As the parent of someone with Autism and likely someone who is undiagnosed himself, I hate that group. They blame Autism on vaccines and want to find a "cure" for Autism. My son and I don't have a disease. We don't need to be cured. We need assistance in dealing with the neurotypical (non-Autistic) world. If you were to "cure" every Autistic person, you'd eliminate a lot of people looking at things differently. I'd wager that a lot of the eccentric geniuses throughout history had Autism. Imagine where we'd be without them.
There are also people on the spectrum who have developed coping mechanisms.
My son was diagnosed with Asperger's. We're nearly positive I'm an Aspie too. I'm not going for a diagnosis because it would cost money we don't have and wouldn't help my son any. I've already learned all the coping mechanisms I need. I can delay or internalize my meltdowns so I don't become a screaming wreck in the middle of a meeting because someone said something that set me off. I can deal with people in certain social situations but not others. (I'm fine in a business environments but stick me in a loud party and watch me squirm and attempt to flee.)
My son has also started showing some of these coping strategies - though obviously not as robust as mine as he hasn't had the time to learn them all. Still, it's both gratifying and frustrating to hear from his teacher how he had a great day while he's melting down at home - having delayed it all school day. Gratifying because he's not doing it in school (which made him a target for bullying before). Frustrating because the teachers don't see what's setting him off.
My son falls on the autism spectrum and we strongly suspect that I do also. (Asperger's - so we're high functioning.) When we first got the diagnosis, I did a bunch of reading about Asperger's and read how the brains of Aspies see the world in If-Then scenarios. This doesn't work so nicely in social situations which tend to be shades of grey. Something that will be a perfectly find thing to say in one social situation will be totally inappropriate if you tweak the setting just a little bit.
Computer programming, however, is all about the If-Then statement. If you boil down any program, it is essentially saying "If you have this input, then do this." Looking at it this way, it's no wonder that my son and I take to computers so readily. Our brains are essentially talking the same language as computers.
If the person making the threat has all intentions of carrying it out, then the threat is not a lie. Even if it was a lie, if it was made in the hopes of intimidating the person into submission, it should be illegal. For example, if someone were to walk up to you and "If you don't pay me $100 right now, I'll break your kneecaps", you would probably feel threatened (assuming they looked like they might do it and/or had people with them who could back up the threat). You may or may not pay the $100, but you certainly would feel threatened. If the police arrived with these folks still there with you, no pleadings of "It was just free speech" would excuse their threatening remarks. They would still be taken into custody.
There is a difference between obnoxious and threatening. The first, I agree, you need to just deal with or find a way to ignore. It's tempting to try to legislate out obnoxious or offensive people, but we can't if we want to preserve free speech. Full-on threats of bodily violence, though, should never be tolerated. As the saying goes, your right to swing your fist ends at my face. You can't say that you have the "free speech right" to threaten my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Years 1 - 28: Argue about funding, contractors, replacing managers, etc. Year 29: Develop faster than light technology. Year 30: Launch FTL rocket, travel 30 light years in 3 minutes to reach the star.
Yes, part of it is depressing. All those planets out there so far away from us. Even worse, if intelligent life is out there, it is likely too far away for us to communicate with. We might not be alone in the Universe, but there might be tiny islands of intelligent life scattered around the Universe - each island unable to talk to the next island over.
On the other hand, just think about how much we've progressed as a species. It wasn't too long ago that we'd see a comet in the sky and think "that's a bad omen from the gods." Now, we've landed a robot on it. Sure it didn't go quite according to plan, but it's still an amazing accomplishment. This is a mere 57 years after Sputnik 1 was launched. That might seem like a long time in human-years, but it's less than a blink of an eye in the history of our species. Who knows where we'll be 57 years from now? Or 100? You or I might not see the other planets, but our children might or our children's children. If not in person, then through photos produced by super-telescopes that we can only dream about now.
This isn't about your speech causing someone to react violently and then claiming that your speech made them do it.
This is about someone saying "I'm going to kill you and your child" and then saying "well, that's a rap lyric so it's protected speech." Death threats don't count as freedom of speech and never have. We have quite a bit of leeway when it comes to freedom of speech (and rightly so), but there is still a boundary. Making unsubstantiated allegations about someone can get you in legal trouble (albeit via a civil suit, not a criminal one) and making death threats against a person or group of people can get you in trouble.
If this guy said offensive things about his wife, the kindergarten class, and the FBI agent, he'd have been fine. Being offensive is completely within your free speech rights. But making death threats is not.
