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"Moron; now THAT is a convincing argument!

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."
ATTRIBUTION: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1785.—The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Albert H. Smyth, vol. 9, p. 293 (1906).
https://www.bartleby.com/73/953.html

The problem is not the incomprehension of the -er ..."Moron"... the problem is the authoritarian mindset which seems to value closure, order, law and justice (in about that order). A protest movement can in fact be considered "heinous" when it sufficiently inconveniences the top of the pyramid. If you don't believe me, let us step over to the Free Speech Zone and discuss it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

Few want truly "heinous" crimes to go unanswered, but if the mechanisms of retribution become simultaneously too potent and too convenient ...

SPOCK: I do not believe there is much beyond Nomad's capabilities.
KIRK: And we've shown it the way home. And when it gets there
SPOCK: It will find the Earth infested with imperfect biological units.
KIRK: And it will carry out its prime directive. Sterilise.
"The Changeling"
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/37.htm

I read the summary of this article and read the previous summary and...

The US and the rest of the "free world" (such as it is) is bitching and moaning about APT10, a so-called hacking collective. Whilst the "free world" goes on hacking sprees against their own citizens (five-eyes, etc).

It's not about catching criminals (the ACLU is falling into the semantics trap). It's about "instant dossiers" on people who might upset "the system" - i.e., the incumbent powers that be. Everyone has skeletons, and without "second chances" (the US since its founding had been the land of second chances - ability to re-invent oneself, until recently, with this data collecting bullshit tied to Real ID), there is not a politician in the US that can effect change.

The future is a mishmash of Big Brother, Little Brothers (private companies collecting data to sell you things, for example) Brave New World, and GATTACA, in the worst possible way. Because every time I think something has gotten as worse as it can get, it gets worser by orders of magnitude, so my ruminations here and in my head can't possibly imagine the tyrannical dystopia coming down the road.

NUMBER: 1593
AUTHOR: Benjamin Franklin (1706â"90)
QUOTATION: âoeWell, Doctor, what have we gotâ"a Republic or a Monarchy?â

    âoeA Republic, if you can keep it.â
ATTRIBUTION: The response is attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLINâ"at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberationâ"in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Marylandâ(TM)s delegates to the Convention.

https://www.bartleby.com/73/15...

"This tribble is dead, Jim" -- Dr. McCoy

--
BMO

severely harming the criminal -- by having him arrested

What? Just being arrested is being severely harmed? No. At best they GOTCHA or at worst it's a waste of everyone's time. But we want to make absolutely sure the bad guys never get away, right?

More like:
if Is_This_A_Person() then Report(Yes);
else Report(No);

Of course bringing asset forfeiture into the picture:
if Is_This_A_Person() then Report(Yes);
if Is_This_An_Object() then Report(Yes);
else Report(No);

Or for the latter, a much simpler:
Report(Yes);

BF would NOT be happy with this. That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer

So, and I'm guessing here, Honor used to be a much more vaunted concept (hence duels to the death for the insulted) than today, and "random" imprisonment by the King (or their representative) used to be much more of a harsh and permanent thing.

I fear for the day we're 100% efficient, since NO ONE'S innocent of everything. Of course the ones making the rules are exempt, almost by definition. With computer security, computer administrators are usually exceptions so they can help implement, check, and debug (and repair!) the rules.

Wow, even bragging about learning to be ignorant... you are brave!

We are not a representative Democracy either.
A Republic does not equal a Representative Democracy, this is a farce only believed by ignorant people that cannot read and comprehend things. A representative Democracy would have results in Hillary winning the election because she had the majority vote. Additionally, SCOTUS would either be abolished or have their ability to rule laws as Unconstitutional removed. Also, to be a Representative Democracy the Veto power of the Executive would need to be removed as well. As long as there is a mechanism in place where a minority power can overrule a Majority then you just do not have a Democracy... no matter how much you kick scream and whine about it.

"I'm quite certain that the Founding Fathers did not intend this in the slightest."

Uhmm... that was my point, I guess we can add poor comprehension to the list of issues you have.

