As a side note supporting this theory, given the effects of the sun's rays, light pigmentation isn't likely to be something that would evolve naturally over time)
Avoiding chronic vitamin D deficiency is a pretty good reason to evolve light pigmentation. It is all fine and good as long as you are somewhere sunny, but up here in the cold, dark north, you need all the vitamin D you can get, to hell with skin cancer. Of course, farther north, the thinner ozone layer pushes towards darker pigmentation again.
It isn't my impression that human communities tend to favour mating with adjacent groups, most new tribes discovered tends to favour throwing whatever death-inducing sharp object they have handy after foreigners. Of course, that might explain why they are still there to discover, the tribes that favour interbreeding stays discovered after the first contact, the more aggressive tribes tend to get undiscovered rather quickly (say, at the speed they can throw a poisoned spear).
And how does the government show it tolerates people from different cultures? By giving them extra or fewer rights. In Britain, Sikhs have the right to drive motorcycle without a helmet, people of other religions haven't. In the EU, people who are of certain religions have the right to wear headgear on the photos in their drivers license and passports, people not of those religions haven't. This is multiculturalism, and it is about what rights people have.
Multiculturalism isn't dead (unfortunately), even though it has been a massive failure from an integration viewpoint. Britain has had the most multicultural politics in Europe, most muslims in Britain doesn't see themselves as British. In France, the state sees individuals, not cultures, and a majority of the muslims in France see themselves as French. For some reason, the European countries are copying Britain in stead of France in their integration politics**.
** The example you gave is not what I thinks should be copied from France, banning clothes is a violation of the freedom of speech, and not something free societies should be doing.
That was beautiful goal-post moving. I mean, "mocking religious people"->"mocking religion", I wouldn't have discovered that, if not for the fact that people do it EVERY SINGLE TIME this subject is discussed.
Religion deserves mocking if people use it to get special rights or to influence politics (remember, Pastafarianism was started because of Creationism).
Anyway, I see this story as more about mocking authorities who give special rights to religious people than it is mocking of religion. If he wears the colander every day, and points out that he does it because of his religion, that would be mocking religion. If he only wears it for taking his drivers license photo, then it is mocking the fact that religious groups have special rights.
This isn't about mocking religious people, this is about mocking multiculturalism, the idea that peoples rights should be affected by their religion or culture. It is clearly antithetical to the idea of a free society, and it restricts people from evolving their culture, but somehow, the powers that be need help to see that.
In this case, the right to choose what headgear to wear on your official photo is restricted if you don't belong to a particular religion. Either it is important that people don't wear headgear on official photos (to make recognition easier), and nobody should be allowed to wear headgear, or it isn't important, and everybody should be allowed to.
A photo of a painting taken to replicate the painting as closely as possible, even if it requires great technical skill for lighting and such, is not a creative work, but an uncopyrightable derivative of the painting.
I thought that the photographer explicitly had the copyright of the photo in this situation. Are you saying that if I take a photo of a painting in a museum, the photo is covered by the painters copyright?
The passer-by (damn, I read that yesterday in an article about this story, but now I can't find it).
With respect to your point, I would agree if he had given the camera to the monkeys, but AFAICT, the monkeys took the pictures with him unaware, so it wasn't his intention to make those pictures.
I think a work has to be the product of creativity to be applicable for copyright (it does in Danish law, anyway). That is why the AACS encryption code could not be covered by copyright.
They also got a pass from a lot of geek types since they were "against Microsoft." They figured anyone who opposed MS in any way, no matter how minor, had to be a good guy. They never looked in to it past that. The love of the underdog and the dislike of MS meant Apple could do no wrong and they needn't look deeper.
A market with two power-hungry, totalitarian companies is slightly better than a market with only one. With the competition between the two, they are forced to make less locked down products than if there was only one. So it can make some sense to root for the underdog, even if he is as bad as the overdog. Not that the level of cheering for Apple among geeks was at that level.
AFAIR, there wouldn't be a case if the code had been written down, then it would be a physical object which the police could demand getting. So yes, it does very much seem that that bizarre situation is the situation in USA, and have been for some years.
