"Mr. Somerson wrongly claims that if the entertainment industry had its way, people would "never again own anything outright." The fact is, if Mr. Somerson had his way, artists would never again own their own music".
So what has the RIAA done to help protect artists owning their own music? The Sonny Bono Copyright protection act?
The RIAA has constantly fought for the ability of the recording industry to take away all of the rights of the artists over their creations.
Of course you're implying that the majority of the people really want change. The only thing that seems to be able to bring voters to the polls anymore is who is promising more entitlements. As far as the two party system is concerned, I see the current race as
Socialist Capitolism vs.
Capitolist Socialism
I'll leave it as an excercise to the reader to decide which is which.
It all comes down to what you know and how far you want to go. Without a degree upper management is pretty much out of reach. Some senior technical positions are out of reach. You basically have to go a lot farther to prove yourself to those around you, but once you do prove yourself, nobody cares if you do or don't have a degree.
There are companies that require degrees for decent jobs. Do some research into where you want to work. Do some research into if you want to work for such a narrow-minded company.
I've tried going to college 4 times. I have about 60 credits. Sure I want a degree eventually, but it's just not worth it at this point.
The worst part about college is paying thousands of dollars for classes where you occasionally know more about the subject (or at least the current state of the art) than the professor.
Make your own decision about college, nobody else really cares.
Yes it is the true quandry here. I really don't have an answer and I am not sure how I feel about the likely outcome. I do agree that non-renewable resources are shared. If it is decided to double the price of gas via taxation to invest in resources to work on this issue I am all for it. Honestly though the government will just squander the money away on yet another pork project. Where is the balance? There is no balance. The majority of my tax money appears to be spent on supporting people who don't like to work. I guess I get more bitter as I climb up the income scale. That is completely off topic though.
Thank you for a reasonable and insightful comment,
Chris
For myself I ride both sides of the fence. I commute via motorcycle, but when there is more than 2 people involved I use a Deisel Truck that's larger than a suburban. I strongly push that 98% of people could commute via motorcycle and it would seriously cut down on congestion, absolutely stop Cell phone drivers, and ease parking. OTOH I also feel that all mentally competent people should carry concealed weapons.
What I really want to know is why so many people feel that they have the right, the duty, to dictate how other people live their lives. America was founded on the basis of personal freedom. America was founded by people who were escaping governments and peoples trying to decree what they felt were personal decisions.
The majority of the constitution can be boiled down to a simple statement: "You are free to live your life as you choose, so long as you do not impinge on the ability of others to do the same."
Wow, simple, basic, easy to understand. Why is this sentiment so hard to grasp and so painful for millions of people? I have never dictated how you should live your life, what you should worship, or what you should read. How you think and how you feel are your own problems.
I recently made the jump to a wireless connection at my new company and I really love it. We are using the Lucent Gold cards with WEP encryption and it only took me a few minutes to get Linux supoport running ( you have to download the wavelan2 drivers from wavelan.com ).
The ability to wander throughout the office on a whim, to meetings, or to a coworkers desk to show them something running on your machine is terrific.
On a humourous whim I recently wandered around the office showing off IE running in Linux (via the Citrix MetaFrame Linux Client). The looks of terror were priceless.
In short, pay attention to the encryption, your companies data is a valuable assett. The worst part is now I am lusting to put the same technology into my home. To wander around the house, and the deck, or to move servers around without stringing wires (I rent) is a bit too appealing, so now I must justify the expenditure to set up wireless at home...
> but I wont take dead wood. _Real Engineers_ learn by doing.
That's really to bad, you may have missed out on some really excellent people.
With 10 years of UNIX, 8 years of networking, 6 years of Linux, and 5 years of NT experience I took the MCSE for one reason: I got an on the spot $3K bonus. The company needed certs to maintain their status as a Microsoft Certified solutions Provider. Marketing, pure marketing. I could care less, the money is the same to me.
Operating systems are just tools. Use the combination of hardware and software that best suits the job you are trying to do. I find it humourous that in my new job I get tremendous resistance to suggesting that we use $2K linux boxes for basic services (mail relays, DNS, NTP) instead of $8K Sun Netra T1's. How's that for dogmatic bigotry?
> Most of the certification programs I've had contact with emphasize "the way of the vendor" a lot, and ignores (or assumes known) the general workings og things.
I maintain and will be willing to bet that anyone can pass the "NT Server in the Enterprise" based on one simple premis: No matter how wrong the answer may seem, the answer that bashes UNIX and/or Novell the most is correct."
