Well, it's quite possible that it's merely an aberration that has no benefit. Alternatively, I suppose you could hypothesize that it stems from any benefit derived from having a youthful parent to your offspring but taken too far.
While I agree that it would have been better to tie the revenue directly to Bay improvements, you can't say that charging extra for behavior that damages the Bay doesn't help at least indirectly.
IANAL, however I think modifications to boiler plate contracts have to be initialized by both parties to be valid. And that's for your benefit or they could add whatever they wanted after you signed it and claim it was there all along. So, funny story, but unless you pointed out your addition to them and got someone to initial it, you probably didn't really accomplish anything.
I completely understand that the goal is thought control. However, the people genuinely pursuing that goal are getting inadvertent help from a cadre of slightly more innocent folks who believe they are merely "thinking of the children." It is those folks who give the cause enough numbers to actually accomplish anything, and it is those folks I wish would wake up and understand the real outcome. Many of those people would not agree to take rights away from adults if it were put to them that way, they just need to take the blinders off and see that it is what they are doing.
I recall a judge a while back who said something like: we should not protect the children by taking away rights they should have once they become adults.
Obviously the real problem is with prudes who hope that no one will ever be able to look at porn or enjoy sex again, but I do really wish more people would think of the other side and realize that stripping rights away that our children would otherwise grow into is just not worth it.
Right after an accident is a really good time to have your cell phone. To make the zillion calls it takes to deal with having an accident for example. Insurance agent? Doctor? Family? Tow truck? Rental car?
My phone is a cheap lousy POS that I've had for years, and I'd be in deep shit caught out at an accident scene without it.
If they think the phone was involved they should subpoena the records. If lawmakers and judges think it's likely that phones are involved in lots of accidents then the solution is to make those subpoenas easier to get and force the carriers to respond quickly. Not to take away the device.
I don't have a particular lot of faith in anyone in our government or we'd already have tackled this problem. I believe that the occasional tragedy is unavoidable. I also believe that telling ourselves it's rare isn't going to make it better.
The best solutions to the problem are difficult. They don't make good campaign talking points, they don't make easy poster slogans. They certainly don't appease the crazy radicals on either side of the issue. It is not realistic to think that guns will disappear en masse or that no restrictions on gun ownership will be allowed.
Things that should be done? IMHO: Every gun shop should be responsible for their inventory. We need more ATF agents. Every gun that is involved in a crime should be destroyed. Mental illness and treatment needs to come out of the shadows. Guns should not be idolized, romanticized etc. Poverty should be addressed. Social inequality plays a huge role in crime in general.
Guns are only an easy way to kill. They are not the motivation or the opportunity to do so. Making it a bit harder to kill someone means you've already failed to stop them from having a reason to do so - but it should be a part of the solution.
I think you're quite wrong on this. At least generally speaking. Almost no-one knows nothing about guns. They may not know as much as you'd like, but most people know something. Just as you know something about the production of pharmaceuticals. Like, you could probably guess that manufacturing them in a dirty environment or shipping/storing them exposed to the elements would be bad.
This particular guy is blowing smoke, but at least he's attempting to address a problem. That is already better than the hordes of people who apparently wish the rest of us would forget that every now and then someone goes bonkers and shoots up a bunch of elementary school kids.
I have owned a gun. I am comfortable around them in circumstances where any reasonable person would be comfortable. I think in the right hands guns are somewhere between a non-issue and a "good thing." However, there are a lot of guns in the wrong hands in this country (and around the world) and pretending that isn't a problem that reasonable minds should tackle is irresponsible.
There are scientific ways to test evolution. Evolution has passed every test. That is why it is a theory (which in scientific circles has a completely different meaning than in the vernacular) rather than a hypothesis. Everything from intermediary fossils which show clear changes over time to DNA analysis which shows commonalities between species in ways which are predicted by evolution support the theory. Anyone who says there are no tests or no proof of evolution just doesn't care to research the topic.
