Oxidization is generally pretty bad for most alcoholic drinks (oxidization is the main component in bottle aging in wine, but much of this has to do with the interaction of the oxygen with tannins and other stuff in the wine - http://www.allbusiness.com/trends-events/trends/11429124-1.html). The oak or whatever wood being used is porous, and this allows some of the alcohol to evaporate (particularly with distilled stuff, wine doesnt spend as much time in the barrel, so it doesn't lose as much in the way of alcohol) . Good stuff does stay in a cask for a long time for just this reason, not only does it pick up more of the good flavor, but the "angel's share" is greater, which mellows the alcohol. New casks are required in America, where it is law that no barrel be used twice, in Europe however, there is no such law, and barrels are used multiple times because this imparts different flavors, which is how you can get a sherry-wood scotch, its literally a scotch aged in a barrel once used for sherry.
The trick to universities is getting into them. Don't worry so much about Tuition and other costs until you know you will actually be applying those concerns. With schools like MIT, it seems, they are more willing to help prospective students financially due to the effort it takes to get accepted by them in the first place. Keep looking around for scholarships, and if nothing else, you can take out federal loans that you wont have to pay until after you graduated.
MS and computer(IBM based computers anyways)companies have been in bed together for a long time. Although its subtle, MS markets computers by bundling its software with them, and then allowing a computer company to advertise their computer as "capable" of running that bundle (or in this case the barest minimum version of that bundle available.) With almost any major computer brand it is impossible buy a computer without an OS, and nine times out of ten that OS is going to MS based. This is part of how MS sold Vista to begin with, as far as I can tell, and at the same time helped major PC manufacturers move newer products. While MS might not be directly responsible for the sale of computers, many people rely on the MS software, and so by assuring people that the computer they are about to buy can run MS Whatever, they sell computers as much as they sell their OS.
What i find interesting about this is that often trends in art are precursors to those in science, i.e. the renaissance theorems about perspective in painting and its eventual application to physics, or Jules Verne's numerous stories that seem, by today's standards, almost prescient. I believe this is another one of those cases where an art form has preceded and accurately, to some degree, predicted the course of the future of science and technology.
This is an interesting expression of the saturation of global culture, and how, despite the perceived barriers between easter and western societies, these gaps are slowly dissolving. What i find most interesting is that, as far as i can tell, the park is so popular - legal issues aside, this does imply within the Chinese population some tension between the west and the east has been eased. Although this is perhaps not the best place to find shared cultural values, it is a start, and i think it would do well for Disney not to castigate the government of China, but rather try to reach some sort of compromise or understanding. Unfortunately, being that they are a corporation, it is unlikely that they will see anything but a lawsuit. One can hope, but that hope is likely misplaced.
I worked for a couple years on a School Newspaper, http://www.dailyillini.com/The Daily Illini, at the University of Illinois, and although it was a School paper, it was at the time the top rated University paper in America, and also in direct competition with the local news paper, The News Gazette. One of the things that i learned was that there is a constant tension between journalists and the advertisers that make the paper run. We were independent, we relied, and the paper still does rely, entirely on ads to cover the costs of running the paper and paying the journalists. People always gripe about how much journalism is a whore to the forces of the general populous, but, in order for a paper to sustain itself, it has to be.
Responsible journalism takes a hit from the interestes of keeping a paper running - and it is always a struggle to determine which stories are best suited to these interests. The fact that headlines are changing is, frankly, not surprising, except in the fact that this change has come so late. Print journalism is floundering in a morass of uncertainty, people rarely pick up the paper anymore, and insted get their information online. Previous posters have said that headlines are dumb, ill-concieved, etc, however, headlines are the most, and often, only part of a paper ever read, and copy editors, who are responsible for headlines, often just sit around fixing grammar, spelling, and ap style, their last bastion of hope was these ridiculous headlines. How do you cram as much information as possible in to two or three words, and keep people interested in the story? If the headline is sucessful, a person will continue reading, if not, at least he or she will get the information she needs.
The alteration of headlines is both disheartening and expected. It is that ugly journalist versus ads department rearing its ugly head - something has to die in order for the paper to live. Views and click-throughs now generate the capital that print advertising once garnered, so it is unfourtunately imperative for newspapers to change with the times. It is an end to an era of whimsy generated by underpaid and understimulated spell-checkers, and I think, however inevitable, it is kind of sad.
