I have been legally entitled to 3 versions of autodesk inventor, not to mention several different games and other software. The DRM has always been so terrible and messed up that it would destroy itself, and all the files I made using it after a couple weeks or so. So now I have just stopped buying software, it just isn't worth losing all of my data. If I feel a game is worth paying for, I buy it to support the developers, but install a pirated copy so that I can be guaranteed it will actually work.
In fact, in this case, according to the article, it would be like saying there are 1 million murders in the US per year, all committed by evil people with no heart, and we need to round them up, and torture them and murder them in public, and kill their families in a similar manner (as far as how badly the punishment for piracy is so much worse than the effects of the piracy. You can pirate a 1 dollar song, and cost the selling company $0 because you wouldn't have purchased it anyways, and have to pay them millions). Not to mention accepting the most ridiculous coincidence as proof of a murder. Like if you reported a gun stolen and it was used to shoot someone, you would be prosecuted in full (if someone pirates on your wifi). What a terribly fun military fear inspiring country that would be to live in.
This is the second recent tablet cancellation since the iPad came out. The iPad sucks because of the app-store and the proprietorialism (although good hardware/setup). But two tablets canceled right after the iPad comes out? It is the perfect time to jump on the market, people start using tablets and realize the millions of uses in industry, retail, warehouses, hospitals, and so on. If all those could make their own software and not have to worry about apple's control and privacy invasions then tablets would be insanely useful. And at the same time all the others are dropping like flies? There is a huge, totally ignored market here that could be filled quickly by the first tablet to use a more open platform like win7 or android variants. I honestly don't think apples price was low enough to cut other tablets out of the market, especially the industry market. And since when has apple been known for low prices? The computer I built for 1400 bucks and threw win7 on would have cost me around $35,000 had I bought it from apple (I went to their site, plugged in the specs and the closest result that met minimum). Course, black friday sales helped, but certainly not by a factor of 20. Something just seems wrong with this drop after drop of these things. Very wrong.
It is not in there. Never has been, but in the USA we have something called precedent, which often matters more than the word of the law. Several major supreme court cases have Came down on the side of freedom and privacy.
The real question is, what kind of asshat doesn't want that? If you have no right to privacy, then you must be perfectly 100% in line with every single law, even while you have sex and shower and sleep.naked inside your own home? nope. Masturbating? Nope. sex in any position besides missionary or oral sex? Death by hanging.
You don't think anyone should have the right to freedom and privacy? Fine,you sacrifice yours first and others will follow.
He does commit great fallacies, but an improper argument does not imply its results are wrong.
The fact is that our online interactions can be as private as husband/wife interactions, doctor/patient interactions, or lawyer/client interactions (which are all protected heavily by law). And if you are snooping a connection, you get it all, and violate that privacy regardless of how little you are searching for. We have the right to peaceful assembly, and last time I checked that didn't come with a clause saying "monitored by the government" after it.
And we do live in a damn police state (USA) whether you want to believe it or not. Children can be sent to prison at the whim of the school principle. Curfews. Drug war. Internet monitoring. Reduction of probable cause to reasonable suspicion to 'he looked funny'. Hell, in middle school I was bullied, and because of 0 tolerance policy they told me for being bullied 5 times I was involved in 5 events and could either go to juvenile detention or anger management. Virtually everything we do is controlled too far.
Have you ever actually tried to walk around and find a place where you could not be seen by cameras? They are incredibly rare. Traffic cams, if you are within 15ft. of a schools property you can easily be seen, any atm, any commercial building. This has been true whether I was in Fascist NY state, hicktown PA, Nowhere OH, Illinois or Missouri. Try just living at home. Want to walk from the shower to the bedroom naked? Don't, someone could be looking in your windows and press charges, and you could be classified as a sexual predator and the rest of your life is ruined. The standards for searches are practically non-existent, illegally obtained evidence is always used, and your local municipality can tell you what brand of toothpaste you are allowed to buy. We are living in this RIGHT NOW. No slippery slope to the future, no appeal to fear, no false dichotomy. I can walk out my door or IM a friend and this is happening. No two ways about it.
Your last section is pretty much my point. The male assholishness that happens in large groups of men without women around, and less sexism. I know I started off as the socially awkward kid, but all the jerks dropped out, and I reached eagle and became well respected. It is a good experience, but there is much to be gained by a merger.
And I must comment it is still possible to maintain a difference between what the two genders learn in a coed environment. In response to Bakkster, it is just an environment where leadership and life skills are taught. Men will learn to be men in the same way, women just won't be taught to be sewing, cooking, cleaning, drop-outs who are good at nothing but rearing children. The gains in respect of the opposite sex far outweigh the losses in 1950's style women. Also membership would expand enormously, I know as a kid everyone always said scouts was 'gay' because it was all guys and no girls. And a lot of girls drop out of girlscouts because it is pretty lame too. The standing principles would be so far advanced, and so many more would benefit.
Corporations merge and split all the time. The only thing stopping it is fear that somehow allowing little boys and little girls to be in general proximity to each other will somehow result in something terrible, instead of a better learned respect for the opposite sex.