The founding Fathers intended for us to be a "Republic" and most definitely not a democracy of any kind. Seriously go and read what many of them have said about what a Democracy is.

A democracy of any form be it direct or indirect will only commit suicide. The reason people like to run around calling things a democracy is to keep ignorant folks like you thinking the government should operate in a way it actually does not operate. Keeping you ignorant, helps keeps them in power.

And said best by...
https://www.bartleby.com/73/15...
Benjamin Franklin...
"A republic, if you can keep it".

Let's just say we have already lost the republic, because of many people like you that do not even know what form their own government takes and will even get on a forum and double down in their ignorance despite there being a mountain of proof and evidence in the form of writing by the very founders of the nation. You are essentially the equivalent of a flat-earther refusing to believe the facts and proof readily available to you.

"Full stack" is just another in a long line of terms such as "rockstar", "guru", "code ninja", or "jedi". I'm sure that some people who have used these terms have some more specific meaning in mind, but most of the people who use it just mean "someone who knows what the hell they're doing". And keep in mind that these are mostly people who don't know what they're doing.

When I read a job ad that includes "full stack", I interpret it as people looking for a savior. I ask myself if I think I could save them, and then whether I'd want to. The answer to at least one of those is usually "no".

Savior! I like the sound of that! Let's make that the new hotness in software job ads.

he expects the government to work in the same way that a corporation works.

I said so during the election. It's not like the army either.

http://www.bartleby.com/73/151...

I ask myself, "Does this news source give all viewpoints, including the ones I disagree with, including the unpopular ones?" I judge them first by the subjects that I'm most familiar with myself (primarily medicine and biology). Classroom example: Does a story about abortion give both (or all) sides? http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...

In my freshman year of college, even the engineering majors had to take a humanities course. The most valuable book they gave me was John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. http://www.bartleby.com/130/2.... Mill summarized it himself:

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.

And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.

So I look for a news source that gives me as many ideas as possible, so I can evaluate them myself. A special case is the journalistic rule: Whenever you attack someone, you have an obligation to give him a chance to respond. I worked as a journalist myself, and any journalist can tell you that when you get the other side, it often turns the whole story around.

The one newspaper that did the best job (more than the New York Times) was the Wall Street Journal. For example, they did a story on a welfare work program in California, and interviewed everyone from the governor down to the welfare recipients. (It seemed clear to me that the program wasn't working, but you could come to your own conclusions.) Some of their best reporters were socialists. Their page 1 editor was gay, contracted AIDS, wrote about his treatement with AZT, and got a Pulitzer Prize for it. http://www.pulitzer.org/winner... They wrote about the successes and failures of the capitalist system. The WSJ made their reputation when GM told them to kill a story, threatened to cancel all their advertising if they didn't, and the WSJ told them to fuck off.

But best of all, they gave me ideas every morning that I disagreed with, and I had to figure out whether I was really right.

Then Rupert Murdoch bought the WSJ and destroyed the best newspaper in the world, by placing right-wing political commissars over the editing process and censoring liberal ideas. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12... .

So it's back to the New York Times, even though they have an annoying habit of pandering to their advertisers and to the neo-liberal establishment. (I noticed this when I was following auto safety engineering, and the NYT basically followed the auto industry line that seat belts and air bags were too expensive. The auto industry is in the top 2 or 3 newspaper advertisers.)

After that, the best news sources that I read are in the professional journals. Science magazine actually does get all sides. I also read the New England

kids these days don't read.

Also - reading correlates with "relatively wealthy"

The best argument for free speech is John Stuart Mill's On Liberty.

On Liberty was standard freshman reading in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Some of my teachers had to leave Germany for their political ideas, because of the Nazis and Hitler. Some of my teachers had to leave the U.S. for their political ideas, because of HUAC and Joe McCarthy. On Liberty was their way of telling us what free speech was and why it was important.

Bottom line: If you don't have free speech for offensive, wrong ideas, you don't have free speech.

I didn't have to read the Nuremburg transcripts. I heard it first-hand from people who were there.

http://www.bartleby.com/130/2....

