I guess you didn't read the report... The ACLU is called a right-wing organisation.
Apparently I read it more thoroughly that you did:
While most of these averages closely agree with the conventional wisdom, two cases seem somewhat anomalous. The first is the ACLU. The average score of legislators citing it was 49.8. Later, we shall provide reasons why it makes sense to define the political center at 50.1. This suggests that the ACLU, if anything is a right-leaning organization. The reason the ACLU has such a low score is that it opposed the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance bill, and conservatives in Congress cited this often. In fact, slightly more than one-eight of all ACLU citations in Congress were due to one person alone, Mitch McConnell (R.-Kt.), perhaps the chief critic of McCain-Feingold. If we omit McConnell's citations, the ACLU's average score increases to 55.9.
Your accusation that I didn't read this is rather hypocritical. For example, you didn't even read the abstract! You said:
Most news report are defined as right of centre. ...and from the abstract:
Our results show a strong liberal bias.
Here's some more:
All of the news outlets except Fox News' Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with many conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received a score far left of center. Outlets such as the Washington Post, USA Today, NPR's Morning Edition, NBC's Nightly News and ABC's World News Tonight were moderately left. The most centrist outlets (but still left-leaning) by our measure were the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN's NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC's Good Morning America. Fox News' Special Report, while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks' evening news broadcasts.
Anyways...
I love how the right shoot themselves in the foot all the time, trying to get a square plug into a round hole.
And I love how some people can blithely ignore facts and rational argument because it doesn't agree with their dogmatic worldview.
Fox news was created because a Murdoch decided that reality wasn't his cup of tea and wanted someplace where his brand of crackpot pseudo-fascism would be taken as gospel.CNN only appears left-wing because anything short of state media from the mouth of a fascist police state looks liberal by comparison to that steaming pile of feces masquerading as a news source.
Jeez, guy. Tell us how you really feel. (and then count to ten and take some deep breaths...) (and then put on your tinfoil hat!)
In the '80s, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; I don't recall why.
Other than the "furthering the spread of global communism" theory, one proposal is geography and oil: The Caspian Sea was estimated to hold huge oil fields, and a direct pipeline through Afghanistan is the quickest route to get it to the open ocean via the Persian Gulf. With meddlesome and destructive Islamic rebels in Afghanistan, it wouldn't be possible to secure such a transnational pipeline.
Our involvement in Afghanistan had little to do with the rebels. It was a very cost-effective way to fight the USSR by proxy. As a side note, does anyone remember the video game based on Tom Clancy's "The Cardinal in the Kremlin"? Part of the game was a mini-arcade shooter where you played the part of an Islamic rebel killing Russians in Afghanistan by finding and using U.S.-supplied weapons. It's kind of funny that a few decades ago we (well, maybe just me and a few others...) were playing a video game in which you got to be Osama Bin Laden...
Anyways, point is that Afghanistan was just a cheap way to harm the USSR during the Cold War...
Twenty years later, Bush gets the bright idea to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, not remembering the lessons of Afghanistan.
I disagree with you here. There were 2 lessons that this conflict taught us: 1) The Russian Army was a paper tiger, and 2) How to lose a guerilla war. We never did have to go to war with the USSR, so lesson 1 is moot. And based on what we did in Afghanistan *this* time around, I'd say that we definitely learned lesson 2.
Furthermore, the problems shaking Iraq right now are largely due to the fact that Muslim != Muslim for all instances. The Sunni and the Shiite Muslims don't like each other. Think Ireland during the '80s and '90s -- the Protestants and Catholics did not play well together. Which flavor of Islam is practiced in Indonesia, Jordan or Egypt? How do you unite the different sects in Iraq?
You make a really good point - The real struggle for peace in the ME is something that Muslims are going to have to work out themselves. It's a choice between a religious identity that transcends nationality, or a national identity, to which your religious beliefs are subordinate. Same thing in Ireland, like you said. The Irish in conflict, by the way, recently chose national identity over religion, by the way, and it's being touted as the end to that particular conflict.
Thing is, most of us live in a world where we take it for granted that religion governs our personal lives, but national governments run our public ones. We've seen what happens when the opposite is true in our own societies, in our own lifetimes - for example, your example about Ireland - yet we're perplexed about why there's fighting in the ME. There's an answer for when the seemingly endless ME conflict will end: When the balance of Muslims subordinate their Islamic identity to their national identity.
The difference between the two cites is that the first says that historical representation of temperature in human records can be wildly inaccurate, whereas the second says that we have the ability, through ice cores an other methods, to accurately determine the temperatures in the past.
Exactly my point! Here's a quote from a "myth" refuting the claim that it's been warmer in the past - apparently, ice cores are suspect here:
First of all, it is worth bearing in mind that any data on global temperatures before about 150 years ago is an estimate, a reconstruction based on second-hand evidence such as ice cores and isotopic ratios. The evidence becomes sparser the further back we look, and its interpretation often involves a set of assumptions. In other words, a fair amount of guesswork.