The specifics of the theory may be undergoing refinements as new evidence is discovered, but at this point there is such a mountain of supporting data that the only way to "disprove" evolution would be to prove magic. You'd have to be able to prove that (insert magical being of your choice) had planted all known evidence to play a prank on humanity.
I read a while back that the problem really started when the patent office was supposed to be self sufficient. The office depends on filing fees. Filing fees come along with applications. Applications come with some hope that they will turn into actual patents. So, the patent office makes more money by having it be generally known that most patents will be granted, not by doing real due diligence.
Posting again while logged in, I'm not afraid of claiming this post:
Not caring and being tired of hearing about it is exactly why they keep getting away with it. We HAVE TO FUCKING CARE or these idiots will end up running the place. Caring is what we're supposed to do as voters.
If this same moron was spewing crap about how Jesus hates the internet and it should be shut down, would you care then?
One of the more annoying parts of this ridiculous debate is that "theory" means something completely different in the common vernacular than it does in science.
In science, a theory is an statement that explains all observable facts and it contradicted by none. That is a far higher bar to reach than most people think of when they use the word in more common situations. A "hypothesis" is more closely related to the common use of theory by the general public.
In science you wouldn't say "just a theory" because it is quite an accomplishment for any hypotheses to be vetted to the point of becoming a theory.
And in socializing those cleanup costs, they manage to appear cheaper than alternatives. Fossil fuels are cheaper, in part at least, because the development was done when it was cheap to do so, when pollution issues were barely an afterthought. Companies trying to put forth alternative energy now have to deal with today's regulations, which cost more in dollars but I'd argue is plenty worth it.
There is a price to be paid in polluting our oceans, ground and air. It might not be added into every gallon of gas, but it's going to come around. My fear is that it'll come due in skyrocketing cancer rates and the like for future generations.
At some point, probably already past, we should quit thinking about cost purely as what will I have to spend to buy something right now. When we figure out in 20 years that none of the ocean's fish are edible, it'll be a bit late to wish we'd spent more on wind/solar/wave etc power.
I wonder how much more viable clean and renewable alternatives would be if the fossil fuel industry was not subsidized and was responsible for the clean up of its mess. I've seen smog and soot and smelled what thousands of gas burning cars do to the air. That has a cost that is hard to measure.
Alternatives would become more financially competitive if more work were put into them. I'd love to see the money oil companies spent on defending their dirty businesses go to research and development of cleaner technologies.
On the other hand, I'd rather make new rules about police and security guard training than have more civilians carrying guns. I'm a firm believer in the constitution and citizens' right to bear arms, even the scary kind that should make the government think twice about going all despotic... but I don't think that the average person having greater access to handguns will make us safer. It will make some people safer, because they will learn to use it properly and make good decisions about how and when to bring the gun into play; for loads of other people it will only lead to more violence, accidents and tragedy.
Many of our citizens can't even be trusted with a mobile phone and a driver's license.
Many people will fall into the trap of feeling invulnerable with a gun in their pocket. They will get into stupid situations. They will stand their ground when running would be smarter. They will rush into a situation rather than hold back and call for police or other support. A lot of people will feel like they can handle a situation that they really can't just because they've got that reassuring weight at their side.
US citizens are promised the right to bear arms, but that doesn't mean that most people should do so.
I have a theory that science was popular in the 50's and 60's because it was all about what we COULD do. When science was telling people we could go to the moon and build better cars and make huge leaps in medicine etc... people loved it. Now that science is telling people what we CAN"T do, at least indefinitely, the same scientific methods that generated such progress are now viewed with suspicion and doubt by people who don't want to change.
When news outlets have to dredge up second rate industry shills to maintain an appearance of a controversy over global climate change, that should be a clue. But some people don't want a clue. They want their gas guzzler.
And that's another thing... I believe officially it is known as global climate change. The average temperature is rising, but that just puts more energy into the global weather system and can lead to swings in temperature either way at a local level.
