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I agree. Criminals already have to wear anklets to make sure they are home when they are supposed to be. But when they are allowed out (work/school) there is no way to verify that they are indeed at work or school.

FYI: Most states only currently incarcerated criminals can't vote, once they have served their sentence they are allowed to vote. Here's a more official source for PA. It makes sense that felons can vote; otherwise how would they be able to vote against the laws that put them there.

And another tidbit is that convicted felons are the only people that can have a gun, but don't have to register it.

No, no, that's "colitas", which the Eagles' road manager translated for them as meaning "little buds".
I'd rather have colitas than colitis!

In case, like me, you missed the final episode of "The Prisioner" a summary of the final episode and it's issues is available here: Prisioner final episode spoiler and issues

No, those were companies. US law didn't grant corporations the rights of people, until a scam hijacking a decision in 1886 gave a railroad monopoly the "equal protection under the law" inalienable from humans. My politics are that humans have rights, and corporations threaten them, without right. What are yours?

Just witness the famous "Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan--Red" to invade Canada...

>The lawsuit is actually about the fact that MGM have a little
> booklet image showing how you're missing information from
> the sides if you watch Pan 'n' Scan films. This is actually
> incorrect for most 1.85:1 films, as the 1.33:1 release isn't
> really a Pan 'n' Scan.

You bring up an excellent point.

There is a difference between

1. Taking a regular movie, chopping off its sides so it's full screen [please give me a shiny star sticker for using the proper "its/it's" in the above sentence], and then panning and scanning to get all the action. Then letter-boxing that pan-and-scan to make it look like a normal wide screen aspect ratio. In this case, the width of the resulting abomination would be less than the original release, but the same as a pan-and-scan release.

2. Taking a regular movie which is intended to be letterboxed when shown in the theater (as you described in your post). When that cut is shown on TV, it must be pan and scanned to eliminate the stuff above and below the letterbox frame. One then applies the letterbox putting it on DVD. The Straight Dope has more on this.

I assumed that's what they did #1 when I read the slashdot story. The notice.pdf file isn't completely clear on this.

"Why? A lot of comments here (and on some past articles) seem to say something similar. [...] "you probably won't be thrown in jail." [...] But what the hell is so great about it that it's worth the risk, no matter how remote you think it may be?"

You are right to ask these questions. The risk of going to jail is not negligable. As a matter of fact, it would seem that China has the second largest prison population per capita in the world! A shocking 100 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants.

Of course, if this bothers you, I can only urge you to stay far, far away from the country with the largest relative prison population (seven times as much).

But calculators are set up the same way as the numeric keypad and calculators existed before nearly all other keypads. I would imagine that touch tone phones started the trend of going the other way, but I don't know why. The straight dope has an article on it but it doesn't have much in the way of solid facts. I know that when I was using an adding machine heavilly I would have broke your fingers if you had changed the order of the keys (of course adding machines and calculators have a different order for hitting the +-=. whatever keys which still screws me up!).

Of course, if we all move to speaking some kind of ubermetalanguage, that implies that the languages spoken today would be lost. That would be a sad thing.

Language is a reflection of culture, and culture, to date, is a deeply regional thing. The standard example is that the Inuit people of Alaska and Canada have dozens of words for snow; while this seems to be not entirely accurate, the general point stands that different groups have richer or poorer ways of expressing concepts based on their collective experiences. This is both a reflection of and an amplification to regional cultural distinctions.

For an example I'm a bit more confident about, Russian has no word for fun. It's a concept that can more or less be expressed with a string of other words, just as "tsunami" can be expressed in English as a string of other words, but the term itself, and so the concept it represents, isn't directly represented by a Russian word. Funny, eh?

Language is full of these little oddities. One of the great things about English is the tendency to gladly pick up terms from other languages when we can't express something already -- cf. "tsunami". If everyone were to speak one doubleplusgooduberlanguage, then this ability to cross-pollinte will presumably go away. That would be doubleplusungood.

But I don't think we're in any danger of that. English may be becoming a "world language", sure, but look at all the regional variations: it can be a real stretch to assume that the Hindi inflected English in India, the Chinese inflected language in Hong Kong & Singapore, the hodgepodge of influences on dialects in the Caribbean, and the diverse variants spoken in the UK, USA, and Australia are really all the "same" language. In a lot of ways, these dialects of English are only growing farther apart, just as the French spoken in places like Haiti and Cote d'Ivorie are much different from the language in France, and the German spoken in Switzerland is much different from the Hochdeutsch in Germany.

