Darpa has had the Shredder document challenge (http://archive.darpa.mil/shredderchallenge/) , Nasa has had a roboic spheres challenge (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/jan/HQ_12-029_SPHERES_Challenge_Winner.html)
Darpa has been having the autonomous vehicle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge)
The Navy the underwater autonomous vehicle comp. (http://www.sdnews.com/view/full_story/302685/article-Navy-readies-to-host-autonomous-underwater-vehicle-competition)
it seems that these competitions have already been started, there is a track record for this producing results. I worked on the shredder challenge, I found it fun and had a good time creating what I did. It is a good way to focus many people on solutions.
But you are right, the patent/copyright laws are out of whack and are now an impediment to progress, which means an impediment to profit in general just not in specific. The patent time line should go back to 35 years or so.
Hard to say if what that quote really speaks to. Like Galileo's recanting his discoveries and theories because of extreme pressure from the Church, and if you see some of the other responses here about what the reaction and consequences could be in a bible belt "Christian" community if you do not profess the dogma, Isaac may have just been keeping the religious Luddites at bay. I think it true that religion is the capstone of knowledge. and by that I mean it puts a lid on knowledge, a cap you use when you do not have another explanation, and intellectual scapegoat if you will that stops curiosity, or rational thought. That of course is not the purpose or intent of spirituality but the sad practice of religion in many of it's institutional secular forms.
And I often wonder if you believe in God, which in the Chinese Yin/Yang philosophy would co-create the opposite, the Devil. Then the two would really be two sides of the same thing, not being able to have one without the other. Then the spinning up of the world, or the big banging of the big bang could equally be attributed to the Devil, or shall we say we are living in the heaven/hell on earth.
We could go back to teaching/presenting the old theories that were held by the theologians and that infallibility of the Pope, with the Flat Earth and after that was shown to be hokum, the Earth the center of the universe. That is the problem with theologians making pronouncements about the real world, they haven't a clue. That is the realm of the sciences, and they are jealous that there is a whole area of existence that they are not the authorities on, which is how they control their flock and the pocket books of their flock.
But we are seeing a new trend of marketing going on. In one case with the religious "wrong" controlling their flocks to vote in ridiculous laws that impose their wrong headed and provably incorrect idea's onto the public and worse yet into the impressionable minds of our children. The other arm of that effort is to convince the electorate to vote for people who will vote in laws that will put them out of jobs, reduce their wages and allow them to have their money siphoned off but the upper 1%. Marketing has gotten much too effective in the world of low information voters, and blind faith believers.
Its a good time to re-read 1984. We are getting the infrastructure in place with the intelligence community and the lack of controls and oversight with our law enforcement arms and military. Now all we need is a "wrong" wing nut job elected and the Jack boot will descend with a vengeance.
Here is another example of the dig your heels in, no compromise strategy the the Newt stated back with the Contract on America days. Here you have legislators that do not care about the Constitution or our system of government, or idea's like settled law. No they want to turn back the clock to those times when Arizona was the Wild West and land barrens and robbers ruled, and if you were quicker with a gun you were right and no one questioned you, and woman could not vote (or have a say). They have defined marriage, and now they want to define free speech as speech you could say to your pastor in a real Christian church. Well the country learned a lesson with prohibition, and the Koch brothers are leaning a lesson in Wisconsin as the governor's recall election starts in full swing. That even though they can market and focus group and wedge issue their way into positions of lawmaking power. Ultimately it is we the voters that will have to clean up their mess. We used to have a Supreme Court we could count on to keep these crazies in check but that sadly does not seem to be the case today.
"Theory of Evolution" well not actually a theory, but a set of established and substantiated principles. The confusion is that the "Theory" part actually only refers to the shape of the various trees, with the ideas of which branches came from which other branches and when. The Fossil record helps clarify the tree structure and relationships, now with DNA and other evidence we refine that picture more and more. But the principles of evolution, like mutation and natural selection are not theories or called into scientific question. But the Creationist trumpet "Theory" "Theory" to refer to the undisputed principals of the process of evolution. This is the intellectual dishonesty that is agenda driven that I find most disagreeable and anti-intellectual and anti-progress.
