Originalism as you define it is pretty much defunct. It's one of what have been memorably referred to as judicial fairy-tales and has now been recognised as being intellectually indefensible. Anyone professing that view is well outside the judicial mainstream.
Really? I don't think so. For example, take a look at all of the discussion around the big Second Amendment cases in the past couple years. Some lawyers, justices, etc. only cared about what the plain meaning of the Second Amendment would be to people in the 1790s, while others looked in detail at the legislative history, discussions of the Founders on the issue, changes in the drafts, etc. It seems pretty clear that those who were interested in the latter things were considering the intent of the law, rather than just the text in isolation. And that's how I defined "originalism" in my post.
It makes me feel good inside to know that I am creating revenue for the website that I visit, which helps cover the cost of providing that website.
See, I prefer to know up-front that they plan to track me. If I have flash blockers, script blockers, cookie blockers, etc. in my browser, and I try to visit a site which says "this site won't work without enabling these things," I click the back button and never return to that site.
If a site had a button that asked me to donate if I appreciated the content, I might do so, as I have actually done for some useful sites voluntarily in the past. Or at least put up a message every time you visit that says, "We'd really appreciate it if we could put ads up and track you and... so please click 'yes' to support us and you'll never see this message again." I might actually click that if I felt the site was worthwhile and they explained EXACTLY what they would do with my information. Just doing it without my permission is not acceptable.
Tracking a user and giving targeting advertising increases the value of the advertising campaigns, which translates into more money for the website.
Seriously, you click on ads??? You really trust advertising campaigns? If I want to buy a product, I'll go research it from reputable third-party reviews or recommendations, thank you very much. I've stopped watching TV because of the advertisements. I don't believe most of the things a used car salesman says to me either... but the internet is worse. Considering a product solely on the basis of an internet ad is like believing some guy who drives by you in an unmarked van while you're walking down the street and offers to sell you a stereo system for a "great deal."
I don't want people to "target" ads for me. I NEVER want to see an ad involuntarily on my personal computer. NEVER. I have NEVER, EVER clicked on an internet ad voluntarily. If I want to know whether a product is out there that I haven't considered and may be useful for my life, I'll search for it myself, thank you very much. If it's really that great, probably someone I know will tell me about it or be using it, and I'll ask about it and decide whether I'm interested.
If we didn't have this, the web is going to become subscription-only very quickly.
Yeah, because there was nothing on the internet until ads existed. And there aren't any sites around today that exist on the basis of donations or out the charity of their owners rather than by selling me out to giant corporations who want to invade my home and steal my money for their random crappy products by brainwashing me through "targeted" ad campaigns.
It is important to bear in mind that this does not normally have anything to do with what the authors of the constitution wanted the constitution to say or meant for it to say. The question is what it would generally have been understood to have meant at the time.
It depends on whom you ask. Some scholars try to draw distinctions between "originalism" and "textualism." While these terms aren't consistently used in the literature (as far as I can tell), the common distinction made is that "textualism" is about the original text (i.e., what the plain meaning of the words is, particularly around the time of the drafting of the law), while "originalism" is centered on the original legislative intent of the statute. Some approaches may emphasize the meaning of the text divorced from the authors of the Constitution, while other approaches may emphasize the intent of the authors beyond the simple meaning of the text.
There are lots of different approaches to "original meaning" interpretation, so it's not fair to say that judges who seek that original meaning privilege one bit of historical data over another -- different judges (and even different justices on the Supreme Court) have different methods. For example, Scalia is on record as being a textualist who also considers subsequent legislative and judicial history of a statute -- he's interested in the plain meaning of the text at the time of its passing, but in many cases he is also willing to consider how the meaning has been interpreted over time. Thomas is more strict in always privileging the original meaning.
Personally I tend to lean toward a constitutional originalist view.
There is certainly an appeal to such a perspective. I once remember Scalia talking about the problem with the "living Constitution" -- he said it's like being a judge and waking up everyday, looking at the ceiling and saying, "I wonder whether the 14th amendment contains a right to privacy and a right to abortion today? It didn't yesterday, but maybe it does today."
That statement makes the problems with the "Living Constitution" clear, because that same judge can wake up one morning and decide there is no longer a right to privacy or abortion or whatever. If it's not clearly in the text, rights can be granted or withdrawn on the whims or judicial fads of the time, and that's disturbing.
While I am in favor of a number of unenumerated rights and liberal reforms that have come over the centuries, I would prefer that the important ones were actually enshrined explicitly in Constitutional amendments or explicit statutes, rather than "interpreted" to magically appear somewhere in the Constitution one day. Because if they are magically "interpreted" to appear one day, they could be magically interpreted out at some point in the future....
When you have products that are highly desirable (and if you're hearing-impaired, a hearing aid is highly desirable) then prices will stay as high as people are willing to pay.
Unless a reliable competitor emerges with a similar product and is willing to make profits off of selling volume rather than hiking the price exponentially.
I frankly don't know what is possible for hearing aids, but I do know, for example, that a medication a friend needed to buy supposedly cost $170 at retail for a 90-day supply, and he was asked to pay $45 for a copay for that medication by his insurance. One day when he moved, he decided to transfer pharmacies and went to a local grocery store with a pharmacy. He didn't have insurance at the time, so he expected to have to shell out a lot of money. But, only with the free savings card from the grocery store, he got the 90-day supply for $10, less than 1/4 of his copay with a premium insurance plan! This was for the same generic drug in both cases -- but in the first case an insurance company, a drug manufacturer, and a pharmacy were obviously in collusion, while in the grocery store, the pharmacy had an incentive to sell cheap drugs to uninsured people, so it made a deal with the manufacturer. The grocery store pharmacist didn't even ask for insurance information, because he knew he could give a price better than any copay required on a normal insurance plan.
This is for a "highly desirable" product (in this case, blood pressure medication).
For another example outside of medicine, there was a regional grocery store chain where I used to live whose prices were consistently about 40% off of all major competing grocery stores in the area. I'm not talking about generic items: I'm talking an average of 40% off for the same name brand grocery items. They had only one store in the metropolitan area where I lived, but the aisles were packed almost from 7am-9pm. It wasn't convenient to public transport, but I saw poorer folks taking cabs to get there all the time, because they saved so much, it more than paid for the cab.
You can't get more "highly desirable" than basic food. The other supermarkets in the area counted on the fact that they were more convenient to public transport or that people just wouldn't bother to look at the other store or that people would assume it was the place "poor people shopped." Quite a few people who never shopped there told me that they heard it was "dirty." Yet the opposite was the case -- produce and meat flew off the shelves and was much fresher than any other supermarket in the area. I never saw evidence of dirt or vermin there, but I heard a couple different friends report that they saw mice at one of the "premium" supermarkets near there, and one who reported the mice saw that the food which had been eaten into was not removed from the shelves when she was back there a couple days later. After all, the "premium" supermarkets were always like ghost towns, except for a few hours right after standard work hours, so most people wouldn't even notice.
Basically, if there is a market where people will shop around, some businesses may take advantage of that market by providing a cheaper product. If few consumers actually have a real transaction to buy a product and instead go through an intermediary like an insurance company, there is little incentive for anyone to provide lower prices. In fact, if there is a situation such as in the current national health care bill where insurance companies will be limited to 15% of billed costs toward "administrative fees" (i.e., where the profits come from), there is actually an incentive for insurance companies to drive costs UP, since that's the only way they can skim more money off the top.
He can say whatever he wants in private or public, but he can't lie in court. Lieing to the courts has ALWAYS been illegal. Filing false documents in court has ALWAYS been illegal. The justice system can't work if people are allowed to lie and fake documents in court without punishment.
What I find curious is that Ceglia was represented by a number of different lawyers, including major lawfirms who made public statements about how the evidence was NOT fraudulent.
From TFA:
In his original complaint, filed in 2010, Mr. Ceglia was represented by Paul Argentieri, a sole practitioner in upstate New York. An amended lawsuit was filed in April 2011 by Robert W. Brownlie of DLA Piper, the world's largest law firm, and Dennis C. Vacco, a former New York attorney general now in private practice at Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman in Buffalo.
In 2011, Mr. Brownlie of DLA Piper declined a request by The New York Times to produce the original documents backing his client's legal claims. "That will come out during the course of litigation," Mr. Brownlie said. "Anyone who claims this case is fraudulent and brought by a scam artist will come to regret those claims."
Yet court records indicate that another law firm, Kasowitz Benson Friedman & Torres, had been hired by Mr. Ceglia before DLA Piper and Lippes Mathias becoming involved. Kasowitz Benson withdrew from the case and put DLA Piper and Lippes Mathias on notice that it had determined that the purported contract was a fraud.
Mr. Brownlie and Mr. Vacco later withdrew from the case. They did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.
When are we going to see these lawyers charged with something? (If not intentional, at a minimum, they should be sanctioned for incompetence and misrepresentation.)
And, if they withdrew from the case after they found out about the fraud, and they didn't immediately report it... that is even worse. Frankly, no one would have paid attention to Ceglia in the first place if it weren't for the fact that he had attorneys with good reputations backing him up. If they knew about any of this or even had a hint of it, they deserve a severe punishment as well.
