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Because the US military has invaded and continue launching wars for over one hundred years, not counting the illegal occupation of Texas, California, and Hawaii, whereas China at most flickering with some regions and islands that they already have some (pre-PRC, typically internationally recognized) historical claims, and at the same time dramatically improve the actual human rights situation, comparing to the Qing and ROC periods, through economic development.

Because the Iranians are all peaceful and stuff, right?

As a matter of fact, yes. Iran hasn't invaded another country in over 270 years. (They invaded India and sacked Delhi in 1738-9). Compare that with the United States: http://academic.evergreen.edu/...
A more comprehensive list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Tony.

cold fjord: you realize that with a few word substitutions, you're talking about capitalist states, right?

This isn't an ideological issue -- it's a human issue. Look at the last century: Germany (not communist) doing an ethnic cleansing... Italy (fascist) joining in... Rwanda (definitely capitalist, to their detriment) involved in ethnic cleansing, the Congo, Somalia, Croatia, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and more.

And then we move on to the ones that were due to American interference in the past century: Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Laos, various conflicts in the mid-east, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada (US invading gentler communism), Panama, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Haiti, Cuba (pre-communism), Honduras, Puerto Rico, Egypt (Suez crisis), Lebanon, Indonesia (over 1,000,000 killed due to US-assisted millitary coup), Chile, Angola, Sudan, Colombia.

Good reference for American interventions (both defense and pro-active intervention): http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

As you can see, people are violent, and incite violence in others. More powerful governments tend to want to export their culture to the rest of the world, and use force when that export is rejected. While political communism is obviously a failed method of governance, none of the others have fared much better, when you take into account the physical and mental health and prosperity of the average citizen.

Aggression towards the US is not misplaced; at present it's one of the greatest services to humanity.

Educate yourself on why this is the case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/us-interventions-in-latin-american-021/

It's not just computation. As I mentioned where we look at changes. So you won't be able to produce the correct blended images that our eyes expect without knowing what they are tracking. Worse if there are multiple viewers for the same display/screen.

So why do it? Why not go to 120Hz or even higher and let our eyes do the blurring?

This has been proven to be incorrect or at least incomplete:

everything that occurs inside of a time interval that short will still be blended together on your retina. Our brains are basically wired to automatically interpret this as continuous motion.

There is no need to blend stuff for the perception of continuous motion. All that needs is for something similar to appear at a different position that's not too far from the first position and at a sufficiently short interval.

That's why we can still perceive continuous motion on unblurred artificial images on computer monitors.

See also:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/emergingorder/seminar/week_1_anderson.pdf

I got the list of events from http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html , and the list of presidents from Wikipedia, then merged and formatted them to test the hypothesis proposed by the previous AC. The list of events seemed very subjective, so I was hesitant to editorialize content from someone who has obviously studied it more than me.

In USSR, I'd wager 99% could be considered poor by the US standards

no. majority would qualify over the hellhole slums americans were living, in around 80s. middle class, the 10-15% in america would rank over most of the u.s. population indeed, but, when you take masses into account, u.s. poor would be in direr straits and conditions than the bottom line in ussr.

Almost all money was spent on the military complex and bribing African, Asian, etc dictators. Very inefficiently at that.

glad that you brought that up. unfortunately, u.s. won at that front - leave aside bribing, but breeding african, asian etc dictators :

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

details more than 15-20 u.s. backed/placed/created dictators and their atrocities. be warned : not a pleasant read.

the thing you are right about is that, they indeed had spent most of their GNP on military. and they did so consciusly - in 1960 socialist international, ussr declared that they would overtake the west in military and space. and everything was spent to that end from that point on.

however you cant blame them. the west was besieging them in an unholy alliance since 1917. with only intermittent pause being world war ii. outside, whereas u.s. only needed to supply and subvert military brass with luxuries and funds to install them as dictators, ussr needed those personas to be ideologically compliant with the left ideology so that they could get a dictator, if they could. you can understand that a dictator would generally prefer luxuries and a lavish life over having to put up at least a storefront of modesty and communal instinct. that goes against greed. moreover, u.s. and its angloamerican allies were conveniently invading/intervening in minor countries by justifying through various means - but if ussr attempted that, world risked nuclear war. see the list of u.s. military interventions -an endless list :

http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

there is no end to these since 1890. what happened in nikaragua, puts any half decent person into tears. and yet, it was done for 'democracy', and the world community just kept silent.