But we know that evolution works and I believe that this set of beliefs do not have long term survival value for those people adopting those beliefs, so social evolution should take care of that intellectual cul de sac in due time. Of course that attitude coupled with the hypocracy of accepting science for those things that benefit you and rejection those (like global warming) for those you have a irrational belief in may in and of itself provide some survival benefit. Probably they do in the short time so you can live in one of those communities that do not treat dis-believers kindly.
He had no clue about what would happen. He was from Chicago, newly moved to that city, surrounded by religious zealots. They did not wear special headgear or clothes or tattoos to identify them from real ordinary citizens.
They buy a property low and then milk it for all they can get. They are true red neck entrepreneurs. Patents are there to protect the creators/inventor and their family to make a reasonable profit on the idea for a limited number of years. What the "owner"/"entrepreneurs" have done is take that idea, bundle the IP as a commodity and buy and sell it on the secondary market. Very different than the intent of the law and creates a system that does not favor the inventor. Much like the pay day loan business, and just as socially acceptable.
Being an advocate of Free Speech can be a hard task. What if we frame it in a slightly different way. Should this asshole be denied gas at a gas station because of his remarks? Should he be kicked out of public park because of remarks he made while drunk and in the past. Maybe kicked out of the park if he were drunk and saying those things, but if it is in the past, should that effect all aspects of life. The school should probably not kicked him out. Acedemic freedom should allow differing views, they certainly don't exclude other forms of what some might see as bad behaviour, like controversial art, or teaching business practices that objectify peoples life work to a point where they can be fired, or underpaid or ill treated to balance the bottom line and give dividents to shareholders and that being seen as good, and valid, and acceptible, or the operations on small insignificant life, to further the cause of human medicine. It seems that acedemia has a long track record of allowing different points of view and practices that are not universally seen as good. They should not have kicked him out.
I knew someone in Grand Rapids, MI that made the mistake of cutting his lawn on Sunday and was shunned by all his neighbors for it (an unnamed fundementalist Christian stronghold). That too is the same sort of thing going on here, but not just personal actions but corporate, civic , legal actions.
I think they have gone too far. I disagree wholeheartedly with his actions but the actions of the community I think were inapproriate.
I'm sorry, there is an assumption here that should be examinded closely. In other area's where an illegal activity (or an activitiy that has had a law to say that particular activity is banned), people who want to practice that illegal activity tend to gravitate towards those places and occupations where they can practice those activities in relative safety. We see pedophiles working in child care and schools or places where children gather under supervision. That is not saying all those in those occupations are pedophiles but if you were a pedophile what kind of occupation do you think would attract you?
Here to you seem to give the IT forensic and Law Enforcement people a blanket pass on not participating in the enjoyment of those images. I suspect the people involved have a wide range of interest in the images and content. They just currently have immunity, but the idea that there are those that are above the law and that there is no question about wrongdoing is not correct. We have seen those in the law enforcement and justice system break the laws for their own uses, whether it is to break a case, get some money, or just show off the power they have that others don't. We also have to be vigilant and skeptical of those that are being vigilant
I am most concerned with the trend to relax the checks and balances on law enforcement which puts us all in danger. We have seen what lifting or not imposing restrictions and oversight has done to the economy. It can do the same to our privacy and freedoms, and just as quickly.
