That and their job isn't to make the ghettos safe. It SHOULD be, but it clearly isn't, or else you'd see a sharp decline in the number of cops patrolling shopping and tourist districts and enforcing parking, and they'd all be where the crime is.
In some areas, it's clearly their job to ignore it as much as possible, so as to keep it contained to areas where voters and people with money don't go.
You sound as if you're suggesting it's a wider problem, but it sounds like that's proof it really doesn't matter: society works fine with different languages spoken. People figure out how to communicate with each other when need be, and it doesn't seem like China or the US are on the verge of fracturing.
It's bad enough that environmentalists helped prevent nuclear power, which would have prevented climate change, now they're standing in the way of reversing climate change.
I think their intentions are good, much better than the buisiness lobby, but the road to a hot as hell earth...
That doesn't make the findings impossible. The genetic variation is known or could be estimated given the demographics of a person's locale, and you could compare the profile of expected (if friend making was completely random) to actual pretty easily. If they don't match up, then there's some selection going on.
For example, if you're white and live in the bronx, and significantly less than half of your local friends are hispanic, then obviously race factors into who you make friends with in some way. You could do the same thing with genetic markers.
I'm talking about geoengineering, not whether or not climate change is happening.
If you want, I'll put you on the list of "people to debate with over arguments that have been basically settled among sane folks," but I have to warn you, it's going to be a while before I get done with all the creationists first.
I'm surprised by the complete lack of the fourth side: "How about we start taking steps to turn the thermostat back down."
It seems to me that geoengineering methods like iron fertilization are worth, you know, investigating. Instead we seem to be prohibiting any reasonable experiments, with regulations being passed preventing it in the UN.
I understand skepticism that humans can fix their environmental mistakes, so I'm not saying "start dumping tons of iron into the sea and hope for the best," but it needs to be studied to prevent further climate change.
Does it matter? My point is the ACLU and NRA aren't in opposition to each other, and it's not shocking that they'd be on the same side of something. The ACLU doesn't hate guns.
In 2006, the ACLU of Washington State joined with a pro-gun rights organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, and prevailed in a lawsuit against the North Central Regional Library District (NCRL) in Washington for its policy of refusing to disable restrictions upon an adult patron's request. Library patrons attempting to access pro-gun web sites were blocked, and the library refused to remove the blocks...
In light of the Supreme Court's Heller decision recognizing that the Constitution protects an individual right to bear arms, ACLU of Nevada took a position of supporting "the individual's right to bear arms subject to constitutionally permissible regulations" and pledged to "defend this right as it defends other constitutional rights".[298] Since 2008, the ACLU has increasingly assisted gun owners recover firearms that have been seized illegally by law enforcement.
It's more of a cultural divide than a ideological divide between the two. The ACLU really isn't pro gun control. Look at their wikipedia page. They've opposed several gun control measures based on privacy issues.
I know some gun rights advocates dislike them for their stated interpretation of the second amendment, but I really can't fathom how they get upset at that position. Nor can I understand how gun rights advocates get mad at them for not really working to uphold the second amendment. The NRA is a more powerful organization than the ACLU and exclusively concerns itself with the second amendment. The group to get mad at for picking and choosing amendments I think is the NRA, though I think the present story indicates how dumb it is to set up an adversarial relationship with other rights groups. It's us vs the government, not second amendment activists vs other amendment activists.
Anyway, it's sadly conservatives vs liberals, which is arguably dumber even than disagreeing about which amendments are most important. But on the bright side, it looks like maybe both are teaming up against big brother.
I am paranoid about Monsanto and the government as much as the next guy on the internet, but that's way too tinfoil hat for me.
First off, show me a poison that is specific enough for any ethnic group. We all have basically the same biochemistry. I've never heard of a poison that specifically works against even one SPECIES let alone one race. If you eat rat poison, you're going to die even though you're not a rat. If it's in everyone's food, it's going to have effects on everyone, and the plot will become obvious.
Second, Monsanto isn't likely to let any government do that. Not because they care about the consumers' health, because they wouldn't want THEIR name associated with poisoning or genocide. Security letters be damned.
Lastly, the problem in your scenario isn't ability to create a new protein, it's poisining the food chain.
I don't think this is what the usual "foot in mouth" or whatever it's called when a politician, required by the media to be talking 24 hours a day for about a year, inevitably proves human and something comes out wrong or is wrong. This was intentional. The mistake, if there was one, was thinking no one would notice.
