I heard Buzz Aldrin (one of the few people to have walked on the moon) on DC news radio the other day talking about moon monoliths. I thought he was talking about Earth's moon, but some googling shows he's talking about a monolith on one of Mars' moons, if that's what he was referring to. He explicitly talked about off-world life forms - aliens - as well.
So that's interesting - Hillary talking about extraterrestrial life, as well as Aldrin talking about it, around the same time.
I do think there's extraterrestrial life (Stephen Hawking has said trying to contact extraterrestrial life is a bad idea), but conventional wisdom says it's impossible for it to have found us, as our understanding of physics and engineering says it would not be possible to traverse interstellar and intergalactic distances in reasonable timeframes.
Just because she's very good at defending financial sector firms doesn't mean she's a wise choice for regulating them. The regulatory agency heads are in federal service only briefly, taking large pay cuts to get into the position in order to make connections and understand how the government operates, before they go back to their industry.
That decision completely dismembers the 2nd Amendment. It totally separates the requirement for service in the militia from the right to keep and bear arms. It cuts the sentence in half and discards the first part.
It is nothing but unconstitutional judicial activism. Special interests like to giggle about stuff like this and say 'tough shit', but like I say, that cuts both ways.
Dist of Col v. Heller,the Supreme Court already ruled the 2nd amendment is the right of the people, not the right of the militia.
The SCOTUS is wrong here. Just like they were wrong with Kelo v. New London. The 2nd Amendment is exceptionally clear about the purpose of the right and its support of the militia. This is judicial activism on the conservative side (cuts both ways, which is why I'm opposed to it).
Keep trying on the reading, maybe one day you will be able to read a complete paragraph or turn off your liberal filter.
Liberal. Right. I support the death penalty, I'm opposed to illegal immigration and I'm fully for securing the southern border, including Trump's Wall. I also think people like the Branch Dildonians are imbeciles and the gun industry has subverted Congress just like Wall Street has. And I'm tired of the NRA and their bought politicians creating totally insane gun laws which have nothing to do with the one sentence 2nd Amendment, but everything to do with furthering the firearms business resulting in needless slaughter in this country, and then having to listen to buffoons parrot incoherent propaganda.
I'm not a big fan of monkeying with the Constitution. 2nd Amendment comes after the first and all that. All I'm saying is, rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin. If firearm owners are forced to observe the responsibilities that come with the right, we can then get solid, in-depth background checks on everyone, the Constitutional goal will be achieved, and fit gun owners get to keep their firearms. While severely limiting those who are likely to commit mayhem with the device from possessing one.
I appreciate reading comprehension can be difficult at times. However, the 2nd Amendment is very short and very clear. I recommend you read the entire sentence, not just the fragment you like.
I'm stating a post-condition. Buy a gun, you're in the militia, you show up for indoc (or drill) 0600 Saturday morning. If it turns out you're unfit for duty due to the voices, you're barred from the militia, and ipso facto, no firearm for you. Obviously the state can prevent certain people from owning firearms already.
Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the coin. If one is going to exercise the right to own a firearm, they should observe the responsibility to serve in the militia and protect the security of the state.
The 2nd Amendment clearly states that in order to have a militia to protect the security of the state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The Constitution says nothing about hunting, self defense, rape prevention or anything else. The reason for the uninfringed right to bear arms is for the purposes of having a state militia to protect the freedom of the state.
So: Make everyone with a firearm serve in the state militia. Make it a National Guard-esque obligation. The most important benefit of this would be to be able to thoroughly screen all the militia members, both mentally and physically, so it can be ascertained they are fit to serve and by extension bear arms in defense of the state.
NIRP = Negative Interest Rates, a situation where a central bank tries to push interest rates below zero (instead of getting interest on your savings, you pay the bank to hold your cash). The theory is that THIS is the thing that will force consumers to spend their wealth, and yadda yadda, the economy starts growing and adding jobs (the reason for the 2% inflation target is similar, to make debt more attractive as one can pay it off in less valuable currency, and to institute a "use it or lose it" tax which doesn't need to be voted on by the legislature).