One of the problems that I run into with linux is that although it is widely availible, the apps one can use on it are limited. Granted one can emu windows or mac oses, however, this take a bit of patience and a bit of savvy that the average user doesn't have, and pobably, in all honesty, doesn't wish to ever possess. The sentiment that i have heard from many people is, "Why use linux when I can run MSWord on mac or pc without hassles? I could use open office, but i know the ms and mac suites, and, for the most part, they are far less finicky." Finding software for linux can be troubling, and most people want to go to an electronics store and pick up whatever it is they feel they need - the likelyhood of finding something compatible with a linux distro is fairly slim for the most part. Until linux becomes more mainstream, i think the point is somewhat moot - the person who says linux is too hard for him or her, or has been in the past, might do well to partition a hard drive and run two osses, but he or she is probably correct in his or her initial observation.
Simply owing to the fact that oses tend to be so proprietary, the world simply isnt quite ready for a linux heavy computer community - that isn't to say it wont be, but i think some major work has to be done, and some of the bickering about distros needs to end, before this utopian os society is realized. Linux is good stuff, but as with all the best stuff, it simply isn't practicable for the uninitiated. Anyone can sing Mary had a Little Lamb with some ammount of proficiency, but only those with traning and years of practice can hope to surmount Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, and only the very best can sing the arias and solos therein.
From what i understdand of oceanography, which is by no means a great deal, oceans may have slightly different sea levels, i.e. the great lakes are quite different, hence the need for the locks in sault ste. marie - despite the fact that superiour and michigan are connected, thier heights differ by quite a few feet... i believe this is true of the atlantic and the pacific, which may be part of why locks are needed in the panama canal... in as much as oceans are contiguous, other factors like the sea bed, crevaces, etc., all have an effect upon what is measured when "sea level" is measured...
Although the implications of this are somewhat grandiose in scale, the question that seems to be refused to be answered by any of the articles or press releases is whether or not this technology will work with corrective lenses. Even now, due to the fact that i wear glasses (and refuse to purchase contacts, which is another issue altogether) i cannot really find sunglasses without paying an exhorbinant rate - my options are 1) buy sunglas clips, which dont work very well, and rarely fit, 2) spend twice as much as i should and purchase a set of sunglasses and non-tinted glasses, or 3) buy a set of glasses with transition lenses, or 4) go without and hope that the migraines that manifest themselves from increadible ammounts of light will be easily and efficiently staved off. Granted, these glasses, if they ever are produced, are likely to be expensive, but will these new glasses afford me new choises, or will i be stuck with the aforementioned quandries, only intensified by the fact that now there is a new kind of optical technology that is making my corrective lenses more expensive, thus increasing the expense i already have to shill out at the optricians and for the various types of lenses i, even now, need but can't afford?
I dont believe that there is any shift in the power structure, especially with regards to survailance, in reality, although citezenry with survailance technology does hinder the government and policing forces somewhat, these incidents still occur, and furthermore, are only very rarely documented. We saw Rodney King on tape, but how many other simmiliar scenarios have we not seen, and we have seen the UCLA incident, but it is foolhardy to believe that this is and will be the only time something simmiliar has or will happen.
The ubiquity of cameras is diminishing our right to privacey, which is something most people take for granted, to such a degree that no one really argues much about placing cameras on the interstate or in the city. At any given time, the people who are using these technologies, know where you are. National geographic had a show about survailance technology last night, and in one of the scenes, they followed a man through london as he entered the city, went to an office building, crossed the street to get a cup of coffee, and finally sat by a fountain to drink it. His entire day was chronicled through the use of cameras. Further, in Penn and Teller's Bullshit, the two magicians did a BS experiment to determine how trustworthy people were behind a camera, they set people up with survailance equipment to watch a truck at a house - telling the people they were working for a u.s. intelegence group. Without exception the people watched not the truck, but the people in the next house where a very lurid sexual scene was being enacted. The problem with cameras is not so much their existence as the people behind them. People would much rather watch something interesting than a truck, it's human nature, and there is no way to mitigate that.
