I'd be willing to bet that you're not even very familiar with the majority of the program that particular university offers, if any at all. Your tunnel vision appears to be set to "super-narrow" mode.
And you'd be wrong. Having lectured there and at several other schools has given me some insight beyond, 'tunnel vision'.
then I have to wonder just what kind of tech is available to the various black-ops agencies. I had some insight into what that world had to play with about twelve years ago. Scary shit, which I only knew about because it was by then hopelessly out of date. But in the public realm, we're not even out of the stone age, relatively speaking.
I remember hearing about holographic technology; back when I was dropping $500 on a 4x CDR drive. And $5 per blank disk. Holographic disk technology was totally viable, and companies were easily able to produce the hardware. But it never made it to market. Gee whiz.
If you step up the technology incrementally, then you get to sell essentially the same device to the same people many times over rather than just once. When people talk about the spirit of 'competition', I laugh. It's a lie. Companies may think they're competing, but the game itself is fixed. Which means competition is just a stage production. Fighting to be the most 'innovative' company using stupid technologies only makes you the best cave man on the hill. Big deal.
Holographic disks were not so much a suppressed technology as they were strategically ignored.
How charming. Isn't living with corporate greed fun? This is why I enjoy not buying new hardware until my old gear has literally fallen apart, and then I only buy stuff which is just about to be phased out so that as few dollars as possible pass from me to the top of the technology pyramid. --I know this doesn't change things much on the large scale, but at least I can say that I don't personally get manipulated into chump-hood like those panting to pay top dollar for the next 'best' 40-year old thing.
Remember how we all used to, when we were kids, imagine living in the high-tech future? Isn't it amusing to think that we would actually be there right now if it wasn't for the military and the corporations who keep us all ignorant and dependant on pathetic technologies?
I live in a university town. The amount of stupid being traded around here is embarrassing. If you have real passion for a field, then you can learn it better than any U can teach it, and you can do so without spending tens of thousands of dollars. The only really good things offered by Universities which I have seen are linked to comradeship, and you can get that for free as well.
--Which is not to say that a university tour can't be worth your while. All experiences are valid on some level, but why anybody would waste their time with a big institution which has no respect for its students is quite beyond me.
They do have their side benefits though, but the major benefit, (for the Powers That Be), is that they are effective in fuzzing people out and dumbing them down just a few more notches so that they are more easily controlled.
It doesn't surprise me that cell phone and wireless technology is being pushed down all our throats. A fully microwaved society is a society which is several steps closer to not even needing totalitarian controls. --When the people are too dazed and misdirected to ever rebel by altering their behavior so that they are not permanently stressed out, tired and sad all the time, who needs Macheovelli?
My current "What the hell?!" is the multinational push to do away with incandescent bulbs in favor of CFLs. Have you seen the EM pollution which come off those things? You probably haven't. Nobody talks about that little aspect of the new magical lightbulbs. The most amazing part is that the companies are trying to sell these to us using the "environmentally friendly" angle. And people are actually buying it! Astonishing. --While it makes great ad copy, doesn't anybody else find it hard to believe GE really cares about such issues? Heck, do they even stand to make much more money, (if any), by selling CFL's than they do incandescents? I suspect the reality is more closely tied to their long relationship with the military industrial complex.
Just think. . . Every home permanently bathed in ambient EM pollution, from cell phones, to computers to the very lights in the ceiling, all eagerly installed by the people themselves. . ! It's genius! It's a fascist's dream come true. --All the little people operating within their little parameters without having to spend any extra money on troops.
Anyway. . , aren't "lower income bracket consumers" generally the same people who shop at Walmart, watch too much TV and feed their kids McFood? That they are adopting the control measures faster than any other group speaks volumes.
You learn and succeed, or you fail and you wind up a programmed unit suitable for maximum exploitation.
If you learn, then you realize that school is about programming social control systems into young people. They are trying to train kids how to respect authority, even when it makes no sense; how to sit in rows and how to exist in a system where it is considered normal to ask permission before you can pee or eat or speak.
The more kids who pop and thrash out at the system, the more control systems are put in place. Drugs. Laws. Fear and heavier programming.
To leven the school system so that there remains a good argument to keep sending kids, school also teaches reading and arithmetic. Barely. The good teachers are pressured through a variety of ways to ensure that the learning experience as oppressive as possible. School is about dumbing kids down and making them obey.
The only two things valuable about the school system is that you get to interact with other kids and learn (hard) social lessons, and you get to see up close how societal controls function, and you get a chance to learn how to defeat them in a somewhat safe environment. Once you realize that your 'permanent record' only means something if you want to fit in and exist in a state of employment which reflects your school teachings, then you are free.
"The Internet is like a magazine on your TV screen! --A magazine with billions of pages, some of which even include sounds and video! Readers of the Internet use a special pointing device to select words and pictures on the screen which can instantly open up new pages. Any page on the Internet can connect to any other page, making the Internet one of the most powerful and exciting media experiences ever!"
Most people here seem to believe that the actual mechanics of the internet are important to the layperson. Nope. Exclamation points, however. . .
And why shouldn't it be? It's non-news even in the political spectrum, marginal congress critters submit all manner of weird bills on a regular basis. You never hear about 99.9999% of them of them because they quietly die in committee. This is just another such bill.
