As you say, rape is sex without consent. The woman was not under the influence of any drugs. The woman was of sound mind and body. The woman was old enough to make her own decisions (i.e. not a child). Legally, her judgment was not impaired---she was responsible for making her own decisions. If we say that lying to a woman in order to have sex with her is rape, then pretty much every man who has ever had sex is a rapist. We all tell little lies to order to have sex.
For instance, imagine the same situation. Suppose that he were Jewish but didn't keep kosher, and lied about that. Is it still rape? What if he claimed to be an orthodox Jew when he was only a conservative Jew. Rape? What if a Mormon boy tells a Baptist girl that he is a Christian, and she agrees to have sex with him because she only sleeps with Christians. She then discovers that he is a Mormon, which she considers to be a non-Christian religion. The boy, on the other hand, feels that he is a Christian. Is that rape? What if a man claims that he make $100,000 per year, when in fact he earns $10 per hour mopping floors? Rape?
Again, the man in this story is not without blame, but he did nothing illegal. If you are willing to have sex with someone without adequately checking their background, it is your own damn fault. Even then, you need to be cognizant of the fact that people lie, especially when sex is involved, and weigh that into your decision to sleep with someone. I am sympathetic to the woman in the story, but she was not raped, and alleging that she was dilutes the meaning of the word to a point where almost all sex is rape.
Her choice is whether or not she believes him. People lie. People who want to have sex, more so. They lie about their income, their religion, their politics, &c. At the end of the day, she decided to give her consent, and had sex with him. Is he a sleazy, unethical asshole? Yes. Did he force her to have sex? No. It was not rape.
I agree that it is absurd, but the advice is still valid and useful in the litigious society in which we live. Students often make bogus claims, and administrators are all to quick to suspend teachers. As a teacher, I have to ask, what would you have me do?
Elevated bus lanes seems to me the best of both worlds.
I know, this is Slashdot, but I think that you need to read the article. Don't worry, it is only one paragraph, a few pictures, and a short embedded video which you can probably skip. They are not talking about elevated bus lanes, which would be a good idea---dedicated bus lanes in Seattle and LA seem to work pretty well in those cities, and taking it one step further sounds good to me. Instead, they are talking about building buses that are two lanes wide, which would be suspended above the rest of traffic. It seems that they would be laying track in the roads (like the old street cars of SF), and the buses would be confined to these tracks. In traffic, the buses could drive over other vehicles.
Agreed on all counts. I am certainly not saying that I don't own a few DVDs of my own, or that I would never buy them if there were an option to rent. However, for the vast majority of what I watch, "renting" is just fine.
Seriously? If I were to buy every movie or television series I watched on Netflix, I would likely be spending a $100-200 dollars every month (my wife and I don't have cable, so instead of watching an hour or two of prime time television every evening, we watch an episode or two of some television series that came out a few years ago, or some movie that we had been meaning to watch). Are you seriously suggesting that one could buy $100 worth in DVDs every month, then reasonably expect to sell them for better than $91 (plus whatever else is needed to pay for shipping, &c.)? Honestly, I would rather pay Netflix.
There are some things that are worth buying. DVDs don't seem to be one of them.
There are a lot of movies and television series that I might want to watch, but that I probably will not want to watch again. Why spend $20 for a movie or $50 for a season of television that I am only going to watch once? Why do I have to be in control of that media? What difference does it make? If I can pay someone else $9 per month to watch television and movies that might cost me several hundred dollars to buy so that I can "be in control," why should I choose the more expensive option?
Honestly, windoze, windblows, M$, linsucks, crapple, and all of the other stupid little alterations to the names of companies and products see pretty silly to me. When people use those terms, I tend to assume that they are fanbois of one stripe or another, and, as I tend to ignore zealots, I generally ignore most of what these fanbois say. It has nothing to do with liking or disliking the same things, and everything to do with the appearance of being motivated by preexisting biases, rather than the reality of a situation.
I see nothing wrong with writing down passwords and keeping them in one's wallet or purse. If it is good enough to carry cash, identification, and credit cards, it is certainly good enough for any password that I am ever going to need.