So ice cores and other proxy measurements aren't that accurate, and we should be skeptical about the things that those measurements suggest. Now, in another "myth," refuting the claim that we are just coming out of a "little ice age,":
The term "Little Ice Age" is somewhat questionable, because there was no single, well-defined period of prolonged cold around the entire planet. After 1600, there are records of average winter temperatures in Europe and North America that were as much as 2C lower than present (although the third coldest winter in England since 1659 was in 1963).
Comparisons of temperature indicators such as tree-ring records from around the northern hemisphere suggest there were several widespread cold intervals between 1580 and 1850.
Yet while there is some evidence of cold intervals in parts of the southern hemisphere during this time, they do not appear to coincide with those in the northern hemisphere. Such findings suggest the Little Ice Age may have been more of a regional phenomenon than a global one.
But we'll accept the things that tree-ring measurements "suggest?"
Let me be exceedingly clear - I'm not saying that the anti-science wishful thinking I've shown here means that global warming isn't happening. It certainly is. I just think that both sides are guilty of gerrymandering evidence, not just the skeptics.
And I completely agree with you! If we want to really fix things, we need to be having candid conversations about the reality of global warming - not a debate where it's "OMGZ! The world is ending unless we live in mud huts!" versus, "meh. Nothing to see here."
This is exactly what I don't like about this debate:
The evidence becomes sparser the further back we look, and its interpretation often involves a set of assumptions. In other words, a fair amount of guesswork... The point is that historical anecdotes about the past climate, such as the claim that Greenland used to be green, or that Newfoundland (Vinland) was full of grapes, have to be treated with caution.
So, claims that the planet has been warmer in the past can't be justified using temperature reconstructions or local phenomena.
What is clear, both from the temperature reconstructions and from independent evidence - such as the extent of the recent melting of mountain glaciers - is that the planet has been warmer in the past few decades than at any time during the medieval period.
Yet, somehow the same "guesswork"-ey temperature reconstructions and local phenomena *can* be used as evidence to support claims that the planet *hasn't* been warmer in the past.
Here's my issue: I'm not sure of the extent of our part in that warming, but I think we ought to minimize our negative impact as much as possible. But the polarized rhetoric about all of this is obfuscating the real, candid debate we ought to be having. You can't claim that it's a fact that we are causing a catastrophic warming trend that will kill billions based on what we know now. But you also can't claim that there's nothing to worry about, either!
The only way we're going to ever have a productive conversation about this is if we can get past the politics and posturing and admit the shortcomings of our knowledge, but at the same time, acknowledge that we can't ignore the issue.
A whole lot of realism right up front isn't always a good thing when you're training for contingencies. I could see the logic if the teachers had gone through an incremental training process with increasing realism and randomness. If their intent was to terrorize young kids while minimizing the learning value of the drill, then, Mission Accomplished!
THAN....THAN anything else, do Americans know the difference between then and than, proper grammar should be a requirement for posting a response online !
No, we don't know the difference between "than" and "then." But we're pretty good at recognizing run-on sentences and sentence fragments. So we've got that going for us.
I don't think we have enough of the facts about this story to be demonizing the university and spreading FUD about the mySpace Police just yet.
What we know:
From Millersville University's website:
The University notes, however, that all of its educational decisions are based on a full range of academic performance issues, not solely on a student's personal website or social networking site. The University is committed to maintaining the academic integrity of its academic programs and degrees and will vigorously defend itself and the actions of its employees in legal proceedings related to the lawsuit.
The University claims that Snyder didn't receive her degree for academic performance issues. Snyder claims that she didn't because of the mySpace picture. I found another article that said this:
Stacy Snyder, a 27-year-old single mother of two, was a student-teacher at Conestoga Valley High School at the time she posted the picture on her "MySpace" account last May.
Earning her teaching degree at Millersville University, she was all but done with her requirements before graduating. But then, her cooperating teacher at Conestoga Valley found out about the posting, and confronted her.
"'(She said) There's a problem with your professionalism. You're not able to attend our school. You can't come back,'" said Snyder from her Strasburg home.
So what it sounds like is that she got booted from her student-teacher internship at Conestoga for the photo. I assume that the Millersville then decided that because she didn't complete her internship, a requirement for graduation as a teacher, that she didn't merit a teaching degree. If there's any "mySpace police" in this story, it's not the university - it's a school, who can certainly have their own standards to which they require their teachers to uphold.
What we don't know:
1) We have no idea of Snyder's actual academic record at Millersville. She could very well have had a spotty record, and getting booted from an internship was "the last straw" for the Teaching Dept at Millersville. Or she could have had an exemplary record, and getting booted from the teaching program was a weird administrative requirement. Point is, we don't know.
2) We have no idea of whether or not Snyder could, if she chose to remain, complete another internship to get her teaching degree. All we know is that she can't get it *now* because of the internship. She could very well be able to re-do the internship, but is just too impatient and thinks that suing is easier than teaching. Or she may not be able to do that, and is totally screwed out of her degree. Point is, we don't know.
So, all I'm trying to say is that I think we're jumping to a whole lot of conclusions without enough facts.
