It's long been known that a diet rich in nutrients but poor in calories extendeds the life of living organisms. "Calorie restriction (CR) has extended the 39-month maximum life span of mice to an impressive 56 months, which would correspond proportionally to a 158 year-old human. " - http://www.pbs.org/stealingtime/living/calories.ht m.
Just taking a pill will never be enough to extend lifespan in lifeforms more complex than a fruitfly. If you're really interested in life extension, check out http://www.walford.com/, with sample meal plans in the "Anti-Aging program", or this report on superhealth.
There is no such thing as a "mandate of the people". Such a thing is something made up by the victor in order to assuage the people they are about (or in this case, continue) to rob blind.
So some nimrod-judge doesn't like something an American Corporation with a french subsidiary is doing. All he has to do is threaten Yahoo! with "sanctions" to exert some control, trappings of law be damned. If Yahoo! has buddies in the US Government, they can threaten back. It's all about fear. Replace every occurance of "judge" with "terrorist bureaucrat" and you'll understand what the french dude is trying to do.
Contrary to popular opinion, the law means what the law says. If the law doesn't have the right combination of words to support your view, you can't go around stretching the meaning of those words.
People will continue to be affected by "Repetitive Stress Injuries". Get a copy of Pain Free at Your PC to find out why RSI's strike some people & leave others unaffected. Muscles work in pairs, and if you're just exercising one of two muscles, of course there's going to be some pain when other muscles have to cover for the one that's atrophied away. Ergonomic solutions can only make things worse, placing less of a demand on more muscles, forcing them to atrophy away... (I should know - I have a very expensive Datahand keyboard sitting unused next to me on my desk. It didn't help. Right now i'm typing on a Keytronic Wireless keyboard, with only a small amount of trouble.) Correct your posture - it'll do wonders for your ability to type.
But, if a comittee of unrelated physicians disagrees or supports your results
But all physicians are related - they've all been through medical school, they've all been through the state-sponsored "health" monopoly gateway program ("licensing" exams), and they're (almost) universally whipping boys of drug company. Most doctors don't care about dealing with what causes health problems, they only deal with symptoms. An example: I've been troubled by an RSI for quite some time (almost a year now). A month ago I went to the student health center to get a referal to a chiropractor (as recommended by various parties on slashdot). The guy basically said "haha, what do you know? A chiropractor can't help you. Here's some drugs, if they don't work we'll send you to the surgeon". I didn't want to be dependant on drugs, so I bought a copy of Pain Free at Your PC, and am now able to type without as much of a problem. (I believe that I should be doing the exercises in the book more often to be completely pain-free...)
How would a comittee of physicians deal with something like a report on how to achieve superhealth? Sure, some might be open minded, but most would turn off their critical thinking skills after reading the fourth line: "Consider the possibility that people in general, and the "medical profession" in particular, do not understand very much about the etiology (causation) of heart disease." When your comittee of physicians disagrees with information, it's defacto censorship. People searching out information to "become their own doctor" will look at a report such as the one above, but then think "well, the WHO said it's mostly bullshit, time to move on". The next site they go to will probably be by some "authority", such as the mayo clinic's site or the AMA's site. And their money stays in the hands of the state-sponsored health monopoly. In short, most doctors just don't have a clue.
Not all physicians are closed minded though... If you can find one who really cares about making his patients truly health, you're in luck.
I can't find the links supporting this, but I believe computer professionsals suffer more back pain than professional movers.
Of course computer professionals are going to suffer more back pain than professional movers - if you spend all day moving couches & heavy stuff, you're giving most of the muscles in your body a good workout. If, on the other hand, you spend your entire day doing next to nothing physically (relatively), using a little force in the same direction over and over again, what do you think is going to happen to most of the muscles in your body? One word: atrophy. At least, that's what happens according to the author of Pain Free At Your PC (http://www.bn.com has it too, just can't get that link to work correctly). To quote from the first chapter: "The true source of chronic musculoskeletal pain is rarely the site of the pain. . . . If your wrist hurts while you are pointing and clicking a mouse, the pain probably has nothing to do with the device." The book has four programs of simple exercises (maintenance or light, moderate and power users) specifically designed to work the muscles we're neglecting.
