Ooooh, nice one, I hadn't thought of the epidemiological objection. This tale has indeed plenty of holes. It doesn't include that the templars themselves mined silver, though (the natives did), so that part of your objection is moot. But yeah, it's very fragile. Nice, but fragile.
Honestly, I prefer Neil Gaiman's postulate for his novel American Gods: just about every populations who had access to the Atlantic ocean has had members who crossed it at one time or another, most of the time accidentally. Not as pretty than the previous tale, but pretty enough, and rather likely at that.
Some historians note that Colombus spent a lot of time in the libraries of the Order of Calatrava, a Spanish knights order. When the Order of the Temple was dissolved, many Templars of the Iberian Peninsula joined the Order of Calatrava (and the Order of Alcantara, too).
At the peak or their power, the Templars were known to have "de l'argent", which nowadays in French means money but at that time may have meant simply "silver". And silver was rather rare in Europe (and even rarer in Middle East, where in some place it was more precious than gold), the German mines hadn't been discovered yet. But silver mines were already exploited in North America. Add to this the fact that six main Templar Roads (networks of pathways protected by Templars) led to La Rochelle for unknown reasons, some historians speculate that maybe the Templars had settlements or commercial counters in the Americas.
I know, this is starting to sound crazy. Let me tell you I don't believe these theories. I just find them worth some thought, or some dreaming (I'm not an historian so I don't need to be rational about this). Even crazier-sounding is the theory that the Templars found America thanks to old Irish tales, notably the Ulster Cycle, with its mention of Cù Chulainn's travel to Tìr na nÒg, which may have been America. Some even go as far as to point the similarity between "Cù Chulainn" and "Kukulkàn", one of the names of the deity better known as Quetzalcoatl. As far as I know, no satisfactory explanation has been found for the south-Americans' welcoming of Europeans, who went as far as treating them like gods. The theory of a previous, unrecorded contact has never been invalidated. Add to this an inch of evhemerism and maybe...
All this to say that I agree, there are plenty of clues that Colombus knew there was a reachable land ahead of him. He didn't know what it was, but he most likely knew that it was there.
Wow, you seem to have hit a sore spot for some Apple fan, to be modded as Troll. Seriously, some people should read the FAQ before using their mod points.
I agree with you, I've never considered buying an iPod and I'll most likely never will. It simply doesn't fit what I expect from a media player. Same with the iPhone, I'd consider a FreeRunner instead (I know it's still glitchy and lacking some features, but I can live with that).
And seriously, the more I read about the App Store and its policies, the more I feel pushed away from anything linked to Apple.
Indeed. One problem with Wikipedia is that experts in some fields shun it by principle, and therefore barely contribute at all. As a result the quality of articles in said fields are slow to improve, and can easily be inaccurate, biased, or messy (exactly what said expert complain about). It's especially the case in social sciences and philosophy, which are rather polemic fields.
There's been a polemics in France a few years ago, in which a professor in classical philosophy used quite a hair-brained accusation: she said she read the Wikipedia (French version) article on Socrates and complained that "it didn't learn her anything." She's a professor of classical philosophy, for Eris' sake! Absolutely no generalist encyclopedia is supposed to learn her anything in her field of expertise! That was so dumb that it still makes me facepalm today when I think about it.
Still, this is getting better, the prejudices of the academics are not as strong as they used to be.
Well, there still are things that need to be memorized (or at least, it's more convenient to memorize them than having to look them up each time you need them), but there are strategies to make it easier.
For example, I've never memorized more than one third of the basic trigonometric formulae. When I had a test involving them (and we weren't allowed a formulae sheet), the first thing I did was tracing a trigonometric circle on my draft, then using it and the formulae I knew to retrieve the whole set of formulae (or retrieve each formula as needed). Same can be said with several mathematical tools.
Shoving, not pushing. Those are not to be confused, lest you anger the Space Robots.
Jokes aside, I find it appalling that this guy got a free pass on such a behavior. This couldn't happen in... aw, shit, this could happen in France too! But not in... Sweden, I'm pretty sure this couldn't happen in Sweden.