She screwed up... twenty... eight... years ago. ...and then continued to screw up every single minute that has passed since twenty-eight years ago by not telling the truth about her fake degrees.
Rigggggggght. I've seen more than my fair share of resumes through the years and easily half of them have something that is shady. More so, many of them have inflated experience and importance for tasks at previous employers. Sadly, this is the norm, not the exception as that CNN poll would have one believe
I still believe that two wrongs don't make a right. The point is not how well she's done since then. The point is not how many other people also lie. The point is that she used fraud to get where she is today.
I read TFA and the kid's essay. This kid shouldn't have been arrested - obviously.
But isn't this just a predictable (and terribly unfortunate) overreaction to the VT killings? Instead of demonizing police and faculty, let's consider for a moment that they were all (like the rest of us) hypersensitized to this sort of thing.
Which would you rather be: the principal of a school that just had 50 of his kids killed by a crazy gunman, or the principal of a school who is now being reviled in the media (and on/.) for being some sort of "fascist"?
I could live with the negative media opinions, but not with the blood of dead kids on my hands. Just try to consider where these administrators and cops are coming from, and what they're worried about.
TFA is interesting. I have to admit, on my first read, I was up in arms - Me:"What?!!? De-emphasizing programming?!?! WTF!!!" Until I read it again...
Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs...to draw more women into compuer science
Here's me as the eternal optimist - I want to believe TFA is saying: "Look - we've got to get more people into CS. We don't care how they get here, but let's not prematurely limit ourselves to preternaturally skillful hackers - don't get me wrong, we're still going to *get* all the hackers into the best programs, but let's not scare off someone who might be good just because they have the wrong idea about CS, or they haven't been writing code on their grandpa's TRS-80 since they were 4." (that was me. I'm old.)
That's OK, as long as the de-emphasis on programming is limited to entry into CS. Once in a CS program, students *have* to program - and program a lot! Writing good code is one of those skills that improves with time and experience. No matter how (hypothetically) brilliant and full-of-potential someone might be, you can't substitute actual coding experience with a few all-nighters in front of a "Learn C in 24 Hours!" book.
I can understand the "lowering barriers to entry" idea of TFA, but only if it doesn't dilute the importance of programming within a CS department's program of instruction.
That having been said...
WTF!?! YOU DON'T AGREE WITH MORE CHICKS IN CS?!?!? DON'T RUIN THIS FOR US!!!! WE'RE SO LONELY!!!
But since it's the executive branch of the government doing it, nothing is done. Hence, far bigger problem.
Actually, you have it backwards. Recall the/. discussion about the RIAA lobbying for exemption from a law that would take away their ability to impersonate other organizations in order to fraudulently gain intelligence (in other words, spy) on individuals that might be infringing on their copyrights.
The difference is that the government is, at least on paper, under our direct control. If Bush's spying cheeses us off enough we can vote him out next term. But if the RIAA can legally lie to us in order to gather evidence (again, spying), what can we do? I'm sure we could figure out *some* way to fight it, but it wouldn't be as direct a solution as voting Democrat in 2008.
The fact that the Democrats are willing to cozy up to an organization that's actively working to threaten our freedoms in ways that we *can't* fight as easily is chilling.
are you telling me there is something more pressing than mass extermination and murder?
No, there isn't. But think about it this way: Imagine you're mayor of a small town that's recently been suffering from a rash of what look to be intentionally set fires. You've got a limited resources to spend on emergency services. Do you put more resources behind the fire department, to fight the fires, or do you put more resources behind the police department to stop the fires from being set?
Likewise, global, militant Islam (not the religion, not the moderates, the violent political movement) is behind the genocide in Darfur. Can we justify putting out the fire in Darfur when, by allocating resources to do that, we have less to go after the arsonists supporting it all? I'm not saying it's an either-or decision. But it's definitely a trade off, and you can't flippantly disregard people who consider it as such.
Wait a minute... Raising awareness of something is generally a good thing. The more informed people are about their choices and the world around them, the better off we are. But don't romanticize this as something it's not: it's consumer marketing, any way you slice it.
And just how people have beliefs of which beer tastes better, or which diet book will make them less fat, people also have different beliefs about what "bad things" in the world are more important to stop than others.
The key is choice, and you shouldn't villify people just because they don't agree with your personal choice of "the worst thing in the world" to prevent.
...that it's awfully difficult to stop murder, hardship and suffering of human beings everywhere on the planet.
Every "good thing" we do in the world is offset by another good thing we won't be able to do somewhere else. People who criticize the world's involvement in Iraq (predominantly the U.S.'s involvement now) by highlighting the other things we're *not* doing clearly understand this.
It's a matter of optimizing our efforts to cause the most good with the resources we have available. It could be argued that by striking at the global nexus of militant Islam in the Middle East, we can indirectly affect things like Darfur all over the world. It could also be argued that we're fighting in Iraq to ensure a nice flow of oil to the U.S., and we ought to focus our efforts elsewhere, like Darfur.
If a U.S. Citizen were to believe the former, the choice to conserve their own personal resources would be a completely justifiable course of action. I don't think we can dismiss people unwilling to contribute resources as simply "not caring about Darfur."
