My initial question comes from my philosophy about living creatures, which is that everything has a right to live it's own life, free from human exploitation
Um, okay, but...
Most people have pointed out that we "subvert" plant and animals all the time, to eat them. I think this is ok, as long as the suffering for the animals involved is kept to a minimum.
With respect, I think you're looking for a way to weasel out of some sort of moral guilt you might have about "suffering", whatever that means when applied to organisms in general.
Look, as biological creatures we are responsible every death for the death of thousands of other biological creatures. Every time you swallow a morsel of food, of whatever sort, your stomach acid destroys thousands of bacteria. This is true of you, me, and the Buddhist monks who go about barefoot so as not to step on any bugs. We can't escape it.
You can't say that everything has a right to live its own life, and yet claim that we can kill whatever we want as long as it doesn't suffer. If suffering is bad in itself, then death is far, far worse.
Is this a revelation? I mean, we already knew of general warnings about bin Laden's plans: remember when Rice testified to the commission about the August memo Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States. I believe there were also various more specific warnings, about airplane hijackings.
This latest piece of data provides evidence of warnings a month or so earlier. I don't know that it's the most pressing indictment against the Bush Administration we could be raising now. Maybe instead the whole arbitrary power to interpret the Geneva Conventions (parodied nicely here), or the indiscrimate warrantless wiretapping program.
your database provides a record of every message sent through the system...
Well, if the server was stolen or confiscated, and the database was on a RAM disk, then it will be lost as soon as the cord is unplugged. If it's hacked, then obviously the data is at risk.
But my point was not that this system is foolproof, but that it's possible, using a simple combination of free tools, to replicate whatever "innovation" this profiled company claims to be introducing.
I don't understand all the hype about this here, of all places. Obviously this is well-marketed, but unless I'm deeply misunderstanding something, it would be damned easy to achieve the same result this using various open-source tools. Something like:
Get a Linux box with Apache and some database engine (PostgreSQL or MySQL)
Make a database for user accounts and user messages.
Throw together some web form for users to leave messages for one another. Use SSL for all HTTP requests.
Write a client-side script (Java, maybe even Javascript) for user's machines that
checks for the existence of a new message
displays it when the user is ready, confirming sender using senders's public key
sends authentication to the server that the message was received.
prompts for a response back to the original sender, signing any response using local user's private key
When the server receives authentication of message receipt, delete M.
Now, there is the issue that the server database is still presumably storing messages on disk, so we aren't matching up to the featured product's boast of never writing messages to disk. Offhand, I don't see a problem with this, since I think we have to trust in the physical integrity of the server. However, there's a simple solution: keep the database on a RAM disk.
In any case, I think this whole boast of the message never being written to disk is ridiculous, because you have absolutely no assurance that some intermediate machine is not caching it in transit.
Therefore, the idea that "I don't see an obvious motivation to lie, so why are y'all so skeptical?" is perilously useless.
Well, compare that to the opposite view (that climate change is not happening). Here there is a quite understandable incentive to lie, since many of the corporations whose use of fossil fuels is the alleged cause of climate change are extremely valuable funding sources.
Both groups make claims, more or less, to scientific credibility and objective truth: one is claiming X and the other not X. (I should say that many of the claims are only qualified support: "studies support X" rather than "X is true", etc.)
One then has to make a choice. One view, the absolutist one, is that no conclusions are trustworthy for the reasons you stated and I expanded on.
Another (potentially error-prone) approach requires making a choice and determining who is more likely to be correct. With this in mind, choosing the group that has the least motivation to lie (rather than no motivation) seems like a plausible strategy.
Get rid of teacher unions, cut the school budgets, and maybe then some real progress can be made.
What the hell? I mean, sure there are bloated unions, but the idea that removing unions entirely and cutting money to schools would somehow improve the educational system is so obviously ludicrous it shouldn't need to be said.
Unions need to be kept in line, sure. But so does management.
If this is really so novel and useful, surely an analysis of it exists that is not written by the guy trying to sell it!