ussr could easily escalate tensions at the wake of these endless invasions, and brave world war iii. and actually, when a similar thing happened in korea, a maniac named mc arthur had went as far to request authorization to use nuclear weapons to 'bomb china into stone age'. the only open half intervention/invasion by ussr through chinese proxy, and this was the u.s. reaction. thankfully, truman was not a maniac himself and retired mc arthur.

moreover, whereas u.s. was stuffing any country bordering ussr with nuclear weapons (turkey, japan etc), hell broke loose and we came to the brink of world war iii when ussr attempted to place a few missiles in cuba. in all grandstanding bastardry. again, ussr backed.

so, in the end, ussr bloc came as the saner, more tempered party in the cold war - despite endless invasions and brutal empire building by the west, we have not come to the point which would cause ultimate destruction of civilization on the planet.

however this naturally had its toll - while u.s. was besieging ussr bloc with nuclear weapons, and spending cash made from empire building to weapon development, ussr had to spend their own bloc's gnp for that end. and since they had to wage war on many fronts, thanks to the endless empire building by the west bloc, they had to cope up with numbers. therefore, we ended up a HUGE military imbalance on ussr side. let me put it into context for you : if ww iii happened with anything other than nuclear weapons, entire europe, asia would be overrun by ussr in mere months. the numerical superiority was SO high that even an f14 bein

I think the Japanese (and the world in general) had a pretty good idea of the relationship between earthquakes and Tsunamis long before plate tectonics was understood. http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/DANIELSC/index.html

Interesting note: Some villagers on Sumatra survived the 2004 Tsunami because their mythology included stories of what happens when there's an earthquake and then the water in the bay recedes (answer: run like hell for high ground).

US intervention has often succeeded in liberating nations...

Yes- Ask the people of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and El Salvador how those interventions went for them. Here's a reference to US interventions in the 20th and 21st centuries. Turns out we've had a very busy 100 years. Hell- I had no idea that we actually stationed troops for years in China well before WWII. Some of the interventions in the list above were likely justified, but I think Marine Major General Smedley Butler had a pretty good handle on reality when he said:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Extending these examples into modern times, I think that Iraq and the 'stans (Caspian oil pipeline) are now relatively safer places for American / Global Oil and Bank Interests. Don't worry; there's more to come- I'm sure there will be several more wars in the near future to get our minds off of the pain of dismantling / rebuilding Europe's and America's economic systems.... ahem...excuse me: "making the world safe for Democracy and Prosperity".

Doing my undergrad I would daily walk past some fairly macabre before and after photos of the treatments. A blackened foot which normally would have been removed and an after photo of the same foot that had been treated. The process was rather simple, cut the foot wide open and slather the correct strain of phage allowing for the drainage after the fact.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095089/
http://blogs.evergreen.edu/phage/

That's true of most schools. But not always, I went to TESC and it's very much a liberal arts school, but a lot of teachers, doctors and lawyers go there before going onto grad school. And while we have a reputation around here for being liberal, smoking pot, and being disruptive, we also have a reputation for having a much more developed set of critical thinking skills than most of the population does.

Clearly I'm out of my comfort zone. I half-quoted something I heard in one of Noam Chomsky's rants but couldn't find the document he referred-to. This seems fairly similar:
  * http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

I'm surprised on one's mentioned Evergreen State College yet. It's not quite wikified, but a lot closer than any normal college:

Founded in 1967, Evergreen was formed to be an experimental and non-traditional college. Faculty issue narrative evaluations of students' work rather than grades, and Evergreen organizes most studies into largely interdisciplinary classes that generally constitute a full-time course load.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evergreen_State_College

Liberal Arts is not about Theatre, Liberal Arts at the core is about thinking. This country needs more people who can think before they do, not more doers whose educations become obsolete before the ink on their diploma is dry.

there are many good essays on exactly what Liberal Arts is, you should try reading a few of them before penning ignorant rants.

