That's a very good point. However, if you notice, the author of this article is not the one making the claim that social media will do the promoting. Rather, he is trying to debunk that very claim as made by others. Apparently, quite a few folks feel the the social media revolution has, or will, revolutionize the way people organize to make change. There have even been books written about this. The author is making the point that social media can only be used as a tool to make change where there is little risk for those involved in the movement. For any change that requires real risk, social media is an inadequate tool because the ties formed through social media are not binding enough to give protesters enough confidence. So the miscategorization of the role of social media is not so much on the side of the author, but rather on the side of those that he is attempting to rebuff.
Did you read the article at all? The author goes into great length about the Iranian Twitter protests and just why they didn't matter. Specifically, the author seems to think that the massive amount of Tehran protesting was actually being done by Westerners outside of the country while the Iranians themselves were not organizing with Twitter as much as was hyped:
Here's the relevant bit of the article:
In the Iranian case, meanwhile, the people tweeting about the demonstrations were almost all in the West. “It is time to get Twitter’s role in the events in Iran right,” Golnaz Esfandiari wrote, this past summer, in Foreign Policy. “Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran.” The cadre of prominent bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, who championed the role of social media in Iran, Esfandiari continued, misunderstood the situation. “Western journalists who couldn’t reach—or didn’t bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection,” she wrote. “Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi.”
So to summarize, the actual protests in Iran were being organized locally, whereas Twitter was simply used by Western media to cover the event because, well, Westerners don't live in Iran. I know it's not typical MOD for 'dotters to RTFA, but in this case, the article was well written and very thorough. I would highly suggest taking the time to read through the entire thing.
Interesting, I'd never heard of those correlations or statistics. Do you have any references for that data? Or did it come from a text book from some old college class you took awhile back? I'd be very curious to read those studies.
Why did this article make it to the front page again?
Because it falls right in line with the, "We're all screwed. The world is going to end. Tomorrow is worse than yesterday. The fall of civilization is on the horizon. DOD has adopted perl as its primary nuclear arsenal launch control language..." theme that is so prevalent in news these days.
...people who do not have altered genes are societally disadvantaged.
I think it would be more apt to say that those without altered genes would be physically disadvantaged. Socially speaking, the opposite may be true. Consider the fact that, historically, humans react negatively to those folks who are considered different. If gene alterations in offspring start occurring intentionally, then for quite awhile, the mass majority of people will still be natural-borns, if you will. As such, if there is any social discrimination (i.e. distinction based on gene manipulation) it will probably begin as a movement of the natural-borns discriminating against the genetically-derived. For quite awhile, therefore, it will be those whom are genetically derived that will be socially disadvantaged. Of course, a day may come when the genetically-derived have their own civil rights movement and, after a few generations of discrimination and hardship, they may win their social equality amongst their natural-born peers. Only after such a revolution occurs would it start to become possible for being a natural-born to be socially disadvantaged, because, until that point, all those natural-borns that already existed will remain sure that their means of birth was the better way all along. Historically speaking, at least, this is how socially advantaged/disadvantaged conflicts occur at least.
Considering that a human's height is derived primarily from there bone dimensions (at least, I think that's the case), this would make sense. Frankly I would have been more surprised to find out that there was one master 'bone gene' that proportionally scaled all bone structures in the body.
Well those are great ideals, if only they were true and the politicians actually voted and acted in the manner you described.
So far as I've seen, Democrats are just as likely to infringe on civil liberties (or uphold infringement laws from previous administrations) as Republicans are. So far as I've seen, Democrats are just as likely to sell out the interests of citizens in favor of large social entities (albeit, sometimes different entities, like military contractors vs. Hollywood contractors). So far as I've seen both Democrats and Republicans are far more likely to vote for bills that involve allocating a few hundred thousand dollars to their petty little pet projects in their communities rather than investing in serious, progressive R&D research. So far as I've seen both Democrats and Republicans are perfectly willing to politicize science in order to make any issue they want a divisive one such that the citizenry develops an us vs. them mentality thus preventing any potential agreement for social progress.
Hell, so far as I can tell Democrats and Republicans are both so likely to throw the US citizen under the bus just to get their next fix of $$$ that they might as well just combine into one united "Fuck the people!" party and do us all the favor of ceasing the charade that they represent citizens' interests in any manner whatsoever. So yeah, keep telling yourself that one party is less evil than the other. In the mean time, you might want to go buy a bottle of lubrication for next time your pseudo-corporatist overlords want to bend you over and whisper in your ear that it's for your best interest.
