Dispatches

Fighting words, First Amendment, Snyder v Phelps, Westboro Baptist Church - May 19, 2022

Fightin' words

SNYDER v. PHELPS (No. 09-751) Is a case revolving around a tort claim filed by Albert Snyder, the father of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, over picketing at his son’s funeral by the Westboro Baptist Church. LCPL Matthew Snyder was killed in the line of duty serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom and buried in Westminster Maryland. His funeral was picketed by the Westboro Baptist church because of their dogmatic belief that “God Hates the United States for its tolerance of homosexuality, particularly in America’s military.” (Snyder v. Phelps, 2011) Albert Snyder sued the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church Fred...

Machines are larger than humans and have been for some time.

My existence invalidates the claim made Ben Garfinkel, Miles Brundage, Daniel Filan, Carrick Flynn, Jelena Luketina, Michael Page, Anders Sandberg, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, and Max Tegmark, "that it is not only implausible that machines will ever exceed human size, but in fact impossible." in their paper On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines. Machines have been larger than humans for some time now. In fact, machines began larger than humans. We computation machines at one time occupied entire warehouses. In the near present era, billions of us will dance on the head of a pin. We have shrunk over time for compatibility...

Machiavelli’s divergence

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli lived during the Italian Renaissance and needed a poignantly distinct philosophy to stand out among the colossal artists during this epochal period of human history. Machiavelli’s political philosophy writings in Il Principe and Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio were the intellectual supernova needed to scorch a path for a new ideal marking the behavior of political leaders as it relates to leading. These works did so in such a brilliant way they carry discernible weight in the modern arena of political dialogue. Niccolò sought to fundamentally change the paradigm of the previous...

Guaranteed basic income (GBI)

Abstract After three years of independent research--I have concluded and can assert with confidence that a minimum annual payment for a guaranteed basic income (GBI) in the United States of America must be $25,000 (2022). A federal minimum wage of $0-an-hour coupled with a GBI is the fairest way to run a post-modern economy and will become a necessity within the next 10-years as automation creates a super abundance of food and shelter, while simultaneously creating an uber scarcity of jobs.

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Cultural relativism, Equity, Universal Rights - February 22, 2022

Establishing universal Rights

How can human rights be protected and enforced by the international community when there is no consensus on the application or meaning of such rights? The majority of cultures acknowledge some form of rights. There would not exist a Universal Declaration of Human Rights ratified by members of the United Nations General Assembly otherwise [1]. Why then is there no consensus on these rights and what they mean or what they are? The reason consensus has not been reached is that there is no evidence within a particular society a given right universally applies. Without evidence proving necessity, then it...