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The opening scene in A New Hope, when you see the huge ship, it goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on... that is like a joke of awesomeness.
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I have talked to Barack Obama about Star Wars recently, in the Oval Office, and he is definitely a fan. Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution creates executive privilege, and as for government regulation and information policy, so too for Star Wars, I will not disclose discussions in private with the President of the United States.
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If you have a regulation that's going to save hundreds of thousands of lives annually and not cost very much, that sounds like a very good idea.
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Great works - and I think Star Wars is a great work - are easily susceptible to multiple plausible interpretations. Some of them are pretty nutty, but the idea that we should see it as profoundly feminist, or as a deeply Christian tale, or as a Freudian exercise... I think all of those have some truth.
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There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day.
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I have argued in favor of a reformulation of First Amendment law. The overriding goal of the reformulation is to reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.
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It is even possible that desirable redistribution is more likely to occur through climate change policy than otherwise, or to be accomplished more effectively through climate policy than through direct foreign aid.
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It's very common to say that Star Wars in the late '70s, that was kind of perfect for Cold War culture and the aftermath of Vietnam in the '60s to have an upbeat, hopeful, cartoonish tale of a hero's journey. I think those explanations are easy to offer and almost always wrong.
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My friend jewelry designer Courtney Crangi has been obsessed with Star Wars all her life and has seen the movies 150 times. When we first started talking about it, I was amazed that her knowledge made mine - which was even then pretty impressive - seem pathetic. And I think there are a couple of reasons for this. One is that the leader of the rebellion is Princess Leia. American theatergoers had never seen a princess like that. She's not a delicate flower, she's not passive, she's often the only one who has a clue.
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Star Wars may be kind of a cartoon, but the original trilogy depicts a political paralysis which breeds an interest in a strong leader who will make a significant break with the past. And Hillary Clinton is a person - whether you like it or not - of extraordinary experience. I don't know if we ever had a presidential candidate with that level of political experience. There's no learning curve for her. And that, in some periods, would be a huge plus. In the end, I think it will be a significant plus for her now.
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So, you could often say things are terrible and that accounts for what happened, or things are really bright, and that accounts for what happened. Often, the real explanation for what happened is much more subtle and interesting and involves maybe small shocks or what a couple people did on a Wednesday morning that changed the arc of history.
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We might have new issues involving information technology for example, or new questions arising out of the war on terror, or new issues arising from natural disasters that can't be anticipated.
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There are bursts of things like Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan or Franklin Delano Roosevelt or same-sex marriage that change very much what we thought we were all about.
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Sometimes, the word 'voluntary' is a little complicated.
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As a matter of history, the Fourteenth Amendment was not understood to ban segregation on the basis of race.
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Groups become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs and polarized from others when members only exchange information that reinforces their views and filter out all else or never learn of alternatives. Thus they narrow their options, and magnify each other's prejudices and misconceptions. This trend leads to blind spots in decision making and to extreme behavior, even terrorism.
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On reflection, some things do super well because they hit with the time. Some things do super well because they are able to activate a kind of echo chamber or bandwagon or cascade - they didn't particularly hit with the time. Some things are just too astonishingly good to not hit the top. Those three explanations, with respect to the Star Wars phenomenon, seem to me all to pass the plausibility test, and to explore them, with respect to Star Wars, I think casts light not just on the saga of our time, but also on everything about our culture.
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For the Sanders supporters, there's a thought that the people who are well off are doing really great, and the system is systematically unfair, and that's a very deeply felt and serious objection to the current situation.
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If Star Wars had been released in the late '60s, or late '80s, or late '90s, adjusting for technology, it fits spectacularly well.
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Somewhat more broadly, I will suggest that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law.
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Well, I've liked Star Wars since the late '70s. I liked it a lot.
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I'm interested in how the Internet spreads information.
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I started to read as obsessively about Star Wars as I once did about Kant - and still do about behavioral economics and behavioral psychology.
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Presumed consent preserves freedom of choice, but it is different from explicit consent because it shifts the default rule. Under this policy, all citizens would be presumed to be consenting donors, but they would have the opportunity to register their unwillingness to donate.