There's been a lot of hype around Sweden going almost cashless, but most transactions there use easily traceable credit and debit cards
Since when does "cashless" mean "untraceable"?
It doesn't, and your quotation does not in any normal linguistic sense imply that it does. Effectively, it is a statement of the form: "Sweden tried a currency with property X, but it still lacks another desirable property Y." (If you're slow, X = "cashlessness," while Y = "anonymity.")
If you read the title to the bloody post at the top of the page, "A Cashless, High-Value, Anonymous Currency: How?" you might realize that this is a question about achieving currency with not one, nor two, but THREE distinct properties.
Sheesh. The fact that this has been modded insightful worries me.
If you actually look at the platform, the Texas Republicans' opposition is to the Outcome Based Education philosophy. Proponents of this methodology sometimes label it "critical thinking skills" since after all, who doesn't favor that?
I don't agree with the platform. I am not a Republican. I do believe in critical thinking.
I also think, as someone who has been actively involved in the field of education (and has been through a number of pedagogy seminars) that the Wikipedia article doesn't adequately convey the associations of the term to people in the educational field.
While it is true that Outcome Based Education can just mean things like testing specific tasks (and thus has recently become connected with things like No Child Left Behind), when it was first proposed a few decades ago, it tended to incorporate a whole lot of modern educational theory (much of it BS, as is most educational theory), most of which tends to be associated with "liberals"... because, well, stats show that most teachers are liberals, and most college professors in schools of education who come up with things like OBE are even more liberal.
I have no idea what is going on here in terms of agendas concerning Creationism or respecting parental authority or whatever, but I can say that the whole OBE thing is probably included because it's a bunch of liberal education mumbo-jumbo. Furthermore, people who use "OBE" and "critical thinking skills" in the same sentence probably are using "critical thinking skills" in the way that traditional old-school "learning-goals" OBE BS uses the term "critical thinking skills," which is to say... "I'm going to make up a bunch of crap that sounds fancy and reorganize my class for no apparent reason instead of actually being a better teacher." It has little to do with actual thinking. Or, at least that's the perception that conservatives have regarding the stereotypical old form of this educational "framework."
"Obamacare" has a provision that forces insurance companies to spend at least 85% of their premiums on providing health care and limiting overhead to 15%
You are correct. However, a few other facts are helpful if we are going to evaluate this compared to other possible options.
For one thing, the average amount of insurance administration costs was, I believe, about 10-12%. Plans that charged 20-30% or more did so because they had significantly more administration costs per person (e.g., individual plans, rather than large group plans for, say, a company of thousands of employees). When you regulate a scenario like that, if you look at various state efforts to regulate other types of insurance, you'll bet that insurance companies will try to push their administration costs to maximum, since they need to hedge for all those high-cost people who now can't pay for themselves (and they'll usually overcompensate to ensure profit)... so we're probably all going to end up paying 15% now... hence, costs probably go up.
Now, if we consider administrative costs for Medicare/Medicaid I believe are closer to 5-6% (though I've seen estimates that are even half that). With a public option, we'd all probably pay about 1/3 as much for administrative costs than with this plan, possibly even less. Actually, it would probably be more savings, given that a single-payer system would make the "rules" for coverage clearer, meaning that you lower administrative costs on the side of hospitals and doctors offices too, which usually take up another 5-10% of your costs to pay for hospital administrators and doctors' assistants to argue with different insurance carriers.
Meanwhile, all those "freeloaders" that everyone's worried about cost the system no more than about 8% of your premiums, even in the worst-case calculation I've seen.
We could have trimmed off more than that in administrative costs just by moving to single payer. Instead, we're locking insurance companies into a regulatory box where they will charge the maximum the law allows to ensure profits, and then they'll claim it isn't enough and lobby to have the law changed so they can get even more profits. And given that corporations now can spend unlimited money on elections... well, we're likely enslaved to insurance companies in the long-term.
IIRC the percentage is 85%, so 85% of premiums can't go into pockets in the insurance company, and need to be spent on healthcare, or else they go back to subscribers.
You are correct. However, a few other facts are helpful if we are going to evaluate this compared to the public option scenario.
For one thing, the average amount of insurance administration costs was, I believe, about 10-12%. Plans that charged 20-30% did so because they had significantly more administration costs per person (e.g., individual plans, rather than large group plans for, say, a company of thousands of employees). When you regulate a scenario like that, if you look at various state efforts to regulate other types of insurance, you'll bet that insurance companies will try to push their administration costs to maximum, since they need to hedge for all those high-cost people who now can't pay for themselves (and they'll usually overcompensate to ensure profit)... so we're probably all going to end up paying 15% now... hence, costs probably go up.
Now, as for the public option, administrative costs for Medicare/Medicaid I believe are closer to 5-6% (though I've seen estimates that are even half that). With a public option, we'd all probably pay about 1/3 as much for administrative costs than with this plan. Actually, it would probably be more, given that a single-payer system would make the "rules" for coverage clearer, meaning that you lower administrative costs on the side of hospitals and doctors offices too, which usually take up another 5-10% of your costs to pay for hospital administrators and doctors' assistants to argue with different insurance carriers.
Meanwhile, all those "freeloaders" that everyone's worried about cost the system no more than about 8% of your premiums, even in the worst-case calculation I've seen.
We could have trimmed off more than that in administrative costs just by moving to single payer. Instead, we're locking insurance companies into a regulatory box where they will charge the maximum the law allows to ensure profits, and then they'll claim it isn't enough and lobby to have the law changed so they can get even more profits. And given that corporations now can spend unlimited money on elections... well, we're likely enslaved to insurance companies in the long-term.
You know, there is a place in the world for "culinary engineering." I'm not talking about the manly art of flipping burgers on the grill. (Although there are actually better and worse techniques for that, too... empirically-derived....) If you don't make use of at least two kitchen scales (with different levels of precision), a superfast probe thermometer with thermocouple, an infrared thermometer, and a pH meter in your kitchen on a regular basis, you're not living up to the engineer's creed.
(I know what some of you are thinking -- what the heck is a pH meter doing in a kitchen? Very useful for testing the place of sourdough in its life cycle, whether your dill pickles and sauerkraut are properly fermented, even getting the perfect lemonade strength...)
My kitchen is also outfitted with a bunch of lab glassware -- Erlenmeyer flasks make great containers for oils and things you don't want to spill (laboratory glassware tends to have good lips to prevent a lot of dripping). A 2-liter or 5-liter beaker is great for measuring the rise of bread dough and its "doubling." All my spices are conveniently alphabetized in large test tubes in a test tube rack.
Engineering can be applied to most problems. Cooking is just applied chemistry, and therefore it amounts to chemical engineering on a very small scale. For example, using precision instruments can actually give your cooking an edge (particularly in baking), as long as you know what you're doing.
If you want to get even more fancy, keep a "lab notebook" of your "experiments." Note successful techniques to replicate your "experiments" for a dinner party. Record the weather and kitchen conditions when you're doing anything involving yeast or other microorganisms (like making your own cultured buttermilk). etc.
One can go overboard. I have yet to set up a distillation column to make my own extracts and essential oils, but that will probably happen at some point....
By the way, perhaps the problem is terminology. I spend a lot of time cooking, and I enjoy a fancy dinner at many "fancy" restaurants. But I'd never associate myself with the term "foodie," which I think of almost as an insult. Perhaps that's because most of the people whom I know and consider themselves "foodies" are pretentious idiots who care more about what the "hot" restaurants are, what the "hip" ways to make certain food are, etc., rather than whether it actually tastes good to anyone.
You're right -- "foodies" are not engineers, any more than an haute couture dress designer is an engineer. But that doesn't mean we can't use engineering to create newer better fabrics, better dyes, more efficient or durable designs for clothing, etc. Whether the fashion snobs will accept it (as the foodies judge the new restaurant or sniff their wine) is beside the point. Unlike in clothing fashion, most people are happy to eat good food cooked at home, without the approval of some elite.
Agreed. I think these qualify as "girlfriend-friendly" episodes, because they have great romance plots but don't emphasize the techno-babble. (I'm assuming a stereotypical female here, which is not always the best assumption....)
They're not very representative, but if you have a girlfriend who hasn't watched a lot of sci-fi at all, these could nudge her into the sorts of possibilities that sci-fi creates while allowing very "human" plots (like a good "chick-flick" drama).
Add a couple more character-driven episodes, and then you can work your way into a couple "moral question" episodes. Mix it up with some of the suspense and cliff-hanger episodes, and save the "action-heavy" and overly technical sci-fi episodes for the time after you have her hooked and watching a series from beginning to end.
With a 1% success rate, 100 people would have close to 100% success and you'd only need 51 people for 50%.
So, wait a sec... you're telling me If I flip a coin with 2 sides twice, I'm guaranteed to get a heads?!? If I have a 6-sided die, and I roll it 6 times, I'm guaranteed to get a 6?!?
I need to book my flight to Vegas now. I've finally got that foolproof strategy to win at games of chance!