I bought this book right after my doctor perscribed me drugs, and said if they didn't work we'd go for surgery. I don't believe in conventional medicine (aside from when they function as body mechanics), so I bought this book when I saw it at the local food co-op in the hopes that it would have some information dealing with what was causing my "repetitive stress injury". I had actually gone to the doctor to get a referral to a chiropractor, 'cause slashdotters have said they can help. Of course, doctors prefer drugs & surgery to dealing with root causes (what was I thinking?). I haven't been very diligent about doing the exercises, but after reading it I corrected my posture, and my back was damn sore for the next few days. If you suffer from pain while using a computer, Buy This Book. I wish I had found it before purchasing a Datahand keyboard... probably would've saved myself a bathtub of cash.
You know those ergonomic chairs that don't have a back? The one several of you with back problems have tried, but can't sit in for any length of time? The muscles in your body have probably decayed because of poor work habits.. Before you go out and spend $1000 on a chair or keyboard, please spend $10 on this book, and give the e-cises a try.
It doesn't matter whether or not a Public Servant's Questionaire is authorized by law. On the contrary, is there a specific law which denies the free-man the ability to know that someone who has claimed a status of privledge over another is qualified to make that claim? Say you and I were walking down the same street. I turn to you and say, "Hello, John Q. Policeman. I suspect you of breaking law X. Show me your ID." I don't have the qualifications to require you to show me your state-issued ID. Do you know this? (Do you care?) How are you supposed to find out whether or not I'm not a bonified public servant?
Remember, anyone can ask questions. You can volunteer answers, but few are the individuals who can require you to answer. Demand your rights from the beginning, don't wait until they've already been violated to beg for redress.
I give it another 100 years tops. Before you see armed revolt. *sigh*.
Before this armed revolt occurs, people who act in the name of government will likely succeed in passing laws requiring registration of all weapons. G-men will see said revolt coming, and institute confiscation programs, reducing the probability of a successful armed uprising. Instead of your armed revolt ending government as you know it, I think it is more likely that people will continue to find "government" less and less relevant in their day-to-day lives, and continue to remove them from their lives. "Building Freedom" would be one term for this gradual extraction of one's self from the influence of terrorist bureaucrats.
If anyone with a badge knocks on your door give there are only two things you should tell them.
Two things? You don't have to (and shouldn't) tell them anything. You do have the right to remain silent, correct? Why should they get to know your name? So they can have it down on public record that YOU were arrested? How would they do that if they don't have your name? It seems to me that you have the RIGHT (but only if you know how to demand it) to be taken before a magistrate (judge) for a Probable Cause Hearing before they can throw you in jail. If some clowns were knocking on my door acting as if they held a position of privledge over me, I'd make damn sure they actually had special powers like they were hoping you'd assume. See my post here about why (in a simplified kind of way) you should never answer a question by a Public Servant with anything other than a question.
And someone comes up to you with what appears to be a valid warrant. What are you supposed to do? Okay, so you call your supporvisor - what's he supposed to do? "Uhm, well, we support our student's right to privacy. We're not going to let you in." Right. It's what happens when you live in a campus environment, where lots of people have the key to your room.
.. but when people with badges are asking you questions, your only respose should be to reply with a question or to not reply at all. This is especially true in traffic cases, as the first thing the cop will try to do is get a confession out of you - "Do you know how fast you were going?" If you say something like, "I think I was going 75 or 80", even though his radar gun said 83, he can write you down for 80 and get it to stand in court (radar tickets can be easy to beat) because that's what you said. So you've answered the Public Servant's question (who you don't even really know is a public servant, he could be an imposter - just 'cause his car has a light bar in no way means that he's valid) with the very best of intentions, hopefully making him so pleased with your obedience to his will that he'll let you off. It's never worked for me. In this case, they were out to hang, details didn't matter, they were going to take your computers, no matter what you said. The side of the road is not a courtroom, and people shouldn't treat it as such.
