I'm not saying that church officials shouldn't be prosecuted for their wrongdoings either. Last I heard, the whole pedophilia thing had somewhat caught up to the catholic church and the law was dealing with it. Scientologists hire a pile of lawyers and go after people who disagree with them and dare speak out about it and run them into the ground financially.
Oh, no, I totally agree. I don't think that Christian beliefs are any more "right" or less crazy than those of Scientology. However, in the present day most Christians aren't running about persecuting non-believers or censoring people who speak out against them with large teams of lawyers. I'm not saying that we shouldn't go after other religious groups for wrongdoing, but some of them are just places where people with common beliefs gather and share those beliefs (i.e. are mostly harmless).
Oh yes, I'm not saying that churches are these perfect entities either. I mean look at these nutters.
And I'm also not saying that other religions should be protected from the consequences of their misdeeds (although charging the catholic church now with the crimes of the middle ages would be silly), I'm just saying that Scientology is a touch worse than most religions at this point in time.
Churches don't tend to steal documents from governments to erase negative things about their founders like Scientologists did during Operation Snow White[wikipedia]. Nor do they tend to try to frame people for various crimes (see operation freakout) or go after anyone who says anything bad about them with a pack of lawyers.
That's exactly what we need! A paper airplane that comes from orbit and doesn't burn up on the way back. That's not going to hurt at all when it hits somebody.
Although the more likely outcome is that it will just land in the ocean, never to be seen again.
Just because we can put people somewhere doesn't make a place more interesting. Mercury has a lot of interesting features, for instance, it's the densest planet, it has a magnetic field (it really shouldn't since its core has likely cooled and solidified long ago), it had a giant impact that caused ridges to form all the way on the other side of the planet et c.
Furthermore, it's actually harder to get things in orbit around Mercury due to the fact that it's so close to the sun, this is why the first pass is in 2008 and it's not actually going into orbit around the planet until 2011.
I don't understand why anyone would buy a bunch of mp3s in the first place. I either buy the full album on cd or (usually if the entire cd isn't good enough to be worth my cash) I download single songs (well, I'll also download an entire album to try it out and then go buy it). There was a time when I used to buy a cd if I liked at least two songs on it, but now I'm unlikely to do so unless I like all of them because I simply don't have the sort of money to throw around on crap.
Maybe if the music industry stopped producing total garbage and trying to pass it off as good music as well as attempting to limit what people can do with their music (i.e. putting absurd protection features on cds that don't allow them to be played in anything but the most basic cd player) then more people would buy music.
Electronic voting is there not here. Like I said, here we put a mark in a box and it's hand counted. No software to screw up, no voting machines that automatically register a vote for the party most friendly to the manufacturer of the voting machine instead of the opponent, not even any hanging chads! And wouldn't you know, it never took us a week to figure out who was in charge, all the votes are counted by the morning after.
Although I really do like Estonia's idea, it would be nice to be able to vote from the comfort of my home or office instead of having to make a special trip. And they also allow non-internet voting, so people who don't trust the process or want to do it by hand can do so. It doesn't seem to have helped their voter turn out though (47%).
I'm so very glad that we do our voting by putting a little "x" in a box and they're then hand counted by thousands of election workers while representatives of each party scrutinize each ballot to see if they're acceptable instead of this electronic no paper trail machines that screw up crap.
The reasons? 'Apple has Microsoft Office, Linux doesn't; Apple has Adobe Creative Suite, Linux doesn't; Apple has easily accessed and easy to use service and support, Linux doesn't; Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not,'
...Apple spends a pile of money on advertising and producing pretty, slick, expensive machines, Linux does not.
I also wonder how these people take into account the number of people who run linux on macs. One of my friends was running gentoo on his macbook for a while.
Being willing to lie and cheat on one's wife (or husband) doesn't mean that one is going to lie about other things or that one is going to do worse at one's own job. It also doesn't mean that we (as the public) should have the right to expect our law enforcement officers to be perfect while off the job, we should just expect the same of them that they expect of us: that they don't break the law. So as long as someone is doing a good job as a policeman, they should be able to do anything that's legal during their time off, from drinking themselves into a stupor to moonlighting as a stripper.
Now, monitoring them while on their job should be acceptable and if anything, could also serve to protect them. They can't get away with abusing the people they have arrested, but the people they arrest also can't claim to have been abused by the police officer when no such abuse has happened.
Why should the police be held to higher standards than the rest of the society?
Are you saying that a police officer who behaves in a questionable (but not illegal) manner while off the job (i.e. getting drunk, cheating on his or her spouse et c) is a worse police officer than someone who has no personal problems?
Well, when putting in a proposal for a NASA mission, you should generally have an idea of what components will be needed, how much the components will cost, how much time it should take to build this instrument et c. It's not like putting the instrument in space is the research aspect of the entire process, the research starts after launch and the experiments (or observing) commence.