The PROBLEM is that if rates get too negative, then people will convert their wealth to cash. Large denomination bills enable that. That's why there has been a push on to eliminate the 100 dollar bill, under the guise of battling terrorists and criminals. The head of the European Central Bank has recently proposed eliminating the 500 Euro note for the same reason. A happy coincidence is that this makes it harder for people to convert their wealth to cash.
This won't be instituted all at once. This is how it is introduced, under a false casus belli.
A cashless society means you are a captive audience to these sorts of experiments. Additionally, while cash doesn't require infrastructure to complete transactions, cashless transactions require a great deal of infrastructure. Buying something electronically means you are requesting permission to buy - either via authentication or other constraints.
Humans have been using currency for thousands of years. Instead of hastily rushing to do away with it, we should approach the situation with a lot of caution. Something proponents most certainly do not want.
Currency is already a logical construct. The slips of paper are inherently worth very little. They don't even function that well as toilet paper (not that I would know). Currency which becomes an electronic logical construct gives a tremendous amount of power to the people running the servers. And even more importantly perhaps, their cronies.
"You come to us today telling us "We're sorry. We won't do it again. Trust us". Well i have some people in my constituency that actually robbed some of your banks, and they say the same thing." -- Representative Mike Capuano quoted in The Inside Job.
That's the search term I'd be looking for, to compare college presidents to CEOs. With that search term, I keep getting hits for average fortune 500 CEO salary, and the range is from 10.5 million to 13.8 million.
Here is what the American Bar Association says about "hate speech"; it's worth repeating:
Hate speech is speech that offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits.
But... what if there is some unflattering FACT about a group that offends and insults most members of that group? Conversely, there may be flattering fact about a group that most members of the group find flattering.
There seem to be two kinds of people when it comes to social policy:
Group 1 first asks whether something is true, then may consider whether it's offensive. Group 2 first asks whether something is offensive, then may consider whether it's true.
I was going to say "conservative" and "liberal" but it didn't quite seem to cover it.
More people vote on God, guns and gays than outsourcing. And as long as big companies pay politicians to help them get re-elected, this - and many other issues like it - fall by the wayside.
That's why they allow it.
"No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems -- of which getting elected and re-elected are No. 1 and No. 2. Whatever is No. 3 is far behind". -- Thomas Sowell
I mean, the reality is that if you were paying 10% on cash trapped in your account, you would more than likely just go out each week and spend all your money, even if you don't really want anything you are buying.
I'm not sure this is true. Eroding your purchasing power at 10% per year is just like inflation at 10%. We've had that. People will likely borrow more. But also, people will draw down their spending in an attempt to preserve whatever purchasing power they've got. People still need to eat, pay rent, pay for gas, buy clothes.
I think it could radically inflate debt-based purchases though. However, I don't know what the housing market did during the inflationary/stagflationary episode of the late 70s/early 80s. We can see just how people react with inflation of 10%.
4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." -- Cornell Legal Information Institute
If the search is reasonable, I'm not seeing the hangup.
It's nice to have an unbreakable lockbox against anyone, even the NSA, but once the search is reasonable, ought not the device be decrypted?
It's also paradoxical. Cold weather should speed up the metabolism, and thus, on the same diet, the organism should lose weight, not gain it. Yet the adaptation to gain fat to likely protect body temperature kicks in, generating changes in the digestive subsystem to achieve that end.
I found that interesting. Identical mice placed in different environments, on the same diets. One set gets fat, the other stays normal weight.
Certainly obese humans should eat healthier and exercise, but perhaps it's not all moral failing that make them fatter than normal weight types.
Also, something like this might suggest further areas of human research. Instead of just saying that the naturally skinny differ "in the genes", researchers might start investigating different subsystems, such as the digestive, to see how changes in them might mitigate weight gain.
If this is a highly vetted population, it won't take into account the grifters, criminals, mentally incompetent and others which make up the tapestry of society. It's like testing a chemical reaction but not adding all the chemicals.