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). On Liberty. 1869.

Chapter II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion

We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate. 40

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. 41

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. 42

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.

Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is fit to take some notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent.

"You'd have to start by explaining a lot of new words that did not exist then. Like "unemployment"."

William Wordsworth, the Lake poet who lived in rural Cumbria, described rural unemployment and vagrancy as being common in his time - the early nineteenth century, in the heart of the Industrial Revolution:
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww...
and: http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww...

This student thesis describes, albeit crudely, Wordsworth's social milieu: https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/ttu-ir/...
A time of dislocation as technology obsoleted a range of traditional jobs, just as it is doing now.

"You'd have to start by explaining a lot of new words that did not exist then. Like "unemployment"."

William Wordsworth, the Lake poet who lived in rural Cumbria, described rural unemployment and vagrancy as being common in his time - the early nineteenth century, in the heart of the Industrial Revolution:
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww...
and: http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww...

This student thesis describes, albeit crudely, Wordsworth's social milieu: https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/ttu-ir/...
A time of dislocation as technology obsoleted a range of traditional jobs, just as it is doing now.

I don't think every generation is getting weaker, or the world wouldn't be getting better. Crime is down, we're reducing pollution, advancing technology and medicine, etc. Maybe that just makes the worst parts of humanity stick out a bit more, but as a whole, we're moving forward. Perfect is never going to happen and things in western democracies are already really good historically speaking, and improving on that is a very slow process rife with missteps to learn from.

Some colleges and/or degrees are shit, but that was always the case. I don't expect some fields to get watered down because of the tenure system. The administration might want to be a degree mill or churn out more students, but cantankerous old tenured professors won't let it happen, and the administration probably doesn't care too much as they get paid whether a student passes or fails so there isn't too much push-back. Ultimately it doesn't matter as long as the rest of the system can correct for it. Eventually the universities that are degree mills get passed over and people start going somewhere else due to the bad reputation. That's why even though some things seem worse, as a whole things are getting better.

There's an old quote about the current generation being disrespectful little shits. I say old because it goes back to Socrates over 2000 years ago.

"We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." -- Ben Franklin, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1776.

So, in all this uncertainty, how can you be sure you have a good understanding of reality? Alternatively, if you consider every point of view, no matter how crazy, how can you not be swayed back and forth by every conflicting report that pops into your view?

John Stuart Mill. On Liberty.
http://www.bartleby.com/130/2....

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

Great quote, but it has more impact if you cite your source: Socrates, 469-399 BC.

"Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

--Winston Churchill

It might be "used by hackers" but that doesn't make it hacking per se. Otherwise you muddy the terms. Phishing is exploiting human weakness. Hacking is exposing computer weakness.

It's probably a totally lost cause to get people to use the words in a meaningful way, but for those who don't subscribe to the Humpty Dumpty theory of semantics, it's important to use words correctly.

Reading comprehension, dude. This is a list:

The same thing with Freddie Gray here, the guy who got shot in his car in front of his kid, the black dude with the autistic kid, and everyone else the cops basically walked up to and shot

Do you see the commas? Those are separators in list items. It doesn't say, "Freddie Gray--the guy who got shot in his car"; it says, "(1)Freddie Gray here, (2)the guy who got shot in his car in front of his kid, (3)the black dude with the autistic kid, and (4)everyone else the cops basically walked up to and shot." That's four separate items.

Is English not your primary language? Perhaps you should educate yourself before attempting to interact with people speaking English, as it makes you look ignorant when you come up with some badly-mangled interpretation of what's been said. That goes as well for the word salad you're using in place of proper English, although at least it's readable (the last thing in your post is a declaration that education makes a person appear ignorant).

I just got done typing up a nice, long response with links, quotes, explanations, and details...and then I hit Refresh and lost it.

So, here are some of the links. I've provided a super quick summary of what you can take away from them.