To their credit, if it's more complex than "THIS politician made a cuss and the microphone picked it up!" or "Someone said this politician rubbed their genitals against someone else's genitals, and NOT THE PERSON THEY MARRIED!!!" the media usually WILL ignore it, along with everyone else.
a devious virus can kill an entire population with a cough.
There's a saying "The dumbest kidney is smarter than the smartest doctor." I took a virology course in undergrad. I quickly concluded that viruses were far more clever than any team of humans could come up with. I wouldn't worry about someone designing some amazing killer virus just yet: the US government still has smallpox hanging around. Plus, while a single nuke might only blow up a large chunk of land, there are how many thousand out there?
You pointed out two examples of strong poisons that already exist. So that's not really a unique danger there. Delivery is still the bigger issue. If you can put computer designed protein poisons in my food and get me to eat it, you could do so with natural poisons.
Besides mad cow disease is already ancient history. What could possibly go wrong?
Uh... were you ACTUALLY asking what could possibly go wrong? Because that's usually sarcastic.
If it was sarcasm, you realize that the real danger from mad cow is economic. If people freak out and stop eating beef overnight. We could certainly stand to eat less beef, it could be better for the environment and national health, and would over the long-term probably improve the economy, (depending on what we replace it with), but if we SUDDENLY stopped eating beef nationally, that would be a severe blow to the agriculture and restaurant industries, and would have some pretty dire economic reprecussions.
Anyway, I don't understand what mad cow has to do with anything either way. Less than a thousand people have died of mad cow, it's not really much of a concern for medicine.
Doping testing as well. Performance enhancing drugs that are not proteins, this really doesn't immediately change anything there. Performing enhancing drugs that ARE proteins (are there any?), biologists and doctors have many tricks up our sleeves to identify proteins, so I'm not really seeing how that would change either.
I have a rule that if some statement can fit on a bumper sticker, it's not a very accurate reflection of a universal truth. Unless it's a math equation.
MLK's legacy has largely been decimated by those who claim to support him the most.
Funny, I didn't think the Supreme Court claimed to be one of MLKs supporters when they ruled on the Voting Rights Act.
People like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who are now seen as civil rights leaders, basically threw that out completely.and shit on it at almost every turn. Groups like the NAACP are pushing for criminal prosecution of, for example, the rodeo clown who made fun of Obama, even though people in much bigger areas of the limelight have done much worse things to make fun of other presidents. George Zimmerman would never have seen prosecution if he was black or Trayvon was white; guilty or not the evidence just wasn't there which is why they originally chose not to prosecute, and only did so after pressure from racial groups, which goes to show that in America, now the only requirement for prosecution is that public opinion be against you regardless of whether or not you can be proven guilty.
And that has what to do with MLK and civil rights? Is the connection that they are all black people? Are you suggesting that black people have been acting so badly in the media that somehow they have lost civil rights? I'm honestly confused. It's not simply "I can't stand people who claim to represent civil rights these days," is it? Because I really can't stand most activists of any stripe, from civil rights to low taxes to free software to critical mass bikers.
It seems to take a particularly irritating personality to care about something so much that you want to change society. So lets not act as if civil rights activists today are particularly annoying.
And how are programs like affirmative action following in that spirit? They tell you that, for example, if you have slanted eyes then you immediately deserve lower preference than anybody, but if you have black skin then you automatically get to be first in line.
Affirmative action is ideally correcting a recurring problem in society, not simply giving a boost to all minorities. So I think the basis for people saying Asians shouldn't be covered by affirmative action would say "They're doing fine as is." For black people, on the other hand, the argument would be there's a cycle of not having opportunities from generation to generation.
I'm not claiming to know anything about whether or not black people are disadvantaged while asians have enough advantages, I'm explicitly steering clear of that, I'm just pointing out the argument is more complex than "your skin is not white so you should get first choice of jobs and education," and consequently, it's not as hypocritical as you're making it out to be.
Wrong trope there. It's not "get off my lawn," that's something you say when you feel old and grumpy. I'm not sure we have a saying for indicating you are aware you're caring way too much about word choice. Maybe "Sorry for getting so upset about words."?
So, you're criticizing Assange and (sigh) dotcom for being attention whores? For not being saints?