Yeah, dietary studies are always interesting to read up on. That is one science that I don't spend much effort researching but would probably benefit me more. For now, my modus operandi is to keep my metabolism sky high by leading an extremely active lifestyle. This gives me the freedom to eat what I want (within reason) without fluctuating in weight too much. Being young probably helps a lot on that front.
Well, liquids are heavy and a pain in the ass to transport into space. Suppose that one day a commercial company (like Bigelow) actually does establish an on-orbit space hotel type thing. If they do that, what makes more sense? Keep ferrying hundreds of lbs of liquid to the hotel weekly? Or would it be better to lug a few bulky pieces of equipment up to space once and then brew the beer there? The added bonus is that most of the ingredients, besides water which the hotel needs anyways, for beer are actually solid. This makes them easier to transport in bulk quantities to orbit on a regular basis (liquids slosh and their CG's make for a pain in the ass control systems problem). So which is better, brewing on orbit or ferrying finished product? To be honest, I don't know. However, were I going to place my business profits on choosing one or the other, I would definitely want to look into both options in depth first.
Oh you stupid asshat! Will you stop with all the retarded, "My party is better than your party BS?" Both parties suck equally and you know it. You think only Republicans were trying to derail this bill? You're completely, totally, and utterly wrong. Here, take a look at this from the Spaceflightnow write up on this particular news bit:
Speaking on the House floor before the vote Wednesday, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, said the legislation "lacks serious budgetary discipline" and includes an "unfunded mandate to keep the shuttle program going through all of fiscal year 2011 even after the shuttle is retired, which NASA estimates will cost the agency more than half a billion dollars."
You see that? Right there a Democrat from Arizona was one of the prime champions of Constellation and derailing funding to commercial spaceflight development. Do you want more proof? Take a look at the article linked to in the summary.It goes into plenty of detail about how that bitch Giffords took up most of the debate time in the proceeds to complain about what a bad bill it was. Does that register to you? This bill, and most bills in Congress, are no longer about those darn Republicans vs. those darn Democrats.Both parties are corrupt, pandering, lip-servicing morons that can't tell their head from their ass. That doesn't change just because the bill involves NASA. Take your two-party political bickering elsewhere you misinformed douche.
Well, that's why it is good that this bill allocates some money to developing more commercial technologies to access space. Even if NASA can simply trick Congress into subsidizing the first few launches of companies like SpaceX, IOS, Armadillo, Orbital Sciences, and so on for the next couple years, that money could be spent to proof and test the new launch systems being developed by those companies. Once those commercial companies have a bit of a track record that they can point to and say, "See, we won't blow up your spacecraft..." then they should be able to charge customers directly for funding and Congress can stay the hell out of space exploration once and for all.
Personally, I would have liked to see even more money going to developing commercial launch capabilities in this bill, but at least there is something in there.
Perhaps, healthy eating keeps women (and men) more attractive and healthy as they get into their 30s, 40s and beyond. I might actually try out a few of their weird recipes, at least for an occasional meal.
Well, considering most of the vitamins that keep skin and cells healthy come from fruits and vegetables, I could see that being the case. On the other hand, I would bet that most of those people have a pretty hard time building a significant amount of muscle, and many of them may be iron deficient. I know that one of my close friends eats almost a pound of meat a day, if not more. He certainly doesn't have the healthiest skin, but man, he packs on muscle like a madman when he works out.
Hey man, if you're going to post on the internet, you might as well use the most colorful and ambiguous language as possible. It's all just fun and games in the end anyways.
Well to be honest, it doesn't always make sense to use national statistics as evidence. In my post I wrote that I like short girls at 5'4 or so. On the central coast of Cali, it seems to me that most women are at least 5'6 or above. That said, 5'4 would be short in terms of my potential mate selection so saying that the average American woman is 5'4 really doesn't have any meaning to me. The sample group needs to be relevant to the question at hand somehow.
You know, there may be a bit of a masked positive side to this kind of behavior...depending on how you look at things. Sure, you may not be able to get just any job you apply for anymore. On the other hand, this helps act as a bit of a filter for you, by weeding out employment solicitations from companies that you wouldn't enjoy working for in the first place. I know that if a company I otherwise found interesting was extremely biased towards folks with, say, unpopular political views, I wouldn't want to work there because I tend to sample and research unpopular political views out of curiosity. Any company that considers such curiosity to be a detriment to their product or business model is not a company I'd want to work for.