You could argue that the Internet may bring all these streams of language closer together, but you could just as credibly argue that it will only serve to churn the already turbulent patterns that are driving languages apart.

Personally, my hunch is that while some kind of pidgin English may come to be widely understood around the world, the predominant trend is going to be increased, not decreased, diversity in global language patterns. And I see that as nothing but a good thing.

How did John Graham-Cumming get through High School with a name like that?

The proof that this is totally bogus is that even though I LOVE graham crackers, I nevertheless manage to masturbate 2-3 times a day (down from 5-6 times in my younger days).

SS's weakness has been known from the day it started - it's a Ponzi scheme paying current beneficiaries out of current receipts. It's only managed to muddle along so far because of repeated rate increases, extending the retirement age, and an increasing working population. Those trends are coming to an end. When I become elgible in 10-15 years, my generation will transition from being the biggest sources of revenues for SSI to the biggest drain. And we'll be calling in such wonderful investments such as the Zero Coupons the Feds sold the SS Trust back in the 90's. Zeroes are a little shell game that defers the expense of a bond until the bond comes due. So not only will there be more beneficiaries asking for payouts, they'll be calling in the zeroes that funded the deficits.

Roosevelt was able to pass SSI legislation because he knew damn well he wouldn't be around to clean up the mess he'd created. Most /. readers, however, will be around to witness what FDR wrought and it isn't going to be very pretty. Watch for terms like "Consensual Euthanasia" and "dead weight baby boomers" to start circulating. You'll see front page stories (even on the NYT if it's still around) extolling the Eskimo's way of death.

I really think it's funny that doctors who are mending bones, restoring vision and helping people to walk again are coming under attack by "religious" people who receive donations which are used to buy nice cars and mansions. Give CBN 10,000,000 and they'll buy some more planes and maybe feed 1,000 people in Africa while they shove Jesus down their throat. Give it to a doctor and he can really perform miracles.

"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

if X can be exempted, why can't Y be exempted if his reasons are quite similar?

By stating that X is exempted you are confirming the fact that X is an exception to the rule and this is exactly how that saying that the exception proves the rule came about. If you prove the existence of a case is an exception that implies that a rule contrary to that exception must be valid for all other cases.

"swastika's are a cultural exponent of a proven harmful ideology"

Sorry, but more people than just the Nazi's used swastikas

Native Americans, Hindus, Jainas, and Buddhists all used it too, so 1 out of 5 and it is banned, nice going, and that's just a quick search, I could probably find more groups of people who used it long before Hitler ever did and most of them have no "proven harmful ideology"

and people call Americans ignorant

Here here, very well put.

Sorry, but the repressed phrase-Nazi AC must point out the correct phrase is "hear, hear". Achtung, baby.

There are several stories/theories that are put out there, all claiming to be the right one.

For example, The Chicago Public Library tells us that it's because originally a sports league of four schools, the number four being "IV" in Roman numerals.

The straight dope, on the other hand, basically says it's the "Big Eight" (formerly "Big Three") who got together for sports competitions, and the "Ivy" in "Ivy League" refers to the Ivy growing on the walls. Wikipedia seems to agree with this, but has a much more detailed information on the league and the schools which form it, as well as other related information.

The story of 33

Coca-Cola decided instead to use a substitute

Are you talking about High Fructose Corn Syrup, by any chance?

or for a more balanced view than Coca-Cola's, there's always Cecil, plus a bunchload of other links

But it's making you think it; just like subliminal messages which are illegal.

You're correct that they're illegal (at least in the US), but the fact is that they don't work.

This seemingly innocent piece of greenery is actually quite insidious, even without the perchlorate. Just say no.

I honestly don't know, but I am curious.

Hmm, I guess it does. A bit of looking at the Straight Dope reveals:

Dear Cecil:

Is the earth getting heavier or lighter? After all, we've littered the cosmos with a lot of NASA stuff, which should shave off a few pounds, along with vapor escaping from the atmosphere. On the other hand, there's a lot more people and meteorites around than there was in 8011 BC. What do you think? --Edward M. Smith Jr., Los Angeles

Dear Edward: Puny humanoid, you think the pitiful efforts of mankind have appreciably altered the mass of the earth, reliably estimated at 6 sextillion, 588 quintillion tons? (And man, if you don't think it was a bitch getting that puppy on the scale...) If so, shed your illusions. It's believed the earth gains anywhere from several dozen to several hundred tons per day due to meteorites and meteoritic dust--10,000 to 100,000 tons a year. (Sorry, but estimates vary widely.) This far exceeds any losses. The weight of the people, incidentally, has increased the mass of the earth by zero, for the obvious reason that we are but dust, and unto dust we shall return. To put it another way, human cells are merely rearrangements of the compunds previously found (i.e., before dinner time) in plant cells and animal cells. Net change pound-wise, nada.