> "This machine is broken, fix it!" and "This machine should do XXX, make it so".
I am really glad to hear about this facet. It sounds like Redhat learned something from Cisco on this one. The CCIE ( Cisco Certified Internetworking Engineer ) is one of the toughest and most respected certifications on the market.
It begins with a qualifing exam taken at normal testing centers. This exam covers every single networking protocol used in the last ten years, along with every physical connection and permutation. In the TCP section you must correctly identify, by byte range, the different parts of the TCP header.
If you manage to pass that then you must go to Cisco to do the hands on labs which are very similar to what has been described for the Redhat tests. A full day of "Set this up to do X" followed by "Why does this not work?".
No, I don't have the CCIE, but don't think I'm not working on it.
The only time that the Supreme Court has ruled on the second amendment it was in US v. Miller. At issue was that one Mr. Miller was in possesion of a sawed off shotgun for which he had not paid the $200 tax and registration (this was in 1934) in violation of the National Firearms Act.
The Supreme court ruled that since a shotgun was not currently used in active duty by the US Military (incorrect) that the shotgun was not protected by the Constitution.
Most unfortunately Mr. Miller or his lawyer never showed up at the Supreme Court to defend the case. It was decided entirely upon the merit of the prosecutions arguments and the previous legal decisions.
What has the anti-gun people terrified is that the Supreme court clearly ruled that any weapon in current use by the military was protected by the Constitution for use and ownership by the common law abiding citizen. This includes pitols, rifles, and machine guns.
> However, nobody has ever been able to convincingly point out any 20th century conflict where the availability to guns has, or could possibly have made a positive difference.
Maybe you should read up your history books about a little country named Vietnam where a well armed citizenry did a fine job of fighting of an invasion by the US Military ( and the french and Australians before that). In all fairness the US Military was so hobbled by the US Government they were fighting a lost cause from the beginning.
> If you study the history of Nazi Germany, it is very chilling and makes you feel incredibly helpless.
If you study the history of Nazi Germany you will see that one the primary acts of the Third Reich was to disarm the citizenry in 1936 (or thereabouts). Hitler knew that an unarmed populace would find it much harder to resist the overtures of the state and dictatorship. Hence the group "Jews for the preservation of firearms" which remembers while they were unable to resist when the Government came to take them away.
If you are going to site the "facts" maybe you should check them first.
> It might surprise American/.ers, but many people in the UK are as proud of our unarmed policemen as Americans are proud of their armed citizenry.
This summer I worked a very large international training program for HP here in the US. Part of the regular festivities was bar hopping around town every night. One Fellow from Britain was regularly terrified at the appearance of police walking around with guns.
I didn't understand it, I was quite amused and more than a bit terrified when I thought about it.
The most fascinating part about US v Miller is that Miller did not show for the appearance. The trial was entirely one sided, with the US presenting all of their evidence, and none being presented for Miller.
Miller was a prohibition bootlegger and after he won the case against the state where the State Supreme Court declared that his shotgun was legal because of the second amendment, he went back into the boonies and disappered, never to be found again.
When the Government appealed to the Supreme Court Miller could not be found and his lawyer did not have the money or ability to defend the case at the Supreme Court, so the case went to the SupremeCourt with only the evidence of the State, and the previous decisions.
Unfortunately nobody with any military knowledge became involved in the procedings. The US discovered in World War I that sawed off shotguns were excellent trench warfare weapons and used them quite heavily.
ESR's gun nut page is a great place to start reading on the web.
And how many people even know about the Bonus Army?
How many people know about Eisenhower, MacArther (sp), and Patton leading a regiment of troops through Washington D.C. gassing hundreds of WW1 veterans in the 1930's? Or the hundreds of women and children injured when the troops surounded the shanty town and set it on fire.
Thousands harmed for marching on Washington D.C. and asking Congress to pay them the money that they were promised when they enlisted for W.W.1.
So much for believing the promises of government.
Check out http://www.google.com/search?q=bonus+army
The worst part about the whole thing is that the new Reich is not in anyway original. They are taking all of their plays straight from Mein Kampf.
Get together with your friends, watch some political speeches and see who can be the first to find the identical passage in Mein Kampf - hell make it a drinking game.
More seriously a similar incident happened on Capitol Hill. Following an impassioned speech by one of our noble congresspeople (except Mrs. Chenowith, she is a Congressmen!), another colleague read a very similar speech which strongly agreed with and supported the previous speech. Afterwards he held up the book and informed his peers that he had been reading from Mein Kampf. People pretended to be shocked. A few days later nobody cared.