So yeah, the double-sided sword cuts both ways. You may not get a job because of your lifestyle or online behavior or whatever, but "Company X" might not get a good employee because of their overly restrictive HR-imposed stereotypes. In that case, it's their loss.
The rule of law was written for people who are too stupid to treat themselves and others with respect. The rule of law ends when it no longer addresses respect and responsibility amongst the members of a society.
You know, there's a bit of an interesting message in the type of language you use in your post. Take a look at this:
I have no problem with a few friends starting an organization with a goal of promoting political views
And now look at this:
The problem is that we're not just talking about "a few friends" -- we're talking about "hundreds of millions of dollars".
At first, you are talking about a few friends, spending their own money on promoting their political views. That's money that has to come out of their pocketbook; the same pocketbook that feeds their family and pays their electricity and water bills. In the second quote, you leap to talking about the money itself being spent, rather than the entities spending the money. We all know that, literally, millions of dollars are being dumped into campaigns by corporations, interest groups, hell, there are even churches that lobby at some levels. I think what causes the root of this whole "right to spend equals right to free speech" dilemma is that, in the case of corporations, the money being spent is not the property of an individual. In other words, whose bank account do such campaign contributions transfer from? Is it the CEO personally giving money to the polticos? Or is it the "company" giving money to the politicos? What name is on the transferring bank account?
I would wager that, in many corporate cases, there is no individual name tied to the campaign donations. The money probably goes to "So-and-so's election campaign account," from a business account owned by
"Big organization X." And therein lies the problem. We have company assets, not individual assets, being spent on politics. The money is not coming from the same checking account that puts food on somebody's table. Rather, it is coming from an account that, ostensibly, should be used for purchasing company capital, thus improving the productive capacity of the company in general. If it is being spent on politics instead, then the company is effectively buying law as capital assets and that, in my opinion, is not speech but, rather, the public sale of public assets (social laws) to private interests. That does seem wrong.
So maybe an effective way to fight abusive campaign spending would be to enforce a law that allows a corporation to donate money to political campaigns only from a specially designated campaign account which can only have money transferred into it by private employees of the company. This would ensure that the corporation really does represent the voice of its employees. It may seem like a bit of a work around, but I'd love to see that idea gain traction...or something similar.
Fine then, change my criteria to at least 6 inches shorter than myself. I don't really care about the USA average height, I just like women that are short compared to myself.
Personally, I like short girls for some reason. I don't know why, but I've always had a thing for girls that are 5'4 or below. I think it's because the short ones are usually zesty packets of spunk and attitude. Nothing like short-woman syndrome to make a girl the right balance of crazy and fierce.
That's what a lot of folk said (and some still do say) about drinking and driving when it was first outlawed. After decades worth of, "Don't drink and drive!" campaigns, however, fewer people (especially young folk) get behind the wheel of a car while snockered. Of course, that's led to other problems like folks who are sober (that had one or two light beers) getting charged outrageous fines and such, but the education campaign certainly was successful to an extent. Sure, some folks still get liquored up and drive their cars through their neighbor's house, but you'll always have some fringe element of retardation that insists upon following the laws of natural selection rather than those of society. You can't fix stupid, after all.
I think this is the first article about 2012 I've read that actually makes the Mayan apocalypse predictions sound appealing. Here's hoping the calendar runs out before Lucas's patience does...
That's why I always do a full strip tease when I use Wal Mart change rooms. There's nothing like watching a fully-bearded, young American white fella that can't dance to convince the Wal Mart security that it's better to turn those cameras off....
That actually gives you really good grounds to fight a speeding ticket in said low-limit zones. Every few years or so your county and/or city should be conducting traffic studies on all county and city maintained roads in your area. Those studies will involve both traffic volume and average traffic speed. All of that information is public record and you can get it by simply calling up your public works department and asking. Once you have the most recent traffic speed study in hand, you can submit it as evidence that the vast majority of people who drive through the area drive higher than the speed limit (if that is truly the case). Suggest in your testimony that the law (the speed limit) is supposed to represent a social contract between citizens and government and note the citizens have spoken, through their officially recorded actions, that the law is wrong (speed limit is too low). You get bonus points if the study is more than 5 years old or so because it means the current speed limit is out of date and probably shouldn't apply any longer (you need to look up your state's laws regarding this matter).
