As John Shimkus of Illinois, who also sits on the [House Energy and Commerce Committee]— as well as on the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment — has said that the government doesn’t need to make a priority of regulating greenhouse-gas emissions, because as he put it late last year, “God said the earth would not be destroyed by a flood.”
Has someone pointed out to the good politician that it is entirely possible for all humanity to be wiped out without destroying the earth? And if we are truly made in God's image, do we want to trust that he didn't leave himself some wiggle room for a reboot?
We used to discuss this at university - it's actually really hard to properly Destroy The Planet. Killing people? Easy. But to actually make Earth Not Be There Anymore? Amazingly tricky.
Because of the only two available explanation -- evolutions and divine intervention
And why do you assume there are only two available explanations? What if neither is correct, but some alternative is? And the two are not necessarily in complete conflict... so, what if parts of both are correct?
We're working with the two available explanations because.. well, no-one has posited a third one that anyone has taken seriously. (I'm sure there are, though).
Also, the core question is "is there Something controlling our world?", which lends itself to a binary "yes there is" vs. "no there isn't" (I use Something because saying "God" opens up the question of "Which one", and that's secondary to the core question.
Personally, I choose evolution because "divine intervention" doesn't lead us anywhere - if Bob is up there, controlling our destinies, then why don't we all just kick back and relax? And if Bob doesn't do anything, then is there any practical difference between "there's no one home" and "someone's home but not answering the door"?
[NB: what with the separation of church and state, I don't think the above should be relevant. But the parent poster seems to argue for flat-rate taxes based on religious arguments. I don't think religious arguments should be relevant, but as per the above, I think the religious argument actually supports progressive taxes.]
Didn't intend it to be "God says we should pay flat tax", although I can see it read that way. Was just grabbing the one historical example I could think of.
I have no objection to the theory of progressive taxes, but it seems in practice the progression goes the wrong way once all the loopholes are taken into consideration. A flat tax would be harder to duck, in my opinion. (Although I have faith that the rich will still find a way.)
Well, that's a problem with minimum wage then, isn't it? (Which, taken literally, should mean "minimum wage required to live").
Not to mention I did point out that some deductions should be allowed - just only for the folks you describe (which wouldn't be a major hit to the budget anyway, since they're by definition the lowest taxed in raw dollars), not for the billionaires.
Part of the trick would be to ditch the device somewhere (I would expect them to come looking for it, and I'd prefer it not to be on my property when they come looking for it - the best lies are the truth, after all), so you'd have to preprogram the fake data. Probably the simplest would be a random-walk. Just add/subtract a little bit from each coordinate (lat, long, altitude) and see how long it takes them to figure out what's going on...
I would put a Republican joke here, but I don't see the Democrats doing it either.
I think you'd see a Republican support space initiatives because of the possible military spinoffs long before a "We've got to solve all our problems here on Earth first" Democrat.
Contrarywise, I'd expect Republicans to cut the funding to reduce taxes before Democrats.
The one think I think we can both agree on is that neither party is likely to have a "we will be on the moon in ten years" moment.
Yes it is tough luck. It can even be done publicly to a public official without any recourse.
I don't know if that's a valid example - it doesn't take a lot of digging to know that Dan Savage (of the "Savage Love" column) is the one who's behind that.
Probably worth pointing out that if Santorum didn't deserve it, it wouldn't have caught on. (Hard to believe that someone picked up the terminology without knowing the context).
Also just followed the link, and the post doesn't say the book is done. In fact, it specifically says it's *not* done. All he's done is give himself a public deadline (probably so he *gets* it done by then.)
Nah, with all due respect to the author of my favourite series, he was slow. Though it had more to do with his fascination to delving way too deep into often unnecessary details rather than him unable to write a plot in a first place. (For instance, did he really need to spend all that all that screen time on Galina?). That meant that he ended up wasting too much time summing it up.
Brandon Sanderson really did cut out the "no-doubt-interesting-but-ultimately-irrelevant" plot trivia. That's why he was able to bang out two books in about as many years. Him and Jim Butcher are some of my favorite modern day authors. I highly recommend their works.
Though if you like, you an replace "Pulling a Jordan" with Author Existence Failure, but that will entail you loosing all track of time:P
Disclaimer: I am a fan of the Jordan books, although I don't think I could explain the plot to you.