Why should a call to impeach Cheney for crimes everybody knows he committed be paid attention to?
The current political scenario in the United States is quite remarkable. The constitution is being dismantled, the U.S. is operating secret prisons all over the globe and stands accused of committing regular torture. The legal system is being rigged, and the current war in Iraq affects everybody. It is safe to say that nearly everybody has been affected negatively by the war in Iraq. That the war was stared illegally and that the men responsible for it have not yet been held responsible is a Big Deal. As such, an actual call to impeachment, (the first for this administration), is a Big Deal. Any rational human being should be interested in this kind of development. Anybody who tries to ignore it or side-line it or diminish the fact that the country is being run by criminals, is not behaving in a rational manner.
Right. All the other political sites out there will ignore it if it's of any value to discuss.
While other political sites may certainly discuss this kind of news, the people who frequent those sites hold starting viewpoints and belief structures and social values which do not necessarily correspond with mine. I am fascinated to know how geeks feel and think about this stuff as opposed to regular folks. I don't find regular folks as interesting or engaging. Geeks have a unique experience in life, often having had to live in the cracks of society and they hold interest in science and fantasty/sci-fi. That's a headspace I love and it's one which provides a huge spectrum of unique language and social mathematics which you cannot find elsewhere. Basically I'd like to discuss the things I care about with the people I feel closest to. I don't want to wander down the hall to hang out with the jocks to discuss relationships. I'd rather stay in the geek hall and talk with the people I understand.
Did you actually bother to read my post? It would seem not - as I was quite clear on why I believed this item should not be here.
Yes, I did read your post, but words and intentions are not always closely related. And from your post this time around, (which I also read), it would appear that my initial impression has a fairly high likelihood of having been correct.
Took about 2 minutes to find those stories and provide links. Easier to believe it's a corporate media conspiracy eh? I could provide a few hundred more but you truthers aren't worth the time.
Oh please.
There's a HUGE difference between page 8 with snide editorial remarks, and front page with cheering sections. Every link you gave demonstrates that the media is armed not just a volume control, but also the ability to raise or lower the perceived validity of a story.
So, yes, when this happens to be the across-the-board policy of every major news agency in the country, it does lead one to think that there is evidence at the very least of a massive bias. I know personally a number of journalists, (both in print and on in television), and they tell me in no uncertain terms that news which does not fit the corporate and Israeli agenda does not get fair play, if any play at all.
This is what is meant when people say that, "The Media is not running this story."
If this was about Clinton's penis being sucked, then every magazine cover would be electric with the news and every day time talk show would be running a discussion segment on it. But instead we're talking about a mass murderer who sold lies in order to start an illegal war and the media clearly has no interest in asking the appropriate questions or in seeing the criminals brought to justice. Do you see the difference?
If you don't want to call this a, 'conspiracy', then perhaps the word, 'corruption' or the term 'base ignorance' would be more appealing to you.
this one really crosses the line. It isn't about technology, or YRO, or anything else 'slashlike'. It's pure politics and nothing else.
I'm a nerd and I am very interested in national policies. And since this news seems to have been largely ignored by the main networks, I am very happy to see it reported by and for our community. Nowhere else will be it discussed by people of like-mind. I like the Slashdot perspective on these matters.
Your complaint begs the question; Are you genuinely concerned about how different types of news should be categorized, or is there some other reason you don't want people here to see or think about this item?
Cite your sources, please. In any case, your point is noted, but you have to be careful not to continue the old saw of, "Division of the Masses" The Democrat v.s. Republican game is a trap.
The U.S. Public needs to start by arresting and jailing those who pushed the policy, sold the lies and sent the U.S. into a wasteful and pointless, (and for some, a highly profitable) war. This would include Bush, Cheney, Rice, and the secret service folks who helped fabricate the falsehoods.
Then the next step would be to arrest everybody who didn't have the spine to stop the war machine if they knew better.
The next appropriate step would be to fire everybody else who should have stood up and asked more questions rather than gone along with the charade.
And finally, honest people need to get into politics. And screening tests be implemented to look for psychopaths at all points along the way.
Is all of that going to happen? Probably not. If we can imprison Cheney for a thousand years, it'll be a good start. And it would set a nice precedent. I'd like to see Bush removed from office and put down.
I've never actually met a person who is concerned with trying to lead a clean and un-destructive life and who is also fundamentally closed off to logic and reason. Perhaps these 'Greens' are out there, but I don't think they are quite as prevalent as would justify the level of hostility being directed at them. It sounds like the same kind of vitriol which angry, blue-collar conservatives (who, sadly, I have met in quantity), direct at all the 'welfare moms' sponging their tax dollars.
People need to chill out a bit on this stuff and stop directing so much anger at straw-man villains.
I had to ditch TB (the last version) because, as much as I liked all the other features, I just couldn't stand how it would bog down on start-up, (sometimes for as long as two or three minutes), once I'd accumulated more than a thousand emails. I couldn't figure out what it was doing or how to set it any differently. Part of the problem was that it seemed determined to keep copies of emails even after I'd deleted them, attachments and all. This seems like a problem everybody would eventually encounter.