Government organizations which are now part of social security no longer have the option of recinding their contract with the federal government. This was done when (while?) the State of California (specifically NOT the geographical region described by "California") was considering pulling out.
Ok, so the creator of the MP3 format is from Germany, and one of the major Linux distributions (S.U.S.E.) is published by a German-based company.. Before the world wars (Specifically, WWII), Germany was a scientific mecca... Who can share information about other recent great innovations and breakthroughs by German companies, specifically in the computer industry?
This person had probably never before had a problem with driving & talking on the cell phone either. Then one day she misses a red light, and a little MR2 comes out of nowhere and causes a little damage. You never expect to get into accidents, they just kinda happen.
It's not that the person who's memorized history facts only has half a loaf, but rather that their loaf of bread is only half baked. We all know how well half-baked technological items work, such as Pentium chips and Space Shuttles... I can see similar fuckups happening with the person who believes the incorrect/incomplete/inaccurate version of history applying his half-baked head to some important nation-wide social issue.
But there are things worth watching. One of our board
members and partners is Discovery Communications. They've
got a vast amount of educational programming that most
people don't see because they're not home when it airs.
Why is it that people think they're actually learning while they're watching "educational" television programs? My roommate last year was addicted to his TV - watched the learning channel, history channel, cartoons, etc, constantly. He (basically) said that he was smart (scored a 5 on the AP US History test) because of that Wonderful invention called Television. In my opinion he just memorized a bunch of facts about history. Television is a passive input device, it provides little stimulation to build neural connections in your head. (There was a study where one group of rats lived in a super-stimulating environment, with wheels & other play structures, and another group got to watch the rats living in the stimulating environment from their barren cell. You get to guess which group had the same lifespan as the control group living in an entirely separate barren cell.) If people really are watching 30% more television with a Tivo like the article says (30%?? - short attention span, too many cartoons when I was young maybe), I cringe when I think of the social problems we'll be facing five years from now.
For example, look at this picture of my Toyota MR2 after I t-boned this Chevy Blazer running a red light. My car was fixed, the tow truck driver just laughed at me when I asked if he thought the Blazer was totaled. I'm 90% certain that the Blazer's driver was on her cell phone when she ran through the red light (which had changed, allowed the cars stopped at the light ahead of me to go through and stayed green for me... I thought I'd gotten lucky & hit the green). Of course, maybe this article explains everything - His team also has evidence from rats that exposure to microwaves unleashes corticotropin releasing factor, a stress hormone, and disrupts the ebb and flow in the brain of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter involved in memory and alertness, among other things. "Yeah honey, I'm on my way home.. You know that chicken in the freezer? Yeah that one. If you put it in the oven at 450 degrees we'd be able to eat a lot sooner. Oopps, that light is red, maybe I'm supposed to stop. Alright, forget the chicken, I'm hanging upside down in my car, please come pick up my stuff at the intersection, I'll see you at the hospital later..."
The people who control the nation states may fight off their obsolescence with their guns and bombs, but that doesn't make their system any less obsolete.
Get real. Don't believe me? Don't pay your taxes for a few years and you'll find out first hand.
True, the IRS & US Government have done a wonderful job of social engineering - Pay Your Taxes or The Big Bad G-Men Will Break Down Your Door & Haul You Off to Jail. Why do you think that the number of audits on lower-income (~$20,000/year) households have risen in recent years? If you're a parasitic organism living off the hard labor of your host, you gotta keep your citizens scared. But what if 500,000 people stopped paying their taxes? 1 million? 10 million? How many people could the IRS go after to keep its campaign of fear going?