Either is acceptable: http://www.grammarbook.com/pun...
Either is acceptable: https://owl.english.purdue.edu...
The Associated Press and Chicago handle it differently: http://www.apvschicago.com/201...
Strunk says keep the "s" unless dealing with ancient names: http://www.bartleby.com/141/st...
Others care more about sibilance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You'll find plenty of adherents to each of those approaches. Which is to say, it's a matter of style, not correctness, with various groups recommending various styles. Your way is a safe way to go, and there's nothing wrong with it. Others prefer to ditch characters that are viewed as unnecessary or that can create awkward phrasings.

While you're here, the "s/quotation mark/a with a hat bracket TM close bracket/" crap is still happening.

I copy-pasted something from another site and got the same effect, but unlike your "editors" I used the preview and spotted it.

Test it yourself: http://www.bartleby.com/73/151...

Well Ray, that's a very nice paper. I hope you got a B, assuming it was Freshman English or the equivalent.

Your instructor really should teach you to get both the arguments in support of your position and against it, as people have been doing since the ancient Greeks, which is what I learned in Freshman English. http://www.bartleby.com/130/2.... Makes a much more persuasive argument (assuming your position holds up). Scientific articles, legal papers, newspaper editorials, and other serious writing is written in a particular style which has been developed over 2,000 years, and is generally accepted in all its variations today. If you don't understand it you won't be able to understand the arguments that are going on around you, much less write them.

You should also take at least a good social science course which will teach you the different kinds of scientific evidence and how to evaluate them, such as the difference between opinions and evidence, and the difference between association and causation. Any professor who has published a research paper in a major journal would know these things.

You should also learn to research the previous research and opinions before you write your own.

On gun control, I stick to the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and the honest answer (even from the anti-gun researchers) is that nobody has good research or good answers because Congress cut the funding.

http://www.nature.com/news/und...
Under the gun
A ban on advocacy and promotion of gun control is keeping US agencies from conducting research that is sorely needed to inform policy on firearms and prevent shootings.
27 March 2013
Nature 495, 409 (28 March 2013) doi:10.1038/495409a

The irony is that the gun lobby and its congressional allies might benefit from rigorous research. Would a robust study reveal that state laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons have resulted in more or fewer deaths? We don't know. Would the spiking homicide rate in Chicago, Illinois, be higher still if it were not for the cityâ(TM)s restrictive gun laws, or are those laws ineffective? We don't know. Does a limit on assault weapons reduce the overall rate of firearms injuries and deaths? We don't know.

http://www.nature.com/news/fir...
Firearms research: The gun fighter
There are almost as many firearms in the United States as there are citizens. Garen Wintemute is one of few people studying the consequences.
Meredith Wadman
Nature 496, 412â"415 (25 April 2013) doi:10.1038/496412a

Or - can light propagate through anything else than space?

Yes. This is a stupid question even if phrased correctly. If empty space had none of the properties you mention, light would still go through it just fine.

Space has many interesting properties, but none of the properties predicted by aether theory. The implication was not that "red doesn't exist", but that they are two different things and simply calling one by the name of the other does not suddenly make the same thing. This is a semantic argument that Humpty-Dumpty would be proud of.

Nope, although it's often misquoted that way: http://www.bartleby.com/73/804....

Inevitably governments do have to make choices

Government should make very few choices, only when absolutely necessary.

Thomas Paine:

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

If government is, at best, a necessary evil, then any government that's unnecessary is simply evil.

Every country has the government it deserves.
                                    -- Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821)

In otherwords, university administrators were forgot the lessons of the 60's and 70's while choosing to believe in some technology utopia.

Yeah, this is even a MUCH older idea. Technology, and better ways to distribute knowledge, and better more efficient methods for communication, have been argued to be "the future of higher education" for at least a couple centuries. Just about every generation since the mid-1800s has thought that "distance learning" would be a democratizing influence that would change everything. (Correspondence courses go back centuries, and the first distance-learning degrees began to be offered in the 1860s.)

