An even smarter policy would put a critical eye on what SHOULD be classified and what should NOT or NO LONGER be classified. There is a COST to maintain classification: monetary and in terms of trust. If the public perceives the executive branch to maintain classification just to be safe, or even worse: to cover up misdeeds, the cost can be immense. The reflex to classify everything remotely connected is BAD policy, just like doctors ordering unnecesary test is BAD policy.
Many people say that the expectation of US drilling domestically will drive down the oil future prices. While theorerically true, the size of the impact depends greatly on the amount of increased supply.
Bush's own energy department has this to say: "if Congress gave the go-ahead to pump oil from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the crude could begin flowing by 2013 and reach a peak of 876,000 barrels a day by 2025." "...would only slightly reduce America's dependence on imports and would lower oil prices by less than 50 cents a barrel." 'James Kendell, one of the authors of the study, said the refuge would add to domestic production, but "when you're talking of a world oil market of over 75 million barrels a day, adding 900,000 barrels by 2025 is a drop in the bucket."'
In other words, add 1% of world wide production in 20 years is NOT going to drop crude oil prices by $40 a barrel. A MUCH MORE realistic reason for the oil price drop is the expectation of global economic slow-down/recession which leads to less oil consumption starting NOW.
Furthermore, people consistently conflate the gasoline price at the pump with the crude oil price. There is a long supply/production line between the oil rig to your gas pump. Local gas prices are much more influenced by taxes and refinery capacity (hence the dependence on hurricane impacts).
It's fine to argue for drilling in Alaska, but please stick to facts and logic and avoid ungrounded speculations.
I recommend this and other books by the biblical scholar and Christian. By studying how the modern 'Scripture' that you read are arrived at, you can see why a 'Literal interpretation' is fraught with perils at best, and nonsensical at worst. The Snake Handling Pentecoastal sects believe that THEY are following the literal words in Mark and Luke, you know.
Even worst is how some people wield the 'literal interpretation' cudgel to label as heretics others who may have different interpretations. It astounded me when I first learn of how many variant sects there are among Christians. Sometimes, they are at each other's throat. Can this truely be what Jesus wanted to have happen 2000 years after his live?
The original FNMA organization was split in 2: GNMA and FNMA. GNMA was and is fully backed by federal guarantee. FNMA became a Government Sponsored Enterprise. This meant that people assumed (correctly as it turns out) that the government will back the FNMA bonds. Thus, FNMA was able to use much higher leverage than the private loan issuers and enjoyed a low borrowing rate. The FNMA stock holders benefited until this year. The leveraged portfolio and loan guarantees are the risks that the federal government is taking on now. However, up to this point, FNMA is NOT losing significant amount of money yet. The fear is on future losses.
In contrast, GNMA remained small and is in no danger at all. One more case of a federal program that is working fine.
No. Not the Internal Revenue Service. The Irsih Republican Army used violence against people whom they consider colonial masters. The means is certainly debatable. The results: UK had >2 decades of experience with domestic political violence. It's only recently cooled down. Having such a handy threat makes it very easy to increase police power and sell politcal demagoguery.
Those are well neigh indestructible. Low density, sure. But even a nuclear EMP will not affect them and a substantially high temperature is needed to melt them. You may need a couple of truck loads for your photos though...
At some point, they will be good enough to compete in regular Formula One race. THAT would really raise awareness. OTOH, to really promote competing technology, the race should include all vehicle designs with zero on-street emission. That would include electric, flywheel or whatever.
While those with a little power tend to abuse them greatly (check out the custom employees). A good fraction of these 'security theater' behavior is simply good ol' CYA.
Imagine that after a subway gas attack, the police finds photos of the train station in the hideout. The subway authority could be lynched for NOT having a policy to prevent photography. Would it have made any difference? Hard to say, but the bureaucrats certainly don't want to take a chance (of losing their jobs).
Definitional error - Creationism is not science because it does not follow scientific method and standards.
