When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.
I live in France, actually. This wasn't a jab at Germany, I fully understand why such a legislation exists. I was just pointing out that, apparently, the legislators may have overlooked some things in how the law was worded. As far as I understand it, Germany is under a Civil Law system, in which judges are rathert strictly bound by statutes.
This went to ridiculous levels with Wolfenstein 3D, which was banned in Germany, even though the Nazis in the game were the enemy. Kinda contradicted the spirit of the law, IMHO, but the judges have to follow the statutes, whether well-worded or not.
What's the situation in French schools? Schools in Britain aren't allowed to sell fizzy drinks or unhealthy snacks.
I'm not sure, to be honest. I'm personally childless, my nieces live in the USA, and my nephew is into universitary circuits (his personal comfort food has always been cucumber anyway, which is healthy if you don't put too much cream - he still managed to have too much of it at a point in his childhood: it messed up his digestion).
Back in my days, in French schools, lunches were taken in refectories, with fixed, one-for-all sets of dishes each day. It evolved a bit, and I know for certain that, at least in high schools, lunch-time tends to a more cafeteria-like model: students get to pick their entree, main course, and dessert from two options for each, with most of the time more options for the dessert, and this being France, the optional piece of cheese. I happen to have a close friend who works at a high-school cafeteria, and I just gave her a call to make sure I didn't say rubbish. I'm glad I did it, because I also asked her if vending machines that provided snacks and sodas had been banned (I thought they had, because it's been discussed at some point), but they haven't.
See, as a European (and even moreso as a French), I can't stop being puzzled by US food habits, and marketing strategies like you describe, which are despicable, and worth denouncing, I agree with you on that.
Still, along with all the French people I discussed the issue with (and I'm reasonably sure many other Europeans would feel the same, but I haven't had the opportunity to check it out), I find this ban a legislative overreach, as well as a lazy and inefficient way to handle the issue.
As much as (some) USA people like to characterize European policies as "Nanny State", such a legislation is far beyond what I find acceptable. It does nothing to promote individual agency. In France, the main governmental action on the issue of food habits has been, in the latter years, essentially based on communication: public service announcement promoting physical activity and mandatory insterted warnings against eating "too fat, too sweet, too salty" at the end of ads on food products, stuff like that. There's also government-funded programs to aid access to healthy food products for people who'd have a hard time affording them. And nothing of value is lost in the process. Individual agency is preserved, and even promoted, as nothing has been outright banned, and options are broadened for the most fragilized people.
Thankfully all these 60 plus year old guys are doing the world a favor and dying of heart attacks and high blood pressure on a spirit-lifting regular basis.
Alas, the most influential ones have access to top-notch medical attention, so it could take some time.
Duuh, as much as I disagree with libertarians on many, many things, I think you're mischaracterizing them, or maybe the label itself is too broad. I've talked to quite a few self-defined libertarians who were all for severely limiting, or even outright banning, inheritance (for the record, while I'm all for limiting, outright banning goes a bit too far in my worldview).
The real issue is that some (too many) economists like to present their discipline as a hard science. It's not. It's a social science. The one that makes the most use of mathematical models, but a social science nonetheless, along with ethnology, sociology, psychology etc. Most actual, serious economists are fully aware of that.
In other words, the plural of anecdote is not data. The myth of the self-made-man is very strongly prevalent in the USA because the country has largely been built from scratch on a rather short timescale that produced genuine examples of people who seized chanceful opportunities. And I'm not implying they had no talent. But it was never JUST talent. And I go as far as to say it's NEVER just talent.
Spectacular economical successes tend to overshadow the fact that most intellectual breakthroughs are incremental. They had the insight and talent to climb on the shoulders of the right giants at the moment (to retool Bernard of Chartres' famous aphorism), but what could have they done without those giants?
Similarly, people who like to point out that even now some people from poor families manage to succeed, as a proof that everyone has the same chance in life, are basically opposing anecdotes to statistics, which means they fail by all definitions of rationality.
Indeed, but it's worth adding that it doesn't necessarily provide useful clues of the causal chain that it hints to, if any.