By adding survailence to the citezenry, we are only declining the volume of our private spheres. Humans may be social animals, but our psychology demands that we have time alone - even married couples who spend their lives together have to get away from one another. By inculcating the world with cameras, whoever they may be hin the hands of, we are doing a disservice to this trait.
Finally, our whole structure of discipline is now determined by the panopticon that we currently live in. We do not behave because it is right or moral (and this is, i realize, a vast generalization) but becaus we are constantly being watched. These watching forces coerce us into action, and although we might agree that the actions we are taking are appropriate, being forced to take them adds a tension that, when released, is bound to have some catastrophic repricutions. Disallowing people to exist as private entities, disallows them to have an inner-life free of that feeling that someone is watching them. Granted the survailance that is in the hands of the government should be countered, by countering it with more survailance, is trying to right a wrong with another wrong.
The really interesting thing about all this conformity, and where i think the issue really lies, is the current inability for people ectirpate themselves from our strange system of discipline. Free expresion is at stake, but i dont think to the degree that most people believe it is, this is one of those isolated incidents that could be forgotten in a few years time (a few moths even). I do believe, however, it does beg a reexamination of how we utilize disciplining forces within societal structures.
People are "systematically getting fucked out of their freedoms," but that being true or not isn't really germain, and just saying it doesnt help anyone. Which isn't to say it is not a valid statement, but it still doesnt get at the why, which is vastly more important.
Looking at schools is a good jumping board, because they are disciplinary institutions in as much as they are educational, and often schools provide a good (if not slightly immature) microcosm of a region;s culture, ideals, ethics, etc. (this is especially true of public schools). In anycase, the real questions, it would seem, should be what is the motivation behind molding people to be more and more simmiliar, and what are the societal pressures that make conformity and lack of expression so attractive? These aren't issues just in the schools; it can be seen in the macrocosm quite clearly. I certainly dont have answers for these questions, but i think this case could be very interesting with regards to the answers it could potentially provide. Certainly the hype is a little untoward, and unfourtunately people will either be intrueged or disgusted not by the case, but by the media circus that is sure to be conjured, but with any luck a few people will follow the case objectively and maybe some real change can begin to take place, or at least some understanding as to why perhaps this conformity is becomming so prevalant.
While, i will grant that global warming is just a "theory," claiming that this is a valid argument for not trying to develop another theory is quite simmiliar to people who claim that evolution is just theory a and therefore we should neither continue teaching it nor researching speciation, the fossil record, and genomics - without the theory of evolution, those that study these aspects of earth's biology would have nothing to theorize about. This line of argument is neither helpful nor meritricious.
The evidence pointing toward episodic global warming is very compelling, especially when seen in the hockey stick graph, for those of us who understand visual representations more than verbiage. Global warming, though just a theory, is pretty well established, where the question really lies, and why this atmosphric blanket might need to be further researched is, how much impact are humans really having on the climate? Granted, there is evidence that humans have already
managed to divert a global ice age, so it is unlikely that we aren't completely benign, this does not mean that the current warming has as much to do with us as we would like to think. The earth has natural cycles of warming and cooling, so, although I agree that we should cut down emissions, and try to be a little less environmentally impactful, we also need to figure out wether this current relative warmth is due to our noxious by-products, or just part of a natural cycle that has existed for billions of years. On the one hand, humans are highly destructive creatures and should be aware of the harm they cause Gaia, on the other, we are also too proud and need to stop internalizing our locus of control to the point that we loose our pragmatic perception of what is really going on in the world.
What i find most disturbing about this is that if this can happen at a bank, and, as the previous post assures us, happens all the time, what happens in industries and businesses where security should be just as tight, but there isn't as obvious a need for said security. (i.e. insurance companies, stock trading companies, small businesses that deal in e-commerce, etc.) Whenever i see something like this bank problem, it makes me quail at the thought of the things that aren't being seen.
The real problem exists, i think, with non-geeks' inability to understand the risks involved with computers. In order to write a paper once, i had to create a term, anti-geeks: people who use computers, but don't respect the power they afford us, and thus, don't really understand how they can be both a boon and a danger. I believe said term is vastly appropriate for situations such as this. In as much as i think we would like not to believe it, many people still have the "if i turn it on, and it works, then everything is all right" mentality, and this is bad enough, but the people that really scare me are the ones with that aforementioned mentality that also believe by turning on the computer and writing a mean spread-sheet, they are terribly savvy people and don't need to pay any heed to security advice or the wise words of their IT guys.