In fact, the USA are in kind of a legal blur on that matter. Apparently, US courts were watching closely what the Europe Union would decide about software patents a few years ago, in order to make their mind. But as for now, the EU decided nothing, because of an adamant refusal from the Parliament to endorse the Commission's text, for its lack of setting a clear limit between what is patentable and what isn't. The issue hasn't been brought up again yet.
Ah well, I can't say I'm surprised that several people have been faster than myself to submit that story.
Anyway, since I'd be offtopic if I posted just to say that, here's a link to the reaction of the association "La Quadrature du Net", spearhead of opponents to the law: Hadopi is dead: "three strikes" buried by highest court. They deserve credit for their hard work.
Terrorism isn't a serious issue. It's flashy, but I have bigger chances of dying from being struck by lighting than from terrorism.
Depending on the context, you may be right, but when there are peaks of attacks during which everyone feels anguished to use public transportation for fear of a bombing (for example, mid 90s in France - OK mostly in Paris), well, people's freedom is at least hindered.
Now, I concede that "terrorism" is largely used as a convenient strawman to justify authoritarian measures of questionable efficience reguarding what they are supposed to be aimed at.
Child porn isn't a serious issue either: it's a few perverts masturbating to my baby pictures
You don't know much about that matter, do you? The real issue with child porn is when actual childs are exploited to shoot sex scenes they are not supposed to be able to consent to.
Unfortunately, this matter is not always treated rationally either. For example, the banning of "lolicon" comics (I put this in quotes because "lolicon" is supposed to stand for "Lolita Complex", but its meaning drifted rather far away from the actual theme of Nabokov's novel "Lolita"). While I fully admit that I find many of them rather icky, no real child has been actually been harmed to produce them, so what's the fuss? Does it encourage child molestation? This needs to be proved.
or, as the case seems to be nowadays, a 17-year old viewing a picture of another 17-year old naked.
Now I totally agree with you, that one is indeed completely moronic. But fortunately not every judicial system is stupid enough to pull that shit. As far as I know, it never happened outside of the USA, anyway.
Now, I may seem to be contradicting my previous post, but don't worry, that's because I am, somewhat.
There's still the problem of relevance and proportion of measures taken to face a threat. And the question of safeguards, too. But let's just stay on the relevance part for now.
After all, Echelon was unable to prevent 9/11, yet the CIA suspected something big was coming in 2001, in part because several friendly countries' intelligence agencies, who mostly hadn't access to Echelon, independantly sent warnings to the US agency that something was coming. But the CIA was deemed as too "old-style" for the Bush administration, and his director, George Tenet, had been appointed by Clinton, and as such was deemed unreliable. And yet the CIA had more relevant informations than the NSA about the upcoming attacks. This puts into question the relevance of Echelon.
And this question extends to other domains: are, or aren't the relevant agents able to do their job without being granted special powers over the Internet? It would seem that they are.
Now at the end of a chase, being granted special powers to peek on one relevant internet connection, even without a warrant (albeit with mandatory a posteriori examination), can be of use in some cases, so why not?
I said the issue was about relevance and proportion? My bad, it's about relevance, proportion, and safeguards. In Europe, safeguards are rather strong about personal data (MUCH stronger than in the USA), but they tend to be weakened, and the agencies that enforce them tend to be weaker and weaker. Which is worrying.
I know, I know, it's confusing. France's current regime is theoretically semi-presidential, but some changes in the constitution made it de facto fully presidential.
OK, one, Nicolas Sarkozy isn't PM. The PM is François Fillon, Nicolas Sarkozy is the omnipresident*.
And two, nope, internet access is not a Fundamental Right as per EU. Not yet. Hopefully soon enough, but the process to make it legally binding is not over yet.
*OK, actually he's the president, but he's such a hyperactive control freak who gets involved in everything, that he's been nicknamed "omnipresident". Incidentally, that's why you never heard of François Fillon: even the French sometimes forget he exists.