It's sad how many people simultaneously try to share information online and treat the same exact service as if it was a 100% private diary. (Or, at the least, that only their small group of friends could ever see it.). No matter how private the message, you should always treat it as if it will spread to everyone.
None of our rights are absolute. If I were to publish an article in a newspaper claiming that you embezzled millions of dollars with no proof whatsoever, I could be sure for libel. Similarly, I can't threaten people's lives and then claim "Freedom of Speech" when the police arrive. This guy made a specific threat against people. It doesn't matter that the threat was in the form of rap lyrics or a handwritten note. Freedom of Speech doesn't mean freedom from the consequences of your speech.
Actually, this isn't even a trailer. This is a teaser. A trailer is supposed to give you some idea of the movie's plot to get you interested enough to want to see the movie. (Ideally, this should be done without giving away the ending. I'm looking at you, Iron Giant trailer.) A teaser, however, can have a bunch of quick-shot scenes or even one mysterious, short, "what can this be" scene. A teaser is best done if it reveals nothing about the plot but shows you just enough to pique your interest.
Thus, as a teaser, I think this succeeds. It doesn't tell us much about what is in the movie, but that wasn't its job. Instead, it shows us a bunch of cool stuff and whets our appetite for Star Wars. If they work it right, the first trailer will be released in a few months which will give some idea of the plot and will build on the excitement and anticipation. Then, more trailers and media releases will build more until opening day.
True, but in Star Wars 4-6 it looks like any technology that isn't in direct service to the Empire is second-hand, beaten up, sometimes barely working technology. The Death Star is for the Emperor so it's "state of the art" and shiny and new. The Rebellion can't get access to technology made for the Empire so they make due with what fighters they can scrounge together.
Not to mention that we still have a functioning comet orbiter still sending back data. I'd call the mission a success and look forward to the next comet landing attempt where we can learn from this one to avoid what happened with Philae.
The problem with starving people isn't a problem of needing to throw more money at the situation as much as it is a problem of politics or power (e.g. local warlords preventing food shipments from reaching starving people so that the warlords can show how powerful they are). Even if you diverted 100% of NASA's budget to feeding starving people, you wouldn't solve the problem.
When it comes to the amount of money NASA spends, the 2013 US Budget shows that NASA is only 1.4% of the national budget. The biggest portions of the budget is defense at 52.7%. This blows away the second biggest portion, Department of Health and Human Services, which stands at 6.4%, If we cut defense to 50% of the budget, we would save 34 billion dollars. That money could be split between NASA, feeding the hungry, and improving the environment and everyone would win. (I don't think a 5% cut in the Department of Defense's budget would hurt them much.)
Start using a democratic system where every vote is equal, it's called Proportional Representation and works very well.
It would also be the end of the two party systems.
Personally I agree but the likelihood of it happening is very small. The chances of someone who has just won by the fisrt past the post system voting for a change is very low!
Not just a politician who won first past the post, but both major parties. Changing the voting system would require one or both of the major parties supporting the change. However, both parties know that they gain power in the current system. Yes, the Democrats lost this round of elections, but wait a few years and the Republicans will be kicked out and replaced by Democrats - who will be kicked out a few years later in favor of Republicans. Repeat ad infinitum.
Why would they support a change that would let some upstart third party gain enough power to unseat their power sharing arrangement? Or worse, allow a few third parties to arise and push Democrats and Republicans to the sidelines instead of sharing the spotlight?
I've heard of employers who do this. I'm lucky enough that my employer doesn't. I wasn't responding that company snooping on personal social media activity never happens, though. I was responding to a statement that personal Twitter accounts don't exist. That there are only "corporate twitter accounts and anonymous twitter accounts which your employer does not know about." There are still some places that respect employees enough to allow them to post their personal stuff on their own time without interfering.
That being said, I do take care about what I post, but that's just my usual posting style. Even under the pseudonym that I use, I don't post anything I wouldn't say in front of my wife, boss, parents, friends, etc. No matter how "private" you think your social media posting is, it can be passed along and brought to the attention of someone you deal with in real life who won't like what you have to say. Free speech doesn't mean freedom from repercussions. This doesn't mean I don't tackle "controversial" topics. I might come out as for Issue A when my employer is officially against Issue A. That's my right. What I won't say is "My Employer - Some Company, Inc. - is wrong for opposing Issue A."
My real name on Slashdot is an artifact of me signing up in the late 90's when I didn't care about using my real name online. For most other activities online, nowadays, I use a pseudonym and I take care not to link the two. If I could change my username from my real name to my pseudonym, I would. I don't want to simply abandon this account and come back in as a new user under my pseudonym, though.
