My only experience with UK police are the ones in NI. I have to say I've always found them to be very helpful, much moreso than the Gardaí further down south here. Although, given that every time I see them they're wearing kevlar and look happy that I'm politely asking for directions or something like that, I may not fall into the norm for people they deal with on their job.
The thing that I remember most about the news about the riots in England last year, was the army of citizend who turned up with shovels, rakes, and implements of destruction, to clean up the mess that the chavs had made.
It would be more amusing if he said it to a politician's face. I'm pretty sure that most FBI asshat maneuvers are due to orders from above and CYA mentalities, not the outright malevolence one sees in many in politics.
I don't find the symbolism strange because of Guy Fawkes being a loser or a hero, just that Guy Fawkes was never fighting for any noble cause, or the suffering of the people per se, but for Catholicism. That's it. I don't find that very impressive and quite unsuitable to what he is being used as a symbol for today.
I'd have to disagree with you on that one. You can certainly take the view that he was "fighting for Catholicism". Fighting for any kind of religion is not something I'd be particularly interested in. I however would take the view that he was fighting against repression and persecution. Europe had all sorts of religious fun after the Reformation. In France, Spain and Italy, Catholics murdered Protestants. In the various germanic countries, they killed each other and eventually learned to live with each other. And in Britain and Ireland, the Protestants got to be the ones who did most of the murdering. And I think that is exactly the view that the comic character takes. He is someone fighting against repression who is planning to blow up the House of Parliament, and he wears a mask of someone who was fighting against repression and who planned to blow up the House of Parliament.
The mask as it is used everywhere has nothing to do with the real Guy Fawkes. It was designed for the comic V for Vendetta by DC
I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with the real Fawkes. It was designed for the comic book character, yes, and is basically a pretty featureless grinning face with a mustache, but is somewhat similar to pictures of Fawkes that a quick google search will find.
I liked the bit of the article where it equated this legislation with censorship.
"There is potential for radical disruption of the way users experience the Internet in the EU. This would transform Facebook and Google into censors-in-chief."
The big lie here, of course, is saying that it is making censors of Google and Facebook. It is merely telling companies to allow people to censor themselves.
Nobody ever said Saddam was a saint. We all know he was a murderous arsehole. But he was the murderous arsehole in charge of what was probably the most enlightened middle eastern muslim country. If you wanted to invade a country over there because you wanted to free the people and end human rights abuses, start with Saudi Arabia.
We should be doing all this already, with robots. No need to send people in the first decade, at least not for the work involved. The moon is easy communication range. We should at least be developing robost on earth capable of operating in space and building the things we want built.
I thought the theist versus atheist debates were usually worse, although they seem to be the same groups of people. After all, from an outside perspective, religion appears to be the defining difference between the two parties. I know there must be more, since polls say most Americans are theists, but that is the only difference I see.
Very few of the scientists who get derided by politicians, oil barons, and denialists, have advocated fixing the problem. They only ask that we stop making it worse. The planet will fix itself if we give it time. Indeed, it may fix itself too far in which case we'll have to advocate people burn stuff left right & centre. Most of us don't have any truck with any mother earth knows best naturalist bullshit. We want earth to be a good human habitat. Earth is just a big old spaceship with nobody at the helm. We may never fix that particular problem, but we'll make damned sure the engineers get cracking on the problems we think they can fix.
Mistake in math above. 1 light year is ~9.4608 * 10^18 millimetres. It's only 211 orders of magnitude larger than the size of the observable universe measured in cubic millimetres.
Just to point out how bad YOUR example was, lets compare it to the size of the observable universe, 4.1 * 10^32 cubic light years. We'll make that into a bigger number of smaller units, both for purposes of easy visualization and ridiculous comparisons. 1 light year is ~9.4608 * 10^17 millimetres. So the volume of the observable universe, measured in cubic millimetres, is approx. 3.47 * 10^ 86. The number of outcomes to 1000 coin tosses is 1.07 * 10^301.
You picked 1 outcome out of a total number of outcomes 214 orders of magnitude larger than the size of the observable universe measured in cubic millimetres, all equally likely, as a credible threat that we should consider when thinking about the possible consequences of our actions. You must be a nervous wreck ordering in a restaurant.