For a while i worked at a camp for kids with special needs, and one of the things we did was teach disability awareness to the community at large. It makes me think that perhaps there should also be a general class to give people some sort of literacy - although i don't know how literacy would be defined or how to implement such a program, but it seems at least like it might be a helpful thing for schools and municipalities to offer. The real issue isn't so much ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance - many people, often, don't even know that they don't know; this is far more dangerous than simply not knowing and admiting it.
Teaching toward tests is a poor choice in any situation. The purpose of education is not only to teach students lessons, but also to engender the ability to think critically and creatively. Tests cannot possibly cover everything that might arise in a given situation - in english and literature classes, for example, the ability to think for oneself and not in a framework that allows only for an understanding based on what someone else understands, is a must. This really is emblematic of the problem with the current educational model. A test, and a grade even, can only give so much information about what someone has really learned, or how much they have really been taught. Some of the greatest minds barely made it through secondary school, let alone university.
The devaluation of teachers is inherant in this scheme as well. Rather than showing teachers they are valued by paying them more (that they are paid very little is almost not worth noting) all this does is show teachers that thay are supposed to create more cogs for a machine - this is why many schools cut music and arts programs, and why in many cases, the humanities and liberal arts are undervalued and come with such a limp-wristed reputation. The belief that writers are born and scientists are made is wholly innacurate, as all absolutes tend to be. To be sure, it is a teachers responsibility to teach his or her students properly, but owing to the pittance they are given to do this job, those bonuses probably look like a dire necesity.
This sceme only hurts teachers and students. Teachers are given the message that their lessons must somehow reflect the values that a governing body has with regards to education if they are to make enough money to survive. Students lose the benefit of having teachers that are not trying to mold them into the good little citezens the government is always trying to get people to be. This initiative is not one to help good teachers - good teachers cannot be bought, and it does not help students - how can they benefit if their teacher is just another soulless government agent, this initiative, rather, is social engineering at its very simplest and most insidious.
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Oxidization is generally pretty bad for most alcoholic drinks (oxidization is the main component in bottle aging in wine, but much of this has to do with the interaction of the oxygen with tannins and other stuff in the wine - http://www.allbusiness.com/trends-events/trends/11429124-1.html). The oak or whatever wood being used is porous, and this allows some of the alcohol to evaporate (particularly with distilled stuff, wine doesnt spend as much time in the barrel, so it doesn't lose as much in the way of alcohol) . Good stuff does stay in a cask for a long time for just this reason, not only does it pick up more of the good flavor, but the "angel's share" is greater, which mellows the alcohol. New casks are required in America, where it is law that no barrel be used twice, in Europe however, there is no such law, and barrels are used multiple times because this imparts different flavors, which is how you can get a sherry-wood scotch, its literally a scotch aged in a barrel once used for sherry.
The trick to universities is getting into them. Don't worry so much about Tuition and other costs until you know you will actually be applying those concerns. With schools like MIT, it seems, they are more willing to help prospective students financially due to the effort it takes to get accepted by them in the first place. Keep looking around for scholarships, and if nothing else, you can take out federal loans that you wont have to pay until after you graduated.
MS and computer(IBM based computers anyways)companies have been in bed together for a long time. Although its subtle, MS markets computers by bundling its software with them, and then allowing a computer company to advertise their computer as "capable" of running that bundle (or in this case the barest minimum version of that bundle available.) With almost any major computer brand it is impossible buy a computer without an OS, and nine times out of ten that OS is going to MS based. This is part of how MS sold Vista to begin with, as far as I can tell, and at the same time helped major PC manufacturers move newer products. While MS might not be directly responsible for the sale of computers, many people rely on the MS software, and so by assuring people that the computer they are about to buy can run MS Whatever, they sell computers as much as they sell their OS.
What i find interesting about this is that often trends in art are precursors to those in science, i.e. the renaissance theorems about perspective in painting and its eventual application to physics, or Jules Verne's numerous stories that seem, by today's standards, almost prescient. I believe this is another one of those cases where an art form has preceded and accurately, to some degree, predicted the course of the future of science and technology.