Michael Faraday ("whose theory of electromagnetic fields and lines of force largely inspired Einstien`s quest for relativity") couldn`t understand the mathmatics behind his theories... Faradyay`s law developed with him picturing them almost like rubber bands. His notebooks and diaries were filled with unstructured streams of thought. It was James Clark Maxwell who later set them into math. Faraday tried to follow Clark`s work, but latter wrote Maxwell asking him to trasnslate his hieroglyphics into a common language he could understand.
Many geniuses often just have an intuitive understanding for their unique insights, and need someone else`s help to put their ideas down into Mathematical language for immortality. Faraday had his rubber bands, Einstein had his bicycle, flashlight and ray of light. Genius is not so much being able to write stuff down in mathematical code, but having unique insights into problems that have stumped others for centuries. Einsteins insights came through his "deep thought" experiments, a sort of cosmic voyage in his mind. There are seven different intelligences, Math is just one of them...
I will vote when I don't feel that I'm choosing between the lesser of two evils. Let my voter apathy be my vote. None of the above.
Abstaining does nothing except reinforce the system that you seem to hate. The DMCA and similiar laws don't pass because too many people
vote. They pass because not enough voters make themselves heard on the issue. Vote for Ralph Nader (or write in John McCain) if you want
to vote against corporate influence in politics.
Voting does nothing except give legitimacy to a system that no longer works, and whose replacement is long overdue (I`m talking about that sacred cow Democracy here). The DMCA and similar laws don`t pass because too few people cast their opinion in the popularity contests. They pass because politicians` roll is too general - no politician has time to become an expert on all issues, thus "experts" (lobbyists) get to write laws to present to legislatures as an expert`s solution to the problem at hand. Don`t vote if you want to vote against corporate influence in politics. Support an alternative form of "government", such as Demarchy, a system where a group of citizens are chosen at random to examine an issue and come to an ideal solution.
oh shit, just killed slashdot's sacred cow.. where's the flamesuit when you need it?
What I propose is a better system is an elected technocracy - what would separate politicians from me and you is that they have studied the causes, effects and solutions to various problems affecting society. These "Philosopher Kings" would know that "#1 most important thing" for managers to know. What to do.
What you are proposing would end up as an Oligarchy. Power would eventually end up in the hands of just a few people, and they would make sure that it stayed that way. You might want to look into the democratic alternative of Demarchy, "a political system without the state or bureaucracies, and based instead on randomly selected groups of decision makers."
james
"Elections serve to legitimize the system of rule by the state. Because people believe they have participated in choosing their rulers, they are much more willing to accept the system of rule itself. In fact, one explanation for the introduction of elections in the Soviet Union was to provide legitimacy to a failing system."
...if everyone voted, and actually cared about the results? Yeah, everyone votes in Australia, but I'm sure many people only go to the polls because they're forced to, and don't really care much one way or the other who gets into office. But imagine for a moment, if you will, what would happen (in america) if the number of voters got up into the 90%+ range, and you had two or three different parties with widely divergent views (unlike today's Republicrat party). 45% of people vote for the conservative party, 53% vote for the socialist party, and 2% vote for a third party. So the socialists get into power (just a hypothetical situation, no flaming please!) and start to implement their agenda. Socialist voters are happy. Conservative voters are pissed off about how the socialists are taking money out of their pocket and giving it to the bum on the corner. If the socialists were elected with only a 30% voter turnout (as is currently the case), conservative voters could just figure that "we should work more next time on bringing out the vote, get more people to support our cause... If only everyone would vote!" But what if everyone did vote? Then you'd have people thinking, "well, I've done what I can with my vote, and it obviously didn't work. Time to go break stuff," and I think there would be lots of civil unrest - protests, riots and the whole nine yards... Things are relatively peaceful when only a fraction of the populace tries to get their way, but what about when everyone tries to enforce their opinion?
