It should be in those databases, but sometimes it's not, simply because someone mentioned something in passing in an unrelated e-mail, a document was saved in the wrong directory, or a file got the wrong name and it wasn't opened to check the contents. A semi-manual review is about the only way to go through these documents to check them.
GM is slowly getting the idea. Pontiac is probably going to be folded. Saturn may get the same treatment. GM may end up with four distinct lines catering to four distinct market segments: Chevrolet (budget cars), Buick (medium-range), and Cadillac (high-end) cars, and GMC for the trucks. Saturn and Pontiac mostly feed off of Chevy's customers, and as much as I liked Saturn back in its first few years, it's become mostly just another division.
It wasn't that he was campaigning for Democrats. I'm fine with that. But the attitude that he took in those posts towards those that preferred to vote Republican, Libertarian, or whatever else was dismissive and arrogant. That's the part that I'm talking about.
His advocacy for the party is one of the things that led me to lose interest in the site. I didn't mind him using his site to voice support for his chosen candidates, and I accepted the ads as part of that. However, for both the 2006 and 2008 federal elections, he made posts that essentially said that if you didn't vote Democrat, you were stupid, evil, or both. This resulted in some very strong words from Libertarians, whom he suggested were just wasting their votes. A few of the editors had similarly strong political views with just as little inclination to listen to the views of others.
I did intend to have one in there, linked to Dave Perry, but I forgot to go back and add it in. Perry goes through her book, citing pages and quotes, and pointing out the problems with them.
According to Gary Mack and Dave Perry, there are a lot of things wrong with her story. Among the most significant, she claimed that she was at a party in Dallas the night before the assassination, a party attended by Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and J. Edgar Hoover. The problem with that claim is that Johnson was in Houston that night with Kennedy. Photographs prove it. He didn't arrive in Dallas until late that night, where Johnson was again photographed at the hotel around midnight. Nixon was in Dallas, but was escorting Joan Crawford at the Statler-Hilton hotel -- and was photographed there.
That's not the only mismatch or logical inconsistency. And there are lots of people who are bad with dates, but that's where she allegedly first heard hints about a murder plot, and the day before the assassination. Those aren't things one is likely to get mixed up.
Madeleine Brown's version of events has been shown to be shaky at best, and an outright fabrication at worst. People she claims were in the room together on particular occasions turned out to be elsewhere for completely unrelated events. Her dates were far off of what should match up with logic. However charming she may have been, accurate she was not.
Murder is a very hard thing to pull off without getting caught, and it's even harder to make things look like an accident. The NTSB will get involved in this crash, and if there's anything out of order, they'll likely find it.
Assembly members can serve six years, actually, but the point is the same. You bring up a good point, though. Anyone who bucks the party line faces recall.
Someone has to give ground. Without it, there is no budget. California requires a 2/3 majority of each house of the Legislature to pass a budget bill. That means that all Democrats plus one Republican (a ratio settled in 2001 when districts were drawn by the Legislature).
If someone doesn't give ground in the next couple of months, according to the Comptroller, the state likely will run out of cash, and so far, DC hasn't been keen on the idea of bailing out the state. If California goes insolvent -- a topic which has been raised -- I have no idea what will happen.
When you stack up the things that the Legislature has done right next to the things that its done wrong, the latter greatly outweighs the former. Term limits themselves did not lead to consumer protection laws -- California has a very long history of that, and still has some of the best labor laws in the country, though a bill recently passed by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor exempts tech employees making $75K per year or more from overtime pay. I know a number of people that are potentially going to be hit by that.
Speaking for many of those under-45s, we're largely grateful for what the unions did for us in getting laws enacted to protect us. We're also largely in favor of allowing collective bargaining and unionization where the employees want it. We just aren't necessarily in favor of it where we work, or under the conditions that many unions want for organizing.
There are some unions for which I have a great deal of respect, such as those backing nurses because they have the patients in mind just as much as they have their members in mind. There are some unions for which I have a great deal of animosity, such as for aerospace workers because I watched my dad get the short end of things for much of my childhood while he worked for McDonnell-Douglas and later Boeing. He's still fairly bitter about what he saw on so many occasions, even after 15 years out of the union.