If you really want to understand a lot of people's feelings on this issue you should study some more history. JonKatz isn't doing a very good job of pointing it is that so much of what is going on is identical to early 1930's Germany.
Gun registration, attempted crackdowns on free speech, psychological profiling of anyone who isn't exactly normal. The only thing missing is an economic crash.
What then? We are the superpower. Who is going to confront us if the US spins out of control and the democracy is overthrown?
No, guns in the hands of the people can't stop a rampaging government. But they can sure slow it down.
> he has reasons for what he believes and others may have beliefs that have not been reasoned out, just adopted.
The problem with this is that when you are talking about something that is subjective, everybodies beliefs tend to be equally valid.
How can you insist that your beliefs about pink fluffy elephants are any more valid than mine when we have not (yet) found any pink fluffy elephants to quantifiably measure.
You can argue over points of logic, but arguments about things which cannot (yet) be proven are subjective arguments based in a persons other beliefs.
That was getting circular, but because we do not share an identical path in space time our perceptions and the beliefs founded upon those perceptions are going to be skewed, but neither of us is going to be _wrong_.
Davies attacks people for their tendency to fall to "unreasoned belief" but when makes his own decleration he says "I believe".
Reasoned or not without any conclusive evidence on any side it is not possible to hold a truly rational discussion. There is a very similar thread(s) in the anti-gravity article.
There are a great many forces at work in the universe that we do not fully understand or are not truly aware of. But just because we do not know them, or can not prove them, does not mean they do not exist.
There is nothing to prove or disprove an overriding cosmic consciousness. It is a fascinating discussion though, which this boook would appear to evidence.
OTOH how much can you really learn through rational and reasoned discourse on the subject of pink fluffy elephants?
It would seem that we are saying the same thing, you however are saying it much better than I.
My real point is that just because some people feel this is impossible due to their current understand of physics does not mean that it is really impossible.
Nothing is truly impossible. The farther we get into Quantum physics the more we discover that we really don't know how it all works. Physics _as we know it_ may not allow for such things, but we are not really sure how things fit together.
I really love Bob Park - "One can only conclude that at the higher levels of these organisations there are people who don't have a very sound grounding in fundamental physics."
I know that he feels it's a long shot, but how many things have been discovered in the last 100 years that were solidly felt to be impossible. Progress is made by stepping away from your blinders and trying new things, looking in directions that you didn't even comprehend existed.
Just because your only knowledge of me is bits on a screen does not quantifiably prove that I do not exist. I may, I may not, but you can not prove that I do not exist because of a lack of evidence or perception.
Interactivity? Why bother. If I want interactivity I talk to people, whether on line or in person. If I want to learn something I dig through the web and books. If I want some good mindless drivel to distract me while I crunch really big problems, I watch TV.
why all of the push and lust for shared experiences? Shared Experiences may be intersting reference points and convenient for psuedo historians to declare "The event that shaped a generation"
Nobody can experience any event the same as any other person. They each have their individual perspective colored by the masks of their past. We can learn a great deal by discussing shared experiences and looking for the differences between individual perspectives and looking for the causal relationships of those viewpoints. But to grow as a culture, to identify with other groups and people it is more important that we express our personal thoughts and perspectives.
The whole gamut of shared experiences is nothing but sheep cloning in the nature vs. nurture argument.
Don't laugh - the truth is closer than you think! I smoke American Spirit cigarettes because they don't do any chemical treatment or additives to the cigarettes. A friend of mine noticed this and then launched into a long diatribe about the chemicals that were in the tobacco by it's very nature.
As an aside to reasearch he had been involved in on using tobacco plants for cleanup of chemical and nuclear waste, they did a side study where they could pinpoint where tobacco had been grown based upon radioactive and chemical signatures in the tobacco.
Tobacco is a very effective weed. Left on it's own it will completely strip the soil of all nutrients and any other chemicals, even to the point where it can no longer survive.
Kinda puts another spin on the ol' tobacco wars...
Slashdot Mirror
Hillary,
Thank you for the great quotes and double-speak:
"Mr. Somerson wrongly claims that if the entertainment industry had its way, people would "never again own anything outright." The fact is, if Mr. Somerson had his way, artists would never again own their own music".
So what has the RIAA done to help protect artists owning their own music? The Sonny Bono Copyright protection act?
The RIAA has constantly fought for the ability of the recording industry to take away all of the rights of the artists over their creations.
Nice shot Hillary.