This is one of them, http://www2.fiu.edu/~hauptli/MyViewofTheNatureofALiberalArtsEducation.html
This is a page that describes the expectations of a student that has graduated with a degree in Liberal Arts (please note that I did not say Theatre or Art Appreciation, those are part of Liberal Arts, but They are not all of Liberal Arts [if you don't understand why this is so, then you should review your logic]).
http://www.evergreen.edu/about/expectations.htm

I'll think about that whilst wiping my ass with your degree.

http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
(I added a little here and there from memory)

Korea - 1904 - Marines land in Russo-Japanese War
Yugoslavia - 1919 - fought serbs in Dalmatia
Korean War - 1951-1953
Iran - 1953 - Overthrew democratic Iranian government
Iraq - 1963 - Supported Ba'ath coup
Iran - 1980s - material support for Saddam Hussein against Iran
Iraq - 1990-1991 - Gulf War
Iraq - 1990s - airstrikes, embargoes
Yugoslavia - 1992-1994 - Naval blockade of Serbia, airstrikes
Yugoslavia - 1999 - NATO airstrikes, occupation of Kosovo
Iraq - 2003-Present - Invasion and occupation of Iraq
Korea - 1951-Present - military stationed at the 38th parallel

Syria is sort of small potatoes, but we currently use them to outsource the torture of terrorism suspects. The military in control there is like the royal family in Saudi Arabia - they raise their voices to impress their subjects, but never enough to lose favor with the imperial army that's stationed at two of their borders.

The correct question, really, is to ask where we have not had our military involved in the last 100 years. I doubt you could come up with twenty nations outside of Africa where our boots have not been felt.

Because the last time the US withdrew from the World it worked out so well for mankind.....

When the fuck was that?

Yes, it was you, but no, it is still not legitimate for you to assume you know what I was trying to say, when obviously you don't. You are saying that it is legitimate for you to try to read my mind, and tell me what I meant? I don't think so.

I’m actually quite confused as to what you’re trying to say, so I’m falling back to explaining what I was saying, under the assumption that you misunderstood me, or don’t understand BCD, or both.

Your BCD above is fine if you are referring to simple unsigned BCD, but packed BCD uses the lowest nibble to indicate sign, not to contain a number value. If you don't believe me, read about it here

That entire section is in severe need of a [Citation needed]. Everything I did in college with BCD referred to “packed” BCD as 2 digits per byte with no sign nibble of any sort, and “unpacked” BCD as 1 digit per byte.

If you want to allow for signed packed BCD, fine, but don’t tell me that my unsigned form of packed BCD isn’t packed BCD! Look at any of the google results other than that one Wikipedia article:

Here, here, here, here (pdf), here.

This gem is even entitled “Packed BCD to 16 bit binary conversion”... when of course I’m sure they meant “2’s complement”, not “binary”, since that was the whole problem from the beginning of this discussion! You should e-mail them and tell them to fix it!

What I was writing about was your confusing way of trying to explain it.

You seem to be one of a very small group of people who thought it was confusing. Is that my fault?

But here is what I was talking about: if you input 0x36 into a C program or most other languages that support that number format, and do not do any explicit conversion, that number will be interpreted as 54 decimal, NOT as 0011 0110 (BCD) or 36 decimal. That was my point. You might prefer to write that BCD number as 0x36, but that is not how a compiler will interpret it.

The compiler doesn’t “interpret” anything. The programmer does. The compiler just creates a binary executable that does whatever the programmer designed it to do.

And for that matter, unless you explicitly label that in code as some kind of BCD representation, any programmer to come along later will also assume it is hexadecimal. So you are introducing confusion into the issue.

Yes, which is why we have standards to tell programmers how stuff is supposed to be written.

0x10 is a HEXADECIMAL representation of the decimal number 16.

It is also a BCD representation of the decimal number 36.

I have nothing more to say to you. I have explained this more than once and in about 3 different ways. As Wikipedia (and other sources if you would care to look them up) clearly show, you have been wrong about some of these things. If you still don't understand the rest, I don't feel like spending more time to help you.

And the Wikipedia warrior throws up his hands!

I, on the other hand, didn’t learn everything I know from Wikipedia.

I was referring to the US deposing Allende in Chile. However, there are many, many other cases of extreme US interventionism. Here's a partial list for you to suck on:

http://www2.truman.edu/~marc/resources/interventions.html

Here's another, because I know how much you love having the facts regarding US interventionism shoved in your face:

http://www.zompist.com/latam.html

Here's a general list of interventions, not Latin America specific:

http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

We are not the good guys. We are not the global police. We are a nation of brutal, arrogant, power hungry thugs, destroying anything that displeases us. You want to know why socialism fails? US. We do it. We infiltrate, kill, lie, steal, rape, and do whatever we have to to "protect" our interests, which really means protecting the interests of rich, owning class Americans, not the peons.