There is an axiom in all decision-making; If you can not deal with the worst case scenario then don't do it.
Sorry, but that is absolutely wrong. If you said "If you can not deal with the worst case plausible and in some way likely scenario" then yes. If people took every tiny possible outcome into account when making a decision, we would never do anything. The chances of Buckethead charging into your kitchen and bludgeoning you to death with his guitar for eating chicken are on a par with 1000 heads in a row flipping a coin. That would be a very bad outcome from my point of view. Do you consider this when buying chicken in the grocery store?
Think of this analogy;
Flip 1000 coins and if they all come up heads kill 1/3 of the earth's population.
How many times would you do this test before considering this test to be safe?
In my opinion it is not safe on the first test. It is a risk/reward analysis; to me the risk of killing billions of people is much heavier on my scale of importance than any reward from the research.
I reckon I might try this. So, around 2 seconds per coin toss on average, to throw and take note of the result. I'll be working 9 to 5:30 with 1 hour off for lunch, Mon-Fri 48 weeks a year. I calculate I should complete this test 3240 times per year. Being the evil bastard that I am, I find that the resulting chance is waaaaaayy too low for my liking. If, however, I successfully conceive with and implement a nefarious plot to mind control the entire human population of earth and get them to do this at the same rate as me, my chance of killing off 1/3 of the people in the world will be.....
Ummm....
Sorry, windows calculator causing a slight bit of trouble. Blasted thing is telling me 1 - 1/(2^1000) is 1. You may all live for now while this evil genius searches for a bigger calculator.
If these guys don't do the research, someone else will. Probably some government, and then they'll spread it once they have a secret cure for themselves.
I'm reading the second article linked, the "should we allow the research" one, and I've only gotten to the second paragraph so far and my bullshit sensors are screaming.
the 1918 influenza virus, which killed somewhere between 50 to 100 million people worldwide, had a mortality rate between 2 to 3 percent.
The world population reached 2 billion some time in the twenties. We'll go with 2 billion. That means if the above numbers are correct, the infection rate for the 1918 flu was somewhere between 83% and 250% of the global population.
sometime a group; in a large organization will do something wrong. sometime by accident, sometime on purpose. How the company overall handles it is the critical issues, as well as the behavior going forward.
ti's not an excuse, its reasonable.
Not just in large organisations. It applies perfectly well in small companies too. We all have colleagues who aren't quite what we'd wish they were. Sometimes they fuck up. With some people, you realise that fucking up is almost a default outcome and you tailor their portion of the general workload with this in mind. Despite this, they still sometimes get their hands on some inoccuous seeming task and cause mayhem. With important customers. You send in the big guns. You will end up with one of 3 outcomes: you lose the contract, you're left with egg on your face but no long term repercussions, or you're told "OMG you are a fucking lifesaver! Yeah, the cheque Bob was asking about last week is in the post. BTW, I dont want to ever see that other cocksucker on my property again."
The exemption is to attempt to help foster and encourage the arts, which in all fairness are mostly produced by people who only ever get rich after they die. The massive bands we all love/hate, blockbuster movies, etc.... they don't need any financial help. The 4 piece student band in a pub on a saturday night who lug all their gear down to the pub, set it up, play for a few hours, pack up and drive home maybe the price of a keg of beer richer, are a massive asset to society. They help people have a good time, and usually at well below minimum wage if you factored all the support work in. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with such a person getting a tax break. 250k a year (on direct artistic income only) tax free is a bit high I agree, it could be lowered to 40k and still cover all the people it was intended for. If you're making more, you have no right to complain. I'm guessing the reason it IS higher, is that a lot of artists may earn 5k 1 year, have an auction the next year and make 200k, then sit down and work without selling anything for 3 years. 9 to 5, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year doesnt really apply.
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My only experience with UK police are the ones in NI. I have to say I've always found them to be very helpful, much moreso than the Gardaí further down south here. Although, given that every time I see them they're wearing kevlar and look happy that I'm politely asking for directions or something like that, I may not fall into the norm for people they deal with on their job.
The thing that I remember most about the news about the riots in England last year, was the army of citizend who turned up with shovels, rakes, and implements of destruction, to clean up the mess that the chavs had made.
