Domain: listverse.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to listverse.com.
Comments · 62
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zero-tolerance
He tells the Post that the interlock devices now available are zero-tolerance -- "if any amount of alcohol is present, they will lock you out".
10 Ridiculous Instances Of Zero Tolerance In Schools — 10 October 2015
In March 2013 at Park Elementary School in Maryland, an eight-year-old boy was suspended for
... biting his Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun.
...
In 2010, a 12-year-old girl named Alexa Gonzalez was arrested for doodling [a short] message on her desk in green marker. ... Alexa Gonzalez was placed in handcuffs and marched out of school by police in front of her classmates and the staff of Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills, New York.
...
In 2014, at Stuart Draft Elementary School, a fifth grader was told that she couldn't use ChapStick because it was considered a medication, and she would need a prescription. While most of us wouldn't see ChapStick in this light, the school district saw it differently.Now you don't always know the context behind these things, but there's clearly something wrong here. Bottom line is that this kind of thing is used to bully the population, and isn't that different in spirit from the Chinese Social Credit System.
One day, someone is going to eat a vanilla-extract flavoured pancake, and then his wife is going to give birth halfway to the hospital, because his car refused to start, and then it will be on Fox News for weeks and weeks, because of how the New Left is now horning in on their traditional territory.
'Secret' Nuclear Missile Launch Code During Cold War Was '00000000' — 5 December 2013
According to Blair, the White House ordered the codes be installed in 1962 despite objections from the U.S. Strategic Air Command, which worried the extra layer of security would delay launching missiles in the event of an emergency.
SAC was so concerned the car wouldn't start at the worst possible time, they effectively flipped the bird to the Commander-in-Chief behind his back.
"The locks had been installed," recalled Blair, "but everyone knew the combination."
Nothing like a zero-tolerance giggle (times eight) at Kennedy's expense behind his back.
Rule Makers, Rule Breakers (2018) by Michele Gelfand.
The military is the iconic example of tightness.
... "The military is like a machine built out of hierarchy," American marine Steve Colley told me in an interview in 2017. "And if you break the hierarchy, you're breaking the machine." ... "We have standards for things as seemingly insignificant as how we dress and as complicated as how to maintain the most advanced battle tank in the world," described James D. Pendry ... "Meeting seemingly insignificant standards is as important as meeting the most complicated ones—meeting one establishes the foundation for meeting the other."I get making a big deal out of the seemingly insignificant (even the Pop-Tart gun). But what goes under the name "zero tolerance" typically involves horrifically disproportionate responses, while all the people paid to be in charge wander around vacuously explaining that their hands are tied. Inevitably, some ridiculous outcome arises that is not a good look for the human species.
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Re:It will not be stolen if it is not needed"May" is not "Will"
A 62-year-old homeless woman from Calgary, Canada found a purse stuffed with over $10,000 in cash, and even though she was living at the local YWCA shelter at the time, she chose to turn it in. “It never crossed my mind to keep the money,” she said. “It’s not mine to keep.”
http://listverse.com/2013/09/0...
Some may, some may not. Not everyone is a thief, regardless of circumstances. Context generally has very little to do with a person's character at the other end of the spectrum. While I don't dispute that someone may steal to eat, having material goods seems to have very little effect in preventing crooks from being crooks. If that was the case, rich people wouldn't embezzle or commit fraud to become even richer.
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Re:5,000 casualties, not worth it ...
Bush didn't avoid dealing with Hussein because he wanted to avoid mission creep, he did it because BushCO and the Hussein family were buddies. And hey, what do you know, they were in bed with bin laden as well. Trump may be worse for the country, it's hard to say really, but Bush was clearly more evil. George pervert fucker bush may have been the worst human being ever to hold the office of the presidency, INCLUDING Trump.
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Your Utopia - My Hell
Every attempt to built a Utopia turns out to be a Hell.
These for example
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https://listverse.com/2016/05/... -
Re: "Scientists"
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Here are the "questionable practices"...
Here are the "questionable practices" Oswald McWeany refers to.
If that doesn't meet your definition of "savage," I shudder to think what does.
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Re:Just The Facts
The rewriting of history is strong with this one.
Your typical capitalist projection is noted.
The ills in Venezuela are NOT from direct US intervention or externally applied policies.
As is your gaslighting.
They clearly are from the implementation of socialism and government mismanagement of "the means of production" which always happens.