So big company can do whatever it wants knowing if small guy wants to fight back it risks minor monetary damage while the small guy risks bankruptcy? This sounds like a license for big companies to take a "ask for forgiveness, not permission" and do whatever they want no matter whether they should be asking/paying some small guy for permission. Say, if a small guy owns patent rights on a technology the big companies want to use.
They might be a small portion, but they seem to be a very vocal portion. It seems like nearly every Republican candidate needs - to be taken seriously as a GOP candidate - to decry all science (especially Evolution) as wrong and the Bible as the only truth America needs. Any Republican who puts science above the bible is DOA as a candidate.
In our case, the trees were planted several owners before us. The reason I didn't want to take care of it myself was that the branches criss-crossed around various wires. One slip up and I've taken out a major power/cable/whatever line. And even if I ignored it, one bad storm and the branches would snap taking down the lines. All we wanted them to do was some trimming to prevent this, but nobody was willing to do it. (Not a problem now since we took down our trees, obviously.)
One caveat: The legal fees should be capped, not set to all legal fees. Otherwise, small guy sues big company. Small guy stretches his budget and pays $10,000 in legal fees. Big company's legal budget is $10 million. Big company wins and now small guy is on the hook for $10 million. With this situation, the possibility of losing and needing to pay Big Company's legal fees will become an incentive not to sue big companies.
He also knew how to stand up to the hawks in his party. After Kuwait was freed, people in his party/administration called for the US to keep marching past the Kuwait border and all the way to Baghdad. Bush Sr refused to do so, rightly seeing that this would be a disaster. Too bad Bush Jr listened to those exact same people and made the mistake his father avoided.
The irony is that, were a candidate to arise that held Ronald Reagan's values, he (or she) would be kicked out of the GOP for not being conservative enough.
My fondest hope is that the GOP splits in two. One half can be made up of the actual conservatives and the other half can be made up of the nut jobs. This way, the crazy-GOP can fade away to the side-lines and the serious-GOP can actually get stuff done without needing to worry about appeasing the crazy elements of their party.
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As the parent of someone with Autism and likely someone who is undiagnosed himself, I hate that group. They blame Autism on vaccines and want to find a "cure" for Autism. My son and I don't have a disease. We don't need to be cured. We need assistance in dealing with the neurotypical (non-Autistic) world. If you were to "cure" every Autistic person, you'd eliminate a lot of people looking at things differently. I'd wager that a lot of the eccentric geniuses throughout history had Autism. Imagine where we'd be without them.
There are also people on the spectrum who have developed coping mechanisms.
My son was diagnosed with Asperger's. We're nearly positive I'm an Aspie too. I'm not going for a diagnosis because it would cost money we don't have and wouldn't help my son any. I've already learned all the coping mechanisms I need. I can delay or internalize my meltdowns so I don't become a screaming wreck in the middle of a meeting because someone said something that set me off. I can deal with people in certain social situations but not others. (I'm fine in a business environments but stick me in a loud party and watch me squirm and attempt to flee.)
My son has also started showing some of these coping strategies - though obviously not as robust as mine as he hasn't had the time to learn them all. Still, it's both gratifying and frustrating to hear from his teacher how he had a great day while he's melting down at home - having delayed it all school day. Gratifying because he's not doing it in school (which made him a target for bullying before). Frustrating because the teachers don't see what's setting him off.
My son falls on the autism spectrum and we strongly suspect that I do also. (Asperger's - so we're high functioning.) When we first got the diagnosis, I did a bunch of reading about Asperger's and read how the brains of Aspies see the world in If-Then scenarios. This doesn't work so nicely in social situations which tend to be shades of grey. Something that will be a perfectly find thing to say in one social situation will be totally inappropriate if you tweak the setting just a little bit.
Computer programming, however, is all about the If-Then statement. If you boil down any program, it is essentially saying "If you have this input, then do this." Looking at it this way, it's no wonder that my son and I take to computers so readily. Our brains are essentially talking the same language as computers.
If the person making the threat has all intentions of carrying it out, then the threat is not a lie. Even if it was a lie, if it was made in the hopes of intimidating the person into submission, it should be illegal. For example, if someone were to walk up to you and "If you don't pay me $100 right now, I'll break your kneecaps", you would probably feel threatened (assuming they looked like they might do it and/or had people with them who could back up the threat). You may or may not pay the $100, but you certainly would feel threatened. If the police arrived with these folks still there with you, no pleadings of "It was just free speech" would excuse their threatening remarks. They would still be taken into custody.