And they could also highlight areas where Saddam Hussein committed acts of genocide against the Kurds. Though, given that he used chemical weapons I guess there might not be that much visible destruction from a satellite photo...
So, if piracy is a crime, then why are the *AAs worried about their own ability to investigate? Shouldn't investigation and evidence collecting be up to a piece of government that we, the people (at least on paper) control?
People are worried about governmental intrusions into privacy (i.e., Patriot Act-type stuff). Why on earth should it *ever* be OK to allow another organization, one that's even *less* accountable to the public, the ability to fraudulently obtain information from us with the intent of prosecution?
Capitalism only realy "works" when all the participants are reasonably protected from fraud. If this sort of thing constitutes fraud, then there ought to be laws against it (if there aren't already are).
I think the 2nd order effect you've identified *is* good, but what lots of people will have to go through to finally get there isn't. In other words, it's definitely a bug, not a feature.
Most of them just use the tactic of [modding down comments that don't agree with their political beliefs] and eventually people will believe you.
[On Slashdot] this has worked.
I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that these effects would only appear if the fake money was traded freely between currencies.
Yes, you're exactly right. The simple fact is that a given currency will only be accepted by certain people as payment for stuff - that's the basis for international currency exchange.
Here's a convoluted, but good, example:
I can be the richest man in China, take all my Yuan out of the bank, put it into some big ass suitcases, travel to Germany, and I couldn't so much as buy a damn schnitzel with it.
Why? Well, think about the schnitzel guy. So I sell one jaegerschnitzel to the desperately starving "Richest-Man-In-China" for a hojillion Yuan (maybe worth a million Euro, or whatever). I, schnitzel guy, leave work and stop off at the Esso to buy some smokes - guess what? They only take euro, and my Yuan is worthless.
Foreign currency only has value if people in your country believe that they will be able to take that currency and buy actual things with it. So let's say that instead of bringing over my Yuan, I spent all my Yuan to buy underpants and brought those over to Germany. Well, underpants have real value - I *like* having something between my pants and my giblets. So I'm willing to pay this strange underpants-selling Chinese guy some of my Euro for his great underpants.
Now, Chinese guy has Euro. Obviously, he can't spend Euro in China - they only take Yuan. So, what do I do? I buy underpants to take back to China, right? Well, let's say my fortune was 1,000,000 Yuan, and underpants cost (in China) 1 Yuan - with those Yuan, I bought 1,000,000 pairs of underpants. Now, I get to Germany, and they're willing to pay me 2 Euro per pair - I sell all my underpants, and all of a sudden I have 2 milion Euro! So, what do I spend it on?
So, I figure that underpants are a pretty safe commodity, so I go to the store, and find that... Damn. Underpants cost 2 Euro,. Well, it doesn't make sense to buy underpants - I'd just break even. So I find something that's maximizes my return - let's say that earplugs cost 5 Yuan a pair in China, but only 1 Euro in Germany - Well, I could buy 2,000,000 sets of earplugs with my Euro, go back to China, and make a bunch of Yuan!
... OK, so this is a weird example, but the point is that currency exchange reflects the export/import balance between two nations with sovereign currency. The reason that things are valued more or less (in an absolute sense) between two countries is based on the ease or efficiency with which a given country can produce that commodity - for example, Canada could produce coconuts with a lot of Biodomes and effort, but they would probably never be as efficient at producing them as a nation whose natural outdoor climate promoted the growth of coconut-producing palm trees.
It's a little more complicated in the real world because there aren't just two currencies, but the principles are unchanged.
"I thought he was involved with terrorism" eventually becomes "He was involved in organized crime" which becomes "We thought he might be committing mail fraud" which becomes "We thought he used pot" which eventually becomes "He's a member of the opposition party"
I can't disagree with this. The problem with the situation we've got is that we have no visibility into the internal workings of the FBI/CIA/NSA to ensure that stuff like this isn't happening. I tend, personally, to be a little too trusting of these organizations and the individual motivations of their agents. I also believe that some people are a little too cynical. The optimal solution is possible only because of people on both sides who believe very strongly that they're right.
But I think that's OK. As long as we agree on the big stuff (i.e., not being blown up on any given day), we can work out the small stuff in exactly the kind of debate we have here. (as long as everyone votes, and holds their representatives and congresspeople accountable for what they do.)
we need a war on cars because I can't make it through a single night in ops without someone dying on the road.
Also another good point. The difference between terrorism and automobile accidents is really simple, but also really weird. For some reason, we accept that 40,000-50,000 fatalities a year is worth being able to drive 55. I know that sounds strange, but if we truly believed that even a single traffic fatality was one too many, we would lower then national speed limit to 10 mph. I mean, that would pretty much eliminate traffic fatalities, right? So why don't we do it? We could say, "Well, it's just not practical! We would never get anywhere! interstate shipping would be impossible! The economy would collapse!" But the (again, weird) unsaid piece of that argument is, "and we're willing to accept that 40 to 50 thousand people will die on the roads each year in order to keep our national economy running, and to allow us sufficient mobility."