Mismanaged to the point their GDP tripped while lifting millions out of poverty. Like I said the first time.
So... The end state of socialism is communism. It's the logical destination.
Sounds like a communist saying it would be "logical" that as soon as you find capital investors for your landscaping business, you'll sexually harass your secretary, dump toxic waste in the river, defraud your investors, and order mob hits on your rivals. Of course, there probably has never been a communist that was that much of an idiot to suggest such "logic".
This form of government is responsible for a very large number of deaths and suppression of human rights world wide both in the past and in current events. You need to own that.
Riiiiiiight. Like you capitalists have owned up to slavery, genocide, and occupying other nations for over two centuries. Then there's the fact that all the socialist violence you'd like to whine was just a backlash to capitalist exploitation. You never would have had Castro without the brutal dictatorship of Batista. You never would have had the Soviet Union if it weren't for the Tsars.
Heads, socialism wins, tails, capitalism loses.
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Parliamentary gay paedophilia?
That was another big story from a few years back. They blocked investigation of the charges until the last documented parliament member with ties to the sex abuse had died, because MI5 had been using 'protection' for the ring of them to get favorable financing passed through parliament.
http://yournewswire.com/britis...
https://www.express.co.uk/news...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://listverse.com/2015/09/0...
https://www.pri.org/stories/20...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/1...You can read and decide for yourself.
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Re:Goverment System = Secure Stable Durable
has been stolen from Federal government systems three times now.
It's worth pointing out that the OPM breaches were on servers maintained by contractors and other breaches were from other companies that the government outsourced background checks to.
That's not worth pointing out at all. It's equivalent of Trump blaming crime on immigrants.
To counterpoint this ridiculous point: https://listverse.com/2016/01/... -
Re:Dystopian Sci-Fi
Bad example maybe? Doesn't seem to have happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There are many other examples...
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Re:Read the Weasel Words
Not to mention cost.
I live further up the west coast, and the probability of "the big one" we all fear is about 0.3% per year (which does not increase much as years go by without such an event happening; there's a whole chapter devoted to the Big Three statistical metaphors in Algorithms to Live By; fractal history approximates no history to a first order).
Furthermore, a big chunk of the "cost" that so worries you is bringing all of the damaged infrastructure into alignment with modern building code and building practice. Sure, it's an unplanned cash outlay (from the category of "unplanned" events that get incessant airplay), but a big chunk of that outlay amounts to capital investment, under duress though it may be.
One can even wonder whether a little creative destruction in the Bay area wouldn't help to ameliorate the Bay-area housing crisis.
Never waste a good crisis.
10 Good Things We Owe To The Black Death
The bottom line here is that ecologists have long recognized that humanities global footprint is a lot better with dense urbanization than without.
It does stack a lot of eggs into some fragile baskets (the damn things barely last a century or few), but this tends to go hand-in-hand—in the least brotherly sense—with an unimaginable concentration of wealth, much of it encoded in 1s and 0s, for which the building code is global redundancy, interconnected by such fat pipes that the restoration bandwidth required to salvage a large, badly shaken urban economy is on the order of a few Netflix-hours.
Methinks the lady has a soft spot for her disaster porn.
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Crap handwaiving
What anti-union company is not going to use general terminations to rid itself of organizers? I think Musk is a latter day Thomas Edison - that is not a compliment - but I don't think he's an idiot. Anyone in a non-union position can find out very quickly that companies have lots of ways to fire people.
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Re:Pretty intriguing plan
Charles Bronson is alive and well, and serving a life term in prison. You're thinking of Chuck Norris, for whom it's easy enough to charge $1 for phonecalls, he just picks up and shouts into a random inanimate object, and everyone who he decides needs to hear him gets the message.
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Re:We are still lacking the technology ...
"Riiiight. Launch a payload of intensely radioactive stuff with high environmental/biological mobility into space. What could possibly go wrong?"
RTGs are what we have already been using in space, for years, and plutonium-based. And yes, there have been launch accidents - and...nothing happened:
http://listverse.com/2012/01/2...The 14C battery being envisioned is a type of RTG that uses carbon-14 rather than plutonium, and whose output is electrons directly, not heat.
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Re:Really?