This is an interesting expression of the saturation of global culture, and how, despite the perceived barriers between easter and western societies, these gaps are slowly dissolving. What i find most interesting is that, as far as i can tell, the park is so popular - legal issues aside, this does imply within the Chinese population some tension between the west and the east has been eased. Although this is perhaps not the best place to find shared cultural values, it is a start, and i think it would do well for Disney not to castigate the government of China, but rather try to reach some sort of compromise or understanding. Unfortunately, being that they are a corporation, it is unlikely that they will see anything but a lawsuit. One can hope, but that hope is likely misplaced.
I worked for a couple years on a School Newspaper, http://www.dailyillini.com/The Daily Illini, at the University of Illinois, and although it was a School paper, it was at the time the top rated University paper in America, and also in direct competition with the local news paper, The News Gazette. One of the things that i learned was that there is a constant tension between journalists and the advertisers that make the paper run. We were independent, we relied, and the paper still does rely, entirely on ads to cover the costs of running the paper and paying the journalists. People always gripe about how much journalism is a whore to the forces of the general populous, but, in order for a paper to sustain itself, it has to be.
Responsible journalism takes a hit from the interestes of keeping a paper running - and it is always a struggle to determine which stories are best suited to these interests. The fact that headlines are changing is, frankly, not surprising, except in the fact that this change has come so late. Print journalism is floundering in a morass of uncertainty, people rarely pick up the paper anymore, and insted get their information online. Previous posters have said that headlines are dumb, ill-concieved, etc, however, headlines are the most, and often, only part of a paper ever read, and copy editors, who are responsible for headlines, often just sit around fixing grammar, spelling, and ap style, their last bastion of hope was these ridiculous headlines. How do you cram as much information as possible in to two or three words, and keep people interested in the story? If the headline is sucessful, a person will continue reading, if not, at least he or she will get the information she needs.
The alteration of headlines is both disheartening and expected. It is that ugly journalist versus ads department rearing its ugly head - something has to die in order for the paper to live. Views and click-throughs now generate the capital that print advertising once garnered, so it is unfourtunately imperative for newspapers to change with the times. It is an end to an era of whimsy generated by underpaid and understimulated spell-checkers, and I think, however inevitable, it is kind of sad.
One of the problems that I run into with linux is that although it is widely availible, the apps one can use on it are limited. Granted one can emu windows or mac oses, however, this take a bit of patience and a bit of savvy that the average user doesn't have, and pobably, in all honesty, doesn't wish to ever possess. The sentiment that i have heard from many people is, "Why use linux when I can run MSWord on mac or pc without hassles? I could use open office, but i know the ms and mac suites, and, for the most part, they are far less finicky." Finding software for linux can be troubling, and most people want to go to an electronics store and pick up whatever it is they feel they need - the likelyhood of finding something compatible with a linux distro is fairly slim for the most part. Until linux becomes more mainstream, i think the point is somewhat moot - the person who says linux is too hard for him or her, or has been in the past, might do well to partition a hard drive and run two osses, but he or she is probably correct in his or her initial observation. Simply owing to the fact that oses tend to be so proprietary, the world simply isnt quite ready for a linux heavy computer community - that isn't to say it wont be, but i think some major work has to be done, and some of the bickering about distros needs to end, before this utopian os society is realized. Linux is good stuff, but as with all the best stuff, it simply isn't practicable for the uninitiated. Anyone can sing Mary had a Little Lamb with some ammount of proficiency, but only those with traning and years of practice can hope to surmount Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, and only the very best can sing the arias and solos therein.
From what i understdand of oceanography, which is by no means a great deal, oceans may have slightly different sea levels, i.e. the great lakes are quite different, hence the need for the locks in sault ste. marie - despite the fact that superiour and michigan are connected, thier heights differ by quite a few feet... i believe this is true of the atlantic and the pacific, which may be part of why locks are needed in the panama canal... in as much as oceans are contiguous, other factors like the sea bed, crevaces, etc., all have an effect upon what is measured when "sea level" is measured...
