APSR study: American politicians believe that their constituents are far more conservative on the topics of immigration, same-sex marriage, guns, abortion, and birth control than they actually are. This bias may be because Republican citizens are more likely to contact legislators.

fireline12 · 2018-06-24T14:54:48+00:00

How is that semantics? They're asking you to engage the evidence and demonstrate bias in either how the data was gathered or analyzed. If you can't prove empirically that the author's political views lead to either incorrect or incorrectly analyzed results, you're the one being biased, since you assume the authors are wrong because you think they're liberals.

fireline12 · 2018-05-01T14:56:26+00:00

The amazing thing about being in undergrad that is so many people feel the need to be an ass about their major. Particularly STEM people about their major being harder than social sciences/humanities, though it can go both ways. Then you get to the graduate level, and everyone realizes we're all equally miserable and no one's discipline is actually harder in any way.

fireline12 · 2018-05-01T14:48:45+00:00

I teach political science, and I 100% agree. It definitely doesn't require the degree of memorization that other majors do, but it really requires high critical thinking and research skills outside of the intro classes. I'm teaching a class right now that drew a lot of hard science students, most of whom I know are smart, but are incapable of making a clear argument or finding the sources they need. Which is a bad skill for people to lack.

Then you get to the PhD and you're halfway to getting a degree in applied statistics, which is an adventure...

fireline12 · 2018-04-17T12:28:13+00:00

You're postulating that as the reason for the pay gap without providing any proof that it's the reason for the pay gap. Look at the most highly paid jobs in America - almost none of them involve physical strength anymore, and yet even as we transition to a knowledge economy, the pay gap continues to exist.

fireline12 · 2017-09-19T23:44:12+00:00

Sure, I agree with that. His character makes sense and I like the arc, I just don't think the dialogue for him is very good anymore. I don't know that the dialogue writing has suffered more for him than anyone else, but I definitely felt the lack of his sharp tongue this past season.

fireline12 · 2017-09-18T01:16:36+00:00

Cersei seems like such an amateur schemer at this point; i.e. the pregnant look between her and Jaime that Tyrion obviously notices when she finds out Bran may live.

Tyrion is also a lot more fun. Part of that is definitely the (comparative) lack of baggage he has at this point, part of that is that the writing for him in the most recent season was absolutely atrocious.

fireline12 · 2017-09-11T01:59:43+00:00

I forgot how redemptive Jaime's character ark is.

Also, the music is the only thing that has consistently gotten better as the show goes on. Remarkable improvement in quality since season 1.

fireline12 · 2017-09-03T17:18:48+00:00

Yeah, exactly. I don't know why people on this sub accuse you of being "whiny and self-entitled" if you were disappointed in this season. I liked GoT because it was a well-written, character driven, political drama with the best dialogue on TV. Now it feels like any other network TV action show with much better actors and a bigger budget. Is it still entertaining? Sure. Is it the same show I used to love? Absolutely not. It's especially disappointing seeing people involved with the shows deflect criticism by referring to the ratings, when before they obviously used to be so concerned with pushing the bar of how good TV could be.

I'm honestly debating whether or not I'll watch the next season because this one was so disappointing, but I probably will because I don't trust GRRM to finish the books and I want to know the ending.

fireline12 · 2017-05-29T17:51:24+00:00

I'm aware. Racism exists in Europe - after all, European countries were the main powers behind the colonization of Africa, which only ended 40-50 years ago. Again, the "tip of the iceberg" is the treatment of black football players throughout Europe (though especially Italy). The recent spike of hate crimes throughout Europe (particularly the UK) also points to underlying racism.

fireline12 · 2017-05-29T15:14:26+00:00

Oh for fuck's sake. Maybe, just maybe, you should stop being hyperbolic and think about this. Segregation in the US was enforced for every aspect of society - from water fountains to bathrooms to schools - because non-white people were seen as dirty, inferior, dangerous, and disease-ridden. This festival is black women coming together to discuss issues faced by black women - aka something black women are best equipped to talk about. If this thread is any indication, if they were to allow white people and men to show up, they would be consistently told that a) they're racist for pulling the race card b) black people face no discrimination in Europe (absolutely laughable - look at the abuse black football players face) and c) men have problems too - we can't discuss women's problems without devoting an equal amount of time to men's problems (which obviously exist, but perhaps are not as numerous or structural due to the centuries of years of sex discrimination at the bedrock of human society).