There is testimony from various cannibals about this:
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FTFY
"Trump nominated a ONE OF THE TOP NEUROSURGEONS IN THE WORLD AND A GUY WHO IS DAMN SIGHT SMARTER THAN I AM who thinks dietary supplements can cure cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis to be the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development." FTFY
A: He didn't nominate him for surgeon general
B: Remember Pellagra, Beriberi, Scurvy, Rickets etc? Probably not because no one in developed countries gets them because they are all easily cured by vitamins. Cancer and MS both potentially have features that behave similarly to a vitamin deficiency, but until we understand what chemical compound it is and how it works, it seems like trivializing deadly diseases, just like the diseases I mentioned above did to people who lived with those diseases before they were eliminated by vitamins.http://listverse.com/2012/03/1...
Also, the cure for cancer is at least in part based on the Hunza mountain people who live an average of 120 plus years and do not get cancer. Ever. Their tribe likely was the real life seed of truth behind the legend of Shangri-La an earthly paradise where people live forever. Why they don't get cancer is what everyone wants to know and the jury is still out, but you can't argue with their lifespans. The problem with cancer at least in part is it appears that the diet of your entire life plays a key role in when or if you will get it, so testing a potential vitamin cure is problematic at best.
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Re:Blame Redhat paranoia!
they didn't land on the moon either and the earth is really flat, here are a few sites for you to feed on, http://www.theflatearthsociety... http://listverse.com/2012/12/2...
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Re:My tax dude is more efficient than my doctor
Now I realize my tax guy farking up is much less serious than my doc farking up. Still, the crap doctors have to keep track of/order tests for/ just to avoid a lawsuit is mind boggling.
Next time someone in your family needs serious surgery, or has some life-threatening disease, you should just ask your tax guy to do it.
Because why should we have regulations on the medical industry? Why should there be malpractice insurance?
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Re: Hm...Leftist Bullshit
What land of Reality do you live in?
Certainly, not the one where the news story took place.
Certainly, not the one that I live in.America, early 21st century. You should try reading the news more often. Reality in America might shock you.
http://listverse.com/2013/08/30/10-disturbing-cases-of-police-impersonation/
The wonderful thing about American Liberals is that think that everywhere is just like America! How provincial. How bourgeois.
If you bothered to read my comment, I pointed out what would happen in the US. Short history lesson: most legal systems around the world are based on Roman law. Whatever can happen legally in the US, can also happen elsewhere in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_law
You suck Lefty.
I'm a moderate conservative.
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Re:She lived longer than most poor voters...
What exactly did Reagan do that previous administrations back to Truman's hadn't done?
Oh man. Where to start?
http://listverse.com/2015/01/1...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Reagan Administration stands as the only US administration that was ever convicted of crimes against humanity.
And that doesn't even count his domestic policies that hollowed out the middle class and started our slide into the economic inequality we have today. He dumped crack cocaine into the inner cities to fund illegal wars in Central America and turned the School of the Americas into a training center for hit squads that massacred innocent people, including Jesuit priests and nuns.
He was by far the president that did the most lasting damage to the United States of America.
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who said anything
about left/right????
I only mentioned "left" (not "right") because THEY are the ones currently pushing speech codes, complaining that any speech they dislike is "hate speech" that must be suppressed, showing up at speeches and rallies (by many different speakers of many different political stripes) to shout-down the speakers, hijack the microphones, etc.
As for it being "hypocritical" - well you seem to like to troll using that accusation but you seem not to know what the word means. I should not need to cite left wing suppression of speech when it's in the news on a nearly daily basis and is all over the web and is currently the subject of another active thread RIGHT HERE ON SLASHDOT. How about liberal rag Slate DEFENDING speech codes. Even the ACLU has had to recognize the plague of liberal speech suppression on the campus. Here's the left-leaning The Atlantic defending the suppression of free speech. It's happening in all the formerly Judeo-Christian nations as they become more secular and more left-wing as can be seen at The Telegraph
The following actual or publicly-thought-of-as right-of-center people have been attacked while speaking at public events by leftists wielding pies: William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, G. Gordon Liddy, Anita Bryant, Rupert Murdoch, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz. While pie attacks have been used by leftists against other leftists for not being left enough, I have never heard of a right-winger attacking a left-winger with a pie on stage in an attempt to shut-down the speech of the left-winger.