Technically, probably. But realistically, not really. Like Cecil says, he was just a pampered rich kid who took advantage. It wasn't AWOL so much as his immediate superiors not caring if he did things that were technically against the rules. AWOL implies a situation that wasn't present here, he didn't desert. It seems like his immediate superiors said "sure, go" but his paperwork was denied and no one on either base really cared because they already told him to go.

Think of all the small penises (peni?) there will now be...

Penes.

For this case, this guy should get 5 years or so of probation with 1,000 hours or so of community service and a nice big fine of $5,000-$10,000. If this punishment doesn't send a message to others, _then_ you start to up the anti by adding 6 months to 1 year jail time. You don't start out with such harsh punishments.

Whatever happened to the US government working for the people? To me a better solution than all this jail time for "criminals" would be to at least try rehabilitation programs first. Shouldn't our government want healthy and happy citizens? You don't keep happy, healthy and productive citizens by having the largest documented prison population in the world.

From this comment and those above (especially the one who was asked when they were coming in the next day when they had been given a fligh the next morning), it sounds like Google HR is heavy on the "stress interview" -- an idea of giving questions that are deliberately designed to rattle people to see how they respond.

As The Straight Dope explains, this tactic isn't all it's cracked up to be.

During the Cold War there was a lot of Civil Defense-related research for their crisis relocation program that came to the conclusion that it was impossible to fully evacuate any of the major American cities. The infrastructure does not exist to accomplish an evacuation in time. I don't think things have changed enough since the end of the Cold War for the situation to be any different today.

Link to a discussion on evacuating NYC in the event of a mega-tsunami: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php ?t=293790/

The old testament was written long before he was alive.

The account you've given doesn't fit with any 'modern day' accounts of when the bible was written and who buy.

For a start you've got all those books written by moses, now I just googled 'who wrote the bible',skipped the book on Amozon and ...

"The traditional explanation is that the Five Books of Moses were written by Moses himself. There are several variants of this explanation:

Traditional Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity believe that the text was dictated by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, letter for letter (or pretty much letter for letter).
Other religious groups still ascribe authorship to Moses, but use words like "divinely inspired" rather than "dictated letter for letter."
Still others say Moses was the sole author, but there's nothing "divine" about it except in the sense that all great works of literature and poetry are "inspired."

Mosaic authorship would mean the five books were written around 1280 to 1250 BC, the most commonly accepted range of dates for the exodus from Egypt, give or take 30 years.

It has long been recognised that there were a few problems with the traditional view of Moses as author. The text reports the death of Moses--how could Moses have written of his own death? It also describes Moses as "the most humble man who ever lived"--how could Moses write that about himself? But these are minor issues. Some say Moses' successor Joshua wrote the few lines that describe the death of Moses; others say that Moses himself was commanded to write that text before it happened. None of this represents a serious challenge to Mosaic authorship."

So, the first 1/4 of you account is generally believed to be wrong, just like the earth isn't flat.

Also, three generations would have been 50-60 years, your 15-30 years is about as close to the line for writing the bible as anything I've seen. Some people even believe that the bible was written by people who knew Jesus, though that's been mostly dismissed.

The letters of John had next to nothing to do with Jesus, Mathew is generally believed to be a christian persecuted for allegedly burning down some Roman city and a lot of the bible is a re-hash of Mathew(though some think that it's a re-hash of mark)

So you've got a book of Chinese whispers, editing and personal opinion, so much so that I would be amazed to find that more than 10% of it was anything like factual, why do so many of the books more or less agree on many of the topics, well they just copied one another.

How can he like Newton so much when Newton was so mean and bitchy?

Hey, you'd be bitchy too if you were a virgin at 84

Merely a snapshot of the continually-evolving Jargon File.

The Big Book of [Urban Ledgends|Hoaxes|Vice|Loosers|Conspiracy| etc.]

Again, more up-to-date stuff can be found at Snopes, The Straight Dope, The Urban Legends Research Centre, Hoaxkill, The Museum of Hoaxes, &c.

Nothing wrong with dead-tree books, of course, but nice to know of alternatives.

Serious reply to a funny: did you know that Brontosaurus never actually existed?

