I think it was the short story, "The Variable Man," that dealt with a warp drive system that was to be used as a weapon for blowing up their enemy's star system's star.
It's a metaphorical leaving, sir, regardless of whether a man has ever had sex with a woman, or if a woman has had sex with a man. Otherwise, if we follow your interpretation, only bisexuals are condemned, but homosexuals and hetereosexuals are fine. That seems like a strange interpretation.
Thanks for bringing up the bit about "using" women, because I looked it up in Strong's to see what the actual Greek words used were. I am not a biblical Greek expert, although I have studied it a little, so I encourage you to check my work. "Natural use" (see Strongs number 5540) appears to be a kind of euphemism the King James translators used for the Greek (because obviously, you couldn't write the word "sex!"). The original Greek ( [XRH=SIS]) means "employment, i.e. (specially), sexual intercourse (as an occupation of the body)..."
Thus, the Greek isn't about using women like a sack of potatoes, or abusing them, or any such thing. It's rather about the act with a woman.
We then see that verse 26 states that the women perverted the sexual act among themselves, and verse 27 notes the men, leaving sex with women, instead did it among themselves. That's the problem.
I'm sorry, what do you mean? If you read the verses surrounding it, it quite clearly indicates that the people indicated are doing horrible things. This is just part of a list of behaviors that are wrong in the chapter, if you look it up.
Technically, it's not just in Leviticus. Romans 1:26-27 states, "...for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."
That seems like a clear description of homosexuality to me.
No, because Washington (nor anybody else in the capital), wrote the treaty. Washington wasn't even president at the time; John Adams was.
Remember, this is 1796. They're still using sailing ships. An emissary from the capital, by the last name of Barlow, was sent to negotiate the treaty. According to the Wikipedia article, which I sent you, he did a really crappy job of translating between Arabic and English.
By the time the U.S. Congress saw the treaty, in 1797, it had already been signed twice, first in late 1796 in Tripoli and then in early 1797 in Algiers. It got to the U.S. Congress in mid-1797. The U.S. Senate passed it unanimously, true, but I'm not sure if it would have made much difference if they had not wanted to ratify it. Barlow had already signed the treaty, "as agent plenipotentiary" for the United States, according to the treaty. According to the definition, he had full powers to sign a treaty. And, if they hadn't passed it, but wanted to renegotiate, it might have pushed the final signing off until 1798 or 1799, Atlantic travel being what it was.
And, the Wikipedia article notes:
Neither Congress nor President Adams would have been able to cancel the terms of the Treaty by the time they first saw it, and there is no record of discussion or debate of the Treaty of Tripoli at the time that it was ratified.
So no, Washington never said, wrote, or signed it. Barlow's the one who wrote it, and the U.S. Congress (and President John Adams) are the ones who signed it.
No, Washington is often quoted as saying that, but it actually comes from the first Treaty of Tripoli, which goes back to the Barbary Coast pirates. American ships were being attacked by pirates, and thus, the U.S. Marines went to Libya to go take care of it. (That's why the Marine's Hymn goes, "From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.") What resulted was the first Treaty of Tripoli, which ended the war. It was signed in 1796 by the Tripolians, and in 1797 by the U.S. Congress. In the English version, which was the version signed by the Americans, Article 11 of which stated that the United States of America is not a Christian nation:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen, [Muslims]—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Interestingly, this was not in the Arabic version, which was the version the Tripolians would have been looking at. Even more strangely, there was no Article 11 in the Arabic translation at all. So then why was it put in the English version?
Even more interestingly, when the second Treaty of Tripoli was signed several years later in 1815 (the pirate problem persisted), neither translations stated anything about the U.S. being or not being a Christian nation. The closest is Article 15:
As the Government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of any nation, and as the said States have never entered into any voluntary war, or act of hostility, except in defence of their just rights on the high seas, it is declared by the Contracting parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of Harmony between the two nations; and the Consuls and agents of both nations, shall have liberty to Celebrate the rights of their respective religions in their own houses.
I think there are two different approaches to looking at the problem of corporations lobbying governments: you can blame the corporations, or you can blame the governments.