Anyways, I don't know if you read the article, but Stern is a scientist, he's an astrophysicist. So he does (or at least should) have an idea of what research proposals should be like. It's not his fault if some people fail to take into account certain things when putting in their proposals and you can't just say to throw more money at groups who didn't ask for enough, what's to stop people from asking for much less money than they could possibly need in hopes of getting their foot in the door then asking for more?
I think this is a pretty good idea. Given that the US government has decided that killing people in pointless, unjustified wars is more important than scientific development, this makes the best of a bad situation (i.e. a stagnant budget) and allows everyone who was promised money for a project to get that money without worrying that someone else will go over budget and the money will disappear.
I did some observing and it was 12 hour shifts, but chances are they're going to be observing all night after being awake for a normal day, so coffee will be necessary.
Can I ask what possible reason there could be beyond corruption and greed for this NOT to be used? Somehow I think that this kind of technology, no matter the initial cost, would be an absolute boon and can see no reason why it shouldn't be adopted.
I'm going to guess it's all the rampant corruption and greed in the world. This is generally the problem.
Well, lucid dreaming isn't something I do all the time, usually dreams are more interesting if I just let them keep going, but I don't think that it removes any survival skills. I mean, if anything, it should mean that when something bad happens in real life, I'll think of a creative outside the box way to solve it.
What about lucid dreaming then? Usually when my dreams aren't turning out nice I'll make something better happen, I definitely can't do that in real life (otherwise I would have a harem of hot half naked men who would cater to my every whim and fan me with palm branches).
As far as I know it, it is. We don't call new theories laws anymore (even when they do an excellent job of explaining something) and science is largely geared towards trying to figure out where (if anywhere) the theories fail.
As for Newton's law of gravitation, we know that it fails (i.e. it doesn't explain the precession of Mercury). That's why we have general relativity in the first place. It's only still called a law because for historical reasons, but it's convenient to use as a simplification (I know physicists are lazy and love simplifications, astronomers do too). We also know that general relativity fails at extremely small scales. Why would we call it a law when we already know it doesn't hold in all cases? And if anything, you should suggest changing "string theory" to "string hypothesis" if you believe it's just wild speculation instead of calling something a law when we know that it doesn't hold in all cases.
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They still burn people alive? I wasn't aware. Please, do tell me where churches are currently burning people alive.
I'm not saying that church officials shouldn't be prosecuted for their wrongdoings either. Last I heard, the whole pedophilia thing had somewhat caught up to the catholic church and the law was dealing with it. Scientologists hire a pile of lawyers and go after people who disagree with them and dare speak out about it and run them into the ground financially.
Oh, no, I totally agree. I don't think that Christian beliefs are any more "right" or less crazy than those of Scientology. However, in the present day most Christians aren't running about persecuting non-believers or censoring people who speak out against them with large teams of lawyers. I'm not saying that we shouldn't go after other religious groups for wrongdoing, but some of them are just places where people with common beliefs gather and share those beliefs (i.e. are mostly harmless).
Oh yes, I'm not saying that churches are these perfect entities either. I mean look at these nutters.
And I'm also not saying that other religions should be protected from the consequences of their misdeeds (although charging the catholic church now with the crimes of the middle ages would be silly), I'm just saying that Scientology is a touch worse than most religions at this point in time.
Churches don't tend to steal documents from governments to erase negative things about their founders like Scientologists did during Operation Snow White[wikipedia]. Nor do they tend to try to frame people for various crimes (see operation freakout) or go after anyone who says anything bad about them with a pack of lawyers.
That's exactly what we need! A paper airplane that comes from orbit and doesn't burn up on the way back. That's not going to hurt at all when it hits somebody.
Although the more likely outcome is that it will just land in the ocean, never to be seen again.
Just because we can put people somewhere doesn't make a place more interesting. Mercury has a lot of interesting features, for instance, it's the densest planet, it has a magnetic field (it really shouldn't since its core has likely cooled and solidified long ago), it had a giant impact that caused ridges to form all the way on the other side of the planet et c. Furthermore, it's actually harder to get things in orbit around Mercury due to the fact that it's so close to the sun, this is why the first pass is in 2008 and it's not actually going into orbit around the planet until 2011.
Are they going to have the right to read my diary if I travel through the US?
I mean, I keep things that are just as personal on my computer.
Not every woman writes "soap opera emo trash" and not all comic book readers are men (as the article discussed, if you felt like reading it).
I don't understand why anyone would buy a bunch of mp3s in the first place. I either buy the full album on cd or (usually if the entire cd isn't good enough to be worth my cash) I download single songs (well, I'll also download an entire album to try it out and then go buy it). There was a time when I used to buy a cd if I liked at least two songs on it, but now I'm unlikely to do so unless I like all of them because I simply don't have the sort of money to throw around on crap.
