Ah, I see you're right; I didn't read the post carefully enough. Well, new taxes are really unnecessary in this case -- an end to oil company corporate welfare would most likely raise prices, and would certainly leave enough savings to help out those who are hardest hit.
There is a rather large difference between letting market forces have their way with oil prices, and actively banning marijuana or profanity. The first requires only that government not do something (disburse the enormous corporate welfare payments which the oil companies have been getting for so long they now regard it as their rightful due) while the second requires the government do something (fund the ever-growing War on Drugs industry, or censor communication.) As for your claim that "people driving a lot... has very very very little short term effect on your health, and most likely you won't be alive for the long term effects of it," that's simply not true; living in a heavy-traffic area has a major effect on your respiratory health, comparable to that of regular smoking. See here for a decent open-access summary of the effects of particulate pollution on respiratory health, and here for an article (not open-access, but the major results are given in the abstract) specifically about the effect of automotive pollution on respiratory health in children.
People like Obama who basically hate capitalism and individual liberty realized that hydrogen fuel cells are too efficient to allow to freely come to the market.
Oh. My. God.
You actually believe that, don't you? I mean, at first I thought your post had to be a joke. But it isn't, is it?
There are a great many posts attached to this story which explain, quite clearly and accurately, what the major problems with hydrogen fuel cells are. Hint: too much efficiency isn't one of them. You could read those posts or, better yet, do a little reading on your own and educate yourself on the issue. But if you prefer your paranoid fantasies, you go with that.
Just be aware that sane people will feel free to regard you as clearly being a nutcase who has nothing worthwhile to say on this or any other subject, ever.
You go right ahead and live on the block where 10 guilty guys went free.
Tell you what. I'll live with the criminals, and you live in the next town over where the cops can do whatever the hell they want. I guarantee you I'll have a longer, safer life than you will. What people like you never seem to understand is that when cops don't follow the law, they're no longer serving and protecting -- they're just the biggest, toughest, meanest gang on the street.
If the other teams were "forced to run Windows" (which it doesn't say anywhere in the story) then it would have been because of service policy... in which case hopefully the Army's relatively favorable attitude Linux will get the other services' attention.
But joining the human rights declaration would be in direct violation of the supremacy clause--stating that the constitution is the supreme law of the land
You mean this supremacy clause?
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land" (emphasis mine)
There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution which prevents us from signing any treaty. Whether signing this particular treaty would be a good idea is a whole 'nother argument, of course, but claiming that it would be disqualified on Constitutional grounds when the Constitution explicitly says otherwise is just silly.
STFU, you dumbass liberal wacko. It is those guns, bombers and soon particle weapons that allow you to be able to freely post things on sites like this. Every one LESS of those things is one more step towards a fascist, socialist slave future for all of us.
[snicker]
GPP was a take-off on a well-known quote:
"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Who said that? Well, that would be that well-known dumbass liberal socialist fascist wacko, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
If you really want to know something, you have to verify it yourself. Don't rely on someone else's interview, go interview the person yourself. Don't rely on someone else's experiment, or someone else's first hand account, if you want to know something, verify it yourself.
The problem with this principle is that if we followed it consistently, we'd never get anything done. As a scientist, am I supposed to go down the reference tree of every paper I cite and reproduce every result back to Newton? Personally verifying every piece of information we receive would drastically reduce the knowledge we have available to use.
In many cases this is of course impractical, but at least you should be aware that your knowledge might not be accurate.
That's where trust comes in. Sometimes there are formal methods for establishing trustworthy sources (peer review is by no means perfect, but all in all it seems to work pretty well) and sometimes you have to judge informally, by personal acquaintance or reputation. But you have to have some sources you trust, somehow, or you'll be paralyzed.
Yes, it's interesting to know that Wikipedia is now being used as a source. But setting up this kind of "experiment" is still a jackass move. GPP's example of stabbing someone to death was a bit melodramatic, sure, but the principle is still the same.
As long as there have been reporters, there have been people who lied to reporters. Fitzgerald's stunt is just a high-tech version of this. It doesn't mean anything in terms of the quality of reporting today vs. some half-mythical golden age of journalism.
Okay, let me get this straight: you accuse mainstream journalists of failing to check their facts and a lack of objectivity... and then you use bloggers as an example of how to correct these problems?