I too have had both Male and Female managers. I have had both good and bad. I had a Female manager that would listen to what you had to say and often take advise and one that would not listen to what you said, or maybe sometimes, then tell you what you were going to do. That second variety was not comfortable and if you worked on something that she had not pre-approved, she would not only never approve it but tell others that she could not touch it also. This vindictive behavior was very counter productive and the department ended up not doing anything new or innovative for fear of retribution. I had a Male boss that told a friend, after approving a vacation to a foriegn country, came back and told him he could not go, as a way of motivating him to be loyal to work. He went anyway and quit the job. The funny part was when that boss asked where he was, and I told him out of the country, he realized his brinkmanship had backfired and he had lost a valuable employee.
There are enough stories of good and bad. Some organizations thrive on a authoritarian top down decision making , others on a bottom up consensus approach. The consensus approach can grid lock, the top down can make uninformed decisions. The bottom up can make uninformed decisions if the people at the bottom are uninformated or the decision maker can't tell an informed choice over and uninformed choice.
Like Lorenzian attactors, each style will morph an organization or a part of an organization to a different process and different timing. which is better? Depends on whether you are doing a marketing campaign or trying to put out a brush fire, or write code that will work and be maintainable.
Faith is sort of the intellectual "The Buck Stops Here". It says there is a door here, you can't see through, your not suppose to see through, you get to go through when you die, but don't think you can know anything, what you were saying is you may not know anything past that door.
Well that is why some religions are desperate to rely on Faith, because they don't know but have a script and a story and they can't get off that script of that story, because they don't know and can not know. If the script and the story are real, they will stand up to scrutiny, if not they won't and as science has progressed, idea's proposed by "the infallible Pope" like the earth being flag, or the center of the universe, or... well as science has progressed, the veils of ignorance have been pulled back to show the full glory of creation. That continues, the ID is a frantic attempt of a group that wants to keep the story and script they learned alive and to claim it is the truth in the face of overwhealming evidence to the contrary. It is not a winning strategy. Truth is what religion should be about not old incorrect scripts and stories. Nasa is part of the progression of scientific knowledge, the exploration of new places and new realms not visited before. That is scary stuff for people locken in a flat earth mentality. And seems incompatible with the basic premise and job description of the agency.
Looks like his job devovled. Of course this is all part of God's plan to bring the light of science to simple minds, or they devolved back into the primordial job soup.
For those of us in the US the right to free speech could be abridged with this. The Republicans have tried "Free Speech Zones", Throwing people out, limiting who is allowed at a venue, but at the same time delivering hecklers to town hall meetings. It seems someone wants it both ways.
The obvious next step in the arms race is a speech jammer jammer. Which could use active sound suppression like the noise canceling headphones. Where my patent application, its here somewhere.
Log into paypal, contact us, there are no good topic sub topics so I chose Business Solutions/Other Business Resources to log a complaint. I suggest you do the same if you feel they should hear from the community
The problem is the factors that bring people to diet soda are overweight or diabetes which are both factors that would tend to increase risk of heart desease. Here too the people that are prescribed sleeping pills are a self selected group on some problem associated with sleep. They can say they have factored in all the external variables but that may not be that case or there may be other factors related to sleep problems that are more to blame and this study would not be complete or accurate unless it followed an equally large group of people that would have been given sleeping pills but were not and/or given a placebo, You don't know if giving a pill is the problem say vs not giving a pill as one factor. If you give a placebo you don't test that variable.
The study said it matched "matched controls with no hypnotic prescriptions" but they did not match with those who would have been prescribed meds but weren't. You may only be seeing the effect of the problems they had. I could be that the meds actually lengthened life vs the group not given them. This is the problem with vacines that have side effects, but the cure in general is much better for society than the side effects.
But that kind of study is hard to come by so you may just have to go on the data you have but as in religion and politics attribution can be a grand evil.
Money translatese to power which implies privilege, and privilege implies that laws and conventions are somehow not for them, so the best thing for society is to level the playing field and increase the wealth of everyone, or say foster programs that grow the middle class at the expense of the ultra wealthy. Our lives in general will be improved and our country will again be the envy of the world, not the envy of the rich and powerful.
Interesting the link to the to "a threatening letter that lawyers for the mining industry sent to various scientific journals " is not working. Maybe the letters have had effect?