There is a difference between obnoxious and threatening. The first, I agree, you need to just deal with or find a way to ignore. It's tempting to try to legislate out obnoxious or offensive people, but we can't if we want to preserve free speech. Full-on threats of bodily violence, though, should never be tolerated. As the saying goes, your right to swing your fist ends at my face. You can't say that you have the "free speech right" to threaten my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Wife's response: "It's a gas giant? A GAS GIANT?!!! You named a gas giant after me?!!!" *beats husband with his DSLR*
Project plan:
Years 1 - 28: Argue about funding, contractors, replacing managers, etc.
Year 29: Develop faster than light technology.
Year 30: Launch FTL rocket, travel 30 light years in 3 minutes to reach the star.
Yes, part of it is depressing. All those planets out there so far away from us. Even worse, if intelligent life is out there, it is likely too far away for us to communicate with. We might not be alone in the Universe, but there might be tiny islands of intelligent life scattered around the Universe - each island unable to talk to the next island over.
On the other hand, just think about how much we've progressed as a species. It wasn't too long ago that we'd see a comet in the sky and think "that's a bad omen from the gods." Now, we've landed a robot on it. Sure it didn't go quite according to plan, but it's still an amazing accomplishment. This is a mere 57 years after Sputnik 1 was launched. That might seem like a long time in human-years, but it's less than a blink of an eye in the history of our species. Who knows where we'll be 57 years from now? Or 100? You or I might not see the other planets, but our children might or our children's children. If not in person, then through photos produced by super-telescopes that we can only dream about now.
This isn't about your speech causing someone to react violently and then claiming that your speech made them do it.
This is about someone saying "I'm going to kill you and your child" and then saying "well, that's a rap lyric so it's protected speech." Death threats don't count as freedom of speech and never have. We have quite a bit of leeway when it comes to freedom of speech (and rightly so), but there is still a boundary. Making unsubstantiated allegations about someone can get you in legal trouble (albeit via a civil suit, not a criminal one) and making death threats against a person or group of people can get you in trouble.
If this guy said offensive things about his wife, the kindergarten class, and the FBI agent, he'd have been fine. Being offensive is completely within your free speech rights. But making death threats is not.
It's sad how many people simultaneously try to share information online and treat the same exact service as if it was a 100% private diary. (Or, at the least, that only their small group of friends could ever see it.). No matter how private the message, you should always treat it as if it will spread to everyone.
None of our rights are absolute. If I were to publish an article in a newspaper claiming that you embezzled millions of dollars with no proof whatsoever, I could be sure for libel. Similarly, I can't threaten people's lives and then claim "Freedom of Speech" when the police arrive. This guy made a specific threat against people. It doesn't matter that the threat was in the form of rap lyrics or a handwritten note. Freedom of Speech doesn't mean freedom from the consequences of your speech.
Actually, this isn't even a trailer. This is a teaser. A trailer is supposed to give you some idea of the movie's plot to get you interested enough to want to see the movie. (Ideally, this should be done without giving away the ending. I'm looking at you, Iron Giant trailer.) A teaser, however, can have a bunch of quick-shot scenes or even one mysterious, short, "what can this be" scene. A teaser is best done if it reveals nothing about the plot but shows you just enough to pique your interest.
Thus, as a teaser, I think this succeeds. It doesn't tell us much about what is in the movie, but that wasn't its job. Instead, it shows us a bunch of cool stuff and whets our appetite for Star Wars. If they work it right, the first trailer will be released in a few months which will give some idea of the plot and will build on the excitement and anticipation. Then, more trailers and media releases will build more until opening day.
True, but in Star Wars 4-6 it looks like any technology that isn't in direct service to the Empire is second-hand, beaten up, sometimes barely working technology. The Death Star is for the Emperor so it's "state of the art" and shiny and new. The Rebellion can't get access to technology made for the Empire so they make due with what fighters they can scrounge together.
It actually does say "breathe." It's just hard to see that last "e" due to the lens flare.
Not to mention that we still have a functioning comet orbiter still sending back data. I'd call the mission a success and look forward to the next comet landing attempt where we can learn from this one to avoid what happened with Philae.
The problem with starving people isn't a problem of needing to throw more money at the situation as much as it is a problem of politics or power (e.g. local warlords preventing food shipments from reaching starving people so that the warlords can show how powerful they are). Even if you diverted 100% of NASA's budget to feeding starving people, you wouldn't solve the problem.