I literally just shit my pants so much that my whole colon came out and shot through the wall in shock. And then the rest of my internal organs followed when I realized that might mean that people who are less than perfect could potentially be elected into office.
I mean, my God, they might sully the good name of elected officials! They might make decisions which are not necessarily in the best interests of everyone! They might have sex while in office with people who are not their spouses and in positions which are not missionary! They might make headlines for things which are not "Kim Dotcom and Julian Assange quietly achieve world peace and nuclear fusion." There might be annoying headlines about things they do! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!
Also, the "crime" matters a great deal. Is it a voting scam, bribery, or genocide? Then that's a bad choice. Is the "fraud" that he ignored draconian copyright laws written by the MAFIAA? Hey, that ain't no crime in my book. Even if he is kind of a douche, which I don't think he actually is, I'd vote for him.
He should campaign as the Robin Hood of intellectual property laws.
Having a fiscal duty to make their shareholders money doesn't change the ethics or ridiculousness of the situation. It simply explains what their goals are. They should still be shamed. You only point out that their shareholders should ALSO be shamed. Their "buisiness model" isn't under attack here anyway. The order songs play in isn't their business model.
If they think they're going to sell CDs in this day and age, they're idiots who should not be allowed to handle money. No, this is one middleman trying to squeeze every last penny they can from the next middleman.
Airlines are close to Hollywood in terms of their ability to squeeze every last half-penny out of the transaction. I'd bet good money they calculated that fixing the problem would cost them more than they'd make. It might be based on really stupid things, like assuming you wouldn't change airlines because of misplaced bags (though... it sounds like you didn't for at least a dozen times.) It might be due to really annoying reasons like TSA won't let them move bags faster, or unions prevent them from eliminating unnecessary baggage handlers or something.
Short-sighted greed, dumb regulations, and customers/voters who put up with it are what I think cause most airport annoyances, not failing to consider solutions.
Slashdot Mirror
That and their job isn't to make the ghettos safe. It SHOULD be, but it clearly isn't, or else you'd see a sharp decline in the number of cops patrolling shopping and tourist districts and enforcing parking, and they'd all be where the crime is.
In some areas, it's clearly their job to ignore it as much as possible, so as to keep it contained to areas where voters and people with money don't go.
You sound as if you're suggesting it's a wider problem, but it sounds like that's proof it really doesn't matter: society works fine with different languages spoken. People figure out how to communicate with each other when need be, and it doesn't seem like China or the US are on the verge of fracturing.
I might forgive it were it not doing that fucking "put content across 10 pages!!!" thing.
Techspot: fuck you and fuck your attempts to make your articles worth ten times as much without actually doing ten times more work.
It's bad enough that environmentalists helped prevent nuclear power, which would have prevented climate change, now they're standing in the way of reversing climate change.
I think their intentions are good, much better than the buisiness lobby, but the road to a hot as hell earth...
That doesn't make the findings impossible. The genetic variation is known or could be estimated given the demographics of a person's locale, and you could compare the profile of expected (if friend making was completely random) to actual pretty easily. If they don't match up, then there's some selection going on.
For example, if you're white and live in the bronx, and significantly less than half of your local friends are hispanic, then obviously race factors into who you make friends with in some way. You could do the same thing with genetic markers.
I'm talking about geoengineering, not whether or not climate change is happening.
If you want, I'll put you on the list of "people to debate with over arguments that have been basically settled among sane folks," but I have to warn you, it's going to be a while before I get done with all the creationists first.
I'm surprised by the complete lack of the fourth side: "How about we start taking steps to turn the thermostat back down."
It seems to me that geoengineering methods like iron fertilization are worth, you know, investigating. Instead we seem to be prohibiting any reasonable experiments, with regulations being passed preventing it in the UN.
I understand skepticism that humans can fix their environmental mistakes, so I'm not saying "start dumping tons of iron into the sea and hope for the best," but it needs to be studied to prevent further climate change.
Does it matter? My point is the ACLU and NRA aren't in opposition to each other, and it's not shocking that they'd be on the same side of something. The ACLU doesn't hate guns.
In 2006, the ACLU of Washington State joined with a pro-gun rights organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, and prevailed in a lawsuit against the North Central Regional Library District (NCRL) in Washington for its policy of refusing to disable restrictions upon an adult patron's request. Library patrons attempting to access pro-gun web sites were blocked, and the library refused to remove the blocks...
