The 1800's,
>>>    quality, the 2000's, quantity. I suppose TextSpeak is the
>>>    ultimate example of this trend.
>>>
>>>    Expect subtly different words like "burned" -vs- "burnt" or
>>>    "pled" -vs- "pleaded" or "spelt" -vs- "spelled" to disappear
>>>    as the trend towards a simpler, more standard, more
>>>    compact, version of the language continues.
>>
>> As far as I'm concerned, the subtle difference is so small that it's
>> completely unimportant.  Not worth stopping to think which it is.
>>
>>>>>    "Pleaded" and "runned" are American 'Blinglish' ... the slow death
>>>>>    of the irregular verb.
>>>>
>>>> I've never heard anyone say "runned".  I've also never heard anyone
>>>
>>>    I hear it more and more - and from more 'educated' people - as
>>>    time goes on. It's "Blinglish' ... American "Black English", a sort
>>>    of pigin where non-speakers learned a language quickly and
>>>    skipped the more subtle rules. That which did happen often has
>>>    "-ed" at the end, so "run"/"runned", "sit"/"sitted" ... the simple
>>>    rule applied to everything. Mass exposure then leads to mass
>>>    usage.
>>
>>  From someone who doesn't speak much English, someone here on holiday
>> maybe, but I don't expect it from anyone who speaks English everyday.
>>
>>>> say "pled" if that's even a word.  What would you say instead of
>>>> pleaded?
>>>
>>>    "Mr. Fracas was brought before a judge and pled 'not guilty'
>>>    to the charges ..... "
>>>
>>>    In 1960s America that would have been the most common way
>>>    of stating that in the news. Today it's "pleaded".
>>
>> If someone said pled now I'd fall about laughing.  In fact my newsreader
>> has underlined it in red.
>>
>>>> A word that annoys me is "dove".  Not dove the bird, but dove as in
>>>> past tense if dive, pronounced like cove.
>>>
>>>    You want "dived" ?
>>>
>>>    "Dove" is another irregular verb ... that's going away.
>>>
>>>    But if you want to sound smart you say "dove"  :-)
>>>
>>>    50 years from now however, will anybody even understand
>>>    if you say "dove" ? It may be like the language of the Bard,
>>>    pretty but obsolete. Can you really appreciate Hamlet if
>>>    you cannot follow the meter and rhythm and play of his
>>>    obsolete words ??? Those were far richer plays to even
>>>    the common folk of his day than they are to the educated
>>>    class of today.
>>
>> Isn't dove an Americanism like aluminum?
>
> How about "shined"?

I would only expect that word to be used by someone under the age of 9.  Mind you the intelligence level of Americans is pretty low, so for them maybe double it to 18.

-- 
Impeccable, adjective: something which cannot be destroyed by the beak of a parrot.  Scientists have yet to discover such a substance.

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#23231

On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 11:00:40 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 03:36:45 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:11:41 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>

>>> I've never heard anyone say "runned".  I've also never heard anyone
>>
>>    I hear it more and more - and from more 'educated' people - as
>>    time goes on. It's "Blinglish' ... American "Black English", a sort
>>    of pigin where non-speakers learned a language quickly and
>>    skipped the more subtle rules. That which did happen often has
>>    "-ed" at the end, so "run"/"runned", "sit"/"sitted" ... the simple
>>    rule applied to everything. Mass exposure then leads to mass
>>    usage.
>
> From someone who doesn't speak much English, someone here on
> holiday maybe, but I don't expect it from anyone who speaks English
> everyday.

   The internet does have the ability to educate - it's not ALL porn.

   So find on-the-street news coverage, say of the "Black Lives
   Matter" demonstrations. Street interviews will reveal the local
   lingo - and it is as I've said. The professional newscasters try
   to keep it more formal, but even they might say "runned" or
   "hitted" or "shooted" if they are "live" and do not have time
   to mentally edit their speech. 

>>> say "pled" if that's even a word.  What would you say instead of pleaded?
>>
>>    "Mr. Fracas was brought before a judge and pled 'not guilty'
>>    to the charges ..... "
>>
>>    In 1960s America that would have been the most common way
>>    of stating that in the news. Today it's "pleaded".
>
>If someone said pled now I'd fall about laughing.  In fact my newsreader has underlined it in red.
>
>>> A word that annoys me is "dove".  Not dove the bird, but dove as in past tense if dive, pronounced like cove.
>>
>>    You want "dived" ?
>>
>>    "Dove" is another irregular verb ... that's going away.
>>
>>    But if you want to sound smart you say "dove"  :-)
>>
>>    50 years from now however, will anybody even understand
>>    if you say "dove" ? It may be like the language of the Bard,
>>    pretty but obsolete. Can you really appreciate Hamlet if
>>    you cannot follow the meter and rhythm and play of his
>>    obsolete words ??? Those were far richer plays to even
>>    the common folk of his day than they are to the educated
>>    class of today.
>
>Isn't dove an Americanism like aluminum?