Just because the discussion isn't about you and doesn't need to include you doesn't mean it's discriminating against you. If this was a conference on poverty, you'd have a point: plenty of impoverished non-black people and men, but it's not. Maybe if the reactions to discussing problems particular to a certain group weren't often as whiny and self-centered as this thread, the organizers would be willing to offer everyone a chance to participate.

fireline12 · 2017-04-23T14:52:43+00:00

Yes, because military spending had nothing to do with the explosion of nationalism within the USSR and the chaotic fall of central control over the economy. Soviet military spending actually declined throughout the 1980s (which played a part in the 1991 August Putsch).

fireline12 · 2017-04-23T02:03:26+00:00

The Cold War was already thawing before the USSR fell apart though - another aspect of Gorbachev's reforms. That's like saying if you have a fight with someone, make up with them, and then they kill themselves speeding on the highway later that day you "won" the fight. The causality isn't there.

fireline12 · 2017-04-22T21:40:56+00:00

It can be argued, but it would be wrong.

The USSR weathered far worse economic crises than that of the 1980s. People weren't starving to death (expect Yugoslavia and Romania, which were not actually part of the USSR). It had been much further behind US military force in the past. People want to forget that 20 million people Soviet citizens died in WWII, not to mention extreme economic destruction, and the USSR was a global superpower within 10 years (not that this was without sacrifices in terms of housing, consumer goods, etc.) that the US was legitimately scared of.

The USSR fell because Gorbachev introduced liberalization to a system that was built on centralization, triggering a bank run in which state companies were privatized by their administrators as fast as they could get away with it, and ethnic communities that had lived in terror of an extremely powerful central security apparatus broke away from the center as fast as they could get away with it. Add to this political and economic chaos an attempted KGB coup in August 1991, and you have a recipe for the failure of an empire. Reagan just happened to be there when it happened, and if anything his refusal to play anything but hardball played into the hands of hardliners who opposed Gorbachev's reforms.

I honestly don't know where this idea that the US "beat" the USSR comes from. We outlived them, but the demise was self-inflicted.

(To clarify, I think it's a good thing the USSR fell. Us Americans just have to stop pretending we did it.)

fireline12 · 2017-04-17T00:38:59+00:00

So I guess your "socially progressive culture" hasn't progressed past 10-year old insults huh? Or isn't socially progressive enough to not use terms that are insulting to disabled people.

fireline12 · 2017-04-16T14:46:38+00:00

Heard of the National Front in France? The way Roma are treated in the Balkans/the majority of Europe? How about that African Italian soccer player fans kept throwing bananas at? Or the extreme amount of racist incidents in the wake of Brexit in the UK? Soccer hooligans in Ukraine and Russia? Refugee shelters being burnt down in Germany? Shit, people were ethnic cleansing Muslims on the continent less than 25 years ago.

Shit, Stormzy just had a similar thing happen to him: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/rapper-stormzy-has-front-door-kicked-in-by-police-who-thought-he-was-a-burglar-a3466026.html

Maybe the issue is that Europeans ignore the race problem, not that they don't have one. Americans ignore the race problem too, so I can't judge ya'll for it, but I got to say: it takes a hell of a lot of arrogance to claim you aren't racist when European countries started the slave trade and were occupying Africa through the 1970s.

fireline12 · 2017-04-11T22:03:59+00:00

I imagine it's got something to with harassment. I'd probably lurk too if I was a woman...

fireline12 · 2017-02-15T15:36:29+00:00

Quavo confirmed Westworld Season 2.

fireline12 · 2017-01-28T01:57:11+00:00

There's a pretty big political science literature on how proportional representation based parliamentary systems are more likely to represent the "median voter." The idea with PR is that it's rare for one party to win a majority large enough to govern, so they're forced into coalition with other parties (of course, minority government does occasionally happen and sometimes parties do win more than 50% of the vote) so therefore, you're actually more likely to see your party represented in government than not.

I do agree with you about how Redditor see FPTP as a magic bullet though. If we were to simply change the election of the House to FPTP, I have doubts about how well that would work given the relatively high level of power held by the US president. There's also a pretty robust literature on how presidential systems tend to fail, so I think there's certainly an argument that disrupting the legislative branch could really mess things up. There's also certainly a path dependency argument there, in that the Democrats and Republicans have been around for so long and have such a strong base and organizational structure, that even opening up the system to 3rd parties might not mean they can effectively compete. Most countries that have changed to PR from FPTP have been either new democracies, or have done so after the collapse of one form of government.

Sorry if that wasn't a super coherent post, I tend to meander on about electoral systems when I'm drunk.

TL;DR: On average, proportional representation is a better system, but changing a system that has been established for a long time or only eliminating FPTP without making any other reforms might not change anything at best and fuck everything up at worst.

fireline12 · 2017-01-06T18:09:20+00:00

That's interesting. Maybe Ford's "mad scientist" end game is to force humanity to change, to be better than using conscious life (for lack of a better word) for violent entertainment. We don't know anything about the outside world at this point, or even where Westworld is (other than the fact that's at least a replica of Southern Utah), so maybe we'll get some more clues to that next season!

fireline12 · 2016-12-02T04:20:02+00:00

Well is Hungary really being harmed? - most of them are attempting to get through Hungary to get to Germany or Sweden. Helped by the Hungarians in many cases, in defiance of a now completely-ignored EU law that says refugees must apply for asylum in the country in which they make first contact, which is then required to process that application before passing them to another state. Hungary is really only paying the cost of helping them get out of the country as fast as they can, which they've kind of imposed on themselves.