For example, one possible explanation that I can draft off the top of my head without being an expert and without having RTFA, is the following:
Genetic diversity in an area indicates that its population is of genetically diverse descends (duh).
The timescale of genetic drift is far slower than cultural developments.
Based on proposition 2, the genetic diversity of the population described in proposition 1 is most likely to come from populations who were separate for a long time.
Different separate populations developped different cultures over time.
The culture of an area that is genetically diverse is most likely to have been built from plenty of cultural exchanges (along with carnal, heh) between populations of various origins.
Cultural exchanges are a factor of progress, through confrontation of ideas leading to a refinement of reason.
I'm plenty sure I've skipped some steps in my modelisation, but as I said, it's a draft from a layman; and I don't think it's particularly original, at that.
Yeah, I remember a story some years ago about a guy in Finland who'd been fined for speeding to an amount of... maybe not millions, but it was impressive. And nothing in this infringes on equality before law. I wish we would implement this in France.
My bad, I had it backwards then. I based my post on what I heard Hervé This (a physico-chemist who studies food and cooking) say on the matter some years ago on the radio. My recollection was fuzzy.
All fries should be fried twice, at different temperatures. The first time is to caramelize the outside, the second is to cook the inside to the point it becomes a puree. Belgian cooks are just more strict on this than French cooks are.
As for beef tallow, yeah, it's seemingly a staple of the Belgian method.
I stand corrected. There are so many international organisations around here that it's hard to keep track of all of them and their attributions. The EU itself is already rather complicated.
I mean, seriously? Sarkozy, in the spy business? Speedy Sarko? Nicolas "Casse-toi pauv' con" Sarkozy? A man compared to whom Tony Montana is a model of self-control? I call bullshit.
Attorneys who don't do their best for their clients ought to be disbarred. There are countries in which attorneys volunteer for public defense duty because they consider it part of the honor of their profession.
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When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.
Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, 1790.
They release accounts and balance every year
Interestingly, it's supposed to be mandatory by French law for newspapers, but they are one of the very few who comply.
I live in France, actually. This wasn't a jab at Germany, I fully understand why such a legislation exists. I was just pointing out that, apparently, the legislators may have overlooked some things in how the law was worded. As far as I understand it, Germany is under a Civil Law system, in which judges are rathert strictly bound by statutes.
This went to ridiculous levels with Wolfenstein 3D, which was banned in Germany, even though the Nazis in the game were the enemy. Kinda contradicted the spirit of the law, IMHO, but the judges have to follow the statutes, whether well-worded or not.
What's the situation in French schools? Schools in Britain aren't allowed to sell fizzy drinks or unhealthy snacks.
I'm not sure, to be honest. I'm personally childless, my nieces live in the USA, and my nephew is into universitary circuits (his personal comfort food has always been cucumber anyway, which is healthy if you don't put too much cream - he still managed to have too much of it at a point in his childhood: it messed up his digestion).
Back in my days, in French schools, lunches were taken in refectories, with fixed, one-for-all sets of dishes each day. It evolved a bit, and I know for certain that, at least in high schools, lunch-time tends to a more cafeteria-like model: students get to pick their entree, main course, and dessert from two options for each, with most of the time more options for the dessert, and this being France, the optional piece of cheese. I happen to have a close friend who works at a high-school cafeteria, and I just gave her a call to make sure I didn't say rubbish. I'm glad I did it, because I also asked her if vending machines that provided snacks and sodas had been banned (I thought they had, because it's been discussed at some point), but they haven't.
See, as a European (and even moreso as a French), I can't stop being puzzled by US food habits, and marketing strategies like you describe, which are despicable, and worth denouncing, I agree with you on that.
Still, along with all the French people I discussed the issue with (and I'm reasonably sure many other Europeans would feel the same, but I haven't had the opportunity to check it out), I find this ban a legislative overreach, as well as a lazy and inefficient way to handle the issue.
As much as (some) USA people like to characterize European policies as "Nanny State", such a legislation is far beyond what I find acceptable. It does nothing to promote individual agency. In France, the main governmental action on the issue of food habits has been, in the latter years, essentially based on communication: public service announcement promoting physical activity and mandatory insterted warnings against eating "too fat, too sweet, too salty" at the end of ads on food products, stuff like that. There's also government-funded programs to aid access to healthy food products for people who'd have a hard time affording them. And nothing of value is lost in the process. Individual agency is preserved, and even promoted, as nothing has been outright banned, and options are broadened for the most fragilized people.