Let's face it. There isn't anything legal their citizens could really do. Revolt is pretty much all that's left for radical change...
Well, they could vote. In many if not most major races, there actually are third party candidates.
The biggest enemy of the American people is not their lack of possible legal actions -- they could easily vote most of these people out of office. The problem is that most of the public has been brainwashed to believe that they should only vote for "someone who can win," which generally only means someone of two parties. If you change that perspective, you immediately could shake up most of the government.
But if you can't even convince people that their leaders are bad enough to vote outside the two-party system, there's no way in hell you're going to get them to arm themselves in insurrection. This is just a stupid argument, because way before you could get a real revolt going, you could certainly convince people to start voting yahoos out of office... by perfectly legal means.
Even within the two parties, they could actually show up to things like caucuses, hang around and get nominated as delegates to state parties -- like, for example, the Ron Paul people have done in a number of states. (For the record, I'm not a Paul supporter, but I admire what his folks are doing.) The Republicans appear to be fighting the Paulites tooth-and-nail at local conventions to disenfranchise them, but they can only do so much. The Paul people have taken over state parties in a number of states. You can bet that those libertarian officials will at least have an impact on state politics, and we have yet to see how much of a hoopla they can raise at the national Republican convention.
Will this completely change the Republican party? I don't know. But there's a reason the mainstream Republicans have downplayed Paul at every turn... he doesn't play by their rules. He's not a "player." He has views that don't change for the most part. He consistently tells things like he sees them, rather than making crap up that people want to hear. I don't agree with a lot of what he has to say, but his efforts show that someone who has the right charisma can make a big impact... we'll have to see how far he goes.
Anyhow, there are lots of legal things the citizens of the U.S. could do. It's not like there are laws preventing you from voting for someone other than a Democrat or Republican. The problem is just convincing enough people that it's worthwhile -- which, again, would be a heck of a lot easier than inciting them to insurrection... so start with getting them to just show up to a voting booth first, rather than staying home and watching the lastest episode of reality TV or whatever the heck it is that people do. After you get them to the voting booth, you can invite them out to your militia or whatever the hell it is that you do.
Bubonic plague has been found in animals (mostly prairie dogs in Colorado) for decades and apparently is the sixth case of plague in Oregon since 1995.
From TFA:
Health officials in Portland have confirmed that a man contracted the plague...
Clown school, double-decker bicycles, and of course... bubonic plague.
(P.S. Yes, I know this case of plague didn't originate in Portland... but neither did clown school, and clowning is apparently still going on there. Elsewhere, plague is so 1390s...)
If decreasing security increased the frequency of terrorist attacks by 10-fold, we'd still need to worry about lightning more. If they increased by 100-fold, they'd be on the level of your chances of dying in a tornado. How many billions have we spent to decrease the chances of deaths from tornados? (For the record, we spend less than $25 million on tornado research, warning systems, etc. total every year, and they cause over a billion dollars of damage in the U.S. every year... there's something else we could increase the budget for before funding the TSA...)
There I was replying to one guy saying that the odds of being killed in an airplane hijacking were nil.
He didn't say that. He discussed the fact that your chances of dying in a hijacking are ridiculously small, so near to zero that worrying about them is dumb. I agree. If you want to worry about stuff, worry about stuff that there's a reasonable chance could kill you (like, for example, driving your car). If you want to pay billions of dollars to prevent every 1-in-a-million scenario, you'd be bankrupt dealing with things that are a thousand times more likely than terrorist attacks.
For example, your lifetime risk of dying in a car crash is less than 1 in 100. Some people have done the numbers, and even if terrorists managed to pull off a 9/11-level attack in the U.S. every year, your lifetime risk would be well over 1 in 10,000. As it is, your chances of dying in your daily commute are probably over a thousand times greater than dying in a terrorist attack.
Worry about driving your car. Worry about being murdered. Worry about your house catching on fire. Worry about drowning. Hell, worry about being struck by lightning, which is probably slightly more likely than dying in a terrorist attack.
If you have time left over after all of that anxiety, then maybe you can start worrying about dying in a terrorist attack.
And sure, it's not really clear why they want to go after aircraft. But they do. They've tried numerous times, including with a number of ridiculous plans (shoebomber, underwear bomber). Whether that's a good plan for them or not, if that's what they're trying to do you need to deal with it.
Setting aside the fact that the TSA didn't and wouldn't have caught these guys... and the fact that such people wouldn't get away with anything because it's clear that passengers on planes now behave differently....
I think you have a big flaw in all your arguments. Who the hell are "they"? You're acting like all of these people are part of some sort of monolithic terrorist structure that is ready to churn out hundreds or thousands of these high-profile terrorists all the time.
Of course the terrorist hierarchy supports these lunatics every so often one of them comes along. But there simply aren't the hoards of terrorists you imply. And, as the person whom you originally responded to pointed out -- even if there were and we did have a massive attack every so often, there are a lot of other things you should be spending your time and money worrying about and perhaps trying to prevent before you shell out billions for the TSA.
Here's a piece of advice -- YOU are living proof that the terrorists have won. The whole point of terrorism is that a tiny group of people can't fight a war against somebody like the U.S., so they're just trying to scare them into disrupting their own way of life, into, in effect, behaving completely irrationally.
You've been taken in by their bluff (as have most Americans) -- hook, line, and sinker. You want to do some good in the world? Save lives? Prevent needless deaths? How about start with heart disease, cancer, etc. which ACTUALLY kill a lot of people. Then after you've spent most of your money trying to solve those problems, make safer cars, prevent murders, etc. -- all those things which kill THOUSANDS OF TIMES the number of people terrorists kill every year in the U.S.
And, after you're done installing new lightning rods everywhere around the country, you might finally get to the point of dealing with the miniscule numbers of terrorist attacks (and their threat of attacks from freakin' laser beams), just before you ban seafood salad and luncheon meats because they might kill people from listeria....
That's the point the GP was making which you were responding to, since you claim you don't want to talk about the actual topic of discussion in TFA.
A lot of your points about potential agendas are fine, but we're talking about the TSA here, and why it should be justified.
Especially in the middle east they're balancing the risk of sending an al qaeda terrorist to the US versus just handing him a gun and telling him to go shoot americans in Iraq. If the guy dies, you pick up his gun, hand it to someone else. Not very life effective, but cost effective.
Fine. What does this have to do with the TSA? If the cost of a plane ticket is enough to dissuade them from coming to the U.S. and blowing something up that's unprotected here, why do we need security to keep them off planes?
I don't really know what the reality is, but if there really is a large number of crazy terrorists out there wanting to kill as many Americans as possible, they don't need to get on planes to do it.
You pretty much made my argument. Their most effective method today is to go after americans in afghanistan, and to go after american 'puppets' (from their perspective) elsewhere.
I'm not sure how I made your argument. I'm talking about the subject of TFA, which is the TSA. Most of the discussion about TSA reform is about their primary base of operation, which is in airports within the U.S. My point is simple: if terrorists do come to the U.S., they have plenty of easy targets that do not require them to get back on a plane and through security, so they don't have to deal with the TSA. If they don't come to the U.S., they don't have to deal with the TSA. So I'm not sure what relevance any of your argument has to do with the TSA.
And since we don't see any malls or buses, etc. blown up in the U.S., I think it's safe to say that there are either incredibly few terrorists within the U.S. capable of any significant attacks... or that they're all stupid.
Getting on a plane is high risk for them right now. With no security whatsoever that would probably change.
I didn't argue for "no security whatsoever." But I would say that the pre-9/11 security was certainly more than adequate. TFA is talking about privatization of security, dialing down security, etc., which would presumably still require pre-9/11 levels of reasonably non-invasive security (unless there is something suspicious). You're talking about attacks from freakin' lasers and protecting airports from rockets being shot from the ground (which would require terrorists already present within the U.S., and thus subject to the common TSA security measures we're discussing).
Sorry, but I'm not making your point, because you seem to be convinced that there are hoards of terrorists waiting to storm airports, even though you freely admit that it's not as cost effective as shooting someone on the ground in the Middle East. And you're right, that's where the real action is going on. That's where stuff is getting blown up.
But this discussion is about the TSA and terrorism within the U.S. My simple point is that if there were that many terrorists with the motivation and the means to come to the U.S., they could do lots more damage by never engaging the TSA. And given empirical evidence, a minimal security net should probably be more than sufficient, since tens of thousands of targets are completely unguarded and are getting no attention from these mythical terrorists.
You're responding by saying that it's cheaper for them to stay in other countries and terrorize there. Fine. But what does that have to do with what our domestic policies should be concerning security anywhere in the country?
I suspect the reality is that there are a literal handful of absolutely crazy people in some bunker somewhere who just want to blow up planes... because, well, they want to blow up planes. Crazy nutjobs like this exist, however, everywhere, from every nation, of every race -- they're the ones who grab a bunch of guns and shoot up a school because... w
THIS. A person with a Ph.D. -- whether it's in biomedical science, philosophy, or English literature -- is generally viewed by employers as a "researcher." If a person with such a Ph.D. applies for any non-research job (academic or not), he will have to convince interviewers that (1) he won't cost too much, (2) he won't be bored and is actually interested in the job, (3) he's not going to bolt for a better job the minute he can find one, etc. Often it's hard to even get an interview, since potential employers assume that you're just not going to be a good fit.