I wasn't talking about verifying the system, I was talking about using the number to decide court cases. About using it to evaluate whether the evidence was heavy enough to warrant punishing somebody. Sure, "is it more likely than X% that this person is guilty?" is a hard question, but today, we have two questions "how much is doubt is reasonable?" and "is it more likely than the answer of the preceding question that this person is guilty". Only the first question we have today is about ethics, the latter is about probability and evidence.
All I am asking for is that we don't reduce ethics to bon mots, but actually discuss it seriously and make it apply evenly in stead of arbitrarily. After all, isn't that the ethical thing to do?
[...] the number isn't important. It's just an illustration of the legal doctrine of presumed innocence.
But the number IS important, it defines what level of presumption of innocence our judicial system has. This is a fundamental question, and yet is isn't defined anywhere. I would assume that different people found different levels of doubt reasonable, so not defining it just leads to arbitrary justice, depending on what the particular jury or judge finds reasonable.
Why is 100 the number? Why not 1000? or 10? How many guilty people must we accept go free to make sure that one innocent doesn't get punished? If it is infinitely worse to punish one innocent, we should just close down the police and courts, as we can never be 100%, totally, without doubt certain of anybodies guilt. If it is zero, we should start putting everybody in prison, to make sure we get everybody who is guilty.
I think we can agree that none of these scenarios are good societies, so we need to aim for something in between. But what level of doubt should be enough for not punishing a person? Until that question is answered, the phrase about a hundred guilty going free is just words that sounds nice.
I was sure it was the other way around, and I even checked wikipedia before posting just to be absolutely sure. I don't really get how I could do that thorough a misread.
The working mechanism is different, alum is an astringent, making you sweat less. The less moist environment not as suitable for germs. Alum (or a close chemical relative, aluminium chlorohydrate) is an ingredient in most deodorants for exactly that reason. Alum works great at stopping small wounds from bleeding, such as after shaving.
GP is probably referring to high concentrations of manufactured chemicals that are intentionally designed to be toxic. Microbes will adapt to those much faster than we will.
Which was why GGP brought up the microbe foot cancer?
And, again I seem to have been misinformed: The lists have so far been made by the police, not the courts, and are secret (apparently not subject to FOIA, though I am not sure whether that is because the people requesting them are not thought to be parts in the case). I think they have been leaked by wikileaks, though.
Yes, the rest of the world will ramp up production in response to rising prices from a ban on exports. However, this does not happen overnight. IIRC, it will take about a decade for a production to fully ramp up, which is quite a long time to have limited access to rare earths.
So, if these things aren't (weren't) socialist, what is? I don't see any non-true-Scotsman way to define it so that these countries aren't included and anything this side of the global revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat is. And we already have several words for what is on the other side of $name_of _rapture_in_particular_religion$, the two most common being heaven and utopia, so I don't see the need for another. In that case, why not use the word "socialist" for the kind of society inevitably made by people who set out to make a socialist society*?
*except for groups small enough for social pressure to be an effective control mechanism, e.g. families and small collectives.
I don't think it will be a huge cost for the ISP, as far as I can tell, we have something like that in Denmark. The ISPs have court orders to block e.g. piratebay and allofmp3.com. The ISPs do this by removing the entries in their DNSes. In stead, it redirects to a page saying what a bad place you just tried to access. The ISPs have not been up in arms over it, so I don't think it is that expensive.
It is censorship, though. These pages host many things that is definitely legal, and that is blocked as well. Of course, circumventing the block is as easy as pointing your computer or router to a DNS working correctly, but how many people know how to do that?
You are right, the three-body collision is far to unlikely (and thus slow) for energy production in stars (and we are talking about furnaces whose first step is the mind-bogglingly slow H-1+H-1->H-2). Be-8 is extremely unstable (halflife 7*10^-17 s), but it exists just long enough to make the pseudo-three-body collision slightly probable.
The carbon produced from He-4+Be-8->C-12 must have to low energy to decay, as it was just made from 3*He-4. And, even if most of it did decay, it would just revert to the starting materials, making the process that much slower.