No we don't want to blame Bush, we don't want to have to blame anyone for hundreds of thousands of lives lost, some thousands of our own in a war of lies and adventure, we don't want to have to watch our hard earned dollars get poured into military budgets. We don't want to have to blame any one person or one party for fighting hard to deregulate the financial markets only to have the people of the same party screw over the entire economy.
Obama has had to oversee the clean up of all those messes with a rabid opposition party using every trick to stop any progress because any progress they know would point out in bas relief the bankruptcy of their ideologies and policies and show who they benefitted and who got screwed.
We don't want to be in a position to have to blame anyone, but there we are, we were attacked muliple times under Bush, not Obama, our economy tanked under Bush, not Obama, we went to two wars with a tax cut for the rich under Bush not Obama.
Lets give credit where credit is due. Why do you not want to give the man credit for his accomplishments. It seems he earned them.
Sorry to disapoint you, but like our current situation with 15% of the US population under the poverty line and 46% (according to a recent research article) are 3 paychecks away from poverty. We have an unprecedented population on earth. The global warming is increasing desertification of large areas of the world. We are plowing under large areas of farmland for cities and other structures. Those idiots in the Amazon are cutting down our carbon sinks at an alarming rate.
And our oil reserves are just about half used up which are much of the basis of fertilizer and pesticide production which allow up to hyper produce agriculture.
What will happen is a short few years is a total change in rainfall areas which changes what crops can be produced.
The problem will get down to (in probably 50 years) how can we support the growing population. We will have to develop new farming and new crops and shift locations and... We can try that, but getting the crops to respond as quickly as the climate does may be a problem.
One theory about the demise of the Neanderthal was that they invented clothes so they could stay in Europe during the ice age, and they weakened and did not survive as a separate race because they lacked Vitamin D. The same is a problem with peoples living far north without dietary supplements.
There are usually mass extinctions with there is a change in temperature and thereby vegetation. Look at the sensitivity of the coral reef environments.
Your suggestion that more heat must be a good thing is conjecture and does not look at what global temperature changes have done in the past.
A good example of what might happen is the shifting of the Gulf Stream away from Europe. That would make Europe not a nice place to live, wine and cheese production would be eliminated, wars would break out as large populations that could not support themselves coveted Southern countries that could.
Don't underestimate either the stupidity or greed that can have global consequences on the human population.
Well I recall that something akin to this did happen in China. Mao in his infinite wisdom (or the wisdom of his advisors) decided that birds were eating crops so he had everyone go out and bang pots and pans around trees that birds were roosting in. They could not land, fatigued and millions, yes millions of birds died. The next few years witnessed plagues of insects eating crops, followed by famine.
Don't underestimate either the stupidity of man, or the quick and important effect of large changes in an ecosystem. I suspect that the article has it right, just like the global winter in Europe that may have been due to massive volcanic eruptions. (http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/318831).
This is such a breach of freedom and privacy, no crime was committed. I am reminded of the pre-crimes in Minority Report. I'll stop complaining if I get one of those crt screen walls. But seriously, this is the foot in the door of a fascist type state control of peoples lives.
Yes, and the current "owner" class is working to ensure that they keep the old model and they "own" everything and make the money off it and all those other unemployed workers, well they can just find another life to live in. I think like all things as the technological landscape changes we will change the way we apportion wealth. It can not stand that we become super productive at the expense of people being poor and jobless. The society, especially a Democracy, can not allow that. We see with the various voter supression moves, the "owners" are trying to start to limit the citizens rights to vote and keep their hands on the economic tiller. As we see with the occupy movement, sometimes the people object.