It would be more amusing if he said it to a politician's face. I'm pretty sure that most FBI asshat maneuvers are due to orders from above and CYA mentalities, not the outright malevolence one sees in many in politics.
I don't find the symbolism strange because of Guy Fawkes being a loser or a hero, just that Guy Fawkes was never fighting for any noble cause, or the suffering of the people per se, but for Catholicism. That's it. I don't find that very impressive and quite unsuitable to what he is being used as a symbol for today.
I'd have to disagree with you on that one. You can certainly take the view that he was "fighting for Catholicism". Fighting for any kind of religion is not something I'd be particularly interested in. I however would take the view that he was fighting against repression and persecution. Europe had all sorts of religious fun after the Reformation. In France, Spain and Italy, Catholics murdered Protestants. In the various germanic countries, they killed each other and eventually learned to live with each other. And in Britain and Ireland, the Protestants got to be the ones who did most of the murdering. And I think that is exactly the view that the comic character takes. He is someone fighting against repression who is planning to blow up the House of Parliament, and he wears a mask of someone who was fighting against repression and who planned to blow up the House of Parliament.
The mask as it is used everywhere has nothing to do with the real Guy Fawkes. It was designed for the comic V for Vendetta by DC
I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with the real Fawkes. It was designed for the comic book character, yes, and is basically a pretty featureless grinning face with a mustache, but is somewhat similar to pictures of Fawkes that a quick google search will find.
I liked the bit of the article where it equated this legislation with censorship. "There is potential for radical disruption of the way users experience the Internet in the EU. This would transform Facebook and Google into censors-in-chief." The big lie here, of course, is saying that it is making censors of Google and Facebook. It is merely telling companies to allow people to censor themselves.
and, sadly, "my life for Aiur!"
My mind always seemed to translate that to "My wife for hire!" for some reason.
Nobody ever said Saddam was a saint. We all know he was a murderous arsehole. But he was the murderous arsehole in charge of what was probably the most enlightened middle eastern muslim country. If you wanted to invade a country over there because you wanted to free the people and end human rights abuses, start with Saudi Arabia.
I see you read the bit in TFA that described how gender equality in Iraqi universities was better than in Princeton.
If the plan is to have an available breeding stock that does not breed, sterilizing most of the males is a viable strategy.
We should be doing all this already, with robots. No need to send people in the first decade, at least not for the work involved. The moon is easy communication range. We should at least be developing robost on earth capable of operating in space and building the things we want built.
I thought the theist versus atheist debates were usually worse, although they seem to be the same groups of people. After all, from an outside perspective, religion appears to be the defining difference between the two parties. I know there must be more, since polls say most Americans are theists, but that is the only difference I see.
Very few of the scientists who get derided by politicians, oil barons, and denialists, have advocated fixing the problem. They only ask that we stop making it worse. The planet will fix itself if we give it time. Indeed, it may fix itself too far in which case we'll have to advocate people burn stuff left right & centre. Most of us don't have any truck with any mother earth knows best naturalist bullshit. We want earth to be a good human habitat. Earth is just a big old spaceship with nobody at the helm. We may never fix that particular problem, but we'll make damned sure the engineers get cracking on the problems we think they can fix.
Mistake in math above. 1 light year is ~9.4608 * 10^18 millimetres. It's only 211 orders of magnitude larger than the size of the observable universe measured in cubic millimetres.
We are so fucked.
Just to point out how bad YOUR example was, lets compare it to the size of the observable universe, 4.1 * 10^32 cubic light years. We'll make that into a bigger number of smaller units, both for purposes of easy visualization and ridiculous comparisons. 1 light year is ~9.4608 * 10^17 millimetres. So the volume of the observable universe, measured in cubic millimetres, is approx. 3.47 * 10^ 86. The number of outcomes to 1000 coin tosses is 1.07 * 10^301.
You picked 1 outcome out of a total number of outcomes 214 orders of magnitude larger than the size of the observable universe measured in cubic millimetres, all equally likely, as a credible threat that we should consider when thinking about the possible consequences of our actions. You must be a nervous wreck ordering in a restaurant.
There is an axiom in all decision-making; If you can not deal with the worst case scenario then don't do it.