It really messes with my childhood. Sigh.

Twenty years ago, it was conceivable that the USSR would roll into Canada and attack the United States, or would start raining hellfire on the country as a whole.

Don't make us force our way into yours if you refused to let us protect you. We can reinitiate Canada invasion plan anytime we see fit.


For the humor impaired, it's supposed to be a joke.

Snopes sez: Shiny side in !!!

troon is absolutely right - this thing is a bug flying across the field of view, illuminated by a flash.

There is a certain class of crackpot who thinks that out of focus pictures of insects flying across a photoframe are evidence of some strange unknown creature.

Fortunately, we can visit their websites and laugh at them. Unfortunately, they can now point at the Astronomy Picture of the Day and say "See! NASA found more evidence for rods!"

Link to roswellrods.com - don't forget your tin foil hat, and your annoying-flash-website spelunking equipment.

Link to an actual sane person describing the phenomenon

More discussion

troon is absolutely right - this thing is a bug flying across the field of view, illuminated by a flash.

There is a certain class of crackpot who thinks that out of focus pictures of insects flying across a photoframe are evidence of some strange unknown creature.

Fortunately, we can visit their websites and laugh at them. Unfortunately, they can now point at the Astronomy Picture of the Day and say "See! NASA found more evidence for rods!"

Link to roswellrods.com - don't forget your tin foil hat, and your annoying-flash-website spelunking equipment.

Link to an actual sane person describing the phenomenon

More discussion

uh - no, that's Rice-a-Roni isn't it?

I forgot rice doesn't explode. Sorry.

A Faraday (one r) cage needs to be grounded or it won't work. A tin foil is sufficiently 'cage-like' (when it comes to passports), but it isn't grounded.

Huh? Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to my 4.5 years of EE, Faraday cages work on the principal of Gauss' Law. That is, no EM field can be present inside because there is no charge inside. Wikipedia seems to agree with me.

So where does all this discussion of grounding come in? Googling for Faraday cage brings up this detailed article about building one, but it doesn't mention grounding either.

This page mentions grounding, but only in relations to the instruments, not the table. And this humorous article says grounding is only required if you have to have edges on your cage (we could design passport books so the edges are metal contacts).

I'd be more concerned with whether tin foil is a sufficient conductor for the higher frequencies.

Dear Straight Dope:

What's the truth about the origin of the term "American Indian"? Schoolchildren have long been taught that Columbus thought he had reached the Indies, and therefore called the inhabitants "Indians." But lately I've been hearing the story that: (a) The Indies weren't even called the Indies at the time, but Hindustan; (b) Columbus didn't call the locals "Indians" but referred to them as "una geste in Dios", meaning "a people in God"; (c) somehow this caused people in Spain to start using the term "Indians"; and (d) Europeans then started using the geographical term "Indies" through back-formation. This explanation sounds like wishful thinking to me, with (c) and (d) particularly hard to swallow. Yet I've seen this stated as fact on some Indian Web sites, and it's doubtless being taught as fact in some schoolrooms. Is it possible to find the truth in this matter? --Steven Doyle, Atlanta, Georgia

SDSTAFF George replies:

The best way to determine the truth in cases like this, Steve, is to go to the source--in this case, Columbus's original letter, through which word of the new lands and their inhabitants was disseminated throughout Europe (see links below). In this letter Columbus repeatedly refers to India and Indians, and says nothing whatever about "a people in God."

First, let's get the supposed phrase right. The Spanish word for people is gente, not geste. Note that the supposed derivation requires Columbus to have made an error in spelling, since "in" in Spanish is en; the word in doesn't exist in the language. I'll have more to say on this point later.

Second, let's dispose of the notion that India was called something else at the time. The name, derived from the Indus River (from Sanskrit sindhu, "a river"), goes back to antiquity. Alexander the Great referred to the Indus (Indos), and to the region's inhabitants as Indikoi, as early as the third century B.C. The name passed from Greek into Latin and thence into other European languages, the earliest citation in English being in 893 A.D. by King Alfred the Great. At the time of Columbus's voyage, "India" or "the Indias/Indies" was often used to refer to all of south and east Asia. Columbus carried with him a passport from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, written in Latin and dispatching him "toward the regions of India" (ab partes Indie) on their behalf. Martin Beheim's globe of 1492, which predated the voyage, clearly labels the region as "Indie." "Hindustan," also derived from the Indus River, is a much later term, not appearing in English until 1665. In any case, in Spanish that name is not Hindustan but Indostan.

