Great points. I've gone through similar processes essentially balancing calories-in vs. calories-out. It's easier today using any number of apps for my phone.
What's most shocking about selecting the proper foods is portion sizes.
I had a meal last night that was lean pork loin (6 oz/168 grams), green peas (1 cup) and about 3 cups of potatoes. It felt like a huge serving to me. That meal had significantly fewer calories (556) than my 1/2 of a fast food meal my wife and I shared the day before while we were driving across Arizona.
I now look at food as expensive or cheap based on calories provided rather than dollars. My wife will ask me if I want a particular item to eat and I might respond, "No thanks, that's too expensive," meaning that I'll spend too many of my day's allotted calories on that particular food.
One can still eat at a fast food restaurant by getting a grilled chicken sandwich (relatively cheap calorie wise) vs. a fried chicken sandwich (very expensive calorie wise). If one is careful then one can eat a larger volume of food and feel fuller while getting fewer calories and better nutrition.
It does require, however, a certain level of personal responsibility and ownership.
In your opinion. I clearly disagree, finding more agreement with Breyer's dissent in McDonald v. Chicago (2010) that incorporation under the 14th was inappropriate because it is not a fundamental, individual right.
The Second is the only Amendment in the Bill of Rights that explicitly explains the intent behind the right enumerated there -- that the ownership of firearms is intended for the establishment of well functioning militias. That means the right is limited and not fundamental, and the government should have a free hand to regulate so long as that purpose is not thwarted. To hold otherwise is to regulate the militia clause meaningless. I do not think any phrase in the Constitution should be treated so.
I agree, mostly, with your comment about the 10th amendment. It has two parts - the States and the People.
However, your reading of the 2nd seems to imply that the 2nd grants a right rather than restricting a power. The preamble to the Bill of Rights states the intention of the BoR to be a further set of restrictions on the government and not a grant of rights to the people.
I, obviously, find it very difficult to accept that the 2nd amendment is not a fundamental right given the preamble to the Bill of Rights, its inclusion in the Bill of Rights and its appearance near the top of the list.
It's difficult for me to see how I could agree with your conclusion without some significant manipulations of the purpose of the document and language:
- The overall purpose of the Bill of Rights is to place further declaratory and restrictive clauses on the power of the government not on individual rights
- The Bill of Rights enumerates individual rights and, except for the 10th, mentions no other entity except in a restrictive capacity. In the 10th the states are mentioned in order to further restrict the powers of the national government.
- Whatever the purpose of the 2nd amendment its conclusion is direct, "...the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The directness of that statement can not be ignored. The authors could have just as easily said, "...the rights of the states to arm their citizens shall not be infringed." An insistence on using the first part of the sentence to modify the second ignores the plain language of the second. There are many elegant ways to write the sentence to support your position and none of those were selected.
Finally, I believe that all our rights are fundamental. The concept of a fundamental right is a fiction invented by the Supreme Court and one that really started to erode in the 1930s. Nevertheless, it is part of our current jurisprudence.
What is most disturbing to me is that we now have to demonstrate that a right is fundamental in order to have that right incorporated against the states. This is another example of why Roberts and other Supreme Court justices are wrong when they start with a presumption of constitutionality when examining a law rather than a presumption of liberty. That presumption began in the 1930s with the wholesale redefinition of "commerce" in order to expand the reach of the national government.
I, too, believe in state's rights. However, that doesn't mean I can accept that states have the power to infringe on our fundamental rights.
The rights protected by the 2nd amendment are rights retained by the people and, in my opinion, are not subject to regulation by states under their powers.
The 14th amendment seems to have clarified that issue.
The Bill of Rights, by the way, does not grant powers to any governmental entity - state or national. It is a list of rights that are so fundamental that further restrictions on the government(s) had to be enshrined.
If you're implying that the 2nd amendment grants a power to the states then I'd like to understand what structure in the Constitution would give you the impression that anything in the Bill of Rights grants any power to a state.
I say good for them given that the term "well-regulated militia" has no meaning as it relates to a right held by the people.