Has this been fixed with the new release?
I ended up switching to Pegasus Mail, which seems to handle the problem of old-mail management much more smoothly. --And it actually deletes the things I tell it to delete. Hallelujah!
I'm now in a position of, "If it ain't broke. .." which means I'll be sticking with the flying white horse until something changes. I hope David Harris is doing well in whatever new pastures called to him!
The two regions [the tunnel would reach] hold most of Russia's metal and mineral reserves ``and yet only 1.5 percent of it is developed due to lack of infrastructure and tough conditions,'' Alexeyev said.
From the perspective of trade and natural resources management, this project makes a lot of sense.
However, this assumes that the world is still going to be here and in the current form we are used to experiencing it. There could be some serious problems with ice-ages and comet disasters in the short term. But I guess you can't stop dreaming until the dream is over. . .
I think this passage loses its full meaning when not presented in the original 48pt orange text on fluorescent green animated gif background.
There's, "Controversial and Open to Alternative Explanations", and then there's, "Insanity".
Spelling and language skills tend to decay the further toward the "Insanity" end of the spectrum one travels. Interestingly, I've read Right Wing screeds which don't fare much better in the language department. Learn to discern.
Sounds to me as though the administrators were simply performing their prescribed job descriptions:
Break the spirit of everybody moving through the system when they're young. Make sure all boat rockers, (i.e., people who have a brain and the ability to question authority), are DESTROYED. Never lose an argument to a kid. Make sure kids feel the quiver of fear and straighten their backs at the mere whisp of 'authority'. Only when our entire population of public school-going middle class citizens have been reduced to well-behaved machine parts who don't mind living in a 'Prison of the mind', will the school authorities have performed their task.
I hope you have learned from your lesson and became an even bigger boat-rocker once you left school. I hope you discovered that you can ignore the system's mandates and actually build a happy life and that you do not need to fear the clowns with their hoops and their demands that you jump through them.
You know? The constantly updated and deliberately placed poisions designed to screw up INSECTS?
That, in combination with the Varroa and the Tracheal mites, (which still infest colonies today), and various other problems which can cripple colonies seems to make more sense to me. There may indeed be some new factor involved, but cell phones. . ?
I distrust the telecom corps far more than most people on Slashdot, but blaming CCD on EM radiation doesn't make much sense to me.
--While there may indeed be some truth to the idea that EM radiation might cause problems in a Honey Bee's navigation system, (EM causes chaotic synaptic firings in brain tissue), I have to wonder just how good the cell phone coverage is out in America's Bread Basket. --And among the almond groves of California State.
Yes, you interpret it correctly. Keep begging -- the principle "Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" still stands.
So if I shoot you and don't get caught, I'm innocent and no crime has been committed? I'm very glad the legal system completely disagrees with you. The semantic proviso you are clinging to as the basis of your entire argument fortunately does not stop law enforcement officers from arresting people for committing the crime of murder. --Because, you see, you can commit a crime, you can perform an illegal act and you can do all of it before you are convicted and punished for it. In fact, that's the only order in which it can happen. Do you see. . ?
I'll phrase it another way:
"The U.S. has committed War Crimes. They broke both international and U.S. laws when they invaded Iraq. --But they haven't been brought to Nuremberg, (or wherever), to be officially convicted yet, and they probably never will be. And so, according to certain well-programmed right-wing Christians, the U.S. remains as innocent as a babe in a blanket."
If you do not see the inherent idiocy in that statement, then you are beyond hope.
Bzzz... A soldier shooting (whom he perceives to be) an enemy is acting lawfully.
This is not true when the war itself is illegal both by U.S. and U.N. standards. It is also not true when burned out and jittery U.S. troops perceive anybody with brown skin who moves suddenly to be an enemy. There are such things as "warcrimes". "Just Following Orders. . ?" Or how about, "Armed and Brainwashed?"
Rife? Like a few hundred incidents, maybe -- most of them not being murders?
The U.S. Army has paid out 32 Million Dollars already to stricken family members over the killings of innocent people. The average pay out is $2000. My math reduced that to a rough guesstimate of about 16,000 cases. And according to the article, this does not include monies paid out from a different fund which allows a unit commander to make condolence payments. And again, those were the cases where the Army even bothered to admit guilt.
Right, it was safer under Saddam -- and the trains were running on-time too, weren't they?
Yes. It was a lot safer. Because Bush is a psychopathic liar, Iraq is now as a direct result, a chaotic killing zone. The trains run on time in the U.S. as well. Would you be thankful if China or somebody decided without asking first to come in and oust the Bush regime and turn the States into a killing pool? It is the responsibility of a population to fight its own fights. If Iraq truly wanted new leadership, it could have revolted, and I'm betting it would have been prettier than the current mess imposed upon them; a war which they did not ask for. --Many famous invading armies use the bullshit claim of 'liberation' to perform geographic rape. It's an old song.
Simple. Your grandmother needs to start keeping very detailed records. She must prove to the IRS she didn't make $12K. I don't see the problem, other than her hobby became more detailed.
The problem is that she has to keep very detailed records. Running your own swap-meet garage-sale thing on-line is fun. Keeping detailed records for the benefit of a bunch of pathologically corrupt, parasitic government scum is not just un-fun; it's infuriating.