Let's look at blaming the corporations. On the one hand, we don't want our legislators being bought with nice trips to Tahiti and such. However, can we truly prohibit companies from speaking their views (assuming they aren't bribing legislators)? As we're a country founded on freedom of speech, it seems strange to say that some entities *cannot* speak. (I will not subscribe to the theory that corporations are people, though.)
Let's look at blaming the governments. Shouldn't we expect our legislators to remain above reproach? And if they don't, shouldn't we vote them out? Finally, let's say we managed to stop all lobbying by corporations. Couldn't our legislators be bought other ways by other people?
While I'm not saying we should have companies buying gifts for legislators as a way to influence votes, I think we should blame our legislators for not resisting. Imagine a legislator caught in a sex scandal. Us blaming the corporations would be like the legislator blaming the prostitute for asking him if he wanted sex. As citizens, we should expect our legislators to exercise some self-control, whether the situation involves prostitutes or trips to Tahiti.
Let's go back to last September [2009], shall we? In an ABC News interview, George Stephanopoulos very pointedly asked the president how forcing Americans to purchase a particular service and imposing penalties if they don't is not a tax. To Obama's credit, he did a bang up job trying to get around the question, even going as far as accusing Stephanopoulos of "making up" language that brands the health care mandate as a tax, even after the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of "tax" was provided to him. The president fired back by stating, "My critics say everything is a tax increase," and when once again asked if he rejected the notion that the mandate was a tax increase, he said, "I absolutely reject that notion."
On the next page, the article notes that it wasn't until legal challenges were filed against the bill, stating the mandate was unconstitutional, that the administration said it was a tax:
Robert Pear, in a July 16 New York Times article, reported that the DOJ "says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is 'a valid exercise' of Congress’s power to impose taxes." Essentially, this whole fiasco, that wasn't tax, is now a tax because the Commerce Clause in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, says it is...even though it wasn't a tax...but it is...until it isn't again. The DOJ also contends that because the IRS will be collecting any penalties and that they will be required to be reported "as an addition to income tax liability," this also makes it a tax, and therefore "no one can challenge it in court before paying it and seeking a refund." This is where it almost seems like the administration is simply trying to play a game of "Gotcha" when it comes to the debate of "tax or not a tax."
Danger, Will Robinson! The president's either lied to the public or clueless when it comes to the English language. I could assume incompetence over malice, but since everyone says he's a great public speaker, I'm inclined to go with the malice explanation.
I sent an email to the address at the bottom of the site...
Dear Sir or Madam,
It was with great interest that I perused the materials on the Music Rules website. (On a side note, it doesn't work properly with Firefox 3.0.) I agree that piracy of music is a problem, and some reform of copyright law is needed. However, I believe that your educational materials are misleading and sometimes directly contradict actions of the RIAA in the past.
In the teacher's guide, on page 4, the answer to question #2 (left column) is given:
Caitlin is not a songlifter because personal use is permitted when music fans buy their music. Caitlin can copy her music onto her hard drive and her MP3 player. Caitlin can even burn a CD with her own special mix of music she has purchased.
This however contradicts earlier cases where the RIAA has pursued music pirates for doing this exact same thing. A Washington Post article from 2007:
Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.
The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.
The teacher's guide also ignores the term, "fair use." While fair use is quite limited in U.S. law, generally being restricted to purposes of research and parody, if the RIAA wants to teach third-graders the term, "DMCA notice," why not "fair use?"
Coverage of alternative forms of copyright appears to be non-existent as well, such as the Creative Commons licenses, which allow the creator to turn over specific rights to others, such as the right to modify, or distribute. Public domain coverage is missing as well. Old recordings from before 1923 (such as Edison's early record player) on the Library of Congress site thus would be public domain, and free to download. The materials would scare kids into thinking that everything is copyrighted, and thus illegal.
The materials also should recommend sites where music can be legally downloaded for free. One example is Musopen.com, which contains recordings of public domain works, but also contemporary works where the composer has expressed willingness for his music to be shared. . Warnings should be balanced with alternatives. Also, you could recommend the students to whenever possible purchase music directly from the artist, so that the artist is paid a fair amount.