If you actually read the entire Bill of Rights, including the preamble, you would see that it is not a document granting rights to the people but, rather, a document further restricting the power of the national government.
If Stevens wants to properly grant the regulatory right to the national government then he would follow the model of the 18th amendment and grant the power to regulate firearms to the national government.
You want to use the phrase "well-regulated militia" as a way of allowing the national government to regulate firearms. Where in the U.S. Constitution is the power to regulate firearms granted to the government.
The 2nd Amendment is not poorly written when taken in context of the preamble to the Bill of Rights.
The 2nd Amendment is not a grant of a right to the people but is a specific prohibition on the national government.
The Constitution is not designed to be changed with time except through the amendment process. The concept that we will nilly-willy change the definition of words so that we can enforce any law we want and still claim adherence to the constitution is ridiculous. It begs the questions, why even have a written constitution if it is subject to change by merely changing the definition or meaning of words? If we merely want to follow the current fashion regarding fundamental rights why bother writing any rules that limit the power of the national government?
Until the 1930s, when Congress and Roosevelt found a sympathetic ear in the Supreme Court, there was no question that the national government had no authority to infringe on many of our rights. It was only the redefinition of the word "commerce" that allowed the national government to use that as a penumbra to cover all sorts of activities that would have previously been seen as infringements of our rights.
If Stevens wanted to really amend the Constitution to regulate firearms then he would propose something along the lines of the 18th amendment that brought is prohibition. He would grant the national government the power to regulate firearms rather than attempt to further cloud the issue and reinforce the concept that the Bill of Rights grants people rights rather than further restricts the power of the government.
We can go on and on about who should be allowed to have a gun, that the 2nd amendment needs to be fixed and the historical context of what the words mean.
What Stevens and others who support strict gun control are missing is a part of the Bill of Rights that is rarely discussed: the preamble.
"THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will be ensure the beneficent ends of its institution."
The Bill of Rights is not a list of rights granted to the people that requires, or is indeed subject, to endless interpretation. The preamble captures the contemporaneous debate issues - should the US Constitution attempt to list the rights of the people in a document that was designed to list the limited powers of the national government.
The compromise was a list of rights that were considered so fundamental that "...further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added..." Those clauses were restrictions on the powers of the national government.
1st Amendment - "Congress shall make now law..." 2nd Amendment - "...shall not be infringed." 3rd Amendment - "No soldier shall..." 4th Amendment - "...shall not be violated..."
There are many who believe the Bill of Rights is a granting of rights to the people when it is actually a harsher, further restriction on the powers and authority of the federal government.
If one looks at the 18th amendment one sees that the prohibition on alcohol was not simply a prohibition but was a specific grant of power to the national government to regulate alcohol. It wouldn't have been enough to simply outlaw alcohol. The amendment had to grant an additional power to the government.
Stevens' amendment to the 2nd amendment would not prohibit the private ownership of firearms nor would it grant a power to the national government to regulate that ownership. Stevens' proposed amendment would simply reinforce the mistaken belief that the Bill of Rights grants rights to the people rather than restricting the power of government.
Much of the attitude regarding the role of the Bill of Rights can be traced to the 1930s when Congress and Roosevelt found a friendly Supreme Court willing to change the definition of commerce to allow the Commerce Clause to be used to regulate all manner of activities.
People are still willing to say, "The Constitution gives me that right," when, in fact, the Constitution give you no rights. The U.S. Constitution was designed to limit the power of the federal government so they couldn't infringe on the rights you have simply because you exist.
Obama was opposed to Prop 8 because he felt a ban on gay marriage should not be enshrined in a constitution. He also said that marriage was between a man and a woman and was opposed to gay marriage.
You can see the full remark in the link above. The article is dated November 1, 2008.
The first search from Google on Oracle SELinux is "3.7 Configuring and Using SELinux" and it discusses the difference between discretionary and mandatory access control.
There's a difference between a vendor saying they don't support something or it doesn't work and scads of administrators who say, "This security crap is too hard, just turn it off."