Unions came about because management kicked around the employees. Employees used their power -- primarily numbers -- to force management to make concessions, and to form political blocs that would elect people who would codify into law fair labor practices. A failure of management led to actions by employees to change the situation. We're grateful for those actions, but we're also willing to say that they just may not be a good fit for our industry.
I'm perhaps guilty of poor phrasing, but that's really how it is in California. The Democrats that I've heard on the radio have been willing to cut programs that are backed by Republicans, but funding for schools or healthcare is considered sacrosanct, and many of them will not touch it, even though either funded well past the legal requirements (as in the case of schools) or have surpluses that have built up (in the case of certain healthcare programs).
Both sides need to loosen up a bit (actually, they need to loosen up a lot). Democrats are going to have to accept some very sharp spending cuts, and Republicans are going to have to accept some higher fees and taxes. Walking the party line is only hurting the general populace.
You're seriously overestimating what I get paid. That said, I started off in the $15/hr range back in the mid-90s. I have worked my way up. I've been opposed to unionization the entire time.
I have no issue with those that would want to organize, but I don't want it forced down my throat, and I especially don't want to be required to put my name on a public roster of for or against (not putting my name on the "for" roster is the same as putting it on one labeled "against) considering how unions in California treat scabs. I see the desire to form a union as a failure on the part of the company to keep their workers happy, but I also see unions as having just as much potential to screw the members over stupid trivialities.
When I mention ideologues, I mean those that adhere to every plank, nail, and splinter of the party platform. It's one of the things that's gotten California in so much trouble. Democrats will not cut any spending (unless it's for something Republicans want), and Republicans will not raise any taxes. It's a deadlock on something where there cannot be a deadlock. I'm generally against raising taxes, but the state has a projected deficit over the next 18 months of $42 billion. Both sides have to give ground, whether or not people and business will be taking a hit. The current crop of ideologues simply figures that they can out-wait the other.
This is the worst situation we've faced, but it's not the first where this has happened, nor will it be the last.
I know people in IT all over the US, and I never hear whispers of unionizing. Most IT people seem to be against unionizing.
Where I work, I know what I make and I know the billing rate on the contract, and between my pay and the benefits that I get, about half of the billing rate is going to me. The client's management has some serious issues that need to get worked out, but a union isn't going to fix that.
I suspect that you'll end up with professional place-holders, or you'll end up with politicians working in circles in places like California where the legislative bodies use the same term lengths and election cycles. The Assembly becomes the Senate and vice versa every eight years. It adds complexity where it doesn't really need to be.
Term limits have their own set of problems. California did this back in the 1990s, and I was an enthusiastic supporter of the concept. The problem is that it tends to bring in ideologues who have to run on their professed beliefs rather than their track record. I would gladly scrap term limits to get back politicians that can actually compromise with each other instead of walk the party line.
On an even bearing, the powerless are incapable of attacking the powerful. A direct confrontation may be stopped by bodyguards, lawyers, or even the very person, who has additional resources (education, training, etc.) that the powerless person does not because the available spare time for the latter is less than the former.
However, powerlessness is be a comparative value and may not be zero. In great masses, the powerless may pool together their individually minuscule power to form a greater power to force an issue. It doesn't happen so often anymore in the US, but other nations have seen protests with varying levels of violence on both sides which have helped to effect change on an issue or of a government. Consider the Solidarity movement in Poland in the late 1970s and early 1980s as well as the overthrow of the Romanian government in 1989. These were both cases where relatively powerless individuals combined their strength to face the very powerful rulers of their countries. One was done non-violently, and the other involved considerable violence. In both cases, the powerless won out over the powerful.
That's why it goes at the equator -- no tropical storms to worry about there, as those that form even near the equator will move away from the equator.
I've asked this question of many people, and I usually get about the same response:
At what risk factor would you be willing to undertake replacement of your eye(s) with cybernetic equivalent(s)? Even with improved capabilities in the new eye(s) such as information display, some minor microscope/telescope functionality, etc, how much risk would you be willing to accept, if the risk included never being able to see again?
For most people to whom I pose this question, the odds of failure have to be extraordinarily long for people to consider doing it voluntarily to healthy eyes. Only one person has ever said as low as one in one hundred chance of failure. Most people settle in at about one in one million, and many say that they simply will not accept it at all. Vision is so central to our lives that most people would rather lose almost all other functionality before losing vision.