And even then, there were already people who felt moved to defend the need for a centralized campus where people actually come together in person to learn. Listen to John Henry Newman from his essay, "The Idea of a University," published in the 1850s:

Considering the prodigious powers of the press, and how they are developed at this time in the never-intermitting issue of periodicals, tracts, pamphlets, works in series, and light literature, we must allow there never was a time which promised fairer for dispensing with every other means of information and instruction. What can we want more, you will say, for the intellectual education of the whole man, and for every man, than so exuberant and diversified and persistent a promulgation of all kinds of knowledge? Why, you will ask, need we go up to knowledge, when knowledge comes down to us?... We have sermons in stones, and books in the running brooks; works larger and more comprehensive than those which have gained for ancients an immortality, issue forth every morning, and are projected onwards to the ends of the earth at the rate of hundreds of miles a day. Our seats are strewed, our pavements are powdered, with swarms of little tracts; and the very bricks of our city walls preach wisdom, by informing us by their placards where we can at once cheaply purchase it.

And yet, despite the fact that we can get all of these things from a distance, Newman says -- we still need to come together at the university, for all sorts of reasons. The essay is long, and you need to read it to get the flavor of it, but a lot of his concerns parallel the very same ones being discussed here right now, over 150 years later.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

http://www.bartleby.com/104/64...

The reference was probably to the quote from Sir Winston Churchill:
"It is ‘better to jaw-jaw than to war-war,"
which given the topic and how the IRA issues were resolved which is fitting.

my favorite book of the Bible is Ecclesiastes which, being basically an existential musing on the meaninglessness of life by, ostensibly, King Solomon, is considered so out-of-place that scholars have been trying for about two thousand years to figure out why the hell it was included in the Hebrew canon.

When you have faith, true faith you see the weird man-made scaffolding of intelligent design theories as unnecessary and counterproductive. Where God seems to conflict with science some choose to believe that one is right and the other is wrong when the truth is that both are in harmony and it is our understanding of both that is flawed. Those who read only their own ephemeral rules, theories and prejudices into the bible have not accepted the spirit which is necessary to guide each of us through the poetry of God's creation whenever it seems to conflict with the logic of what we think we know.

A faithful person also knows (as any honest scientist should know), that those "gaps" where God must exist are enormous. The amount of her universe(s) we truly understand is vanishingly small, far less than 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the universe is known to us. What we know is certainly smaller than ourselves, our brain, a leaf of grass, , DNA, atoms, quarks, strings and everything. While we've come to learn more about each of these things with each passing day, we should accept that a scientist 50 or 100 years from now would look at the social constructs we know as scientific beliefs as being remarkably simplistic. Even for agnostics and atheists who choose to disbelieve in a universal creator with more embedded intelligence than the 3 pounds of chemicals within their brains, the Judeo-Christian bible contains remnants of the human story which pre-dates agriculture and civilization. In this age of short attention spans we need such an anchor to counter-balance pop-cultural fads and give us a longer view of humanity.

How about a more reputable source linking to the actual quote (48).

have you spent more time watching television or being politically active?

Code wants to be free.
Rent wants to be paid.

The only way I can spend more time being politically active than (insert other activity here) is if being politically active is a revenue stream for me.

Your real question (IMO) condenses down to:
What have you really done to be politically active? And griping on a web forum does not count.

And for those curious, the rest of the Ben Franklin missive (or at least a larger portion of it) can be found here

Actually, one of Aesop's fables specifically states that one wrong deserves another.

The Fox and the Stork: http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/19.html

Some people do think two wrongs do make a right, for instance, death penalty supporters think this way.

http://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html

"Well, Doctor, what have we got - a Republic or a Monarchy?"

    "A Republic, if you can keep it."

ATTRIBUTION: The response is attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN - at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation - in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland's delegates to the Convention.

    McHenry's notes were first published in The American Historical Review, vol. 11, 1906, and the anecdote on p. 618 reads: "A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it." When McHenry's notes were included in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand, vol. 3, appendix A, p. 85 (1911, reprinted 1934), a footnote stated that the date this anecdote was written is uncertain.

Then there's the hippie quote about not trusting anybody over 30.

Or, you can just read one of his books. http://www.bartleby.com/173/

It's been obvious how politics really works for a long while now.