As for the first claim, go on believing that "[b]loggers actually check their facts, or their posters or competition will" if it suits you, but I can pretty much guarantee that you will find more errors of fact per story in just about any political blog than you will find in just about any newspaper, or radio or TV news show. There are simply too many blogs, and too few people with the time and motivation and skills to fact-check, to keep the blogosphere honest. You could put up a blog post claiming that Obama eats live kittens every morning for breakfast, and there would be a substantial number of people who will not only believe you, but would champion you against those who said "Um, no, actually he doesn't" as a Bold Politically Incorrect Speaker Of Truth To Power.
And as for the second, I would argue that the pretense (which is all it can ever be) of journalistic objectivity has done more damage to journalism than its lack ever did. People know perfectly well that reporters -- and, at least as importantly, the people who pay those reporters -- have opinions of their own, and that those opinions will influence news coverage. MSM journalism (newspapers, radio, TV) is actually much more useful when you can discern those opinions within minutes of picking up a paper or tuning into a station instead of trying to read between the lines to puzzle them out.
[sigh] Many Democrats in Congress voted for the Iraq war resolution; some of them still think it was a good idea. A majority of Democrats (and these days, independents) believe they were wrong for doing so, but no one's "drummed them out of the party" for it. For that matter, Lieberman hasn't been "drummed out of the party" either... even though he richly deserves it, not for his support of the war, but for his support of the Republican candidate in the Presidential election. What do you think would have happened to a Republican who supported Kerry or Obama?
Perhaps you missed the fact that the Representative who introduced this bill is a Republican? Kind of hard to pin this particular piece of idiocy on Obama.
Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?
Elsevier is a major scientific publisher; articles appearing in their journals are generally considered respectable. The fact that they were willing to publish a "journal" like this one will do a lot of damage to that reputation. Researchers will be less likely to submit high-quality articles to other Elsevier journals, and university libraries will look more closely at the subscription package deals which is where the journal publishers make most of their money.
Eventually this country will come to that.... Politicians have made such a mockery of the law that personal feelings towards it should be one of either laughter or contempt.
You talk tough, but you really wouldn't want to live in the world your pathetic Mad Max fantasies would create.
good church going people who would rather vote Democrat than see anything with a little adult content
Come on, at least get your stereotypes straight! It's good church-going Republicans who want to burn the vile pornographers and fornicators at the stake to please Jesus Christ Our Lord And Savior. Democrats hate porn because they're all secret Muslims who are paving the way for President Hussein's upcoming declaration of sharia law... or because they're under the thrall of the Godless man-hating hairy-legged feminists, I can never remember which.
The idea that "scientists" are going to be spiking water supply with Li+, a freaking powerful mood stabilizing aka mood altering drug for the "Greater Good"?
Um... no, that would be pretty much just you.
Have you considered seeking help for this paranoia of yours?
I thought touching swine was a crime in a Muslim country, and eating it... could cost your head.
Islam is no more homogeneous than Christendom. Egypt has a large non-Muslim population, and in general, at least until fairly recently, it's pretty much been a "Muslim country" in the same sense that the US is a "Christian country." IOW, you could raise and eat pigs in peace. The fundamentalist wackos are gaining power, however, and the flu gave them a handy excuse to exercise it with the pig slaughter.
Any suppression of publication is censorship. (Your examples of stores choosing what to carry is a red herring; they're distributors, not publishers.) And in fact it happens all the time, and we accept it as a fact of life. The question is, when should censorship be disallowed? In the US we've taken the line that censorship by the government is generally wrong and that corporate censorship is generally okay. But as corporations get more powerful -- as their effect on the lives of the average citizen becomes less and less distinguishable from the effect of government -- we may have to revise that view.
The problem today is that sanitization and sterilization of our restaurants and homes is that we are now exposed to FAR FEWER germs than in the past.
And interestingly, today FAR FEWER people die in infectious disease epidemics than in the past.
Maybe we've gone too far in our germ-phobia, sure. But people today don't remember the world (which was most of human history) where damn near everyone had a sibling, spouse, or child -- especially a child, or multiple children -- who had died young from some disease that we know now to be easily preventable by basic sanitation measures. If you want to go back to that world, don't expect the rest of us to go along with you... or let you drag us back into it.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, I see you're right; I didn't read the post carefully enough. Well, new taxes are really unnecessary in this case -- an end to oil company corporate welfare would most likely raise prices, and would certainly leave enough savings to help out those who are hardest hit.