Chris
Of course you're implying that the majority of the people really want change. The only thing that seems to be able to bring voters to the polls anymore is who is promising more entitlements. As far as the two party system is concerned, I see the current race as
Socialist Capitolism vs.
Capitolist Socialism
I'll leave it as an excercise to the reader to decide which is which.
chris
It all comes down to what you know and how far you want to go. Without a degree upper management is pretty much out of reach. Some senior technical positions are out of reach. You basically have to go a lot farther to prove yourself to those around you, but once you do prove yourself, nobody cares if you do or don't have a degree.
There are companies that require degrees for decent jobs. Do some research into where you want to work. Do some research into if you want to work for such a narrow-minded company.
I've tried going to college 4 times. I have about 60 credits. Sure I want a degree eventually, but it's just not worth it at this point.
The worst part about college is paying thousands of dollars for classes where you occasionally know more about the subject (or at least the current state of the art) than the professor.
Make your own decision about college, nobody else really cares.
chris
Yes it is the true quandry here. I really don't have an answer and I am not sure how I feel about the likely outcome. I do agree that non-renewable resources are shared. If it is decided to double the price of gas via taxation to invest in resources to work on this issue I am all for it. Honestly though the government will just squander the money away on yet another pork project. Where is the balance? There is no balance. The majority of my tax money appears to be spent on supporting people who don't like to work. I guess I get more bitter as I climb up the income scale. That is completely off topic though.
Thank you for a reasonable and insightful comment,
Chris
For myself I ride both sides of the fence. I commute via motorcycle, but when there is more than 2 people involved I use a Deisel Truck that's larger than a suburban. I strongly push that 98% of people could commute via motorcycle and it would seriously cut down on congestion, absolutely stop Cell phone drivers, and ease parking. OTOH I also feel that all mentally competent people should carry concealed weapons.
O.K., cut the silly Austin Powers bit.
What I really want to know is why so many people feel that they have the right, the duty, to dictate how other people live their lives. America was founded on the basis of personal freedom. America was founded by people who were escaping governments and peoples trying to decree what they felt were personal decisions.
The majority of the constitution can be boiled down to a simple statement: "You are free to live your life as you choose, so long as you do not impinge on the ability of others to do the same."
Wow, simple, basic, easy to understand. Why is this sentiment so hard to grasp and so painful for millions of people? I have never dictated how you should live your life, what you should worship, or what you should read. How you think and how you feel are your own problems.
Confused in Kalifornia...
I recently made the jump to a wireless connection at my new company and I really love it. We are using the Lucent Gold cards with WEP encryption and it only took me a few minutes to get Linux supoport running ( you have to download the wavelan2 drivers from wavelan.com ).
The ability to wander throughout the office on a whim, to meetings, or to a coworkers desk to show them something running on your machine is terrific.
On a humourous whim I recently wandered around the office showing off IE running in Linux (via the Citrix MetaFrame Linux Client). The looks of terror were priceless.
In short, pay attention to the encryption, your companies data is a valuable assett. The worst part is now I am lusting to put the same technology into my home. To wander around the house, and the deck, or to move servers around without stringing wires (I rent) is a bit too appealing, so now I must justify the expenditure to set up wireless at home...
Chris
> but I wont take dead wood. _Real Engineers_ learn by doing.
That's really to bad, you may have missed out on some really excellent people.
With 10 years of UNIX, 8 years of networking, 6 years of Linux, and 5 years of NT experience I took the MCSE for one reason: I got an on the spot $3K bonus. The company needed certs to maintain their status as a Microsoft Certified solutions Provider. Marketing, pure marketing. I could care less, the money is the same to me.
Operating systems are just tools. Use the combination of hardware and software that best suits the job you are trying to do. I find it humourous that in my new job I get tremendous resistance to suggesting that we use $2K linux boxes for basic services (mail relays, DNS, NTP) instead of $8K Sun Netra T1's. How's that for dogmatic bigotry?
Chris
> Most of the certification programs I've had contact with emphasize "the way of the vendor" a lot, and ignores (or assumes known) the general workings og things.
I maintain and will be willing to bet that anyone can pass the "NT Server in the Enterprise" based on one simple premis: No matter how wrong the answer may seem, the answer that bashes UNIX and/or Novell the most is correct."
> "This machine is broken, fix it!" and "This machine should do XXX, make it so".
I am really glad to hear about this facet. It sounds like Redhat learned something from Cisco on this one. The CCIE ( Cisco Certified Internetworking Engineer ) is one of the toughest and most respected certifications on the market.