You and me both. Though it probably has something to do with him being my first Doctor---PBS started airing Doctor Who during his tenure in the late 80s, thus McCoy was the first Doctor for many, many Americans.
The Doctor is a very, very British character. A Doctor who is not British just wouldn't work very well---it just wouldn't feel right for the show, or for the fans. Aside from Anglos, Indians are one of the more populous minorities in the UK, hence a British Indian would make perfect sense. A black Doctor could also work. An American Indian, Eskimo, or Polynesian would not really make sense. It might be possible to pull of an east Asian Doctor (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, &c.), but I doubt it.
NB: Polynesia, with a y. It comes from the Greek: "poly" for many, "nesos" for island. Many islands.
More accurately, equality is a relation. Other relations include congruence and similarity (i.e. in geometry), inequality (which is neither symmetric nor reflexive, but is transitive), or isomorphism and homomorphism.
You and I have taken some very differnt exams, then. Most of the exams that I took during my last two and half years of college required that I be able to prove statements that I had never seen prior to a given exam. I had to understand the underlying theory, and had to be able to apply it to a novel situation. There was very little, if any, regurgitation required.
That being said, I agree with your statement that passing an exam is not the same as getting an education. This does not, however, completely invalidate the notion of giving exams to ensure that students understand the material.
At most colleges and universities, 12-15 undergraduate hours is considered a full load. If you are carrying a full load, you are a full time student, in the same sense that someone who has a full time job is a full time employee. That is, you are expected to spend 40+ hours every week on work. Only 12-15 of those hours are in class, so the remaining 35-38 hours are spend working on homework. Hence for every hour you spend in class, you are expected by professors to spend at least two or three hours outside of class completing homework.
In the example you give, I would entirely expect a student to have to spend 10 hours a week on a 3-4 unit class. And an 18 hour load is a heavy load, with the expectation of spending 35-45 hours per week outside of class on homework. If you think this is excessive, don't take 18 hours of classes. Take 12.
The thing is, as I understand it, you either agree to the copyleft license, or you are bound by the more restrictive rules of traditional copyright. Thus if you exceed the limits of the copyleft license, you are also violating the original copyright. Either you agreed to the license, and are in violation of it; or you did not, and you are in violation of copyright. Either way, you are not in a defensible position.
My guess is that original poster assumes that a lack of Saturday delivery also implies that post offices will be closed on Saturdays. Thus it would be impossible to pick up packages at the post office on a Saturday. Since many people only have the weekend off, they would be unable to pick up packages, thus anything requiring a signature would be very difficult to collect.
I agree with you that dictionaries are not the arbiters of language, and that a word need not be in a dictionary in order to be considered a useful part of the language. Dictionaries are supposed to be descriptive, not prescriptive. That being said, the decision of the New York Times to disallow the use of "tweet" in news stories it perfectly understandable. In terms of language use, newspapers should be professional. Newspapers are presenting a record of what is happening, as it is happening. This record is intended not just for the current generation, but for future generations, as well. This is especially true of large newspapers with an international readership and influence, such as the New York Times.
So, while "many people find the word [tweet] and words like it perfectly fine," it is likely that (as others have pointed out) the word will eventually fade from the language. It is a fad word tied to a particular brand, and probably will not last. If, in another 10 or 15 years Twitter is still around, and people are still using the word, it might be time for the New York Times to reevaluate its policy. However, right now, it does not appear that the word has any staying power, thus it would be unprofessional for the New York Times to use it.
Why the hate for neologism? Wikipedia may have an obsession with it, but it is a perfectly cromulent English word, which as been with use since 1803 according to Merriam-Webster, or since 1772 according to the venerable OED.
I am convinced that the entire movie was a complicated lead up to the pun "There is no spoon." That alone makes it one of the best bad movies ever made.
[i]Alice in Wonderland[/i] is public domain. There is not much that Disney could do to stop anyone from making a version based on American McGee's game. McGee might be able to put a stop to it, but not Disney.
Slashdot Mirror
As you say, rape is sex without consent. The woman was not under the influence of any drugs. The woman was of sound mind and body. The woman was old enough to make her own decisions (i.e. not a child). Legally, her judgment was not impaired---she was responsible for making her own decisions. If we say that lying to a woman in order to have sex with her is rape, then pretty much every man who has ever had sex is a rapist. We all tell little lies to order to have sex.