Same goes for someone with a 4-year degree applying for a job that only requires a high-school diploma. etc.
There are those jokes about philosophy Ph.D.'s working at McDonald's or waiting tables, but the reality is that overqualified people often have significant trouble landing a position unless it's low enough to be considered "temp level" or the kind of thing that high school kids do part-time.
Yes, many will eventually convince an employer to take a chance on an "overqualified" candidate, and they can then work their way up to a reasonable salary. But I know young people who have multiple master's degrees and years of experience, but have ended up out of work for well over a year waiting for a reasonable job to come along -- and by "reasonable," I mean something that would at least put them into the equivalent of an entry level position for a bachelor's degree in their field (or, frankly, any related field).
For Ph.D.'s, the stigma tends to be worse. Looking outside of academia is fine, but trying for professional jobs outside of high-level research is often quite difficult.
That's tricky. Terrorists are looking for soft targets. If there's no security on aircraft, they'll attack aircraft. If their most 'dead americans per dollar' is in Iraq then they go to iraq, or afghanistan or whatever.
I think the empirical evidence suggests that terrorists are not looking for "soft targets" or "most dead Americans per dollar." If they were, they could walk a bomb on a bus, train, or into a shopping mall and probably kill close to as many or more people than on a plane -- with no fuss. Or, heck, walk a bomb into an airport outside the security zone and detonate there. Any of these things would probably lead to even more disruptive crazy security measures in the U.S., so even if their goal is to disrupt society instead of just killing people, they're failing miserably.
If there are indeed as many motivated terrorists out there as you suggest, and if they were really looking for soft targets, they must be pretty darn stupid.
But they *are* looking for ways to kill people.... You need security looking for bombs, and poison gas, you need to secure airports themselves against ground based lasers and rockets and so on (because god knows, if you can blind a pilot to crash a plane they'll try that).
If you really think that we need all that to protect airplanes, then get ready to militarize every square foot of the entire country, because if terrorists are actually looking for easy targets for bombs, poison gas, etc. -- there are tens of thousands of high population targets waiting on the ground which are completely unguarded.
And yet, we've seen nothing of substance since 9/11 except for a few idiots on planes that the TSA couldn't even catch.
So, empirical evidence suggests that at least one of your premises is false. Some possibilities: (1) the terrorists are just obsessed with planes and aren't actually looking for soft targets or maximum casualties, (2) most terrorists are too stupid or not motivated enough to just build a simple bomb on American soil (or transport one through porous borders, like, say, shipping containers), and blow it up in some easy place, and/or (3) the number of terrorists who are actually out there and capable of an attack is much, much smaller than we have been led to believe.
I don't really know what the reality is, but if there really is a large number of crazy terrorists out there wanting to kill as many Americans as possible, they don't need to get on planes to do it.
Remember, they did try and blow up the WTC previous, with a car bomb. And failed. Whatever else they are, they are persistent bastards.
I'm not sure you understand what "persistent" means. If they really were out there and wanted to kill people or disrupt the American way of life, they could easily do so at any of tens of thousands of locations where lots of people hang out every day.
Israel has had real problems with terrorists. England and Northern Ireland has had them with the IRA. I hope things like that never come to the U.S., but that's what things look like when you have real motivated terrorists willing to maximize casualties on any soft target... there's no evidence for the scenario you suggest.
This is a great comment and a perfectly rational explanation for the findings. We are so used to having problems worded in a particular way, presenting information in a particular way, etc. that it can make it difficult to spot something that makes the question a little more complex.
I also think subtle details can change the way people answer these questions. Suppose the first question instead was:
A bat and ball cost $1.10 total. The ball costs $0.84 less than the bat. How much does the ball cost?
I guarantee you that the results would favor those with higher SAT scores. In fact, even if you just changed the difference in prices to a number that is less round, it will cause people to think differently. As the question is worded, it encourages the reader to associate "a dollar and ten cents" with "a dollar" only a few words later. If you make that association less strong, even by changing "a dollar and ten" to $1.10, it will already change the results.
Also, the choice of subject in each sentence is important. When you say "A bat and a ball cost..." then "A bat costs..." and then "How much does the ball cost," it encourages a quick reader to break down the "a dollar and ten" into its constitutent "a dollar" and then "ten cents." If you switch the emphasis, as I did, to the fact that "a ball costs less," then "how much does the ball cost?", that would also disrupt the tendency to parse incorrectly.
It would also be in line with simple word problem structure, which often tends to make a series of statements about X and then ask a further question about X. (e.g., "X is taller than..." "X is wider than..." followed by "How big is X?")
In contrast, the structure of this problem encourages a reader to make assignments: X and Y cost... X costs... how much is Y? That's a different problem type, but it's also common, and that's probably why many people who have taken a lot of tests stumble here.
I'm not an expert on these things, but I have taught for a number of years, and I was on a number of committees that developed standards for testing. I think most people who write tests are aware of how these sorts of details in wording the question will trip people up -- did the psychologists not actually talk to people who write test questions?
I also think context plays a huge role. If you preface the first question with "Here's a simple arithmetic question:" that will encourage the person hearing/reading the question to think of it as such. As written, however, the question is worded as an algebra question.
In other words:
Arithmetic: X + Y = Z, X is X, find Y. Answer: Y = Z - X. Algebra: X + Y = Z, X = Y + N, find Y. Answer: Y = (Z - N) / 2
The problem is not a "simple arithmetic" problem for most people, particularly if round numbers weren't involved.
Of course, when I read the description in the article of a "simple arithmetic question," it merely put me on guard and made me read the question more carefully, because the subject of the article convinced me that I should pay attention.
Context is everything.
They're just good at solving tricky word problems as quickly as possible, primarily by ignoring information. In my experience, this methodology is often the inverse of an intelligent process.
I do have to disagree here. The reality is that the only way you can become more intelligent is by learning to process information efficiently. Some of that is being able to distill essential information quickly, which also means ignoring stuff that isn't important. I'm not talking about "taking a standardized test" efficiency -- I'm talking about real-world comprehension of events around you, where smart people need to be able to quickly connect chains of related information into a coherent whole, either to solve a particular problem, or to learn how to do more complex ones without a bunch of "baby step
It's kind of like sticking your stuff in a locker at a swimming pool or a gym -- they put up big signs saying they're not responsible for your stuff.
What the heck are you talking about?
If someone breaks into your locker at the gym and steals your stuff, you can still call the police. If they find the guy who took it, they can still charge him with theft and potentially send him to prison.
Just because the gym puts up a sign that they aren't responsible doesn't mean that it's a free-for-all, and anyone can just come in, steal everything in everyone's lockers, and no one has any recourse. Similarly, Megaupload may not be responsible if your stuff is lost, but that doesn't mean that we should automatically assume that if the stuff is taken, it's just "no harm, no foul."
So although it's fun to rant about 'suing the gubbermint', such a pointless exercise would never lead anywhere, and the government knows that. By pointing out that you could recover your data through Megaupload's hosting provider, they're really just being 'nice'. They owe you nothing.
It may be a pointless exercise because the government gets a lot of immunity in a lot of cases like this. However, it's not a pointless question. Just because one party declares that they aren't liable for taking care of your property doesn't mean that that property has no value, ceases to exist, or that you thereby agree that anyone can just break in and steal it.
In a properly made bed, the humidity from sleeping in it is preserved for much longer. That gives nice cozy conditions to everything from mold and mites to bed bugs.
Absolutely. The best method would actually be to pull down the bedding as far as possible for most of the day and only make it before bed, if you want that "crisp" feeling when you get into bed.
Making the bed in the morning will just make your bed dirtier and stinkier sooner.
Learn to cook instead. If you can make her dinner and show off a clean kitchen, she's not going to give a damn that you didn't bother making the bed.
Wow -- good relationship advice on Slashdot. Unbelievable!
Yes... guys: you should learn to master 2 or 3 dinner options, as well as either omelets, pancakes, or waffles for breakfast (and there could certainly be bonus points for you in the morning if you don't use Bisquick or can make an omelet completely and get it out of the pan without ever using a utensil). The dinners don't have to be difficult, but there should be something unique about them. Go upstairs from the basement and ask your Mom or Grandma -- women often love a good homecooked meal based on a family recipe.
As for the bed, cleanliness is more important than impeccably made. It doesn't matter if you did "hospital corners" and get the sheets tight if they smell like an old wet dog died in them five years ago.
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Originalism as you define it is pretty much defunct. It's one of what have been memorably referred to as judicial fairy-tales and has now been recognised as being intellectually indefensible. Anyone professing that view is well outside the judicial mainstream.
Really? I don't think so. For example, take a look at all of the discussion around the big Second Amendment cases in the past couple years. Some lawyers, justices, etc. only cared about what the plain meaning of the Second Amendment would be to people in the 1790s, while others looked in detail at the legislative history, discussions of the Founders on the issue, changes in the drafts, etc. It seems pretty clear that those who were interested in the latter things were considering the intent of the law, rather than just the text in isolation. And that's how I defined "originalism" in my post.