I know this goes against the prevailing "We'd have Nirvana if only everyone voted" attitude on/., but everyone who thinks Democracy is the final solution in the quest for "better government" needs some sense (and a dose of reality) knocked into them. Everyone points to ancient Greece as an example of when democracy worked, but their experiment didn't last very long. There are alternatives to the Holy Democratic Society, Demarchy being one of them. So, in reply to your post, having most people vote through online voting is just like asking for some serious social unrest.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed" -Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
I believe that this second quote can be attributed to Thomas Jefferson as well - "Those who would trade liberty for security shall have and deserve neither."
You'd think that if they passed a law requiring background checks on people who wanted to buy a gun, keeping criminals from buying said firearms, you'd be able to keep guns out of the hands of people who really shouldn't have them, and gun fatalities would go down. But according to this abcnews article (which has strangely disappeared since I read it last night) about a study of states that had to change their gun laws to comply with the Brady Bill, that hasn't been the case. When someone says "it's for your own good," I say that I'd rather take my chances.
Slashdot Mirror
It's long been known that a diet rich in nutrients but poor in calories extendeds the life of living organisms. "Calorie restriction (CR) has extended the 39-month maximum life span of mice to an impressive 56 months, which would correspond proportionally to a 158 year-old human. " - http://www.pbs.org/stealingtime/living/calories.ht m.
Just taking a pill will never be enough to extend lifespan in lifeforms more complex than a fruitfly. If you're really interested in life extension, check out http://www.walford.com/, with sample meal plans in the "Anti-Aging program", or this report on superhealth.
There is no such thing as a "mandate of the people". Such a thing is something made up by the victor in order to assuage the people they are about (or in this case, continue) to rob blind.
So some nimrod-judge doesn't like something an American Corporation with a french subsidiary is doing. All he has to do is threaten Yahoo! with "sanctions" to exert some control, trappings of law be damned. If Yahoo! has buddies in the US Government, they can threaten back. It's all about fear. Replace every occurance of "judge" with "terrorist bureaucrat" and you'll understand what the french dude is trying to do.
Contrary to popular opinion, the law means what the law says. If the law doesn't have the right combination of words to support your view, you can't go around stretching the meaning of those words.
People will continue to be affected by "Repetitive Stress Injuries". Get a copy of Pain Free at Your PC to find out why RSI's strike some people & leave others unaffected. Muscles work in pairs, and if you're just exercising one of two muscles, of course there's going to be some pain when other muscles have to cover for the one that's atrophied away. Ergonomic solutions can only make things worse, placing less of a demand on more muscles, forcing them to atrophy away... (I should know - I have a very expensive Datahand keyboard sitting unused next to me on my desk. It didn't help. Right now i'm typing on a Keytronic Wireless keyboard, with only a small amount of trouble.) Correct your posture - it'll do wonders for your ability to type.
But all physicians are related - they've all been through medical school, they've all been through the state-sponsored "health" monopoly gateway program ("licensing" exams), and they're (almost) universally whipping boys of drug company. Most doctors don't care about dealing with what causes health problems, they only deal with symptoms. An example: I've been troubled by an RSI for quite some time (almost a year now). A month ago I went to the student health center to get a referal to a chiropractor (as recommended by various parties on slashdot). The guy basically said "haha, what do you know? A chiropractor can't help you. Here's some drugs, if they don't work we'll send you to the surgeon". I didn't want to be dependant on drugs, so I bought a copy of Pain Free at Your PC, and am now able to type without as much of a problem. (I believe that I should be doing the exercises in the book more often to be completely pain-free...)
How would a comittee of physicians deal with something like a report on how to achieve superhealth? Sure, some might be open minded, but most would turn off their critical thinking skills after reading the fourth line: "Consider the possibility that people in general, and the "medical profession" in particular, do not understand very much about the etiology (causation) of heart disease." When your comittee of physicians disagrees with information, it's defacto censorship. People searching out information to "become their own doctor" will look at a report such as the one above, but then think "well, the WHO said it's mostly bullshit, time to move on". The next site they go to will probably be by some "authority", such as the mayo clinic's site or the AMA's site. And their money stays in the hands of the state-sponsored health monopoly. In short, most doctors just don't have a clue.
