Why take your hat off when you come inside? Two reasons. You don't need to wear it ( in most cases ) and because it's considered polite to remove it.
Which of course is why etiquette is dead. "it's polite because it's polite." That's what we call arbitrary. Now some would say that going on green and stopping on red are arbitrary too, so let me just nip that in the bud before this gets out of hand. Theres a difference between needing a standard and picking one arbitrarily (if people choose which side of the road to drive on based on however they feel, we'll have more accidents, so lets pick a side and stick with it) and imposing an arbitrary custom because it's custom (take off your hat because you take off your hat.)
I prefer politeness to etiquette. That means being respectful to people and trying to make life easier. Etiquetee says that men open doors for women. So if there's two doors close together, the man rushes by the woman to get the second and slows tham both down. Politeness says that the person who gets to the door first should hold it for someone who is reasonably close behind them, who may then return the favor at the next door. A woman may offer the open seat on the bus to a man who has been standing longer or is carrying more. Whoever makes an invitation should make a good faith effort to pay for their date, and accept it with good grace if the date doesn't want to be paid for. Nice simple stuff like that, which becomes obvious in most situations if you just apply consideration and think. No emily post book required.
It's basically the same as my preference for ethics over morals.
Why is it that whenever somebody criticizes how we speak, somebody else will cry 'censorship?'
The worst case of this I saw was shortly after the Matthew Shepard killing. An anti-gay religious coalition had started a "ex-gay" ad campaign shortly before the murder, and a few pro-gay groups were criticising the social effects of the campaign as contributing to the culture of hate that lead to the murder (they never said the campaign contributed to that murder, just that the group was contributing to more of the same by demonising gays.)
One of the newsgroups that I was reading that was pretty neutral on the gay issue had posts accusing the pro-gay group of censorship. The gay groups hadn't called for the ads to be banned, just said that they were bad and could lead to greater homophobia and problems for gays. But the censorship criers said that just the criticism "could lead to such things being banned in the future" and was thus unacceptable censoring speech.
I found it pretty disturbing that these people thought that speech that encorages us to think about a segment of our population as diseased and sinful is ok, speech that may lead to people losing legal protections, being further harrassed or thrown out of their homes is ok, but speech that may someday lead to limiting of other speech is dangerous and wrong. When did we get to the point where freedom of speech was not just a right, but the right to be defended above all others? I'd like to think that this was a outlier, but I don't.
Just because people have the right to do something, doesn't mean that people ought to do something.
hear, hear. Its odd that this group had such a universal response to "frivolous" lawsuits encouraging "taking responsibility for your own actions" and "don't sue just because you can sue" with the assumption that your legal rights should not be the end of your personal responsibility. Yet in discussions of moderation and having a good conversation online, the first amendment is viewed as not just the beginning, but the end of the conversation. You don't have the constitutional right not to be offended, therefore we won't take any actions to make our forum less offensive and encourage more use. Congress can't stop you from ruining the discussion with static and noise, so we won't.
What if we started a conversation about what kind of forums we wanted on line and how different ones would be best crafted, and deal with "free speech" as it comes up, instead of starting with complete irresponsibility and fighting tooth and nail against attempts to bring out some signal?
Because some thoughts should be illegal? (note the bitter sarcasm)
Yeah, like the thought "wow, I'd like to kill that guy, oh good his back is turned I'll bash him in the head" is illegal. Must be, because the crime is then procescuted more heavily than if the thought is "hey, I'm in the middle of a bar fight, how did that happen, let me out of here, oh shit, guy with a bottle, hit him to get him out of my way so I can run for the door."
And in many states, the thought "if I run, he'll kill my kids, and find me, if I stay here he'll kill me, the police won't help" is thought to be legally different than the thought "hmmmmmm... insurance money....."
Motive matters, and it always have. If you object to hate crimes laws, make a good argument, but don't just cry "thought police" unless you also object to differing penalties for 1st degree and 2nd degree murder, manslaughter and self defense.
Off topic, bad Kahuna, no karma!
PS, if you're bitter because you're white, why? AFAIK, one of the first "hate crimes" procecutions held up by a higher court involved a racially motivated attack on a white man motivated by a black militant yelling something along the lines of "go get whitey!" Or do you believe that hate crimes laws only protect minorities, rather than victims of "class" motivated bias?
Though I am american as well, I actually thought about trying a "v flip" emoticon, but decided it would be even harder to represent. you could just say WING! which is the noise I usually associate with the brit gesture.;-)
Except for every thread on "your rights on line" the discussion of open source as a movement, the legal debate around dvd cca, continous arguments about what makes a good movie, libertarian philosophy that comes up in every other thread, and of course, everything said in this discussion.
On a less flippant level, because Science and Engineering have produced an immense numbers of usefull things, while the humanities (soc. psych. etc...), Have yet to come up with anything practically usefull or valuable. Given this, empirically it seems reasonable to dismiss the field(s) as possessing little or no worth.
Less flipant? I hope you were being flipant, because otherwise (to stay in the "let'em know they're stupid, people like that sort of thing" mood of the day) you were being just plain dumb.
Does anyone actualy believe that, or is it something engeneering majors say because they like to see liberal arts types throw a rod? Do you beleive that Slavery was outlawed because an engineer came up with a more efficient machine so we had no more use for slaves or because people who read and wrote about history, culture and philosophy came to conslusions about keeping another human being as property? Do you beleive that we should get rid of all the history of the holocaust and just study their blueprints in case something of scientific worth comes out of them?
Are you so out of touch with the world today that you can make a comment like the humanities (soc. psych. etc...), Have yet to come up with anything practically usefull or valuable. and truely believe it? If so, get your head out of your computer and try to educate yourself a little. If not, what's wrong with your life that you need to piss people off to enjoy yourself? (note, the answer to that question would be best examined in the humanities rather than the hard sciences.)
I actually found the "blood splash on the camera" gore in braveheart distracting from the story. It was bloodiness for the sake of blood. Not something I think any movie should aspire to. And (IMHO) Private Ryan got much better when they moved on to action instead of slaughter. If you want to establish the death and destruction around them, the "dog tag poker" scene was infinitly better, and didn't make me just tune out and wait till that part of the movie was over.