The article goes on to explain that six other countries have tried laser-enrichment schemes and failed, but this effort has succeeded, and the only possible hint at why is that this new approach is that it is more "elegant and sophisticated".
Even a link to the press release would have provided a bit more information (though more legalistic than technical).
Some followers of this principle are the Khmer Rouge, the Taliban, and practitioners of Sati.
If you really think these are examples of cultural relativism, you are sorely deluded about the meaning of the term. (This is amusing given that you just provided the definition.)
Moral absolutists like the Taliban, Khmer Rouge don't argue that people with different cultures should be permitted their own moralities: they, like Bush, employ their own morality to judge everyone. This is exactly the opposite of relativism.
Now, if you had someone who was simultaneously an apologist for both sides, i.e. defending the validity of Western morality for Westerns and Taliban fundamentalism for Afghanistan, that would be at least be a reasonable moment to fling out the accusation "cultural relativism". But for the Taliban themselves it makes no bloody sense at all.
People who are not U.S. Citizens and do not live inside U.S. borders are not entitled to the government protections(Bill of Rights) that citizens are.
Well, to be rather literal about it, all the original poster said was "wiretapping without warrants". This claim is technically still true, whether or not warrants are in fact required.:)
Anyway, on to your point: just so I understand, if I (a Canadian) happen to cross the border for the afternoon to Niagara Falls, NY and a cop decides on a whim to stop and search me without a warrant, are you claiming that he's fully entitled to do this?
RTFA. This program does not tap domestic calls. I still, though, don't like the fact that the NSA shares this "product" with the FBI & the DEA.
1) The parent poster didn't have to qualify his claim: even if you only wiretap international calls without warrants, that's still wiretapping without warrants.
2) I'm not sure what your "RTFA" was supposed to refer to: this new program, or Bush's wiretapping program. The new program is not "tapping" because it's apparently only cellphone records, not actual calls. But it definitely includes all calls, both foreign and domestic:
As a result, domestic call records -- those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders -- were believed to be private.
Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans.
There probably are a few sick individuals who actually like the taste, but I've talked to people who drank diet drinks regularly and almost all of them told me that they didn't like the taste of aspartame, but put up with it to get a reduced calorie beverage.
yet somehow the accursed Sir Walter Raleigh has travelled through time and space to bring them the same cretinous habit that is killing millions of addicts here and now?
Well, according to his own testimony Ron Moore is a pretty hardcore smoker. (I confess: I downloaded the podcasts.) I agree with you; though it would be hard to imagine Starbuck without the cigars.
You can uninstall Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel.
Interesting, that's not what TFA says now. Now it says:
You can use Add or Remove Programs to view Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications, but you cannot use Add or Remove Programs to remove the notifications.
Perhaps it was changed since your comment was posted?
For a Wiki which already exists which archives existing knowledge on computational complexity in great detail, particularly the P=NP question, see The Complexity Zoo.
The website isn't exactly lightning-fast, so I'm sure they'll thank me for the link...:)
Scientists may use mathematics, but science and mathematics are very different fields.
I wouldn't say there's such a fine distinction between science and mathematics: surely it would be hard to really explain to an eight-year old the particulars of string theory or quantum mechanics, even though they are "tangible", "real-world".
But it's not true that theoretical scientists and mathematicians can say nothing to an eight-year old, it's just that they can say nothing terribly exciting. Pretty much all of mathematics research would map to some variation of "I'm trying to prove claim X" or "I'm trying to find a counterexample for claim X" (obviously translated into eight-year old language). There's information communicated there, but it's just not flashy.
The problem is that most of mathematics is very tall but casts a very short shadow on popular culture, or even on other parts of mathematics.
Most of my conversations with my friends from undergrad sound something what I quoted above, even though we had four years of university-level pure mathematics in common. Now and then the background helps ("well, what I'm studying can be viewed as a generalization of Hilbert's Nullstellensatz.") but that's surprisingly rare.
this site's the hobby of a google employee (orkut buyokkoten) that google encourages, and not exactly the product of google labs so maybe that's why its not google quality - it's not a great site, just shows that google has something running in this direction as well!