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As a side note supporting this theory, given the effects of the sun's rays, light pigmentation isn't likely to be something that would evolve naturally over time)
Avoiding chronic vitamin D deficiency is a pretty good reason to evolve light pigmentation. It is all fine and good as long as you are somewhere sunny, but up here in the cold, dark north, you need all the vitamin D you can get, to hell with skin cancer. Of course, farther north, the thinner ozone layer pushes towards darker pigmentation again.
It isn't my impression that human communities tend to favour mating with adjacent groups, most new tribes discovered tends to favour throwing whatever death-inducing sharp object they have handy after foreigners. Of course, that might explain why they are still there to discover, the tribes that favour interbreeding stays discovered after the first contact, the more aggressive tribes tend to get undiscovered rather quickly (say, at the speed they can throw a poisoned spear).
OK. I guess that makes much more sense than what I thought was the case. Thanks.
And how does the government show it tolerates people from different cultures? By giving them extra or fewer rights. In Britain, Sikhs have the right to drive motorcycle without a helmet, people of other religions haven't. In the EU, people who are of certain religions have the right to wear headgear on the photos in their drivers license and passports, people not of those religions haven't. This is multiculturalism, and it is about what rights people have.
Multiculturalism isn't dead (unfortunately), even though it has been a massive failure from an integration viewpoint. Britain has had the most multicultural politics in Europe, most muslims in Britain doesn't see themselves as British. In France, the state sees individuals, not cultures, and a majority of the muslims in France see themselves as French. For some reason, the European countries are copying Britain in stead of France in their integration politics**.
** The example you gave is not what I thinks should be copied from France, banning clothes is a violation of the freedom of speech, and not something free societies should be doing.
That was beautiful goal-post moving. I mean, "mocking religious people"->"mocking religion", I wouldn't have discovered that, if not for the fact that people do it EVERY SINGLE TIME this subject is discussed.
Religion deserves mocking if people use it to get special rights or to influence politics (remember, Pastafarianism was started because of Creationism).
Anyway, I see this story as more about mocking authorities who give special rights to religious people than it is mocking of religion. If he wears the colander every day, and points out that he does it because of his religion, that would be mocking religion. If he only wears it for taking his drivers license photo, then it is mocking the fact that religious groups have special rights.
This isn't about mocking religious people, this is about mocking multiculturalism, the idea that peoples rights should be affected by their religion or culture. It is clearly antithetical to the idea of a free society, and it restricts people from evolving their culture, but somehow, the powers that be need help to see that.
In this case, the right to choose what headgear to wear on your official photo is restricted if you don't belong to a particular religion. Either it is important that people don't wear headgear on official photos (to make recognition easier), and nobody should be allowed to wear headgear, or it isn't important, and everybody should be allowed to.
A photo of a painting taken to replicate the painting as closely as possible, even if it requires great technical skill for lighting and such, is not a creative work, but an uncopyrightable derivative of the painting.
I thought that the photographer explicitly had the copyright of the photo in this situation. Are you saying that if I take a photo of a painting in a museum, the photo is covered by the painters copyright?
The passer-by (damn, I read that yesterday in an article about this story, but now I can't find it).
With respect to your point, I would agree if he had given the camera to the monkeys, but AFAICT, the monkeys took the pictures with him unaware, so it wasn't his intention to make those pictures.
I think a work has to be the product of creativity to be applicable for copyright (it does in Danish law, anyway). That is why the AACS encryption code could not be covered by copyright.
They also got a pass from a lot of geek types since they were "against Microsoft." They figured anyone who opposed MS in any way, no matter how minor, had to be a good guy. They never looked in to it past that. The love of the underdog and the dislike of MS meant Apple could do no wrong and they needn't look deeper.
A market with two power-hungry, totalitarian companies is slightly better than a market with only one. With the competition between the two, they are forced to make less locked down products than if there was only one. So it can make some sense to root for the underdog, even if he is as bad as the overdog. Not that the level of cheering for Apple among geeks was at that level.
AFAIR, there wouldn't be a case if the code had been written down, then it would be a physical object which the police could demand getting. So yes, it does very much seem that that bizarre situation is the situation in USA, and have been for some years.
I wasn't talking about verifying the system, I was talking about using the number to decide court cases. About using it to evaluate whether the evidence was heavy enough to warrant punishing somebody. Sure, "is it more likely than X% that this person is guilty?" is a hard question, but today, we have two questions "how much is doubt is reasonable?" and "is it more likely than the answer of the preceding question that this person is guilty". Only the first question we have today is about ethics, the latter is about probability and evidence.