The thing is, we could be the shining beacon of freedom and democracy we pretend to be if it weren't for people like you sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" every time someone constructively criticizes the US.

History of U.S. government violence.

All or almost all of the violence was done for the profit of someone in control.

I'm confused. Why are we discussing depictions of education in Star Trek as though they actually indicate anything?

I used it as a single example and people replied. I guess I struck a nerve. The point is that imaginative fiction like Star Trek speculates wildly on all sorts of aspects of human civilization. Star Trek in particular isn't about what the future is going to be like, but about issues current since the 60's. They speculate on all sorts of transformative technology like universal translators, subspace communicators, transporters and on and on - and yet from the original series up through the recent movie they never considered any style of education aside from the academy. For instance, why not create a school on the holodeck? One answer might be that all the creative individuals associated with Star Trek over the years recognize that students benefit from actual human contact.

Regarding the rest of your comments, there are increasingly more alternative college options, e.g.: http://www.evergreen.edu/, http://www.pitzer.edu/ or http://hampshire.edu/ There's nothing wrong with appropriate use of technology, but one has reason to be skeptical of corporate motivations when discussing the future of educational institutions.

By some measures, the U.S. government is the most corrupt in the world. For example, this Rolling Stone article about the extreme financial corruption in the U.S.: The Great American Bubble Machine. (The full article is in the paper edition, available at any library.)

The U.S. government spends more money on surveillance and war than any country in the history of the world. That taxpayer money partly helps those who want corruption to profit, and hurts U.S. taxpayers, and the entire world. For just one example, see the book, House of Bush, House of Saud.

The U.S. government has invaded or bombed 25 countries since the 2nd world war. Most or all of the interference was for profit. Quote: '... although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites'. The dictators pay the corrupters. In Iraq, those who control the U.S. government want control over the oil, and don't care how many people they kill. In Afghanistan, the corrupters want to build an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to a port where the oil can be delivered.

The U.S. government has a higher percentage of its people in prison than any country ever in the history of the world, over 6 times higher than in Europe, for example. Wikipedia quote: Approximately one in every 18 men in the United States is behind bars or being monitored.

U.S. citizens don't want to believe that their government is as corrupt as it is, even though the recent financial corruption has made many of them poor.

Will the corrupters of the U.S. get control of Canada, too?

By some measures, the U.S. government is the most corrupt in the world. For example, this Rolling Stone article: The Great American Bubble Machine. (The full article is in the paper edition, available at any library.)

The U.S. government spends more money on surveillance and war than any country in the history of the world. That taxpayer money partly helps those who want corruption to profit, and hurts U.S. taxpayers, and the entire world. For just one example, see the book: House of Bush, House of Saud

The U.S. government has invaded or bombed 25 countries since the 2nd world war. Most or all of the interference was for profit. Quote: '... although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites' The dictators pay the corrupters. In Iraq, the U.S. government wanted control over the oil, and didn't care how many people it killed. In Afghanistan, the corrupters want to build an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to a port where the oil can be delivered.

The U.S. government has a higher percentage of its people in prison than any country ever in the history of the world, over 6 times higher than in Europe, for example. Wikipedia quote: Approximately one in every 18 men in the United States is behind bars or being monitored.

U.S. citizens don't want to believe that their government is as corrupt as it is, even though the recent financial corruption has made many of them poor.

If the corrupters have success in Canada, they will only want more. The problem is MUCH bigger than most people think.

"We are Team America..."

There is no "we". The violence of the U.S. government has not benefited U.S. citizens. If you got in the way of the controlling groups, they would kill you, delt0r, and your family.

> google delt0r
> Your search - delt0r - did not match any documents.

Damn, too late !

The U.S. government has invaded or bombed 25 countries since the 2nd world war. Most or all of the interference was for profit. Quote: '... although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites' The dictators pay the corrupters, of course.

Shuddup ! What's wrong with you ?

I don't know this guy anyway. I'm not even from the US ! Honest I was just passing by ! I don't even come here that often !