When I tried to log in just now, it asked me for my Google Account username/password. So clearly it is not entirely independent of Google.
Are not fair. The first is exaggerated to almost comical proportions (very few liberals would actually say such a thing). While the second is something that would not be out of place at all on Limbaugh or Fox News.
Well, I should say it wasn't my specific intent to be fair: I just wanted to pick two clearly absurd positions from "either side". I wasn't trying to perfectly balance them.
I must say, I still have only an academic understanding of what is said on American right-wing radio and on Fox News. I've only seen about five minutes of Fox News ever, in a hotel lobby in Texas. I suppose the fact that my first example would rarely be said at all while the second is commonplace might serve as evidence of just how absurd Fox News/American right-wing radio is.
Erg, all the spelling errors were driving me insane...
===== Ronald Moore may have done a lot for the Trek series of shows, but recently he's been making new fans with his work on the Battlestar Galactica title. He was invited to speak at GDC to relate ways in which intelligent folks can adapt an existing franchise. He focused on not only adapting and improving the original, but maintaining the core goodness of the inspiring work. Read on for notes from his talk.
I got here late, but not before the montage of Battlestar footage had ended. Ron More comes on from stage left. He's here to talk about the process of developing and adapting the original show into the popular sequel series.
What are the fundamentals of Battlestar Galactica? Cylon attack on the colonies. Original show is very dark. A show of survival, not the normal s/f pablum. Footage from the original show compared to the new show, with the attack on the homeworld. Side-by-side comparison of the old footage with the new footage of the genocidal attack. Realistically, you don't want to have 'fun' with the attack. It's not that it can't be entertaining, but there has to be a fundamental realism. With the new show, a lot of the attack was off-screen, to make it about the character's reaction rather than just special effects. Somewhat topical, as the pitch for the new show came soon after the September 11th attacks. "You know what it is to wake up one day and find that the world has changed forever." Out in the fog, terrible things are happening, an important element of the show.
The characters are the core of the show: 'The Family Adama'. Everything rotates around the Family of Adama. Footage of the family, side by side, in the old and new. In the old show 'not credible' to have his whole family on the ship. To make the show rooted in our reality, he avoided the hierarchical military state by having Apollo come aboard later in the show. You lose Athena, who had no real purpose. The role of Athena is taken by Starbuck. Instead of Zak dying in the pilot, he's part of the backstory. Welds together how Starbuck, Adama, and Apollo interact.
Footage of new and old Adama. He's key both as the father of the family, but he's also the father-figure for audience and survivors. A man of principle and true beliefs. He's a believer in democracy, and ethics, honorable person. Mixed with the realities of a ship at war, crossing some ethical lines. He's not perfect, 'a human man for a human story.'
Problem with the original story was that there was nothing to balance Adama as an authority figure. Balanced, of course, with the Madam President. Compared with the old show's aging president (weak, non-threatening). President is important in three ways: Balance of military and civil authority, Mother figure of the show (though there is little sexual tension), she is a reminder of the apocalypse. She grounds the series in the context of the tragedy that began the show.
The government: the Quorum of Twelve. The original was a bunch of straw men with stupid ideas ("Let's trust the Cylons!") This time around, a group with more of a backbone. A show about democracy, what it means to be in a society during a time of war. There still has to be a civilian government despite the time of war. Not only that you survive, but the way you survive. The decision to make Starbuck into a woman... lots of 'comment'. Comparison of old starbuck and new Starbuck. Starbuck is a 'load-bearing member' in the architecture of the show. Making her a woman was almost random. Original Starbuck was a cliche (hot-shot pilot, womanizer, gambler), only really worked because of the actor. His attitude made the character okay. The new show: Don't let things be 'okay'. Don't have fun. Everything has consequences. 'This is a screwed up person.' She's been really damaged, and is only functioning in the military environment because it's all she knows.