Because if just about everyone starts using encryption, the people handling serious matters (like terrorism or child-porn) will have their task rendered nigh-impossible. Right now they focus on encrypted data, but if everything goes encrypted, they will never be able to decrypt everything.
That's another reason why too much enforcement against online copyright infringement is moronic, as it is an incentive for people whose actions, while illicit, are very benign, to encrypt their data. And that's one of the reasons why such a system as the recent French three-strikes law haven't been implemented (yet?) in the USA, despite intense lobbying from the MAFIAA: the NSA opposes it.
Now that you mention it... IANAL, but as a French with a dabbling interest in law, I'd say you're right, and that the Guardian article is probably not quite accurate on that part.
The summary imples that the US has given scientology religious status. The US does not recognise or give religions status. This is prohibited by the Constitution.
I'm glad to read that, I was starting to wonder if the USA were that much different from France in that respect.
As far as the charges against scientology, scientology does use sleazy methods to extract methods from the followers of this cult. However, these persons handed over this money willingly, in cases this is not illegal as long as Scientology did not attempt to coerce them or prohibit them from leaving.
You should look up the definition of "fraud". The fact that the money was given willingly is irrelevant, it's the deceptive methods that are considered.
As an exemple of the deception, the victims often learn very late that the "coaching" organisaton they found themselves involved with (and are growing more and more indebted to), is in fact a facade for the Church of Scientology.
Which, by the way, begs the question: how come an organisation claiming so loudly to be a religion, with its own spirituality and rites, feels the need to catch their new members by pretending at first not to be one, and to have nothing to do with spirituality and rites at all?
Slashdot Mirror
Ooooh, nice one, I hadn't thought of the epidemiological objection. This tale has indeed plenty of holes. It doesn't include that the templars themselves mined silver, though (the natives did), so that part of your objection is moot. But yeah, it's very fragile. Nice, but fragile.
Honestly, I prefer Neil Gaiman's postulate for his novel American Gods: just about every populations who had access to the Atlantic ocean has had members who crossed it at one time or another, most of the time accidentally. Not as pretty than the previous tale, but pretty enough, and rather likely at that.
Some historians note that Colombus spent a lot of time in the libraries of the Order of Calatrava, a Spanish knights order. When the Order of the Temple was dissolved, many Templars of the Iberian Peninsula joined the Order of Calatrava (and the Order of Alcantara, too).
At the peak or their power, the Templars were known to have "de l'argent", which nowadays in French means money but at that time may have meant simply "silver". And silver was rather rare in Europe (and even rarer in Middle East, where in some place it was more precious than gold), the German mines hadn't been discovered yet. But silver mines were already exploited in North America. Add to this the fact that six main Templar Roads (networks of pathways protected by Templars) led to La Rochelle for unknown reasons, some historians speculate that maybe the Templars had settlements or commercial counters in the Americas.
I know, this is starting to sound crazy. Let me tell you I don't believe these theories. I just find them worth some thought, or some dreaming (I'm not an historian so I don't need to be rational about this). Even crazier-sounding is the theory that the Templars found America thanks to old Irish tales, notably the Ulster Cycle, with its mention of Cù Chulainn's travel to Tìr na nÒg, which may have been America. Some even go as far as to point the similarity between "Cù Chulainn" and "Kukulkàn", one of the names of the deity better known as Quetzalcoatl. As far as I know, no satisfactory explanation has been found for the south-Americans' welcoming of Europeans, who went as far as treating them like gods. The theory of a previous, unrecorded contact has never been invalidated. Add to this an inch of evhemerism and maybe...
All this to say that I agree, there are plenty of clues that Colombus knew there was a reachable land ahead of him. He didn't know what it was, but he most likely knew that it was there.
Wow, you seem to have hit a sore spot for some Apple fan, to be modded as Troll. Seriously, some people should read the FAQ before using their mod points.
I agree with you, I've never considered buying an iPod and I'll most likely never will. It simply doesn't fit what I expect from a media player. Same with the iPhone, I'd consider a FreeRunner instead (I know it's still glitchy and lacking some features, but I can live with that).
And seriously, the more I read about the App Store and its policies, the more I feel pushed away from anything linked to Apple.