Perhaps even longer than you might think. Take for example In Verrem (full text of oration), a series of speeches made by Cicero in 70 BC during the corruption and extortion trial of Gaius Verres; the former governor of Sicily. Organized government and corruption of those in power go together hand in glove; they are like action and reaction, cause and effect.

Rex mortuus est, vivat rex.

Art loses much in its transition into a digital mass media, but it has never been more popular. To take Keats loosely then the Internet itself may be considered an enormous collective work of art.

First, you might start to enhance your understanding of advanced calculus.

At some early point along the road, get yourself a copy of
The ABC of Relativity, by Bertrand Russell, first ed. in 1925.
(Reading this book will just take the better part of a rainy day, breaks included. Enjoy it.)

Later on, read the Master's own writing:
Relativity. The Special and General Theory, by Albert Einstein, first ed. in 1920
http://www.bartleby.com/173/

Meanwhile, don't forget to continue your calculus efforts. ;-)

Remember, Einstein had a very pragmatic approach towards mathematics, he just used it.
To understand GR, you won't necessarily have to become more of a mathematician than Einstein wanted to be.

I meant that relative to a poet's other options for communicating, like essays and dissertations and other prose, a poem is a puzzle because it doesn't go to the same lengths to set forth ideas clearly and avoid ambiguity

Ah, but ambiguity what makes both quantum computing and poetry work. An essay, ideally, means only one sharp well-defined thing, where a poem (or a literary work of prose) can simultaneously hold many meanings.

"The tao that can be told / is not the eternal Tao," says the ol' master in an famous Chinese poem, and "The facts are useful and real . . . . they are not my dwelling . . . . I enter by them to an area of the dwelling" says crazy Uncle Walt. These statements are ambiguous not because Lao Tzu or Whitman were careless, or because they were creating puzzles, or because they were not capable essayists (can't speak for Lao Tzu, but Whitman could write clear prose), but because ambiguity was part and parcel of their subject matter.

[...] because of how poor the education system has become in the US (largely thanks to the no child left behind movement), the majority of people don't understand the extreme importance of every amendment contained within the Bill Of Rights[...]

Although I agree that the public education system in the United States has generally done a horrible job of teaching the US Constitution, this started long before NCLB became effective slightly less than ten years ago. Therefore, I have a hard time seeing that a continued decline (to the extent it may have become worse) in this dimension is attributable "largely" to NCLB.

Of course, the mentality you refer to was anticipated by Franklin when he wrote "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Anonymous's

Two wrongs do not make a right but, according to Aesop, "One bad turn derserves another."

The Fox and the Stork -> http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/19.html

The bigger issue is that as soon as you start putting that kind of money into the DoD people want to see the military do something.

Why put the money into DoD at all?

Libya is a much better user of resources than Iraq was, albeit, a much cheaper conflict to get involved in. Even if they don't give us access to their resources, having an unstable regime headed by a dictator isn't in our best interest.

Violating sovereignty of another nation state (even the one led by an unstable dictator) is in the interest of the world's "pinnacle of freedom and democracy"? Taking sides in an internal conflict is right and justified? I don't remember the United States being so proactive during the war in my homeland. In fact, I remember certain embargoes while we were attacked. It must be just my memory.

For some reason, my logic must be screwed up as well, since I don't see anyone talking about bringing down the regime of Kazakhstan, where Nursultan Nazarbayev won with alleged support of 95% of citizens. Which is quite an ordinary thing after 20 years of rule, right? What about Sudan, Yemen? Oh, let's not forget the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea and its leaders, who, after they lost power, were supported by China and the United States.

It seems I'm a pretty much messed up person, for opposing the senseless war. Since you worry about universal healthcare and education, you are probably a pretty messed up person yourself. Since of course the "security", "stability" and "spread of democracy" are a priority, right?

AUTHOR: Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)
QUOTATION: “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

ATTRIBUTION: The response is attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN—at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation—in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention.

http://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html

Throughout history, no democracy has ever lasted.
Democracy = mob rule.

But is it art?