Personally, I might do one eye at around one in ten thousand, but even then, it would be after probably months of consideration.
Many of the things that we do involve risk to those around us, including those who are not aware of our actions and may not agree to them. We are responsible for mitigating those risks or paying a price, a price that is handled by the courts. If I drive in an unsafe manner and cause an accident, there are laws that handle compensation for the victims and punishment for me.
You may well be someone who drives no faster than the posted speed limit, never listens to anything that would irritate you while driving, and never drives for more than two hours at a stretch before taking a fifteen-minute break. Again, that's your call to be that cautious. But requiring getting the permission from everyone around for anything that may cause any increased level of risk isn't practical or realistic. I sometimes have a soda with me to sip from while driving. It's a risk, as it takes my concentration off the road for a moment and alters my field of view. But it's not something that I view as that serious an overall risk, and so I continue to do it.
That's your decision. I occasionally choose to make calls while on the road, especially when it's a long drive from, say, Bullhead City, AZ, or Sacramento to my home in SoCal, a situation in which highway hypnosis is a danger.
We can't remove all hazards from driving. It's impossible to do. Even if you make it illegal for everyone, on what basis would people be stopped? Just because the driver has an earpiece clipped on? Maybe its presence was forgotten when getting in the car. Perhaps it would be because the driver's mouth was moving while no one else was observed in the car. Perhaps the driver was singing along to some music.
There's a significant difference between drunk driving and driving while talking, aside from the option point that some have mentioned. It's generally short-term. If you leave a party drunk, you're probably drunk all the way home. If you're talking on the phone, you're at an elevated risk for only part of the time.
If you choose to play it extra-safe, that's your call. But we have a right to exercise a little extra freedom at the cost of a little extra risk.
In California, no person under the age of 18 may use a cell phone while driving for any purpose (other than calling 911). There are no exceptions for hands-free devices. If they're not calling 911, they have to pull off the road to make the call. I can see some logic in requiring this also for those who are 18 or older but have their driver's license for less than, say, two years.
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There's a difference. You don't have tenure. Therefore, you are nobody. :\
It should be in those databases, but sometimes it's not, simply because someone mentioned something in passing in an unrelated e-mail, a document was saved in the wrong directory, or a file got the wrong name and it wasn't opened to check the contents. A semi-manual review is about the only way to go through these documents to check them.
GM is slowly getting the idea. Pontiac is probably going to be folded. Saturn may get the same treatment. GM may end up with four distinct lines catering to four distinct market segments: Chevrolet (budget cars), Buick (medium-range), and Cadillac (high-end) cars, and GMC for the trucks. Saturn and Pontiac mostly feed off of Chevy's customers, and as much as I liked Saturn back in its first few years, it's become mostly just another division.
It wasn't that he was campaigning for Democrats. I'm fine with that. But the attitude that he took in those posts towards those that preferred to vote Republican, Libertarian, or whatever else was dismissive and arrogant. That's the part that I'm talking about.
His advocacy for the party is one of the things that led me to lose interest in the site. I didn't mind him using his site to voice support for his chosen candidates, and I accepted the ads as part of that. However, for both the 2006 and 2008 federal elections, he made posts that essentially said that if you didn't vote Democrat, you were stupid, evil, or both. This resulted in some very strong words from Libertarians, whom he suggested were just wasting their votes. A few of the editors had similarly strong political views with just as little inclination to listen to the views of others.
I did intend to have one in there, linked to Dave Perry, but I forgot to go back and add it in. Perry goes through her book, citing pages and quotes, and pointing out the problems with them.
According to Gary Mack and Dave Perry, there are a lot of things wrong with her story. Among the most significant, she claimed that she was at a party in Dallas the night before the assassination, a party attended by Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and J. Edgar Hoover. The problem with that claim is that Johnson was in Houston that night with Kennedy. Photographs prove it. He didn't arrive in Dallas until late that night, where Johnson was again photographed at the hotel around midnight. Nixon was in Dallas, but was escorting Joan Crawford at the Statler-Hilton hotel -- and was photographed there.
That's not the only mismatch or logical inconsistency. And there are lots of people who are bad with dates, but that's where she allegedly first heard hints about a murder plot, and the day before the assassination. Those aren't things one is likely to get mixed up.