U.S. federal government training materials ignore this distinction, preferring the "all downloaded music is illegal" mantra. For example, see this training website (it's screen 27 of 48). I can disprove this by visiting this Wikipedia link, where I can download a copy of the W.W.S.S. Wind Ensemble with Dennis Smith playing Arthur Pryor's arrangement of "Blue Bells of Scotland," released under the EFF's Open Audio License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arthur_Pryor_-_Blue_Bells_of_Scotland,_for_Trombone_and_Band.ogg). Similarly, recordings by U.S. military bands, being created by the U.S. government, are generally also public domain.
Copyright reform does need to be effected in the United States. The clause in the Constitution governing copy
Maybe in the rural area people don't like government but Blumenauer represents District 3, which is basically Multnomah County, which includes the Portland metropolitan area; Portland being the liberal city of Oregon. Looking at his Wikipedia photo, he has a little bicycle pin, so maybe this is some massive plot to drive everyone to ride bicycles and use public transportation.
Here is the Austrialian news article linked to in the original Slashdot post: News article.
CHINA plans to require that all personal computers sold in the country as of July 1 be shipped with software that blocks access to certain websites, a move that could give government censors unprecedented control over how Chinese users access the internet.
While in practice that could mean essentially all Internet cafe users, in theory, it would have applied to everyone.
The controversy was that the Chinese government was requiring this software (I believe developed by the Chinese government) to be installed on all new computers sold in China, including those sold by U.S. manufacturers.
My university here in Oregon doesn't support Linux, so it's more of a, "you're on your own." So for the VPN, I had to hack the config files provided for Windows and Mac users, decrypt the group password, etc. I then wrote up directions, and submitted it to my university's tech department, to include on their wiki! I have yet to get printing support functional---they use some kind of weird print thing I have yet to figure out.
For wifi, I had some problems using NetworkManager, KDE4, and Arch, so I dualbooted into my Windows install to check settings, etc. I then got it to work by using iwconfig, etc.
For documents, teachers want Word documents (to do revisions, etc.), so I use OpenOffice.org and save in DOC. I also requested a copy of Office 2007 Enterprise using my college's licensing program, and installed it in Wine. It has OneNote, which is one of the Office programs I like, and haven't found a good replacement on Linux (I've tried Tomboy and BasKet).
I graduated in June. It was a public high school system, and yes the phones worked. The school was built in the 1960's, and I believe there was an intercom system. As for it being two-way...it may have been, but it was rarely used for that. One-way communications from the office, and the phone systems (and of course email) made up the bulk.
Our school just got a complete new phone system, routed the phone calls over ethernet. I know this because I would sometimes unplug the ethernet cable to get another computer plugged in. I also used said phones to make external calls. Note that we still had phones in the classrooms before then.
A teacher can call parents during their prep period. Personal calls can also be made during this time. My band teacher in high school would ignore his cell phone and class phone if they rang off during class.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the story was "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury. The title is a line from a poem by Sarah Teasdale.
I think it was the short story, "The Variable Man," that dealt with a warp drive system that was to be used as a weapon for blowing up their enemy's star system's star.
It's a metaphorical leaving, sir, regardless of whether a man has ever had sex with a woman, or if a woman has had sex with a man. Otherwise, if we follow your interpretation, only bisexuals are condemned, but homosexuals and hetereosexuals are fine. That seems like a strange interpretation.
Do straight men use women?
Thanks for bringing up the bit about "using" women, because I looked it up in Strong's to see what the actual Greek words used were. I am not a biblical Greek expert, although I have studied it a little, so I encourage you to check my work. "Natural use" (see Strongs number 5540) appears to be a kind of euphemism the King James translators used for the Greek (because obviously, you couldn't write the word "sex!"). The original Greek ( [XRH=SIS]) means "employment, i.e. (specially), sexual intercourse (as an occupation of the body)..."
Thus, the Greek isn't about using women like a sack of potatoes, or abusing them, or any such thing. It's rather about the act with a woman.
We then see that verse 26 states that the women perverted the sexual act among themselves, and verse 27 notes the men, leaving sex with women, instead did it among themselves. That's the problem.
It is a suggestion of it.
I'm sorry, what do you mean? If you read the verses surrounding it, it quite clearly indicates that the people indicated are doing horrible things. This is just part of a list of behaviors that are wrong in the chapter, if you look it up.
Technically, it's not just in Leviticus. Romans 1:26-27 states, "...for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."
That seems like a clear description of homosexuality to me.