I think it's also a matter of what sort of company you are willing to work for. Small businesses are likely more willing to talk to you just because you get a recommendation than a very large company. For a well known company, the problem isn't really finding qualified candidates but having enough time to sort through all the applications. They can afford to make having a degree a strict requirement because they'll still have hundreds of resumes on that pile.
The blog post that was published about this price increase actually tried to sound surprised that the DVD by mail business hadn't dried up in favor of the streaming side. But with less than half the content available for streaming this should never have surprised anyone. You need both sides of Netflix to make a worthwhile service.
I was looking for an actual explanation along the lines of the studios dramatically raising licensing costs for streaming content. Instead they tried to spin it as a "good thing" that they were putting out new subscription plans. The marketing double speak made this rate increase even worse. You can't tell people that paying more for the same service is good for them. You can try to convince them that it is necessary or inevitable and they may understand, but good? Not a chance.
To the extent that teachers use this new law to actually teach, I'm all for it. Critical thinking and exploring all sides of an issue are important for students. But... what is to be feared is if this law is used to allow teachers to ignore/misrepresent facts in order to create a false controversy. From the examples the Bill gives, it's almost certain that the drafters of it don't want Pastafarianism or Hinduism or pink unicorns discussed in classrooms. They want teachers to be able to confidently ignore mountains of evidence supporting evolution in order to claim that there is a HUGE controversy and it's entirely valid to dismiss said evidence and believe a 2000 year old book instead.
The "chicken and egg" dilemma is not a real mystery. It's simply a question of creationism vs. evolution. Either you believe a higher power created the chicken in its current form (and it then continued to reproduce by laying eggs) or you believe that something that wasn't quite a chicken laid an egg with a mutation that caused it to be what we now know as "chicken." The chicken comes first in creationism and the egg comes first in evolution.
I was discussing climate change with a co-worker a while back and thought up this little analogy that helped me explain a tiny part of the "controversy" to him:
Imagine that the global climate is like a car engine. There are many parts, some move air, some move water, some create heat, some dissipate it. If you throw a wrench in hard enough to break a random engine part, you don't know ahead of time if the engine will keep running more or less ok, if it will get hotter or colder, if it will run for a while but be doomed in the long run... Just because you don't know if the first part to fail will be the water pump (causing overheating) or the fuel pump (causing the engine to stall) doesn't mean it's a good idea to keep tossing in wrenches.
The global climate is a vast interconnected series of checks and balances. The fact that scientists can't be certain that any given part of the world will be hotter or colder in 10, 100 or 1000 years doesn't mean they are clueless idiots who should be ignored completely. I think that anyone who still goes around saying humans can't possibly affect a global system like the climate are being willfully ignorant and mostly just don't like the idea that our behavior might have to change if we want Earth to be a nice place for our great-grandkids to live.
Science is about collecting evidence and developing theories that explain what is observed now and predict what might happen in the future. Scientists as individuals may have a personal agenda that they may occasionally do a less than stellar job of keeping isolated from their science. As a whole however, science is a much better way to get at the truth than gut reactions and "feelings" that humans couldn't possibly be making such a mess. The consequences if all this science is correct are pretty horrendous and I do believe we owe it to future generations to be better custodians of the planet.
The "think of the children" crowd prefer to have porn right out there in the open where they can get away with saying their favorite phrase. If porn were locked away onto an easily blockable domain they would lose their clout in trying to ban it entirely. I'm totally convinced that most of these folks want to ban porn outright, not simply keep children from seeing it. They need the sympathies of parental minded folks who might put "protect the children" ahead of freedoms for adults when voting.
Science does not fall back on the invisible friend in the sky to explain what it does not currently understand. Scientists may not have all the answers, but at least they are looking for ways to find them. Hand waving and saying "God did it" is a dead end that can never expand human knowledge the way science can.
You are correct, both modems were still authorized on my account. Plugging the old one back in just worked, and presumably you are also correct that the new owner of the other modem plugged it in and *poof* instant access. Even after this was discovered and proven to the tech's satisfaction, we had to wait about a month for all their internal legal folks to sign off and "officially" remove those complaints from my account.