Yes officer, whatever you say... I'm on my way, no I didn't see anything, shutting up right now... if you could just get the M1's main gun pointing elsewhere.

"We are Team America..."

There is no "we". The violence of the U.S. government has not benefited U.S. citizens. If you got in the way of the controlling groups, they would kill you, delt0r, and your family.

"US anti-terror officials"

The "anti-terror" is only a smokescreen. The U.S. government spends more money on surveillance and war than any country in the history of the world. That taxpayer money partly helps some people profit, for example: House of Bush, House of Saud, and hurts U.S. taxpayers.

The U.S. government has invaded or bombed 25 countries since the 2nd world war. Most or all of the interference was for profit. Quote: '... although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites' The dictators pay the corrupters, of course.

U.S. citizens don't want to believe that their government is as corrupt as it is, even though the recent financial corruption has made many of them poor.

Sure we voted for the wrong guy, but his administration's gross mismanagement of this country showed very clearly that the two parties are not by any means identical, and that your vote for a president can have a very real impact on the policies that are put into place.

Regardless of which party is in power, the goal of dominating the Middle East is the same.

"Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

That might sound like Bush but those words were uttered by alleged humanitarian Jimmy Carter. The history of both corporate parties shows they have enthusiastically pursued the nation's imperial ambitions abroad.

Conventional liberal wisdom dictates that Al Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq, but we'll never know for sure what might have been. We do know that Gore didn't oppose the crippling sanctions the Clinton administration enforced on Iraq, resulting in over one million innocent Iraqi deaths. To them the price was worth it. We know that Gore also supported the "Iraq Liberation Act" and accused Saddam Hussein of supporting terrorism.

Currently Barack Obama is pulling the wool over everyone's eyes with his talk of withdrawal. But examining his policy proposals shows a much different picture. He wants to increase the size of the military. He wants to keep a number of troops in Iraq and has no plans to withdraw any of the so-called contractors. He wants more troops in Afghanistan and he is arguing the same discredited lies about Iran as Bush. He's not anti-war, he's anti-losing-Iraq and he's trying to find a way to salvage the US empire.

Voting Democrat is not necessarily going to lead to a hastier exit from the occupations. They promised that in 2006 when they took over Congress and they have abrogated that promise. They won't even impeach Bush. Why would they do anything different after Obama is elected? Besides, it was under the Republican Dick Nixon that the Vietnam war was ended (this time started with lies by a Democrat).

The Vietnam war was finally ended when large sections of the military refused to fight the war. Mutiny, killing of officers and widespread breakdown of command meant that the US government could no longer count on the military to fight the war. They had no choice but to end the war. The GI resistance was made possible by a large, vibrant and supportive civilian antiwar movement at home.

In Vietnam the stakes were "credibility" in the face of the US's chief imperial competitor, the USSR. Today the stakes are far higher for the US ruling class. They need to control the flow of oil in the Middle East for leverage over their emerging competitors around the globe. They are not going to just walk away from what the US State Department once called "one of the greatest material prizes in world history." We're going to have to force them to leave.

Would things have turned out differently had Gore become President? I concede the point: had things been different then they would be different. But would the US still be attempting to dominate the Middle East and use every means at its disposal to do so? It would be naive to believe that Gore is somehow different in this respect.

How about an unprovoked war of aggression that has murdered over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4-5 million more from their homes (out of a starting population of 26 million or so)? When has Iran done anything as bad as that?

The US has a long and sordid history of overthrowing governments and oppressing people abroad, not to mention at home. The FBI and police have routinely been used to infiltrate, subvert and destroy social movements, not to mention murder their leaders.

The only reason you don't think the US is as bad as Iran is probably because you received a mediocre education that glosses over all the terror the US government has inflicted on millions of people over the past 200+ years. Go read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" and then come back and try to argue that the US isn't "as bad as" Iran.

Heres one for the older crowd who lived in western Washington state in the early-mid 80's. A game called "Civil" run on a mainframe at T.E.S.C.. The game was entirely ASCII and played in real time. I never played it but I had a friend that was massively addicted to it. You built & acquired land and resources through politics and war etc. I can't find a thing about it on Google. 100's (or more?) of people were playing, (you had to have a TESC acct) I remember my friend connecting with a 300 baud modem (the old phone sitting on a "modem" cradle).