The nice thing about social science studies (and studies in general) is you can make them say just about anything to advance your cause. Just massage the incoming data, in any number of ways, and it will say what you want it to say. "If you torture the data long enough, it will confess."
Suicide bombers are like viking berserkers and japanese kamakazi pilots. They are the walking, talking embodiment of courage and dedication. The fact that you are their enemy doesn't diminish that in the slightest. Oppose them or not, when you disparage them, you diminish yourself.
It is true that suicide bombers are badass. However, they are fighting for extreme limits on freedom, fighting to take autonomy and power away from the populace and give it to the ultimate nanny state. That's regrettable. In virtually all cases, they are anti-education, anti-science, anti-technology, anti-liberty.
The ones who deserve contempt are the drone pilots. They're walking, talking embodiments of cowardice, deserving of utter contempt.
If combat were purely a dick-waving contest (war is to a certain degree, but I'm talking about actual tactical combat), then this might be true. However, combat is about winning, as quickly, efficiently and safely as possible. Very Art Of War-esque. As such, drone pilots play an important role in force protection, threat identification and threat neutralization. They save our troops' lives and advance the mission. As such, I consider them extremely effective and worthy combatants. They're a manifestation of the West's technological dominance, something suicide bombers and their handlers will never understand or achieve.
So his stake in Xerox is 9.12%: "Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) increased his shareholding of Xerox XRX +0.00% (NYSE:XRX) in January, a filing revealed Friday as the company announced increased partnership with him and major changes in line with his vision for the company.
Icahn’s funds purchased an additional 5,740,871 during the period from Jan. 4 to Jan. 8, at an average price of $10.05 per share. According to the filing, the purchases brought his total stake in the company to 92,377,043 shares, or 9.12% of its shares outstanding, and a boost of 12.2% from his last disclosure in December.
Icahn’s three selected board members will join a nine-member board of directors for the BPO company. The current board will begin searching for an external candidate for CEO of the BPO company and also allow Icahn to choose a representative to be involved in the search process, Xerox said. [...] “Happy to announce we reached an agreement with $XRX re: separation into two independent public companies,” Icahn said on Twitter TWTR +0.00% Friday. “We believe the separation will greatly enhance value for $XRX shareholders. I applaud and respect Ursula Burns for doing what she believes shareholders want – as @Donahoe_John did with $Ebay EBAY +0.00% and $PYPL. I hope and believe the results will be just as good for XRX shareholders.”
Icahn’s tweets referred to the division of Paypal (NASDAQ:PYPL) from eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) that he prompted last year and which became complete in July. Since they began trading separately on July 20, eBay’s shares have fallen 18.3% and Paypal Holdings shares have declined 6.7%."
-- Forbes link (sorry folks, but that's where the info was)
Icahn himself says he "reached an agreement" with Xerox. The guy is a famous corporate raider with a significant stake in the company. Whoever said Icahn had nothing to do with it is delusional or lying.
Being able to control the information being fed to the population creates a tremendous of control over that population. Television and radio are loudspeakers into people's homes. And now so is the Internet. Television and radio are very strictly controlled by those that own the airwaves, and a very expensive medium on which to advertise.
Being able to control information on the Internet is a very dear goal to the powers that be, either elected or not-elected. ALL spectrums of politicians want this power, not just the ones you or I disagree with.
Here's the cold, unabashed, truth: Programming is easy.
It's easier after one has amassed 20 years of experience. Dealing with the intricacies of syntax, remember what functions require what parameters, the nuances of compilers and interpreters, of threads and mutexes, roll-your-own bit-shifting, reading other people's code and identifying subtle, intermittent bugs may be easy to a rockstar, but to merely highly capable it can produce challenges, especially in large code bases. I've heard elite programmers say they don't know what's going on in a section of code.
Conceptually, at a high level, it's typically easy to describe many if not most programs. But those who think actually programming non-trivial systems is easy I think are not correctly stating the reality.
Slashdot Mirror
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was the film that did it.
There was only one de facto media back then, not the heterogeneity we have today.