Slashdot Mirror
Darpa has had the Shredder document challenge (http://archive.darpa.mil/shredderchallenge/) , Nasa has had a roboic spheres challenge (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/jan/HQ_12-029_SPHERES_Challenge_Winner.html)
Darpa has been having the autonomous vehicle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge)
The Navy the underwater autonomous vehicle comp. (http://www.sdnews.com/view/full_story/302685/article-Navy-readies-to-host-autonomous-underwater-vehicle-competition)
it seems that these competitions have already been started, there is a track record for this producing results. I worked on the shredder challenge, I found it fun and had a good time creating what I did. It is a good way to focus many people on solutions.
But you are right, the patent/copyright laws are out of whack and are now an impediment to progress, which means an impediment to profit in general just not in specific. The patent time line should go back to 35 years or so.
Hard to say if what that quote really speaks to. Like Galileo's recanting his discoveries and theories because of extreme pressure from the Church, and if you see some of the other responses here about what the reaction and consequences could be in a bible belt "Christian" community if you do not profess the dogma, Isaac may have just been keeping the religious Luddites at bay. I think it true that religion is the capstone of knowledge. and by that I mean it puts a lid on knowledge, a cap you use when you do not have another explanation, and intellectual scapegoat if you will that stops curiosity, or rational thought. That of course is not the purpose or intent of spirituality but the sad practice of religion in many of it's institutional secular forms.
And I often wonder if you believe in God, which in the Chinese Yin/Yang philosophy would co-create the opposite, the Devil. Then the two would really be two sides of the same thing, not being able to have one without the other. Then the spinning up of the world, or the big banging of the big bang could equally be attributed to the Devil, or shall we say we are living in the heaven/hell on earth.
We could go back to teaching/presenting the old theories that were held by the theologians and that infallibility of the Pope, with the Flat Earth and after that was shown to be hokum, the Earth the center of the universe. That is the problem with theologians making pronouncements about the real world, they haven't a clue. That is the realm of the sciences, and they are jealous that there is a whole area of existence that they are not the authorities on, which is how they control their flock and the pocket books of their flock.
But we are seeing a new trend of marketing going on. In one case with the religious "wrong" controlling their flocks to vote in ridiculous laws that impose their wrong headed and provably incorrect idea's onto the public and worse yet into the impressionable minds of our children. The other arm of that effort is to convince the electorate to vote for people who will vote in laws that will put them out of jobs, reduce their wages and allow them to have their money siphoned off but the upper 1%. Marketing has gotten much too effective in the world of low information voters, and blind faith believers.
Its a good time to re-read 1984. We are getting the infrastructure in place with the intelligence community and the lack of controls and oversight with our law enforcement arms and military. Now all we need is a "wrong" wing nut job elected and the Jack boot will descend with a vengeance.
Vote carefully, but vote.
Here is another example of the dig your heels in, no compromise strategy the the Newt stated back with the Contract on America days. Here you have legislators that do not care about the Constitution or our system of government, or idea's like settled law. No they want to turn back the clock to those times when Arizona was the Wild West and land barrens and robbers ruled, and if you were quicker with a gun you were right and no one questioned you, and woman could not vote (or have a say). They have defined marriage, and now they want to define free speech as speech you could say to your pastor in a real Christian church. Well the country learned a lesson with prohibition, and the Koch brothers are leaning a lesson in Wisconsin as the governor's recall election starts in full swing. That even though they can market and focus group and wedge issue their way into positions of lawmaking power. Ultimately it is we the voters that will have to clean up their mess. We used to have a Supreme Court we could count on to keep these crazies in check but that sadly does not seem to be the case today.
What ever else you do in life, vote!
Now you know why NSA and the CIA have their servers classified. (eyes only guys)
Just checked Google Play and no Instagram yet.
"Theory of Evolution" well not actually a theory, but a set of established and substantiated principles. The confusion is that the "Theory" part actually only refers to the shape of the various trees, with the ideas of which branches came from which other branches and when. The Fossil record helps clarify the tree structure and relationships, now with DNA and other evidence we refine that picture more and more. But the principles of evolution, like mutation and natural selection are not theories or called into scientific question. But the Creationist trumpet "Theory" "Theory" to refer to the undisputed principals of the process of evolution. This is the intellectual dishonesty that is agenda driven that I find most disagreeable and anti-intellectual and anti-progress.