Which is my Preferred Theory on what happened to Jordan: I don't believe he had the whole thing plotted out, and ended up in Twin Peaks land - so many plot points to clear up that it just couldn't be done, and he couldn't decide which ones to abandon. (I think Sanderson has done a great job just focusing on the important ones, while keeping the general style.) But if I had to compare Wheel of Time to another series, it would be like taking all the Dragonlance novels and running them as one continuous series instead of breaking them up into particular three-four book plots.
If I were to go around the internet telling everyone that you are a child molester, wouldn't you want to find out my identity? Oh, I posted as an AP when I did it, tough luck
Which means that it's just gossip, hearsay, and other things that mean "should be impolitely ignored'
If someone is slandering my name on the internet anonymously, I want to go after that person. First I should have to prove the allegations are false, though.
I respect your desire to "want to go after that person". But I don't believe you have any particular right to that information. Besides, anonymous comments are the equivalent of "have you stopped beating your wife yet" - you only win by ignoring it.
Make all trades simultanous, and happen every second. Change the game from "make any decision as fast as possible" to "what's the best plan you can come up with in this time"
My (admittedly limited) understanding of these sort of thing is that since you can make so many trades so fast, they let things "average out" - you jump in quick, and if a nano later the system realizes it's wrong, it can jump back out (generally before us meatsacks realize they screwed up in the first place).
I mean seriously -- if this had happened to me, I'd have gotten rid of the thing, and claim I never knew about it, and it must have fallen off the car.
Keep in mind that they didn't know what it was (hence why they took a picture and posted it). Then the FBI descended (and at that point it's a bad idea to claim that the item you were so curious about was thrown out and destroyed - not to mention the bloody thing was probably still broadcasting).
Now, the *next* time someone finds one of these things on their car - there's no limit to the wackery that can ensue. Off the top of my head:
The obvious "attach it to a long-haul truck"
Stick it to a local delivery vehicle. Post office truck, pizza delivery...
For the more geekily inclined, if I understand the technology correctly, these gizmos are a GPS attached to a broadcaster. Which means that once you crack the case, all you need is a few moments outage (say, tunnel, underground parking) to swap the input from the actual GPS chip to something that now shows you "driving" on whatever path you programmed in. (Plus, you get a free GPS chip!).
The FBI would simply have to follow "the due process of law" if they wanted their discarded item back. I'm sure that would be most embarassing and reveal things they'd rather not reveal, but then I guess they shouldn't have left the GPS in my yard.
I believe part of the suit involves the fact that their demands for the return of the item included threats of arrest if he didn't comply. Probably "failure to obey a police officer".
This is a good point, and certainly something that the police should consider.
Part of what a warrant gets you is the ability to do things private citizens can't - enter a private property and search, listen in on phone calls, and so on. That's why you need to convince a judge, after all: you're getting the ability to do something that would normally be illegal.
If the court rules that there's no reason why a cop can't attach a tracking device to a car on public property, they need to be prepared for the converse argument - why can't a private citizen attach a tracking device to a police car? They have no additional expectation of privacy, the car can easily be found parked on public property (to use the obvious joke, a coffee shop), and they themselves just argued that there's no requirement for permission.
Not to rain on the parade, but from where I'm sitting, I don't see the US building one of these this generation. One, you don't have remotely the political will to fund it. (I would put a Republican joke here, but I don't see the Democrats doing it either). Two, you don't have the money to do it anymore. Three, before you can start building that sort of stuff, you'd need to rebuild your manned launch capability, and you may have noticed that's not going particularly quickly.
My money's on China being the one to make the next big technical leap forward - they have the money, and can muster the will. The EU is another possibility - they still have some sense of adventure for space, but I don't know if they can hack the expense.
Second, why in the world is paying the same percentage the "fair" thing? Why not the same dollar amount? At best a percentage-based system is just a vague - a really vague - approximation of whatever kind of fairness principle you have going. You probably don't even have an identifiable principle on which you are basing it.
For the same reason a sales tax is percentage-based - it keeps the tax relative to the value. And it dates back to the classic church tithe (as in "give the church a tenth of what you make").
I would be thrilled to see a proper flat percentage, with the barest minimum of deductions for the poorest.
Actually, that just highlights how ridiculous this is. Opera is simply not big enough to be a threat to Safari's market share, warning label or not. However, they've now managed to make themselves look like assholes to thousands of people who would never have downloaded the app anyway.
And I might just download it now, just to tweak Apple's nose.
I would presume you would be detained, as they now have "probable cause".