I heard Buzz Aldrin (one of the few people to have walked on the moon) on DC news radio the other day talking about moon monoliths. I thought he was talking about Earth's moon, but some googling shows he's talking about a monolith on one of Mars' moons, if that's what he was referring to. He explicitly talked about off-world life forms - aliens - as well.
So that's interesting - Hillary talking about extraterrestrial life, as well as Aldrin talking about it, around the same time.
I do think there's extraterrestrial life (Stephen Hawking has said trying to contact extraterrestrial life is a bad idea), but conventional wisdom says it's impossible for it to have found us, as our understanding of physics and engineering says it would not be possible to traverse interstellar and intergalactic distances in reasonable timeframes.
Seems like there's a lot of conflicts of interest, kinda like Eric Holder: Mary Jo White, current head of the SEC
Just because she's very good at defending financial sector firms doesn't mean she's a wise choice for regulating them. The regulatory agency heads are in federal service only briefly, taking large pay cuts to get into the position in order to make connections and understand how the government operates, before they go back to their industry.
That decision completely dismembers the 2nd Amendment. It totally separates the requirement for service in the militia from the right to keep and bear arms. It cuts the sentence in half and discards the first part.
It is nothing but unconstitutional judicial activism. Special interests like to giggle about stuff like this and say 'tough shit', but like I say, that cuts both ways.
The SCOTUS is wrong here. Just like they were wrong with Kelo v. New London. The 2nd Amendment is exceptionally clear about the purpose of the right and its support of the militia. This is judicial activism on the conservative side (cuts both ways, which is why I'm opposed to it).
Liberal. Right. I support the death penalty, I'm opposed to illegal immigration and I'm fully for securing the southern border, including Trump's Wall. I also think people like the Branch Dildonians are imbeciles and the gun industry has subverted Congress just like Wall Street has. And I'm tired of the NRA and their bought politicians creating totally insane gun laws which have nothing to do with the one sentence 2nd Amendment, but everything to do with furthering the firearms business resulting in needless slaughter in this country, and then having to listen to buffoons parrot incoherent propaganda.
I'm not a big fan of monkeying with the Constitution. 2nd Amendment comes after the first and all that. All I'm saying is, rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin. If firearm owners are forced to observe the responsibilities that come with the right, we can then get solid, in-depth background checks on everyone, the Constitutional goal will be achieved, and fit gun owners get to keep their firearms. While severely limiting those who are likely to commit mayhem with the device from possessing one.
I appreciate reading comprehension can be difficult at times. However, the 2nd Amendment is very short and very clear. I recommend you read the entire sentence, not just the fragment you like.
It's a post-condition. The state grants the right so that it may have a well-regulated militia.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
I'm stating a post-condition. Buy a gun, you're in the militia, you show up for indoc (or drill) 0600 Saturday morning. If it turns out you're unfit for duty due to the voices, you're barred from the militia, and ipso facto, no firearm for you. Obviously the state can prevent certain people from owning firearms already.
Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the coin. If one is going to exercise the right to own a firearm, they should observe the responsibility to serve in the militia and protect the security of the state.
The 2nd Amendment clearly states that in order to have a militia to protect the security of the state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The Constitution says nothing about hunting, self defense, rape prevention or anything else. The reason for the uninfringed right to bear arms is for the purposes of having a state militia to protect the freedom of the state.
So: Make everyone with a firearm serve in the state militia. Make it a National Guard-esque obligation. The most important benefit of this would be to be able to thoroughly screen all the militia members, both mentally and physically, so it can be ascertained they are fit to serve and by extension bear arms in defense of the state.
NIRP = Negative Interest Rates, a situation where a central bank tries to push interest rates below zero (instead of getting interest on your savings, you pay the bank to hold your cash). The theory is that THIS is the thing that will force consumers to spend their wealth, and yadda yadda, the economy starts growing and adding jobs (the reason for the 2% inflation target is similar, to make debt more attractive as one can pay it off in less valuable currency, and to institute a "use it or lose it" tax which doesn't need to be voted on by the legislature).