But we know that evolution works and I believe that this set of beliefs do not have long term survival value for those people adopting those beliefs, so social evolution should take care of that intellectual cul de sac in due time. Of course that attitude coupled with the hypocracy of accepting science for those things that benefit you and rejection those (like global warming) for those you have a irrational belief in may in and of itself provide some survival benefit. Probably they do in the short time so you can live in one of those communities that do not treat dis-believers kindly.
He had no clue about what would happen. He was from Chicago, newly moved to that city, surrounded by religious zealots. They did not wear special headgear or clothes or tattoos to identify them from real ordinary citizens.
They buy a property low and then milk it for all they can get. They are true red neck entrepreneurs. Patents are there to protect the creators/inventor and their family to make a reasonable profit on the idea for a limited number of years. What the "owner"/"entrepreneurs" have done is take that idea, bundle the IP as a commodity and buy and sell it on the secondary market. Very different than the intent of the law and creates a system that does not favor the inventor. Much like the pay day loan business, and just as socially acceptable.
Being an advocate of Free Speech can be a hard task. What if we frame it in a slightly different way. Should this asshole be denied gas at a gas station because of his remarks? Should he be kicked out of public park because of remarks he made while drunk and in the past. Maybe kicked out of the park if he were drunk and saying those things, but if it is in the past, should that effect all aspects of life. The school should probably not kicked him out. Acedemic freedom should allow differing views, they certainly don't exclude other forms of what some might see as bad behaviour, like controversial art, or teaching business practices that objectify peoples life work to a point where they can be fired, or underpaid or ill treated to balance the bottom line and give dividents to shareholders and that being seen as good, and valid, and acceptible, or the operations on small insignificant life, to further the cause of human medicine. It seems that acedemia has a long track record of allowing different points of view and practices that are not universally seen as good. They should not have kicked him out.
I knew someone in Grand Rapids, MI that made the mistake of cutting his lawn on Sunday and was shunned by all his neighbors for it (an unnamed fundementalist Christian stronghold). That too is the same sort of thing going on here, but not just personal actions but corporate, civic , legal actions.
I think they have gone too far. I disagree wholeheartedly with his actions but the actions of the community I think were inapproriate.
I'm sorry, there is an assumption here that should be examinded closely. In other area's where an illegal activity (or an activitiy that has had a law to say that particular activity is banned), people who want to practice that illegal activity tend to gravitate towards those places and occupations where they can practice those activities in relative safety. We see pedophiles working in child care and schools or places where children gather under supervision. That is not saying all those in those occupations are pedophiles but if you were a pedophile what kind of occupation do you think would attract you?
Here to you seem to give the IT forensic and Law Enforcement people a blanket pass on not participating in the enjoyment of those images. I suspect the people involved have a wide range of interest in the images and content. They just currently have immunity, but the idea that there are those that are above the law and that there is no question about wrongdoing is not correct. We have seen those in the law enforcement and justice system break the laws for their own uses, whether it is to break a case, get some money, or just show off the power they have that others don't. We also have to be vigilant and skeptical of those that are being vigilant
I am most concerned with the trend to relax the checks and balances on law enforcement which puts us all in danger. We have seen what lifting or not imposing restrictions and oversight has done to the economy. It can do the same to our privacy and freedoms, and just as quickly.
I too have had both Male and Female managers. I have had both good and bad. I had a Female manager that would listen to what you had to say and often take advise and one that would not listen to what you said, or maybe sometimes, then tell you what you were going to do. That second variety was not comfortable and if you worked on something that she had not pre-approved, she would not only never approve it but tell others that she could not touch it also. This vindictive behavior was very counter productive and the department ended up not doing anything new or innovative for fear of retribution. I had a Male boss that told a friend, after approving a vacation to a foriegn country, came back and told him he could not go, as a way of motivating him to be loyal to work. He went anyway and quit the job. The funny part was when that boss asked where he was, and I told him out of the country, he realized his brinkmanship had backfired and he had lost a valuable employee.