The poster I responded to accused US of violating international law -- she/he quoted UN charter.
And you responded with an answer which doesn't make sense. --Your logic, if I interpret it correctly, was that unless a resolution is passed, no crime has been committed? I beg to differ.
That the US law is not broken is rather obvious -- as the original poster in this thread pointed out, America's Congress and Senate have approved the resumption of the anti-Iraq hostilities.
There are such things as unlawful acts of government. Just because nobody has yet condemned the original orchestrators of the war does not make subsequent hostilities based upon the original lies suddenly lawful, any more than subsequent sins make the original sin legal.
Though I do grant that your style of argument might stand up in the courts given the way they've been stacked (or should it be 'de-stacked'?) lately.
???? What else, other than letter of the law, should a rational person be considering, when determining, whether something is illegal or not?
How about the Spirit of the Law? --Oh come on. You must have heard about the "Letter v.s. the Spirit" of the Law. As I note your approval of the great Wiki, I'll offer the relevant entry for your perusal.
We killed an awful lot more Chinese and Koreans during the Korean war -- not to mention the millions of enemies we managed to dispatch during WW2. Calling a war "illegal" based on the number of casualties is quite irrational...
WW2? The Korean war? Well shucks, I don't know anything about the Korean war except that Alan Alda plays a good surgeon. But since we're not talking about WW2 or Korea, I would submit that this is hardly relevant and I might ask that you try to stay focused.
"Illegal" means that a law or set of laws has been broken. Mass murder without just cause, (as in bombing and shooting thousands of Iraqi civilians), is not lawful. Nor is it lawful to present falsehoods to the public in order to start a war with a nation which does not actually pose a threat. You'll simply have to pardon me for bringing up the body count. I happen to think it IS relevant to the issue at hand. After all, it is the crime; It is the base detail upon which the spirit of the Law resides. It is what the laws were designed to prevent. To not look at it and to not think about it is an irrationality bordering on the psychopathic.
Murder is a fairly well-defined term, which applies to very few incidents of Iraqis killed by US.
Very well. Let's see what your link to the wonderful world of Wiki offers up. . .
"Murder is the unlawful and intentional killing of a human being by another."
Unlawful. . . Check. Intentional. . ? How much more intentional can you get than aiming a military-grade weapon and pulling its trigger?
These instances are unfortunate and the perpetrators are generally prosecuted.
This isn't true at all. What actually happens is that sometimes the family members are paid off, (when guilt is admitted to), and the killer carries on as before. That's the state of things.
The vast majority of Iraqis killed in Iraq are killed by insurgent terrorists (mostly - fellow Iraqis). Our policies (or failures to execute them properly) may be contributing to the carnage, but it is not us, who is doing the killing...
So the 4 million bullets a day being produced and shipped to U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003 were being shot at clay pigeons?
The situation today is rife with stories of Iraqi murders at the hands of U.S. troops and military contractors. Further, the civil chaos in Iraq today would not exist were it not for the U.S. having invaded in the first place, allowing some of the nastiest figures from Saddam's old regime to continue in positions of military and police power.
Well aimed ridicule is highly effective and I suspect the alternative, pretending respect, could easily end up being less non-violent.
Hm. An interesting argument.
While in this particular case, the religious poster is being silly, I'm not sure I agree with your analysis of ridicule.
I suppose that ridicule being, "Well aimed", as you suggest, is the key.
Unfortunately, virtually every group I've ever seen uses ridicule to discredit whatever opposing viewpoint they find threatening. Not all of them are right, but they all believe they are right. In the end, no real progress is made and people stay in their fortified camps.
In the end ridicule is just another form of attack and control. Even though I have an imperfect track record, I have always, always found it better to ask questions and engage people in discussion and to offer genuine respect, (as opposed to pretended respect), when trying to find the truth of a given matter. People are far lessing willing to budge if you try to hurt them. Ego prevents it. If, however, they feel you hold truth as the ultimate goal and are happy to grant others the dignity of simply being another searcher who is human and capable of mistakes, then there is a greater chance of actually getting somewhere. And who knows? You might even discover that the other side has a better grasp on truth than you. If you don't attack others for being wrong, then you are less likely to attack yourself for being wrong, and are therefore more open to growth.
Ever notice how spammers always use such clunky grammar?
The coding of the virus itself is clever and it takes computer language skills which most people cannot and will not ever master. --And yet the same people can't seem to write a convincing English sentence to save their lives.
These guys never fail to sound like ESL Russians or console game junkies. (Probably a bit of both.)
Anyway, I find it indicative of something Big and Unhappy that half-baked social engineering scams performed by the barely-literate can still be effective. It does, however, offer a useful tool in avoiding traps. Knowledge! It's all the protection you'll ever need.
I assume that CNN, being a nationalist propaganda machine is likely to round down. But even assuming the real figure is only as high as 200,000, the situation remains unforgivable and the U.S. is by no means "innocent".
Also, 'murdered' is an objective term. If someone is shooting at me and I have a gun, guess what: I don't care if it's a police action, declared war, or what ever, I'm shooting back. Is that murder, I supposed it depends on what side you are on or who shot first.