For instance, imagine the same situation. Suppose that he were Jewish but didn't keep kosher, and lied about that. Is it still rape? What if he claimed to be an orthodox Jew when he was only a conservative Jew. Rape? What if a Mormon boy tells a Baptist girl that he is a Christian, and she agrees to have sex with him because she only sleeps with Christians. She then discovers that he is a Mormon, which she considers to be a non-Christian religion. The boy, on the other hand, feels that he is a Christian. Is that rape? What if a man claims that he make $100,000 per year, when in fact he earns $10 per hour mopping floors? Rape?
Again, the man in this story is not without blame, but he did nothing illegal. If you are willing to have sex with someone without adequately checking their background, it is your own damn fault. Even then, you need to be cognizant of the fact that people lie, especially when sex is involved, and weigh that into your decision to sleep with someone. I am sympathetic to the woman in the story, but she was not raped, and alleging that she was dilutes the meaning of the word to a point where almost all sex is rape.
Her choice is whether or not she believes him. People lie. People who want to have sex, more so. They lie about their income, their religion, their politics, &c. At the end of the day, she decided to give her consent, and had sex with him. Is he a sleazy, unethical asshole? Yes. Did he force her to have sex? No. It was not rape.
I agree that it is absurd, but the advice is still valid and useful in the litigious society in which we live. Students often make bogus claims, and administrators are all to quick to suspend teachers. As a teacher, I have to ask, what would you have me do?
I know, this is Slashdot, but I think that you need to read the article. Don't worry, it is only one paragraph, a few pictures, and a short embedded video which you can probably skip. They are not talking about elevated bus lanes, which would be a good idea---dedicated bus lanes in Seattle and LA seem to work pretty well in those cities, and taking it one step further sounds good to me. Instead, they are talking about building buses that are two lanes wide, which would be suspended above the rest of traffic. It seems that they would be laying track in the roads (like the old street cars of SF), and the buses would be confined to these tracks. In traffic, the buses could drive over other vehicles.
Agreed on all counts. I am certainly not saying that I don't own a few DVDs of my own, or that I would never buy them if there were an option to rent. However, for the vast majority of what I watch, "renting" is just fine.
Seriously? If I were to buy every movie or television series I watched on Netflix, I would likely be spending a $100-200 dollars every month (my wife and I don't have cable, so instead of watching an hour or two of prime time television every evening, we watch an episode or two of some television series that came out a few years ago, or some movie that we had been meaning to watch). Are you seriously suggesting that one could buy $100 worth in DVDs every month, then reasonably expect to sell them for better than $91 (plus whatever else is needed to pay for shipping, &c.)? Honestly, I would rather pay Netflix.
There are some things that are worth buying. DVDs don't seem to be one of them.
There are a lot of movies and television series that I might want to watch, but that I probably will not want to watch again. Why spend $20 for a movie or $50 for a season of television that I am only going to watch once? Why do I have to be in control of that media? What difference does it make? If I can pay someone else $9 per month to watch television and movies that might cost me several hundred dollars to buy so that I can "be in control," why should I choose the more expensive option?
Honestly, windoze, windblows, M$, linsucks, crapple, and all of the other stupid little alterations to the names of companies and products see pretty silly to me. When people use those terms, I tend to assume that they are fanbois of one stripe or another, and, as I tend to ignore zealots, I generally ignore most of what these fanbois say. It has nothing to do with liking or disliking the same things, and everything to do with the appearance of being motivated by preexisting biases, rather than the reality of a situation.
I see nothing wrong with writing down passwords and keeping them in one's wallet or purse. If it is good enough to carry cash, identification, and credit cards, it is certainly good enough for any password that I am ever going to need.
Actually, many people refer to the "1990s" or "1650s," when context requires that a century be given. Aside from that, I don't see what you point is.
You and me both. Though it probably has something to do with him being my first Doctor---PBS started airing Doctor Who during his tenure in the late 80s, thus McCoy was the first Doctor for many, many Americans.