Hardly seems like a "judicial fairy-tale" to me.
It makes me feel good inside to know that I am creating revenue for the website that I visit, which helps cover the cost of providing that website.
See, I prefer to know up-front that they plan to track me. If I have flash blockers, script blockers, cookie blockers, etc. in my browser, and I try to visit a site which says "this site won't work without enabling these things," I click the back button and never return to that site.
If a site had a button that asked me to donate if I appreciated the content, I might do so, as I have actually done for some useful sites voluntarily in the past. Or at least put up a message every time you visit that says, "We'd really appreciate it if we could put ads up and track you and... so please click 'yes' to support us and you'll never see this message again." I might actually click that if I felt the site was worthwhile and they explained EXACTLY what they would do with my information. Just doing it without my permission is not acceptable.
Tracking a user and giving targeting advertising increases the value of the advertising campaigns, which translates into more money for the website.
Seriously, you click on ads??? You really trust advertising campaigns? If I want to buy a product, I'll go research it from reputable third-party reviews or recommendations, thank you very much. I've stopped watching TV because of the advertisements. I don't believe most of the things a used car salesman says to me either... but the internet is worse. Considering a product solely on the basis of an internet ad is like believing some guy who drives by you in an unmarked van while you're walking down the street and offers to sell you a stereo system for a "great deal."
I don't want people to "target" ads for me. I NEVER want to see an ad involuntarily on my personal computer. NEVER. I have NEVER, EVER clicked on an internet ad voluntarily. If I want to know whether a product is out there that I haven't considered and may be useful for my life, I'll search for it myself, thank you very much. If it's really that great, probably someone I know will tell me about it or be using it, and I'll ask about it and decide whether I'm interested.
If we didn't have this, the web is going to become subscription-only very quickly.
Yeah, because there was nothing on the internet until ads existed. And there aren't any sites around today that exist on the basis of donations or out the charity of their owners rather than by selling me out to giant corporations who want to invade my home and steal my money for their random crappy products by brainwashing me through "targeted" ad campaigns.
It is important to bear in mind that this does not normally have anything to do with what the authors of the constitution wanted the constitution to say or meant for it to say. The question is what it would generally have been understood to have meant at the time.
It depends on whom you ask. Some scholars try to draw distinctions between "originalism" and "textualism." While these terms aren't consistently used in the literature (as far as I can tell), the common distinction made is that "textualism" is about the original text (i.e., what the plain meaning of the words is, particularly around the time of the drafting of the law), while "originalism" is centered on the original legislative intent of the statute. Some approaches may emphasize the meaning of the text divorced from the authors of the Constitution, while other approaches may emphasize the intent of the authors beyond the simple meaning of the text.
There are lots of different approaches to "original meaning" interpretation, so it's not fair to say that judges who seek that original meaning privilege one bit of historical data over another -- different judges (and even different justices on the Supreme Court) have different methods. For example, Scalia is on record as being a textualist who also considers subsequent legislative and judicial history of a statute -- he's interested in the plain meaning of the text at the time of its passing, but in many cases he is also willing to consider how the meaning has been interpreted over time. Thomas is more strict in always privileging the original meaning.
Personally I tend to lean toward a constitutional originalist view.
There is certainly an appeal to such a perspective. I once remember Scalia talking about the problem with the "living Constitution" -- he said it's like being a judge and waking up everyday, looking at the ceiling and saying, "I wonder whether the 14th amendment contains a right to privacy and a right to abortion today? It didn't yesterday, but maybe it does today."
That statement makes the problems with the "Living Constitution" clear, because that same judge can wake up one morning and decide there is no longer a right to privacy or abortion or whatever. If it's not clearly in the text, rights can be granted or withdrawn on the whims or judicial fads of the time, and that's disturbing.
While I am in favor of a number of unenumerated rights and liberal reforms that have come over the centuries, I would prefer that the important ones were actually enshrined explicitly in Constitutional amendments or explicit statutes, rather than "interpreted" to magically appear somewhere in the Constitution one day. Because if they are magically "interpreted" to appear one day, they could be magically interpreted out at some point in the future....
When you have products that are highly desirable (and if you're hearing-impaired, a hearing aid is highly desirable) then prices will stay as high as people are willing to pay.
Unless a reliable competitor emerges with a similar product and is willing to make profits off of selling volume rather than hiking the price exponentially.
I frankly don't know what is possible for hearing aids, but I do know, for example, that a medication a friend needed to buy supposedly cost $170 at retail for a 90-day supply, and he was asked to pay $45 for a copay for that medication by his insurance. One day when he moved, he decided to transfer pharmacies and went to a local grocery store with a pharmacy. He didn't have insurance at the time, so he expected to have to shell out a lot of money. But, only with the free savings card from the grocery store, he got the 90-day supply for $10, less than 1/4 of his copay with a premium insurance plan! This was for the same generic drug in both cases -- but in the first case an insurance company, a drug manufacturer, and a pharmacy were obviously in collusion, while in the grocery store, the pharmacy had an incentive to sell cheap drugs to uninsured people, so it made a deal with the manufacturer. The grocery store pharmacist didn't even ask for insurance information, because he knew he could give a price better than any copay required on a normal insurance plan.
This is for a "highly desirable" product (in this case, blood pressure medication).
For another example outside of medicine, there was a regional grocery store chain where I used to live whose prices were consistently about 40% off of all major competing grocery stores in the area. I'm not talking about generic items: I'm talking an average of 40% off for the same name brand grocery items. They had only one store in the metropolitan area where I lived, but the aisles were packed almost from 7am-9pm. It wasn't convenient to public transport, but I saw poorer folks taking cabs to get there all the time, because they saved so much, it more than paid for the cab.
You can't get more "highly desirable" than basic food. The other supermarkets in the area counted on the fact that they were more convenient to public transport or that people just wouldn't bother to look at the other store or that people would assume it was the place "poor people shopped." Quite a few people who never shopped there told me that they heard it was "dirty." Yet the opposite was the case -- produce and meat flew off the shelves and was much fresher than any other supermarket in the area. I never saw evidence of dirt or vermin there, but I heard a couple different friends report that they saw mice at one of the "premium" supermarkets near there, and one who reported the mice saw that the food which had been eaten into was not removed from the shelves when she was back there a couple days later. After all, the "premium" supermarkets were always like ghost towns, except for a few hours right after standard work hours, so most people wouldn't even notice.
Basically, if there is a market where people will shop around, some businesses may take advantage of that market by providing a cheaper product. If few consumers actually have a real transaction to buy a product and instead go through an intermediary like an insurance company, there is little incentive for anyone to provide lower prices. In fact, if there is a situation such as in the current national health care bill where insurance companies will be limited to 15% of billed costs toward "administrative fees" (i.e., where the profits come from), there is actually an incentive for insurance companies to drive costs UP, since that's the only way they can skim more money off the top.
He can say whatever he wants in private or public, but he can't lie in court. Lieing to the courts has ALWAYS been illegal. Filing false documents in court has ALWAYS been illegal. The justice system can't work if people are allowed to lie and fake documents in court without punishment.
What I find curious is that Ceglia was represented by a number of different lawyers, including major lawfirms who made public statements about how the evidence was NOT fraudulent.
From TFA:
In his original complaint, filed in 2010, Mr. Ceglia was represented by Paul Argentieri, a sole practitioner in upstate New York. An amended lawsuit was filed in April 2011 by Robert W. Brownlie of DLA Piper, the world's largest law firm, and Dennis C. Vacco, a former New York attorney general now in private practice at Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman in Buffalo.
In 2011, Mr. Brownlie of DLA Piper declined a request by The New York Times to produce the original documents backing his client's legal claims. "That will come out during the course of litigation," Mr. Brownlie said. "Anyone who claims this case is fraudulent and brought by a scam artist will come to regret those claims."
Yet court records indicate that another law firm, Kasowitz Benson Friedman & Torres, had been hired by Mr. Ceglia before DLA Piper and Lippes Mathias becoming involved. Kasowitz Benson withdrew from the case and put DLA Piper and Lippes Mathias on notice that it had determined that the purported contract was a fraud.
Mr. Brownlie and Mr. Vacco later withdrew from the case. They did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.
When are we going to see these lawyers charged with something? (If not intentional, at a minimum, they should be sanctioned for incompetence and misrepresentation.)
And, if they withdrew from the case after they found out about the fraud, and they didn't immediately report it... that is even worse. Frankly, no one would have paid attention to Ceglia in the first place if it weren't for the fact that he had attorneys with good reputations backing him up. If they knew about any of this or even had a hint of it, they deserve a severe punishment as well.
There's been a lot of hype around Sweden going almost cashless, but most transactions there use easily traceable credit and debit cards
Since when does "cashless" mean "untraceable"?
It doesn't, and your quotation does not in any normal linguistic sense imply that it does. Effectively, it is a statement of the form: "Sweden tried a currency with property X, but it still lacks another desirable property Y." (If you're slow, X = "cashlessness," while Y = "anonymity.")