Of course there are also the incidents where people like Condoleezza Rice, first black female Sec of State was disinvited to speak. How about this: list of stuff leftists have banned from various colleges? Here is a Harvard Crimson editorial in favor of junking free speech in favor of "social justice". If you are so inept that you cannot ferret-out even a tiny bit of evidence from the publicly-available tidal wave of evidence that the left is responsible for most of the speech suppression these days then you are the last person who should be labeling other people as trolls - apparently simply because they disagree with you (Making yourself an example of the phenomena)
Please cite the most recent 5 examples of a US College or University event where a left-of-center speaker was shut down (speech blocked/microphone seized/Pies thrown/etc) by a bunch or college Republicans or TEA Partiers. Please cite any occasions in the past 20 years when any right-leaning group has demanded a left-leaning speaker be shut up (and please exclude those very few cases where such a plea was made as part of a call for balance AFTER left-wingers successfully block right-leaning speakers) on a university campus. The university USED to be the place where all speech was welcome. This is no longer the case
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Sorry this is a scam!
Everyone knows that the moon landing was a fake! This should be enough for all you doubters http://listverse.com/2012/12/2... Jesus Slashdot, post some real science for fuck sake Sad thing is the conspiracy theorists are alive and well
..... and breeding -
10 Times The Military Mistakenly Dropped Nucks
Hell any day now http://listverse.com/2014/11/0...
Each time it mentions the bombs detonated it was due to conventional explosives that exploding out of sequence tossing or only blowing the core into dust (the explosives must blow up at the same time imploding the Plutonium core).
This wasn't the article I was looking for as there are many more, When loading a nuclear missile into a sub it was dropped, these are listed in the "Family Almanac" Volume 1
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Re:Reality Clause
"In the binary alternative fork we sent up a nuclear powered satellite that failed
..."This has already happened on several occasions, including the scenario of a crappy Soviet nuclear satellite dropping out of orbit. We're all still here. In the RTG launch accidents, the RTGs stayed intact.
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Re:If he actually did all that...
"If you can't put what you want into your own body then you don't live in a free society and you're kidding yourself if you think you do. "
If narcotics were legal, usage rates would probably drop 90% overnight - back down to 1880s (or earlier) levels.
The reason narcotics are so pervasive (apart from Ronald Regan orchestrating the greatest cocaine smuggling outfit in history(*) whilst simultaneously pushing "the war on drugs"(**)) is that there are massive profit levels to be had and every time the legal system ups the risk, the profit to be had increases further - in other words the prime motivator is money.
(*) http://listverse.com/2015/01/1... - the #2 entry - and was part of the way the contra deals were funded.
(**) This dichotomy is what drove the rapid expansion of the USA's prison system in the 1980s and it's not really a coincidence that poor and black people are disproportionately affected - almost all the cocaine Regan's group brought into the USA was turned into crack and sold in poor areas.
If there wasn't money to be made, narco-gangs wouldn't exist, people wouldn't be selling crack to schoolkids and most importantly of all, there wouldn't be an incentive for people to tempt others into an addiction cycle (bear in mind that fewer than 5% of those who use heroin regularly ever get hooked with slightly higher stats for cocaine) in order to make money out of them.
If people aren't pulled into an addiction cycle for something that's hideously expensive, they won't end up restoring to crime in order to make money to buy their fix.
Silk Road exists because of the War on Drugs. There's a war alright - and the narcogangs have won it already. They prefer the status quo as it's more profitable.
Switzerland has shown the way and Colorado has shown it can work in the USA.
As for Ulbricht: Being caught redhanded chatting as "Dread Pirate Roberts" is a slamdunk. I'm surprised they didn't have a camera looking over his shoulder before he was apprehended.
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Re: Don't worry guys...
Simple proof is that no nation states that have a McDonalds have yet been to war with each other (and by that I mean a true war not supporting insurgents aka Ukraine).
Not true, there was the conflict between Russian and Georgia as well as the Israel and Lebanon conflict in 2006 all of whom had McDonalds at the time of fighting. Also in doing some digging it appears that there was the NATO bombing of Serbia (sure seems like war) that happened shortly after the book with that statement was published.
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Re:they will defeat themselves
The one thing Nazi's had, that ISIS doesn't is government.
I'm pretty sure the Nazis were also pretty big on science (and technology).