Similar setup that they do with the "drug sniffing dogs" - the dogs aren't considered to be a search, but if they "find something", then it's probable cause for them to search you.
I don't necessarily have an objection to a per-bit charge, under two conditions:
1. The charge is reasonable compared to the actual cost of sending that bit (none of this $2/GB crap).
2. I get the maximum available speed on the network at that time - you don't get to constrain me based on speed *and* volume. That's like saying you're going to charge me for my water based on usage and water pressure.
The Canadian numbers were a joke, though - the caps were so slow that if you actually got the advertised speeds, you'd hit the cap within days (or sometimes hours!) of the beginning of the month.
You know what steve jobs thinks is neat? The fact that you bought the first one, and are seriously contemplating already buying the second one.
I bought the first one, and my wife is seriously thinking about buying me the second one.
Because then she can keep my first one (instead of me, her, and our daughter fighting over who's turn it is). (And people who can't think of a use for a hidef camera that can do it's own editing aren't trying...)
We are mostly to blame for it ourselves. For such intelligent people, we aren't smart. Ego and personality traits have been exploited to force us into 24x7 drones that are lowly, subservient, and basically whipping boys.
While we don't help our own case, I think there's larger forces at work:
IT has evolved into a commodity - a computer isn't the magical and mysterious box that it was even ten years ago.
IT is a "cost center", so there is continual pressure to do things cheaper/faster/with less.
"Computers" was the field that everyone was pushing their kids into during the 90s.
So, what does that leave us with?
A field that has lost it's air of mystery - which means bosses can assume it's not that hard, and thus not requiring expensive expertise. (Compare with "marketing", which luckily has the right skills built-in to keep itself mysterious and hard to pin down - which keeps the implication that it's Complicated and Difficult, thus Expensive.)
A glut of people "trained with computers", combined with a push to minimize costs, means that they can push people into low-paying high-effort work, because there's always a new class of "up to speed with latest technology" recruits willing to work for entry-level wages. It doesn't help that many of us are here "for the love of the job", which employers mentally tally as a "job benefit".
Seriously...how long is this windows admin vs *nix admin comparison going to last?
Oh, forever. Although the blame lies more with the software than the people in my opinion.
Unix (as a class) are generally designed to be user-serviceable - so the admins learn how to do that. Windows tends to encourage black-box thinking (here's your Server (tm), don't touch it). That trains their admins to find the solutions that work for them.
So while Windows admins make poor Unix admins, I'd argue the reverse is true as well - a Unix admin will drive himself crazy trying to fix a box labeled "no user-serviceable parts"
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As John Shimkus of Illinois, who also sits on the [House Energy and Commerce Committee]— as well as on the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment — has said that the government doesn’t need to make a priority of regulating greenhouse-gas emissions, because as he put it late last year, “God said the earth would not be destroyed by a flood.”
Has someone pointed out to the good politician that it is entirely possible for all humanity to be wiped out without destroying the earth? And if we are truly made in God's image, do we want to trust that he didn't leave himself some wiggle room for a reboot?
We used to discuss this at university - it's actually really hard to properly Destroy The Planet. Killing people? Easy. But to actually make Earth Not Be There Anymore? Amazingly tricky.
Because of the only two available explanation -- evolutions and divine intervention
And why do you assume there are only two available explanations? What if neither is correct, but some alternative is? And the two are not necessarily in complete conflict... so, what if parts of both are correct?
We're working with the two available explanations because.. well, no-one has posited a third one that anyone has taken seriously. (I'm sure there are, though).
Also, the core question is "is there Something controlling our world?", which lends itself to a binary "yes there is" vs. "no there isn't" (I use Something because saying "God" opens up the question of "Which one", and that's secondary to the core question.
Personally, I choose evolution because "divine intervention" doesn't lead us anywhere - if Bob is up there, controlling our destinies, then why don't we all just kick back and relax? And if Bob doesn't do anything, then is there any practical difference between "there's no one home" and "someone's home but not answering the door"?
[NB: what with the separation of church and state, I don't think the above should be relevant. But the parent poster seems to argue for flat-rate taxes based on religious arguments. I don't think religious arguments should be relevant, but as per the above, I think the religious argument actually supports progressive taxes.]
Didn't intend it to be "God says we should pay flat tax", although I can see it read that way. Was just grabbing the one historical example I could think of.