The PROBLEM is that if rates get too negative, then people will convert their wealth to cash. Large denomination bills enable that. That's why there has been a push on to eliminate the 100 dollar bill, under the guise of battling terrorists and criminals. The head of the European Central Bank has recently proposed eliminating the 500 Euro note for the same reason. A happy coincidence is that this makes it harder for people to convert their wealth to cash.
This won't be instituted all at once. This is how it is introduced, under a false casus belli.
A cashless society means you are a captive audience to these sorts of experiments. Additionally, while cash doesn't require infrastructure to complete transactions, cashless transactions require a great deal of infrastructure. Buying something electronically means you are requesting permission to buy - either via authentication or other constraints.
Humans have been using currency for thousands of years. Instead of hastily rushing to do away with it, we should approach the situation with a lot of caution. Something proponents most certainly do not want.
Currency is already a logical construct. The slips of paper are inherently worth very little. They don't even function that well as toilet paper (not that I would know). Currency which becomes an electronic logical construct gives a tremendous amount of power to the people running the servers. And even more importantly perhaps, their cronies.
"The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One." by William K. Black
"You come to us today telling us "We're sorry. We won't do it again. Trust us". Well i have some people in my constituency that actually robbed some of your banks, and they say the same thing." -- Representative Mike Capuano quoted in The Inside Job.
That's the search term I'd be looking for, to compare college presidents to CEOs. With that search term, I keep getting hits for average fortune 500 CEO salary, and the range is from 10.5 million to 13.8 million.
But... what if there is some unflattering FACT about a group that offends and insults most members of that group? Conversely, there may be flattering fact about a group that most members of the group find flattering.
There seem to be two kinds of people when it comes to social policy:
Group 1 first asks whether something is true, then may consider whether it's offensive.
Group 2 first asks whether something is offensive, then may consider whether it's true.
I was going to say "conservative" and "liberal" but it didn't quite seem to cover it.
More people vote on God, guns and gays than outsourcing. And as long as big companies pay politicians to help them get re-elected, this - and many other issues like it - fall by the wayside.
That's why they allow it.
"No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems -- of which getting elected and re-elected are No. 1 and No. 2. Whatever is No. 3 is far behind". -- Thomas Sowell
I'm not sure this is true. Eroding your purchasing power at 10% per year is just like inflation at 10%. We've had that. People will likely borrow more. But also, people will draw down their spending in an attempt to preserve whatever purchasing power they've got. People still need to eat, pay rent, pay for gas, buy clothes.
I think it could radically inflate debt-based purchases though. However, I don't know what the housing market did during the inflationary/stagflationary episode of the late 70s/early 80s. We can see just how people react with inflation of 10%.
Most impactfully, inflation costs politicians their jobs. And the central bank is a political animal.
This is an interesting angle:
1) A historical graph of "percentage of households with air conditioning."
2) Historical obesity rates.
Could be totally a coincidental correlation, but interesting.
4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." -- Cornell Legal Information Institute
If the search is reasonable, I'm not seeing the hangup.
It's nice to have an unbreakable lockbox against anyone, even the NSA, but once the search is reasonable, ought not the device be decrypted?
It's also paradoxical. Cold weather should speed up the metabolism, and thus, on the same diet, the organism should lose weight, not gain it. Yet the adaptation to gain fat to likely protect body temperature kicks in, generating changes in the digestive subsystem to achieve that end.
I found that interesting. Identical mice placed in different environments, on the same diets. One set gets fat, the other stays normal weight.
Certainly obese humans should eat healthier and exercise, but perhaps it's not all moral failing that make them fatter than normal weight types.
Also, something like this might suggest further areas of human research. Instead of just saying that the naturally skinny differ "in the genes", researchers might start investigating different subsystems, such as the digestive, to see how changes in them might mitigate weight gain.
If this is a highly vetted population, it won't take into account the grifters, criminals, mentally incompetent and others which make up the tapestry of society. It's like testing a chemical reaction but not adding all the chemicals.