They are a lot more aware than most folks realize... and a lot smarter than most anti-games crusaders!

At least he's smarter than all those retards with the Bobo Doll. Yeah, those kids, you know the ones -- the ones that watched the video of a doll being beaten up and then imitated that behavior. Those kids, or about 88% or them, anyway. Hey, did you know that after 8 months during followup studies 40% of those kids beat the shit out of the Bobo doll again? 8 MONTHS later 40% of these children who saw that video for only TEN MINUTES still repeated the aggressive behavior.

Thank Our Heavenly Load and Father Jesus Christ, who is Lord, Our God, that you kid is alot "smarter" than those evil crusaders. That, and go fuck your mother.

Well, in Jefferson Parish, you're tasered until you fall to the ground, then your beaten with the clubs until you need facial reconstruction surgery. Then the cops take your drugs and leave you convulsing softly and bleeding in the street. Say what you will, but it keeps the blacks out of our perfect shitpeople "city" (David Duke's former congressional district). If they had a new piece of technology that made people feel like they were on fire, but left no scars... they'd probably just set up a battery of them along the 17th street canal and fire them at New Orleans.

Hail King Lee, may the fat fucker be rotated slowly on a spit for all eternity. Or maybe he's just carrying on the legacy of Jefferson Parish Race Relations.

Offtopic, I realize. I just fucking hate cops, growing up where I did.

10,000 longbows ~ hardly!

It is a well known fact that during the middle ages and before then, during an attack on a city, the sieging army would catapult into cities corpses with the plague, or dead animals, in attempts to spread disease/plague that would decimate populations.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/bioweapons/biowa r_timeline.html
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/xiongmn.h tml
http://www.usmedicine.com/column.cfm?columnID=109& issueID=46
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague

But the soldiers who lose limbs fighting for your right to read those books don't deserve your money, because "you don't even know them?"

Soldiers work for the government, which is much more of a threat to my right to read books than the people of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Korea, Lebanon, Panama, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Cambodia, Laos, Libya, or anyplace else the U.S. has conducted military actions in the past 50 years.

The last time the U.S. was threated with invading forces that posed a threat to our rights was 1814. (No, Pearl Harbor doesn't count, Hawaii wasn't a state. Nor does 9/11, it as an act of mass murder, not an invasion attempt.) The last threat against the rights of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government was probably on Bush's desk this morning.

I salute veterans and active military personel for their courage and their desire to serve. And I'm grateful for the VA's tax-funded health care, which saved my father's life last year. (He served in Viet Nam.)

But in choosing to serve the U.S. government, they've displayed poor judgement. Serving the government and serving the nation are two very different things.

unless, of course, you want to inject another line of logic: They're fighting for your country and you aren't.

Nah. They're fighting for my government. Not always the same thing.

Last time any other nation was a real military threat to my country was 1814 or 1865, depending on whether you want to argue that the pro-slavery terrorists who styled themselves the "Confederacy" were or were not "another nation". The Mexican-American war was a war of agression; neither Japan nor Germany posed a threat of invading the U.S. in WWII (and Hawaii was not part of the U.S. - understand how there came to be a naval base at Pearl Harbor and you'll see that the Pacific theatre was a straight-up battle between colonial powers); and the mass murderers behind 9/11, while very bad people against whom strong action must be taken, are criminals, not a military threat who are going to invade the U.S.

(BTW, I'm not saying the Nazis weren't brutal sadistic thugs, or that the Japanese colonialism of the early 20th century wasn't more brutal than the American colonialism of that period. This doesn't change the fact that neither was a threat to send troops over here to invade and occupy the U.S.)

Yet my government keeps finding all kinds of things to send American soldiers overseas to kill and die over - mostly involving protecting the interests of its richest and most powerful citizens and corporations.

If your country runs out of soldiers they're in some tough straits, wether they lost them via combat attrition, and/or lack of recruits because people like yourself who can't envision that the use of violence is ever necessary.

Governments can always create more soldiers via conscription. If they lose officers, they're in a tough place, but cannon fodder is relatively cheap.

Perhaps, if a government were corrupt, or otherwise undeserving of loyalty, I could agree...questionable as some decisions have been, I still support my government and would die to defend my home.

Again, the former and the latter are completely unrelated. The government can go screw itself; but if Canada tries to invade us, my rifle will be out and ready.