Empirical error - Insistence on abstinence education only and not paying for condom distribution empirically leads to more pregnancies and STD cases including AIDS. Clean water has demonstrably lowered spread of infectious diseases. Digging your pit toilet next to your water well is a WRONG answer.
Theoretical error - When McCann thump the table to drill offshore and insists that it'll lower gas price at the pump, it reflects a lack of understanding of the oil commodity market (or extreme pandering or BOTH!). At peak projected production 20+ years from now, such offshore production would be only a fraction of 1% of global production. THAT is just not enough to move the spot or futures oil market today. It's buried in the noise!
Don't just look at nuclear power, look at policy toward ALL source of energies.
"Obama's overall plan calls for a $150 billion investment in solar and wind power, $1,000 tax credits to consumers buying hybrids and $4 billion in incentives for Detroit to produce more energy-efficient cars. The goal is to wean the U.S. off foreign oil within 10years." NY Dialy News. 8-4-08
McCann has a more modest plan focused around traditional sources including nuclear energy. His idiotic drone, "We have to drill here and drill now," is pandering of the first order. Nevertheless, the relevant question should be, "Will we be a better positions 10 years from now if we follow Obama's plan or McCann's?"
Do not assume Obama is some sort of saint. He is a politician who will compromise individual points in order to implement his broad programs. He is also very intelligent, so do not judge him by the soundbyte messages. Study the nuances of his plans.
For McCann, don't just listen to what the press says, look at what he's voted for and worked for.
Look at each one in totality and estimate who will provide a leadership that you believe will be best for the US and the world 4-20 years down the road. (remember that more Supreme Court appointments may come up this next 4 year)
The Dems in congress tried hard to pass a version without telecomm immunity. They proposed amendments to that effects. However, Bush has threatened to veto such versions. Thus, some of them chose to vote for the flawed law to avoid being painted as 'helping terrorists!' You could accused those as being cowardly. But you cannot call them rubber stamps like many of the GOPers this past 8 years.
I think we have fundamentally different assumptions: Parents can cajole, entice, persuade, experiment, and threaten. I don't know where you live, but most states I've been in do not allow 'unlimited spanking'. At most the parents can force external behavior changes. But I believe only the individual can motivate herself.
So I am suspicious when someone says 'parents need to be more involved' as if that is the end of the discussion. It's similar to the doctors telling people to cut out fatty food for decades and we still have an obesity problem. Now cities are trying a trans-fat ban. Let's see if that helps. It's worth a try.
We need to start with Who we have now and Where we are at now. What I want to ask is, given the current level of parental involvement, WHAT is the proper role for the staff of the school? Are we willing to pay for it? Otherwise, it's just complaining about the weather.
seems to be what you're saying. In most cases, I would agree.
But, there IS no government monopoly in k_12 education. There are plenty of private schools available. They compete rather well, thank you very much. Interestingly, the Catholic private schools tend to pay their teachers very little? How about that?
Perhaps your issue is wanting your taxes to go toward vouchers?
But my biased view is that it's easier for people trained in math and science to pick up liberal arts later in life compared to the other way around. This is because youth is the best time to develop the rigour and formal reasoning skills as opposed to learning with an older brain, I believe.
Often times, when people (esp poliitcos) are talking about fixing education, they are talking about fixing some social ills by MEANS of the school. Look at the school lunch program.
I'm all for the school lunch program, but we need to be realistic on what can be accomplished by teachers alone. An untrained teacher is not likely to be able to help students who are, say, emotionally disturbed. There USED to be some fundings for Social Workers in the schools, but much of that have been stripped away.
So when some one says "Parents need to be involved", my antennae twitters. Consider your example, if a kid is not motivated, clearly the parent has the best chance to persuade them. However, that is not absolute and we certainly cannot beat our kids unless we want to land in jail. Some times the parents ARE part of the problem, esp. where psychological problems are involved.
I understand that teachers would like more support from the parents, that is sometimes not possible if they are overwhlemed with their own problems or are working 2 jobs to make ends meet. Parental involvement will not solve all the problems either. In north america, unless you live in a small town, there is little reality to a 'school community.' IOW, a small minority of the parents might be involved, but most family will be busy with other activities. If there are extra-educational issues that arise, it may make the most sense for other professionals such as psychologist, social workers to be called in.
