Slashdot Mirror

True, but real horses or mules tend to react poorly to gunfire.

I'm glad nobody told these guys:

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/l...

The next time a southern state wants to secede from the union.... LET THEM!!!!!!!!

This is literally one of the most ignorant things I've read on slashdot in a good while. The fact it was moderated "insightful" makes it all the more frightful.

Unlike most southern states, Texas is an extremely wealthy state because of oil, gas, water ways, and ports (imports). Texas is also a "second California" when it comes to the technology sector. The fact is, Texas contributes its share of taxes and is a major contributor to the US economy. It is these very resources which causes so many problems for Texas politics. Realistically, the people are not than much different from the rest of the country - excluding California and New York. The problem stems from lobbyists having huge sway over Texas politicians. Its not so much the people but rather the special interests who have bought and paid for Texas politicians, which cause the majority of the screwiness in Texas politics.

Unlike most states, because there was once a Republic of Texas, Texas does maintain the right to legally secede. Having said that, Texas' talk of succession was nothing but lip service for political, albeit questionable gain. No one was serious about succession. There may have been a nut job here and there but by in large, most Texans laughed at the prospect.

Another interesting note which many don't know, Texas is actually MUCH smaller than it once was.

And another odd ball fact, Texas actually has fewer gun rights than most states. This is particularly interesting because when most think of Texas they think of oil wells, tumble weeds, desert, the wild west, and especially guns and gunslingers. Simple fact is, current Texas laws on the books are both state and federally unconstitutional with regards to gun rights. In fact, Texans have been actively working to re-obtain their gun rights which the state and federal constitutions are supposed to protect. So much for either Constitution protecting anything...

So, let me see if I've got this straight: A:
* fraudulent gov'nor of a
* fraudulent (unconstitutional) 'state' called NM
* fraudulently leasing out Republic of Texas' soil to Virgin (nasty! nasty!) Galactic tours?
FIND: http://republicoftexas.50megs.com/
AND OFFICIAL MAPS: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/republic-texas-map.htm
http://www.earlytexashistory.com/Tx1836/maprepub.html
RR

What do you expect when 'New Mexico' mostly carved out of sovereign Texas soil - is a myth?
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/pictures/texas-map-1846-1500.jpg
The so-called STATES of TEXAS and NEW MEXICO are (ill-)'legal' / unlawful fictions
in clear violation of the US constitution that, in LAW, cannot exist -
having been founded on a tissue of lies. It looks good and legit, but reeks!
RR

The real point here is that peer review is not the fine filter it is portrayed as being. The end result of the process might be science, but much of the workings along the way are sub-standard.

The people who wish to replace Wikipedia with a different system of "expert review" are just replacing one flawed group of people with another flawed group of people, only this new flawed group of people has manicured egos, and they have all made a pact with a social system which reasons "no need to point out every flaw in the papers I review, do I wish to draw the same scrutiny to my own papers while my tenure track remains uncertain?" So they all sit around pretending their shit doesn't smell, and hope that the rest of us fall for the ruse.

I detest the invisible nature of peer review. The person doing the review is not accountable and doesn't leave a written audit trail. How is that acceptable to Wikipedia, but the standards of its own community?

If a scientist's own work is discredited, does that discredit any papers he might have reviewed? Fat chance that review is repeated, those papers are already on the books. The only offense that gets formally repealed is plagiarism of one published paper by another published paper, because that is an offense of the record against itself. Failures of the review process itself never leads to formal repeal. Or do people here know otherwise?

It's not that I think the current process in Wikipedia works terribly well, but at least it has the potential to evolve into something we haven't tried yet, that could serve as a useful counterbalance to the multitudinous small offenses that overworked professors are almost obliged to pull off in the cut-throat academic world of publish or perish.

We only have to tear the page out of Freakanomics concerning his analysis of Sumo politics to see what happens when the inmates run the asylum.

America is no better. Witness NBA handling of the corrupt referee Robert Hoyzer. The only principled solution is to ban betting against the spread. A corrupt referee who changes the *outcome* of games will find himself subject to merciless scrutiny among the players themselves, who have a huge vested stake in that outcome. Gambling on the outcome of sporting events can't be manipulated half so easily as the spread. Any punter who bets on the outcome of a meaningless game at the end of a season deserves what he gets.

The kind of person who accepts betting against the spread as something that is adequately policed is the same kind of person likely to argue that the peer review system works well enough. I don't agree in either case.

On a tangent the size of Jupiter, I once asked myself the question, not in the spirit of sci-fi, but in the spirit of someone who might set out to write some sci-fi (which is not my cup of tea), that if we regard the hacking off of limbs in the American civil war as medically barbaric, what will appear barbaric about our generation to the generations of the future?

To be brutally honest, most people are not equiped to pose this question, much less answer it. If you've seen those end of the year lists, you know what I mean. To begin with, the answer is never the same. We don't need to invent the theory of pathogenesis twice. Nor is it as literal as replacing a D-saw with a fancy collection of salt shakers.

My suspicion is that 100 years from now, society will look back at the 20'th century and gasp over our practice of approving medications on the basis of population studies.

Not only will it be regarded as scientifically suspect, even barbaric in the exposure of the general population to poorly understood chemical agents, but also as a great industry of hucksterism. Take a therapeutic substance that achieves a large effect for a small number of individuals who need precisely that treatment, conduct a large population study with includes a small group of these people, th

Outing an active agent is an act of treason which, if I recall correctly, is still punishable by death in the US.
This so-called administration has broken, no--pulverized--their oaths of office

Those Itanium boxes must be huge!

Actually, Ballooon's were used in the U.S civil war decades earlier (first? I'm not sure) http://www.sonofthesouth.net/prod0191.htm

Not to mention trench warfare, machine guns, submarines, iron-hulled ships and "that damn Yankee rifle you load on Sunday and shoot all week"

Actually, hot air balloons were used as far back as the US civil war. (Sites include photos).