If you read the title to the bloody post at the top of the page, "A Cashless, High-Value, Anonymous Currency: How?" you might realize that this is a question about achieving currency with not one, nor two, but THREE distinct properties.
Sheesh. The fact that this has been modded insightful worries me.
If you actually look at the platform, the Texas Republicans' opposition is to the Outcome Based Education philosophy. Proponents of this methodology sometimes label it "critical thinking skills" since after all, who doesn't favor that?
I don't agree with the platform. I am not a Republican. I do believe in critical thinking.
I also think, as someone who has been actively involved in the field of education (and has been through a number of pedagogy seminars) that the Wikipedia article doesn't adequately convey the associations of the term to people in the educational field.
While it is true that Outcome Based Education can just mean things like testing specific tasks (and thus has recently become connected with things like No Child Left Behind), when it was first proposed a few decades ago, it tended to incorporate a whole lot of modern educational theory (much of it BS, as is most educational theory), most of which tends to be associated with "liberals"... because, well, stats show that most teachers are liberals, and most college professors in schools of education who come up with things like OBE are even more liberal.
I have no idea what is going on here in terms of agendas concerning Creationism or respecting parental authority or whatever, but I can say that the whole OBE thing is probably included because it's a bunch of liberal education mumbo-jumbo. Furthermore, people who use "OBE" and "critical thinking skills" in the same sentence probably are using "critical thinking skills" in the way that traditional old-school "learning-goals" OBE BS uses the term "critical thinking skills," which is to say... "I'm going to make up a bunch of crap that sounds fancy and reorganize my class for no apparent reason instead of actually being a better teacher." It has little to do with actual thinking. Or, at least that's the perception that conservatives have regarding the stereotypical old form of this educational "framework."
"Obamacare" has a provision that forces insurance companies to spend at least 85% of their premiums on providing health care and limiting overhead to 15%
You are correct. However, a few other facts are helpful if we are going to evaluate this compared to other possible options.
For one thing, the average amount of insurance administration costs was, I believe, about 10-12%. Plans that charged 20-30% or more did so because they had significantly more administration costs per person (e.g., individual plans, rather than large group plans for, say, a company of thousands of employees). When you regulate a scenario like that, if you look at various state efforts to regulate other types of insurance, you'll bet that insurance companies will try to push their administration costs to maximum, since they need to hedge for all those high-cost people who now can't pay for themselves (and they'll usually overcompensate to ensure profit)... so we're probably all going to end up paying 15% now... hence, costs probably go up.
Now, if we consider administrative costs for Medicare/Medicaid I believe are closer to 5-6% (though I've seen estimates that are even half that). With a public option, we'd all probably pay about 1/3 as much for administrative costs than with this plan, possibly even less. Actually, it would probably be more savings, given that a single-payer system would make the "rules" for coverage clearer, meaning that you lower administrative costs on the side of hospitals and doctors offices too, which usually take up another 5-10% of your costs to pay for hospital administrators and doctors' assistants to argue with different insurance carriers.
Meanwhile, all those "freeloaders" that everyone's worried about cost the system no more than about 8% of your premiums, even in the worst-case calculation I've seen.
We could have trimmed off more than that in administrative costs just by moving to single payer. Instead, we're locking insurance companies into a regulatory box where they will charge the maximum the law allows to ensure profits, and then they'll claim it isn't enough and lobby to have the law changed so they can get even more profits. And given that corporations now can spend unlimited money on elections... well, we're likely enslaved to insurance companies in the long-term.
IIRC the percentage is 85%, so 85% of premiums can't go into pockets in the insurance company, and need to be spent on healthcare, or else they go back to subscribers.
You are correct. However, a few other facts are helpful if we are going to evaluate this compared to the public option scenario.
For one thing, the average amount of insurance administration costs was, I believe, about 10-12%. Plans that charged 20-30% did so because they had significantly more administration costs per person (e.g., individual plans, rather than large group plans for, say, a company of thousands of employees). When you regulate a scenario like that, if you look at various state efforts to regulate other types of insurance, you'll bet that insurance companies will try to push their administration costs to maximum, since they need to hedge for all those high-cost people who now can't pay for themselves (and they'll usually overcompensate to ensure profit)... so we're probably all going to end up paying 15% now... hence, costs probably go up.
Now, as for the public option, administrative costs for Medicare/Medicaid I believe are closer to 5-6% (though I've seen estimates that are even half that). With a public option, we'd all probably pay about 1/3 as much for administrative costs than with this plan. Actually, it would probably be more, given that a single-payer system would make the "rules" for coverage clearer, meaning that you lower administrative costs on the side of hospitals and doctors offices too, which usually take up another 5-10% of your costs to pay for hospital administrators and doctors' assistants to argue with different insurance carriers.
Meanwhile, all those "freeloaders" that everyone's worried about cost the system no more than about 8% of your premiums, even in the worst-case calculation I've seen.
We could have trimmed off more than that in administrative costs just by moving to single payer. Instead, we're locking insurance companies into a regulatory box where they will charge the maximum the law allows to ensure profits, and then they'll claim it isn't enough and lobby to have the law changed so they can get even more profits. And given that corporations now can spend unlimited money on elections... well, we're likely enslaved to insurance companies in the long-term.
Engineer: antithesis of a 'foodie'
PBJ for lunch every day!
You know, there is a place in the world for "culinary engineering." I'm not talking about the manly art of flipping burgers on the grill. (Although there are actually better and worse techniques for that, too... empirically-derived....) If you don't make use of at least two kitchen scales (with different levels of precision), a superfast probe thermometer with thermocouple, an infrared thermometer, and a pH meter in your kitchen on a regular basis, you're not living up to the engineer's creed.
(I know what some of you are thinking -- what the heck is a pH meter doing in a kitchen? Very useful for testing the place of sourdough in its life cycle, whether your dill pickles and sauerkraut are properly fermented, even getting the perfect lemonade strength...)
My kitchen is also outfitted with a bunch of lab glassware -- Erlenmeyer flasks make great containers for oils and things you don't want to spill (laboratory glassware tends to have good lips to prevent a lot of dripping). A 2-liter or 5-liter beaker is great for measuring the rise of bread dough and its "doubling." All my spices are conveniently alphabetized in large test tubes in a test tube rack.
Engineering can be applied to most problems. Cooking is just applied chemistry, and therefore it amounts to chemical engineering on a very small scale. For example, using precision instruments can actually give your cooking an edge (particularly in baking), as long as you know what you're doing.
If you want to get even more fancy, keep a "lab notebook" of your "experiments." Note successful techniques to replicate your "experiments" for a dinner party. Record the weather and kitchen conditions when you're doing anything involving yeast or other microorganisms (like making your own cultured buttermilk). etc.
One can go overboard. I have yet to set up a distillation column to make my own extracts and essential oils, but that will probably happen at some point....
By the way, perhaps the problem is terminology. I spend a lot of time cooking, and I enjoy a fancy dinner at many "fancy" restaurants. But I'd never associate myself with the term "foodie," which I think of almost as an insult. Perhaps that's because most of the people whom I know and consider themselves "foodies" are pretentious idiots who care more about what the "hot" restaurants are, what the "hip" ways to make certain food are, etc., rather than whether it actually tastes good to anyone.
You're right -- "foodies" are not engineers, any more than an haute couture dress designer is an engineer. But that doesn't mean we can't use engineering to create newer better fabrics, better dyes, more efficient or durable designs for clothing, etc. Whether the fashion snobs will accept it (as the foodies judge the new restaurant or sniff their wine) is beside the point. Unlike in clothing fashion, most people are happy to eat good food cooked at home, without the approval of some elite.
Agreed. I think these qualify as "girlfriend-friendly" episodes, because they have great romance plots but don't emphasize the techno-babble. (I'm assuming a stereotypical female here, which is not always the best assumption....)
They're not very representative, but if you have a girlfriend who hasn't watched a lot of sci-fi at all, these could nudge her into the sorts of possibilities that sci-fi creates while allowing very "human" plots (like a good "chick-flick" drama).
Add a couple more character-driven episodes, and then you can work your way into a couple "moral question" episodes. Mix it up with some of the suspense and cliff-hanger episodes, and save the "action-heavy" and overly technical sci-fi episodes for the time after you have her hooked and watching a series from beginning to end.
someone could probably write a doctoral dissertation on Gul Dukat or Garak.
Ah, yes, the Ph.D. in Star Trek Studies, coming to an online university near you!
Perhaps a candidate for the newest Slashdot achievement??
Never mind the "there will always be risk", the risk is very low compared to other stuff that we take for granted and do nothing about.
Yeah, in terms of terrorist attack risk, you could just consult this handy chart.
With a 1% success rate, 100 people would have close to 100% success and you'd only need 51 people for 50%.
So, wait a sec... you're telling me If I flip a coin with 2 sides twice, I'm guaranteed to get a heads?!? If I have a 6-sided die, and I roll it 6 times, I'm guaranteed to get a 6?!?