Let's not forget that the Nazis (as terrible as they and their methods were) did a lot of great things for their people. I don't see ISIS constructing a legendary countrywide road network, inventing cutting-edge technology, providing affordable transportation, etc ( http://listverse.com/2011/01/3... ). Considering the extremely (backwards) conservative religiously inspired path ISIS is on, it is hard to see how they would bring any benefits of significance to the table for the populace. Straight indoctrination, instilling terror and offering money looks to be their only way of getting people 'behind them'.
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Re:Gunpower
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if they float they are guiltyThe cyber laws in some countries seem to be inspired by fear of the unknown, reminds me of the Salem Witch Trials. The next test for guilt in "hackers" might be that they float
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Re:hmmm...
Unfortunately, it's happened enough that it's sadly hard to narrow down. Though if I had to guess, you were originally referring to this one.
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Re:Not all good
This begs the question: If a drug has no pain for indulgence, and you can turn off the effect almost immediately with a counter-acting dose... Does it matter if you're addicted to it? Do we have a problem with people using drugs of their own free will if those drugs have no negative impact on their lives?
It is that last line that is the problem... Addiction does have a negative impact. That is the defining characteristic. Some examples here... http://listverse.com/2010/11/07/top-10-cases-of-extreme-game-addiction/
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Re:THEFT of intellectual property
Nobody is saying that creators or publishers are deliberately destroying works; I agree that sounds insane.
I will say it as will the internet:
It happens all the time. Maybe you just deleted a smartphone movie that future generations might have wanted.
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We've got it so easy nowadays.
All I can think of is the size of exoskeleton life that used to exist on this planet (some of which when the oxygen levels were higher).
http://listverse.com/2013/01/14/10-prehistoric-bugs-that-could-seriously-mess-you-up/
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Re:And people wonder why we hate CEOs
If anyone wants proof of what is said above: Ten people that made millions for being terrible at their job
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Re:How safe do you think driving is?
http://listverse.com/2007/12/04/top-10-worst-engineering-disasters/
Thats just the 10 worst it proves my point so no engineering can truly be trusted..none -
Re:Aperture Science Was Real
Cave Johnson was a parody, and any parody has to have a basis in the thing it's making fun of. The Cold War was filled with junk science and grandiose, delusional "engineering" projects to try to one up stuff that we imagined the commies were up to (and vice versa). Cold War threat assessment by both sides essentially ran on games of telephone and urban legends, and by god we would not have a mine shaft gap!
Try these links on for size, this article surprised you:
Nuke the Moon: 5 Certifiably Insane Cold War Projects
10 Ridiculous Cold War Government Projects
10 Creative Military Plans to Use Animals as Weapons (half of which are Cold War era).Me? There's almost nothing you could say that the US or the Soviets experimented with during the Cold War or thought about doing that I would immediately disbelieve.
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Re:Aperture Science Was Real
Cave Johnson was a parody, and any parody has to have a basis in the thing it's making fun of. The Cold War was filled with junk science and grandiose, delusional "engineering" projects to try to one up stuff that we imagined the commies were up to (and vice versa). Cold War threat assessment by both sides essentially ran on games of telephone and urban legends, and by god we would not have a mine shaft gap!
Try these links on for size, this article surprised you:
Nuke the Moon: 5 Certifiably Insane Cold War Projects
10 Ridiculous Cold War Government Projects
10 Creative Military Plans to Use Animals as Weapons (half of which are Cold War era).Me? There's almost nothing you could say that the US or the Soviets experimented with during the Cold War or thought about doing that I would immediately disbelieve.
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Re:If you want peace prepare for war
http://listverse.com/2010/06/22/top-10-greatest-empires-in-history/
A point could be made for "most willfully ignorant", but that's about it.
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Or be a saint
Or be a saint, blessed with incorruptibility.
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Re:Karl Marx
When you're championing the rights of the individual, the question becomes -- which individual?
There's an old Soviet joke (the difference between Soviet Russia and fascist America is becoming less clear all the time):
A Chukchi returned home from the Communist Party Congress:
"I attended the Congress. They accepted the new program. They said: âEverything for man, everything for the benefit of Man!â(TM) And this Chukchi saw this Man with his own eyes. He was right there, in the Presidium."
Clearly we need people to champion the rights of individuals in order to resist the forces of government. The problem is, you probably shouldn't win that game.
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Re:Just socialise the damn thing already
I'm afraid you've got things a bit wrong.
It's also no small matter that the UK has the BBC. . . . The licensing fees you pay are amply repaid not just in terms of quality programming, but also unbiased programming.