It's not just belligerence. I'm seeing many of the mod points being used to express agreement and disagreement. One word posts bashing a political party are reaching a moderation level of 5 for insightful and informative but controversial posts are being modded as Troll.
I've got 15 moderator points right now and I feel the most I can do is spend them on overrated/underrated. I used to spend a lot of time spending those points and now I just want to give up.
I used to give presentations to our customers and prospects in our "Corporate Visit Center" and was always extremely disappointed with the dog-and-pony shows I experienced. The problem goes well beyond PowerPoint and gets into people who have no idea how to present an idea. I'd follow speakers who would have 100 slides for a 45 minute presentation, average 3-4 minutes per slide and then wonder why they were behind schedule.
I would show up with my PowerPoint presentation queued up and then I would challenge the audience to ask enough questions to be able to break free from it. After a while I got pretty good at never even getting past the title slide before breaking into a back-and-forth discussion and white-board diagramming. I consistently rated as the most popular speaker because I didn't walk in and present to the audience - I engaged and would talk about anything they wanted to talk about.
I remember a new guy came on board and he was sent to watch me after I was billed as the best presenter. He reported back that I never got past the first slide and the response from my manager was, "Exactly!"
PowerPoint is just one symptom of a larger problem: the inability to interact with an audience and discuss what they want to discuss. Even for those who needed PowerPoint in order to present I would coach them to not read the slides. The audience will read the words on the slides as you speak. The presenter should be telling a story that engages an audience - the presentation can be used as reminder points to the speaker or as either supplemental content for the audience to read or important/complex points you want them to take home for later study.
Furthermore, health care providers are required to provide translation assistance for their enrollees in the enrollee's "preferred spoken and written languages."
Many of the healthcare regulations have spilled over into other governmental departments such as the DMV and voting.
I ship items that have to be taken to the shipper and are not eligible for pickup. I often visit UPS hubs and USPS. UPS hubs almost never have more than 1 or 2 people waiting to ship. USPS is almost always at the other end of the spectrum. I hate going to a UPS hub because it's a 45 minute drive for me. I hate going to USPS because it's such a long wait and a hassle.
Skipping efficiency for a moment and commenting on your concept of "update cycle," I'm still amazed that an organization that basically visited every address in the nation on an almost everyday basis completely missed out on the opportunity that made FedEx and UPS what they are today. UPS, in the name of efficiency, had their package car drivers recording GPS coordinates for the addresses they visited and ended up in the map-data business.
The last time I had to mail something via the post office (about 6 months ago):
- I had to wait in line 20 minutes - The shipping information was filled out on multi-part NCR paper - The sheets of paper were peeled apart, each one stamped and filed in a separate bin - I was given a sheet of paper as my receipt - The tracking options were minimal, at best
The last time I shipped via UPS:
- I filled out the shipping information online - I printed a mailing label and affixed it to my box - I dropped it off at a UPS store after waiting about 30 seconds - I was given a sheet of paper as a drop-off receipt - I could track the package
A shipping organization that still collects shipping information in triplicate, separately stamps each of the copies, files them in separate bins for later processing and can't provide adequate tracking information is, in my opinion, inefficient.
Let's socialize all these public services, get rid of the private "high margin stuff" and reduce our choice down to 1 sucky provider answerable to no one.
Then we'll all be equal at the lowest-common denominator.
Yep, just what I desire - internet service as efficient as the Postal service.
Before anyone goes off on how I can send a letter all the way across the country for whatever the 1st class rate is today really consider how inefficient their operation runs. I go out of my way to use private entities in lieu of the US Postal service.
There is nothing preventing government services from being properly internet enabled today. The problem with government services is, wait for it, the government.
The government has done more to prevent me from getting the internet service I desire than they've done to enable high quality, high speed service.
Why does internet service have greater penetration in poor neighborhoods than telephone service (which is subsidized for those neighborhoods)? Could it be that individuals are better equipped to determine what services are best for them.