There is a rather large difference between letting market forces have their way with oil prices, and actively banning marijuana or profanity. The first requires only that government not do something (disburse the enormous corporate welfare payments which the oil companies have been getting for so long they now regard it as their rightful due) while the second requires the government do something (fund the ever-growing War on Drugs industry, or censor communication.) As for your claim that "people driving a lot ... has very very very little short term effect on your health, and most likely you won't be alive for the long term effects of it," that's simply not true; living in a heavy-traffic area has a major effect on your respiratory health, comparable to that of regular smoking. See here for a decent open-access summary of the effects of particulate pollution on respiratory health, and here for an article (not open-access, but the major results are given in the abstract) specifically about the effect of automotive pollution on respiratory health in children.
People like Obama who basically hate capitalism and individual liberty realized that hydrogen fuel cells are too efficient to allow to freely come to the market.
Oh. My. God.
You actually believe that, don't you? I mean, at first I thought your post had to be a joke. But it isn't, is it?
There are a great many posts attached to this story which explain, quite clearly and accurately, what the major problems with hydrogen fuel cells are. Hint: too much efficiency isn't one of them. You could read those posts or, better yet, do a little reading on your own and educate yourself on the issue. But if you prefer your paranoid fantasies, you go with that.
Just be aware that sane people will feel free to regard you as clearly being a nutcase who has nothing worthwhile to say on this or any other subject, ever.
You go right ahead and live on the block where 10 guilty guys went free.
Tell you what. I'll live with the criminals, and you live in the next town over where the cops can do whatever the hell they want. I guarantee you I'll have a longer, safer life than you will. What people like you never seem to understand is that when cops don't follow the law, they're no longer serving and protecting -- they're just the biggest, toughest, meanest gang on the street.
If the other teams were "forced to run Windows" (which it doesn't say anywhere in the story) then it would have been because of service policy ... in which case hopefully the Army's relatively favorable attitude Linux will get the other services' attention.
But joining the human rights declaration would be in direct violation of the supremacy clause--stating that the constitution is the supreme law of the land
You mean this supremacy clause?
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land" (emphasis mine)
There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution which prevents us from signing any treaty. Whether signing this particular treaty would be a good idea is a whole 'nother argument, of course, but claiming that it would be disqualified on Constitutional grounds when the Constitution explicitly says otherwise is just silly.
17 billion here, 17 billion there ... oh, hell, I'm not going to say it.
STFU, you dumbass liberal wacko. It is those guns, bombers and soon particle weapons that allow you to be able to freely post things on sites like this. Every one LESS of those things is one more step towards a fascist, socialist slave future for all of us.
[snicker]
GPP was a take-off on a well-known quote:
"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Who said that? Well, that would be that well-known dumbass liberal socialist fascist wacko, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
But ... but ... I gave the Wikipedia page version number and everything!
If you really want to know something, you have to verify it yourself. Don't rely on someone else's interview, go interview the person yourself. Don't rely on someone else's experiment, or someone else's first hand account, if you want to know something, verify it yourself.
The problem with this principle is that if we followed it consistently, we'd never get anything done. As a scientist, am I supposed to go down the reference tree of every paper I cite and reproduce every result back to Newton? Personally verifying every piece of information we receive would drastically reduce the knowledge we have available to use.
In many cases this is of course impractical, but at least you should be aware that your knowledge might not be accurate.
That's where trust comes in. Sometimes there are formal methods for establishing trustworthy sources (peer review is by no means perfect, but all in all it seems to work pretty well) and sometimes you have to judge informally, by personal acquaintance or reputation. But you have to have some sources you trust, somehow, or you'll be paralyzed.
Yes, it's interesting to know that Wikipedia is now being used as a source. But setting up this kind of "experiment" is still a jackass move. GPP's example of stabbing someone to death was a bit melodramatic, sure, but the principle is still the same.
As long as there have been reporters, there have been people who lied to reporters. Fitzgerald's stunt is just a high-tech version of this. It doesn't mean anything in terms of the quality of reporting today vs. some half-mythical golden age of journalism.
Okay, let me get this straight: you accuse mainstream journalists of failing to check their facts and a lack of objectivity ... and then you use bloggers as an example of how to correct these problems?
As for the first claim, go on believing that "[b]loggers actually check their facts, or their posters or competition will" if it suits you, but I can pretty much guarantee that you will find more errors of fact per story in just about any political blog than you will find in just about any newspaper, or radio or TV news show. There are simply too many blogs, and too few people with the time and motivation and skills to fact-check, to keep the blogosphere honest. You could put up a blog post claiming that Obama eats live kittens every morning for breakfast, and there would be a substantial number of people who will not only believe you, but would champion you against those who said "Um, no, actually he doesn't" as a Bold Politically Incorrect Speaker Of Truth To Power.