Maybe if the music industry stopped producing total garbage and trying to pass it off as good music as well as attempting to limit what people can do with their music (i.e. putting absurd protection features on cds that don't allow them to be played in anything but the most basic cd player) then more people would buy music.
Electronic voting is there not here. Like I said, here we put a mark in a box and it's hand counted. No software to screw up, no voting machines that automatically register a vote for the party most friendly to the manufacturer of the voting machine instead of the opponent, not even any hanging chads! And wouldn't you know, it never took us a week to figure out who was in charge, all the votes are counted by the morning after. Although I really do like Estonia's idea, it would be nice to be able to vote from the comfort of my home or office instead of having to make a special trip. And they also allow non-internet voting, so people who don't trust the process or want to do it by hand can do so. It doesn't seem to have helped their voter turn out though (47%).
I'm so very glad that we do our voting by putting a little "x" in a box and they're then hand counted by thousands of election workers while representatives of each party scrutinize each ballot to see if they're acceptable instead of this electronic no paper trail machines that screw up crap.
...Apple spends a pile of money on advertising and producing pretty, slick, expensive machines, Linux does not.
I also wonder how these people take into account the number of people who run linux on macs. One of my friends was running gentoo on his macbook for a while.
Being willing to lie and cheat on one's wife (or husband) doesn't mean that one is going to lie about other things or that one is going to do worse at one's own job. It also doesn't mean that we (as the public) should have the right to expect our law enforcement officers to be perfect while off the job, we should just expect the same of them that they expect of us: that they don't break the law. So as long as someone is doing a good job as a policeman, they should be able to do anything that's legal during their time off, from drinking themselves into a stupor to moonlighting as a stripper.
Now, monitoring them while on their job should be acceptable and if anything, could also serve to protect them. They can't get away with abusing the people they have arrested, but the people they arrest also can't claim to have been abused by the police officer when no such abuse has happened.
Why should the police be held to higher standards than the rest of the society?
Are you saying that a police officer who behaves in a questionable (but not illegal) manner while off the job (i.e. getting drunk, cheating on his or her spouse et c) is a worse police officer than someone who has no personal problems?
Well, when putting in a proposal for a NASA mission, you should generally have an idea of what components will be needed, how much the components will cost, how much time it should take to build this instrument et c. It's not like putting the instrument in space is the research aspect of the entire process, the research starts after launch and the experiments (or observing) commence.
Anyways, I don't know if you read the article, but Stern is a scientist, he's an astrophysicist. So he does (or at least should) have an idea of what research proposals should be like. It's not his fault if some people fail to take into account certain things when putting in their proposals and you can't just say to throw more money at groups who didn't ask for enough, what's to stop people from asking for much less money than they could possibly need in hopes of getting their foot in the door then asking for more?
I think this is a pretty good idea. Given that the US government has decided that killing people in pointless, unjustified wars is more important than scientific development, this makes the best of a bad situation (i.e. a stagnant budget) and allows everyone who was promised money for a project to get that money without worrying that someone else will go over budget and the money will disappear.
I did some observing and it was 12 hour shifts, but chances are they're going to be observing all night after being awake for a normal day, so coffee will be necessary.
Yes, this is also a huge problem. I don't think that the environmental impact from such a power transmission is particularly tiny either.
Can I ask what possible reason there could be beyond corruption and greed for this NOT to be used? Somehow I think that this kind of technology, no matter the initial cost, would be an absolute boon and can see no reason why it shouldn't be adopted.
I'm going to guess it's all the rampant corruption and greed in the world. This is generally the problem.
Dreams where I'm naked are awesome due to my total hotness.
Well, lucid dreaming isn't something I do all the time, usually dreams are more interesting if I just let them keep going, but I don't think that it removes any survival skills. I mean, if anything, it should mean that when something bad happens in real life, I'll think of a creative outside the box way to solve it.
What about lucid dreaming then? Usually when my dreams aren't turning out nice I'll make something better happen, I definitely can't do that in real life (otherwise I would have a harem of hot half naked men who would cater to my every whim and fan me with palm branches).
Is that a fact?
As far as I know it, it is. We don't call new theories laws anymore (even when they do an excellent job of explaining something) and science is largely geared towards trying to figure out where (if anywhere) the theories fail.
As for Newton's law of gravitation, we know that it fails (i.e. it doesn't explain the precession of Mercury). That's why we have general relativity in the first place. It's only still called a law because for historical reasons, but it's convenient to use as a simplification (I know physicists are lazy and love simplifications, astronomers do too). We also know that general relativity fails at extremely small scales. Why would we call it a law when we already know it doesn't hold in all cases? And if anything, you should suggest changing "string theory" to "string hypothesis" if you believe it's just wild speculation instead of calling something a law when we know that it doesn't hold in all cases.
Oh. I'm clearly awesome at noticing things like this.