After a testimony like that, even if the citing officer submits a testimony against yours, you have a decent chance of winning in court. IANAL, but I am offering you this advice because I just fought my own speeding ticket for this exact same reason and won by doing what I described. For what it's worth, I went through a trial by written declaration, rather than an actual court trial.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a very good point. However, if you notice, the author of this article is not the one making the claim that social media will do the promoting. Rather, he is trying to debunk that very claim as made by others. Apparently, quite a few folks feel the the social media revolution has, or will, revolutionize the way people organize to make change. There have even been books written about this. The author is making the point that social media can only be used as a tool to make change where there is little risk for those involved in the movement. For any change that requires real risk, social media is an inadequate tool because the ties formed through social media are not binding enough to give protesters enough confidence. So the miscategorization of the role of social media is not so much on the side of the author, but rather on the side of those that he is attempting to rebuff.
Here's the relevant bit of the article:
In the Iranian case, meanwhile, the people tweeting about the demonstrations were almost all in the West. “It is time to get Twitter’s role in the events in Iran right,” Golnaz Esfandiari wrote, this past summer, in Foreign Policy. “Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran.” The cadre of prominent bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, who championed the role of social media in Iran, Esfandiari continued, misunderstood the situation. “Western journalists who couldn’t reach—or didn’t bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection,” she wrote. “Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi.”
So to summarize, the actual protests in Iran were being organized locally, whereas Twitter was simply used by Western media to cover the event because, well, Westerners don't live in Iran. I know it's not typical MOD for 'dotters to RTFA, but in this case, the article was well written and very thorough. I would highly suggest taking the time to read through the entire thing.
Interesting, I'd never heard of those correlations or statistics. Do you have any references for that data? Or did it come from a text book from some old college class you took awhile back? I'd be very curious to read those studies.
Why did this article make it to the front page again?
Because it falls right in line with the, "We're all screwed. The world is going to end. Tomorrow is worse than yesterday. The fall of civilization is on the horizon. DOD has adopted perl as its primary nuclear arsenal launch control language..." theme that is so prevalent in news these days.
...people who do not have altered genes are societally disadvantaged.
I think it would be more apt to say that those without altered genes would be physically disadvantaged. Socially speaking, the opposite may be true. Consider the fact that, historically, humans react negatively to those folks who are considered different. If gene alterations in offspring start occurring intentionally, then for quite awhile, the mass majority of people will still be natural-borns, if you will. As such, if there is any social discrimination (i.e. distinction based on gene manipulation) it will probably begin as a movement of the natural-borns discriminating against the genetically-derived. For quite awhile, therefore, it will be those whom are genetically derived that will be socially disadvantaged. Of course, a day may come when the genetically-derived have their own civil rights movement and, after a few generations of discrimination and hardship, they may win their social equality amongst their natural-born peers. Only after such a revolution occurs would it start to become possible for being a natural-born to be socially disadvantaged, because, until that point, all those natural-borns that already existed will remain sure that their means of birth was the better way all along. Historically speaking, at least, this is how socially advantaged/disadvantaged conflicts occur at least.
Considering that a human's height is derived primarily from there bone dimensions (at least, I think that's the case), this would make sense. Frankly I would have been more surprised to find out that there was one master 'bone gene' that proportionally scaled all bone structures in the body.
Well those are great ideals, if only they were true and the politicians actually voted and acted in the manner you described.
So far as I've seen, Democrats are just as likely to infringe on civil liberties (or uphold infringement laws from previous administrations) as Republicans are. So far as I've seen, Democrats are just as likely to sell out the interests of citizens in favor of large social entities (albeit, sometimes different entities, like military contractors vs. Hollywood contractors). So far as I've seen both Democrats and Republicans are far more likely to vote for bills that involve allocating a few hundred thousand dollars to their petty little pet projects in their communities rather than investing in serious, progressive R&D research. So far as I've seen both Democrats and Republicans are perfectly willing to politicize science in order to make any issue they want a divisive one such that the citizenry develops an us vs. them mentality thus preventing any potential agreement for social progress.
Hell, so far as I can tell Democrats and Republicans are both so likely to throw the US citizen under the bus just to get their next fix of $$$ that they might as well just combine into one united "Fuck the people!" party and do us all the favor of ceasing the charade that they represent citizens' interests in any manner whatsoever. So yeah, keep telling yourself that one party is less evil than the other. In the mean time, you might want to go buy a bottle of lubrication for next time your pseudo-corporatist overlords want to bend you over and whisper in your ear that it's for your best interest.