Colonel Tigh, another part of the Family Adama. Provides contemporary for Adama, a confidante for the head of the fa
It sure would be nice if people could discuss science and not politics, especially for something so important. But I'm not holding my breath.
Uh, is climate change not a political issue? Should we avoid political discussions whenever an issue is "important"? Seems like a strange idea to me.
I think what you mean to say is that we should avoid political discussions that consist of braindead mudslinging (e.g. "Everyone who drives a car is a guilty of ecological genocide!", "If you criticize car culture, you're with the terrorists", etc., etc.).
I've talked to panhandlers that take in over $60 an hour tax free every day.
I don't deny this happens — I've seen some cases myself — but I think it's talked about by passerbys like us much more than it really happens.
My rationale here is essentially that the reward of believing that all (or most) homeless people are scammers is the ability to walk by while ignoring their pleas, without a guilty conscience. That emotional "reward" is so powerful, especially for people that are confronted by homeless people regularly, that I can easily see all kinds of people choosing to believe it regardless of the evidence. Even you provided only one piece of circumstantial evidence.
There was a guy in London (Ontario) who used to sit on a busy corner in a wheelchair. I got a haircut across the street from this corner once, and the hairdresser said she'd seen the guy walk a block without trouble to a nearby Tim Hortons and get coffee with his earnings.
I had my suspicions about the guy too, and I don't doubt she was telling the truth. But the outrage in her voice and the exasperated sighs of the fellow customers said there was more going on here than just being pissed off at this guy.
Original article also implies this guy had been reminded of the computer policies in 2004. Sounds like a repeat offender, and moreover he embarrassed the boss in front of company.
It said that he had reviewed the policies, which probably means that he along with all the other employees read and/or signed something saying they had read this documents.
This is pretty standard, so that the signed document can be pulled out later in cases like this. But I didn't get the impression that he was a repeat offender.
Slashdot Mirror
My initial question comes from my philosophy about living creatures, which is that everything has a right to live it's own life, free from human exploitation
Um, okay, but...
Most people have pointed out that we "subvert" plant and animals all the time, to eat them. I think this is ok, as long as the suffering for the animals involved is kept to a minimum.
With respect, I think you're looking for a way to weasel out of some sort of moral guilt you might have about "suffering", whatever that means when applied to organisms in general.
Look, as biological creatures we are responsible every death for the death of thousands of other biological creatures. Every time you swallow a morsel of food, of whatever sort, your stomach acid destroys thousands of bacteria. This is true of you, me, and the Buddhist monks who go about barefoot so as not to step on any bugs. We can't escape it.
You can't say that everything has a right to live its own life, and yet claim that we can kill whatever we want as long as it doesn't suffer. If suffering is bad in itself, then death is far, far worse.
Is this a revelation? I mean, we already knew of general warnings about bin Laden's plans: remember when Rice testified to the commission about the August memo Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States. I believe there were also various more specific warnings, about airplane hijackings.
This latest piece of data provides evidence of warnings a month or so earlier. I don't know that it's the most pressing indictment against the Bush Administration we could be raising now. Maybe instead the whole arbitrary power to interpret the Geneva Conventions (parodied nicely here), or the indiscrimate warrantless wiretapping program.
your database provides a record of every message sent through the system...
Well, if the server was stolen or confiscated, and the database was on a RAM disk, then it will be lost as soon as the cord is unplugged. If it's hacked, then obviously the data is at risk.
But my point was not that this system is foolproof, but that it's possible, using a simple combination of free tools, to replicate whatever "innovation" this profiled company claims to be introducing.
Now, there is the issue that the server database is still presumably storing messages on disk, so we aren't matching up to the featured product's boast of never writing messages to disk. Offhand, I don't see a problem with this, since I think we have to trust in the physical integrity of the server. However, there's a simple solution: keep the database on a RAM disk.
In any case, I think this whole boast of the message never being written to disk is ridiculous, because you have absolutely no assurance that some intermediate machine is not caching it in transit.