I actually have heard of ventures, but it is harder to get into, and find a crew than scouts. It is also a step up, and some of us just like regular scouting. I mean, its fun and all but I never got into it. The venture crew off of my troop had a requirement to wear shoes, and I just couldn't deal with it, especially on longer trips.
Very true about the girl scouts, but like I said there is much to be gained from some kind of merger. Maybe there would be less sexism.
Scouts does have problems, but to be fair I am an atheist, and my Eagle board of review new it, and awarded me the rank anyways. When asked about 'Reverence' I simply answered that I possess reverence, for the mighty forces of nature, that when I am 10 miles into the woods on the top of a snow covered hill, I understand that nature can kill you on a whim. They responded positively.
Also, a lot of people call scouts 'gay' even though it tends to discriminate against homosexuals. I just find that amusing. I think we should merge boy and girl scouts to just have 'scouts'. Canada does that and it works fine, but in the US? Hell no, they might see each others parts in the group shower, and that would just be the end of the world. The ground would turn to lava and hell would swallow up all the sinners. At least thats what I am told.
Cub scouts really is a crock, as is Girl scouts. My ex was a girl scout, and their merit badges were like sandwich making, how to keep a kitchen clean, knitting, needlepoint, parenting. Not even kidding.
Haven't we seen that video games at least engage the mind and don't induce the same fattening as television. Perhaps the 1 hour of video games instead of 1 hour of television is a good difference.
Cub scouts really wasn't that fulfilling, I didn't learn that much in it, Boy scouts is where you learn the real leadership skills, and life skills. You have to move with the times, and try to keep the same values at the same time.
Nobody said that. I said yes there is a problem, and yes it needs to be fixed, but throwing a few hundred thousand people in prison purely on grounds of their skin color will not fix anything. It will simply inundate prisons, cost a shit-load of money and more will file in to fill their places. The solution of rounding them up and putting them in camps is terribly shortsighted, and using them as a scapegoat for all of your problems doesn't make them go away either. The problem is that the policies are crap, and a solution needs to be found. But borrowing heavily from the Nazi party is going to have consequences far worse than you think.
What you do is you beef up border security, and allow limitless legal immigration. Then you can put a name and a face to any immigrant, and instantly deport them for committing a crime. The fact is that nobody should be hear illegally, but all the racist bastards in the border states have prevented a great deal of legal immigration. People are going to come here one way or another, but letting them come in illegally is far worse than coming in legally. Nobody is denying that border towns have serious problems, we are denying that rounding up people solely based on race and putting them in camps because your prisons are full and deporting them so that they can just hop the border again tomorrow is a good idea, because anyone who sat through 8th grade history should know that the Nazi's were terrible people, and using them as an ideal model is absolutely retarded.
You tell me that I don't understand the problems border towns face? Well, I don't live in one so I don't. But even if they outnumber legals 10-1, making a law that mandates racism and racial profiling that can lead to the arrest of anyone who is not a protestant pale white male with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Never once have I said "they deserve to freely commit crimes" nor have I said anything even remotely reminiscent of that. Saying "racial profiling and racism is wrong" is not saying "let mexicans take your job and black men rape your women and jews run your banks", although it appears to be the kind of thing you are ready to follow and base legal action on.
And do you really want your children to be reading about you in the same way you read about Hitler?
While it is true that it is a big problem in those states, acting like a Nazi is not magically going to fix it. The false presumption that making a police state will fix all of your problems always does more harm than good. Seriously, just placing everyone in jail is not about to fix anything.
How would I fix it? Make it easier to get to those states legally, because if they have to work for at least minimum wage and pay taxes then you are in a situation a hundred times better already. The problem is that racism keeps them from becoming legal, and as long as it is hard as shit to become legal, the problem will persist, because they will come to America either way.
The only real difference if whether you are going to be racist and destroy your own economy, or work with the reality of the situation to actually make the best of a bad situation.
I find your +5 interesting mod to be absolutely BS, because it is not insightful, it is basically you just whining about your problems and using them as an excuse for racism and Nazi-like behavior, instead of being a responsible citizenry and actually working towards a real solution. And if there are as many illegals as you say, do you really have the prison capacity to deal with all of them? If you are rounding up people as if you were herding cats, and throw them all into the prisons, you will very quickly see the error in your logic.
So yes, I will scream racist, because not only is it racist, but it is lazy, ignorant and flat out wrong. America is a free country, it was once the land of the free and the home of the brave, not it is the home of the ignorant land of the racist.
In any decision there will be debate, and I can tell clear out that this is going to be a massive drain on resources, lead to higher crime, drive up taxes and hurt the economy. Arizona is digging their own grave with the shovel of racism, and they are lying in it too. They could look for a way to solve the problem, but hate seems to feel better for them.
Apparently it only applies to protestant white men over 18 with pale skin, blonde hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders and free of genetic defects. Only the 'normal' ones in that group too.
This is not just a presumption of guilt, it is a presumption that no matter your actions, you are guilty because of the color of your skin. These are Jose Crow laws, and are very Hitler-y.