Yep, if you want the government to provide basic services then that's just what you'll get, BASIC services.
You should read part of the PDR sometime; many medicines are quite toxic and their pages look exactly like the ones that are less toxic. Sometimes, the result of taking a toxin is better than not taking it for a particular patient.
But, more to your point, you seem to suggest that because someone doesn't take the time to read the FUCKING BOLD PRINT that we should then hold the author accountable for mistakes the reader makes in comprehension. Your "courage to say no" sounds an awful lot like infringing someone's free speech because some idiot reader couldn't comprehend the plain language of the document or simply decided not to read it.
I'll go ahead and judge who actually did wrong - it was a presumably well-educated man who made a mistake and sought to place the blame elsewhere.
Perhaps we really do need a take-it-back button. We did this with the airlines who are now required to offer refunds on non-refundable tickets for 24 hours after purchase. If we extend the idea far enough then perhaps all those poor saps who contributed to Obama expecting him to close Gitmo, or who really thought they could keep their health insurance should be entitled to refunds as well.
From the summary: 'Dr. Ray Bellamy, the Tampa Bay donor mentioned above, intended to give money to candidate Alex Sink, but evidently didn't notice this line in bold print, just above the "Donate" button: "Make a contribution today to help defeat Alex Sink and candidates like her."'
Is this how you want your doctor reading the physicians desk reference?
If you look at the web site or the photos in the article it's pretty hard to miss that one is contributing to "help defeat Alex Sink."
Yep, let's start protecting ourselves from more than just the fine print. Let's protect ourselves from the bolded headlines also. A little reading comprehension may have helped the good doctor realize just what he was doing.
I started back in 1978 and I remember someone coming in to pitch a database technology in 2006 for which they had patents pending and it would replace relational databases. They kept describing it using catch phrases and turning rows into columns and I just couldn't grasp WTF they were talking about. I finally asked them to draw a picture and they mapped it out on the white board.
I then asked if they had ever read about IMS and hierarchical databases. They had not. I wished them good luck on their patents and sent them packing.
I dropped out of college back in 1983 but did very well in the computer science classes I took. After dropping out I started tutoring computer science students at a rate of $10/hour for a little scratch. My tutored students did very well on their projects and exams and I soon had a growing list of students interested in my services.
What scares me about these types of regulatory schemes is we are replacing the market and individual choice and responsibility with government oversight that is incapable or uninterested in measuring results. Rather than allowing the market to decide on a product based on results we are implementing entry thresholds to be sure the "right people" are delivering the services. However, when we seek to abdicate all market responsibility to the government we simply create a set of rules so that our educators look the way the government wants them to look.
Some argue that the government should have the power to regulate because some of these students are using government money and that, in my opinion, is the ultimate issue. Once we start using public funds we create more opportunity for corruption. It is not longer necessary to rip off one student at a time and hope the market doesn't catch on because you can meet some bureaucratic threshold and be fed a steady stream of students who have no personal investment in the process outside of their own time.
Once we accept regulatory schemes such as this we open ourselves up to whatever whims the bureaucrats decide upon. We'll move from meeting a threshold of requirements in order to teach to a system where the content becomes mandated.
I don't expect the government to be making ANY social economic decisions, informed or otherwise.
Expecting, or even allowing, the government to make those decisions reverses the relationship that should exist between citizen and government. If, on the other hand, we were subjects then they could probably do damn well as they please.
Amazon, on sales of $2.98 Billion for the 12 months ending September 30, 2013, had net income of $130 million.
You say the budgetary impact wouldn't even be a blip. How about putting a hard number on it?
There's a difference between a company being big and having "immense resources" to spend on staffing "a 24x7 abuse desk with very senior people."
Generally speaking, Amazon has been happy incurring a lot of losses in their bid for world domination. You may disagree with their allocation of resources as a company but it's difficult to conclude they have immense, unallocated resources sitting by and "they just don't want to" fix the problem.
I'm curious as to what you think the solution is that would be so easy for their smart people to fix.