Madeleine Brown's version of events has been shown to be shaky at best, and an outright fabrication at worst. People she claims were in the room together on particular occasions turned out to be elsewhere for completely unrelated events. Her dates were far off of what should match up with logic. However charming she may have been, accurate she was not.
Murder is a very hard thing to pull off without getting caught, and it's even harder to make things look like an accident. The NTSB will get involved in this crash, and if there's anything out of order, they'll likely find it.
Assembly members can serve six years, actually, but the point is the same. You bring up a good point, though. Anyone who bucks the party line faces recall.
Someone has to give ground. Without it, there is no budget. California requires a 2/3 majority of each house of the Legislature to pass a budget bill. That means that all Democrats plus one Republican (a ratio settled in 2001 when districts were drawn by the Legislature).
If someone doesn't give ground in the next couple of months, according to the Comptroller, the state likely will run out of cash, and so far, DC hasn't been keen on the idea of bailing out the state. If California goes insolvent -- a topic which has been raised -- I have no idea what will happen.
When you stack up the things that the Legislature has done right next to the things that its done wrong, the latter greatly outweighs the former. Term limits themselves did not lead to consumer protection laws -- California has a very long history of that, and still has some of the best labor laws in the country, though a bill recently passed by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor exempts tech employees making $75K per year or more from overtime pay. I know a number of people that are potentially going to be hit by that.
Speaking for many of those under-45s, we're largely grateful for what the unions did for us in getting laws enacted to protect us. We're also largely in favor of allowing collective bargaining and unionization where the employees want it. We just aren't necessarily in favor of it where we work, or under the conditions that many unions want for organizing.
There are some unions for which I have a great deal of respect, such as those backing nurses because they have the patients in mind just as much as they have their members in mind. There are some unions for which I have a great deal of animosity, such as for aerospace workers because I watched my dad get the short end of things for much of my childhood while he worked for McDonnell-Douglas and later Boeing. He's still fairly bitter about what he saw on so many occasions, even after 15 years out of the union.
Unions came about because management kicked around the employees. Employees used their power -- primarily numbers -- to force management to make concessions, and to form political blocs that would elect people who would codify into law fair labor practices. A failure of management led to actions by employees to change the situation. We're grateful for those actions, but we're also willing to say that they just may not be a good fit for our industry.
I'm perhaps guilty of poor phrasing, but that's really how it is in California. The Democrats that I've heard on the radio have been willing to cut programs that are backed by Republicans, but funding for schools or healthcare is considered sacrosanct, and many of them will not touch it, even though either funded well past the legal requirements (as in the case of schools) or have surpluses that have built up (in the case of certain healthcare programs).
Both sides need to loosen up a bit (actually, they need to loosen up a lot). Democrats are going to have to accept some very sharp spending cuts, and Republicans are going to have to accept some higher fees and taxes. Walking the party line is only hurting the general populace.
You're seriously overestimating what I get paid. That said, I started off in the $15/hr range back in the mid-90s. I have worked my way up. I've been opposed to unionization the entire time.
I have no issue with those that would want to organize, but I don't want it forced down my throat, and I especially don't want to be required to put my name on a public roster of for or against (not putting my name on the "for" roster is the same as putting it on one labeled "against) considering how unions in California treat scabs. I see the desire to form a union as a failure on the part of the company to keep their workers happy, but I also see unions as having just as much potential to screw the members over stupid trivialities.
When I mention ideologues, I mean those that adhere to every plank, nail, and splinter of the party platform. It's one of the things that's gotten California in so much trouble. Democrats will not cut any spending (unless it's for something Republicans want), and Republicans will not raise any taxes. It's a deadlock on something where there cannot be a deadlock. I'm generally against raising taxes, but the state has a projected deficit over the next 18 months of $42 billion. Both sides have to give ground, whether or not people and business will be taking a hit. The current crop of ideologues simply figures that they can out-wait the other.
This is the worst situation we've faced, but it's not the first where this has happened, nor will it be the last.
I know people in IT all over the US, and I never hear whispers of unionizing. Most IT people seem to be against unionizing.
Where I work, I know what I make and I know the billing rate on the contract, and between my pay and the benefits that I get, about half of the billing rate is going to me. The client's management has some serious issues that need to get worked out, but a union isn't going to fix that.