And lets not forget that violence in the plot does not neccesitate gore on the screen. The most violent scene in Braveheart was the torture at the end which you saw no blood in. The disimboweling was(as I recal) totally "under the camera angle" and was a much better scene (IMHO) with shots of his face and the general movement than if they had gone for the gross-out. Or how about Mulan? Sure, its disney, but without losing a G rating they had some scenes of chilling violence.
If you need nudity or spatters of gore to make a film seem "adult", I don't think you have a very adult film to begin with.
What other part of the movie is there that matters? That's like saying that you have a really cool car with custom rims, bass cannon and a bitchin' paint job...if only you had an engine...
And if you want to do a music video with a buncha guys working on an old car ala "greased lightning" you've got a really cool car for it, don't ya?;-)
Totally aside from the fact that I enjoyed the plot and acting in "DragonHeart", you go to different movies for different things. I went and saw "Blade" expecting some great fight scenes set to techno music and some lovely eye-candy in the form of a beautifully built man in tight black leather. I was not disapointed in the slightest. If the previous poster went to "DragonHeart" looking for some heartstopping graphics, there was no reason to be disapointed, even if the plot and acting weren't up to standard.
Best effect in the movie I thought was the scene where draco is swimming under the water. just lovely.
Maybe we're lucky its not the animated series. I really hated that poni/unicorn/whatever.
Die Infidel!!!!! Uni was the single coolest thing about that show. She was cute and helpful and one of the only charecters capable of doing something useful with Presto's hat. But, hey, YMMV..... Infidel.
What I would REALLY like to see, though, is a Dragon Lance movie!
I'd like to see DragonLance come out well after the Lord of the Rings series and the D&D movie so it could deconstruct them both. See, I read Dragon Lance as a subtle deconstruction of the Tolkien and traditional D&D GOODtm versus EVILtm worldview. The elves are so good that they can't be bothered to listen to the "lesser races" and were practically the bad guys for half the series. The knights (sort of palidins) were simlarly so caught up in their own "goodness" that they couldn't do what was right. Doing well or badly, right or wrong and good or evil were more seperate things than in many more traditional fantasy stories.
On the other hand, the writers didn't feel the need to make deconstruction the entire goal and left a pretty clear choice of who you should be rooting for, which puts it well ahead of some stuff I've read where the traditional story was deconstructed to the point where everything sucks at the end and you feel you're expected to be greatful to the author for broadening your mind. (when you're really thinking about writing a few simple literary suggestions on a lead pipe and attempting reverse/phernology. (sp?) )
Men in Black and Blade were both pretty good, but that doesn't easy my worries about X-MEN of a Spiderman movie. See, Blade and MIB are Marvel comics (eg, comic books published by a particular nigh bankrupt publishing giant.) But they are not Marvel Universe (eg, comics or books set in the fictional world containing the Fantastic Four, X-MEN, Avengers, etc.)
This is, unfortunately, crucial to my expectations. Only two Marvel Universe tales have made it to movei form - Captain America and The Punisher. And, how can I put this gently...
THEY BLEW GOATS!!!! THEY SUCKED! THE PAIN, THE PAIN!!!!
Uh, yeah, thats about at gentle as I can be about it. If you want to truely fear the upcoming movies, rent Captian America. The costume is just hideous. The action was cheesier than the later Batman sequels could dream of. Do not see this movie alone.
OK, positive thoughts. Love Ramie(sp) so maybe he'll do something useful with this. Maybe they'll use the black and white costume and make it tights instead of plastic. That could cut down on the worst of the cheese fator in transforming four color comic heroes into live action.
By the way, I love animals, but last time I checked, humans have rights and animals don't - period.
You didn't check very well or very recently. Animals have rights in the United States. They have more rights in the UK. These rights differ by country and judicial district, just like the rights of children, women or anyone else differ. In the US, animals have the right not to be tortured for sport (unless you own a rodeo). Animals used for experimentation have a long list of rights involving their care, feeding, vetilation, whatever. In the UK, animals have the right not to be mutilated by their owners for cosmetic reasons.
Animals have rights in the exact same way people do - there are things you can do to them that you get in trouble for. One could safely say that some species of animal have more rights in the United States than a child had in some past (and perhaps present) societies. Since I'm not a proponent of Natural Law, I don't consider those rights any more or less valid than the ones you have.
Animal Rights is a sliding scale, not a yes or no position.
hmmm, that's interesting, because this research was not done solely for the purpose of making and selling toys. The toy products we are seeing are a result of an idea to sell them to get an extra avenue of revenue for further research.
Everyone assuming that the rats were used for testing, to ONLY sell the toys, are jumping to conclusions.
Actually, we're reading the website. The animal testing is mentioned under a page talking about the safety of the toys. The tests described are no where near medicine grade, they are the sort of tests you do on something that is not supposed to be eaten or gotten in your eyes in the first place, so they can tell you "if you get this in your eyes, flush with water." instead of "if this touches any mucus membrane call an ambulance and pray."
It appears to me that people are seeing the term "animal testing" and immediately going into some type of "environmental gestapo" mode without first being fully aware of the motives and facts behind said animal testing.
It appears to me that other people see any objection to animal testing and go into "human first gestapo" mode without considering what is being objected to.
I take several modern medicines and appriciate the testing that goes onto them. I also know that most major medical advances that separate us from "primitive medicine" have needed no animal testing to be accomplished. I also have no intention of pouring my shampoo or face cleanser into my eyes every morning, and don't need to know how long they had to do that to animals before they went blind.
Animal rights is a sliding scale, not a yes or no position.
If the media did cull their understanding of this issue from/. it's pretty unfortunate. The majority of posters here have dealt with telecommuting exclusivly as an optional luxury and have ignored the circumstance of those who do "piece work" or required telecommuting. And not to stereotype, but there is a serious libertarian bent to/. And OSHA taking its cues from libertarians is kinda like the surgeon general being lead by Christian Scientists. (appologies to xtian sci's in the audience.)
Myself, I have a good amount of respect for OSHA. It probably helps that one of my friends almost died because her former employer was in flagrant violation of OSHA rules. And all of the real examples I've seen, (as opposed to wild exageration and supposition) have pointed towards a real need for some light to be shed on the issue of employers avoiding responsibility in work from home plans.
Here's to OSHA continuing its job of protecting worker saftey and health from corner cutting employers.
Ehem, I believe the quote was meant to accentuate what was written, it did not replace the argument, which I thought was a valid one.