   I am unaware of its full extent. I've definitely heard the
   word on BBC television - news and entertainment - so
   "dove" has made it back to the motherland. It will
   surely filter down to all speakers from there. Frankly
   I think it sounds more educated than "dived" and is
   more specific than "jumped". 

   "Aluminum" isn't an Americanism per-se .... the 
   PRONUNCIATION is. Americans say "Ah-LOOM-
   uh-num" while Brits (and surely those in Oz and
   NZ) say "Al-You-MIN-ee-um". The latter really 
   does seem to sound better with a "British accent".
   From the spelling, the British form also seems
   more correct. Sharp/crisp-sounding words do
   tend to "soften" with time and distance ... become
   more "vowely". 

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#23235

On Sat, 02 Jan 2016 03:41:41 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 11:00:40 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 03:36:45 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:11:41 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>
>
>>>> I've never heard anyone say "runned".  I've also never heard anyone
>>>
>>>    I hear it more and more - and from more 'educated' people - as
>>>    time goes on. It's "Blinglish' ... American "Black English", a sort
>>>    of pigin where non-speakers learned a language quickly and
>>>    skipped the more subtle rules. That which did happen often has
>>>    "-ed" at the end, so "run"/"runned", "sit"/"sitted" ... the simple
>>>    rule applied to everything. Mass exposure then leads to mass
>>>    usage.
>>
>> From someone who doesn't speak much English, someone here on
>> holiday maybe, but I don't expect it from anyone who speaks English
>> everyday.
>
>    The internet does have the ability to educate - it's not ALL porn.
>
>    So find on-the-street news coverage, say of the "Black Lives
>    Matter" demonstrations. Street interviews will reveal the local
>    lingo - and it is as I've said. The professional newscasters try
>    to keep it more formal, but even they might say "runned" or
>    "hitted" or "shooted" if they are "live" and do not have time
>    to mentally edit their speech.

Ah, blacks.

>>>> say "pled" if that's even a word.  What would you say instead of pleaded?
>>>
>>>    "Mr. Fracas was brought before a judge and pled 'not guilty'
>>>    to the charges ..... "
>>>
>>>    In 1960s America that would have been the most common way
>>>    of stating that in the news. Today it's "pleaded".
>>
>> If someone said pled now I'd fall about laughing.  In fact my newsreader has underlined it in red.
>>
>>>> A word that annoys me is "dove".  Not dove the bird, but dove as in past tense if dive, pronounced like cove.
>>>
>>>    You want "dived" ?
>>>
>>>    "Dove" is another irregular verb ... that's going away.
>>>
>>>    But if you want to sound smart you say "dove"  :-)
>>>
>>>    50 years from now however, will anybody even understand
>>>    if you say "dove" ? It may be like the language of the Bard,
>>>    pretty but obsolete. Can you really appreciate Hamlet if
>>>    you cannot follow the meter and rhythm and play of his
>>>    obsolete words ??? Those were far richer plays to even
>>>    the common folk of his day than they are to the educated
>>>    class of today.
>>
>> Isn't dove an Americanism like aluminum?
>
>    I am unaware of its full extent. I've definitely heard the
>    word on BBC television - news and entertainment - so
>    "dove" has made it back to the motherland.

The BBC is no longer what it once was.

>    It will surely filter down to all speakers from there. Frankly
>    I think it sounds more educated than "dived" and is
>    more specific than "jumped".

Would you say jove for the past tense of jive?  Love for the past tense of live?

>    "Aluminum" isn't an Americanism per-se .... the
>    PRONUNCIATION is. Americans say "Ah-LOOM-
>    uh-num" while Brits (and surely those in Oz and
>    NZ) say "Al-You-MIN-ee-um". The latter really
>    does seem to sound better with a "British accent".
>    From the spelling, the British form also seems
>    more correct. Sharp/crisp-sounding words do
>    tend to "soften" with time and distance ... become
>    more "vowely".

The spell it different aswell as pronounce it different.

-- 
This guy's in the rear of a full elevator and he shouts, "Ballroom please."
A lady standing in front of him turns around and says, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was crowding you."