Yeah, dietary studies are always interesting to read up on. That is one science that I don't spend much effort researching but would probably benefit me more. For now, my modus operandi is to keep my metabolism sky high by leading an extremely active lifestyle. This gives me the freedom to eat what I want (within reason) without fluctuating in weight too much. Being young probably helps a lot on that front.
Well, liquids are heavy and a pain in the ass to transport into space. Suppose that one day a commercial company (like Bigelow) actually does establish an on-orbit space hotel type thing. If they do that, what makes more sense? Keep ferrying hundreds of lbs of liquid to the hotel weekly? Or would it be better to lug a few bulky pieces of equipment up to space once and then brew the beer there? The added bonus is that most of the ingredients, besides water which the hotel needs anyways, for beer are actually solid. This makes them easier to transport in bulk quantities to orbit on a regular basis (liquids slosh and their CG's make for a pain in the ass control systems problem). So which is better, brewing on orbit or ferrying finished product? To be honest, I don't know. However, were I going to place my business profits on choosing one or the other, I would definitely want to look into both options in depth first.
Speaking on the House floor before the vote Wednesday, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, said the legislation "lacks serious budgetary discipline" and includes an "unfunded mandate to keep the shuttle program going through all of fiscal year 2011 even after the shuttle is retired, which NASA estimates will cost the agency more than half a billion dollars."
-- Source.
You see that? Right there a Democrat from Arizona was one of the prime champions of Constellation and derailing funding to commercial spaceflight development. Do you want more proof? Take a look at the article linked to in the summary.It goes into plenty of detail about how that bitch Giffords took up most of the debate time in the proceeds to complain about what a bad bill it was. Does that register to you? This bill, and most bills in Congress, are no longer about those darn Republicans vs. those darn Democrats.Both parties are corrupt, pandering, lip-servicing morons that can't tell their head from their ass. That doesn't change just because the bill involves NASA. Take your two-party political bickering elsewhere you misinformed douche.
Well, that's why it is good that this bill allocates some money to developing more commercial technologies to access space. Even if NASA can simply trick Congress into subsidizing the first few launches of companies like SpaceX, IOS, Armadillo, Orbital Sciences, and so on for the next couple years, that money could be spent to proof and test the new launch systems being developed by those companies. Once those commercial companies have a bit of a track record that they can point to and say, "See, we won't blow up your spacecraft..." then they should be able to charge customers directly for funding and Congress can stay the hell out of space exploration once and for all.
Personally, I would have liked to see even more money going to developing commercial launch capabilities in this bill, but at least there is something in there.
Perhaps, healthy eating keeps women (and men) more attractive and healthy as they get into their 30s, 40s and beyond. I might actually try out a few of their weird recipes, at least for an occasional meal.
Well, considering most of the vitamins that keep skin and cells healthy come from fruits and vegetables, I could see that being the case. On the other hand, I would bet that most of those people have a pretty hard time building a significant amount of muscle, and many of them may be iron deficient. I know that one of my close friends eats almost a pound of meat a day, if not more. He certainly doesn't have the healthiest skin, but man, he packs on muscle like a madman when he works out.
Hey man, if you're going to post on the internet, you might as well use the most colorful and ambiguous language as possible. It's all just fun and games in the end anyways.
Well to be honest, it doesn't always make sense to use national statistics as evidence. In my post I wrote that I like short girls at 5'4 or so. On the central coast of Cali, it seems to me that most women are at least 5'6 or above. That said, 5'4 would be short in terms of my potential mate selection so saying that the average American woman is 5'4 really doesn't have any meaning to me. The sample group needs to be relevant to the question at hand somehow.
You know, there may be a bit of a masked positive side to this kind of behavior...depending on how you look at things. Sure, you may not be able to get just any job you apply for anymore. On the other hand, this helps act as a bit of a filter for you, by weeding out employment solicitations from companies that you wouldn't enjoy working for in the first place. I know that if a company I otherwise found interesting was extremely biased towards folks with, say, unpopular political views, I wouldn't want to work there because I tend to sample and research unpopular political views out of curiosity. Any company that considers such curiosity to be a detriment to their product or business model is not a company I'd want to work for.
So yeah, the double-sided sword cuts both ways. You may not get a job because of your lifestyle or online behavior or whatever, but "Company X" might not get a good employee because of their overly restrictive HR-imposed stereotypes. In that case, it's their loss.