Not all physicians are closed minded though... If you can find one who really cares about making his patients truly health, you're in luck.
Of course computer professionals are going to suffer more back pain than professional movers - if you spend all day moving couches & heavy stuff, you're giving most of the muscles in your body a good workout. If, on the other hand, you spend your entire day doing next to nothing physically (relatively), using a little force in the same direction over and over again, what do you think is going to happen to most of the muscles in your body? One word: atrophy. At least, that's what happens according to the author of Pain Free At Your PC (http://www.bn.com has it too, just can't get that link to work correctly). To quote from the first chapter: "The true source of chronic musculoskeletal pain is rarely the site of the pain. . . . If your wrist hurts while you are pointing and clicking a mouse, the pain probably has nothing to do with the device." The book has four programs of simple exercises (maintenance or light, moderate and power users) specifically designed to work the muscles we're neglecting.
I bought this book right after my doctor perscribed me drugs, and said if they didn't work we'd go for surgery. I don't believe in conventional medicine (aside from when they function as body mechanics), so I bought this book when I saw it at the local food co-op in the hopes that it would have some information dealing with what was causing my "repetitive stress injury". I had actually gone to the doctor to get a referral to a chiropractor, 'cause slashdotters have said they can help. Of course, doctors prefer drugs & surgery to dealing with root causes (what was I thinking?). I haven't been very diligent about doing the exercises, but after reading it I corrected my posture, and my back was damn sore for the next few days. If you suffer from pain while using a computer, Buy This Book. I wish I had found it before purchasing a Datahand keyboard... probably would've saved myself a bathtub of cash.
You know those ergonomic chairs that don't have a back? The one several of you with back problems have tried, but can't sit in for any length of time? The muscles in your body have probably decayed because of poor work habits.. Before you go out and spend $1000 on a chair or keyboard, please spend $10 on this book, and give the e-cises a try.
It doesn't matter whether or not a Public Servant's Questionaire is authorized by law. On the contrary, is there a specific law which denies the free-man the ability to know that someone who has claimed a status of privledge over another is qualified to make that claim? Say you and I were walking down the same street. I turn to you and say, "Hello, John Q. Policeman. I suspect you of breaking law X. Show me your ID." I don't have the qualifications to require you to show me your state-issued ID. Do you know this? (Do you care?) How are you supposed to find out whether or not I'm not a bonified public servant?
Remember, anyone can ask questions. You can volunteer answers, but few are the individuals who can require you to answer. Demand your rights from the beginning, don't wait until they've already been violated to beg for redress.
Before this armed revolt occurs, people who act in the name of government will likely succeed in passing laws requiring registration of all weapons. G-men will see said revolt coming, and institute confiscation programs, reducing the probability of a successful armed uprising. Instead of your armed revolt ending government as you know it, I think it is more likely that people will continue to find "government" less and less relevant in their day-to-day lives, and continue to remove them from their lives. "Building Freedom" would be one term for this gradual extraction of one's self from the influence of terrorist bureaucrats.
Two things? You don't have to (and shouldn't) tell them anything. You do have the right to remain silent, correct? Why should they get to know your name? So they can have it down on public record that YOU were arrested? How would they do that if they don't have your name? It seems to me that you have the RIGHT (but only if you know how to demand it) to be taken before a magistrate (judge) for a Probable Cause Hearing before they can throw you in jail. If some clowns were knocking on my door acting as if they held a position of privledge over me, I'd make damn sure they actually had special powers like they were hoping you'd assume. See my post here about why (in a simplified kind of way) you should never answer a question by a Public Servant with anything other than a question.
And someone comes up to you with what appears to be a valid warrant. What are you supposed to do? Okay, so you call your supporvisor - what's he supposed to do? "Uhm, well, we support our student's right to privacy. We're not going to let you in." Right. It's what happens when you live in a campus environment, where lots of people have the key to your room.