Therefore, the idea that "I don't see an obvious motivation to lie, so why are y'all so skeptical?" is perilously useless.
Well, compare that to the opposite view (that climate change is not happening). Here there is a quite understandable incentive to lie, since many of the corporations whose use of fossil fuels is the alleged cause of climate change are extremely valuable funding sources.
Both groups make claims, more or less, to scientific credibility and objective truth: one is claiming X and the other not X. (I should say that many of the claims are only qualified support: "studies support X" rather than "X is true", etc.)
One then has to make a choice. One view, the absolutist one, is that no conclusions are trustworthy for the reasons you stated and I expanded on.
Another (potentially error-prone) approach requires making a choice and determining who is more likely to be correct. With this in mind, choosing the group that has the least motivation to lie (rather than no motivation) seems like a plausible strategy.
Get rid of teacher unions, cut the school budgets, and maybe then some real progress can be made.
What the hell? I mean, sure there are bloated unions, but the idea that removing unions entirely and cutting money to schools would somehow improve the educational system is so obviously ludicrous it shouldn't need to be said.
Unions need to be kept in line, sure. But so does management.
If this is really so novel and useful, surely an analysis of it exists that is not written by the guy trying to sell it!
The article goes on to explain that six other countries have tried laser-enrichment schemes and failed, but this effort has succeeded, and the only possible hint at why is that this new approach is that it is more "elegant and sophisticated".
Even a link to the press release would have provided a bit more information (though more legalistic than technical).
Some followers of this principle are the Khmer Rouge, the Taliban, and practitioners of Sati.
If you really think these are examples of cultural relativism, you are sorely deluded about the meaning of the term. (This is amusing given that you just provided the definition.)
Moral absolutists like the Taliban, Khmer Rouge don't argue that people with different cultures should be permitted their own moralities: they, like Bush, employ their own morality to judge everyone. This is exactly the opposite of relativism.
Now, if you had someone who was simultaneously an apologist for both sides, i.e. defending the validity of Western morality for Westerns and Taliban fundamentalism for Afghanistan, that would be at least be a reasonable moment to fling out the accusation "cultural relativism". But for the Taliban themselves it makes no bloody sense at all.
People who are not U.S. Citizens and do not live inside U.S. borders are not entitled to the government protections(Bill of Rights) that citizens are.
:)
Well, to be rather literal about it, all the original poster said was "wiretapping without warrants". This claim is technically still true, whether or not warrants are in fact required.
Anyway, on to your point: just so I understand, if I (a Canadian) happen to cross the border for the afternoon to Niagara Falls, NY and a cop decides on a whim to stop and search me without a warrant, are you claiming that he's fully entitled to do this?
RTFA. This program does not tap domestic calls. I still, though, don't like the fact that the NSA shares this "product" with the FBI & the DEA.
1) The parent poster didn't have to qualify his claim: even if you only wiretap international calls without warrants, that's still wiretapping without warrants.
2) I'm not sure what your "RTFA" was supposed to refer to: this new program, or Bush's wiretapping program. The new program is not "tapping" because it's apparently only cellphone records, not actual calls. But it definitely includes all calls, both foreign and domestic:
As a result, domestic call records -- those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders -- were believed to be private.
Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans.
There probably are a few sick individuals who actually like the taste, but I've talked to people who drank diet drinks regularly and almost all of them told me that they didn't like the taste of aspartame, but put up with it to get a reduced calorie beverage.
That and the brain diseases. Mmm, brain diseases.
Sure, he can beat his students, but what about pirates?
Wait a minute! That light brown plumage... - you're not pirates, you're barn owls!
yet somehow the accursed Sir Walter Raleigh has travelled through time and space to bring them the same cretinous habit that is killing millions of addicts here and now?
Well, according to his own testimony Ron Moore is a pretty hardcore smoker. (I confess: I downloaded the podcasts.) I agree with you; though it would be hard to imagine Starbuck without the cigars.