The rule of law was written for people who are too stupid to treat themselves and others with respect. The rule of law ends when it no longer addresses respect and responsibility amongst the members of a society.
I have no problem with a few friends starting an organization with a goal of promoting political views
And now look at this:
The problem is that we're not just talking about "a few friends" -- we're talking about "hundreds of millions of dollars".
At first, you are talking about a few friends, spending their own money on promoting their political views. That's money that has to come out of their pocketbook; the same pocketbook that feeds their family and pays their electricity and water bills. In the second quote, you leap to talking about the money itself being spent, rather than the entities spending the money. We all know that, literally, millions of dollars are being dumped into campaigns by corporations, interest groups, hell, there are even churches that lobby at some levels. I think what causes the root of this whole "right to spend equals right to free speech" dilemma is that, in the case of corporations, the money being spent is not the property of an individual. In other words, whose bank account do such campaign contributions transfer from? Is it the CEO personally giving money to the polticos? Or is it the "company" giving money to the politicos? What name is on the transferring bank account?
I would wager that, in many corporate cases, there is no individual name tied to the campaign donations. The money probably goes to "So-and-so's election campaign account," from a business account owned by "Big organization X." And therein lies the problem. We have company assets, not individual assets, being spent on politics. The money is not coming from the same checking account that puts food on somebody's table. Rather, it is coming from an account that, ostensibly, should be used for purchasing company capital, thus improving the productive capacity of the company in general. If it is being spent on politics instead, then the company is effectively buying law as capital assets and that, in my opinion, is not speech but, rather, the public sale of public assets (social laws) to private interests. That does seem wrong.
So maybe an effective way to fight abusive campaign spending would be to enforce a law that allows a corporation to donate money to political campaigns only from a specially designated campaign account which can only have money transferred into it by private employees of the company. This would ensure that the corporation really does represent the voice of its employees. It may seem like a bit of a work around, but I'd love to see that idea gain traction...or something similar.
Fine then, change my criteria to at least 6 inches shorter than myself. I don't really care about the USA average height, I just like women that are short compared to myself.
Personally, I like short girls for some reason. I don't know why, but I've always had a thing for girls that are 5'4 or below. I think it's because the short ones are usually zesty packets of spunk and attitude. Nothing like short-woman syndrome to make a girl the right balance of crazy and fierce.
That's what a lot of folk said (and some still do say) about drinking and driving when it was first outlawed. After decades worth of, "Don't drink and drive!" campaigns, however, fewer people (especially young folk) get behind the wheel of a car while snockered. Of course, that's led to other problems like folks who are sober (that had one or two light beers) getting charged outrageous fines and such, but the education campaign certainly was successful to an extent. Sure, some folks still get liquored up and drive their cars through their neighbor's house, but you'll always have some fringe element of retardation that insists upon following the laws of natural selection rather than those of society. You can't fix stupid, after all.
Ban privately owned vehicles, and repossess all of them.
Your idea of utopia must be horribly boring.
I didn't know Donald Trump posted to Slashdot...
I think this is the first article about 2012 I've read that actually makes the Mayan apocalypse predictions sound appealing. Here's hoping the calendar runs out before Lucas's patience does...
That's why I always do a full strip tease when I use Wal Mart change rooms. There's nothing like watching a fully-bearded, young American white fella that can't dance to convince the Wal Mart security that it's better to turn those cameras off....
That actually gives you really good grounds to fight a speeding ticket in said low-limit zones. Every few years or so your county and/or city should be conducting traffic studies on all county and city maintained roads in your area. Those studies will involve both traffic volume and average traffic speed. All of that information is public record and you can get it by simply calling up your public works department and asking. Once you have the most recent traffic speed study in hand, you can submit it as evidence that the vast majority of people who drive through the area drive higher than the speed limit (if that is truly the case). Suggest in your testimony that the law (the speed limit) is supposed to represent a social contract between citizens and government and note the citizens have spoken, through their officially recorded actions, that the law is wrong (speed limit is too low). You get bonus points if the study is more than 5 years old or so because it means the current speed limit is out of date and probably shouldn't apply any longer (you need to look up your state's laws regarding this matter).
After a testimony like that, even if the citing officer submits a testimony against yours, you have a decent chance of winning in court. IANAL, but I am offering you this advice because I just fought my own speeding ticket for this exact same reason and won by doing what I described. For what it's worth, I went through a trial by written declaration, rather than an actual court trial.