Although it is a law that your papers can be checked, it has never been required that you have them on your person at all times. The law makes probably cause = to your race. This essentially makes it a crime to not have up to date papers proving your legality on your person at all times, so you are guilty, no matter what you do. I'm surprised the punishment isn't being run down by an angry mob wearing bedsheets carrying crosses, or being lynched on the towns most prominent tree.
Well, I would like to see you try to shoot someone, just to miss by 6'. No matter how messed up the technology I imagine insane uses of it in many applications.
Plus, I am sure they will find a way to change the structure such that it works from any angle. One step at a time, technology takes time to be perfected. The Intel i7 didn't come out the day the transistor was invented in bell labs.
I would go to www.teach12.com and try out their 'joy of math' class, or try some Math Tutor. The joy of math is a 24 lecture series, each is 30 minutes long, and it goes all the way from basic math to basic integral calculus. That will teach you all the theory you need. Then the Math Tutor calculus classes will easily fill in the exacting skills you need.
Or, if your not into lectures, I would highly recommend the textbook 'Calculus 6th Edition' by James Stuart. It is in easy to understand language and goes from the beginning of calculus 1 to the beginning of differential equations in the last chapter.
Also, if you want to understand 3d space in a calculitic way, just buy matlab and play with surfaces for a few weeks.
Really, I think calculus is easy if you understand the concepts, the rest is just bookkeeping. But spend enough time playing with that bookkeeping, and beautiful patterns about the very nature of the world in which we live arise, and you will be flabbergasted. The importance of numbers like pi and e become obvious, and all the frustration seen in math is gone.
The practical use is also great, besides the enhanced understanding of the world. You might not use Statistics and Calculus every day, but the concepts will change the way you see the world, and how you think. When you run into any kind of issue or problem, your tools to deal with it will be far better than before. And what once kicked your ass will be kick ass to practice.
Try not to cram to much, reading a calc textbook or watching some of those classes will let you understand what you are doing, so you won't have to worry about trying to cram.
Hope I helped, just remember to give yourself the chance to learn. Without learning, what do we have after all?
Edit: I for got to state the specific heat capacity of air in calories per gram is about.1-.2, and considering the low density of air compared to water and ice, it can clearly be seen that the amount of heat stored in the oceans and ice caps is many thousands of times greater, if not hundreds of thousands of times greater than the heat stored in the atmosphere. I am no climatologist, but I know a bit about thermodynamics, and you that calls me the glan beck of the green movement, I abhor you.
Also, for the record, I am not that 'green'. I am an engineer. I believe in efficiency, facts, logic, and truth. I chase these as far as the evidence takes me, regardless of political party. Glen Beck doesn't even know the most basic of logical principles, and if he does then he is manipulating his followers.
Your comments rating of troll is accurate, and here is why:
*note: following calculations are in calories per gram degrees celsius.
Melting ice is no small issue, neither are warming oceans. We know that the heat capacity of water is 1 and the heat capacity of ice is.5. We know that to melt 1 cubic centimeter or ice it takes 50 calories of heat, and we know it takes 10 Calories of heat to raise the temperature of 1 cubic cm of water 1 degree Celsius. and it takes.5 Calories of heat to warm 1 cubic cm of ice 1 degree C. So if the ice caps contain millions of metric tons of ice that is below 0 C, and it is not in an equilibrium of forming at the same speed that it is melting, then we can see that the total heat content of the earth in increasing, all other things held constant. Now consider the oceans, which cover the majority of the earths surface, and are very deep in places, constituting a massive possible store of heat, several orders of magnitude higher than Surface temps, air temp, and the ice caps combined.
So based on the fact that we know definitively that the oceans are warming, but quite a bit, and that the melting of the ice-caps also displays a gratuitous increase in total heat of the earth. While the air temps are fairly static, they carry very little heat compared to the other major mechanisms, and very difficult to accurately measure, and give us practically no insight whatsoever into the temperatures of our planet.
You attack what i say blatantly using the fallacy reducto ad absurdum, reducing logical constructions to absurdity by eliminating all of the important facets, as so many creationists, flat earthers, evolution deniers and republicans do. Any lover of science would do no such thing.
I talk about general concepts and things, you reduce and twist what is said to absurdium. Your points are neither here nor there, and you are broken. over 99% of the scientific community is in concensus over global warming, whereas polling figures from the big polling organizations deny it. You call me crazy and lofty while you ignore everything around you. Open your eyes.
I was modded insightful because I displayed insight. You were modded troll because when you ignore everything I say and then insult me based on 5 or 6 buzzwords picked out of my post, you are doing justice to every other troll out there. Scientific reasoning says something important, rhetoric and foolishness is why people believe as you do. As Plato once said "Rhetoric is the art of making the lesser argument seem the greater" and you have failed at accomplishing such a disgraceful task.
So it doesn't matter that efficiency is good for business in the long term, or that carbon emissions hurt people, or that the earth is warming regardless of the cause, we should listen to something that is so unlikely it is totally pointless to consider for more than ten minutes (which of course, we have already).