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Well, it's quite possible that it's merely an aberration that has no benefit. Alternatively, I suppose you could hypothesize that it stems from any benefit derived from having a youthful parent to your offspring but taken too far.
While I agree that it would have been better to tie the revenue directly to Bay improvements, you can't say that charging extra for behavior that damages the Bay doesn't help at least indirectly.
IANAL, however I think modifications to boiler plate contracts have to be initialized by both parties to be valid. And that's for your benefit or they could add whatever they wanted after you signed it and claim it was there all along. So, funny story, but unless you pointed out your addition to them and got someone to initial it, you probably didn't really accomplish anything.
I am not assuming that at all.
I completely understand that the goal is thought control. However, the people genuinely pursuing that goal are getting inadvertent help from a cadre of slightly more innocent folks who believe they are merely "thinking of the children." It is those folks who give the cause enough numbers to actually accomplish anything, and it is those folks I wish would wake up and understand the real outcome. Many of those people would not agree to take rights away from adults if it were put to them that way, they just need to take the blinders off and see that it is what they are doing.
Obviously the real problem is with prudes who hope that no one will ever be able to look at porn or enjoy sex again, but I do really wish more people would think of the other side and realize that stripping rights away that our children would otherwise grow into is just not worth it.
My phone is a cheap lousy POS that I've had for years, and I'd be in deep shit caught out at an accident scene without it.
If they think the phone was involved they should subpoena the records. If lawmakers and judges think it's likely that phones are involved in lots of accidents then the solution is to make those subpoenas easier to get and force the carriers to respond quickly. Not to take away the device.
I don't have a particular lot of faith in anyone in our government or we'd already have tackled this problem. I believe that the occasional tragedy is unavoidable. I also believe that telling ourselves it's rare isn't going to make it better.
The best solutions to the problem are difficult. They don't make good campaign talking points, they don't make easy poster slogans. They certainly don't appease the crazy radicals on either side of the issue. It is not realistic to think that guns will disappear en masse or that no restrictions on gun ownership will be allowed.
Things that should be done? IMHO: Every gun shop should be responsible for their inventory. We need more ATF agents. Every gun that is involved in a crime should be destroyed. Mental illness and treatment needs to come out of the shadows. Guns should not be idolized, romanticized etc. Poverty should be addressed. Social inequality plays a huge role in crime in general.
Guns are only an easy way to kill. They are not the motivation or the opportunity to do so. Making it a bit harder to kill someone means you've already failed to stop them from having a reason to do so - but it should be a part of the solution.
You could say exactly the same thing about sex education and look at the lunatics trying to get rid of that.
I think you're quite wrong on this. At least generally speaking. Almost no-one knows nothing about guns. They may not know as much as you'd like, but most people know something. Just as you know something about the production of pharmaceuticals. Like, you could probably guess that manufacturing them in a dirty environment or shipping/storing them exposed to the elements would be bad.
This particular guy is blowing smoke, but at least he's attempting to address a problem. That is already better than the hordes of people who apparently wish the rest of us would forget that every now and then someone goes bonkers and shoots up a bunch of elementary school kids.
I have owned a gun. I am comfortable around them in circumstances where any reasonable person would be comfortable. I think in the right hands guns are somewhere between a non-issue and a "good thing." However, there are a lot of guns in the wrong hands in this country (and around the world) and pretending that isn't a problem that reasonable minds should tackle is irresponsible.
There are scientific ways to test evolution. Evolution has passed every test. That is why it is a theory (which in scientific circles has a completely different meaning than in the vernacular) rather than a hypothesis. Everything from intermediary fossils which show clear changes over time to DNA analysis which shows commonalities between species in ways which are predicted by evolution support the theory. Anyone who says there are no tests or no proof of evolution just doesn't care to research the topic. The specifics of the theory may be undergoing refinements as new evidence is discovered, but at this point there is such a mountain of supporting data that the only way to "disprove" evolution would be to prove magic. You'd have to be able to prove that (insert magical being of your choice) had planted all known evidence to play a prank on humanity.