At this point, most people (I think...) probably feel that even one death caused by an act of terrorism is one too many. So we have all these really expansive Homeland Security laws that not everybody agrees with (i.e., domestic spying, etc.).
Now, I'm willing to trade away some of my less-noticed derived rights, like phone and email privacy, to prevent even a single death caused by terrorism. I'm OK with the NSA/CIA/FBI looking at my phone records and listening to me talk dirty to my girlfriend. But I probably wouldn't be willing to allow random, warrantless, baseless searches of my home. And I definitely wouldn't be willing to trade away one of my fundamental rights for *any* measure of safety - give me liberty or give me death, and all that.
So, I guess my point is that, yes I acknowledge that it's a tradeoff. I'm willing to trade my derived right to phone/email/bank transaction privacy for safety. Others of you aren't. We probably *all* agree that we wouldn't be willing to trade a more overt kind of privacy, or a truly fundamental right to prevent even a single death caused by an act of terrorism.
This whole debate is about finding what level of tradeoff is acceptable to the most people.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently I read it more thoroughly that you did:
While most of these averages closely agree with the conventional wisdom, two cases seem somewhat anomalous. The first is the ACLU. The average score of legislators citing it was 49.8. Later, we shall provide reasons why it makes sense to define the political center at 50.1. This suggests that the ACLU, if anything is a right-leaning organization. The reason the ACLU has such a low score is that it opposed the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance bill, and conservatives in Congress cited this often. In fact, slightly more than one-eight of all ACLU citations in Congress were due to one person alone, Mitch McConnell (R.-Kt.), perhaps the chief critic of McCain-Feingold. If we omit McConnell's citations, the ACLU's average score increases to 55.9.
Your accusation that I didn't read this is rather hypocritical. For example, you didn't even read the abstract! You said:
Most news report are defined as right of centre.
Our results show a strong liberal bias.
Here's some more:
All of the news outlets except Fox News' Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with many conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received a score far left of center. Outlets such as the Washington Post, USA Today, NPR's Morning Edition, NBC's Nightly News and ABC's World News Tonight were moderately left. The most centrist outlets (but still left-leaning) by our measure were the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN's NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC's Good Morning America. Fox News' Special Report, while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks' evening news broadcasts.
Anyways... I love how the right shoot themselves in the foot all the time, trying to get a square plug into a round hole.
And I love how some people can blithely ignore facts and rational argument because it doesn't agree with their dogmatic worldview.
Actually, it mostly does lean left.
Fox news was created because a Murdoch decided that reality wasn't his cup of tea and wanted someplace where his brand of crackpot pseudo-fascism would be taken as gospel.CNN only appears left-wing because anything short of state media from the mouth of a fascist police state looks liberal by comparison to that steaming pile of feces masquerading as a news source.
Jeez, guy. Tell us how you really feel. (and then count to ten and take some deep breaths...) (and then put on your tinfoil hat!)
Other than the "furthering the spread of global communism" theory, one proposal is geography and oil: The Caspian Sea was estimated to hold huge oil fields, and a direct pipeline through Afghanistan is the quickest route to get it to the open ocean via the Persian Gulf. With meddlesome and destructive Islamic rebels in Afghanistan, it wouldn't be possible to secure such a transnational pipeline.
Our involvement in Afghanistan had little to do with the rebels. It was a very cost-effective way to fight the USSR by proxy. As a side note, does anyone remember the video game based on Tom Clancy's "The Cardinal in the Kremlin"? Part of the game was a mini-arcade shooter where you played the part of an Islamic rebel killing Russians in Afghanistan by finding and using U.S.-supplied weapons. It's kind of funny that a few decades ago we (well, maybe just me and a few others...) were playing a video game in which you got to be Osama Bin Laden...
Anyways, point is that Afghanistan was just a cheap way to harm the USSR during the Cold War...
Twenty years later, Bush gets the bright idea to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, not remembering the lessons of Afghanistan.
I disagree with you here. There were 2 lessons that this conflict taught us: 1) The Russian Army was a paper tiger, and 2) How to lose a guerilla war. We never did have to go to war with the USSR, so lesson 1 is moot. And based on what we did in Afghanistan *this* time around, I'd say that we definitely learned lesson 2.
Furthermore, the problems shaking Iraq right now are largely due to the fact that Muslim != Muslim for all instances. The Sunni and the Shiite Muslims don't like each other. Think Ireland during the '80s and '90s -- the Protestants and Catholics did not play well together. Which flavor of Islam is practiced in Indonesia, Jordan or Egypt? How do you unite the different sects in Iraq?
You make a really good point - The real struggle for peace in the ME is something that Muslims are going to have to work out themselves. It's a choice between a religious identity that transcends nationality, or a national identity, to which your religious beliefs are subordinate. Same thing in Ireland, like you said. The Irish in conflict, by the way, recently chose national identity over religion, by the way, and it's being touted as the end to that particular conflict.