Regardless of the general hate of reality, the end results will be the same, and the science will still be true, but it will still be denied when Florida is totally submerged, the ice caps are melted, and so on.
Who gives a damn what the pollution is made out of. Let us just follow a simple logical process. Smog happens over cities. Smog is bad for people. Smog has never existed over countryside, unless very close to city and blown there. Smog filled areas are warmer than non-smog filled ones, any number of data collection surveys have proved that, and it is obvious to anyone who commutes. And the fact that the earth is warming, and CO2 levels rise in a way directly proportional to what we output, as does total heat content of earth, which is all just icing on the cake.
You remind me of evolution deniers in that you take a major theory with blatantly obvious effects that can be observed all around you (such as drug resistant bacteria) and you b) pick a small insignificant detail to insult, and stand on your mighty high horse of self-confidence. The problem is that you are talking about something small, and ignoring the angry elephant in the room.
as an aside, we know carbon emissions harm people, we know how much emissions things produce. Regulating them is a matter or protecting people. The environment is just an add on. Back in the days before I was alive, when something was toxic and harming people it was banned, not left alone so that big businesses didn't have to pay a few more dollars to save an enormous amount of money in the long run.
So carbon emissions should be limited no matter what. I don't even see why you bothered bringing it up.
The fact of the matter is that the earth is warming, and no matter how many times you say it isn't, or try to spend decades debating possible causes beyond all reasonable doubt, meanwhile the sea levels rise, coastal cities flood, people die of pollution related ailments, all because some super-corporation decided that it was cheaper to buy a lobbyist now, or bribe a few scientists, instead of invest in more efficient technology what would save them money in the long run, which just goes back to greedy stock holders only caring about the share price in the next couple weeks and saying to screw the long term health of the company.
And carbon is not the only pollution. Nitrous oxides are bad for people and cause acid rain, industrial waste products can be lethal even in relatively small amounts, or can cause birth defects in children and blah blah blah.
I mean really, your argument relies on the idea that the environment is the only important thing in the world, and that it is fine until trillions of dollars of research have been spent to verify things that were known after only a million dollars of research.
Really, what are you trying to achieve? There is no good reason not to decrease emissions, it creates efficiency which saves money and advances technology, and improves the quality of life. And global warming exists beyond reasonable doubt, and it is happening ridiculously fast in parallel to human emissions of several pollutants.
Do we know it for an absolute fact? of course not, but we know it within enough probability that it is totally pointless to pretend that very small possibility that there is a major force at work on earth that we have not yet discovered that changes earths temperature is like saying that we should just let an asteroid hit earth and some 'God' will save his chosen people.
The real question is, what point does that argument serve? As far as the science goes it is far less probable that your argument is right than that UFO scientists will discover something useful, and it is only useful to mega-corps in the extreme short term. Why even bother, when there are so many, far more important issues that we need to be dealing with.
To be honest, the evidence for global warming is so blatantly obviously everywhere, so incredibly pervasive that it becomes hard for anyone with a scientific mind to treat those that can't see the obviousness with dislike. Just how must of us hate the flat earth society.
I mean, just think about the oceans, and the amount of heat water can store, the amount of heat it takes to melt ice, and you realize the melting ice caps and the warming oceans are more than enough proof that global warming exists.
Really, with that overwhelming visual evidence, it is obvious the earth is warming, regardless of surface air temperatures (which vary drastically and constantly based on local conditions). Not only that, but scientists must do exactly what evolution scientists and geologists are forced to do, and comb over every last detail with a fine tooth comb and make sure their are NO published discrepancies, because even the smallest data variation leads to thousands of crazed unscientific nut-jobs storming about how everything you have ever said is a lie and that you are a dirty fraudulent alarmist and nothing more.
Whether or not it is caused by people? that is easy enough, just look at any city from afar, or smell the city air compared to the country air, or go within a few miles of a factory. You quickly realize that we are polluting to no end, and even if it isn't bad for the environment it is bad for us. But that is clearly at least slightly bad for the environment. Whether or not we are causing global warming is irrelevant to whether or not we should limit pollution, it is just used as a distraction and crux for major energy companies and industries that have the entire republican party and those that worship it in their pocket.
Attacking consensus with logical and valid evidence is one thing, but to deny the blatantly obvious is what makes scientists dislike deniers. Just as they dislike evolution deniers (and we can watch evolution before our vary eyes), radio-carbon dating deniers, and so on. There was once a time when the absolutely insane were widely accepted as such, but scientific illiteracy has made this not only main-stream, but has caused a whopping 50% of people to deny well accepted science (in the case of global warming).
As XKCD says, "A million people can call the mountains a fiction, yet it need not trouble you as you stand atop them" It troubles the lovers of science when the fate of their future is at stake over such idiocy though.
Climate science is no more a religion than is belief in the heliocentric model of our solar system.
Bugs in software are one thing, but it is undoubtable that our ice-caps are glacial deposits are shrinking, and that the oceans are getting warmer. No amount of bugs in software can make that false. And no number of calculation mistakes make the smog clouds above cities disappear.