In light of the Supreme Court's Heller decision recognizing that the Constitution protects an individual right to bear arms, ACLU of Nevada took a position of supporting "the individual's right to bear arms subject to constitutionally permissible regulations" and pledged to "defend this right as it defends other constitutional rights".[298] Since 2008, the ACLU has increasingly assisted gun owners recover firearms that have been seized illegally by law enforcement.
wiki Even more relevant and recently, they opposed creating a national database of background checks this year, evidently because of medical information.
It's more of a cultural divide than a ideological divide between the two. The ACLU really isn't pro gun control. Look at their wikipedia page. They've opposed several gun control measures based on privacy issues.
I know some gun rights advocates dislike them for their stated interpretation of the second amendment, but I really can't fathom how they get upset at that position. Nor can I understand how gun rights advocates get mad at them for not really working to uphold the second amendment. The NRA is a more powerful organization than the ACLU and exclusively concerns itself with the second amendment. The group to get mad at for picking and choosing amendments I think is the NRA, though I think the present story indicates how dumb it is to set up an adversarial relationship with other rights groups. It's us vs the government, not second amendment activists vs other amendment activists.
Anyway, it's sadly conservatives vs liberals, which is arguably dumber even than disagreeing about which amendments are most important. But on the bright side, it looks like maybe both are teaming up against big brother.
I am paranoid about Monsanto and the government as much as the next guy on the internet, but that's way too tinfoil hat for me.
First off, show me a poison that is specific enough for any ethnic group. We all have basically the same biochemistry. I've never heard of a poison that specifically works against even one SPECIES let alone one race. If you eat rat poison, you're going to die even though you're not a rat. If it's in everyone's food, it's going to have effects on everyone, and the plot will become obvious.
Second, Monsanto isn't likely to let any government do that. Not because they care about the consumers' health, because they wouldn't want THEIR name associated with poisoning or genocide. Security letters be damned.
Lastly, the problem in your scenario isn't ability to create a new protein, it's poisining the food chain.
I don't think this is what the usual "foot in mouth" or whatever it's called when a politician, required by the media to be talking 24 hours a day for about a year, inevitably proves human and something comes out wrong or is wrong. This was intentional. The mistake, if there was one, was thinking no one would notice.
To their credit, if it's more complex than "THIS politician made a cuss and the microphone picked it up!" or "Someone said this politician rubbed their genitals against someone else's genitals, and NOT THE PERSON THEY MARRIED!!!" the media usually WILL ignore it, along with everyone else.
I guess it's true: MS has become the underdog and google has become "the man." Slashdot likes an underdog and hates the man.
Alternatively, someone still likes to troll and knows how to push slashdot's buttons with the pro-MS stuff.
a devious virus can kill an entire population with a cough.
There's a saying "The dumbest kidney is smarter than the smartest doctor." I took a virology course in undergrad. I quickly concluded that viruses were far more clever than any team of humans could come up with. I wouldn't worry about someone designing some amazing killer virus just yet: the US government still has smallpox hanging around. Plus, while a single nuke might only blow up a large chunk of land, there are how many thousand out there?
You pointed out two examples of strong poisons that already exist. So that's not really a unique danger there. Delivery is still the bigger issue. If you can put computer designed protein poisons in my food and get me to eat it, you could do so with natural poisons.
Besides mad cow disease is already ancient history. What could possibly go wrong?
Uh... were you ACTUALLY asking what could possibly go wrong? Because that's usually sarcastic.
If it was sarcasm, you realize that the real danger from mad cow is economic. If people freak out and stop eating beef overnight. We could certainly stand to eat less beef, it could be better for the environment and national health, and would over the long-term probably improve the economy, (depending on what we replace it with), but if we SUDDENLY stopped eating beef nationally, that would be a severe blow to the agriculture and restaurant industries, and would have some pretty dire economic reprecussions.
Anyway, I don't understand what mad cow has to do with anything either way. Less than a thousand people have died of mad cow, it's not really much of a concern for medicine.
Doping testing as well. Performance enhancing drugs that are not proteins, this really doesn't immediately change anything there. Performing enhancing drugs that ARE proteins (are there any?), biologists and doctors have many tricks up our sleeves to identify proteins, so I'm not really seeing how that would change either.
Sports? No car metaphor? You must be new here.