There are enough stories of good and bad. Some organizations thrive on a authoritarian top down decision making , others on a bottom up consensus approach. The consensus approach can grid lock, the top down can make uninformed decisions. The bottom up can make uninformed decisions if the people at the bottom are uninformated or the decision maker can't tell an informed choice over and uninformed choice.
Like Lorenzian attactors, each style will morph an organization or a part of an organization to a different process and different timing. which is better? Depends on whether you are doing a marketing campaign or trying to put out a brush fire, or write code that will work and be maintainable.
Pet rocks can be re-tasked to be a coffee subsitute as well. Like sucking on a rock
Faith is sort of the intellectual "The Buck Stops Here". It says there is a door here, you can't see through, your not suppose to see through, you get to go through when you die, but don't think you can know anything, what you were saying is you may not know anything past that door.
Well that is why some religions are desperate to rely on Faith, because they don't know but have a script and a story and they can't get off that script of that story, because they don't know and can not know. If the script and the story are real, they will stand up to scrutiny, if not they won't and as science has progressed, idea's proposed by "the infallible Pope" like the earth being flag, or the center of the universe, or ... well as science has progressed, the veils of ignorance have been pulled back to show the full glory of creation. That continues, the ID is a frantic attempt of a group that wants to keep the story and script they learned alive and to claim it is the truth in the face of overwhealming evidence to the contrary. It is not a winning strategy. Truth is what religion should be about not old incorrect scripts and stories. Nasa is part of the progression of scientific knowledge, the exploration of new places and new realms not visited before. That is scary stuff for people locken in a flat earth mentality. And seems incompatible with the basic premise and job description of the agency.
Looks like his job devovled. Of course this is all part of God's plan to bring the light of science to simple minds, or they devolved back into the primordial job soup.
For those of us in the US the right to free speech could be abridged with this. The Republicans have tried "Free Speech Zones", Throwing people out, limiting who is allowed at a venue, but at the same time delivering hecklers to town hall meetings. It seems someone wants it both ways.
The obvious next step in the arms race is a speech jammer jammer. Which could use active sound suppression like the noise canceling headphones. Where my patent application, its here somewhere.
Log into paypal, contact us, there are no good topic sub topics so I chose Business Solutions/Other Business Resources to log a complaint. I suggest you do the same if you feel they should hear from the community
Another bogus study recently was on the correlation of Diet Soda to Heart desease.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/20/us-soda-diet-idUSTRE81J03920120220
The problem is the factors that bring people to diet soda are overweight or diabetes which are both factors that would tend to increase risk of heart desease. Here too the people that are prescribed sleeping pills are a self selected group on some problem associated with sleep. They can say they have factored in all the external variables but that may not be that case or there may be other factors related to sleep problems that are more to blame and this study would not be complete or accurate unless it followed an equally large group of people that would have been given sleeping pills but were not and/or given a placebo, You don't know if giving a pill is the problem say vs not giving a pill as one factor. If you give a placebo you don't test that variable.
The study said it matched "matched controls with no hypnotic prescriptions" but they did not match with those who would have been prescribed meds but weren't. You may only be seeing the effect of the problems they had. I could be that the meds actually lengthened life vs the group not given them. This is the problem with vacines that have side effects, but the cure in general is much better for society than the side effects.
But that kind of study is hard to come by so you may just have to go on the data you have but as in religion and politics attribution can be a grand evil.
Money translatese to power which implies privilege, and privilege implies that laws and conventions are somehow not for them, so the best thing for society is to level the playing field and increase the wealth of everyone, or say foster programs that grow the middle class at the expense of the ultra wealthy. Our lives in general will be improved and our country will again be the envy of the world, not the envy of the rich and powerful.