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I have been legally entitled to 3 versions of autodesk inventor, not to mention several different games and other software. The DRM has always been so terrible and messed up that it would destroy itself, and all the files I made using it after a couple weeks or so. So now I have just stopped buying software, it just isn't worth losing all of my data. If I feel a game is worth paying for, I buy it to support the developers, but install a pirated copy so that I can be guaranteed it will actually work.
In fact, in this case, according to the article, it would be like saying there are 1 million murders in the US per year, all committed by evil people with no heart, and we need to round them up, and torture them and murder them in public, and kill their families in a similar manner (as far as how badly the punishment for piracy is so much worse than the effects of the piracy. You can pirate a 1 dollar song, and cost the selling company $0 because you wouldn't have purchased it anyways, and have to pay them millions). Not to mention accepting the most ridiculous coincidence as proof of a murder. Like if you reported a gun stolen and it was used to shoot someone, you would be prosecuted in full (if someone pirates on your wifi). What a terribly fun military fear inspiring country that would be to live in.
This is the second recent tablet cancellation since the iPad came out. The iPad sucks because of the app-store and the proprietorialism (although good hardware/setup). But two tablets canceled right after the iPad comes out? It is the perfect time to jump on the market, people start using tablets and realize the millions of uses in industry, retail, warehouses, hospitals, and so on. If all those could make their own software and not have to worry about apple's control and privacy invasions then tablets would be insanely useful. And at the same time all the others are dropping like flies? There is a huge, totally ignored market here that could be filled quickly by the first tablet to use a more open platform like win7 or android variants. I honestly don't think apples price was low enough to cut other tablets out of the market, especially the industry market. And since when has apple been known for low prices? The computer I built for 1400 bucks and threw win7 on would have cost me around $35,000 had I bought it from apple (I went to their site, plugged in the specs and the closest result that met minimum). Course, black friday sales helped, but certainly not by a factor of 20. Something just seems wrong with this drop after drop of these things. Very wrong.
It is not in there. Never has been, but in the USA we have something called precedent, which often matters more than the word of the law. Several major supreme court cases have Came down on the side of freedom and privacy.
The real question is, what kind of asshat doesn't want that? If you have no right to privacy, then you must be perfectly 100% in line with every single law, even while you have sex and shower and sleep.naked inside your own home? nope. Masturbating? Nope. sex in any position besides missionary or oral sex? Death by hanging.
You don't think anyone should have the right to freedom and privacy? Fine,you sacrifice yours first and others will follow.
He does commit great fallacies, but an improper argument does not imply its results are wrong.
The fact is that our online interactions can be as private as husband/wife interactions, doctor/patient interactions, or lawyer/client interactions (which are all protected heavily by law). And if you are snooping a connection, you get it all, and violate that privacy regardless of how little you are searching for. We have the right to peaceful assembly, and last time I checked that didn't come with a clause saying "monitored by the government" after it.
And we do live in a damn police state (USA) whether you want to believe it or not. Children can be sent to prison at the whim of the school principle. Curfews. Drug war. Internet monitoring. Reduction of probable cause to reasonable suspicion to 'he looked funny'. Hell, in middle school I was bullied, and because of 0 tolerance policy they told me for being bullied 5 times I was involved in 5 events and could either go to juvenile detention or anger management. Virtually everything we do is controlled too far.
Have you ever actually tried to walk around and find a place where you could not be seen by cameras? They are incredibly rare. Traffic cams, if you are within 15ft. of a schools property you can easily be seen, any atm, any commercial building. This has been true whether I was in Fascist NY state, hicktown PA, Nowhere OH, Illinois or Missouri. Try just living at home. Want to walk from the shower to the bedroom naked? Don't, someone could be looking in your windows and press charges, and you could be classified as a sexual predator and the rest of your life is ruined. The standards for searches are practically non-existent, illegally obtained evidence is always used, and your local municipality can tell you what brand of toothpaste you are allowed to buy. We are living in this RIGHT NOW. No slippery slope to the future, no appeal to fear, no false dichotomy. I can walk out my door or IM a friend and this is happening. No two ways about it.
Your last section is pretty much my point. The male assholishness that happens in large groups of men without women around, and less sexism. I know I started off as the socially awkward kid, but all the jerks dropped out, and I reached eagle and became well respected. It is a good experience, but there is much to be gained by a merger.
And I must comment it is still possible to maintain a difference between what the two genders learn in a coed environment. In response to Bakkster, it is just an environment where leadership and life skills are taught. Men will learn to be men in the same way, women just won't be taught to be sewing, cooking, cleaning, drop-outs who are good at nothing but rearing children. The gains in respect of the opposite sex far outweigh the losses in 1950's style women. Also membership would expand enormously, I know as a kid everyone always said scouts was 'gay' because it was all guys and no girls. And a lot of girls drop out of girlscouts because it is pretty lame too. The standing principles would be so far advanced, and so many more would benefit.
Corporations merge and split all the time. The only thing stopping it is fear that somehow allowing little boys and little girls to be in general proximity to each other will somehow result in something terrible, instead of a better learned respect for the opposite sex.