Indeed. One problem with Wikipedia is that experts in some fields shun it by principle, and therefore barely contribute at all. As a result the quality of articles in said fields are slow to improve, and can easily be inaccurate, biased, or messy (exactly what said expert complain about). It's especially the case in social sciences and philosophy, which are rather polemic fields.
There's been a polemics in France a few years ago, in which a professor in classical philosophy used quite a hair-brained accusation: she said she read the Wikipedia (French version) article on Socrates and complained that "it didn't learn her anything." She's a professor of classical philosophy, for Eris' sake! Absolutely no generalist encyclopedia is supposed to learn her anything in her field of expertise! That was so dumb that it still makes me facepalm today when I think about it.
Still, this is getting better, the prejudices of the academics are not as strong as they used to be.
Well, there still are things that need to be memorized (or at least, it's more convenient to memorize them than having to look them up each time you need them), but there are strategies to make it easier.
For example, I've never memorized more than one third of the basic trigonometric formulae. When I had a test involving them (and we weren't allowed a formulae sheet), the first thing I did was tracing a trigonometric circle on my draft, then using it and the formulae I knew to retrieve the whole set of formulae (or retrieve each formula as needed). Same can be said with several mathematical tools.
Shoving, not pushing. Those are not to be confused, lest you anger the Space Robots.
Jokes aside, I find it appalling that this guy got a free pass on such a behavior. This couldn't happen in... aw, shit, this could happen in France too! But not in... Sweden, I'm pretty sure this couldn't happen in Sweden.
That's exactly the point of GP: the lack of data protection laws in the USA fatally leads to aberrant situations like this.
As a Europan, if I was "antiamerican", I would find it laughable, but since I'm not I just find it tragic.
Oh, and weird, too.
Gold? That would be from a supernova.
In fact, the USA are in kind of a legal blur on that matter. Apparently, US courts were watching closely what the Europe Union would decide about software patents a few years ago, in order to make their mind. But as for now, the EU decided nothing, because of an adamant refusal from the Parliament to endorse the Commission's text, for its lack of setting a clear limit between what is patentable and what isn't. The issue hasn't been brought up again yet.
because he couldn't afford jail.
Duuh, I'm not familiar with Texas or US law, so I may be mistaken, but didn't you mean "bail"?
Going with an English sport instead? Are you nuts?
Better a "let's try to throw large balls of steel as close as possible to the small wooden ball" law.
To be fair to the submitter, the phrase "three strikes and you're out" has been used for a while to describe this law. I'm not sure who started to.
Ah well, I can't say I'm surprised that several people have been faster than myself to submit that story.
Anyway, since I'd be offtopic if I posted just to say that, here's a link to the reaction of the association "La Quadrature du Net", spearhead of opponents to the law: Hadopi is dead: "three strikes" buried by highest court. They deserve credit for their hard work.
Terrorism isn't a serious issue. It's flashy, but I have bigger chances of dying from being struck by lighting than from terrorism.
Depending on the context, you may be right, but when there are peaks of attacks during which everyone feels anguished to use public transportation for fear of a bombing (for example, mid 90s in France - OK mostly in Paris), well, people's freedom is at least hindered.
Now, I concede that "terrorism" is largely used as a convenient strawman to justify authoritarian measures of questionable efficience reguarding what they are supposed to be aimed at.
Child porn isn't a serious issue either: it's a few perverts masturbating to my baby pictures
You don't know much about that matter, do you? The real issue with child porn is when actual childs are exploited to shoot sex scenes they are not supposed to be able to consent to.
Unfortunately, this matter is not always treated rationally either. For example, the banning of "lolicon" comics (I put this in quotes because "lolicon" is supposed to stand for "Lolita Complex", but its meaning drifted rather far away from the actual theme of Nabokov's novel "Lolita"). While I fully admit that I find many of them rather icky, no real child has been actually been harmed to produce them, so what's the fuss? Does it encourage child molestation? This needs to be proved.
or, as the case seems to be nowadays, a 17-year old viewing a picture of another 17-year old naked.