Law can be simple and understandable to all when "all" really means "all the generally homogeneous people who matter." As more people matter, and those people do not all agree on what is the right thing to do, laws must become more detailed, and cannot be summed up as "don't do anything you shouldn't do."
As an example, an older and "understandable" definition of rape was "forcible sexual conduct with a woman not your wife." It made sense to everyone (who mattered) that if a woman was in such as state that the violation didn't have to be forcible that she was a woman of loose enough morals not to be protected by the law, and that sex with your wife was an absolute right, no matter how much force you had to bring to bear to accomplish it. But when women started mattering, the laws began to change, fitfully and in different ways in different states. We now have a hodgepodge of different state rules which means that a particular act of unwanted sex may or may not be legally considered rape, depending on where it took place. The system is less understandable, but significantly more just than when it was understandable by the lights of one single group.
And in this case as in most others, the reason is not some sort of conspiracy of lawyers to make it complicated, but rather the nature of social and legal change, which simply does not allow for sudden, grand overhauls from one idea of what is right to another. (The laws governing theft underwent a similar change much earlier, from "highway robbery" as the only real form of theft, to our current understanding of fraud, embezzelment, etc.)
So if my home is in disrepair, but my workspace is OK then they will "allow" me to work there? How nice of them. What if they don't like where your workspace is and the company refuses to make it come up to arbitrary code? Do I lose my job?
If your workplace is safe, they will allow the company to pay you to work there. If the company will not take reasonable actions to see that you have a safe working environment, the company should not be offering you telecommuting as part of the job. Thats what OSHA is saying.
There is a difference between an employee and an independant contractor. If you are an independant contractor, OSHA doesn't necassarily care if you are working chained to your basement wall while a dominatrix whips you and shouts "code faster you pig-dog linux slave!". Theoretically, neither does the person paying you for the end product. All that matters is that you are trading a "job" (a finished program, an article, a blueprint for a building) for money.
When you are an employee, on the other hand, your relationship is different. You are trading money for a certain amount of work, be it in definitive hours or not. Your employer pays different taxes, and has different responsibilities. Most importantly in this case, they have to care about your work environment. This is where OSHA steps in.
Here's an example, off of the telecommuting topic. A friend of mine sued a former employer for injuries sustained while working for her. She was a groomer, and was vicisously bitten by a cat while trying to handle it. The employer had no first aid materials on hand - no alcohol, no peroxide, nothing. She had also allowed a dog in the room where the cat was caged, riling it up without telling my friend. Then she said that she couldn't close the shop and my friend would have to wait until "a good time" to take her to the hospital. During the suit, the employer tried to get out of her liability by saying that the groomer was an independant contractor, and was thus responsible for her own safety and work environment. Since the judge disagreed, the employer paid a lot of money and got in big trouble with OSHA.
So, you can work in whatever conditions you want as long as you're a contractor. But by paying you to work at home but dealing with you in all other ways as an employee, your employer is trying to get around the rules.
Now, all that said, I really didn't see much reason to panic in the article. Not only does it explicitly state that OSHA is only interested in the workplace (so chill about wheelchair access and all the other silliness that has been going around this discussion) but it also states that an employer is responsible only for things it knows about, or should reasonably have known about.
So, a simple solution presents itself. If you want to telecommunte, the company gives you a form to describe your home workspace and equipment and lays out certain fire and air safety standards. After you work out any details on equipment to avoid repeditive motion problems, you both sign off on it. If you lied, they had no reasonable way of knowing, since they are not required to check your home, and if you can't come to an agreement on something, they don't have to let you work from home. Simple, non intrusive and maintains the responsibility that employers are required to take.
Kahuna Burger
P.S. In all the jobs I've had that OSHA was an issue, I have never considered them arbitrary. In most cases, the rules are straightforward and designed to protect the employee from corner cutting management.
However I can think of a dozen reasons why a satellite slowing down my car against my will is insane. Just the other day I was in a car going 130 Mph at on a busy city street. Reckless driving perhaps but the lady in the back seat was in labor.
Others have pointed out that this particular example just doesn't work. If you are in a city, there is a pay phone or cell phone close enough to get an ambulance to meet you. You are more likely to kill someone than avert even a small problem otherwise. If you are out of a city and trying to get someone into the city, the situation becomes trickier, but if the gov is going to put something like this in a car, they should include one of those "hotline to 911" cell phones they're marketing as well.
But aside from that, there may be conditions where you need to speed temporarily to avoid an accident. Thus, my question about the idea would be - how long do you have to speed for, does it give you a warning signal, how imediately would it cut your speed? In general,I would agree with giving tickets based on the data, and you can argue the exact circumstances if you want.
There was a "philosophy" of law book I read once with a discussion of "law" vs "justice" based on a similar example of someone crossing the double yellow line to avoid an accident.
"Most people were driving 70 when the speed limit was 55. Now that the limit is 70, people are STILL pretty much driving 70, maybe 75; it's just a speed people are comfortable with. But there's less people on the highways driving SLOW."
This sort of implies that if you raise the speed limit to the point where the fast drivers are already going, then speeding would be decreased. But my annecdotal expereince has been that this only happens temporarily, then people start driving as much over the speed limit as they were before. Its kinda like theres a type of driver who says "the speed limit is how fast its safe for them to go. Those average people can only drive at 50 mph, but since I am a far above average driver, it must mean that I'm safe to drive at 65mph."
Another common qualifier to the decrease in accidents after the increase in the speed limit is simply that people are aware of the possible increased danger and are temporarily more alert and aware of thier driving conditions. The potential for a change in the other drivers makes you actually give driving the concentration it deserves. Its when that novelty wears off, the people who were going 70 start going 80, the people who were going 50 are going 65 and all the same accident causing patterns start up again and you get the same accidents but at higher speeds and more potential for damage.
But I'm just cynical.
And as for another person's "racetrack" objection to "speed kills", racetracks are predictable. No one is suddenly realizing that they want to be going the other way on the racetrack. No one has been driving on the racetrack all night to get home for thanksgiving and dozes off at the wheel. There isn't a box in the middle of the racetrack that someone tries to swerve around into your lane.
Yes, disparities in speed cause accidents. And people changing lanes suddenly, or not paying attention, or whatever. But all other things being equal (and raising the speed limit rarely changes those other things) the higher the speed, the less stopping distance you have, the worse you are going to be at sudden turns, the more impact you hit something with, yes, the more likely you are to be killed.