If you go beyond the abstract and read the paper you'll notice that they chose a TPC-H scale factor of 1 (1 GB of data) so that the entire dataset would fit in the GPU.
The question they seem to really be asking is more akin to, "Why don't we make our datasets small enough for complex queries that it can all fit in the storage attached to a processor we like?"
They continue to answer their own question when discussing results and admit they can't compare costs of "traditional" implementations because those tests were all run with scale of 100 (100 GB of data).
They say the comparison is difficult against complete systems because of the scaling factor and "...this paper is about the effectiveness of mapping relational queries to utilize the compute throughput [of] GPUs".
So, it seems to boil down to a test of compute power on data sets small enough to fit in memory rather than an effective test of relational query processing, though they did use relational queries as their base testing model.
It is not reasonable to think that deadly force, or any force for that matter, is a justified response when "any" physical act is visited upon you.
However, a duty to retreat is very complicated and requires a jury to agree with your point of view; whether you are the prosecutor or the defendant.
I teach defensive firearm classes and concealed handgun permit classes. One of the things I teach is that if you're paying attention you should never have to draw your weapon and, if you do, it is unlikely you will have to fire a shot. However, students always raise a ton of "what if" questions.
I always answer the "what if" questions by explaining that if you're able to stand there and objectively go through a check list justifying why you're in fear of losing your life or of grievous bodily harm then you are probably not justified in using deadly force. When faced with impending death or serious bodily injury you will not be analyzing legal options; you will be trying to survive. When trying to survive, the firearm becomes one of many tools available to you to aid in your survival. Another tool includes tactically retreating.
I apologize when someone bumps into me even when it's their fault. I back away from aggressive drivers to avoid road rage incidents. I tend to be quite deferential to jerks and their rude behaviors. I want to avoid trouble and I go out of my way to make sure I do. I understand that someone might be acting like a jerk because they've had a rough morning or are just having a bad life in general. They aren't my problem and I will do whatever I can to keep them from becoming my problem.
On the other hand, if someone punches me it will be difficult for me to believe it is anything other than the start of an ongoing attack and will do whatever I have to do to survive. If increasing distance from my attacker is possible then I will do so because it is the safest, most efficient way to stop the immediate threat and to ready myself to respond with greater force if necessary.
In force-on-force simulations it is not unusual to see someone "run away" from the danger presented. The analysis and de-brief after the exercise centers on whether the person being attacked ran away in the safest and most effective way possible. The de-brief doesn't include admonition on why the student should have used their gun to stop the attack. Running away safely is a valid tool to survival.
I get nervous and become uncomfortable when someone, even joking, threatens violence. I winced when I read the parent post that started this discussion where the poster said, "doesn't mean I can't punch someone in the face." That attitude of justifiable violence for being offended is what scares me and it's fairly prevalent in these comments. Then again, I suspect that most of the people advocating a punch to the face are, as you call them, "internet tough guys" and, I hope, wouldn't actually commit the act of violence they are so quick to advocate.
The M1911 was designed well before 1911 by John Browning and was a standard in U.S. military forces until the 1970s when, some would argue due to political pressure, the U.S. and NATO adopted the European standard 9mm round.
The standard 1911 fires a.45 ACP bullet and is remarkably elegant from a design perspective. Many would argue it's still the best defensive pistol out there. I'm carrying one on my hip at the moment.
The design has been reliable enough that I can take the parts from my current 1911 and put them in a 1911 from the era when they were initially introduced and have a very functional firearm. Today, one can pay anywhere from $400 to $5,000 for a 1911 depending on the manufacturer and I would gladly carry any of them to defend myself.
Just because it was designed over 100 years ago doesn't make it obsolete in any way, shape or form.
Slashdot Mirror
Great points. I've gone through similar processes essentially balancing calories-in vs. calories-out. It's easier today using any number of apps for my phone.
What's most shocking about selecting the proper foods is portion sizes.