Interesting the link to the to "a threatening letter that lawyers for the mining industry sent to various scientific journals " is not working. Maybe the letters have had effect?
No we don't want to blame Bush, we don't want to have to blame anyone for hundreds of thousands of lives lost, some thousands of our own in a war of lies and adventure, we don't want to have to watch our hard earned dollars get poured into military budgets. We don't want to have to blame any one person or one party for fighting hard to deregulate the financial markets only to have the people of the same party screw over the entire economy.
Obama has had to oversee the clean up of all those messes with a rabid opposition party using every trick to stop any progress because any progress they know would point out in bas relief the bankruptcy of their ideologies and policies and show who they benefitted and who got screwed.
We don't want to be in a position to have to blame anyone, but there we are, we were attacked muliple times under Bush, not Obama, our economy tanked under Bush, not Obama, we went to two wars with a tax cut for the rich under Bush not Obama.
Lets give credit where credit is due. Why do you not want to give the man credit for his accomplishments. It seems he earned them.
Sorry to disapoint you, but like our current situation with 15% of the US population under the poverty line and 46% (according to a recent research article) are 3 paychecks away from poverty. We have an unprecedented population on earth. The global warming is increasing desertification of large areas of the world. We are plowing under large areas of farmland for cities and other structures. Those idiots in the Amazon are cutting down our carbon sinks at an alarming rate.
And our oil reserves are just about half used up which are much of the basis of fertilizer and pesticide production which allow up to hyper produce agriculture.
What will happen is a short few years is a total change in rainfall areas which changes what crops can be produced.
The problem will get down to (in probably 50 years) how can we support the growing population. We will have to develop new farming and new crops and shift locations and ... We can try that, but getting the crops to respond as quickly as the climate does may be a problem.
One theory about the demise of the Neanderthal was that they invented clothes so they could stay in Europe during the ice age, and they weakened and did not survive as a separate race because they lacked Vitamin D. The same is a problem with peoples living far north without dietary supplements.
There are usually mass extinctions with there is a change in temperature and thereby vegetation. Look at the sensitivity of the coral reef environments.
Your suggestion that more heat must be a good thing is conjecture and does not look at what global temperature changes have done in the past.
A good example of what might happen is the shifting of the Gulf Stream away from Europe. That would make Europe not a nice place to live, wine and cheese production would be eliminated, wars would break out as large populations that could not support themselves coveted Southern countries that could.
Don't underestimate either the stupidity or greed that can have global consequences on the human population.
Well I recall that something akin to this did happen in China. Mao in his infinite wisdom (or the wisdom of his advisors) decided that birds were eating crops so he had everyone go out and bang pots and pans around trees that birds were roosting in. They could not land, fatigued and millions, yes millions of birds died. The next few years witnessed plagues of insects eating crops, followed by famine.
Don't underestimate either the stupidity of man, or the quick and important effect of large changes in an ecosystem. I suspect that the article has it right, just like the global winter in Europe that may have been due to massive volcanic eruptions. (http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/318831).
This is such a breach of freedom and privacy, no crime was committed. I am reminded of the pre-crimes in Minority Report. I'll stop complaining if I get one of those crt screen walls. But seriously, this is the foot in the door of a fascist type state control of peoples lives.
Next, banning books especially the Koran
Yes, and the current "owner" class is working to ensure that they keep the old model and they "own" everything and make the money off it and all those other unemployed workers, well they can just find another life to live in. I think like all things as the technological landscape changes we will change the way we apportion wealth. It can not stand that we become super productive at the expense of people being poor and jobless. The society, especially a Democracy, can not allow that. We see with the various voter supression moves, the "owners" are trying to start to limit the citizens rights to vote and keep their hands on the economic tiller. As we see with the occupy movement, sometimes the people object.