When it comes to the amount of money NASA spends, the 2013 US Budget shows that NASA is only 1.4% of the national budget. The biggest portions of the budget is defense at 52.7%. This blows away the second biggest portion, Department of Health and Human Services, which stands at 6.4%, If we cut defense to 50% of the budget, we would save 34 billion dollars. That money could be split between NASA, feeding the hungry, and improving the environment and everyone would win. (I don't think a 5% cut in the Department of Defense's budget would hurt them much.)
Not just a politician who won first past the post, but both major parties. Changing the voting system would require one or both of the major parties supporting the change. However, both parties know that they gain power in the current system. Yes, the Democrats lost this round of elections, but wait a few years and the Republicans will be kicked out and replaced by Democrats - who will be kicked out a few years later in favor of Republicans. Repeat ad infinitum.
Why would they support a change that would let some upstart third party gain enough power to unseat their power sharing arrangement? Or worse, allow a few third parties to arise and push Democrats and Republicans to the sidelines instead of sharing the spotlight?
I've heard of employers who do this. I'm lucky enough that my employer doesn't. I wasn't responding that company snooping on personal social media activity never happens, though. I was responding to a statement that personal Twitter accounts don't exist. That there are only "corporate twitter accounts and anonymous twitter accounts which your employer does not know about." There are still some places that respect employees enough to allow them to post their personal stuff on their own time without interfering.
That being said, I do take care about what I post, but that's just my usual posting style. Even under the pseudonym that I use, I don't post anything I wouldn't say in front of my wife, boss, parents, friends, etc. No matter how "private" you think your social media posting is, it can be passed along and brought to the attention of someone you deal with in real life who won't like what you have to say. Free speech doesn't mean freedom from repercussions. This doesn't mean I don't tackle "controversial" topics. I might come out as for Issue A when my employer is officially against Issue A. That's my right. What I won't say is "My Employer - Some Company, Inc. - is wrong for opposing Issue A."
My real name on Slashdot is an artifact of me signing up in the late 90's when I didn't care about using my real name online. For most other activities online, nowadays, I use a pseudonym and I take care not to link the two. If I could change my username from my real name to my pseudonym, I would. I don't want to simply abandon this account and come back in as a new user under my pseudonym, though.
So big company can do whatever it wants knowing if small guy wants to fight back it risks minor monetary damage while the small guy risks bankruptcy? This sounds like a license for big companies to take a "ask for forgiveness, not permission" and do whatever they want no matter whether they should be asking/paying some small guy for permission. Say, if a small guy owns patent rights on a technology the big companies want to use.
They might be a small portion, but they seem to be a very vocal portion. It seems like nearly every Republican candidate needs - to be taken seriously as a GOP candidate - to decry all science (especially Evolution) as wrong and the Bible as the only truth America needs. Any Republican who puts science above the bible is DOA as a candidate.
In our case, the trees were planted several owners before us. The reason I didn't want to take care of it myself was that the branches criss-crossed around various wires. One slip up and I've taken out a major power/cable/whatever line. And even if I ignored it, one bad storm and the branches would snap taking down the lines. All we wanted them to do was some trimming to prevent this, but nobody was willing to do it. (Not a problem now since we took down our trees, obviously.)
One caveat: The legal fees should be capped, not set to all legal fees. Otherwise, small guy sues big company. Small guy stretches his budget and pays $10,000 in legal fees. Big company's legal budget is $10 million. Big company wins and now small guy is on the hook for $10 million. With this situation, the possibility of losing and needing to pay Big Company's legal fees will become an incentive not to sue big companies.
Because this lets the prosecutor appear "tough on crime" which plays well when he tries to advance his political career.
Because that CEO is also a major campaign contributor.
It's sad how much of this goes back to politics.
He also knew how to stand up to the hawks in his party. After Kuwait was freed, people in his party/administration called for the US to keep marching past the Kuwait border and all the way to Baghdad. Bush Sr refused to do so, rightly seeing that this would be a disaster. Too bad Bush Jr listened to those exact same people and made the mistake his father avoided.
The irony is that, were a candidate to arise that held Ronald Reagan's values, he (or she) would be kicked out of the GOP for not being conservative enough.
My fondest hope is that the GOP splits in two. One half can be made up of the actual conservatives and the other half can be made up of the nut jobs. This way, the crazy-GOP can fade away to the side-lines and the serious-GOP can actually get stuff done without needing to worry about appeasing the crazy elements of their party.