I had a meal last night that was lean pork loin (6 oz/168 grams), green peas (1 cup) and about 3 cups of potatoes. It felt like a huge serving to me. That meal had significantly fewer calories (556) than my 1/2 of a fast food meal my wife and I shared the day before while we were driving across Arizona.
I now look at food as expensive or cheap based on calories provided rather than dollars. My wife will ask me if I want a particular item to eat and I might respond, "No thanks, that's too expensive," meaning that I'll spend too many of my day's allotted calories on that particular food.
One can still eat at a fast food restaurant by getting a grilled chicken sandwich (relatively cheap calorie wise) vs. a fried chicken sandwich (very expensive calorie wise). If one is careful then one can eat a larger volume of food and feel fuller while getting fewer calories and better nutrition.
It does require, however, a certain level of personal responsibility and ownership.
In your opinion. I clearly disagree, finding more agreement with Breyer's dissent in McDonald v. Chicago (2010) that incorporation under the 14th was inappropriate because it is not a fundamental, individual right.
The Second is the only Amendment in the Bill of Rights that explicitly explains the intent behind the right enumerated there -- that the ownership of firearms is intended for the establishment of well functioning militias. That means the right is limited and not fundamental, and the government should have a free hand to regulate so long as that purpose is not thwarted. To hold otherwise is to regulate the militia clause meaningless. I do not think any phrase in the Constitution should be treated so.
I agree, mostly, with your comment about the 10th amendment. It has two parts - the States and the People.
However, your reading of the 2nd seems to imply that the 2nd grants a right rather than restricting a power. The preamble to the Bill of Rights states the intention of the BoR to be a further set of restrictions on the government and not a grant of rights to the people.
I, obviously, find it very difficult to accept that the 2nd amendment is not a fundamental right given the preamble to the Bill of Rights, its inclusion in the Bill of Rights and its appearance near the top of the list.
It's difficult for me to see how I could agree with your conclusion without some significant manipulations of the purpose of the document and language:
- The overall purpose of the Bill of Rights is to place further declaratory and restrictive clauses on the power of the government not on individual rights
- The Bill of Rights enumerates individual rights and, except for the 10th, mentions no other entity except in a restrictive capacity. In the 10th the states are mentioned in order to further restrict the powers of the national government.
- Whatever the purpose of the 2nd amendment its conclusion is direct, "...the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The directness of that statement can not be ignored. The authors could have just as easily said, "...the rights of the states to arm their citizens shall not be infringed." An insistence on using the first part of the sentence to modify the second ignores the plain language of the second. There are many elegant ways to write the sentence to support your position and none of those were selected.
Finally, I believe that all our rights are fundamental. The concept of a fundamental right is a fiction invented by the Supreme Court and one that really started to erode in the 1930s. Nevertheless, it is part of our current jurisprudence.
What is most disturbing to me is that we now have to demonstrate that a right is fundamental in order to have that right incorporated against the states. This is another example of why Roberts and other Supreme Court justices are wrong when they start with a presumption of constitutionality when examining a law rather than a presumption of liberty. That presumption began in the 1930s with the wholesale redefinition of "commerce" in order to expand the reach of the national government.
I, too, believe in state's rights. However, that doesn't mean I can accept that states have the power to infringe on our fundamental rights.
The rights protected by the 2nd amendment are rights retained by the people and, in my opinion, are not subject to regulation by states under their powers.
The 14th amendment seems to have clarified that issue.
The Bill of Rights, by the way, does not grant powers to any governmental entity - state or national. It is a list of rights that are so fundamental that further restrictions on the government(s) had to be enshrined.
If you're implying that the 2nd amendment grants a power to the states then I'd like to understand what structure in the Constitution would give you the impression that anything in the Bill of Rights grants any power to a state.
I say good for them given that the term "well-regulated militia" has no meaning as it relates to a right held by the people.
If you actually read the entire Bill of Rights, including the preamble, you would see that it is not a document granting rights to the people but, rather, a document further restricting the power of the national government.
If Stevens wants to properly grant the regulatory right to the national government then he would follow the model of the 18th amendment and grant the power to regulate firearms to the national government.