It begins with a qualifing exam taken at normal testing centers. This exam covers every single networking protocol used in the last ten years, along with every physical connection and permutation. In the TCP section you must correctly identify, by byte range, the different parts of the TCP header.
If you manage to pass that then you must go to Cisco to do the hands on labs which are very similar to what has been described for the Redhat tests. A full day of "Set this up to do X" followed by "Why does this not work?".
No, I don't have the CCIE, but don't think I'm not working on it.
Chris
The only time that the Supreme Court has ruled on the second amendment it was in US v. Miller. At issue was that one Mr. Miller was in possesion of a sawed off shotgun for which he had not paid the $200 tax and registration (this was in 1934) in violation of the National Firearms Act.
The Supreme court ruled that since a shotgun was not currently used in active duty by the US Military (incorrect) that the shotgun was not protected by the Constitution.
Most unfortunately Mr. Miller or his lawyer never showed up at the Supreme Court to defend the case. It was decided entirely upon the merit of the prosecutions arguments and the previous legal decisions.
What has the anti-gun people terrified is that the Supreme court clearly ruled that any weapon in current use by the military was protected by the Constitution for use and ownership by the common law abiding citizen. This includes pitols, rifles, and machine guns.
chris
> However, nobody has ever been able to convincingly point out any 20th century conflict where the availability to guns has, or could possibly have made a positive difference.
Maybe you should read up your history books about a little country named Vietnam where a well armed citizenry did a fine job of fighting of an invasion by the US Military ( and the french and Australians before that). In all fairness the US Military was so hobbled by the US Government they were fighting a lost cause from the beginning.
> If you study the history of Nazi Germany, it is very chilling and makes you feel incredibly helpless.
If you study the history of Nazi Germany you will see that one the primary acts of the Third Reich was to disarm the citizenry in 1936 (or thereabouts). Hitler knew that an unarmed populace would find it much harder to resist the overtures of the state and dictatorship. Hence the group "Jews for the preservation of firearms" which remembers while they were unable to resist when the Government came to take them away.
If you are going to site the "facts" maybe you should check them first.
Chris
> It might surprise American /.ers, but many people in the UK are as proud of our unarmed policemen as Americans are proud of their armed citizenry.
This summer I worked a very large international training program for HP here in the US. Part of the regular festivities was bar hopping around town every night. One Fellow from Britain was regularly terrified at the appearance of police walking around with guns.
I didn't understand it, I was quite amused and more than a bit terrified when I thought about it.
The most fascinating part about US v Miller is that Miller did not show for the appearance. The trial was entirely one sided, with the US presenting all of their evidence, and none being presented for Miller.
Miller was a prohibition bootlegger and after he won the case against the state where the State Supreme Court declared that his shotgun was legal because of the second amendment, he went back into the boonies and disappered, never to be found again.
When the Government appealed to the Supreme Court Miller could not be found and his lawyer did not have the money or ability to defend the case at the Supreme Court, so the case went to the SupremeCourt with only the evidence of the State, and the previous decisions.
Unfortunately nobody with any military knowledge became involved in the procedings. The US discovered in World War I that sawed off shotguns were excellent trench warfare weapons and used them quite heavily.
ESR's gun nut page is a great place to start reading on the web.
Chris
And how many people even know about the Bonus Army?
How many people know about Eisenhower, MacArther (sp), and Patton leading a regiment of troops through Washington D.C. gassing hundreds of WW1 veterans in the 1930's? Or the hundreds of women and children injured when the troops surounded the shanty town and set it on fire.
Thousands harmed for marching on Washington D.C. and asking Congress to pay them the money that they were promised when they enlisted for W.W.1.
So much for believing the promises of government.
Check out
http://www.google.com/search?q=bonus+army
> They have the power to directly influence both, including allowing themselves to exchange some freedom for a feeling of safety
"They that can give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve deserve neither liberty or safety." - Benjamin Franklin
The problem is I don't see any way for me to stop everyone else from giving away our liberties.
chris
The worst part about the whole thing is that the new Reich is not in anyway original. They are taking all of their plays straight from Mein Kampf.
Get together with your friends, watch some political speeches and see who can be the first to find the identical passage in Mein Kampf - hell make it a drinking game.
More seriously a similar incident happened on Capitol Hill. Following an impassioned speech by one of our noble congresspeople (except Mrs. Chenowith, she is a Congressmen!), another colleague read a very similar speech which strongly agreed with and supported the previous speech. Afterwards he held up the book and informed his peers that he had been reading from Mein Kampf. People pretended to be shocked. A few days later nobody cared.