The nice thing about social science studies (and studies in general) is you can make them say just about anything to advance your cause. Just massage the incoming data, in any number of ways, and it will say what you want it to say. "If you torture the data long enough, it will confess."
Response: "I may have nothing to hide, but my personal information is none of your gorram business."
If my information is valuable to you, you need to compensate me for it, if I'm interested in selling it. You have no right to take what is mine.
Suicide bombers are like viking berserkers and japanese kamakazi pilots. They are the walking, talking embodiment of courage and dedication. The fact that you are their enemy doesn't diminish that in the slightest. Oppose them or not, when you disparage them, you diminish yourself.
It is true that suicide bombers are badass. However, they are fighting for extreme limits on freedom, fighting to take autonomy and power away from the populace and give it to the ultimate nanny state. That's regrettable. In virtually all cases, they are anti-education, anti-science, anti-technology, anti-liberty.
The ones who deserve contempt are the drone pilots. They're walking, talking embodiments of cowardice, deserving of utter contempt.
If combat were purely a dick-waving contest (war is to a certain degree, but I'm talking about actual tactical combat), then this might be true. However, combat is about winning, as quickly, efficiently and safely as possible. Very Art Of War-esque. As such, drone pilots play an important role in force protection, threat identification and threat neutralization. They save our troops' lives and advance the mission. As such, I consider them extremely effective and worthy combatants. They're a manifestation of the West's technological dominance, something suicide bombers and their handlers will never understand or achieve.
So his stake in Xerox is 9.12%: "Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) increased his shareholding of Xerox XRX +0.00% (NYSE:XRX) in January, a filing revealed Friday as the company announced increased partnership with him and major changes in line with his vision for the company.
Icahn’s funds purchased an additional 5,740,871 during the period from Jan. 4 to Jan. 8, at an average price of $10.05 per share. According to the filing, the purchases brought his total stake in the company to 92,377,043 shares, or 9.12% of its shares outstanding, and a boost of 12.2% from his last disclosure in December.
Icahn’s three selected board members will join a nine-member board of directors for the BPO company. The current board will begin searching for an external candidate for CEO of the BPO company and also allow Icahn to choose a representative to be involved in the search process, Xerox said.
[...]
“Happy to announce we reached an agreement with $XRX re: separation into two independent public companies,” Icahn said on Twitter TWTR +0.00% Friday. “We believe the separation will greatly enhance value for $XRX shareholders. I applaud and respect Ursula Burns for doing what she believes shareholders want – as @Donahoe_John did with $Ebay EBAY +0.00% and $PYPL. I hope and believe the results will be just as good for XRX shareholders.”
Icahn’s tweets referred to the division of Paypal (NASDAQ:PYPL) from eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) that he prompted last year and which became complete in July. Since they began trading separately on July 20, eBay’s shares have fallen 18.3% and Paypal Holdings shares have declined 6.7%."
-- Forbes link (sorry folks, but that's where the info was)
Icahn himself says he "reached an agreement" with Xerox. The guy is a famous corporate raider with a significant stake in the company. Whoever said Icahn had nothing to do with it is delusional or lying.
Being able to control the information being fed to the population creates a tremendous of control over that population. Television and radio are loudspeakers into people's homes. And now so is the Internet. Television and radio are very strictly controlled by those that own the airwaves, and a very expensive medium on which to advertise.
Being able to control information on the Internet is a very dear goal to the powers that be, either elected or not-elected. ALL spectrums of politicians want this power, not just the ones you or I disagree with.
It's easier after one has amassed 20 years of experience. Dealing with the intricacies of syntax, remember what functions require what parameters, the nuances of compilers and interpreters, of threads and mutexes, roll-your-own bit-shifting, reading other people's code and identifying subtle, intermittent bugs may be easy to a rockstar, but to merely highly capable it can produce challenges, especially in large code bases. I've heard elite programmers say they don't know what's going on in a section of code.
Conceptually, at a high level, it's typically easy to describe many if not most programs. But those who think actually programming non-trivial systems is easy I think are not correctly stating the reality.