Aack. My first sentence should have been, "No, because neither Washington (nor anybody else in capital), wrote the treaty."
No, because Washington (nor anybody else in the capital), wrote the treaty. Washington wasn't even president at the time; John Adams was.
Remember, this is 1796. They're still using sailing ships. An emissary from the capital, by the last name of Barlow, was sent to negotiate the treaty. According to the Wikipedia article, which I sent you, he did a really crappy job of translating between Arabic and English.
By the time the U.S. Congress saw the treaty, in 1797, it had already been signed twice, first in late 1796 in Tripoli and then in early 1797 in Algiers. It got to the U.S. Congress in mid-1797. The U.S. Senate passed it unanimously, true, but I'm not sure if it would have made much difference if they had not wanted to ratify it. Barlow had already signed the treaty, "as agent plenipotentiary" for the United States, according to the treaty. According to the definition, he had full powers to sign a treaty. And, if they hadn't passed it, but wanted to renegotiate, it might have pushed the final signing off until 1798 or 1799, Atlantic travel being what it was.
And, the Wikipedia article notes:
Neither Congress nor President Adams would have been able to cancel the terms of the Treaty by the time they first saw it, and there is no record of discussion or debate of the Treaty of Tripoli at the time that it was ratified.
So no, Washington never said, wrote, or signed it. Barlow's the one who wrote it, and the U.S. Congress (and President John Adams) are the ones who signed it.
No, Washington is often quoted as saying that, but it actually comes from the first Treaty of Tripoli, which goes back to the Barbary Coast pirates. American ships were being attacked by pirates, and thus, the U.S. Marines went to Libya to go take care of it. (That's why the Marine's Hymn goes, "From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.") What resulted was the first Treaty of Tripoli, which ended the war. It was signed in 1796 by the Tripolians, and in 1797 by the U.S. Congress. In the English version, which was the version signed by the Americans, Article 11 of which stated that the United States of America is not a Christian nation:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen, [Muslims]—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Interestingly, this was not in the Arabic version, which was the version the Tripolians would have been looking at. Even more strangely, there was no Article 11 in the Arabic translation at all. So then why was it put in the English version?
Even more interestingly, when the second Treaty of Tripoli was signed several years later in 1815 (the pirate problem persisted), neither translations stated anything about the U.S. being or not being a Christian nation. The closest is Article 15:
As the Government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of any nation, and as the said States have never entered into any voluntary war, or act of hostility, except in defence of their just rights on the high seas, it is declared by the Contracting parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of Harmony between the two nations; and the Consuls and agents of both nations, shall have liberty to Celebrate the rights of their respective religions in their own houses.
For more information, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli.
I think there are two different approaches to looking at the problem of corporations lobbying governments: you can blame the corporations, or you can blame the governments.
Let's look at blaming the corporations. On the one hand, we don't want our legislators being bought with nice trips to Tahiti and such. However, can we truly prohibit companies from speaking their views (assuming they aren't bribing legislators)? As we're a country founded on freedom of speech, it seems strange to say that some entities *cannot* speak. (I will not subscribe to the theory that corporations are people, though.)
Let's look at blaming the governments. Shouldn't we expect our legislators to remain above reproach? And if they don't, shouldn't we vote them out? Finally, let's say we managed to stop all lobbying by corporations. Couldn't our legislators be bought other ways by other people?
While I'm not saying we should have companies buying gifts for legislators as a way to influence votes, I think we should blame our legislators for not resisting. Imagine a legislator caught in a sex scandal. Us blaming the corporations would be like the legislator blaming the prostitute for asking him if he wanted sex. As citizens, we should expect our legislators to exercise some self-control, whether the situation involves prostitutes or trips to Tahiti.
It's not a matter of whether the hacker's skills are formidable, it's a matter of whether Lush's IT team's aren't.
The problem with you arguing that it is a tax, and is thus allowed under the Constitution, is that the president insisted at first that it was not a tax (See http://technorati.com/politics/article/health-care-mandate-thats-not-a/ [Unfortunately, it's a two-pager article].):
Let's go back to last September [2009], shall we? In an ABC News interview, George Stephanopoulos very pointedly asked the president how forcing Americans to purchase a particular service and imposing penalties if they don't is not a tax. To Obama's credit, he did a bang up job trying to get around the question, even going as far as accusing Stephanopoulos of "making up" language that brands the health care mandate as a tax, even after the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of "tax" was provided to him. The president fired back by stating, "My critics say everything is a tax increase," and when once again asked if he rejected the notion that the mandate was a tax increase, he said, "I absolutely reject that notion."