Thing is, most of us live in a world where we take it for granted that religion governs our personal lives, but national governments run our public ones. We've seen what happens when the opposite is true in our own societies, in our own lifetimes - for example, your example about Ireland - yet we're perplexed about why there's fighting in the ME. There's an answer for when the seemingly endless ME conflict will end: When the balance of Muslims subordinate their Islamic identity to their national identity.
Exactly my point! Here's a quote from a "myth" refuting the claim that it's been warmer in the past - apparently, ice cores are suspect here:
First of all, it is worth bearing in mind that any data on global temperatures before about 150 years ago is an estimate, a reconstruction based on second-hand evidence such as ice cores and isotopic ratios. The evidence becomes sparser the further back we look, and its interpretation often involves a set of assumptions. In other words, a fair amount of guesswork.
So ice cores and other proxy measurements aren't that accurate, and we should be skeptical about the things that those measurements suggest. Now, in another "myth," refuting the claim that we are just coming out of a "little ice age,": The term "Little Ice Age" is somewhat questionable, because there was no single, well-defined period of prolonged cold around the entire planet. After 1600, there are records of average winter temperatures in Europe and North America that were as much as 2C lower than present (although the third coldest winter in England since 1659 was in 1963). Comparisons of temperature indicators such as tree-ring records from around the northern hemisphere suggest there were several widespread cold intervals between 1580 and 1850. Yet while there is some evidence of cold intervals in parts of the southern hemisphere during this time, they do not appear to coincide with those in the northern hemisphere. Such findings suggest the Little Ice Age may have been more of a regional phenomenon than a global one.
But we'll accept the things that tree-ring measurements "suggest?"
Let me be exceedingly clear - I'm not saying that the anti-science wishful thinking I've shown here means that global warming isn't happening. It certainly is. I just think that both sides are guilty of gerrymandering evidence, not just the skeptics.
And I completely agree with you! If we want to really fix things, we need to be having candid conversations about the reality of global warming - not a debate where it's "OMGZ! The world is ending unless we live in mud huts!" versus, "meh. Nothing to see here."
So, claims that the planet has been warmer in the past can't be justified using temperature reconstructions or local phenomena.
What is clear, both from the temperature reconstructions and from independent evidence - such as the extent of the recent melting of mountain glaciers - is that the planet has been warmer in the past few decades than at any time during the medieval period.
Yet, somehow the same "guesswork"-ey temperature reconstructions and local phenomena *can* be used as evidence to support claims that the planet *hasn't* been warmer in the past.
Here's my issue: I'm not sure of the extent of our part in that warming, but I think we ought to minimize our negative impact as much as possible. But the polarized rhetoric about all of this is obfuscating the real, candid debate we ought to be having. You can't claim that it's a fact that we are causing a catastrophic warming trend that will kill billions based on what we know now. But you also can't claim that there's nothing to worry about, either!
The only way we're going to ever have a productive conversation about this is if we can get past the politics and posturing and admit the shortcomings of our knowledge, but at the same time, acknowledge that we can't ignore the issue.
A whole lot of realism right up front isn't always a good thing when you're training for contingencies. I could see the logic if the teachers had gone through an incremental training process with increasing realism and randomness. If their intent was to terrorize young kids while minimizing the learning value of the drill, then, Mission Accomplished!
No, we don't know the difference between "than" and "then." But we're pretty good at recognizing run-on sentences and sentence fragments. So we've got that going for us.
What we know:
From Millersville University's website: The University notes, however, that all of its educational decisions are based on a full range of academic performance issues, not solely on a student's personal website or social networking site. The University is committed to maintaining the academic integrity of its academic programs and degrees and will vigorously defend itself and the actions of its employees in legal proceedings related to the lawsuit.
The University claims that Snyder didn't receive her degree for academic performance issues. Snyder claims that she didn't because of the mySpace picture. I found another article that said this:
Stacy Snyder, a 27-year-old single mother of two, was a student-teacher at Conestoga Valley High School at the time she posted the picture on her "MySpace" account last May. Earning her teaching degree at Millersville University, she was all but done with her requirements before graduating. But then, her cooperating teacher at Conestoga Valley found out about the posting, and confronted her. "'(She said) There's a problem with your professionalism. You're not able to attend our school. You can't come back,'" said Snyder from her Strasburg home.
So what it sounds like is that she got booted from her student-teacher internship at Conestoga for the photo. I assume that the Millersville then decided that because she didn't complete her internship, a requirement for graduation as a teacher, that she didn't merit a teaching degree. If there's any "mySpace police" in this story, it's not the university - it's a school, who can certainly have their own standards to which they require their teachers to uphold.
What we don't know:
1) We have no idea of Snyder's actual academic record at Millersville. She could very well have had a spotty record, and getting booted from an internship was "the last straw" for the Teaching Dept at Millersville. Or she could have had an exemplary record, and getting booted from the teaching program was a weird administrative requirement. Point is, we don't know.
2) We have no idea of whether or not Snyder could, if she chose to remain, complete another internship to get her teaching degree. All we know is that she can't get it *now* because of the internship. She could very well be able to re-do the internship, but is just too impatient and thinks that suing is easier than teaching. Or she may not be able to do that, and is totally screwed out of her degree. Point is, we don't know.