How nice. But we're not talking about you and your armchair war theory. We're talking about an American invasion army shooting and bombing civilians. It might also be pointed out that the Americans did indeed shoot first. "Pre-emptive", I believe the term was. Based on lies and faulty intelligence.
Further, bombed civilians aren't typically in a position to shoot first. The term 'murder' fits quite well in such cases. As it does when Americans open fire on civilian weddings, school children, fishermen and cars which, "didn't slow down fast enough", among many such countless incidents. --And these are just the ones that the U.S. admits guilt for, (otherwise they wouldn't be handing out cash to stricken family members). When murder is an offense which carries only a small fine, there is something wrong.
The U.S. should not be in Iraq. It wasn't a mistake. It was a willful, criminal act.
"Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law." For the inter-nations cases such court would be the UN Security Council. Can you name the resolution, which condemns our war on Iraq as illegal? No, you can't... Oops. US is innocent.
If the U.S. government breaks U.S. law, which it has done, then it's up to the U.S. court systems to deal with it, not the U.N. It's amazing that they have not done so already.
In any case, calling the U.S. innocent based on the letter of the law is hardly rational. Iraqi deaths since the Americans invaded, numbers in the hundreds of thousands. That's a lot of murdered people who would otherwise be alive today.
Slashdot Mirror
And you'd be wrong. Having lectured there and at several other schools has given me some insight beyond, 'tunnel vision'.
-FL
I remember hearing about holographic technology; back when I was dropping $500 on a 4x CDR drive. And $5 per blank disk. Holographic disk technology was totally viable, and companies were easily able to produce the hardware. But it never made it to market. Gee whiz.
If you step up the technology incrementally, then you get to sell essentially the same device to the same people many times over rather than just once. When people talk about the spirit of 'competition', I laugh. It's a lie. Companies may think they're competing, but the game itself is fixed. Which means competition is just a stage production. Fighting to be the most 'innovative' company using stupid technologies only makes you the best cave man on the hill. Big deal.
Holographic disks were not so much a suppressed technology as they were strategically ignored.
How charming. Isn't living with corporate greed fun? This is why I enjoy not buying new hardware until my old gear has literally fallen apart, and then I only buy stuff which is just about to be phased out so that as few dollars as possible pass from me to the top of the technology pyramid. --I know this doesn't change things much on the large scale, but at least I can say that I don't personally get manipulated into chump-hood like those panting to pay top dollar for the next 'best' 40-year old thing.
Remember how we all used to, when we were kids, imagine living in the high-tech future? Isn't it amusing to think that we would actually be there right now if it wasn't for the military and the corporations who keep us all ignorant and dependant on pathetic technologies?
-FL
I live in a university town. The amount of stupid being traded around here is embarrassing. If you have real passion for a field, then you can learn it better than any U can teach it, and you can do so without spending tens of thousands of dollars. The only really good things offered by Universities which I have seen are linked to comradeship, and you can get that for free as well.
--Which is not to say that a university tour can't be worth your while. All experiences are valid on some level, but why anybody would waste their time with a big institution which has no respect for its students is quite beyond me.
-FL
They do have their side benefits though, but the major benefit, (for the Powers That Be), is that they are effective in fuzzing people out and dumbing them down just a few more notches so that they are more easily controlled.
It doesn't surprise me that cell phone and wireless technology is being pushed down all our throats. A fully microwaved society is a society which is several steps closer to not even needing totalitarian controls. --When the people are too dazed and misdirected to ever rebel by altering their behavior so that they are not permanently stressed out, tired and sad all the time, who needs Macheovelli?
My current "What the hell?!" is the multinational push to do away with incandescent bulbs in favor of CFLs. Have you seen the EM pollution which come off those things? You probably haven't. Nobody talks about that little aspect of the new magical lightbulbs. The most amazing part is that the companies are trying to sell these to us using the "environmentally friendly" angle. And people are actually buying it! Astonishing. --While it makes great ad copy, doesn't anybody else find it hard to believe GE really cares about such issues? Heck, do they even stand to make much more money, (if any), by selling CFL's than they do incandescents? I suspect the reality is more closely tied to their long relationship with the military industrial complex.
Just think. . . Every home permanently bathed in ambient EM pollution, from cell phones, to computers to the very lights in the ceiling, all eagerly installed by the people themselves. . ! It's genius! It's a fascist's dream come true. --All the little people operating within their little parameters without having to spend any extra money on troops.
Anyway. . , aren't "lower income bracket consumers" generally the same people who shop at Walmart, watch too much TV and feed their kids McFood? That they are adopting the control measures faster than any other group speaks volumes.
-FL
If you expose voter fraud, then you become a hero. And everybody wants a hero for president.
I wonder how this game of Illuminati will play out? I wonder if it even matters at this point, what with the sky starting to fall and all that.
-FL
If you learn, then you realize that school is about programming social control systems into young people. They are trying to train kids how to respect authority, even when it makes no sense; how to sit in rows and how to exist in a system where it is considered normal to ask permission before you can pee or eat or speak.
The more kids who pop and thrash out at the system, the more control systems are put in place. Drugs. Laws. Fear and heavier programming.