On the next page, the article notes that it wasn't until legal challenges were filed against the bill, stating the mandate was unconstitutional, that the administration said it was a tax:
Robert Pear, in a July 16 New York Times article, reported that the DOJ "says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is 'a valid exercise' of Congress’s power to impose taxes." Essentially, this whole fiasco, that wasn't tax, is now a tax because the Commerce Clause in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, says it is...even though it wasn't a tax...but it is...until it isn't again. The DOJ also contends that because the IRS will be collecting any penalties and that they will be required to be reported "as an addition to income tax liability," this also makes it a tax, and therefore "no one can challenge it in court before paying it and seeking a refund." This is where it almost seems like the administration is simply trying to play a game of "Gotcha" when it comes to the debate of "tax or not a tax."
Danger, Will Robinson! The president's either lied to the public or clueless when it comes to the English language. I could assume incompetence over malice, but since everyone says he's a great public speaker, I'm inclined to go with the malice explanation.
While cell phones over the past twenty years have gotten smaller, obviously they're going to have to get larger to accomodate the temporal circuitry.
We absolutely, positively promise that this is going to be the last version for Windows XP! No exceptions!
I sent an email to the address at the bottom of the site...
I have a bad feeling about this...
U.S. government works are automatically public domain. Shouldn't state government materials be the same way?
The latest absurdity to come out of my home state. (The first was yesterday.) And I thought Kroger was a good guy, for a Democrat.
Maybe in the rural area people don't like government but Blumenauer represents District 3, which is basically Multnomah County, which includes the Portland metropolitan area; Portland being the liberal city of Oregon. Looking at his Wikipedia photo, he has a little bicycle pin, so maybe this is some massive plot to drive everyone to ride bicycles and use public transportation.
It's actually nice not having to get out of your car to pump gas...
But yes, leave it to my state to come up with this. Citizens have bumper stickers that say, "Keep Portland Weird."
Here is the Austrialian news article linked to in the original Slashdot post: News article.
CHINA plans to require that all personal computers sold in the country as of July 1 be shipped with software that blocks access to certain websites, a move that could give government censors unprecedented control over how Chinese users access the internet.
While in practice that could mean essentially all Internet cafe users, in theory, it would have applied to everyone.
The controversy was that the Chinese government was requiring this software (I believe developed by the Chinese government) to be installed on all new computers sold in China, including those sold by U.S. manufacturers.
My university here in Oregon doesn't support Linux, so it's more of a, "you're on your own." So for the VPN, I had to hack the config files provided for Windows and Mac users, decrypt the group password, etc. I then wrote up directions, and submitted it to my university's tech department, to include on their wiki! I have yet to get printing support functional---they use some kind of weird print thing I have yet to figure out.
For wifi, I had some problems using NetworkManager, KDE4, and Arch, so I dualbooted into my Windows install to check settings, etc. I then got it to work by using iwconfig, etc.
For documents, teachers want Word documents (to do revisions, etc.), so I use OpenOffice.org and save in DOC. I also requested a copy of Office 2007 Enterprise using my college's licensing program, and installed it in Wine. It has OneNote, which is one of the Office programs I like, and haven't found a good replacement on Linux (I've tried Tomboy and BasKet).
Good luck!
I graduated in June. It was a public high school system, and yes the phones worked. The school was built in the 1960's, and I believe there was an intercom system. As for it being two-way...it may have been, but it was rarely used for that. One-way communications from the office, and the phone systems (and of course email) made up the bulk.
Our school just got a complete new phone system, routed the phone calls over ethernet. I know this because I would sometimes unplug the ethernet cable to get another computer plugged in. I also used said phones to make external calls. Note that we still had phones in the classrooms before then.
A teacher can call parents during their prep period. Personal calls can also be made during this time. My band teacher in high school would ignore his cell phone and class phone if they rang off during class.
Sorry, but at least at our schools, we have phones in the classroom.