I read a while back that the problem really started when the patent office was supposed to be self sufficient. The office depends on filing fees. Filing fees come along with applications. Applications come with some hope that they will turn into actual patents. So, the patent office makes more money by having it be generally known that most patents will be granted, not by doing real due diligence.
Posting again while logged in, I'm not afraid of claiming this post: Not caring and being tired of hearing about it is exactly why they keep getting away with it. We HAVE TO FUCKING CARE or these idiots will end up running the place. Caring is what we're supposed to do as voters. If this same moron was spewing crap about how Jesus hates the internet and it should be shut down, would you care then?
One of the more annoying parts of this ridiculous debate is that "theory" means something completely different in the common vernacular than it does in science.
In science, a theory is an statement that explains all observable facts and it contradicted by none. That is a far higher bar to reach than most people think of when they use the word in more common situations. A "hypothesis" is more closely related to the common use of theory by the general public.
In science you wouldn't say "just a theory" because it is quite an accomplishment for any hypotheses to be vetted to the point of becoming a theory.
And in socializing those cleanup costs, they manage to appear cheaper than alternatives. Fossil fuels are cheaper, in part at least, because the development was done when it was cheap to do so, when pollution issues were barely an afterthought. Companies trying to put forth alternative energy now have to deal with today's regulations, which cost more in dollars but I'd argue is plenty worth it.
There is a price to be paid in polluting our oceans, ground and air. It might not be added into every gallon of gas, but it's going to come around. My fear is that it'll come due in skyrocketing cancer rates and the like for future generations.
At some point, probably already past, we should quit thinking about cost purely as what will I have to spend to buy something right now. When we figure out in 20 years that none of the ocean's fish are edible, it'll be a bit late to wish we'd spent more on wind/solar/wave etc power.
I wonder how much more viable clean and renewable alternatives would be if the fossil fuel industry was not subsidized and was responsible for the clean up of its mess. I've seen smog and soot and smelled what thousands of gas burning cars do to the air. That has a cost that is hard to measure.
Alternatives would become more financially competitive if more work were put into them. I'd love to see the money oil companies spent on defending their dirty businesses go to research and development of cleaner technologies.
On the other hand, I'd rather make new rules about police and security guard training than have more civilians carrying guns. I'm a firm believer in the constitution and citizens' right to bear arms, even the scary kind that should make the government think twice about going all despotic... but I don't think that the average person having greater access to handguns will make us safer. It will make some people safer, because they will learn to use it properly and make good decisions about how and when to bring the gun into play; for loads of other people it will only lead to more violence, accidents and tragedy.
Many of our citizens can't even be trusted with a mobile phone and a driver's license.
Many people will fall into the trap of feeling invulnerable with a gun in their pocket. They will get into stupid situations. They will stand their ground when running would be smarter. They will rush into a situation rather than hold back and call for police or other support. A lot of people will feel like they can handle a situation that they really can't just because they've got that reassuring weight at their side.
US citizens are promised the right to bear arms, but that doesn't mean that most people should do so.
I have a theory that science was popular in the 50's and 60's because it was all about what we COULD do. When science was telling people we could go to the moon and build better cars and make huge leaps in medicine etc... people loved it. Now that science is telling people what we CAN"T do, at least indefinitely, the same scientific methods that generated such progress are now viewed with suspicion and doubt by people who don't want to change.
When news outlets have to dredge up second rate industry shills to maintain an appearance of a controversy over global climate change, that should be a clue. But some people don't want a clue. They want their gas guzzler.
And that's another thing... I believe officially it is known as global climate change. The average temperature is rising, but that just puts more energy into the global weather system and can lead to swings in temperature either way at a local level.