Now I totally agree with you, that one is indeed completely moronic. But fortunately not every judicial system is stupid enough to pull that shit. As far as I know, it never happened outside of the USA, anyway.
Now, I may seem to be contradicting my previous post, but don't worry, that's because I am, somewhat.
There's still the problem of relevance and proportion of measures taken to face a threat. And the question of safeguards, too. But let's just stay on the relevance part for now.
After all, Echelon was unable to prevent 9/11, yet the CIA suspected something big was coming in 2001, in part because several friendly countries' intelligence agencies, who mostly hadn't access to Echelon, independantly sent warnings to the US agency that something was coming. But the CIA was deemed as too "old-style" for the Bush administration, and his director, George Tenet, had been appointed by Clinton, and as such was deemed unreliable. And yet the CIA had more relevant informations than the NSA about the upcoming attacks. This puts into question the relevance of Echelon.
And this question extends to other domains: are, or aren't the relevant agents able to do their job without being granted special powers over the Internet? It would seem that they are.
Now at the end of a chase, being granted special powers to peek on one relevant internet connection, even without a warrant (albeit with mandatory a posteriori examination), can be of use in some cases, so why not?
I said the issue was about relevance and proportion? My bad, it's about relevance, proportion, and safeguards. In Europe, safeguards are rather strong about personal data (MUCH stronger than in the USA), but they tend to be weakened, and the agencies that enforce them tend to be weaker and weaker. Which is worrying.
I know, I know, it's confusing. France's current regime is theoretically semi-presidential, but some changes in the constitution made it de facto fully presidential.
OK, one, Nicolas Sarkozy isn't PM. The PM is François Fillon, Nicolas Sarkozy is the omnipresident*.
And two, nope, internet access is not a Fundamental Right as per EU. Not yet. Hopefully soon enough, but the process to make it legally binding is not over yet.
*OK, actually he's the president, but he's such a hyperactive control freak who gets involved in everything, that he's been nicknamed "omnipresident". Incidentally, that's why you never heard of François Fillon: even the French sometimes forget he exists.
Because if just about everyone starts using encryption, the people handling serious matters (like terrorism or child-porn) will have their task rendered nigh-impossible. Right now they focus on encrypted data, but if everything goes encrypted, they will never be able to decrypt everything.
That's another reason why too much enforcement against online copyright infringement is moronic, as it is an incentive for people whose actions, while illicit, are very benign, to encrypt their data. And that's one of the reasons why such a system as the recent French three-strikes law haven't been implemented (yet?) in the USA, despite intense lobbying from the MAFIAA: the NSA opposes it.
Well, to be fair, the EU has no case (yet) to sue France for the three strikes law.
Nope, not the first time. Happened several time to France, for example.
Well, maybe it would work better with goatse, but it's likely they would all fall in a blackhole anyway...
Now that you mention it... IANAL, but as a French with a dabbling interest in law, I'd say you're right, and that the Guardian article is probably not quite accurate on that part.
I'll try to find more information.
As I've been saying, over and over, no such protections exist for religions in France.
Oops, looks like I've been too long at posting. Ah, well...
The summary imples that the US has given scientology religious status. The US does not recognise or give religions status. This is prohibited by the Constitution.
I'm glad to read that, I was starting to wonder if the USA were that much different from France in that respect.
As far as the charges against scientology, scientology does use sleazy methods to extract methods from the followers of this cult. However, these persons handed over this money willingly, in cases this is not illegal as long as Scientology did not attempt to coerce them or prohibit them from leaving.
You should look up the definition of "fraud". The fact that the money was given willingly is irrelevant, it's the deceptive methods that are considered.
As an exemple of the deception, the victims often learn very late that the "coaching" organisaton they found themselves involved with (and are growing more and more indebted to), is in fact a facade for the Church of Scientology.
Which, by the way, begs the question: how come an organisation claiming so loudly to be a religion, with its own spirituality and rites, feels the need to catch their new members by pretending at first not to be one, and to have nothing to do with spirituality and rites at all?
No religion is legally recognised as such in France.