Slashdot is not a medium suitable for discussions.
Hrm? Do you mean not designed structurally for discussion, not meant to encourage discussion, or not the right place to have discussions in your opinion? The first two seem incompatible with even a brief overview of the reply protocol and "articles" that directly encourage further discussion. The latter I just don't understand what you're trying to say, since you're here discussing.
If you want to raise the signal to noise ratio, I would think the first move would be to eliminate anon posts. Frankly, we're all as anonomous as we want to be to each other, and someone who didn't want an account could just sing up as "temp user" by entering their email address. Readers and even moderators would see the poster as anon, but moderation points would be recorded against the email address.
Of course there is the argument that meta-discussions like this one are worse on the s/n than actual trolls. I can see that point, but think there is a simple solution that won't require any changes in the current moderation or comments protocol. Every [two weeks, month?] just have an "upkeep" article that maybe discusses some of the meta-comments that have come up recently and encourages discussion of how moderation, s/n and quality of articles has been. Those who find this sort of electronic navel gazing annoying could ignore the entire thread, and knowing that there is an appropriate forum could help navel-gazers such as myself hold back from such discussions in other threads. And who knows - we might actaully hash out some mutually agreeable suggestions for improving the quality of discussion.
In the spirit of this bright future, I've cut a few other general suggestions for changes in moderation, in hopes that there will soon be a better place to make them.:)
One could agrue that written word etc are inventions, not gadgets, but even if not, what about paper?
Hey, instead of carving things into rocks or clay tablets, we can write it down, roll it up, carry it long distances without a hernia, store 20 tablets worth of harvest records in half the space, and a 100th of the weight! And you thought PDAs were cool.:)
One of the ways te chinese deal with the fact there is no "alphabet" as WE know it is by using the roots of each word OR the pronunciation. That's what they use to type on a computer for instance. It takes 1-4 keystroke to write one character (and one of their character can be a word in itself). Some of their dictionaries work like that as well. It may not seem very practical to us, but they manage just fine.
Off topic, but one of the cool things I have heard about the chinese written language is that it made it much easier to manage a huge, multi-cultural empire. When writing is by alphabet, it is generally phonetic, and you have to know the spoken language to understand the written language. But since chinese charecters represented whole words, once they taught a part of the empire reading and writing, all communications were compatible with the main chinese government. So one tax notice could be printed and sent to every corner of the empire, no matter what dielect or language was spoken there.
I can't really see it. His contribution was entirely philosophical and political, not scientific. And frankly, he would never have "proved everyone wrong" if not for his post-mortum press agent and editor, Paul. *
A wonk maybe, but not a geek.
* Not that having your fame be entirely due to a post mortum press agent should totally be held against a figure. Socrates (I think, I could be mixing up the two mentioned in this sentance) is known purely by mention of him as a teacher in Plato's writings. (And maybe one satirical play by Aristophanes.) There is even some theorising that he never existed and was only used as a literary foil as it were for Plato's philosophy.
But, none of these guys are this millenuem(sp) either, so its way OT.
I guess what I'm saying is Y2K was VERY REAL for us... and you can thank the thousands of engineers, technicians and programmers who fixed the problems BEFORE THEY HAPPENED for a very quiet new year's eve.
I mentioned this phenomenon on the "Y2K pledge" thread. I call it a self defeating prophecy. Someone says "if we don't do something, X will occur by 2010." Then they do something about it and avert the problem. But somehow, when 2010 rolls around, you're gonna have a few cranks saying "You said X would happen by 2010, and here it is and it isn't happening. We've been had by hysterical fear mongerers out to make a buck!"
The problem is, when there is a serious catastrophy possible, no one is going to just write it in a sealed envelope so they can have bragging rights at the post apocolypse party. You do what needs done, then get no thanks after.
So for you who labored so that we could gloat, my greatest thanks. And hopefully I'll have a moment to write the Boston Globe a bitchy letter like you wouldn't believe for their "top of the webpage" story Was the Y2K bug a big ripoff?. Flaming assholes.
Here we see one of the standard problems with faith in government power -- its workings are always presented on the assumption that it will be wielded in a just and responsible manner. Skepticism toward this assumption is never addressed by sound argument.
In case you ignored earlier comments and those in my post, the fact is that these scanners are part of an overhall based on complaints of abuses. The customs officers have already been put on notice that they are not immune to the backlash of public opinion. In that context, the implication that customs officers would conduct a violating seach of a 12 to 14 year old, isn't "skepticism", its outright paranoia, and was responded to as such.
(perhaps because no such argument has ever survived collision with historical fact),
You will now be presenting some historical facts about the number of preteens frisked or strip searched with no warning by customs. Come on, just give me one that didn't result in an imediate firing.
but by caricature of the skeptic's position (as in the opening paragraphs of KahunaBurger's post).
The poster talked about being observed naked against your will as a form of rape or a violation. He suggested that no teenaged girl would willingly undergo such an ordeal even if she had to walk where she was going. My representation was not a caricature, but merely the only sort of scenerio I could envision that would actually make this true given the facts that we have learned about the device and the situations under which it will be used. While I admitted that the dialogue of my scenerio was an extreme, the type of exchange was realistic (since this is an option to be presented) and any such explaination that included a example of the type of image seen and the fact that it would be observed by one person and unrecorded would negate the previous posters worries of psyche damaging violation.
If you honestly think that the officers wouldn't convey that information (and that they wouldn't give a little bit of gentle handling to a kid) then again, you are exibiting paranoia, not any sort of skepticism.
I don't know about you, but most of the 12-16 year old girls I know would never step in front of that thing. They'd probably rather walk than fly. Can you tear up your ticket and leave rather than get scanned? Isn't staring at someone's body *without their consent* a mild type of rape? Maybe not, but it is violation.
Ok, I see what you're saying. They're gonna grab this 14 year old kid out of line because they suspect something.
"Get up against that wall and hold still!!"
"What, what are you doing?!?!?"
"We're looking under your clothes, now turn around and show us your ass!"
Yep, thats exactly how it would work. A totally non-consensual invasion of a person's privacy. Nothing like say,
"Ok, due to a security percaution, we need to find out if you are carrying anything on your body."
"How do you do that?"