Wikipedia> :

Variations on this quote have been attributed to Martin Luther, although Bartlett's Familiar Quotations names Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826) as a more likely source.

Bartlett

The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, "My country, right or wrong." In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

- Carl Schurz

I feel that actors like Assange perform an invaluable role in "setting right" my country. We've been for far too long operating under the assumption that anything relating to the military is sacrosanct.

Perhaps built-in solar makes more sense, in more places, than the hand-cranked power

Perhaps it does, perhaps it does! If, that is, you can build the device such that it can run off of built-in solar. That's the real trick, isn't it.

A simple four-function calculator trivially can run of a little photocell, and this has been true for decades. So why didn't OLPC simply put a little photocell on the XO-1? Because a little cheap photocell doesn't produce anywhere near the needed power needed by an XO-1.

And, the hand-cranked power is a particularly irritating straw man. A long, long, time ago, when OLPC was just an idea, they thought about a hand crank, and even made a mockup of what it might look like. But it was never made. Reasons: 0) some kids live in places with a decent electrical grid, so there is no need to add the cost of a generator to every single laptop; 1) an external generator can be trivially replaced if it breaks, without the laptop itself needing to be repaired; 2) a crank built-in to the laptop adds mechanical cranking strain on the laptop, necessitating the laptop being made sturdy in otherwise-needless ways; and 3) little kids are not known for their arm strength, so a generator that could be operated by leg muscles was deemed better. OLPC announced that a pull-cord generator would be the human powered generator, but as far as I can tell from a few quick Google searches just now, the pull-cord generator is still vapor.

I recently sent my XO-1 to India for use by the Bharti Integrated Rural Development Society
(B.I.R.D.S.) and I looked into a solar array for it. I found one for about $200 that should operate an XO-1 continuously and charge the battery in about an hour. I also found lots of other solar arrays that cost way more than that. So, the most affordable solar array I found cost more than the XO-1. As I understand it, the B.I.R.D.S. school has electrical power only when they run their generator, which is a few hours a day, so my hope is that the XO-1 will be useful just with the generator power. (Conveniently, the power supply on an XO-1 accepts any AC from 100 to 240 Volts, at 50 or 60 Hz, so they should be able to just plug it in with a plug adapter.)

Note that TFA says "...the I-slate is the first of a series of electronic notepads being built around a new class of low-energy-consumption microchips under development...". So, one of the reasons the OLPC XO-1 isn't powered with a little solar array is that it was developed half a decade ago, and the new ultra-low-power chips are, well, new.

Isn't it enough to say "This is a cool new technology and I'm excited about it" rather than talking about how much better it is compared to a half-decade-old technology?

P.S. I put an 8 GB flash card in the SD card slot on the XO-1. On the card I put a copy of Wikipedia for Schools, which takes up about 4 GB; then I put some health and medical books and a bunch of classic fiction books (for students to read when studying English). I updated the OS on the OLPC to the latest build, and installed a typing tutor program (Typing Turtle) from Sugar Labs. I found a public-domain copy of The Elements of Style and a few other free textbooks. Finally, I put a few books on Python Programming. I haven't had any email back from B.I.R.D.S. telling me anything, so I have no idea how it's working out.

I have to say, an XO-1 loading books straight off an SD card is a pretty nice book reading platform! And with the backlight off, to read books in monochrome, battery life should be pretty good. I'm hoping they will find the XO-1 to be useful.

steveha

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

~ Socrates (399 BC)

Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Socrates ever said that. Your quote first appeared in the book Personality and Adjustment in 1953. There is no evidence of the quote before that date. See

http://www.bartleby.com/73/195.html http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=398104

Although, from that second link, they make it clear that Plato claimed Socrates had made statements to that general effect, and Plato himself had directly stated something similar -- so while Socrates may not have said those specific words, it's pretty clear that both Socrates and Plato were saying things that were so similar as to be practically identical when the vagaries of translation are taken into account, as did Hesiod at roughly the same time. So the OP's point, that "the kids these days are all lousy slackers" was being made 3000 years ago, is still valid.