So I don't think that there's anything wrong about thinking of the school as services. We just need to be honest about what services we want and be willing to actually pay for them.
Perhaps we don't have all the bells and whistle enabled, but we do have sharepoints in the company IT environment. It seems very much like a clunky version control system with a web interface and ACL. The functionality that I've seen can be duplicated easily on a webserver, so I don't understand the attraction given all the overhead....
I am sure you are aware of the New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's campaign that aims to rid the Internet of child porn. So far, several major ISPs have fallen for the misinformation perpetuated by his office and agreed to overreact by shutting down a huge portion of the Internet that has nothing to do with child porn. I have been a subscriber to your services for ___ years and am concerned that you might also be mislead by these lies and succumb to the ineffective and counterproductive tactics promoted by Attorney General Cuomo. I have enjoyed the USENET newsgroups such as ________ for many years. And even the Attorney General's own study showed that 99.9+% of the newsgroups have nothing whatsoever to do with child-porn. I urge you to contact the Attorney General's Office as soon as possible and tell him you will not participate in this overreaching campaign that will do nothing to actually shut down child pornography. Tell him instead that you will shut down specific sources of child pornography following the existing laws.
Sincerely,
ADD YOUR NAME HERE
cc: Office of New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
Some of you may recall that his father was a loved governor of NY state for many years. He is obviously planting the seeds for his own race. This is a simple case of scoring points by beating an easy target.
What I am surprised by is how few people here plan to protest this tactic to the AG or the the ISP. You know that many busybodies will write to the ISPs eventhough they have NEVER heard of Usenet before. If as many or more subscribers write to the ISPs, they may discover more of a backbone to negotiate and try to craft real solutions instead of a sham.
Fair enough. Intentionally giving a large amount of drug to an addict such that he would overdose is clearly deliberate homocide. However, we are now down to issues of what the adult woman knew and whether she believed in it. As you probably know, the vast majority of people who've spoken of committing suicide never attempt it. So motive and knowledge are pretty hard to prove and that's probably why they resort to these bizarre charges.
If causing distress were a crime, people would be too scared to get a hostile divorce! Bosses might be to scared to fire their employees. Shows like Scare Tactics or Candid Camera would be illegal!
I understand the desire to get some justice for the poor girl who committed suicide. But how much is reasonable? How about public shame with possibilities of losing one's means of livelihood? Is that enough? Is 10 years in prison enough? Should this be a criminal matter at all? I'm sceptical of rushing to create legal precedents in knee-jerk responses.
You've certainly demonstrated yourself to be an artist --- Oil is a commodity, not a technology.
What you probably don't know is that all the US oil refineries actually have agreed upon standards. A standard set of gasoline (premium, plus, regulare. etc) is produced in ALL US refineries. Before getting to the local Exxon or BP stations, they have company specific additives added to distinguish them. This system saves the oil companies from shipping gasolines all over the country for lrss time and cost. THIS is the power of standardization. Promoting an Open Standard is the best way to insure standardization.
Most posters here, like myself, feel that there is a proper place for using Flash. However, it is far to encumbered and controlled to be a Web 2.0 replacement for HTML.
As for artist replacing developer, that's great for artistic creation or hacking, but hardly suitable for large scale projects. Want to write an online tax filing app that'll seve 100 millions people over a 2 week period in Flash?
Slashdot Mirror
An even smarter policy would put a critical eye on what SHOULD be classified and what should NOT or NO LONGER be classified. There is a COST to maintain classification: monetary and in terms of trust. If the public perceives the executive branch to maintain classification just to be safe, or even worse: to cover up misdeeds, the cost can be immense. The reflex to classify everything remotely connected is BAD policy, just like doctors ordering unnecesary test is BAD policy.
Volunteer for a nonprofit to fix up a donor database, wire their office, etc.
Join an OSS (almost too obvious to mention).