Third, let's look at what Columbus actually said. The admiral wrote a letter, in Spanish, detailing his discoveries while off the Azores during his homeward voyage. He forwarded this to the royal court, then at Barcelona, shortly after his storm-driven arrival in Lisbon on March 4, 1493. The original manuscript has not survived, but a printed copy made shortly after its receipt has. In the first paragraph Columbus says "In 33 days I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies" (en 33 días pasé de las islas de Canaria a las Indias). His first reference to the inhabitants comes in the second paragraph: "To the first [island] which I found I gave the name San Salvador . . . the Indians call it Guanahaní" (A la primera que yo hallé puse nombre San Salvador . . . los Indios la llaman Guanahaní). In all he makes six references to India or the Indies, and four to Indios. Nowhere in the letter does he use a phrase resembling una gente in Dios. He says little of the spiritual beliefs of

I call B.S. Columbus never wrote that.

Or if it equals 3.2, 4 or 3.23, you might be in Indiana.

Terrace's work was a major blow to talking-ape proponents. But their case started looking stronger in 1990, when researcher Emily Sue Savage-Rumbaugh of Georgia State University presented evidence of language development in a bonobo chimp named Kanzi. One of the more telling complaints made about gorillas like Koko who communicated via sign language was that they often babbled, producing long, apparently meaningless strings of signs. Their handlers would then pluck a few lucky hits from the noise and declare that communication had occurred. Savage-Rumbaugh got around this problem by teaching Kanzi to point to printed symbols on a keyboard, a less ambiguous approach. She claimed that the ape demonstrated a rough grasp of grammar using this system. What's more, when presented with 653 sentences making requests using novel word combinations, Kanzi responded correctly 72 percent of the time--supposedly comparable to what a human child can do at two and a half years old. (Emphasis mine)

Primate sign language is not as advanced as we're lead to believe... they often "babble" and the handlers pick and chose words that fit the interpretation they are trying to deliver... and ignore the nonsense words. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030328.html/ Mentions some of this. I've talked to some deaf people who have met Koko and tried to communicate and unless you're engaged in some serious wishful thinking it does NOT use sign language in any sense more than a parrot uses english when it says "Polly wants a cracker." So yes it uses a Pavlov response and knows that certain gestures will get it certain things, much as a dog can be taught to sit, roll over and beg. It's hardly language. I like the "nipple is a rhyme for people" bit in that straight dope account of Koko's internet chat adventure. :-)

-Don.

I'm gonna call bullshit on this one, and point to a couple sources to back me up, unlike the parent. Prescott Bush did not have any direct affiliation with the Nazi Party, nor was he a known supporter thereof. He was neither tried nor convicted, although a single share of stock that he held in the UBC was seized by the government. He was even reimbursed the value of his stock by the government following the seizure.
See http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030214.html
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush for verification of my counterclaim.

Obviously you don't know how much waste is generated each year. According to Regan, it can all fit under his desk:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_229.html

I mean, its one thing to accidentally expose a person to a disease that they had not been exposed to, but completely another to do it intentionally.

On July 16, 1763 General Amherst wrote in a letter to Colonel Bouquet;

"You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race."

There are several other confirmed examples as well. Have a look at The Staight Dope for more about this one. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_066.html

Actually, metric time was introduced in 1793.

Ahem. United states has almost six times the proportion of people in prison as China. Now, it is possible that China is simply not reporting many of the imprisoned people, or that the simply use alternative methods which we may find less savory than imprisonment, but...

"2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2" is sometimes called "Fermat's next-to-last theorem" and is said to be the occasion for a duel with sabers between Tycho Brahe and Manderup Parsbjerg in 1566.

You can read about the grisly outcome here as part of the discussion "Did Tycho Brahe really have a silver nose?".

be enlightened. There is no standard for when summer or winter starts, even in common parlance. And a number of other factors (latitude and longitude, culture, meteorological best practice ...) muddy the waters even more.

Guess it depends what you mean by zero pollution. Bio fuels have almost none of the sulpher in the fossil fuels, and close the carbon cycle. That's good enough for me.

The only problem up until now has been finding a cost-effective solution.

Changing World Technologies offers one such solution.

What I did learn is HOW to drink though. If they are adding all this sugar and caffeine to beer, its time to buy stock in Tylenol..

Bad idea if you like your liver. Straight Dope and LSU Alcohol Research Center links for some background... A main contributing factor to hangovers is dehydration, so try loading up on water or gatorade or the like. Or eating something first.