And as for the second, I would argue that the pretense (which is all it can ever be) of journalistic objectivity has done more damage to journalism than its lack ever did. People know perfectly well that reporters -- and, at least as importantly, the people who pay those reporters -- have opinions of their own, and that those opinions will influence news coverage. MSM journalism (newspapers, radio, TV) is actually much more useful when you can discern those opinions within minutes of picking up a paper or tuning into a station instead of trying to read between the lines to puzzle them out.
There is nothing dorkier than geeks and nerds arguing over the correct name to use for wonks.
[sigh] Many Democrats in Congress voted for the Iraq war resolution; some of them still think it was a good idea. A majority of Democrats (and these days, independents) believe they were wrong for doing so, but no one's "drummed them out of the party" for it. For that matter, Lieberman hasn't been "drummed out of the party" either ... even though he richly deserves it, not for his support of the war, but for his support of the Republican candidate in the Presidential election. What do you think would have happened to a Republican who supported Kerry or Obama?
Perhaps you missed the fact that the Representative who introduced this bill is a Republican? Kind of hard to pin this particular piece of idiocy on Obama.
I don't trust anything a reporter says about anything. ... It seems they're like UK parliamentary ministers
Of course, the way you find out about the behavior of your MPs is ... well ... what reporters tell you.
So either the reporters are telling the truth about the politicians' behavior, or they're lying and the politicians are really all brilliant.
Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?
Elsevier is a major scientific publisher; articles appearing in their journals are generally considered respectable. The fact that they were willing to publish a "journal" like this one will do a lot of damage to that reputation. Researchers will be less likely to submit high-quality articles to other Elsevier journals, and university libraries will look more closely at the subscription package deals which is where the journal publishers make most of their money.
That's why.
Eventually this country will come to that. ... Politicians have made such a mockery of the law that personal feelings towards it should be one of either laughter or contempt.
You talk tough, but you really wouldn't want to live in the world your pathetic Mad Max fantasies would create.
good church going people who would rather vote Democrat than see anything with a little adult content
Come on, at least get your stereotypes straight! It's good church-going Republicans who want to burn the vile pornographers and fornicators at the stake to please Jesus Christ Our Lord And Savior. Democrats hate porn because they're all secret Muslims who are paving the way for President Hussein's upcoming declaration of sharia law ... or because they're under the thrall of the Godless man-hating hairy-legged feminists, I can never remember which.
The idea that "scientists" are going to be spiking water supply with Li+, a freaking powerful mood stabilizing aka mood altering drug for the "Greater Good"?
Um ... no, that would be pretty much just you.
Have you considered seeking help for this paranoia of yours?
I thought touching swine was a crime in a Muslim country, and eating it... could cost your head.
Islam is no more homogeneous than Christendom. Egypt has a large non-Muslim population, and in general, at least until fairly recently, it's pretty much been a "Muslim country" in the same sense that the US is a "Christian country." IOW, you could raise and eat pigs in peace. The fundamentalist wackos are gaining power, however, and the flu gave them a handy excuse to exercise it with the pig slaughter.
It's not censorship unless it's banned by the government.
Wrong.
Any suppression of publication is censorship. (Your examples of stores choosing what to carry is a red herring; they're distributors, not publishers.) And in fact it happens all the time, and we accept it as a fact of life. The question is, when should censorship be disallowed? In the US we've taken the line that censorship by the government is generally wrong and that corporate censorship is generally okay. But as corporations get more powerful -- as their effect on the lives of the average citizen becomes less and less distinguishable from the effect of government -- we may have to revise that view.
in the context of the people fighting it is perfectly acceptable to lie to infidels (and shoot them, and cut off their heads, and so on).
Just about every type of evil imaginable has been perfectly acceptable to large numbers of people fighting in every war, ever.
The problem today is that sanitization and sterilization of our restaurants and homes is that we are now exposed to FAR FEWER germs than in the past.
And interestingly, today FAR FEWER people die in infectious disease epidemics than in the past.
Maybe we've gone too far in our germ-phobia, sure. But people today don't remember the world (which was most of human history) where damn near everyone had a sibling, spouse, or child -- especially a child, or multiple children -- who had died young from some disease that we know now to be easily preventable by basic sanitation measures. If you want to go back to that world, don't expect the rest of us to go along with you ... or let you drag us back into it.