All I am asking for is that we don't reduce ethics to bon mots, but actually discuss it seriously and make it apply evenly in stead of arbitrarily. After all, isn't that the ethical thing to do?
[...] the number isn't important. It's just an illustration of the legal doctrine of presumed innocence.
But the number IS important, it defines what level of presumption of innocence our judicial system has. This is a fundamental question, and yet is isn't defined anywhere. I would assume that different people found different levels of doubt reasonable, so not defining it just leads to arbitrary justice, depending on what the particular jury or judge finds reasonable.
Why is 100 the number? Why not 1000? or 10? How many guilty people must we accept go free to make sure that one innocent doesn't get punished?
If it is infinitely worse to punish one innocent, we should just close down the police and courts, as we can never be 100%, totally, without doubt certain of anybodies guilt.
If it is zero, we should start putting everybody in prison, to make sure we get everybody who is guilty.
I think we can agree that none of these scenarios are good societies, so we need to aim for something in between. But what level of doubt should be enough for not punishing a person? Until that question is answered, the phrase about a hundred guilty going free is just words that sounds nice.
Sure, not that much new information is made by the net, but it sure is represented by a lot of data. Or, that is how I would use the terms, YMMV.
I was sure it was the other way around, and I even checked wikipedia before posting just to be absolutely sure. I don't really get how I could do that thorough a misread.
Anyway, I stand corrected.
The working mechanism is different, alum is an astringent, making you sweat less. The less moist environment not as suitable for germs. Alum (or a close chemical relative, aluminium chlorohydrate) is an ingredient in most deodorants for exactly that reason. Alum works great at stopping small wounds from bleeding, such as after shaving.
No, plastic footwear invariably reek, leather sandals don't (unless we are talking about the smell of leather).
GP is probably referring to high concentrations of manufactured chemicals that are intentionally designed to be toxic. Microbes will adapt to those much faster than we will.
Which was why GGP brought up the microbe foot cancer?
Even if they did evolve to survive 70% alcohol, they probably wouldn't be fit to survive in the human body any more.
And, again I seem to have been misinformed: The lists have so far been made by the police, not the courts, and are secret (apparently not subject to FOIA, though I am not sure whether that is because the people requesting them are not thought to be parts in the case). I think they have been leaked by wikileaks, though.
Yes, the rest of the world will ramp up production in response to rising prices from a ban on exports. However, this does not happen overnight. IIRC, it will take about a decade for a production to fully ramp up, which is quite a long time to have limited access to rare earths.
So, if these things aren't (weren't) socialist, what is? I don't see any non-true-Scotsman way to define it so that these countries aren't included and anything this side of the global revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat is. And we already have several words for what is on the other side of $name_of _rapture_in_particular_religion$, the two most common being heaven and utopia, so I don't see the need for another. In that case, why not use the word "socialist" for the kind of society inevitably made by people who set out to make a socialist society*?
*except for groups small enough for social pressure to be an effective control mechanism, e.g. families and small collectives.
I don't think it will be a huge cost for the ISP, as far as I can tell, we have something like that in Denmark. The ISPs have court orders to block e.g. piratebay and allofmp3.com. The ISPs do this by removing the entries in their DNSes. In stead, it redirects to a page saying what a bad place you just tried to access. The ISPs have not been up in arms over it, so I don't think it is that expensive.
It is censorship, though. These pages host many things that is definitely legal, and that is blocked as well. Of course, circumventing the block is as easy as pointing your computer or router to a DNS working correctly, but how many people know how to do that?
You are right, the three-body collision is far to unlikely (and thus slow) for energy production in stars (and we are talking about furnaces whose first step is the mind-bogglingly slow H-1+H-1->H-2). Be-8 is extremely unstable (halflife 7*10^-17 s), but it exists just long enough to make the pseudo-three-body collision slightly probable.
The carbon produced from He-4+Be-8->C-12 must have to low energy to decay, as it was just made from 3*He-4. And, even if most of it did decay, it would just revert to the starting materials, making the process that much slower.