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#23237

On Sat, 02 Jan 2016 20:46:25 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:

>On Sat, 02 Jan 2016 03:41:41 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 11:00:40 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 03:36:45 -0000, Mr. B1ack <nowhere@nada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:11:41 -0000, "Mr Macaw" <no@spam.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>
>>>>> I've never heard anyone say "runned".  I've also never heard anyone
>>>>
>>>>    I hear it more and more - and from more 'educated' people - as
>>>>    time goes on. It's "Blinglish' ... American "Black English", a sort
>>>>    of pigin where non-speakers learned a language quickly and
>>>>    skipped the more subtle rules. That which did happen often has
>>>>    "-ed" at the end, so "run"/"runned", "sit"/"sitted" ... the simple
>>>>    rule applied to everything. Mass exposure then leads to mass
>>>>    usage.
>>>
>>> From someone who doesn't speak much English, someone here on
>>> holiday maybe, but I don't expect it from anyone who speaks English
>>> everyday.
>>
>>    The internet does have the ability to educate - it's not ALL porn.
>>
>>    So find on-the-street news coverage, say of the "Black Lives
>>    Matter" demonstrations. Street interviews will reveal the local
>>    lingo - and it is as I've said. The professional newscasters try
>>    to keep it more formal, but even they might say "runned" or
>>    "hitted" or "shooted" if they are "live" and do not have time
>>    to mentally edit their speech.
>
>Ah, blacks.


   There are also pidgins amongst the "Spanish" subcultures
   (Mexican isn't Guatamalan isn't Cuban isn't Puerto Rican)
   and the longer-established asian enclaves. 'Cajun'/Acadian
   "Fringlish" permeates much of the state of Louisiana as well.
   The sheer size of the USA allowed immigrants from many
   nations to form partial enclaves where the Queens english
   mixed with the local lingo in odd and interesting ways. 
   
   Hmm ... is there "Hindglish" - Hindi-English - in the UK ? Lots
   of immigrants from there, held partially segregated for 
   racial & class reasons for over 100 years .... bound to be
   some interesting words and grammar ...... 


>>>>> say "pled" if that's even a word.  What would you say instead of pleaded?
>>>>
>>>>    "Mr. Fracas was brought before a judge and pled 'not guilty'
>>>>    to the charges ..... "
>>>>
>>>>    In 1960s America that would have been the most common way
>>>>    of stating that in the news. Today it's "pleaded".
>>>
>>> If someone said pled now I'd fall about laughing.  In fact my newsreader has underlined it in red.
>>>
>>>>> A word that annoys me is "dove".  Not dove the bird, but dove as in past tense if dive, pronounced like cove.
>>>>
>>>>    You want "dived" ?
>>>>
>>>>    "Dove" is another irregular verb ... that's going away.
>>>>
>>>>    But if you want to sound smart you say "dove"  :-)
>>>>
>>>>    50 years from now however, will anybody even understand
>>>>    if you say "dove" ? It may be like the language of the Bard,
>>>>    pretty but obsolete. Can you really appreciate Hamlet if
>>>>    you cannot follow the meter and rhythm and play of his
>>>>    obsolete words ??? Those were far richer plays to even
>>>>    the common folk of his day than they are to the educated
>>>>    class of today.
>>>
>>> Isn't dove an Americanism like aluminum?
>>
>>    I am unaware of its full extent. I've definitely heard the
>>    word on BBC television - news and entertainment - so
>>    "dove" has made it back to the motherland.
>
>The BBC is no longer what it once was.


   Maybe ... but it's still a cut above any American news/culture
   programming. Americans have a very short attention span
   and despise "egghead" discussions. A practical, blue-collar,
   black & white novelty-loving culture. Car crashes, police
   chases and  "Funniest Home Videos" reign supreme. 

   Ah ... an episode of "Dr. Who" sometime last year ... the MI-6
   lady tells another why they've kept a time-travel device secret
   from the Americans ... "Well, you've seen their movies !"  :-) 


>>    It will surely filter down to all speakers from there. Frankly
>>    I think it sounds more educated than "dived" and is
>>    more specific than "jumped".
>
>Would you say jove for the past tense of jive?  Love for the past tense of live?

   There's a reason irregular verbs are called "irregular". 
   Conventions, homegrown or imported, that just stuck,
   likely because somebody important used them. They
   do not follow from any "rule". 

>>    "Aluminum" isn't an Americanism per-se .... the
>>    PRONUNCIATION is. Americans say "Ah-LOOM-
>>    uh-num" while Brits (and surely those in Oz and
>>    NZ) say "Al-You-MIN-ee-um". The latter really
>>    does seem to sound better with a "British accent".
>>    From the spelling, the British form also seems
>>    more correct. Sharp/crisp-sounding words do
>>    tend to "soften" with time and distance ... become
>>    more "vowely".
>
>The spell it different aswell as pronounce it different.

   "Colour" -vs- "color" ? Americans are lazy too, we tend
   to drop "useless" letters  :-) 

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#23240

On 1/2/2016 7:52 PM, Mr. B1ack wrote:
>
>     "Colour" -vs- "color" ? Americans are lazy too, we tend
>     to drop "useless" letters  :-)

What happens when we try to retain the superfluous British extra letters:

   http://web.newsguy.com/dadoctah/images/IMG_20150819_122642_655.jpg

....r

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