So, all I'm trying to say is that I think we're jumping to a whole lot of conclusions without enough facts.
Rigggggggght. I've seen more than my fair share of resumes through the years and easily half of them have something that is shady. More so, many of them have inflated experience and importance for tasks at previous employers. Sadly, this is the norm, not the exception as that CNN poll would have one believe
I still believe that two wrongs don't make a right. The point is not how well she's done since then. The point is not how many other people also lie. The point is that she used fraud to get where she is today.
--baboo
I read TFA and the kid's essay. This kid shouldn't have been arrested - obviously.
But isn't this just a predictable (and terribly unfortunate) overreaction to the VT killings? Instead of demonizing police and faculty, let's consider for a moment that they were all (like the rest of us) hypersensitized to this sort of thing.
Which would you rather be: the principal of a school that just had 50 of his kids killed by a crazy gunman, or the principal of a school who is now being reviled in the media (and on
I could live with the negative media opinions, but not with the blood of dead kids on my hands. Just try to consider where these administrators and cops are coming from, and what they're worried about.
--baboo
I don't get your point. (I was trying to make a joke at the end.)
Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs...to draw more women into compuer science
Here's me as the eternal optimist - I want to believe TFA is saying: "Look - we've got to get more people into CS. We don't care how they get here, but let's not prematurely limit ourselves to preternaturally skillful hackers - don't get me wrong, we're still going to *get* all the hackers into the best programs, but let's not scare off someone who might be good just because they have the wrong idea about CS, or they haven't been writing code on their grandpa's TRS-80 since they were 4." (that was me. I'm old.)
That's OK, as long as the de-emphasis on programming is limited to entry into CS. Once in a CS program, students *have* to program - and program a lot! Writing good code is one of those skills that improves with time and experience. No matter how (hypothetically) brilliant and full-of-potential someone might be, you can't substitute actual coding experience with a few all-nighters in front of a "Learn C in 24 Hours!" book.
I can understand the "lowering barriers to entry" idea of TFA, but only if it doesn't dilute the importance of programming within a CS department's program of instruction.
That having been said...
WTF!?! YOU DON'T AGREE WITH MORE CHICKS IN CS?!?!? DON'T RUIN THIS FOR US!!!! WE'RE SO LONELY!!!
--baboo
That's naive.
When was the last time a Presidential candidate proposed policies that were not mostly in line with those supported by their party?
I'm not saying this is a good thing - I think it's terrible. But it's the way it is.
Actually, you have it backwards. Recall the
The difference is that the government is, at least on paper, under our direct control. If Bush's spying cheeses us off enough we can vote him out next term. But if the RIAA can legally lie to us in order to gather evidence (again, spying), what can we do? I'm sure we could figure out *some* way to fight it, but it wouldn't be as direct a solution as voting Democrat in 2008.
The fact that the Democrats are willing to cozy up to an organization that's actively working to threaten our freedoms in ways that we *can't* fight as easily is chilling.
No, there isn't. But think about it this way: Imagine you're mayor of a small town that's recently been suffering from a rash of what look to be intentionally set fires. You've got a limited resources to spend on emergency services. Do you put more resources behind the fire department, to fight the fires, or do you put more resources behind the police department to stop the fires from being set?
Likewise, global, militant Islam (not the religion, not the moderates, the violent political movement) is behind the genocide in Darfur. Can we justify putting out the fire in Darfur when, by allocating resources to do that, we have less to go after the arsonists supporting it all? I'm not saying it's an either-or decision. But it's definitely a trade off, and you can't flippantly disregard people who consider it as such.
Wait a minute... Raising awareness of something is generally a good thing. The more informed people are about their choices and the world around them, the better off we are. But don't romanticize this as something it's not: it's consumer marketing, any way you slice it.
And just how people have beliefs of which beer tastes better, or which diet book will make them less fat, people also have different beliefs about what "bad things" in the world are more important to stop than others.
The key is choice, and you shouldn't villify people just because they don't agree with your personal choice of "the worst thing in the world" to prevent.
...that it's awfully difficult to stop murder, hardship and suffering of human beings everywhere on the planet. Every "good thing" we do in the world is offset by another good thing we won't be able to do somewhere else. People who criticize the world's involvement in Iraq (predominantly the U.S.'s involvement now) by highlighting the other things we're *not* doing clearly understand this. It's a matter of optimizing our efforts to cause the most good with the resources we have available. It could be argued that by striking at the global nexus of militant Islam in the Middle East, we can indirectly affect things like Darfur all over the world. It could also be argued that we're fighting in Iraq to ensure a nice flow of oil to the U.S., and we ought to focus our efforts elsewhere, like Darfur. If a U.S. Citizen were to believe the former, the choice to conserve their own personal resources would be a completely justifiable course of action. I don't think we can dismiss people unwilling to contribute resources as simply "not caring about Darfur."
And they could also highlight areas where Saddam Hussein committed acts of genocide against the Kurds. Though, given that he used chemical weapons I guess there might not be that much visible destruction from a satellite photo...