I think it's also a matter of what sort of company you are willing to work for. Small businesses are likely more willing to talk to you just because you get a recommendation than a very large company. For a well known company, the problem isn't really finding qualified candidates but having enough time to sort through all the applications. They can afford to make having a degree a strict requirement because they'll still have hundreds of resumes on that pile.
The blog post that was published about this price increase actually tried to sound surprised that the DVD by mail business hadn't dried up in favor of the streaming side. But with less than half the content available for streaming this should never have surprised anyone. You need both sides of Netflix to make a worthwhile service. I was looking for an actual explanation along the lines of the studios dramatically raising licensing costs for streaming content. Instead they tried to spin it as a "good thing" that they were putting out new subscription plans. The marketing double speak made this rate increase even worse. You can't tell people that paying more for the same service is good for them. You can try to convince them that it is necessary or inevitable and they may understand, but good? Not a chance.
To the extent that teachers use this new law to actually teach, I'm all for it. Critical thinking and exploring all sides of an issue are important for students. But... what is to be feared is if this law is used to allow teachers to ignore/misrepresent facts in order to create a false controversy. From the examples the Bill gives, it's almost certain that the drafters of it don't want Pastafarianism or Hinduism or pink unicorns discussed in classrooms. They want teachers to be able to confidently ignore mountains of evidence supporting evolution in order to claim that there is a HUGE controversy and it's entirely valid to dismiss said evidence and believe a 2000 year old book instead.
The "chicken and egg" dilemma is not a real mystery. It's simply a question of creationism vs. evolution. Either you believe a higher power created the chicken in its current form (and it then continued to reproduce by laying eggs) or you believe that something that wasn't quite a chicken laid an egg with a mutation that caused it to be what we now know as "chicken." The chicken comes first in creationism and the egg comes first in evolution.
Imagine that the global climate is like a car engine. There are many parts, some move air, some move water, some create heat, some dissipate it. If you throw a wrench in hard enough to break a random engine part, you don't know ahead of time if the engine will keep running more or less ok, if it will get hotter or colder, if it will run for a while but be doomed in the long run... Just because you don't know if the first part to fail will be the water pump (causing overheating) or the fuel pump (causing the engine to stall) doesn't mean it's a good idea to keep tossing in wrenches.
The global climate is a vast interconnected series of checks and balances. The fact that scientists can't be certain that any given part of the world will be hotter or colder in 10, 100 or 1000 years doesn't mean they are clueless idiots who should be ignored completely. I think that anyone who still goes around saying humans can't possibly affect a global system like the climate are being willfully ignorant and mostly just don't like the idea that our behavior might have to change if we want Earth to be a nice place for our great-grandkids to live.
Science is about collecting evidence and developing theories that explain what is observed now and predict what might happen in the future. Scientists as individuals may have a personal agenda that they may occasionally do a less than stellar job of keeping isolated from their science. As a whole however, science is a much better way to get at the truth than gut reactions and "feelings" that humans couldn't possibly be making such a mess. The consequences if all this science is correct are pretty horrendous and I do believe we owe it to future generations to be better custodians of the planet.
The "think of the children" crowd prefer to have porn right out there in the open where they can get away with saying their favorite phrase. If porn were locked away onto an easily blockable domain they would lose their clout in trying to ban it entirely. I'm totally convinced that most of these folks want to ban porn outright, not simply keep children from seeing it. They need the sympathies of parental minded folks who might put "protect the children" ahead of freedoms for adults when voting.
Science does not fall back on the invisible friend in the sky to explain what it does not currently understand. Scientists may not have all the answers, but at least they are looking for ways to find them. Hand waving and saying "God did it" is a dead end that can never expand human knowledge the way science can.
You are correct, both modems were still authorized on my account. Plugging the old one back in just worked, and presumably you are also correct that the new owner of the other modem plugged it in and *poof* instant access. Even after this was discovered and proven to the tech's satisfaction, we had to wait about a month for all their internal legal folks to sign off and "officially" remove those complaints from my account.