.. but when people with badges are asking you questions, your only respose should be to reply with a question or to not reply at all. This is especially true in traffic cases, as the first thing the cop will try to do is get a confession out of you - "Do you know how fast you were going?" If you say something like, "I think I was going 75 or 80", even though his radar gun said 83, he can write you down for 80 and get it to stand in court (radar tickets can be easy to beat) because that's what you said. So you've answered the Public Servant's question (who you don't even really know is a public servant, he could be an imposter - just 'cause his car has a light bar in no way means that he's valid) with the very best of intentions, hopefully making him so pleased with your obedience to his will that he'll let you off. It's never worked for me. In this case, they were out to hang, details didn't matter, they were going to take your computers, no matter what you said. The side of the road is not a courtroom, and people shouldn't treat it as such.
Government organizations which are now part of social security no longer have the option of recinding their contract with the federal government. This was done when (while?) the State of California (specifically NOT the geographical region described by "California") was considering pulling out.
Ok, so the creator of the MP3 format is from Germany, and one of the major Linux distributions (S.U.S.E.) is published by a German-based company.. Before the world wars (Specifically, WWII), Germany was a scientific mecca... Who can share information about other recent great innovations and breakthroughs by German companies, specifically in the computer industry?
This person had probably never before had a problem with driving & talking on the cell phone either. Then one day she misses a red light, and a little MR2 comes out of nowhere and causes a little damage. You never expect to get into accidents, they just kinda happen.
...but half a loaf is better than none.
It's not that the person who's memorized history facts only has half a loaf, but rather that their loaf of bread is only half baked. We all know how well half-baked technological items work, such as Pentium chips and Space Shuttles... I can see similar fuckups happening with the person who believes the incorrect/incomplete/inaccurate version of history applying his half-baked head to some important nation-wide social issue.
But there are things worth watching. One of our board members and partners is Discovery Communications. They've got a vast amount of educational programming that most people don't see because they're not home when it airs.
Why is it that people think they're actually learning while they're watching "educational" television programs? My roommate last year was addicted to his TV - watched the learning channel, history channel, cartoons, etc, constantly. He (basically) said that he was smart (scored a 5 on the AP US History test) because of that Wonderful invention called Television. In my opinion he just memorized a bunch of facts about history. Television is a passive input device, it provides little stimulation to build neural connections in your head. (There was a study where one group of rats lived in a super-stimulating environment, with wheels & other play structures, and another group got to watch the rats living in the stimulating environment from their barren cell. You get to guess which group had the same lifespan as the control group living in an entirely separate barren cell.) If people really are watching 30% more television with a Tivo like the article says (30%?? - short attention span, too many cartoons when I was young maybe), I cringe when I think of the social problems we'll be facing five years from now.
For example, look at this picture of my Toyota MR2 after I t-boned this Chevy Blazer running a red light. My car was fixed, the tow truck driver just laughed at me when I asked if he thought the Blazer was totaled. I'm 90% certain that the Blazer's driver was on her cell phone when she ran through the red light (which had changed, allowed the cars stopped at the light ahead of me to go through and stayed green for me... I thought I'd gotten lucky & hit the green). Of course, maybe this article explains everything - His team also has evidence from rats that exposure to microwaves unleashes corticotropin releasing factor, a stress hormone, and disrupts the ebb and flow in the brain of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter involved in memory and alertness, among other things. "Yeah honey, I'm on my way home.. You know that chicken in the freezer? Yeah that one. If you put it in the oven at 450 degrees we'd be able to eat a lot sooner. Oopps, that light is red, maybe I'm supposed to stop. Alright, forget the chicken, I'm hanging upside down in my car, please come pick up my stuff at the intersection, I'll see you at the hospital later..."
The people who control the nation states may fight off their obsolescence with their guns and bombs, but that doesn't make their system any less obsolete.
Get real. Don't believe me? Don't pay your taxes for a few years and you'll find out first hand.