I have no objection to the theory of progressive taxes, but it seems in practice the progression goes the wrong way once all the loopholes are taken into consideration. A flat tax would be harder to duck, in my opinion. (Although I have faith that the rich will still find a way.)
Well, that's a problem with minimum wage then, isn't it? (Which, taken literally, should mean "minimum wage required to live").
Not to mention I did point out that some deductions should be allowed - just only for the folks you describe (which wouldn't be a major hit to the budget anyway, since they're by definition the lowest taxed in raw dollars), not for the billionaires.
Aside: 10% of a month is 3 days, not 5.
Part of the trick would be to ditch the device somewhere (I would expect them to come looking for it, and I'd prefer it not to be on my property when they come looking for it - the best lies are the truth, after all), so you'd have to preprogram the fake data. Probably the simplest would be a random-walk. Just add/subtract a little bit from each coordinate (lat, long, altitude) and see how long it takes them to figure out what's going on...
I would put a Republican joke here, but I don't see the Democrats doing it either.
I think you'd see a Republican support space initiatives because of the possible military spinoffs long before a "We've got to solve all our problems here on Earth first" Democrat.
Contrarywise, I'd expect Republicans to cut the funding to reduce taxes before Democrats.
The one think I think we can both agree on is that neither party is likely to have a "we will be on the moon in ten years" moment.
Yes it is tough luck. It can even be done publicly to a public official without any recourse.
I don't know if that's a valid example - it doesn't take a lot of digging to know that Dan Savage (of the "Savage Love" column) is the one who's behind that.
Probably worth pointing out that if Santorum didn't deserve it, it wouldn't have caught on. (Hard to believe that someone picked up the terminology without knowing the context).
Also just followed the link, and the post doesn't say the book is done. In fact, it specifically says it's *not* done. All he's done is give himself a public deadline (probably so he *gets* it done by then.)
Nah, with all due respect to the author of my favourite series, he was slow. Though it had more to do with his fascination to delving way too deep into often unnecessary details rather than him unable to write a plot in a first place. (For instance, did he really need to spend all that all that screen time on Galina?). That meant that he ended up wasting too much time summing it up.
Brandon Sanderson really did cut out the "no-doubt-interesting-but-ultimately-irrelevant" plot trivia. That's why he was able to bang out two books in about as many years. Him and Jim Butcher are some of my favorite modern day authors. I highly recommend their works.
Though if you like, you an replace "Pulling a Jordan" with Author Existence Failure, but that will entail you loosing all track of time :P
Disclaimer: I am a fan of the Jordan books, although I don't think I could explain the plot to you.
Which is my Preferred Theory on what happened to Jordan: I don't believe he had the whole thing plotted out, and ended up in Twin Peaks land - so many plot points to clear up that it just couldn't be done, and he couldn't decide which ones to abandon. (I think Sanderson has done a great job just focusing on the important ones, while keeping the general style.) But if I had to compare Wheel of Time to another series, it would be like taking all the Dragonlance novels and running them as one continuous series instead of breaking them up into particular three-four book plots.
If I were to go around the internet telling everyone that you are a child molester, wouldn't you want to find out my identity? Oh, I posted as an AP when I did it, tough luck
Which means that it's just gossip, hearsay, and other things that mean "should be impolitely ignored'
If someone is slandering my name on the internet anonymously, I want to go after that person. First I should have to prove the allegations are false, though.
I respect your desire to "want to go after that person". But I don't believe you have any particular right to that information. Besides, anonymous comments are the equivalent of "have you stopped beating your wife yet" - you only win by ignoring it.
Make all trades simultanous, and happen every second. Change the game from "make any decision as fast as possible" to "what's the best plan you can come up with in this time"
My (admittedly limited) understanding of these sort of thing is that since you can make so many trades so fast, they let things "average out" - you jump in quick, and if a nano later the system realizes it's wrong, it can jump back out (generally before us meatsacks realize they screwed up in the first place).
I mean seriously -- if this had happened to me, I'd have gotten rid of the thing, and claim I never knew about it, and it must have fallen off the car.
Keep in mind that they didn't know what it was (hence why they took a picture and posted it). Then the FBI descended (and at that point it's a bad idea to claim that the item you were so curious about was thrown out and destroyed - not to mention the bloody thing was probably still broadcasting).
Now, the *next* time someone finds one of these things on their car - there's no limit to the wackery that can ensue. Off the top of my head:
The FBI would simply have to follow "the due process of law" if they wanted their discarded item back. I'm sure that would be most embarassing and reveal things they'd rather not reveal, but then I guess they shouldn't have left the GPS in my yard.