"You have two options. One is called a frisk, you've probably seen it done on cop shows. We pat down your body, and we would have to touch between your legs and your breasts. Someone you trust could be present. The other option is to stand in front of this machine, which shows us the outlines of your body and anything you're carrying. This is what Officer Sherry looks like under it.
"Thats funny, she's like a maniquin with a gun and handcuffs."
"Thats all we'd see of you. Officer Sherry would be the only one looking, and there wouldn't be any record or print out of what she saw."
"You mean I can't get a picture to show my sister what it looked like?"
"Well, maybe if you have a camera, Sherry can take a picture of the screen while she's reading it."
Now, both of these scenerios are exremes, but the later is IMHO a hell of a lot more likely, esp since these devices are partly to prevent the charges of harrassment that come with frisks. One look at the pictures that actually come out of it are going to aleviate any worry or feeling of violation.
a little known fact but incidents of terrorism are at a 20 year low.
Not to be a smartass, but why do you think that is?
A) Fanaticism is going down with the advent of self help books for pissed off nationalist such as Chicken Soup for the Terrorist-Wannabe's Soul and Don't Sweat the Simple Things in Freeing Your Country From the Great Satan.
B) All the other terrorists diss people who suggest hijacking. "My god, hijacking a plane? PuLease, the 80's are so in, they're OUT!"
C) The strong and continualy evolving security measures around common targets of terrorism are making a serious assault harder to plan and less likely to work.
I know I shouldn't be flippant about this subject, but opposing safety measures because terrorism is low, seems at least somewhat akin to cutting school lunch programs because child nutrition is so much better than it ever has been.
However, there may be a technological leveling off point where we should be focusing more on fully implementing and taking advantage of what we have now, before we increase security at the places already best protected. Something I'd have to think and read about a bit more before I could say that we had or hadn't reached that point.
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Which of course is why etiquette is dead. "it's polite because it's polite." That's what we call arbitrary. Now some would say that going on green and stopping on red are arbitrary too, so let me just nip that in the bud before this gets out of hand. Theres a difference between needing a standard and picking one arbitrarily (if people choose which side of the road to drive on based on however they feel, we'll have more accidents, so lets pick a side and stick with it) and imposing an arbitrary custom because it's custom (take off your hat because you take off your hat.)
I prefer politeness to etiquette. That means being respectful to people and trying to make life easier. Etiquetee says that men open doors for women. So if there's two doors close together, the man rushes by the woman to get the second and slows tham both down. Politeness says that the person who gets to the door first should hold it for someone who is reasonably close behind them, who may then return the favor at the next door. A woman may offer the open seat on the bus to a man who has been standing longer or is carrying more. Whoever makes an invitation should make a good faith effort to pay for their date, and accept it with good grace if the date doesn't want to be paid for. Nice simple stuff like that, which becomes obvious in most situations if you just apply consideration and think. No emily post book required.
It's basically the same as my preference for ethics over morals.
The worst case of this I saw was shortly after the Matthew Shepard killing. An anti-gay religious coalition had started a "ex-gay" ad campaign shortly before the murder, and a few pro-gay groups were criticising the social effects of the campaign as contributing to the culture of hate that lead to the murder (they never said the campaign contributed to that murder, just that the group was contributing to more of the same by demonising gays.)
One of the newsgroups that I was reading that was pretty neutral on the gay issue had posts accusing the pro-gay group of censorship. The gay groups hadn't called for the ads to be banned, just said that they were bad and could lead to greater homophobia and problems for gays. But the censorship criers said that just the criticism "could lead to such things being banned in the future" and was thus unacceptable censoring speech.
I found it pretty disturbing that these people thought that speech that encorages us to think about a segment of our population as diseased and sinful is ok, speech that may lead to people losing legal protections, being further harrassed or thrown out of their homes is ok, but speech that may someday lead to limiting of other speech is dangerous and wrong. When did we get to the point where freedom of speech was not just a right, but the right to be defended above all others? I'd like to think that this was a outlier, but I don't.
Just because people have the right to do something, doesn't mean that people ought to do something.
hear, hear. Its odd that this group had such a universal response to "frivolous" lawsuits encouraging "taking responsibility for your own actions" and "don't sue just because you can sue" with the assumption that your legal rights should not be the end of your personal responsibility. Yet in discussions of moderation and having a good conversation online, the first amendment is viewed as not just the beginning, but the end of the conversation. You don't have the constitutional right not to be offended, therefore we won't take any actions to make our forum less offensive and encourage more use. Congress can't stop you from ruining the discussion with static and noise, so we won't.
What if we started a conversation about what kind of forums we wanted on line and how different ones would be best crafted, and deal with "free speech" as it comes up, instead of starting with complete irresponsibility and fighting tooth and nail against attempts to bring out some signal?
Yeah, like the thought "wow, I'd like to kill that guy, oh good his back is turned I'll bash him in the head" is illegal. Must be, because the crime is then procescuted more heavily than if the thought is "hey, I'm in the middle of a bar fight, how did that happen, let me out of here, oh shit, guy with a bottle, hit him to get him out of my way so I can run for the door."
And in many states, the thought "if I run, he'll kill my kids, and find me, if I stay here he'll kill me, the police won't help" is thought to be legally different than the thought "hmmmmmm... insurance money....."
Motive matters, and it always have. If you object to hate crimes laws, make a good argument, but don't just cry "thought police" unless you also object to differing penalties for 1st degree and 2nd degree murder, manslaughter and self defense.
Off topic, bad Kahuna, no karma!
PS, if you're bitter because you're white, why? AFAIK, one of the first "hate crimes" procecutions held up by a higher court involved a racially motivated attack on a white man motivated by a black militant yelling something along the lines of "go get whitey!" Or do you believe that hate crimes laws only protect minorities, rather than victims of "class" motivated bias?
Though I am american as well, I actually thought about trying a "v flip" emoticon, but decided it would be even harder to represent. you could just say WING! which is the noise I usually associate with the brit gesture. ;-)
Except for every thread on "your rights on line" the discussion of open source as a movement, the legal debate around dvd cca, continous arguments about what makes a good movie, libertarian philosophy that comes up in every other thread, and of course, everything said in this discussion.
On a less flippant level, because Science and Engineering have produced an immense numbers of usefull things, while the humanities (soc. psych. etc...), Have yet to come up with anything practically usefull or valuable. Given this, empirically it seems reasonable to dismiss the field(s) as possessing little or no worth.