To leven the school system so that there remains a good argument to keep sending kids, school also teaches reading and arithmetic. Barely. The good teachers are pressured through a variety of ways to ensure that the learning experience as oppressive as possible. School is about dumbing kids down and making them obey.
The only two things valuable about the school system is that you get to interact with other kids and learn (hard) social lessons, and you get to see up close how societal controls function, and you get a chance to learn how to defeat them in a somewhat safe environment. Once you realize that your 'permanent record' only means something if you want to fit in and exist in a state of employment which reflects your school teachings, then you are free.
-FL
Most people here seem to believe that the actual mechanics of the internet are important to the layperson. Nope. Exclamation points, however. . .
-FL
Why should a call to impeach Cheney for crimes everybody knows he committed be paid attention to?
The current political scenario in the United States is quite remarkable. The constitution is being dismantled, the U.S. is operating secret prisons all over the globe and stands accused of committing regular torture. The legal system is being rigged, and the current war in Iraq affects everybody. It is safe to say that nearly everybody has been affected negatively by the war in Iraq. That the war was stared illegally and that the men responsible for it have not yet been held responsible is a Big Deal. As such, an actual call to impeachment, (the first for this administration), is a Big Deal. Any rational human being should be interested in this kind of development. Anybody who tries to ignore it or side-line it or diminish the fact that the country is being run by criminals, is not behaving in a rational manner.
Right. All the other political sites out there will ignore it if it's of any value to discuss.
While other political sites may certainly discuss this kind of news, the people who frequent those sites hold starting viewpoints and belief structures and social values which do not necessarily correspond with mine. I am fascinated to know how geeks feel and think about this stuff as opposed to regular folks. I don't find regular folks as interesting or engaging. Geeks have a unique experience in life, often having had to live in the cracks of society and they hold interest in science and fantasty/sci-fi. That's a headspace I love and it's one which provides a huge spectrum of unique language and social mathematics which you cannot find elsewhere. Basically I'd like to discuss the things I care about with the people I feel closest to. I don't want to wander down the hall to hang out with the jocks to discuss relationships. I'd rather stay in the geek hall and talk with the people I understand.
Did you actually bother to read my post? It would seem not - as I was quite clear on why I believed this item should not be here.
Yes, I did read your post, but words and intentions are not always closely related. And from your post this time around, (which I also read), it would appear that my initial impression has a fairly high likelihood of having been correct.
-FL
Oh please.
There's a HUGE difference between page 8 with snide editorial remarks, and front page with cheering sections. Every link you gave demonstrates that the media is armed not just a volume control, but also the ability to raise or lower the perceived validity of a story.
So, yes, when this happens to be the across-the-board policy of every major news agency in the country, it does lead one to think that there is evidence at the very least of a massive bias. I know personally a number of journalists, (both in print and on in television), and they tell me in no uncertain terms that news which does not fit the corporate and Israeli agenda does not get fair play, if any play at all.
This is what is meant when people say that, "The Media is not running this story."
If this was about Clinton's penis being sucked, then every magazine cover would be electric with the news and every day time talk show would be running a discussion segment on it. But instead we're talking about a mass murderer who sold lies in order to start an illegal war and the media clearly has no interest in asking the appropriate questions or in seeing the criminals brought to justice. Do you see the difference?
If you don't want to call this a, 'conspiracy', then perhaps the word, 'corruption' or the term 'base ignorance' would be more appealing to you.
-FL
I'm a nerd and I am very interested in national policies. And since this news seems to have been largely ignored by the main networks, I am very happy to see it reported by and for our community. Nowhere else will be it discussed by people of like-mind. I like the Slashdot perspective on these matters.
Your complaint begs the question; Are you genuinely concerned about how different types of news should be categorized, or is there some other reason you don't want people here to see or think about this item?
-FL
The U.S. Public needs to start by arresting and jailing those who pushed the policy, sold the lies and sent the U.S. into a wasteful and pointless, (and for some, a highly profitable) war. This would include Bush, Cheney, Rice, and the secret service folks who helped fabricate the falsehoods.
Then the next step would be to arrest everybody who didn't have the spine to stop the war machine if they knew better.
The next appropriate step would be to fire everybody else who should have stood up and asked more questions rather than gone along with the charade.
And finally, honest people need to get into politics. And screening tests be implemented to look for psychopaths at all points along the way.
Is all of that going to happen? Probably not. If we can imprison Cheney for a thousand years, it'll be a good start. And it would set a nice precedent. I'd like to see Bush removed from office and put down.
-FL
I've never actually met a person who is concerned with trying to lead a clean and un-destructive life and who is also fundamentally closed off to logic and reason. Perhaps these 'Greens' are out there, but I don't think they are quite as prevalent as would justify the level of hostility being directed at them. It sounds like the same kind of vitriol which angry, blue-collar conservatives (who, sadly, I have met in quantity), direct at all the 'welfare moms' sponging their tax dollars.
People need to chill out a bit on this stuff and stop directing so much anger at straw-man villains.
-FL
Has this been fixed with the new release?
I ended up switching to Pegasus Mail, which seems to handle the problem of old-mail management much more smoothly. --And it actually deletes the things I tell it to delete. Hallelujah!
I'm now in a position of, "If it ain't broke. .
-FL
From the perspective of trade and natural resources management, this project makes a lot of sense.