So, if piracy is a crime, then why are the *AAs worried about their own ability to investigate? Shouldn't investigation and evidence collecting be up to a piece of government that we, the people (at least on paper) control?
People are worried about governmental intrusions into privacy (i.e., Patriot Act-type stuff). Why on earth should it *ever* be OK to allow another organization, one that's even *less* accountable to the public, the ability to fraudulently obtain information from us with the intent of prosecution?
Capitalism only realy "works" when all the participants are reasonably protected from fraud. If this sort of thing constitutes fraud, then there ought to be laws against it (if there aren't already are).
I think the 2nd order effect you've identified *is* good, but what lots of people will have to go through to finally get there isn't. In other words, it's definitely a bug, not a feature.
Most of them just use the tactic of [modding down comments that don't agree with their political beliefs] and eventually people will believe you. [On Slashdot] this has worked.
*cough* Global Warming *cough*
Here's a convoluted, but good, example:
I can be the richest man in China, take all my Yuan out of the bank, put it into some big ass suitcases, travel to Germany, and I couldn't so much as buy a damn schnitzel with it.
Why? Well, think about the schnitzel guy. So I sell one jaegerschnitzel to the desperately starving "Richest-Man-In-China" for a hojillion Yuan (maybe worth a million Euro, or whatever). I, schnitzel guy, leave work and stop off at the Esso to buy some smokes - guess what? They only take euro, and my Yuan is worthless.
Foreign currency only has value if people in your country believe that they will be able to take that currency and buy actual things with it. So let's say that instead of bringing over my Yuan, I spent all my Yuan to buy underpants and brought those over to Germany. Well, underpants have real value - I *like* having something between my pants and my giblets. So I'm willing to pay this strange underpants-selling Chinese guy some of my Euro for his great underpants.
Now, Chinese guy has Euro. Obviously, he can't spend Euro in China - they only take Yuan. So, what do I do? I buy underpants to take back to China, right? Well, let's say my fortune was 1,000,000 Yuan, and underpants cost (in China) 1 Yuan - with those Yuan, I bought 1,000,000 pairs of underpants. Now, I get to Germany, and they're willing to pay me 2 Euro per pair - I sell all my underpants, and all of a sudden I have 2 milion Euro! So, what do I spend it on?
So, I figure that underpants are a pretty safe commodity, so I go to the store, and find that... Damn. Underpants cost 2 Euro,. Well, it doesn't make sense to buy underpants - I'd just break even. So I find something that's maximizes my return - let's say that earplugs cost 5 Yuan a pair in China, but only 1 Euro in Germany - Well, I could buy 2,000,000 sets of earplugs with my Euro, go back to China, and make a bunch of Yuan!
It's a little more complicated in the real world because there aren't just two currencies, but the principles are unchanged.
I can't disagree with this. The problem with the situation we've got is that we have no visibility into the internal workings of the FBI/CIA/NSA to ensure that stuff like this isn't happening. I tend, personally, to be a little too trusting of these organizations and the individual motivations of their agents. I also believe that some people are a little too cynical. The optimal solution is possible only because of people on both sides who believe very strongly that they're right.
But I think that's OK. As long as we agree on the big stuff (i.e., not being blown up on any given day), we can work out the small stuff in exactly the kind of debate we have here. (as long as everyone votes, and holds their representatives and congresspeople accountable for what they do.)
Also another good point. The difference between terrorism and automobile accidents is really simple, but also really weird. For some reason, we accept that 40,000-50,000 fatalities a year is worth being able to drive 55. I know that sounds strange, but if we truly believed that even a single traffic fatality was one too many, we would lower then national speed limit to 10 mph. I mean, that would pretty much eliminate traffic fatalities, right? So why don't we do it? We could say, "Well, it's just not practical! We would never get anywhere! interstate shipping would be impossible! The economy would collapse!" But the (again, weird) unsaid piece of that argument is, "and we're willing to accept that 40 to 50 thousand people will die on the roads each year in order to keep our national economy running, and to allow us sufficient mobility."
At this point, most people (I think...) probably feel that even one death caused by an act of terrorism is one too many. So we have all these really expansive Homeland Security laws that not everybody agrees with (i.e., domestic spying, etc.).
Now, I'm willing to trade away some of my less-noticed derived rights, like phone and email privacy, to prevent even a single death caused by terrorism. I'm OK with the NSA/CIA/FBI looking at my phone records and listening to me talk dirty to my girlfriend. But I probably wouldn't be willing to allow random, warrantless, baseless searches of my home. And I definitely wouldn't be willing to trade away one of my fundamental rights for *any* measure of safety - give me liberty or give me death, and all that.
So, I guess my point is that, yes I acknowledge that it's a tradeoff. I'm willing to trade my derived right to phone/email/bank transaction privacy for safety. Others of you aren't. We probably *all* agree that we wouldn't be willing to trade a more overt kind of privacy, or a truly fundamental right to prevent even a single death caused by an act of terrorism.
This whole debate is about finding what level of tradeoff is acceptable to the most people.