Disclaimer: Discharged from the US Navy July 11th after a 6-year stint.

Sorry that you got ripped off of a few years of your life by the con men who convinced you that serving them was the same as serving your country; glad you made it out in one piece.

...and now a word from the sponsors who made this all possible,.... and necessary. Personal service and group plans are available. Coming soon to your neighborhood?

Check out phage therapy it kills bacterial infections with precisely matched phage viruses

http://www.evergreen.edu/phage/phagetherapy/phaget herapy.htm
or here:
http://www.phagetherapy.org/pii/PatientServlet?com mand=static_home&secnavpos=-1

coming from the ireland where we have Thirty-one words for seaweed, I don't find it difficult to believe that Eskimos would havy many for snow.

Not really started in Russia:

Historical Context of Phage Therapy

More: BBC

Oh, Alexander Fleming? where art thou now?

Also, on a personal note, I tested positive for the Mantoux TB skin test as part of my college health requirements in the US because I grew up in an Eastern European country where I had a TB vaccine administered as a child. As the referenced article states:

Today is the most fortuitous time ever realized to develop effective TB vaccines.

Bacteriophage appears to be an alternative to antibiotics for fighting bacteria. An article (you have to pay to access it) in Discover Magazine by Peter Radetsky about bacteriophage was published in November, 1996. It was mentioned by a man named Caisey Harlingten in a Horizon documentary on the BBC, and seems to have been an important publication that set things into motion. What isn't mentioned in the transcript is that right at the end of the documentary, text appears that says the deal between the American company called Georgia Research, Inc. set up by Harlingten and the Eliava Institute fell apart.

Wired wrote a follow up article on the story. One of the disputes involved another man, Alexander Sulakvelidze, opposing the seemingly pointless aim to genetically engineering phages, which Harlingten wanted to do. This possibly has something to do with the fact that genetically engineered products are protected by patents and can be regulated by intellectual property laws, whereas natural phages are not. This is what Harlingten is up to now. He is trying to apply phage therapy to multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis . And this is what Sulakvelidze is up to now, applying phage therapy to livestock.

Evergreen State College and the Rowland Institute at Harvard have pages about bacteriophage. Phage therapy may have some side effects, however. Some types of phage carry genes that can actually make bacteria pathogenic (briefly mentioned at end of page). This has been observed in E. Coli as a response to antibiotics.

Bacteriophage appears to be an alternative to antibiotics for fighting bacteria. An article (you have to pay to access it) in Discover Magazine by Peter Radetsky about bacteriophage was published in November, 1996. It was mentioned by a man named Caisey Harlingten in a Horizon documentary on the BBC, and seems to have been an important publication that set things into motion. What isn't mentioned in the transcript is that right at the end of the documentary, text appears that says the deal between the American company called Georgia Research, Inc. set up by Harlingten and the Eliava Institute fell apart.

Wired wrote a follow up article on the story. One of the disputes involved another man, Alexander Sulakvelidze, opposing the seemingly pointless aim to genetically engineering phages, which Harlingten wanted to do. This possibly has something to do with the fact that genetically engineered products are protected by patents and can be regulated by intellectual property laws, whereas natural phages are not. This is what Harlingten is up to now. He is trying to apply phage therapy to multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis . And this is what Sulakvelidze is up to now, applying phage therapy to livestock.

Evergreen State College and the Rowland Institute at Harvard have pages about bacteriophage. Phage therapy may have some side effects, however. Some types of phage carry genes that can actually make bacteria pathogenic (briefly mentioned at end of page). This has been observed in E. Coli as a response to antibiotics.

First of all, you must attend college. I would put my little brother in the "non-traditionally bright" category. Very smart kid who almost never got the challenges he needed in high school to really shine and ended up doing a year at comm. college and then dropping out, never (at least yet and it's been 6 years) to return. He drives a truck that picks up low-level hazardous waste now which I think is wasting his talent.

I would suggest that you look at some of the "non-traditional" colleges to help nurture your "non-traditional" intelligence. Schools like Evergreen State, Hampshire (caution, Flash), Antioch and Colorado College among others.

These schools tend to have very flexible curricula, lots of independent projects, small seminar-based classes and DIY major programs. I have friends who have attended all of these schools who I think are much happier and doing much better now (10 years after graduation) than they would have if they'd attended "better" schools with more straightforward lecture/lab/test curricula.