Are these interesting times or what?
chris
If you really want to understand a lot of people's feelings on this issue you should study some more history. JonKatz isn't doing a very good job of pointing it is that so much of what is going on is identical to early 1930's Germany.
Gun registration, attempted crackdowns on free speech, psychological profiling of anyone who isn't exactly normal. The only thing missing is an economic crash.
What then? We are the superpower. Who is going to confront us if the US spins out of control and the democracy is overthrown?
No, guns in the hands of the people can't stop a rampaging government. But they can sure slow it down.
chris
> he has reasons for what he believes and others may have beliefs that have not been reasoned out, just adopted.
The problem with this is that when you are talking about something that is subjective, everybodies beliefs tend to be equally valid.
How can you insist that your beliefs about pink fluffy elephants are any more valid than mine when we have not (yet) found any pink fluffy elephants to quantifiably measure.
You can argue over points of logic, but arguments about things which cannot (yet) be proven are subjective arguments based in a persons other beliefs.
That was getting circular, but because we do not share an identical path in space time our perceptions and the beliefs founded upon those perceptions are going to be skewed, but neither of us is going to be _wrong_.
-- reality is just a product of my imagination.
Davies attacks people for their tendency to fall to "unreasoned belief" but when makes his own decleration he says "I believe".
Reasoned or not without any conclusive evidence on any side it is not possible to hold a truly rational discussion. There is a very similar thread(s) in the anti-gravity article.
There are a great many forces at work in the universe that we do not fully understand or are not truly aware of. But just because we do not know them, or can not prove them, does not mean they do not exist.
There is nothing to prove or disprove an overriding cosmic consciousness. It is a fascinating discussion though, which this boook would appear to evidence.
OTOH how much can you really learn through rational and reasoned discourse on the subject of pink fluffy elephants?
chris
It would seem that we are saying the same thing, you however are saying it much better than I.
My real point is that just because some people feel this is impossible due to their current understand of physics does not mean that it is really impossible.
Nothing is truly impossible. The farther we get into Quantum physics the more we discover that we really don't know how it all works. Physics _as we know it_ may not allow for such things, but we are not really sure how things fit together.
I really love Bob Park - "One can only conclude that at the higher levels of these organisations there are people who don't have a very sound grounding in fundamental physics."
I know that he feels it's a long shot, but how many things have been discovered in the last 100 years that were solidly felt to be impossible. Progress is made by stepping away from your blinders and trying new things, looking in directions that you didn't even comprehend existed.
Just because your only knowledge of me is bits on a screen does not quantifiably prove that I do not exist. I may, I may not, but you can not prove that I do not exist because of a lack of evidence or perception.
chris
Interactivity? Why bother. If I want interactivity I talk to people, whether on line or in person. If I want to learn something I dig through the web and books. If I want some good mindless drivel to distract me while I crunch really big problems, I watch TV.
why all of the push and lust for shared experiences? Shared Experiences may be intersting reference points and convenient for psuedo historians to declare "The event that shaped a generation"
Nobody can experience any event the same as any other person. They each have their individual perspective colored by the masks of their past. We can learn a great deal by discussing shared experiences and looking for the differences between individual perspectives and looking for the causal relationships of those viewpoints. But to grow as a culture, to identify with other groups and people it is more important that we express our personal thoughts and perspectives.
The whole gamut of shared experiences is nothing but sheep cloning in the nature vs. nurture argument.
chris
One man's humor is another man's flamebait
Damnit and just when I was filing my patent for interactive weblogs utilizing #006666 heavily as the color scheme!
Back to the drawing board...
</sarcasm>
chris
Rob,
The Changes file is 1.4MB, not really practical to post here.
what am I saying? now some KW is going to try. I hope there is a good size limitation on comments
chris
Don't laugh - the truth is closer than you think! I smoke American Spirit cigarettes because they don't do any chemical treatment or additives to the cigarettes. A friend of mine noticed this and then launched into a long diatribe about the chemicals that were in the tobacco by it's very nature.
As an aside to reasearch he had been involved in on using tobacco plants for cleanup of chemical and nuclear waste, they did a side study where they could pinpoint where tobacco had been grown based upon radioactive and chemical signatures in the tobacco.
Tobacco is a very effective weed. Left on it's own it will completely strip the soil of all nutrients and any other chemicals, even to the point where it can no longer survive.
Kinda puts another spin on the ol' tobacco wars...
chris