You want to use the phrase "well-regulated militia" as a way of allowing the national government to regulate firearms. Where in the U.S. Constitution is the power to regulate firearms granted to the government.
The 2nd Amendment is not poorly written when taken in context of the preamble to the Bill of Rights.
The 2nd Amendment is not a grant of a right to the people but is a specific prohibition on the national government.
The Constitution is not designed to be changed with time except through the amendment process. The concept that we will nilly-willy change the definition of words so that we can enforce any law we want and still claim adherence to the constitution is ridiculous. It begs the questions, why even have a written constitution if it is subject to change by merely changing the definition or meaning of words? If we merely want to follow the current fashion regarding fundamental rights why bother writing any rules that limit the power of the national government?
Until the 1930s, when Congress and Roosevelt found a sympathetic ear in the Supreme Court, there was no question that the national government had no authority to infringe on many of our rights. It was only the redefinition of the word "commerce" that allowed the national government to use that as a penumbra to cover all sorts of activities that would have previously been seen as infringements of our rights.
If Stevens wanted to really amend the Constitution to regulate firearms then he would propose something along the lines of the 18th amendment that brought is prohibition. He would grant the national government the power to regulate firearms rather than attempt to further cloud the issue and reinforce the concept that the Bill of Rights grants people rights rather than further restricts the power of the government.
We can go on and on about who should be allowed to have a gun, that the 2nd amendment needs to be fixed and the historical context of what the words mean.
What Stevens and others who support strict gun control are missing is a part of the Bill of Rights that is rarely discussed: the preamble.
"THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will be ensure the beneficent ends of its institution."
The Bill of Rights is not a list of rights granted to the people that requires, or is indeed subject, to endless interpretation. The preamble captures the contemporaneous debate issues - should the US Constitution attempt to list the rights of the people in a document that was designed to list the limited powers of the national government.
The compromise was a list of rights that were considered so fundamental that "...further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added..." Those clauses were restrictions on the powers of the national government.
1st Amendment - "Congress shall make now law..."
2nd Amendment - "...shall not be infringed."
3rd Amendment - "No soldier shall..."
4th Amendment - "...shall not be violated..."
There are many who believe the Bill of Rights is a granting of rights to the people when it is actually a harsher, further restriction on the powers and authority of the federal government.
If one looks at the 18th amendment one sees that the prohibition on alcohol was not simply a prohibition but was a specific grant of power to the national government to regulate alcohol. It wouldn't have been enough to simply outlaw alcohol. The amendment had to grant an additional power to the government.
Stevens' amendment to the 2nd amendment would not prohibit the private ownership of firearms nor would it grant a power to the national government to regulate that ownership. Stevens' proposed amendment would simply reinforce the mistaken belief that the Bill of Rights grants rights to the people rather than restricting the power of government.
Much of the attitude regarding the role of the Bill of Rights can be traced to the 1930s when Congress and Roosevelt found a friendly Supreme Court willing to change the definition of commerce to allow the Commerce Clause to be used to regulate all manner of activities.
People are still willing to say, "The Constitution gives me that right," when, in fact, the Constitution give you no rights. The U.S. Constitution was designed to limit the power of the federal government so they couldn't infringe on the rights you have simply because you exist.
MTV Interview
Obama was opposed to Prop 8 because he felt a ban on gay marriage should not be enshrined in a constitution. He also said that marriage was between a man and a woman and was opposed to gay marriage.
You can see the full remark in the link above. The article is dated November 1, 2008.
Funny, it seems that government interference is closing the markets by making it more and more difficult for new companies to enter markets.
Is it not government interference that keeps new ISPs from entering many markets?
The first search from Google on Oracle SELinux is "3.7 Configuring and Using SELinux" and it discusses the difference between discretionary and mandatory access control.
There's a difference between a vendor saying they don't support something or it doesn't work and scads of administrators who say, "This security crap is too hard, just turn it off."