I need to book my flight to Vegas now. I've finally got that foolproof strategy to win at games of chance!
Let's face it. There isn't anything legal their citizens could really do. Revolt is pretty much all that's left for radical change...
Well, they could vote. In many if not most major races, there actually are third party candidates.
The biggest enemy of the American people is not their lack of possible legal actions -- they could easily vote most of these people out of office. The problem is that most of the public has been brainwashed to believe that they should only vote for "someone who can win," which generally only means someone of two parties. If you change that perspective, you immediately could shake up most of the government.
But if you can't even convince people that their leaders are bad enough to vote outside the two-party system, there's no way in hell you're going to get them to arm themselves in insurrection. This is just a stupid argument, because way before you could get a real revolt going, you could certainly convince people to start voting yahoos out of office... by perfectly legal means.
Even within the two parties, they could actually show up to things like caucuses, hang around and get nominated as delegates to state parties -- like, for example, the Ron Paul people have done in a number of states. (For the record, I'm not a Paul supporter, but I admire what his folks are doing.) The Republicans appear to be fighting the Paulites tooth-and-nail at local conventions to disenfranchise them, but they can only do so much. The Paul people have taken over state parties in a number of states. You can bet that those libertarian officials will at least have an impact on state politics, and we have yet to see how much of a hoopla they can raise at the national Republican convention.
Will this completely change the Republican party? I don't know. But there's a reason the mainstream Republicans have downplayed Paul at every turn... he doesn't play by their rules. He's not a "player." He has views that don't change for the most part. He consistently tells things like he sees them, rather than making crap up that people want to hear. I don't agree with a lot of what he has to say, but his efforts show that someone who has the right charisma can make a big impact... we'll have to see how far he goes.
Anyhow, there are lots of legal things the citizens of the U.S. could do. It's not like there are laws preventing you from voting for someone other than a Democrat or Republican. The problem is just convincing enough people that it's worthwhile -- which, again, would be a heck of a lot easier than inciting them to insurrection... so start with getting them to just show up to a voting booth first, rather than staying home and watching the lastest episode of reality TV or whatever the heck it is that people do. After you get them to the voting booth, you can invite them out to your militia or whatever the hell it is that you do.
Bubonic plague has been found in animals (mostly prairie dogs in Colorado) for decades and apparently is the sixth case of plague in Oregon since 1995.
From TFA:
Health officials in Portland have confirmed that a man contracted the plague...
Hmm... I KNEW there was something that the Portlandia folks left out when they said, "The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland...."
Clown school, double-decker bicycles, and of course... bubonic plague.
(P.S. Yes, I know this case of plague didn't originate in Portland... but neither did clown school, and clowning is apparently still going on there. Elsewhere, plague is so 1390s...)
By the way, if you still have trouble understanding the GP's point, here's a handy chart:
ahref=http://boingboing.net/2009/12/30/odds-of-being-a-terr.htmlrel=url2html-30382http://boingboing.net/2009/12/30/odds-of-being-a-terr.html>
If decreasing security increased the frequency of terrorist attacks by 10-fold, we'd still need to worry about lightning more. If they increased by 100-fold, they'd be on the level of your chances of dying in a tornado. How many billions have we spent to decrease the chances of deaths from tornados? (For the record, we spend less than $25 million on tornado research, warning systems, etc. total every year, and they cause over a billion dollars of damage in the U.S. every year... there's something else we could increase the budget for before funding the TSA...)
There I was replying to one guy saying that the odds of being killed in an airplane hijacking were nil.
He didn't say that. He discussed the fact that your chances of dying in a hijacking are ridiculously small, so near to zero that worrying about them is dumb. I agree. If you want to worry about stuff, worry about stuff that there's a reasonable chance could kill you (like, for example, driving your car). If you want to pay billions of dollars to prevent every 1-in-a-million scenario, you'd be bankrupt dealing with things that are a thousand times more likely than terrorist attacks.
For example, your lifetime risk of dying in a car crash is less than 1 in 100. Some people have done the numbers, and even if terrorists managed to pull off a 9/11-level attack in the U.S. every year , your lifetime risk would be well over 1 in 10,000. As it is, your chances of dying in your daily commute are probably over a thousand times greater than dying in a terrorist attack.
Worry about driving your car. Worry about being murdered. Worry about your house catching on fire. Worry about drowning. Hell, worry about being struck by lightning, which is probably slightly more likely than dying in a terrorist attack.
If you have time left over after all of that anxiety, then maybe you can start worrying about dying in a terrorist attack.
And sure, it's not really clear why they want to go after aircraft. But they do. They've tried numerous times, including with a number of ridiculous plans (shoebomber, underwear bomber). Whether that's a good plan for them or not, if that's what they're trying to do you need to deal with it.
Setting aside the fact that the TSA didn't and wouldn't have caught these guys... and the fact that such people wouldn't get away with anything because it's clear that passengers on planes now behave differently....
I think you have a big flaw in all your arguments. Who the hell are "they"? You're acting like all of these people are part of some sort of monolithic terrorist structure that is ready to churn out hundreds or thousands of these high-profile terrorists all the time.
Of course the terrorist hierarchy supports these lunatics every so often one of them comes along. But there simply aren't the hoards of terrorists you imply. And, as the person whom you originally responded to pointed out -- even if there were and we did have a massive attack every so often, there are a lot of other things you should be spending your time and money worrying about and perhaps trying to prevent before you shell out billions for the TSA.
Here's a piece of advice -- YOU are living proof that the terrorists have won. The whole point of terrorism is that a tiny group of people can't fight a war against somebody like the U.S., so they're just trying to scare them into disrupting their own way of life, into, in effect, behaving completely irrationally.
You've been taken in by their bluff (as have most Americans) -- hook, line, and sinker. You want to do some good in the world? Save lives? Prevent needless deaths? How about start with heart disease, cancer, etc. which ACTUALLY kill a lot of people. Then after you've spent most of your money trying to solve those problems, make safer cars, prevent murders, etc. -- all those things which kill THOUSANDS OF TIMES the number of people terrorists kill every year in the U.S.
And, after you're done installing new lightning rods everywhere around the country, you might finally get to the point of dealing with the miniscule numbers of terrorist attacks (and their threat of attacks from freakin' laser beams), just before you ban seafood salad and luncheon meats because they might kill people from listeria....
That's the point the GP was making which you were responding to, since you claim you don't want to talk about the actual topic of discussion in TFA.
A lot of your points about potential agendas are fine, but we're talking about the TSA here, and why it should be justified.
Especially in the middle east they're balancing the risk of sending an al qaeda terrorist to the US versus just handing him a gun and telling him to go shoot americans in Iraq. If the guy dies, you pick up his gun, hand it to someone else. Not very life effective, but cost effective.
Fine. What does this have to do with the TSA? If the cost of a plane ticket is enough to dissuade them from coming to the U.S. and blowing something up that's unprotected here, why do we need security to keep them off planes?
I don't really know what the reality is, but if there really is a large number of crazy terrorists out there wanting to kill as many Americans as possible, they don't need to get on planes to do it.
You pretty much made my argument. Their most effective method today is to go after americans in afghanistan, and to go after american 'puppets' (from their perspective) elsewhere.
I'm not sure how I made your argument. I'm talking about the subject of TFA, which is the TSA. Most of the discussion about TSA reform is about their primary base of operation, which is in airports within the U.S. My point is simple: if terrorists do come to the U.S., they have plenty of easy targets that do not require them to get back on a plane and through security, so they don't have to deal with the TSA. If they don't come to the U.S., they don't have to deal with the TSA. So I'm not sure what relevance any of your argument has to do with the TSA.
And since we don't see any malls or buses, etc. blown up in the U.S., I think it's safe to say that there are either incredibly few terrorists within the U.S. capable of any significant attacks... or that they're all stupid.
Getting on a plane is high risk for them right now. With no security whatsoever that would probably change.
I didn't argue for "no security whatsoever." But I would say that the pre-9/11 security was certainly more than adequate. TFA is talking about privatization of security, dialing down security, etc., which would presumably still require pre-9/11 levels of reasonably non-invasive security (unless there is something suspicious). You're talking about attacks from freakin' lasers and protecting airports from rockets being shot from the ground (which would require terrorists already present within the U.S., and thus subject to the common TSA security measures we're discussing).
Sorry, but I'm not making your point, because you seem to be convinced that there are hoards of terrorists waiting to storm airports, even though you freely admit that it's not as cost effective as shooting someone on the ground in the Middle East. And you're right, that's where the real action is going on. That's where stuff is getting blown up.
But this discussion is about the TSA and terrorism within the U.S. My simple point is that if there were that many terrorists with the motivation and the means to come to the U.S., they could do lots more damage by never engaging the TSA. And given empirical evidence, a minimal security net should probably be more than sufficient, since tens of thousands of targets are completely unguarded and are getting no attention from these mythical terrorists.
You're responding by saying that it's cheaper for them to stay in other countries and terrorize there. Fine. But what does that have to do with what our domestic policies should be concerning security anywhere in the country?