Less flipant? I hope you were being flipant, because otherwise (to stay in the "let'em know they're stupid, people like that sort of thing" mood of the day) you were being just plain dumb.
Does anyone actualy believe that, or is it something engeneering majors say because they like to see liberal arts types throw a rod? Do you beleive that Slavery was outlawed because an engineer came up with a more efficient machine so we had no more use for slaves or because people who read and wrote about history, culture and philosophy came to conslusions about keeping another human being as property? Do you beleive that we should get rid of all the history of the holocaust and just study their blueprints in case something of scientific worth comes out of them?
Are you so out of touch with the world today that you can make a comment like the humanities (soc. psych. etc...), Have yet to come up with anything practically usefull or valuable. and truely believe it? If so, get your head out of your computer and try to educate yourself a little. If not, what's wrong with your life that you need to piss people off to enjoy yourself? (note, the answer to that question would be best examined in the humanities rather than the hard sciences.)
~~!~
I dunno, it seems to me we more need a "I'm not as angry as I may sound" emoticon, than one to make it more clear that we're pissed off.
And lets not forget that violence in the plot does not neccesitate gore on the screen. The most violent scene in Braveheart was the torture at the end which you saw no blood in. The disimboweling was(as I recal) totally "under the camera angle" and was a much better scene (IMHO) with shots of his face and the general movement than if they had gone for the gross-out. Or how about Mulan? Sure, its disney, but without losing a G rating they had some scenes of chilling violence.
If you need nudity or spatters of gore to make a film seem "adult", I don't think you have a very adult film to begin with.
What other part of the movie is there that matters? That's like saying that you have a really cool car with custom rims, bass cannon and a bitchin' paint job...if only you had an engine...
And if you want to do a music video with a buncha guys working on an old car ala "greased lightning" you've got a really cool car for it, don't ya? ;-)
Totally aside from the fact that I enjoyed the plot and acting in "DragonHeart", you go to different movies for different things. I went and saw "Blade" expecting some great fight scenes set to techno music and some lovely eye-candy in the form of a beautifully built man in tight black leather. I was not disapointed in the slightest. If the previous poster went to "DragonHeart" looking for some heartstopping graphics, there was no reason to be disapointed, even if the plot and acting weren't up to standard.
Best effect in the movie I thought was the scene where draco is swimming under the water. just lovely.
Die Infidel!!!!! Uni was the single coolest thing about that show. She was cute and helpful and one of the only charecters capable of doing something useful with Presto's hat. But, hey, YMMV. .... Infidel.
What I would REALLY like to see, though, is a Dragon Lance movie!
I'd like to see DragonLance come out well after the Lord of the Rings series and the D&D movie so it could deconstruct them both. See, I read Dragon Lance as a subtle deconstruction of the Tolkien and traditional D&D GOODtm versus EVILtm worldview. The elves are so good that they can't be bothered to listen to the "lesser races" and were practically the bad guys for half the series. The knights (sort of palidins) were simlarly so caught up in their own "goodness" that they couldn't do what was right. Doing well or badly, right or wrong and good or evil were more seperate things than in many more traditional fantasy stories.
On the other hand, the writers didn't feel the need to make deconstruction the entire goal and left a pretty clear choice of who you should be rooting for, which puts it well ahead of some stuff I've read where the traditional story was deconstructed to the point where everything sucks at the end and you feel you're expected to be greatful to the author for broadening your mind. (when you're really thinking about writing a few simple literary suggestions on a lead pipe and attempting reverse/phernology. (sp?) )
This is, unfortunately, crucial to my expectations. Only two Marvel Universe tales have made it to movei form - Captain America and The Punisher. And, how can I put this gently...
THEY BLEW GOATS!!!! THEY SUCKED! THE PAIN, THE PAIN!!!!
Uh, yeah, thats about at gentle as I can be about it. If you want to truely fear the upcoming movies, rent Captian America. The costume is just hideous. The action was cheesier than the later Batman sequels could dream of. Do not see this movie alone.
OK, positive thoughts. Love Ramie(sp) so maybe he'll do something useful with this. Maybe they'll use the black and white costume and make it tights instead of plastic. That could cut down on the worst of the cheese fator in transforming four color comic heroes into live action.
You didn't check very well or very recently. Animals have rights in the United States. They have more rights in the UK. These rights differ by country and judicial district, just like the rights of children, women or anyone else differ. In the US, animals have the right not to be tortured for sport (unless you own a rodeo). Animals used for experimentation have a long list of rights involving their care, feeding, vetilation, whatever. In the UK, animals have the right not to be mutilated by their owners for cosmetic reasons.
Animals have rights in the exact same way people do - there are things you can do to them that you get in trouble for. One could safely say that some species of animal have more rights in the United States than a child had in some past (and perhaps present) societies. Since I'm not a proponent of Natural Law, I don't consider those rights any more or less valid than the ones you have.
Animal Rights is a sliding scale, not a yes or no position.
Everyone assuming that the rats were used for testing, to ONLY sell the toys, are jumping to conclusions.
Actually, we're reading the website. The animal testing is mentioned under a page talking about the safety of the toys. The tests described are no where near medicine grade, they are the sort of tests you do on something that is not supposed to be eaten or gotten in your eyes in the first place, so they can tell you "if you get this in your eyes, flush with water." instead of "if this touches any mucus membrane call an ambulance and pray."
It appears to me that people are seeing the term "animal testing" and immediately going into some type of "environmental gestapo" mode without first being fully aware of the motives and facts behind said animal testing.
It appears to me that other people see any objection to animal testing and go into "human first gestapo" mode without considering what is being objected to.
I take several modern medicines and appriciate the testing that goes onto them. I also know that most major medical advances that separate us from "primitive medicine" have needed no animal testing to be accomplished. I also have no intention of pouring my shampoo or face cleanser into my eyes every morning, and don't need to know how long they had to do that to animals before they went blind.
Animal rights is a sliding scale, not a yes or no position.
Myself, I have a good amount of respect for OSHA. It probably helps that one of my friends almost died because her former employer was in flagrant violation of OSHA rules. And all of the real examples I've seen, (as opposed to wild exageration and supposition) have pointed towards a real need for some light to be shed on the issue of employers avoiding responsibility in work from home plans.
