Not his senator, actually. He's from PA and the senator was from KY. (Not that that makes it any less ridiculous)

No, it works. On a 4 it's accepted, then later pulled for a random reason.

Aaaaand another wall of text people can safely ignore.

It's probably because you said 'i.e., Islam' rather than the more generally targeted 'e.g., Islam'

i.e. (id est), after all, is a specifier. It takes a general term, and qualifies it, i.e., provides the specific example you're talking about.

e.g. (exempli gratia), on the other hand, merely provides an example for clarification. A Free-as-in-beer example, as it were. It does not eliminate other options from being considered, merely specifies one option that qualifies.

Therefore, when you're saying that Jediism makes more sense than [another religion] i.e., Islam, what you're actually saying is that specifically, Islam makes less sense than Jediism, while Jediism makes less sense than the rest of the religions.

If instead, you were to say that Jediism were to make more sense than [other religions], e.g., Islam, then you would be saying that Jediism makes more sense than religion in general, which is much less combative, especially since all the Abrahamic religions pretty much boil down to the same thing when you get down to the core beliefs, and so specifying one of them as being less sensible than a religion whereby a person may gain power over the very nature of physics through deft control of mutualistic symbiotes infesting our cells makes little to no sense.

Also, if I'm not mistaken it's established in the expanded universe that one cannot be a Jedi Knight until one has created their own lightsaber (specifically, I'm pretty sure that is established in I, Jedi). Why would a purported follower of Jediism claim to be a knight if he hasn't undertaken that task yet?

If the work was created by a government contractor, then by the very law that grants copyrights the work is not copyrightable and is in the public domain. I have no clue if that applies in this case, and am too lazy to look it up, but copyright law very specifically does not apply copyright to creative works contracted by the government.

Also: Judging by the fact that the case was ruled pro-artist, my guess is this was not a contracted piece of work.

So you understand JSM's argument perfectly then! Good thing we live in a culture that allows dissenting opinions to be expressed, and so, through your dissent, you could come to a perfect understanding of what JSM was trying to say.

I believe in this case it was someone alluding to the assassination of McCain and then trailing off...

You seem to be conveniently forgetting the actions of the Chamber of Commerce earlier this year.

One example for your personal edification: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/25/nation/na-climate-trial25

There are more examples of businesses doing similar things - they know that with any (and I do mean *ANY*) theory in science, if you don't need to present an alternative, you can always find holes in the theory and ram those holes through to be the only thing anyone talks about.

A non-climate related example would be people saying we haven't witnessed macroevolution in a lab, so how can we be sure that it exists? Of course, anyone versed in the field will say, "Well, we have witnessed macroevolution among single-celled organisms, and it's unreasonable to expect us to have lab evidence of a process that takes hundreds of generations for multi-celled creatures, where hundreds of generations could take decades."

Of course, to evolution skeptics (or those paid to oppose evolution), this is not nearly good enough. Nothing says a priori that macroevolution on a unicellular scale extends to multicellular organisms, much like nothing says a priori that microevolution on a multicellular scale extends to macroevolution. Scientifically, of course, we are united on macroevolution occurring, and have moved onto discussing its mechanisms, history, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is, if we can't get people to agree that macroevolution exists despite the overwhelming, irrefutable evidence that it does, how can we get people to agree on something with even greater societal impact based on (by necessity) much less data?

You jest, but you should try watching Youtube on my MSN-provided DSL. How they can provide consistent 1MBps downloads of windows updates but be unable to completely cache a 2 minute Youtube clip after I walk away from the computer for 3 minutes will forever be beyond my limits of comprehension.

Once again, I recommend you actually read my arguments rather than complain about people who don't know economics.

1) I never said we've had a free market since then. I said we've chosen competitive markets over free markets.

2) Read Brian's posts. He is using free market as a synonym for unregulated markets, so I used competitive markets as a counter to that.

When did we give them the 'right' to a free market?

Or, to put it another way, when did we give them the right to remove *our* right to a competitive market?

This 'we, as a society' are the people of the United States who decided in the early 1900s to enact anti-trust laws, after seeing what lack of competition did to OUR (not their) economy.

Similarly, you are free to exercise your right to live in a non-competitive market by moving. If you want to enjoy the benefits of living in a competitive market, you have to agree to live with the restrictions that places on you.

Also, if you're saying a free market doesn't have rights violated, you're forgetting that it only protects you from the Government violating your rights. The government does not have a monopoly on that, and so I welcome their restricting the ability of others to violate my rights.

So it's right for those with power to abuse it? Because that's the point of Antitrust - we as a society have decided that we value a competitive market more than a free market, so we took steps towards that. We have economic evidence that competitive markets are better for both consumers, corporations, and innovation than free markets. You are assuming that free = better, and therefore free = right. I see no evidence you're giving that that is correct.

You're right. Similarly, if Microsoft doesn't want to agree to the terms of doing business in the United States, where we require businesses to not behave in anti-competitive behaviour, they are perfectly free to take their business elsewhere.

That doesn't sound very militant. Would you go to "Ham, bacon & Pork - The only all-pig fast food restaurant" with a muslim?

Just because vegetarians in the western world generally don't use an invisible friend to justify their vegetarianism doesn't mean they don't take it seriously (whatever their reason for it is).

/Mikael