Do consulting/job shopping.
It doesn't have to profitable initially. As long as you can point to some accomplishments and talk knowledgably about how you accomplished it.
The worst thing is to just wait around for the perfect job....
Many people say that the expectation of US drilling domestically will drive down the oil future prices. While theorerically true, the size of the impact depends greatly on the amount of increased supply.
Bush's own energy department has this to say: "if Congress gave the go-ahead to pump oil from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the crude could begin flowing by 2013 and reach a peak of 876,000 barrels a day by 2025." "...would only slightly reduce America's dependence on imports and would lower oil prices by less than 50 cents a barrel."
'James Kendell, one of the authors of the study, said the refuge would add to domestic production, but "when you're talking of a world oil market of over 75 million barrels a day, adding 900,000 barrels by 2025 is a drop in the bucket."'
as reported here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4542853/
In other words, add 1% of world wide production in 20 years is NOT going to drop crude oil prices by $40 a barrel. A MUCH MORE realistic reason for the oil price drop is the expectation of global economic slow-down/recession which leads to less oil consumption starting NOW.
Furthermore, people consistently conflate the gasoline price at the pump with the crude oil price. There is a long supply/production line between the oil rig to your gas pump. Local gas prices are much more influenced by taxes and refinery capacity (hence the dependence on hurricane impacts).
It's fine to argue for drilling in Alaska, but please stick to facts and logic and avoid ungrounded speculations.
I recommend this and other books by the biblical scholar and Christian. By studying how the modern 'Scripture' that you read are arrived at, you can see why a 'Literal interpretation' is fraught with perils at best, and nonsensical at worst.
The Snake Handling Pentecoastal sects believe that THEY are following the literal words in Mark and Luke, you know.
Even worst is how some people wield the 'literal interpretation' cudgel to label as heretics others who may have different interpretations. It astounded me when I first learn of how many variant sects there are among Christians. Sometimes, they are at each other's throat. Can this truely be what Jesus wanted to have happen 2000 years after his live?
or at least a being with a great sense of humor.
The original FNMA organization was split in 2: GNMA and FNMA. GNMA was and is fully backed by federal guarantee. FNMA became a Government Sponsored Enterprise. This meant that people assumed (correctly as it turns out) that the government will back the FNMA bonds. Thus, FNMA was able to use much higher leverage than the private loan issuers and enjoyed a low borrowing rate. The FNMA stock holders benefited until this year. The leveraged portfolio and loan guarantees are the risks that the federal government is taking on now. However, up to this point, FNMA is NOT losing significant amount of money yet. The fear is on future losses.
In contrast, GNMA remained small and is in no danger at all. One more case of a federal program that is working fine.
"One of my high school teachers once told me that pretty much everything can eventually be traced back to Shakespeare or the Bible."
Ehh. Like the Ulysses? Gilgamash's Epic? Mahabharata?
Oh yeah. They're older than the Bible, aren't they?
We've been telling stories to each other since the dawn of languages, at least tens of thousands of years ago. History did not start 2000 years ago.
No. Not the Internal Revenue Service. The Irsih Republican Army used violence against people whom they consider colonial masters. The means is certainly debatable.
The results: UK had >2 decades of experience with domestic political violence. It's only recently cooled down. Having such a handy threat makes it very easy to increase police power and sell politcal demagoguery.
Those are well neigh indestructible. Low density, sure. But even a nuclear EMP will not affect them and a substantially high temperature is needed to melt them. You may need a couple of truck loads for your photos though...
At some point, they will be good enough to compete in regular Formula One race. THAT would really raise awareness. OTOH, to really promote competing technology, the race should include all vehicle designs with zero on-street emission. That would include electric, flywheel or whatever.
While those with a little power tend to abuse them greatly (check out the custom employees). A good fraction of these 'security theater' behavior is simply good ol' CYA.
Imagine that after a subway gas attack, the police finds photos of the train station in the hideout. The subway authority could be lynched for NOT having a policy to prevent photography. Would it have made any difference? Hard to say, but the bureaucrats certainly don't want to take a chance (of losing their jobs).