However, this assumes that the world is still going to be here and in the current form we are used to experiencing it. There could be some serious problems with ice-ages and comet disasters in the short term. But I guess you can't stop dreaming until the dream is over. . .
-FL
There's, "Controversial and Open to Alternative Explanations", and then there's, "Insanity".
Spelling and language skills tend to decay the further toward the "Insanity" end of the spectrum one travels. Interestingly, I've read Right Wing screeds which don't fare much better in the language department. Learn to discern.
-FL
Break the spirit of everybody moving through the system when they're young. Make sure all boat rockers, (i.e., people who have a brain and the ability to question authority), are DESTROYED. Never lose an argument to a kid. Make sure kids feel the quiver of fear and straighten their backs at the mere whisp of 'authority'. Only when our entire population of public school-going middle class citizens have been reduced to well-behaved machine parts who don't mind living in a 'Prison of the mind', will the school authorities have performed their task.
I hope you have learned from your lesson and became an even bigger boat-rocker once you left school. I hope you discovered that you can ignore the system's mandates and actually build a happy life and that you do not need to fear the clowns with their hoops and their demands that you jump through them.
-FL
That, in combination with the Varroa and the Tracheal mites, (which still infest colonies today), and various other problems which can cripple colonies seems to make more sense to me. There may indeed be some new factor involved, but cell phones. . ?
I distrust the telecom corps far more than most people on Slashdot, but blaming CCD on EM radiation doesn't make much sense to me.
--While there may indeed be some truth to the idea that EM radiation might cause problems in a Honey Bee's navigation system, (EM causes chaotic synaptic firings in brain tissue), I have to wonder just how good the cell phone coverage is out in America's Bread Basket. --And among the almond groves of California State.
-FL
So if I shoot you and don't get caught, I'm innocent and no crime has been committed? I'm very glad the legal system completely disagrees with you. The semantic proviso you are clinging to as the basis of your entire argument fortunately does not stop law enforcement officers from arresting people for committing the crime of murder. --Because, you see, you can commit a crime, you can perform an illegal act and you can do all of it before you are convicted and punished for it. In fact, that's the only order in which it can happen. Do you see. . ?
I'll phrase it another way:
"The U.S. has committed War Crimes. They broke both international and U.S. laws when they invaded Iraq. --But they haven't been brought to Nuremberg, (or wherever), to be officially convicted yet, and they probably never will be. And so, according to certain well-programmed right-wing Christians, the U.S. remains as innocent as a babe in a blanket."
If you do not see the inherent idiocy in that statement, then you are beyond hope.
Bzzz... A soldier shooting (whom he perceives to be) an enemy is acting lawfully.
This is not true when the war itself is illegal both by U.S. and U.N. standards. It is also not true when burned out and jittery U.S. troops perceive anybody with brown skin who moves suddenly to be an enemy. There are such things as "warcrimes". "Just Following Orders. . ?" Or how about, "Armed and Brainwashed?"
Rife? Like a few hundred incidents, maybe -- most of them not being murders?
The U.S. Army has paid out 32 Million Dollars already to stricken family members over the killings of innocent people. The average pay out is $2000. My math reduced that to a rough guesstimate of about 16,000 cases. And according to the article, this does not include monies paid out from a different fund which allows a unit commander to make condolence payments. And again, those were the cases where the Army even bothered to admit guilt.
Right, it was safer under Saddam -- and the trains were running on-time too, weren't they?
Yes. It was a lot safer. Because Bush is a psychopathic liar, Iraq is now as a direct result, a chaotic killing zone. The trains run on time in the U.S. as well. Would you be thankful if China or somebody decided without asking first to come in and oust the Bush regime and turn the States into a killing pool? It is the responsibility of a population to fight its own fights. If Iraq truly wanted new leadership, it could have revolted, and I'm betting it would have been prettier than the current mess imposed upon them; a war which they did not ask for. --Many famous invading armies use the bullshit claim of 'liberation' to perform geographic rape. It's an old song.
-FL
The problem is that she has to keep very detailed records. Running your own swap-meet garage-sale thing on-line is fun. Keeping detailed records for the benefit of a bunch of pathologically corrupt, parasitic government scum is not just un-fun; it's infuriating.
-FL
And you responded with an answer which doesn't make sense. --Your logic, if I interpret it correctly, was that unless a resolution is passed, no crime has been committed? I beg to differ.
That the US law is not broken is rather obvious -- as the original poster in this thread pointed out, America's Congress and Senate have approved the resumption of the anti-Iraq hostilities.
There are such things as unlawful acts of government. Just because nobody has yet condemned the original orchestrators of the war does not make subsequent hostilities based upon the original lies suddenly lawful, any more than subsequent sins make the original sin legal.
Though I do grant that your style of argument might stand up in the courts given the way they've been stacked (or should it be 'de-stacked'?) lately.
???? What else, other than letter of the law, should a rational person be considering, when determining, whether something is illegal or not?
How about the Spirit of the Law? --Oh come on. You must have heard about the "Letter v.s. the Spirit" of the Law. As I note your approval of the great Wiki, I'll offer the relevant entry for your perusal.