Sorry, but that is absolutely wrong. If you said "If you can not deal with the worst case plausible and in some way likely scenario" then yes. If people took every tiny possible outcome into account when making a decision, we would never do anything. The chances of Buckethead charging into your kitchen and bludgeoning you to death with his guitar for eating chicken are on a par with 1000 heads in a row flipping a coin. That would be a very bad outcome from my point of view. Do you consider this when buying chicken in the grocery store?
Think of this analogy; Flip 1000 coins and if they all come up heads kill 1/3 of the earth's population. How many times would you do this test before considering this test to be safe?
In my opinion it is not safe on the first test. It is a risk/reward analysis; to me the risk of killing billions of people is much heavier on my scale of importance than any reward from the research.
I reckon I might try this. So, around 2 seconds per coin toss on average, to throw and take note of the result. I'll be working 9 to 5:30 with 1 hour off for lunch, Mon-Fri 48 weeks a year. I calculate I should complete this test 3240 times per year. Being the evil bastard that I am, I find that the resulting chance is waaaaaayy too low for my liking. If, however, I successfully conceive with and implement a nefarious plot to mind control the entire human population of earth and get them to do this at the same rate as me, my chance of killing off 1/3 of the people in the world will be.....
Ummm....
Sorry, windows calculator causing a slight bit of trouble. Blasted thing is telling me 1 - 1/(2^1000) is 1. You may all live for now while this evil genius searches for a bigger calculator.
If these guys don't do the research, someone else will. Probably some government, and then they'll spread it once they have a secret cure for themselves.
I'm reading the second article linked, the "should we allow the research" one, and I've only gotten to the second paragraph so far and my bullshit sensors are screaming.
the 1918 influenza virus, which killed somewhere between 50 to 100 million people worldwide, had a mortality rate between 2 to 3 percent.
The world population reached 2 billion some time in the twenties. We'll go with 2 billion. That means if the above numbers are correct, the infection rate for the 1918 flu was somewhere between 83% and 250% of the global population.
Vague much?
I love the specificity of this sentence.
Yes.
sometime a group; in a large organization will do something wrong. sometime by accident, sometime on purpose. How the company overall handles it is the critical issues, as well as the behavior going forward.
ti's not an excuse, its reasonable.
Not just in large organisations. It applies perfectly well in small companies too. We all have colleagues who aren't quite what we'd wish they were. Sometimes they fuck up. With some people, you realise that fucking up is almost a default outcome and you tailor their portion of the general workload with this in mind. Despite this, they still sometimes get their hands on some inoccuous seeming task and cause mayhem. With important customers. You send in the big guns. You will end up with one of 3 outcomes: you lose the contract, you're left with egg on your face but no long term repercussions, or you're told "OMG you are a fucking lifesaver! Yeah, the cheque Bob was asking about last week is in the post. BTW, I dont want to ever see that other cocksucker on my property again."
The exemption is to attempt to help foster and encourage the arts, which in all fairness are mostly produced by people who only ever get rich after they die. The massive bands we all love/hate, blockbuster movies, etc.... they don't need any financial help. The 4 piece student band in a pub on a saturday night who lug all their gear down to the pub, set it up, play for a few hours, pack up and drive home maybe the price of a keg of beer richer, are a massive asset to society. They help people have a good time, and usually at well below minimum wage if you factored all the support work in. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with such a person getting a tax break. 250k a year (on direct artistic income only) tax free is a bit high I agree, it could be lowered to 40k and still cover all the people it was intended for. If you're making more, you have no right to complain. I'm guessing the reason it IS higher, is that a lot of artists may earn 5k 1 year, have an auction the next year and make 200k, then sit down and work without selling anything for 3 years. 9 to 5, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year doesnt really apply.
You speak of people demanding laws to reflect reality. The MAFIAA is demanding laws that deny reality.
That would have little effect. The government is being sued by distribution companies, not artists.
ARE THESE GUYS CRAZY?
If there was any doubt before now, it has been removed. If they weren't completely batshit insane they would have sued a government with some money.
There is nothing insane about this. These assholes aren't after a lump sum. They want a percentage of the tax take.
Can a Hot Pocket be cooked in space?
I had to look up "Hot Pocket". Now I'm hungry. I hope you're happy with yourself.