Definitional error - Creationism is not science because it does not follow scientific method and standards.
Empirical error - Insistence on abstinence education only and not paying for condom distribution empirically leads to more pregnancies and STD cases including AIDS.
Clean water has demonstrably lowered spread of infectious diseases. Digging your pit toilet next to your water well is a WRONG answer.
Theoretical error - When McCann thump the table to drill offshore and insists that it'll lower gas price at the pump, it reflects a lack of understanding of the oil commodity market (or extreme pandering or BOTH!). At peak projected production 20+ years from now, such offshore production would be only a fraction of 1% of global production. THAT is just not enough to move the spot or futures oil market today. It's buried in the noise!
Don't just look at single trees.
Don't just look at nuclear power, look at policy toward ALL source of energies.
"Obama's overall plan calls for a $150 billion investment in solar and wind power, $1,000 tax credits to consumers buying hybrids and $4 billion in incentives for Detroit to produce more energy-efficient cars. The goal is to wean the U.S. off foreign oil within 10years." NY Dialy News. 8-4-08
McCann has a more modest plan focused around traditional sources including nuclear energy.
His idiotic drone, "We have to drill here and drill now," is pandering of the first order. Nevertheless, the relevant question should be, "Will we be a better positions 10 years from now if we follow Obama's plan or McCann's?"
Do not assume Obama is some sort of saint. He is a politician who will compromise individual points in order to implement his broad programs. He is also very intelligent, so do not judge him by the soundbyte messages. Study the nuances of his plans.
For McCann, don't just listen to what the press says, look at what he's voted for and worked for.
Look at each one in totality and estimate who will provide a leadership that you believe will be best for the US and the world 4-20 years down the road. (remember that more Supreme Court appointments may come up this next 4 year)
The Dems in congress tried hard to pass a version without telecomm immunity. They proposed amendments to that effects. However, Bush has threatened to veto such versions. Thus, some of them chose to vote for the flawed law to avoid being painted as 'helping terrorists!'
You could accused those as being cowardly. But you cannot call them rubber stamps like many of the GOPers this past 8 years.
Just so I'm clear on this:
A cleaning future environment is of no interest to you unless you can make a profit from it, right?
I think we have fundamentally different assumptions:
Parents can cajole, entice, persuade, experiment, and threaten. I don't know where you live, but most states I've been in do not allow 'unlimited spanking'. At most the parents can force external behavior changes. But I believe only the individual can motivate herself.
So I am suspicious when someone says 'parents need to be more involved' as if that is the end of the discussion. It's similar to the doctors telling people to cut out fatty food for decades and we still have an obesity problem. Now cities are trying a trans-fat ban. Let's see if that helps. It's worth a try.
We need to start with Who we have now and Where we are at now. What I want to ask is, given the current level of parental involvement, WHAT is the proper role for the staff of the school? Are we willing to pay for it? Otherwise, it's just complaining about the weather.
seems to be what you're saying. In most cases, I would agree.
But, there IS no government monopoly in k_12 education. There are plenty of private schools available. They compete rather well, thank you very much. Interestingly, the Catholic private schools tend to pay their teachers very little? How about that?
Perhaps your issue is wanting your taxes to go toward vouchers?
Fair enough.
But my biased view is that it's easier for people trained in math and science to pick up liberal arts later in life compared to the other way around. This is because youth is the best time to develop the rigour and formal reasoning skills as opposed to learning with an older brain, I believe.
Often times, when people (esp poliitcos) are talking about fixing education, they are talking about fixing some social ills by MEANS of the school. Look at the school lunch program.
I'm all for the school lunch program, but we need to be realistic on what can be accomplished by teachers alone. An untrained teacher is not likely to be able to help students who are, say, emotionally disturbed. There USED to be some fundings for Social Workers in the schools, but much of that have been stripped away.
So when some one says "Parents need to be involved", my antennae twitters. Consider your example, if a kid is not motivated, clearly the parent has the best chance to persuade them. However, that is not absolute and we certainly cannot beat our kids unless we want to land in jail. Some times the parents ARE part of the problem, esp. where psychological problems are involved.