Although the implications of this are somewhat grandiose in scale, the question that seems to be refused to be answered by any of the articles or press releases is whether or not this technology will work with corrective lenses. Even now, due to the fact that i wear glasses (and refuse to purchase contacts, which is another issue altogether) i cannot really find sunglasses without paying an exhorbinant rate - my options are 1) buy sunglas clips, which dont work very well, and rarely fit, 2) spend twice as much as i should and purchase a set of sunglasses and non-tinted glasses, or 3) buy a set of glasses with transition lenses, or 4) go without and hope that the migraines that manifest themselves from increadible ammounts of light will be easily and efficiently staved off. Granted, these glasses, if they ever are produced, are likely to be expensive, but will these new glasses afford me new choises, or will i be stuck with the aforementioned quandries, only intensified by the fact that now there is a new kind of optical technology that is making my corrective lenses more expensive, thus increasing the expense i already have to shill out at the optricians and for the various types of lenses i, even now, need but can't afford?
I dont believe that there is any shift in the power structure, especially with regards to survailance, in reality, although citezenry with survailance technology does hinder the government and policing forces somewhat, these incidents still occur, and furthermore, are only very rarely documented. We saw Rodney King on tape, but how many other simmiliar scenarios have we not seen, and we have seen the UCLA incident, but it is foolhardy to believe that this is and will be the only time something simmiliar has or will happen.
The ubiquity of cameras is diminishing our right to privacey, which is something most people take for granted, to such a degree that no one really argues much about placing cameras on the interstate or in the city. At any given time, the people who are using these technologies, know where you are. National geographic had a show about survailance technology last night, and in one of the scenes, they followed a man through london as he entered the city, went to an office building, crossed the street to get a cup of coffee, and finally sat by a fountain to drink it. His entire day was chronicled through the use of cameras. Further, in Penn and Teller's Bullshit, the two magicians did a BS experiment to determine how trustworthy people were behind a camera, they set people up with survailance equipment to watch a truck at a house - telling the people they were working for a u.s. intelegence group. Without exception the people watched not the truck, but the people in the next house where a very lurid sexual scene was being enacted. The problem with cameras is not so much their existence as the people behind them. People would much rather watch something interesting than a truck, it's human nature, and there is no way to mitigate that.
By adding survailence to the citezenry, we are only declining the volume of our private spheres. Humans may be social animals, but our psychology demands that we have time alone - even married couples who spend their lives together have to get away from one another. By inculcating the world with cameras, whoever they may be hin the hands of, we are doing a disservice to this trait.
Finally, our whole structure of discipline is now determined by the panopticon that we currently live in. We do not behave because it is right or moral (and this is, i realize, a vast generalization) but becaus we are constantly being watched. These watching forces coerce us into action, and although we might agree that the actions we are taking are appropriate, being forced to take them adds a tension that, when released, is bound to have some catastrophic repricutions. Disallowing people to exist as private entities, disallows them to have an inner-life free of that feeling that someone is watching them. Granted the survailance that is in the hands of the government should be countered, by countering it with more survailance, is trying to right a wrong with another wrong.
The really interesting thing about all this conformity, and where i think the issue really lies, is the current inability for people ectirpate themselves from our strange system of discipline. Free expresion is at stake, but i dont think to the degree that most people believe it is, this is one of those isolated incidents that could be forgotten in a few years time (a few moths even). I do believe, however, it does beg a reexamination of how we utilize disciplining forces within societal structures.
People are "systematically getting fucked out of their freedoms," but that being true or not isn't really germain, and just saying it doesnt help anyone. Which isn't to say it is not a valid statement, but it still doesnt get at the why, which is vastly more important.
Looking at schools is a good jumping board, because they are disciplinary institutions in as much as they are educational, and often schools provide a good (if not slightly immature) microcosm of a region;s culture, ideals, ethics, etc. (this is especially true of public schools). In anycase, the real questions, it would seem, should be what is the motivation behind molding people to be more and more simmiliar, and what are the societal pressures that make conformity and lack of expression so attractive? These aren't issues just in the schools; it can be seen in the macrocosm quite clearly. I certainly dont have answers for these questions, but i think this case could be very interesting with regards to the answers it could potentially provide. Certainly the hype is a little untoward, and unfourtunately people will either be intrueged or disgusted not by the case, but by the media circus that is sure to be conjured, but with any luck a few people will follow the case objectively and maybe some real change can begin to take place, or at least some understanding as to why perhaps this conformity is becomming so prevalant.