Here's to OSHA continuing its job of protecting worker saftey and health from corner cutting employers.
Law can be simple and understandable to all when "all" really means "all the generally homogeneous people who matter." As more people matter, and those people do not all agree on what is the right thing to do, laws must become more detailed, and cannot be summed up as "don't do anything you shouldn't do."
As an example, an older and "understandable" definition of rape was "forcible sexual conduct with a woman not your wife." It made sense to everyone (who mattered) that if a woman was in such as state that the violation didn't have to be forcible that she was a woman of loose enough morals not to be protected by the law, and that sex with your wife was an absolute right, no matter how much force you had to bring to bear to accomplish it. But when women started mattering, the laws began to change, fitfully and in different ways in different states. We now have a hodgepodge of different state rules which means that a particular act of unwanted sex may or may not be legally considered rape, depending on where it took place. The system is less understandable, but significantly more just than when it was understandable by the lights of one single group.
And in this case as in most others, the reason is not some sort of conspiracy of lawyers to make it complicated, but rather the nature of social and legal change, which simply does not allow for sudden, grand overhauls from one idea of what is right to another. (The laws governing theft underwent a similar change much earlier, from "highway robbery" as the only real form of theft, to our current understanding of fraud, embezzelment, etc.)
If your workplace is safe, they will allow the company to pay you to work there. If the company will not take reasonable actions to see that you have a safe working environment, the company should not be offering you telecommuting as part of the job. Thats what OSHA is saying.
There is a difference between an employee and an independant contractor. If you are an independant contractor, OSHA doesn't necassarily care if you are working chained to your basement wall while a dominatrix whips you and shouts "code faster you pig-dog linux slave!". Theoretically, neither does the person paying you for the end product. All that matters is that you are trading a "job" (a finished program, an article, a blueprint for a building) for money.
When you are an employee, on the other hand, your relationship is different. You are trading money for a certain amount of work, be it in definitive hours or not. Your employer pays different taxes, and has different responsibilities. Most importantly in this case, they have to care about your work environment. This is where OSHA steps in.
Here's an example, off of the telecommuting topic. A friend of mine sued a former employer for injuries sustained while working for her. She was a groomer, and was vicisously bitten by a cat while trying to handle it. The employer had no first aid materials on hand - no alcohol, no peroxide, nothing. She had also allowed a dog in the room where the cat was caged, riling it up without telling my friend. Then she said that she couldn't close the shop and my friend would have to wait until "a good time" to take her to the hospital. During the suit, the employer tried to get out of her liability by saying that the groomer was an independant contractor, and was thus responsible for her own safety and work environment. Since the judge disagreed, the employer paid a lot of money and got in big trouble with OSHA.
So, you can work in whatever conditions you want as long as you're a contractor. But by paying you to work at home but dealing with you in all other ways as an employee, your employer is trying to get around the rules.
Now, all that said, I really didn't see much reason to panic in the article. Not only does it explicitly state that OSHA is only interested in the workplace (so chill about wheelchair access and all the other silliness that has been going around this discussion) but it also states that an employer is responsible only for things it knows about, or should reasonably have known about.
So, a simple solution presents itself. If you want to telecommunte, the company gives you a form to describe your home workspace and equipment and lays out certain fire and air safety standards. After you work out any details on equipment to avoid repeditive motion problems, you both sign off on it. If you lied, they had no reasonable way of knowing, since they are not required to check your home, and if you can't come to an agreement on something, they don't have to let you work from home. Simple, non intrusive and maintains the responsibility that employers are required to take.
Kahuna Burger
P.S. In all the jobs I've had that OSHA was an issue, I have never considered them arbitrary. In most cases, the rules are straightforward and designed to protect the employee from corner cutting management.
Others have pointed out that this particular example just doesn't work. If you are in a city, there is a pay phone or cell phone close enough to get an ambulance to meet you. You are more likely to kill someone than avert even a small problem otherwise. If you are out of a city and trying to get someone into the city, the situation becomes trickier, but if the gov is going to put something like this in a car, they should include one of those "hotline to 911" cell phones they're marketing as well.
But aside from that, there may be conditions where you need to speed temporarily to avoid an accident. Thus, my question about the idea would be - how long do you have to speed for, does it give you a warning signal, how imediately would it cut your speed? In general,I would agree with giving tickets based on the data, and you can argue the exact circumstances if you want.
There was a "philosophy" of law book I read once with a discussion of "law" vs "justice" based on a similar example of someone crossing the double yellow line to avoid an accident.
This sort of implies that if you raise the speed limit to the point where the fast drivers are already going, then speeding would be decreased. But my annecdotal expereince has been that this only happens temporarily, then people start driving as much over the speed limit as they were before. Its kinda like theres a type of driver who says "the speed limit is how fast its safe for them to go. Those average people can only drive at 50 mph, but since I am a far above average driver, it must mean that I'm safe to drive at 65mph."
Another common qualifier to the decrease in accidents after the increase in the speed limit is simply that people are aware of the possible increased danger and are temporarily more alert and aware of thier driving conditions. The potential for a change in the other drivers makes you actually give driving the concentration it deserves. Its when that novelty wears off, the people who were going 70 start going 80, the people who were going 50 are going 65 and all the same accident causing patterns start up again and you get the same accidents but at higher speeds and more potential for damage.
But I'm just cynical.
And as for another person's "racetrack" objection to "speed kills", racetracks are predictable. No one is suddenly realizing that they want to be going the other way on the racetrack. No one has been driving on the racetrack all night to get home for thanksgiving and dozes off at the wheel. There isn't a box in the middle of the racetrack that someone tries to swerve around into your lane.
Yes, disparities in speed cause accidents. And people changing lanes suddenly, or not paying attention, or whatever. But all other things being equal (and raising the speed limit rarely changes those other things) the higher the speed, the less stopping distance you have, the worse you are going to be at sudden turns, the more impact you hit something with, yes, the more likely you are to be killed.
Hrm? Do you mean not designed structurally for discussion, not meant to encourage discussion, or not the right place to have discussions in your opinion? The first two seem incompatible with even a brief overview of the reply protocol and "articles" that directly encourage further discussion. The latter I just don't understand what you're trying to say, since you're here discussing.