I actually have heard of ventures, but it is harder to get into, and find a crew than scouts. It is also a step up, and some of us just like regular scouting. I mean, its fun and all but I never got into it. The venture crew off of my troop had a requirement to wear shoes, and I just couldn't deal with it, especially on longer trips.
Very true about the girl scouts, but like I said there is much to be gained from some kind of merger. Maybe there would be less sexism.
Scouts does have problems, but to be fair I am an atheist, and my Eagle board of review new it, and awarded me the rank anyways. When asked about 'Reverence' I simply answered that I possess reverence, for the mighty forces of nature, that when I am 10 miles into the woods on the top of a snow covered hill, I understand that nature can kill you on a whim. They responded positively.
Also, a lot of people call scouts 'gay' even though it tends to discriminate against homosexuals. I just find that amusing. I think we should merge boy and girl scouts to just have 'scouts'. Canada does that and it works fine, but in the US? Hell no, they might see each others parts in the group shower, and that would just be the end of the world. The ground would turn to lava and hell would swallow up all the sinners. At least thats what I am told.
Cub scouts really is a crock, as is Girl scouts. My ex was a girl scout, and their merit badges were like sandwich making, how to keep a kitchen clean, knitting, needlepoint, parenting. Not even kidding.
Haven't we seen that video games at least engage the mind and don't induce the same fattening as television. Perhaps the 1 hour of video games instead of 1 hour of television is a good difference.
Cub scouts really wasn't that fulfilling, I didn't learn that much in it, Boy scouts is where you learn the real leadership skills, and life skills. You have to move with the times, and try to keep the same values at the same time.
Nobody said that. I said yes there is a problem, and yes it needs to be fixed, but throwing a few hundred thousand people in prison purely on grounds of their skin color will not fix anything. It will simply inundate prisons, cost a shit-load of money and more will file in to fill their places. The solution of rounding them up and putting them in camps is terribly shortsighted, and using them as a scapegoat for all of your problems doesn't make them go away either. The problem is that the policies are crap, and a solution needs to be found. But borrowing heavily from the Nazi party is going to have consequences far worse than you think.
What you do is you beef up border security, and allow limitless legal immigration. Then you can put a name and a face to any immigrant, and instantly deport them for committing a crime. The fact is that nobody should be hear illegally, but all the racist bastards in the border states have prevented a great deal of legal immigration. People are going to come here one way or another, but letting them come in illegally is far worse than coming in legally. Nobody is denying that border towns have serious problems, we are denying that rounding up people solely based on race and putting them in camps because your prisons are full and deporting them so that they can just hop the border again tomorrow is a good idea, because anyone who sat through 8th grade history should know that the Nazi's were terrible people, and using them as an ideal model is absolutely retarded.
You tell me that I don't understand the problems border towns face? Well, I don't live in one so I don't. But even if they outnumber legals 10-1, making a law that mandates racism and racial profiling that can lead to the arrest of anyone who is not a protestant pale white male with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Never once have I said "they deserve to freely commit crimes" nor have I said anything even remotely reminiscent of that. Saying "racial profiling and racism is wrong" is not saying "let mexicans take your job and black men rape your women and jews run your banks", although it appears to be the kind of thing you are ready to follow and base legal action on.
And do you really want your children to be reading about you in the same way you read about Hitler?
While it is true that it is a big problem in those states, acting like a Nazi is not magically going to fix it. The false presumption that making a police state will fix all of your problems always does more harm than good. Seriously, just placing everyone in jail is not about to fix anything.
How would I fix it? Make it easier to get to those states legally, because if they have to work for at least minimum wage and pay taxes then you are in a situation a hundred times better already. The problem is that racism keeps them from becoming legal, and as long as it is hard as shit to become legal, the problem will persist, because they will come to America either way.
The only real difference if whether you are going to be racist and destroy your own economy, or work with the reality of the situation to actually make the best of a bad situation.
I find your +5 interesting mod to be absolutely BS, because it is not insightful, it is basically you just whining about your problems and using them as an excuse for racism and Nazi-like behavior, instead of being a responsible citizenry and actually working towards a real solution. And if there are as many illegals as you say, do you really have the prison capacity to deal with all of them? If you are rounding up people as if you were herding cats, and throw them all into the prisons, you will very quickly see the error in your logic.
So yes, I will scream racist, because not only is it racist, but it is lazy, ignorant and flat out wrong. America is a free country, it was once the land of the free and the home of the brave, not it is the home of the ignorant land of the racist.
In any decision there will be debate, and I can tell clear out that this is going to be a massive drain on resources, lead to higher crime, drive up taxes and hurt the economy. Arizona is digging their own grave with the shovel of racism, and they are lying in it too. They could look for a way to solve the problem, but hate seems to feel better for them.
I have no sympathy for such idiocy.
Apparently it only applies to protestant white men over 18 with pale skin, blonde hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders and free of genetic defects. Only the 'normal' ones in that group too.
This is not just a presumption of guilt, it is a presumption that no matter your actions, you are guilty because of the color of your skin. These are Jose Crow laws, and are very Hitler-y.