You can uninstall Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications by using Add or Remove Programs
in Control Panel.
Interesting, that's not what TFA says now. Now it says:
You can use Add or Remove Programs to view Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications, but you cannot use Add or Remove Programs to remove the notifications.
Perhaps it was changed since your comment was posted?
For a Wiki which already exists which archives existing knowledge on computational complexity in great detail, particularly the P=NP question, see The Complexity Zoo.
:)
The website isn't exactly lightning-fast, so I'm sure they'll thank me for the link...
Scientists may use mathematics, but science and mathematics are very different fields.
I wouldn't say there's such a fine distinction between science and mathematics: surely it would be hard to really explain to an eight-year old the particulars of string theory or quantum mechanics, even though they are "tangible", "real-world".
But it's not true that theoretical scientists and mathematicians can say nothing to an eight-year old, it's just that they can say nothing terribly exciting. Pretty much all of mathematics research would map to some variation of "I'm trying to prove claim X" or "I'm trying to find a counterexample for claim X" (obviously translated into eight-year old language). There's information communicated there, but it's just not flashy.
The problem is that most of mathematics is very tall but casts a very short shadow on popular culture, or even on other parts of mathematics.
Most of my conversations with my friends from undergrad sound something what I quoted above, even though we had four years of university-level pure mathematics in common. Now and then the background helps ("well, what I'm studying can be viewed as a generalization of Hilbert's Nullstellensatz.") but that's surprisingly rare.
I think the Farkers have already made every possible anus joke.
I think that statement was true even before this latest news came out.
"Why couldn't she have been the other kind of mermaid, with the fish half on top and the lady half on the bottom?" -- Fry, Futurama
See Wikipedia's entry on the "mermaid problem".
this site's the hobby of a google employee (orkut buyokkoten) that google encourages, and not exactly the product of google labs so maybe that's why its not google quality - it's not a great site, just shows that google has something running in this direction as well!
When I tried to log in just now, it asked me for my Google Account username/password. So clearly it is not entirely independent of Google.
Are not fair. The first is exaggerated to almost comical proportions (very few liberals would actually say such a thing). While the second is something that would not be out of place at all on Limbaugh or Fox News.
Well, I should say it wasn't my specific intent to be fair: I just wanted to pick two clearly absurd positions from "either side". I wasn't trying to perfectly balance them.
I must say, I still have only an academic understanding of what is said on American right-wing radio and on Fox News. I've only seen about five minutes of Fox News ever, in a hotel lobby in Texas. I suppose the fact that my first example would rarely be said at all while the second is commonplace might serve as evidence of just how absurd Fox News/American right-wing radio is.
Erg, all the spelling errors were driving me insane...
=====
Ronald Moore may have done a lot for the Trek series of shows, but recently he's been making new fans with his work on the Battlestar Galactica title. He was invited to speak at GDC to relate ways in which intelligent folks can adapt an existing franchise. He focused on not only adapting and improving the original, but maintaining the core goodness of the inspiring work. Read on for notes from his talk.
I got here late, but not before the montage of Battlestar footage had ended. Ron More comes on from stage left. He's here to talk about the process of developing and adapting the original show into the popular sequel series.
What are the fundamentals of Battlestar Galactica? Cylon attack on the colonies. Original show is very dark. A show of survival, not the normal s/f pablum. Footage from the original show compared to the new show, with the attack on the homeworld. Side-by-side comparison of the old footage with the new footage of the genocidal attack. Realistically, you don't want to have 'fun' with the attack. It's not that it can't be entertaining, but there has to be a fundamental realism. With the new show, a lot of the attack was off-screen, to make it about the character's reaction rather than just special effects. Somewhat topical, as the pitch for the new show came soon after the September 11th attacks. "You know what it is to wake up one day and find that the world has changed forever." Out in the fog, terrible things are happening, an important element of the show.