But that NY sugary drink ban is just silly.
Thankfully all these 60 plus year old guys are doing the world a favor and dying of heart attacks and high blood pressure on a spirit-lifting regular basis.
Alas, the most influential ones have access to top-notch medical attention, so it could take some time.
Duuh, as much as I disagree with libertarians on many, many things, I think you're mischaracterizing them, or maybe the label itself is too broad. I've talked to quite a few self-defined libertarians who were all for severely limiting, or even outright banning, inheritance (for the record, while I'm all for limiting, outright banning goes a bit too far in my worldview).
The real issue is that some (too many) economists like to present their discipline as a hard science. It's not. It's a social science. The one that makes the most use of mathematical models, but a social science nonetheless, along with ethnology, sociology, psychology etc. Most actual, serious economists are fully aware of that.
Argh, you make this point more concisely and clearly than I made it in the previous thread. Kudos.
In other words, the plural of anecdote is not data. The myth of the self-made-man is very strongly prevalent in the USA because the country has largely been built from scratch on a rather short timescale that produced genuine examples of people who seized chanceful opportunities. And I'm not implying they had no talent. But it was never JUST talent. And I go as far as to say it's NEVER just talent.
Spectacular economical successes tend to overshadow the fact that most intellectual breakthroughs are incremental. They had the insight and talent to climb on the shoulders of the right giants at the moment (to retool Bernard of Chartres' famous aphorism), but what could have they done without those giants?
Similarly, people who like to point out that even now some people from poor families manage to succeed, as a proof that everyone has the same chance in life, are basically opposing anecdotes to statistics, which means they fail by all definitions of rationality.
Oh, come on, Slashdot! I'm not allowed to use an ordered list in my comments? It would have made it more readable, dammit!
Indeed, but it's worth adding that it doesn't necessarily provide useful clues of the causal chain that it hints to, if any.
For example, one possible explanation that I can draft off the top of my head without being an expert and without having RTFA, is the following:
I'm plenty sure I've skipped some steps in my modelisation, but as I said, it's a draft from a layman; and I don't think it's particularly original, at that.
Indeed, and it wasn't for hypothetical fighters, more for work vehicle.
Yeah, I remember a story some years ago about a guy in Finland who'd been fined for speeding to an amount of... maybe not millions, but it was impressive. And nothing in this infringes on equality before law. I wish we would implement this in France.
You're confusing fines and damages. Fines are a punition and are part of criminal law, damages are for reparation of prejudice and part of civil law.
They follow different rules. No general principle of law exists that forbids fines to be adjusted to the means of the condemned.
My bad, I had it backwards then. I based my post on what I heard Hervé This (a physico-chemist who studies food and cooking) say on the matter some years ago on the radio. My recollection was fuzzy.
All fries should be fried twice, at different temperatures. The first time is to caramelize the outside, the second is to cook the inside to the point it becomes a puree. Belgian cooks are just more strict on this than French cooks are.
As for beef tallow, yeah, it's seemingly a staple of the Belgian method.
Have you ever considered using Eclim? It's Eclipse with Vim as the interface (or Vim with Eclipse tools if you prefer).
It's factually true, but it doesn't follow from the premises. It's a non sequitur.
I stand corrected. There are so many international organisations around here that it's hard to keep track of all of them and their attributions. The EU itself is already rather complicated.
You obviously know absolutely nothing about the Pussy Riot affair, but hey, don't let that stop you from spouting nonsense.
Citation needed.
I mean, seriously? Sarkozy, in the spy business? Speedy Sarko? Nicolas "Casse-toi pauv' con" Sarkozy? A man compared to whom Tony Montana is a model of self-control? I call bullshit.
Attorneys who don't do their best for their clients ought to be disbarred. There are countries in which attorneys volunteer for public defense duty because they consider it part of the honor of their profession.
Russia's power structure has only marginally evolved since the nineteenth century. Even the USSR wasn't very different from the Czar regime.