Although it is a law that your papers can be checked, it has never been required that you have them on your person at all times. The law makes probably cause = to your race. This essentially makes it a crime to not have up to date papers proving your legality on your person at all times, so you are guilty, no matter what you do. I'm surprised the punishment isn't being run down by an angry mob wearing bedsheets carrying crosses, or being lynched on the towns most prominent tree.
Well, I would like to see you try to shoot someone, just to miss by 6'. No matter how messed up the technology I imagine insane uses of it in many applications.
Plus, I am sure they will find a way to change the structure such that it works from any angle. One step at a time, technology takes time to be perfected. The Intel i7 didn't come out the day the transistor was invented in bell labs.
I would go to www.teach12.com and try out their 'joy of math' class, or try some Math Tutor. The joy of math is a 24 lecture series, each is 30 minutes long, and it goes all the way from basic math to basic integral calculus. That will teach you all the theory you need. Then the Math Tutor calculus classes will easily fill in the exacting skills you need.
Or, if your not into lectures, I would highly recommend the textbook 'Calculus 6th Edition' by James Stuart. It is in easy to understand language and goes from the beginning of calculus 1 to the beginning of differential equations in the last chapter.
Also, if you want to understand 3d space in a calculitic way, just buy matlab and play with surfaces for a few weeks.
Really, I think calculus is easy if you understand the concepts, the rest is just bookkeeping. But spend enough time playing with that bookkeeping, and beautiful patterns about the very nature of the world in which we live arise, and you will be flabbergasted. The importance of numbers like pi and e become obvious, and all the frustration seen in math is gone.
The practical use is also great, besides the enhanced understanding of the world. You might not use Statistics and Calculus every day, but the concepts will change the way you see the world, and how you think. When you run into any kind of issue or problem, your tools to deal with it will be far better than before. And what once kicked your ass will be kick ass to practice.
Try not to cram to much, reading a calc textbook or watching some of those classes will let you understand what you are doing, so you won't have to worry about trying to cram.
Hope I helped, just remember to give yourself the chance to learn. Without learning, what do we have after all?
Edit: I for got to state the specific heat capacity of air in calories per gram is about .1-.2, and considering the low density of air compared to water and ice, it can clearly be seen that the amount of heat stored in the oceans and ice caps is many thousands of times greater, if not hundreds of thousands of times greater than the heat stored in the atmosphere. I am no climatologist, but I know a bit about thermodynamics, and you that calls me the glan beck of the green movement, I abhor you.
Also, for the record, I am not that 'green'. I am an engineer. I believe in efficiency, facts, logic, and truth. I chase these as far as the evidence takes me, regardless of political party. Glen Beck doesn't even know the most basic of logical principles, and if he does then he is manipulating his followers.
Your comments rating of troll is accurate, and here is why:
*note: following calculations are in calories per gram degrees celsius.
Melting ice is no small issue, neither are warming oceans. We know that the heat capacity of water is 1 and the heat capacity of ice is .5. We know that to melt 1 cubic centimeter or ice it takes 50 calories of heat, and we know it takes 10 Calories of heat to raise the temperature of 1 cubic cm of water 1 degree Celsius. and it takes .5 Calories of heat to warm 1 cubic cm of ice 1 degree C. So if the ice caps contain millions of metric tons of ice that is below 0 C, and it is not in an equilibrium of forming at the same speed that it is melting, then we can see that the total heat content of the earth in increasing, all other things held constant. Now consider the oceans, which cover the majority of the earths surface, and are very deep in places, constituting a massive possible store of heat, several orders of magnitude higher than Surface temps, air temp, and the ice caps combined.
So based on the fact that we know definitively that the oceans are warming, but quite a bit, and that the melting of the ice-caps also displays a gratuitous increase in total heat of the earth. While the air temps are fairly static, they carry very little heat compared to the other major mechanisms, and very difficult to accurately measure, and give us practically no insight whatsoever into the temperatures of our planet.
You attack what i say blatantly using the fallacy reducto ad absurdum, reducing logical constructions to absurdity by eliminating all of the important facets, as so many creationists, flat earthers, evolution deniers and republicans do. Any lover of science would do no such thing.
I talk about general concepts and things, you reduce and twist what is said to absurdium. Your points are neither here nor there, and you are broken. over 99% of the scientific community is in concensus over global warming, whereas polling figures from the big polling organizations deny it. You call me crazy and lofty while you ignore everything around you. Open your eyes.
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I was modded insightful because I displayed insight. You were modded troll because when you ignore everything I say and then insult me based on 5 or 6 buzzwords picked out of my post, you are doing justice to every other troll out there. Scientific reasoning says something important, rhetoric and foolishness is why people believe as you do. As Plato once said "Rhetoric is the art of making the lesser argument seem the greater" and you have failed at accomplishing such a disgraceful task.
So it doesn't matter that efficiency is good for business in the long term, or that carbon emissions hurt people, or that the earth is warming regardless of the cause, we should listen to something that is so unlikely it is totally pointless to consider for more than ten minutes (which of course, we have already).