While, i will grant that global warming is just a "theory," claiming that this is a valid argument for not trying to develop another theory is quite simmiliar to people who claim that evolution is just theory a and therefore we should neither continue teaching it nor researching speciation, the fossil record, and genomics - without the theory of evolution, those that study these aspects of earth's biology would have nothing to theorize about. This line of argument is neither helpful nor meritricious.
The evidence pointing toward episodic global warming is very compelling, especially when seen in the hockey stick graph, for those of us who understand visual representations more than verbiage. Global warming, though just a theory, is pretty well established, where the question really lies, and why this atmosphric blanket might need to be further researched is, how much impact are humans really having on the climate? Granted, there is evidence that humans have already managed to divert a global ice age, so it is unlikely that we aren't completely benign, this does not mean that the current warming has as much to do with us as we would like to think. The earth has natural cycles of warming and cooling, so, although I agree that we should cut down emissions, and try to be a little less environmentally impactful, we also need to figure out wether this current relative warmth is due to our noxious by-products, or just part of a natural cycle that has existed for billions of years. On the one hand, humans are highly destructive creatures and should be aware of the harm they cause Gaia, on the other, we are also too proud and need to stop internalizing our locus of control to the point that we loose our pragmatic perception of what is really going on in the world.
What i find most disturbing about this is that if this can happen at a bank, and, as the previous post assures us, happens all the time, what happens in industries and businesses where security should be just as tight, but there isn't as obvious a need for said security. (i.e. insurance companies, stock trading companies, small businesses that deal in e-commerce, etc.) Whenever i see something like this bank problem, it makes me quail at the thought of the things that aren't being seen.
The real problem exists, i think, with non-geeks' inability to understand the risks involved with computers. In order to write a paper once, i had to create a term, anti-geeks: people who use computers, but don't respect the power they afford us, and thus, don't really understand how they can be both a boon and a danger. I believe said term is vastly appropriate for situations such as this. In as much as i think we would like not to believe it, many people still have the "if i turn it on, and it works, then everything is all right" mentality, and this is bad enough, but the people that really scare me are the ones with that aforementioned mentality that also believe by turning on the computer and writing a mean spread-sheet, they are terribly savvy people and don't need to pay any heed to security advice or the wise words of their IT guys.
For a while i worked at a camp for kids with special needs, and one of the things we did was teach disability awareness to the community at large. It makes me think that perhaps there should also be a general class to give people some sort of literacy - although i don't know how literacy would be defined or how to implement such a program, but it seems at least like it might be a helpful thing for schools and municipalities to offer. The real issue isn't so much ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance - many people, often, don't even know that they don't know; this is far more dangerous than simply not knowing and admiting it.
Teaching toward tests is a poor choice in any situation. The purpose of education is not only to teach students lessons, but also to engender the ability to think critically and creatively. Tests cannot possibly cover everything that might arise in a given situation - in english and literature classes, for example, the ability to think for oneself and not in a framework that allows only for an understanding based on what someone else understands, is a must. This really is emblematic of the problem with the current educational model. A test, and a grade even, can only give so much information about what someone has really learned, or how much they have really been taught. Some of the greatest minds barely made it through secondary school, let alone university. The devaluation of teachers is inherant in this scheme as well. Rather than showing teachers they are valued by paying them more (that they are paid very little is almost not worth noting) all this does is show teachers that thay are supposed to create more cogs for a machine - this is why many schools cut music and arts programs, and why in many cases, the humanities and liberal arts are undervalued and come with such a limp-wristed reputation. The belief that writers are born and scientists are made is wholly innacurate, as all absolutes tend to be. To be sure, it is a teachers responsibility to teach his or her students properly, but owing to the pittance they are given to do this job, those bonuses probably look like a dire necesity. This sceme only hurts teachers and students. Teachers are given the message that their lessons must somehow reflect the values that a governing body has with regards to education if they are to make enough money to survive. Students lose the benefit of having teachers that are not trying to mold them into the good little citezens the government is always trying to get people to be. This initiative is not one to help good teachers - good teachers cannot be bought, and it does not help students - how can they benefit if their teacher is just another soulless government agent, this initiative, rather, is social engineering at its very simplest and most insidious.