True, the IRS & US Government have done a wonderful job of social engineering - Pay Your Taxes or The Big Bad G-Men Will Break Down Your Door & Haul You Off to Jail. Why do you think that the number of audits on lower-income (~$20,000/year) households have risen in recent years? If you're a parasitic organism living off the hard labor of your host, you gotta keep your citizens scared. But what if 500,000 people stopped paying their taxes? 1 million? 10 million? How many people could the IRS go after to keep its campaign of fear going?
Musical Intelligence
Spatial Intelligence
Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
Interpersonal Intelligence
Intrapersonal Intelligence
Linguistic Intelligence
Body-Kinesthetic Intelligence
Michael Faraday ("whose theory of electromagnetic fields and lines of force largely inspired Einstien`s quest for relativity") couldn`t understand the mathmatics behind his theories... Faradyay`s law developed with him picturing them almost like rubber bands. His notebooks and diaries were filled with unstructured streams of thought. It was James Clark Maxwell who later set them into math. Faraday tried to follow Clark`s work, but latter wrote Maxwell asking him to trasnslate his hieroglyphics into a common language he could understand.
Many geniuses often just have an intuitive understanding for their unique insights, and need someone else`s help to put their ideas down into Mathematical language for immortality. Faraday had his rubber bands, Einstein had his bicycle, flashlight and ray of light. Genius is not so much being able to write stuff down in mathematical code, but having unique insights into problems that have stumped others for centuries. Einsteins insights came through his "deep thought" experiments, a sort of cosmic voyage in his mind. There are seven different intelligences, Math is just one of them...
Abstaining does nothing except reinforce the system that you seem to hate. The DMCA and similiar laws don't pass because too many people vote. They pass because not enough voters make themselves heard on the issue. Vote for Ralph Nader (or write in John McCain) if you want to vote against corporate influence in politics.
Voting does nothing except give legitimacy to a system that no longer works, and whose replacement is long overdue (I`m talking about that sacred cow Democracy here). The DMCA and similar laws don`t pass because too few people cast their opinion in the popularity contests. They pass because politicians` roll is too general - no politician has time to become an expert on all issues, thus "experts" (lobbyists) get to write laws to present to legislatures as an expert`s solution to the problem at hand. Don`t vote if you want to vote against corporate influence in politics. Support an alternative form of "government", such as Demarchy, a system where a group of citizens are chosen at random to examine an issue and come to an ideal solution.
oh shit, just killed slashdot's sacred cow.. where's the flamesuit when you need it?
What you are proposing would end up as an Oligarchy. Power would eventually end up in the hands of just a few people, and they would make sure that it stayed that way. You might want to look into the democratic alternative of Demarchy, "a political system without the state or bureaucracies, and based instead on randomly selected groups of decision makers."
james"Elections serve to legitimize the system of rule by the state. Because people believe they have participated in choosing their rulers, they are much more willing to accept the system of rule itself. In fact, one explanation for the introduction of elections in the Soviet Union was to provide legitimacy to a failing system."
I know this goes against the prevailing "We'd have Nirvana if only everyone voted" attitude on /., but everyone who thinks Democracy is the final solution in the quest for "better government" needs some sense (and a dose of reality) knocked into them. Everyone points to ancient Greece as an example of when democracy worked, but their experiment didn't last very long. There are alternatives to the Holy Democratic Society, Demarchy being one of them. So, in reply to your post, having most people vote through online voting is just like asking for some serious social unrest.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed"
-Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
I believe that this second quote can be attributed to Thomas Jefferson as well - "Those who would trade liberty for security shall have and deserve neither."
You'd think that if they passed a law requiring background checks on people who wanted to buy a gun, keeping criminals from buying said firearms, you'd be able to keep guns out of the hands of people who really shouldn't have them, and gun fatalities would go down. But according to this abcnews article (which has strangely disappeared since I read it last night) about a study of states that had to change their gun laws to comply with the Brady Bill, that hasn't been the case. When someone says "it's for your own good," I say that I'd rather take my chances.