Regardless of the general hate of reality, the end results will be the same, and the science will still be true, but it will still be denied when Florida is totally submerged, the ice caps are melted, and so on.
Who gives a damn what the pollution is made out of. Let us just follow a simple logical process. Smog happens over cities. Smog is bad for people. Smog has never existed over countryside, unless very close to city and blown there. Smog filled areas are warmer than non-smog filled ones, any number of data collection surveys have proved that, and it is obvious to anyone who commutes. And the fact that the earth is warming, and CO2 levels rise in a way directly proportional to what we output, as does total heat content of earth, which is all just icing on the cake.
You remind me of evolution deniers in that you take a major theory with blatantly obvious effects that can be observed all around you (such as drug resistant bacteria) and you b) pick a small insignificant detail to insult, and stand on your mighty high horse of self-confidence. The problem is that you are talking about something small, and ignoring the angry elephant in the room.
as an aside, we know carbon emissions harm people, we know how much emissions things produce. Regulating them is a matter or protecting people. The environment is just an add on. Back in the days before I was alive, when something was toxic and harming people it was banned, not left alone so that big businesses didn't have to pay a few more dollars to save an enormous amount of money in the long run.
So carbon emissions should be limited no matter what. I don't even see why you bothered bringing it up.
The fact of the matter is that the earth is warming, and no matter how many times you say it isn't, or try to spend decades debating possible causes beyond all reasonable doubt, meanwhile the sea levels rise, coastal cities flood, people die of pollution related ailments, all because some super-corporation decided that it was cheaper to buy a lobbyist now, or bribe a few scientists, instead of invest in more efficient technology what would save them money in the long run, which just goes back to greedy stock holders only caring about the share price in the next couple weeks and saying to screw the long term health of the company.
And carbon is not the only pollution. Nitrous oxides are bad for people and cause acid rain, industrial waste products can be lethal even in relatively small amounts, or can cause birth defects in children and blah blah blah.
I mean really, your argument relies on the idea that the environment is the only important thing in the world, and that it is fine until trillions of dollars of research have been spent to verify things that were known after only a million dollars of research.
Really, what are you trying to achieve? There is no good reason not to decrease emissions, it creates efficiency which saves money and advances technology, and improves the quality of life. And global warming exists beyond reasonable doubt, and it is happening ridiculously fast in parallel to human emissions of several pollutants.
Do we know it for an absolute fact? of course not, but we know it within enough probability that it is totally pointless to pretend that very small possibility that there is a major force at work on earth that we have not yet discovered that changes earths temperature is like saying that we should just let an asteroid hit earth and some 'God' will save his chosen people.
The real question is, what point does that argument serve? As far as the science goes it is far less probable that your argument is right than that UFO scientists will discover something useful, and it is only useful to mega-corps in the extreme short term. Why even bother, when there are so many, far more important issues that we need to be dealing with.
To be honest, the evidence for global warming is so blatantly obviously everywhere, so incredibly pervasive that it becomes hard for anyone with a scientific mind to treat those that can't see the obviousness with dislike. Just how must of us hate the flat earth society.
I mean, just think about the oceans, and the amount of heat water can store, the amount of heat it takes to melt ice, and you realize the melting ice caps and the warming oceans are more than enough proof that global warming exists.
Really, with that overwhelming visual evidence, it is obvious the earth is warming, regardless of surface air temperatures (which vary drastically and constantly based on local conditions). Not only that, but scientists must do exactly what evolution scientists and geologists are forced to do, and comb over every last detail with a fine tooth comb and make sure their are NO published discrepancies, because even the smallest data variation leads to thousands of crazed unscientific nut-jobs storming about how everything you have ever said is a lie and that you are a dirty fraudulent alarmist and nothing more.
Whether or not it is caused by people? that is easy enough, just look at any city from afar, or smell the city air compared to the country air, or go within a few miles of a factory. You quickly realize that we are polluting to no end, and even if it isn't bad for the environment it is bad for us. But that is clearly at least slightly bad for the environment. Whether or not we are causing global warming is irrelevant to whether or not we should limit pollution, it is just used as a distraction and crux for major energy companies and industries that have the entire republican party and those that worship it in their pocket.
Attacking consensus with logical and valid evidence is one thing, but to deny the blatantly obvious is what makes scientists dislike deniers. Just as they dislike evolution deniers (and we can watch evolution before our vary eyes), radio-carbon dating deniers, and so on. There was once a time when the absolutely insane were widely accepted as such, but scientific illiteracy has made this not only main-stream, but has caused a whopping 50% of people to deny well accepted science (in the case of global warming).
As XKCD says, "A million people can call the mountains a fiction, yet it need not trouble you as you stand atop them" It troubles the lovers of science when the fate of their future is at stake over such idiocy though.
Climate science is no more a religion than is belief in the heliocentric model of our solar system.
Bugs in software are one thing, but it is undoubtable that our ice-caps are glacial deposits are shrinking, and that the oceans are getting warmer. No amount of bugs in software can make that false. And no number of calculation mistakes make the smog clouds above cities disappear.
The Hatchet