I suspect the reality is that there are a literal handful of absolutely crazy people in some bunker somewhere who just want to blow up planes... because, well, they want to blow up planes. Crazy nutjobs like this exist, however, everywhere, from every nation, of every race -- they're the ones who grab a bunch of guns and shoot up a school because... w
Ever hear of the phrase "over-qualified"?
THIS. A person with a Ph.D. -- whether it's in biomedical science, philosophy, or English literature -- is generally viewed by employers as a "researcher." If a person with such a Ph.D. applies for any non-research job (academic or not), he will have to convince interviewers that (1) he won't cost too much, (2) he won't be bored and is actually interested in the job, (3) he's not going to bolt for a better job the minute he can find one, etc. Often it's hard to even get an interview, since potential employers assume that you're just not going to be a good fit.
Same goes for someone with a 4-year degree applying for a job that only requires a high-school diploma. etc.
There are those jokes about philosophy Ph.D.'s working at McDonald's or waiting tables, but the reality is that overqualified people often have significant trouble landing a position unless it's low enough to be considered "temp level" or the kind of thing that high school kids do part-time.
Yes, many will eventually convince an employer to take a chance on an "overqualified" candidate, and they can then work their way up to a reasonable salary. But I know young people who have multiple master's degrees and years of experience, but have ended up out of work for well over a year waiting for a reasonable job to come along -- and by "reasonable," I mean something that would at least put them into the equivalent of an entry level position for a bachelor's degree in their field (or, frankly, any related field).
For Ph.D.'s, the stigma tends to be worse. Looking outside of academia is fine, but trying for professional jobs outside of high-level research is often quite difficult.
That's tricky. Terrorists are looking for soft targets. If there's no security on aircraft, they'll attack aircraft. If their most 'dead americans per dollar' is in Iraq then they go to iraq, or afghanistan or whatever.
I think the empirical evidence suggests that terrorists are not looking for "soft targets" or "most dead Americans per dollar." If they were, they could walk a bomb on a bus, train, or into a shopping mall and probably kill close to as many or more people than on a plane -- with no fuss. Or, heck, walk a bomb into an airport outside the security zone and detonate there. Any of these things would probably lead to even more disruptive crazy security measures in the U.S., so even if their goal is to disrupt society instead of just killing people, they're failing miserably.
If there are indeed as many motivated terrorists out there as you suggest, and if they were really looking for soft targets, they must be pretty darn stupid.
But they *are* looking for ways to kill people.... You need security looking for bombs, and poison gas, you need to secure airports themselves against ground based lasers and rockets and so on (because god knows, if you can blind a pilot to crash a plane they'll try that).
If you really think that we need all that to protect airplanes, then get ready to militarize every square foot of the entire country, because if terrorists are actually looking for easy targets for bombs, poison gas, etc. -- there are tens of thousands of high population targets waiting on the ground which are completely unguarded.
And yet, we've seen nothing of substance since 9/11 except for a few idiots on planes that the TSA couldn't even catch.
So, empirical evidence suggests that at least one of your premises is false. Some possibilities: (1) the terrorists are just obsessed with planes and aren't actually looking for soft targets or maximum casualties, (2) most terrorists are too stupid or not motivated enough to just build a simple bomb on American soil (or transport one through porous borders, like, say, shipping containers), and blow it up in some easy place, and/or (3) the number of terrorists who are actually out there and capable of an attack is much, much smaller than we have been led to believe.
I don't really know what the reality is, but if there really is a large number of crazy terrorists out there wanting to kill as many Americans as possible, they don't need to get on planes to do it.
Remember, they did try and blow up the WTC previous, with a car bomb. And failed. Whatever else they are, they are persistent bastards.
I'm not sure you understand what "persistent" means. If they really were out there and wanted to kill people or disrupt the American way of life, they could easily do so at any of tens of thousands of locations where lots of people hang out every day. Israel has had real problems with terrorists. England and Northern Ireland has had them with the IRA. I hope things like that never come to the U.S., but that's what things look like when you have real motivated terrorists willing to maximize casualties on any soft target... there's no evidence for the scenario you suggest.
This is a great comment and a perfectly rational explanation for the findings. We are so used to having problems worded in a particular way, presenting information in a particular way, etc. that it can make it difficult to spot something that makes the question a little more complex.
I also think subtle details can change the way people answer these questions. Suppose the first question instead was:
A bat and ball cost $1.10 total. The ball costs $0.84 less than the bat. How much does the ball cost?
I guarantee you that the results would favor those with higher SAT scores. In fact, even if you just changed the difference in prices to a number that is less round, it will cause people to think differently. As the question is worded, it encourages the reader to associate "a dollar and ten cents" with "a dollar" only a few words later. If you make that association less strong, even by changing "a dollar and ten" to $1.10, it will already change the results.
Also, the choice of subject in each sentence is important. When you say "A bat and a ball cost..." then "A bat costs..." and then "How much does the ball cost," it encourages a quick reader to break down the "a dollar and ten" into its constitutent "a dollar" and then "ten cents." If you switch the emphasis, as I did, to the fact that "a ball costs less," then "how much does the ball cost?", that would also disrupt the tendency to parse incorrectly.
It would also be in line with simple word problem structure, which often tends to make a series of statements about X and then ask a further question about X. (e.g., "X is taller than..." "X is wider than..." followed by "How big is X?")
In contrast, the structure of this problem encourages a reader to make assignments: X and Y cost... X costs... how much is Y? That's a different problem type, but it's also common, and that's probably why many people who have taken a lot of tests stumble here.
I'm not an expert on these things, but I have taught for a number of years, and I was on a number of committees that developed standards for testing. I think most people who write tests are aware of how these sorts of details in wording the question will trip people up -- did the psychologists not actually talk to people who write test questions?
I also think context plays a huge role. If you preface the first question with "Here's a simple arithmetic question:" that will encourage the person hearing/reading the question to think of it as such. As written, however, the question is worded as an algebra question. In other words:
Arithmetic: X + Y = Z, X is X, find Y. Answer: Y = Z - X.
Algebra: X + Y = Z, X = Y + N, find Y. Answer: Y = (Z - N) / 2
The problem is not a "simple arithmetic" problem for most people, particularly if round numbers weren't involved.
Of course, when I read the description in the article of a "simple arithmetic question," it merely put me on guard and made me read the question more carefully, because the subject of the article convinced me that I should pay attention.
Context is everything.
They're just good at solving tricky word problems as quickly as possible, primarily by ignoring information. In my experience, this methodology is often the inverse of an intelligent process.
I do have to disagree here. The reality is that the only way you can become more intelligent is by learning to process information efficiently. Some of that is being able to distill essential information quickly, which also means ignoring stuff that isn't important. I'm not talking about "taking a standardized test" efficiency -- I'm talking about real-world comprehension of events around you, where smart people need to be able to quickly connect chains of related information into a coherent whole, either to solve a particular problem, or to learn how to do more complex ones without a bunch of "baby step
It's kind of like sticking your stuff in a locker at a swimming pool or a gym -- they put up big signs saying they're not responsible for your stuff.
What the heck are you talking about? If someone breaks into your locker at the gym and steals your stuff, you can still call the police. If they find the guy who took it, they can still charge him with theft and potentially send him to prison.
Just because the gym puts up a sign that they aren't responsible doesn't mean that it's a free-for-all, and anyone can just come in, steal everything in everyone's lockers, and no one has any recourse. Similarly, Megaupload may not be responsible if your stuff is lost, but that doesn't mean that we should automatically assume that if the stuff is taken, it's just "no harm, no foul."
So although it's fun to rant about 'suing the gubbermint', such a pointless exercise would never lead anywhere, and the government knows that. By pointing out that you could recover your data through Megaupload's hosting provider, they're really just being 'nice'. They owe you nothing.
It may be a pointless exercise because the government gets a lot of immunity in a lot of cases like this. However, it's not a pointless question. Just because one party declares that they aren't liable for taking care of your property doesn't mean that that property has no value, ceases to exist, or that you thereby agree that anyone can just break in and steal it.
In a properly made bed, the humidity from sleeping in it is preserved for much longer. That gives nice cozy conditions to everything from mold and mites to bed bugs.
Absolutely. The best method would actually be to pull down the bedding as far as possible for most of the day and only make it before bed, if you want that "crisp" feeling when you get into bed.
Making the bed in the morning will just make your bed dirtier and stinkier sooner.
Learn to cook instead. If you can make her dinner and show off a clean kitchen, she's not going to give a damn that you didn't bother making the bed.
Wow -- good relationship advice on Slashdot. Unbelievable!
Yes... guys: you should learn to master 2 or 3 dinner options, as well as either omelets, pancakes, or waffles for breakfast (and there could certainly be bonus points for you in the morning if you don't use Bisquick or can make an omelet completely and get it out of the pan without ever using a utensil). The dinners don't have to be difficult, but there should be something unique about them. Go upstairs from the basement and ask your Mom or Grandma -- women often love a good homecooked meal based on a family recipe.
As for the bed, cleanliness is more important than impeccably made. It doesn't matter if you did "hospital corners" and get the sheets tight if they smell like an old wet dog died in them five years ago.