I suspect that you'll end up with professional place-holders, or you'll end up with politicians working in circles in places like California where the legislative bodies use the same term lengths and election cycles. The Assembly becomes the Senate and vice versa every eight years. It adds complexity where it doesn't really need to be.
Term limits have their own set of problems. California did this back in the 1990s, and I was an enthusiastic supporter of the concept. The problem is that it tends to bring in ideologues who have to run on their professed beliefs rather than their track record. I would gladly scrap term limits to get back politicians that can actually compromise with each other instead of walk the party line.
On an even bearing, the powerless are incapable of attacking the powerful. A direct confrontation may be stopped by bodyguards, lawyers, or even the very person, who has additional resources (education, training, etc.) that the powerless person does not because the available spare time for the latter is less than the former.
However, powerlessness is be a comparative value and may not be zero. In great masses, the powerless may pool together their individually minuscule power to form a greater power to force an issue. It doesn't happen so often anymore in the US, but other nations have seen protests with varying levels of violence on both sides which have helped to effect change on an issue or of a government. Consider the Solidarity movement in Poland in the late 1970s and early 1980s as well as the overthrow of the Romanian government in 1989. These were both cases where relatively powerless individuals combined their strength to face the very powerful rulers of their countries. One was done non-violently, and the other involved considerable violence. In both cases, the powerless won out over the powerful.
That's why it goes at the equator -- no tropical storms to worry about there, as those that form even near the equator will move away from the equator.
I've asked this question of many people, and I usually get about the same response:
At what risk factor would you be willing to undertake replacement of your eye(s) with cybernetic equivalent(s)? Even with improved capabilities in the new eye(s) such as information display, some minor microscope/telescope functionality, etc, how much risk would you be willing to accept, if the risk included never being able to see again?
For most people to whom I pose this question, the odds of failure have to be extraordinarily long for people to consider doing it voluntarily to healthy eyes. Only one person has ever said as low as one in one hundred chance of failure. Most people settle in at about one in one million, and many say that they simply will not accept it at all. Vision is so central to our lives that most people would rather lose almost all other functionality before losing vision.
Personally, I might do one eye at around one in ten thousand, but even then, it would be after probably months of consideration.
Many of the things that we do involve risk to those around us, including those who are not aware of our actions and may not agree to them. We are responsible for mitigating those risks or paying a price, a price that is handled by the courts. If I drive in an unsafe manner and cause an accident, there are laws that handle compensation for the victims and punishment for me.
You may well be someone who drives no faster than the posted speed limit, never listens to anything that would irritate you while driving, and never drives for more than two hours at a stretch before taking a fifteen-minute break. Again, that's your call to be that cautious. But requiring getting the permission from everyone around for anything that may cause any increased level of risk isn't practical or realistic. I sometimes have a soda with me to sip from while driving. It's a risk, as it takes my concentration off the road for a moment and alters my field of view. But it's not something that I view as that serious an overall risk, and so I continue to do it.
That's your decision. I occasionally choose to make calls while on the road, especially when it's a long drive from, say, Bullhead City, AZ, or Sacramento to my home in SoCal, a situation in which highway hypnosis is a danger.
We can't remove all hazards from driving. It's impossible to do. Even if you make it illegal for everyone, on what basis would people be stopped? Just because the driver has an earpiece clipped on? Maybe its presence was forgotten when getting in the car. Perhaps it would be because the driver's mouth was moving while no one else was observed in the car. Perhaps the driver was singing along to some music.
There's a significant difference between drunk driving and driving while talking, aside from the option point that some have mentioned. It's generally short-term. If you leave a party drunk, you're probably drunk all the way home. If you're talking on the phone, you're at an elevated risk for only part of the time.
If you choose to play it extra-safe, that's your call. But we have a right to exercise a little extra freedom at the cost of a little extra risk.
Research performed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories showed bullet lead analysis to be unreliable. Following this research, the FBI announced that it was no longer making use of the process.
In California, no person under the age of 18 may use a cell phone while driving for any purpose (other than calling 911). There are no exceptions for hands-free devices. If they're not calling 911, they have to pull off the road to make the call. I can see some logic in requiring this also for those who are 18 or older but have their driver's license for less than, say, two years.