We killed an awful lot more Chinese and Koreans during the Korean war -- not to mention the millions of enemies we managed to dispatch during WW2. Calling a war "illegal" based on the number of casualties is quite irrational...
WW2? The Korean war? Well shucks, I don't know anything about the Korean war except that Alan Alda plays a good surgeon. But since we're not talking about WW2 or Korea, I would submit that this is hardly relevant and I might ask that you try to stay focused.
"Illegal" means that a law or set of laws has been broken. Mass murder without just cause, (as in bombing and shooting thousands of Iraqi civilians), is not lawful. Nor is it lawful to present falsehoods to the public in order to start a war with a nation which does not actually pose a threat. You'll simply have to pardon me for bringing up the body count. I happen to think it IS relevant to the issue at hand. After all, it is the crime; It is the base detail upon which the spirit of the Law resides. It is what the laws were designed to prevent. To not look at it and to not think about it is an irrationality bordering on the psychopathic.
Murder is a fairly well-defined term, which applies to very few incidents of Iraqis killed by US.
Very well. Let's see what your link to the wonderful world of Wiki offers up. . .
"Murder is the unlawful and intentional killing of a human being by another."
Unlawful. . . Check. Intentional. . ? How much more intentional can you get than aiming a military-grade weapon and pulling its trigger?
These instances are unfortunate and the perpetrators are generally prosecuted.
This isn't true at all. What actually happens is that sometimes the family members are paid off, (when guilt is admitted to), and the killer carries on as before. That's the state of things.
The vast majority of Iraqis killed in Iraq are killed by insurgent terrorists (mostly - fellow Iraqis). Our policies (or failures to execute them properly) may be contributing to the carnage, but it is not us, who is doing the killing...
So the 4 million bullets a day being produced and shipped to U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003 were being shot at clay pigeons?
The situation today is rife with stories of Iraqi murders at the hands of U.S. troops and military contractors. Further, the civil chaos in Iraq today would not exist were it not for the U.S. having invaded in the first place, allowing some of the nastiest figures from Saddam's old regime to continue in positions of military and police power.
-FL
Hm. An interesting argument.
While in this particular case, the religious poster is being silly, I'm not sure I agree with your analysis of ridicule.
I suppose that ridicule being, "Well aimed", as you suggest, is the key.
Unfortunately, virtually every group I've ever seen uses ridicule to discredit whatever opposing viewpoint they find threatening. Not all of them are right, but they all believe they are right. In the end, no real progress is made and people stay in their fortified camps.
In the end ridicule is just another form of attack and control. Even though I have an imperfect track record, I have always, always found it better to ask questions and engage people in discussion and to offer genuine respect, (as opposed to pretended respect), when trying to find the truth of a given matter. People are far lessing willing to budge if you try to hurt them. Ego prevents it. If, however, they feel you hold truth as the ultimate goal and are happy to grant others the dignity of simply being another searcher who is human and capable of mistakes, then there is a greater chance of actually getting somewhere. And who knows? You might even discover that the other side has a better grasp on truth than you. If you don't attack others for being wrong, then you are less likely to attack yourself for being wrong, and are therefore more open to growth.
-FL
Ever notice how spammers always use such clunky grammar?
The coding of the virus itself is clever and it takes computer language skills which most people cannot and will not ever master. --And yet the same people can't seem to write a convincing English sentence to save their lives.
These guys never fail to sound like ESL Russians or console game junkies. (Probably a bit of both.)
Anyway, I find it indicative of something Big and Unhappy that half-baked social engineering scams performed by the barely-literate can still be effective. It does, however, offer a useful tool in avoiding traps. Knowledge! It's all the protection you'll ever need.
-FL
650,000. CNN.
I assume that CNN, being a nationalist propaganda machine is likely to round down. But even assuming the real figure is only as high as 200,000, the situation remains unforgivable and the U.S. is by no means "innocent".
Also, 'murdered' is an objective term. If someone is shooting at me and I have a gun, guess what: I don't care if it's a police action, declared war, or what ever, I'm shooting back. Is that murder, I supposed it depends on what side you are on or who shot first.
How nice. But we're not talking about you and your armchair war theory. We're talking about an American invasion army shooting and bombing civilians. It might also be pointed out that the Americans did indeed shoot first. "Pre-emptive", I believe the term was. Based on lies and faulty intelligence.
Further, bombed civilians aren't typically in a position to shoot first. The term 'murder' fits quite well in such cases. As it does when Americans open fire on civilian weddings, school children, fishermen and cars which, "didn't slow down fast enough", among many such countless incidents. --And these are just the ones that the U.S. admits guilt for, (otherwise they wouldn't be handing out cash to stricken family members). When murder is an offense which carries only a small fine, there is something wrong.
The U.S. should not be in Iraq. It wasn't a mistake. It was a willful, criminal act.
-FL
No nasty words, simple rationality and a handy camera. Nice job!
-FL
If the U.S. government breaks U.S. law, which it has done, then it's up to the U.S. court systems to deal with it, not the U.N. It's amazing that they have not done so already.
In any case, calling the U.S. innocent based on the letter of the law is hardly rational. Iraqi deaths since the Americans invaded, numbers in the hundreds of thousands. That's a lot of murdered people who would otherwise be alive today.
-FL