Given that Nation's original Daleks were, more or less, based on the Nazis, an antisemitic leader of the Daleks might be appropriate. ;)
Clarke said that, not Asimov.
The Doctor is a very, very British character. A Doctor who is not British just wouldn't work very well---it just wouldn't feel right for the show, or for the fans. Aside from Anglos, Indians are one of the more populous minorities in the UK, hence a British Indian would make perfect sense. A black Doctor could also work. An American Indian, Eskimo, or Polynesian would not really make sense. It might be possible to pull of an east Asian Doctor (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, &c.), but I doubt it.
NB: Polynesia, with a y. It comes from the Greek: "poly" for many, "nesos" for island. Many islands.
More accurately, equality is a relation. Other relations include congruence and similarity (i.e. in geometry), inequality (which is neither symmetric nor reflexive, but is transitive), or isomorphism and homomorphism.
Equality is symmetric (as well as transitive and reflexive), not commutative.
/pedant
You and I have taken some very differnt exams, then. Most of the exams that I took during my last two and half years of college required that I be able to prove statements that I had never seen prior to a given exam. I had to understand the underlying theory, and had to be able to apply it to a novel situation. There was very little, if any, regurgitation required.
That being said, I agree with your statement that passing an exam is not the same as getting an education. This does not, however, completely invalidate the notion of giving exams to ensure that students understand the material.
At most colleges and universities, 12-15 undergraduate hours is considered a full load. If you are carrying a full load, you are a full time student, in the same sense that someone who has a full time job is a full time employee. That is, you are expected to spend 40+ hours every week on work. Only 12-15 of those hours are in class, so the remaining 35-38 hours are spend working on homework. Hence for every hour you spend in class, you are expected by professors to spend at least two or three hours outside of class completing homework.
In the example you give, I would entirely expect a student to have to spend 10 hours a week on a 3-4 unit class. And an 18 hour load is a heavy load, with the expectation of spending 35-45 hours per week outside of class on homework. If you think this is excessive, don't take 18 hours of classes. Take 12.
The thing is, as I understand it, you either agree to the copyleft license, or you are bound by the more restrictive rules of traditional copyright. Thus if you exceed the limits of the copyleft license, you are also violating the original copyright. Either you agreed to the license, and are in violation of it; or you did not, and you are in violation of copyright. Either way, you are not in a defensible position.
My guess is that original poster assumes that a lack of Saturday delivery also implies that post offices will be closed on Saturdays. Thus it would be impossible to pick up packages at the post office on a Saturday. Since many people only have the weekend off, they would be unable to pick up packages, thus anything requiring a signature would be very difficult to collect.
By my count, the cockroaches are winning. Or perhaps viruses, if you consider them to be life.
I agree with you that dictionaries are not the arbiters of language, and that a word need not be in a dictionary in order to be considered a useful part of the language. Dictionaries are supposed to be descriptive, not prescriptive. That being said, the decision of the New York Times to disallow the use of "tweet" in news stories it perfectly understandable. In terms of language use, newspapers should be professional. Newspapers are presenting a record of what is happening, as it is happening. This record is intended not just for the current generation, but for future generations, as well. This is especially true of large newspapers with an international readership and influence, such as the New York Times.
So, while "many people find the word [tweet] and words like it perfectly fine," it is likely that (as others have pointed out) the word will eventually fade from the language. It is a fad word tied to a particular brand, and probably will not last. If, in another 10 or 15 years Twitter is still around, and people are still using the word, it might be time for the New York Times to reevaluate its policy. However, right now, it does not appear that the word has any staying power, thus it would be unprofessional for the New York Times to use it.
Why the hate for neologism? Wikipedia may have an obsession with it, but it is a perfectly cromulent English word, which as been with use since 1803 according to Merriam-Webster, or since 1772 according to the venerable OED.
I am convinced that the entire movie was a complicated lead up to the pun "There is no spoon." That alone makes it one of the best bad movies ever made.
[i]Alice in Wonderland[/i] is public domain. There is not much that Disney could do to stop anyone from making a version based on American McGee's game. McGee might be able to put a stop to it, but not Disney.