I believe part of the suit involves the fact that their demands for the return of the item included threats of arrest if he didn't comply. Probably "failure to obey a police officer".
This is a good point, and certainly something that the police should consider.
Part of what a warrant gets you is the ability to do things private citizens can't - enter a private property and search, listen in on phone calls, and so on. That's why you need to convince a judge, after all: you're getting the ability to do something that would normally be illegal.
If the court rules that there's no reason why a cop can't attach a tracking device to a car on public property, they need to be prepared for the converse argument - why can't a private citizen attach a tracking device to a police car? They have no additional expectation of privacy, the car can easily be found parked on public property (to use the obvious joke, a coffee shop), and they themselves just argued that there's no requirement for permission.
Not to rain on the parade, but from where I'm sitting, I don't see the US building one of these this generation. One, you don't have remotely the political will to fund it. (I would put a Republican joke here, but I don't see the Democrats doing it either). Two, you don't have the money to do it anymore. Three, before you can start building that sort of stuff, you'd need to rebuild your manned launch capability, and you may have noticed that's not going particularly quickly.
My money's on China being the one to make the next big technical leap forward - they have the money, and can muster the will. The EU is another possibility - they still have some sense of adventure for space, but I don't know if they can hack the expense.
Second, why in the world is paying the same percentage the "fair" thing? Why not the same dollar amount? At best a percentage-based system is just a vague - a really vague - approximation of whatever kind of fairness principle you have going. You probably don't even have an identifiable principle on which you are basing it.
For the same reason a sales tax is percentage-based - it keeps the tax relative to the value. And it dates back to the classic church tithe (as in "give the church a tenth of what you make").
I would be thrilled to see a proper flat percentage, with the barest minimum of deductions for the poorest.
Actually, that just highlights how ridiculous this is. Opera is simply not big enough to be a threat to Safari's market share, warning label or not. However, they've now managed to make themselves look like assholes to thousands of people who would never have downloaded the app anyway.
And I might just download it now, just to tweak Apple's nose.
I would presume you would be detained, as they now have "probable cause".
Similar setup that they do with the "drug sniffing dogs" - the dogs aren't considered to be a search, but if they "find something", then it's probable cause for them to search you.
Much obliged. (Now just need to figure out how to get an iPod to record continuously for a month).
I don't necessarily have an objection to a per-bit charge, under two conditions:
1. The charge is reasonable compared to the actual cost of sending that bit (none of this $2/GB crap).
2. I get the maximum available speed on the network at that time - you don't get to constrain me based on speed *and* volume. That's like saying you're going to charge me for my water based on usage and water pressure.
The Canadian numbers were a joke, though - the caps were so slow that if you actually got the advertised speeds, you'd hit the cap within days (or sometimes hours!) of the beginning of the month.
Not disbelieving, but is there a citation for those numbers? Just find it hard to believe that my iPod can store an entire month of FM broadcasting.
I really didn't needed it to be thinner, I needed it to be lighter. 1.3 lbs is still too heavy to carry single handed like a writing pad.
I've never had a problem with the weight - feels like a smallish hardcover book. I'd rather keep the weight and up the size to a proper page display.
*shrug* Everyone has their trade-offs, I suppose.
You know what steve jobs thinks is neat? The fact that you bought the first one, and are seriously contemplating already buying the second one.
I bought the first one, and my wife is seriously thinking about buying me the second one.
Because then she can keep my first one (instead of me, her, and our daughter fighting over who's turn it is). (And people who can't think of a use for a hidef camera that can do it's own editing aren't trying...)
We are mostly to blame for it ourselves. For such intelligent people, we aren't smart. Ego and personality traits have been exploited to force us into 24x7 drones that are lowly, subservient, and basically whipping boys.
While we don't help our own case, I think there's larger forces at work:
So, what does that leave us with?
Seriously...how long is this windows admin vs *nix admin comparison going to last?
Oh, forever. Although the blame lies more with the software than the people in my opinion.
Unix (as a class) are generally designed to be user-serviceable - so the admins learn how to do that. Windows tends to encourage black-box thinking (here's your Server (tm), don't touch it). That trains their admins to find the solutions that work for them.
So while Windows admins make poor Unix admins, I'd argue the reverse is true as well - a Unix admin will drive himself crazy trying to fix a box labeled "no user-serviceable parts"