BBC chief Mark Thompson admits 'Left-wing bias'
Mark Thompson: “There was massive left-wing bias at the BBC”That has been found more than once, by the way.
Lastly, the UK was bombed into near-nothingness. The US never has been. The closest we've come to having to reassess economically was the Great Depression. Because we never had to rebuild from scratch, we never learned the social lessons that an experience like that offers --
19 - Ruins of Charleston, 10 - Damaged Atlanta, 7 - Burned-out Richmond
Besieged, bombarded and blocked from commerce, Charleston suffered greatly in the war. Sidney Andrews, a Northern reporter in Charleston at war’s end described it as “a city of desolation, of vacant homes, of widowed women, of deserted warehouses, of weed wild gardens
... of miles of grass grown streets.” - - The Destruction of Charleston in the Civil WarRuins seen from the State Capitol - Columbia, SC, 1865
It's not socialism per-se that we're afraid of -- it's the idea that we aren't in control of our own fate. That we aren't individuals, but actually part of something more than ourselves, . . .
.Religion takes a back seat in Western Europe
The Europe Syndrome and the Challenge to American ExceptionalismFor us, socialism is a sign of weakness;
Soviet internationalist socialist "weakness" on parade
Chinese internationalist socialist "weakness" on parade
North Korean internationalist socialist "weakness" on parade
Polish internationalist socialist "weakness" on parade
Czeck internationalist socialist "weakness" on parade
German internationalist socialist "weakness" on parade (Same tailor as below?)
German Nationalist Socialist "weakness" on parade (Same tailor as above?)The Big Lies of the Soviet Union
I was recently re-reading John Gross’s marvelously entertaining Oxford Book of Parodies when I came across a 1938 passage from George Orwell that attempts to explain the strangeness of
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Re:You say it like it is a bad thing.
Worse still - this is a formula tailored to create lethal crowd-crush ("stampede") catastrophes, like the Baghdad Bridge Stampede which killed 953:
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Re:Heil
Well, he certainly had his fans.
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Re:If it evolves by replicating, it's life.
Of course we are just computers. Organic ones but still computers , and we are programming our peers every day . If we don't get programmed we end like this : http://listverse.com/2008/03/07/10-modern-cases-of-feral-children/
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Re:many people think this is madness
Amusingly, people said the exact same things about the lowland gorilla and the orangutan, back when they were cryptids.
There are quite a few cryptids that turned out to be real that established zoologists insisted were not real, just as you asserted about Orang Pendek.
The difference between a cryptid and a known species is that somebody managed to snag a living sample of the latter. Unless people actually look for those animals, that is very unlikely to happen.
As such, people who genuinely look for such animals to further scientific knowledge and to abolish ignorance are indeed scientists, if they follow the scientific method to do so.
Blandly asserting a negative without evidence is contrary to the scientific method, and therefor not science: In order to conduct science, one must be actively observing, and making testable hypotheses based on those observations; a bland assertion accomplishes neigther.
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Re:This just makes sense
Right, b/c nothing immoral has ever been done in the name of science. Of course, YOU didn't commit these acts and they should in no way impinge on any pursuit of science you personally approve of. But any religious person trying to distance themselves from the atrocious acts of other religious persons is obviously just a hypocrite.
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Re:pay more!
Here is what happens when engineers have bad days.
http://listverse.com/2007/12/04/top-10-worst-engineering-disasters/
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Interested parties
In most of those cases, it's a bunch of marketing nonsense. Yeah, Microsoft people were poo-pooing the ipod and the internet. It wasn't a bad prediction, though, it was just marketing. If you can't cash in, try hard to undermind confidence and interest in your competitors products... right up until you have something competetive to sell, then it's the next big thing, and you're the visionary bringing it to market...
Besides, it's a short, worthless article. Try this one instead;
http://listverse.com/2007/10/28/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/
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Re:Increased IT literacy???
Actually, I quite liked their seaweed burger
I have never heard of this one
... however, it would appear that we've each cited one of the top ten failed products from McDonald's, along with the GPs reference to McPizza. :-P -
raise the bar instead
Instead of raising fees to lower the application rate, how about raising the bar for patents to be genuinely useful, innovative and non-obvious.
So there are fewer of these:
http://listverse.com/2009/05/07/10-more-extremely-bizarre-and-pointless-patents/