I don't think I would have done particularly well at these places, I like some flexibility but need a fair amount of structure in my learning. If you are the sort of person who just strikes off on your own trying to learn whatever interests you, this may be your best chance.

I just finished a PhD last week and my advice about grad school is that you cross that bridge when you come to it. Maybe it will be exactly what you need, maybe it will be a complete waste of 2-8 years (mine took 5 FWIW). Get yourself a broad, interesting, liberal arts degree first (with a focus on CS or biology or photography or whatever if you want).

My $.02

BFL

Curiously it should is mirrored at
Evergreen (a liberal arts collage in Olympia, WA) that Matt Groening attended as an undergrad.

Hence the street address for the Simpson's house -- Evergreen Terrace.

It looks like the place is slashdotted. Here's a mirror? copy I found on Google's image search.

Slowly but surely, it seems your hope is being fulfilled (though, sadly, probably not in the US for several years for guess which reason(s)...)

These little guys are entirely natural (ie. found in nature without any of mankind's fiddling) critters that kill specific bacteria. There's a particularly cool image of one at the top of this page (you can pretty clearly make out the shape of the thing; it looks like it was designed to latch-onto something and inject it!!)

Also, there's a definite link between the body's immune system(s) and cancer -- ie. a healthy immune system can keep (at least certain) cancers at bay; a relative who had to begin taking immunosuppressant drugs following his kidney transplant suddenly began developing these little cancers on his skin (mostly on his face, neck, and hands; whatever was exposed to light.) His doctor said this wasn't uncommon and calmly referred him to a plastic surgeon who carved about 15 of the little boogers off him the first year alone!

BTW, for those of you who have been living in a (different) fantasy world for the last 50 years, "Spy-vs-Spy" refers to the long running Mad Magazine cartoon about two competing spies whose attempts to eliminate each other (and each's counter-elimination actions, and counter-counter-elimination actions, etc.) escalate, well, madly.

I'd prefer that the books be transcribed now and maybe later we can add some foreign-language books once we figure out a standard that can satisfy the world. Besides, English (European languages, anyway) are the real languages of the Internet.

The definitive online resource for algorithms is NISTS's Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures. There is a list of algorithm resources, and you can also find some free e-books using The Assayer.

In print you should be looking for "Introduction to Algorithms, 2nd edition". It is the bible of the field. Other excellent candidates are "Data Structures and Algorithms" ( / in Java / in C).

Google will also tell you to look here, here and here.

The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, USA doesn't use a typical grading scheme. Instead of grades, you receive an "evaluation", which is a written summary of your accomplishments and how well you performed. It works very well, and for those slackers that think they can get away without grades, it's not as easy as you think. If you really aren't doing the work, you'll just lose credit and won't get anywhere. I went there for a while, and I think it's a really great system. They stress teamwork and cooperation. They have computer science-y stuff too! The Evergreen State College

From one critique, departments and courses are much too fragmented - far too many small pictures incoherently presented. It's worth keeping in mind that knowledge wasn't approached that way until the last century - scholars of the 18th century had a much broader vantage. Making colleges into trade schools isn't bad for some students, if you can be sure that the trades they learn will still be around, and the skills taught pertinent, in five or ten years. In my own experience, I've done fine in technology after not studying it at all, because I learned how to learn at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA - which structures everything without disciplinary boundaries. People who can work across and between disciplines are often more valuable than those who can merely work within them. We've got far more specialists than people who can meaningfully and profitably coordinate them. The dot.com bust wasn't because of a lack of technical talent, but because most of what passed for 'big picture' was too thinly conceived.

On the other hand, a lot of folk from Evergreen end up going up the street to Microsoft for employment - so the untraditional structure of the curriculum may have some small reflection in the muddled structure in the code from that shop. But I'd lay more of the blame at Harvard's Gates.

The Evergreen State College in Washington state has a program called Student Originated Software that attempts to address this problem. It is a Software Engineering class (well, its a full year program) that draws students from comp.sci., liberal arts, and natural science backgrounds and puts them in a fairly realistic SE atmosphere. They must solicite for projects, then design and implement them. The focus is on cooperation, organization and design, not Comp.Sci. fundamentals.

TESC