Also, steroids aren't proteins.
I have a rule that if some statement can fit on a bumper sticker, it's not a very accurate reflection of a universal truth. Unless it's a math equation.
MLK's legacy has largely been decimated by those who claim to support him the most.
Funny, I didn't think the Supreme Court claimed to be one of MLKs supporters when they ruled on the Voting Rights Act.
People like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who are now seen as civil rights leaders, basically threw that out completely.and shit on it at almost every turn. Groups like the NAACP are pushing for criminal prosecution of, for example, the rodeo clown who made fun of Obama, even though people in much bigger areas of the limelight have done much worse things to make fun of other presidents. George Zimmerman would never have seen prosecution if he was black or Trayvon was white; guilty or not the evidence just wasn't there which is why they originally chose not to prosecute, and only did so after pressure from racial groups, which goes to show that in America, now the only requirement for prosecution is that public opinion be against you regardless of whether or not you can be proven guilty.
And that has what to do with MLK and civil rights? Is the connection that they are all black people? Are you suggesting that black people have been acting so badly in the media that somehow they have lost civil rights? I'm honestly confused. It's not simply "I can't stand people who claim to represent civil rights these days," is it? Because I really can't stand most activists of any stripe, from civil rights to low taxes to free software to critical mass bikers.
It seems to take a particularly irritating personality to care about something so much that you want to change society. So lets not act as if civil rights activists today are particularly annoying.
And how are programs like affirmative action following in that spirit? They tell you that, for example, if you have slanted eyes then you immediately deserve lower preference than anybody, but if you have black skin then you automatically get to be first in line.
Affirmative action is ideally correcting a recurring problem in society, not simply giving a boost to all minorities. So I think the basis for people saying Asians shouldn't be covered by affirmative action would say "They're doing fine as is." For black people, on the other hand, the argument would be there's a cycle of not having opportunities from generation to generation.
I'm not claiming to know anything about whether or not black people are disadvantaged while asians have enough advantages, I'm explicitly steering clear of that, I'm just pointing out the argument is more complex than "your skin is not white so you should get first choice of jobs and education," and consequently, it's not as hypocritical as you're making it out to be.
Wrong trope there. It's not "get off my lawn," that's something you say when you feel old and grumpy. I'm not sure we have a saying for indicating you are aware you're caring way too much about word choice. Maybe "Sorry for getting so upset about words."?
So, you're criticizing Assange and (sigh) dotcom for being attention whores? For not being saints?
I literally just shit my pants so much that my whole colon came out and shot through the wall in shock. And then the rest of my internal organs followed when I realized that might mean that people who are less than perfect could potentially be elected into office.
I mean, my God, they might sully the good name of elected officials! They might make decisions which are not necessarily in the best interests of everyone! They might have sex while in office with people who are not their spouses and in positions which are not missionary! They might make headlines for things which are not "Kim Dotcom and Julian Assange quietly achieve world peace and nuclear fusion." There might be annoying headlines about things they do! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!
Also, the "crime" matters a great deal. Is it a voting scam, bribery, or genocide? Then that's a bad choice. Is the "fraud" that he ignored draconian copyright laws written by the MAFIAA? Hey, that ain't no crime in my book. Even if he is kind of a douche, which I don't think he actually is, I'd vote for him.
He should campaign as the Robin Hood of intellectual property laws.
Having a fiscal duty to make their shareholders money doesn't change the ethics or ridiculousness of the situation. It simply explains what their goals are. They should still be shamed. You only point out that their shareholders should ALSO be shamed. Their "buisiness model" isn't under attack here anyway. The order songs play in isn't their business model.
If they think they're going to sell CDs in this day and age, they're idiots who should not be allowed to handle money. No, this is one middleman trying to squeeze every last penny they can from the next middleman.
Airlines are close to Hollywood in terms of their ability to squeeze every last half-penny out of the transaction. I'd bet good money they calculated that fixing the problem would cost them more than they'd make. It might be based on really stupid things, like assuming you wouldn't change airlines because of misplaced bags (though... it sounds like you didn't for at least a dozen times.) It might be due to really annoying reasons like TSA won't let them move bags faster, or unions prevent them from eliminating unnecessary baggage handlers or something.
Short-sighted greed, dumb regulations, and customers/voters who put up with it are what I think cause most airport annoyances, not failing to consider solutions.