The characters are the core of the show: 'The Family Adama'. Everything rotates around the Family of Adama. Footage of the family, side by side, in the old and new. In the old show 'not credible' to have his whole family on the ship. To make the show rooted in our reality, he avoided the hierarchical military state by having Apollo come aboard later in the show. You lose Athena, who had no real purpose. The role of Athena is taken by Starbuck. Instead of Zak dying in the pilot, he's part of the backstory. Welds together how Starbuck, Adama, and Apollo interact.
Footage of new and old Adama. He's key both as the father of the family, but he's also the father-figure for audience and survivors. A man of principle and true beliefs. He's a believer in democracy, and ethics, honorable person. Mixed with the realities of a ship at war, crossing some ethical lines. He's not perfect, 'a human man for a human story.'
Problem with the original story was that there was nothing to balance Adama as an authority figure. Balanced, of course, with the Madam President. Compared with the old show's aging president (weak, non-threatening). President is important in three ways: Balance of military and civil authority, Mother figure of the show (though there is little sexual tension), she is a reminder of the apocalypse. She grounds the series in the context of the tragedy that began the show.
The government: the Quorum of Twelve. The original was a bunch of straw men with stupid ideas ("Let's trust the Cylons!") This time around, a group with more of a backbone. A show about democracy, what it means to be in a society during a time of war. There still has to be a civilian government despite the time of war. Not only that you survive, but the way you survive. The decision to make Starbuck into a woman... lots of 'comment'. Comparison of old starbuck and new Starbuck. Starbuck is a 'load-bearing member' in the architecture of the show. Making her a woman was almost random. Original Starbuck was a cliche (hot-shot pilot, womanizer, gambler), only really worked because of the actor. His attitude made the character okay. The new show: Don't let things be 'okay'. Don't have fun. Everything has consequences. 'This is a screwed up person.' She's been really damaged, and is only functioning in the military environment because it's all she knows.
Colonel Tigh, another part of the Family Adama. Provides contemporary for Adama, a confidante for the head of the fa
It sure would be nice if people could discuss science and not politics, especially for something so important. But I'm not holding my breath.
Uh, is climate change not a political issue? Should we avoid political discussions whenever an issue is "important"? Seems like a strange idea to me.
I think what you mean to say is that we should avoid political discussions that consist of braindead mudslinging (e.g. "Everyone who drives a car is a guilty of ecological genocide!", "If you criticize car culture, you're with the terrorists", etc., etc.).
I've talked to panhandlers that take in over $60 an hour tax free every day.
I don't deny this happens — I've seen some cases myself — but I think it's talked about by passerbys like us much more than it really happens.
My rationale here is essentially that the reward of believing that all (or most) homeless people are scammers is the ability to walk by while ignoring their pleas, without a guilty conscience. That emotional "reward" is so powerful, especially for people that are confronted by homeless people regularly, that I can easily see all kinds of people choosing to believe it regardless of the evidence. Even you provided only one piece of circumstantial evidence.
There was a guy in London (Ontario) who used to sit on a busy corner in a wheelchair. I got a haircut across the street from this corner once, and the hairdresser said she'd seen the guy walk a block without trouble to a nearby Tim Hortons and get coffee with his earnings.
I had my suspicions about the guy too, and I don't doubt she was telling the truth. But the outrage in her voice and the exasperated sighs of the fellow customers said there was more going on here than just being pissed off at this guy.
Hmm, on September 10, 2001:
The world is run by small-minded militaristic plutocrats with no concern for human life or the future of the planet who rule by intimidation and fear.
On March 2, 2006:
The world is run by small-minded militaristic plutocrats with no concern for human life or the future of the planet who rule by intimidation and fear.
Brave New World, eh?
Original article also implies this guy had been reminded of the computer policies in 2004. Sounds like a repeat offender, and moreover he embarrassed the boss in front of company.
It said that he had reviewed the policies, which probably means that he along with all the other employees read and/or signed something saying they had read this documents.
This is pretty standard, so that the signed document can be pulled out later in cases like this. But I didn't get the impression that he was a repeat offender.