If you want to raise the signal to noise ratio, I would think the first move would be to eliminate anon posts. Frankly, we're all as anonomous as we want to be to each other, and someone who didn't want an account could just sing up as "temp user" by entering their email address. Readers and even moderators would see the poster as anon, but moderation points would be recorded against the email address.
Of course there is the argument that meta-discussions like this one are worse on the s/n than actual trolls. I can see that point, but think there is a simple solution that won't require any changes in the current moderation or comments protocol. Every [two weeks, month?] just have an "upkeep" article that maybe discusses some of the meta-comments that have come up recently and encourages discussion of how moderation, s/n and quality of articles has been. Those who find this sort of electronic navel gazing annoying could ignore the entire thread, and knowing that there is an appropriate forum could help navel-gazers such as myself hold back from such discussions in other threads. And who knows - we might actaully hash out some mutually agreeable suggestions for improving the quality of discussion.
In the spirit of this bright future, I've cut a few other general suggestions for changes in moderation, in hopes that there will soon be a better place to make them. :)
Hey, instead of carving things into rocks or clay tablets, we can write it down, roll it up, carry it long distances without a hernia, store 20 tablets worth of harvest records in half the space, and a 100th of the weight! And you thought PDAs were cool. :)
Off topic, but one of the cool things I have heard about the chinese written language is that it made it much easier to manage a huge, multi-cultural empire. When writing is by alphabet, it is generally phonetic, and you have to know the spoken language to understand the written language. But since chinese charecters represented whole words, once they taught a part of the empire reading and writing, all communications were compatible with the main chinese government. So one tax notice could be printed and sent to every corner of the empire, no matter what dielect or language was spoken there.
OK, off topic, bad kahuna.
A wonk maybe, but not a geek.
* Not that having your fame be entirely due to a post mortum press agent should totally be held against a figure. Socrates (I think, I could be mixing up the two mentioned in this sentance) is known purely by mention of him as a teacher in Plato's writings. (And maybe one satirical play by Aristophanes.) There is even some theorising that he never existed and was only used as a literary foil as it were for Plato's philosophy.
But, none of these guys are this millenuem(sp) either, so its way OT.
I mentioned this phenomenon on the "Y2K pledge" thread. I call it a self defeating prophecy. Someone says "if we don't do something, X will occur by 2010." Then they do something about it and avert the problem. But somehow, when 2010 rolls around, you're gonna have a few cranks saying "You said X would happen by 2010, and here it is and it isn't happening. We've been had by hysterical fear mongerers out to make a buck!"
The problem is, when there is a serious catastrophy possible, no one is going to just write it in a sealed envelope so they can have bragging rights at the post apocolypse party. You do what needs done, then get no thanks after.
So for you who labored so that we could gloat, my greatest thanks. And hopefully I'll have a moment to write the Boston Globe a bitchy letter like you wouldn't believe for their "top of the webpage" story Was the Y2K bug a big ripoff?. Flaming assholes.
In case you ignored earlier comments and those in my post, the fact is that these scanners are part of an overhall based on complaints of abuses. The customs officers have already been put on notice that they are not immune to the backlash of public opinion. In that context, the implication that customs officers would conduct a violating seach of a 12 to 14 year old, isn't "skepticism", its outright paranoia, and was responded to as such.
(perhaps because no such argument has ever survived collision with historical fact),
You will now be presenting some historical facts about the number of preteens frisked or strip searched with no warning by customs. Come on, just give me one that didn't result in an imediate firing.
but by caricature of the skeptic's position (as in the opening paragraphs of KahunaBurger's post).
The poster talked about being observed naked against your will as a form of rape or a violation. He suggested that no teenaged girl would willingly undergo such an ordeal even if she had to walk where she was going. My representation was not a caricature, but merely the only sort of scenerio I could envision that would actually make this true given the facts that we have learned about the device and the situations under which it will be used. While I admitted that the dialogue of my scenerio was an extreme, the type of exchange was realistic (since this is an option to be presented) and any such explaination that included a example of the type of image seen and the fact that it would be observed by one person and unrecorded would negate the previous posters worries of psyche damaging violation.
If you honestly think that the officers wouldn't convey that information (and that they wouldn't give a little bit of gentle handling to a kid) then again, you are exibiting paranoia, not any sort of skepticism.
Ok, I see what you're saying. They're gonna grab this 14 year old kid out of line because they suspect something.
"Get up against that wall and hold still!!"
"What, what are you doing?!?!?"
"We're looking under your clothes, now turn around and show us your ass!"
Yep, thats exactly how it would work. A totally non-consensual invasion of a person's privacy. Nothing like say,
"Ok, due to a security percaution, we need to find out if you are carrying anything on your body."
"How do you do that?"
"You have two options. One is called a frisk, you've probably seen it done on cop shows. We pat down your body, and we would have to touch between your legs and your breasts. Someone you trust could be present. The other option is to stand in front of this machine, which shows us the outlines of your body and anything you're carrying. This is what Officer Sherry looks like under it.
"Thats funny, she's like a maniquin with a gun and handcuffs."
"Thats all we'd see of you. Officer Sherry would be the only one looking, and there wouldn't be any record or print out of what she saw."
"You mean I can't get a picture to show my sister what it looked like?"
"Well, maybe if you have a camera, Sherry can take a picture of the screen while she's reading it."
Now, both of these scenerios are exremes, but the later is IMHO a hell of a lot more likely, esp since these devices are partly to prevent the charges of harrassment that come with frisks. One look at the pictures that actually come out of it are going to aleviate any worry or feeling of violation.
Not to be a smartass, but why do you think that is?
A) Fanaticism is going down with the advent of self help books for pissed off nationalist such as Chicken Soup for the Terrorist-Wannabe's Soul and Don't Sweat the Simple Things in Freeing Your Country From the Great Satan.
B) All the other terrorists diss people who suggest hijacking. "My god, hijacking a plane? PuLease, the 80's are so in, they're OUT!"
C) The strong and continualy evolving security measures around common targets of terrorism are making a serious assault harder to plan and less likely to work.
I know I shouldn't be flippant about this subject, but opposing safety measures because terrorism is low, seems at least somewhat akin to cutting school lunch programs because child nutrition is so much better than it ever has been.
However, there may be a technological leveling off point where we should be focusing more on fully implementing and taking advantage of what we have now, before we increase security at the places already best protected. Something I'd have to think and read about a bit more before I could say that we had or hadn't reached that point.