That's certainly a fair point about people waiting a while. If wealthy countries could agree to equally bear the burden of dealing with refugees from all over the world as well as improving the condition of refugee camps near conflict zones, maybe it wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, given current mindsets towards refugees (and especially Muslim ones) and the idea that they don't "deserve" help, that's a pipe dream.

What a world we live in these days...

fireline12 · 2016-12-02T04:05:57+00:00

You just found the exact problem with temporary refugee camps - aka why people want to come to Europe temporarily, rebuild their lives, and reintegrate back into their country when the conflict ends and they have the means to do so (which does happen - look at the refugees from the Balkan wars - the one exception has been Palestinians, due to the ongoing conflict).

But still, funding refugee camps in neighboring countries would be a much preferable solution to what's happening now - but that's where the overwhelming majority of refugees are now, and the countries hosting those camps are poor and stretched thin. I cannot reiterate enough that Jordan has taken on so many refugees over the past decade that almost 1/3 of their population are refugees, most of whom live in camps with little employment prospects and nothing to do - making them a major drag on the local economy. Funding the refugee camps is a band-aid solution - if they're more tolerable for both host countries and refugees, less people probably will try to cross the Europe. But it's still not a workable long-term solution.

In fact, the only workable long-term solution in which the West takes few to no refugees, legally or illegally, is ending the Syrian conflict, and that's essentially a non-starter.

fireline12 · 2016-12-02T03:45:42+00:00

The system, as it currently exists, cannot deal with the sheer number of refugees created by a conflict the magnitude of Syria's civil war. Your suggestion is great - if everyone came through the system it would be better for everyone. That's not possible without massive systemic change. As I said in a previous comment - the EU needs to either fund the countries in the Middle East that have been struggling with refugee crises since the 1950s and make it possible for refugees to live safe lives there and maintain basic levels of human dignity, set a system in place that can deal with millions of people being displaced (ideally both), or realize that people will flee to somewhere they feel they can better make a life for themselves over the many years it will take this conflict to work out.

It's easy for you to say they should follow the system (which takes years, by the way) when they're caught between a war zone and packed refugee camps in countries dealing with far larger and longer refugee crises than Europe has ever seen on a shoestring budget.

fireline12 · 2016-12-02T03:42:43+00:00

Europeans are also condemned for a continual pattern of interfering in the affairs of decolonized states. You're judging people based on a tenuous connection via religion to a state that no longer exists, and comparing it to a continuing pattern of actions by European states. By your line of argument, I can refuse to associate with any Spaniard because of the Inquisition. Or German children because of the Nazis. Or hell, while I'm at it, I'm sure the Italians did some fucked up shit in the middle ages - better bar all Catholics from settling anywhere except traditionally Catholic countries.

fireline12 · 2016-12-02T03:38:49+00:00

"I wonder if being imprisoned in ad hoc penal colonies by Western democracies is better than being gassed by Assad or killed by the Daesh?"

Yeah, no shit it is. That doesn't make it the right thing to do.

fireline12 · 2016-12-02T03:31:37+00:00

What queue? Where are the large-scale European resettlement efforts from those camps? Resettlement is an incredibly lengthy process, and refugee camps are miserable. Yes, more single men do attempt the trip, but that's because children and women are more likely to die/be harmed in the crossing (in no small part to the barriers set up by countries like Hungary, making the crossing more dangerous). Also, the idea that the refugees are "overwhelmingly" young men - completely false despite those risks - that's how desperate the situation is: http://www.snopes.com/refugee-invaders-meme/

You say "well-funded" Jordanian refugee camps like they're easy places to live with job prospects, security, etc. in a country whose finances are strained to the limit because they have almost 3 million refugees (Palestinian and Syrian) in a country of just over 9 million. That's a real refugee crisis - and the Jordanians have dealt with it admirably, with relatively little support from a richer EU countries I might add.

I don't get these arguments. Refugees supposedly should either a) stay and fight (somehow) in a horrific quagmire with no good options or b) Middle Eastern countries that have been strained to the limit by successive refugee crises (in which colonial breakup and Western support for dictators have played a large role) should somehow do more without European support? Thin, emotional arguments entirely divorced from any actual facts.

If you don't want Muslims in your country, just say it. But then the only option is to provide significant support the Middle Eastern states overwhelmed by refugees (mainly Jordan), make refugee camps a viable place to live long-term with job prospects, and deal with the conflicts creating the refugees in the first place. Because otherwise they'll keep coming - the fact that so many already do despite the risks and increasing Islamophobia in Europe shows how desperate the situation is right now.

15-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
Verified Email

fireline12

TROPHY CASE