I understand that teachers would like more support from the parents, that is sometimes not possible if they are overwhlemed with their own problems or are working 2 jobs to make ends meet. Parental involvement will not solve all the problems either.
In north america, unless you live in a small town, there is little reality to a 'school community.' IOW, a small minority of the parents might be involved, but most family will be busy with other activities. If there are extra-educational issues that arise, it may make the most sense for other professionals such as psychologist, social workers to be called in.
So I don't think that there's anything wrong about thinking of the school as services. We just need to be honest about what services we want and be willing to actually pay for them.
Perhaps we don't have all the bells and whistle enabled, but we do have sharepoints in the company IT environment. It seems very much like a clunky version control system with a web interface and ACL. The functionality that I've seen can be duplicated easily on a webserver, so I don't understand the attraction given all the overhead....
ADD ISP ADDRESS HERE
RE: Stopping child porn on the Internet
Dear ISP:
I am sure you are aware of the New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's campaign that aims to rid the Internet of child porn. So far, several major ISPs have fallen for the misinformation perpetuated by his office and agreed to overreact by shutting down a huge portion of the Internet that has nothing to do with child porn. I have been a subscriber to your services for ___ years and am concerned that you might also be mislead by these lies and succumb to the ineffective and counterproductive tactics promoted by Attorney General Cuomo. I have enjoyed the USENET newsgroups such as ________ for many years. And even the Attorney General's own study showed that 99.9+% of the newsgroups have nothing whatsoever to do with child-porn. I urge you to contact the Attorney General's Office as soon as possible and tell him you will not participate in this overreaching campaign that will do nothing to actually shut down child pornography. Tell him instead that you will shut down specific sources of child pornography following the existing laws.
Sincerely,
ADD YOUR NAME HERE
cc: Office of New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
Some of you may recall that his father was a loved governor of NY state for many years.
He is obviously planting the seeds for his own race. This is a simple case of
scoring points by beating an easy target.
What I am surprised by is how few people here plan to protest this tactic to the AG or the
the ISP. You know that many busybodies will write to the ISPs eventhough they have NEVER
heard of Usenet before. If as many or more subscribers write to the ISPs, they
may discover more of a backbone to negotiate and try to craft real solutions instead of
a sham.
Fair enough. Intentionally giving a large amount of drug to an addict such that he would overdose is clearly deliberate homocide.
However, we are now down to issues of what the adult woman knew and whether she believed in it. As you probably know, the vast majority of people who've spoken of committing suicide never attempt it. So motive and knowledge are pretty hard to prove and that's probably why they resort to these bizarre charges.
If causing distress were a crime, people would be too scared to get a hostile divorce!
Bosses might be to scared to fire their employees.
Shows like Scare Tactics or Candid Camera would be illegal!
I understand the desire to get some justice for the poor girl who committed suicide. But how much is reasonable? How about public shame with possibilities of losing one's means of livelihood? Is that enough? Is 10 years in prison enough? Should this be a criminal matter at all? I'm sceptical of rushing to create legal precedents in knee-jerk responses.
'Oil is a "Proprietary Solution".'
You've certainly demonstrated yourself to be an artist --- Oil is a commodity, not a technology.
What you probably don't know is that all the US oil refineries actually have agreed upon standards. A standard set of gasoline (premium, plus, regulare. etc) is produced in ALL US refineries. Before getting to the local Exxon or BP stations, they have company specific additives added to distinguish them. This system saves the oil companies from shipping gasolines all over the country for lrss time and cost. THIS is the power of standardization. Promoting an Open Standard is the best way to insure standardization.
Most posters here, like myself, feel that there is a proper place for using Flash. However, it is far to encumbered and controlled to be a Web 2.0 replacement for HTML.
As for artist replacing developer, that's great for artistic creation or hacking, but hardly suitable for large scale projects. Want to write an online tax filing app that'll seve 100 millions people over a 2 week period in Flash?