It's not just belligerence. I'm seeing many of the mod points being used to express agreement and disagreement. One word posts bashing a political party are reaching a moderation level of 5 for insightful and informative but controversial posts are being modded as Troll.
I've got 15 moderator points right now and I feel the most I can do is spend them on overrated/underrated. I used to spend a lot of time spending those points and now I just want to give up.
I used to give presentations to our customers and prospects in our "Corporate Visit Center" and was always extremely disappointed with the dog-and-pony shows I experienced. The problem goes well beyond PowerPoint and gets into people who have no idea how to present an idea. I'd follow speakers who would have 100 slides for a 45 minute presentation, average 3-4 minutes per slide and then wonder why they were behind schedule.
I would show up with my PowerPoint presentation queued up and then I would challenge the audience to ask enough questions to be able to break free from it. After a while I got pretty good at never even getting past the title slide before breaking into a back-and-forth discussion and white-board diagramming. I consistently rated as the most popular speaker because I didn't walk in and present to the audience - I engaged and would talk about anything they wanted to talk about.
I remember a new guy came on board and he was sent to watch me after I was billed as the best presenter. He reported back that I never got past the first slide and the response from my manager was, "Exactly!"
PowerPoint is just one symptom of a larger problem: the inability to interact with an audience and discuss what they want to discuss. Even for those who needed PowerPoint in order to present I would coach them to not read the slides. The audience will read the words on the slides as you speak. The presenter should be telling a story that engages an audience - the presentation can be used as reminder points to the speaker or as either supplemental content for the audience to read or important/complex points you want them to take home for later study.
I'm not arguing whether it's a good or bad idea but California requires all health care documents be available in the following "threshold languages":
Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Farsi, Hmong, Khmer/Cambodian, Korean, Lao, Russian, Tagalog ad Vietnamese
Furthermore, health care providers are required to provide translation assistance for their enrollees in the enrollee's "preferred spoken and written languages."
Many of the healthcare regulations have spilled over into other governmental departments such as the DMV and voting.
I ship items that have to be taken to the shipper and are not eligible for pickup. I often visit UPS hubs and USPS. UPS hubs almost never have more than 1 or 2 people waiting to ship. USPS is almost always at the other end of the spectrum. I hate going to a UPS hub because it's a 45 minute drive for me. I hate going to USPS because it's such a long wait and a hassle.
Skipping efficiency for a moment and commenting on your concept of "update cycle," I'm still amazed that an organization that basically visited every address in the nation on an almost everyday basis completely missed out on the opportunity that made FedEx and UPS what they are today. UPS, in the name of efficiency, had their package car drivers recording GPS coordinates for the addresses they visited and ended up in the map-data business.
The last time I had to mail something via the post office (about 6 months ago):
- I had to wait in line 20 minutes
- The shipping information was filled out on multi-part NCR paper
- The sheets of paper were peeled apart, each one stamped and filed in a separate bin
- I was given a sheet of paper as my receipt
- The tracking options were minimal, at best
The last time I shipped via UPS:
- I filled out the shipping information online
- I printed a mailing label and affixed it to my box
- I dropped it off at a UPS store after waiting about 30 seconds
- I was given a sheet of paper as a drop-off receipt
- I could track the package
A shipping organization that still collects shipping information in triplicate, separately stamps each of the copies, files them in separate bins for later processing and can't provide adequate tracking information is, in my opinion, inefficient.
Brilliant, I wish I had seen it before.
Let's socialize all these public services, get rid of the private "high margin stuff" and reduce our choice down to 1 sucky provider answerable to no one.
Then we'll all be equal at the lowest-common denominator.
Yep, just what I desire - internet service as efficient as the Postal service.
Before anyone goes off on how I can send a letter all the way across the country for whatever the 1st class rate is today really consider how inefficient their operation runs. I go out of my way to use private entities in lieu of the US Postal service.
There is nothing preventing government services from being properly internet enabled today. The problem with government services is, wait for it, the government.
The government has done more to prevent me from getting the internet service I desire than they've done to enable high quality, high speed service.
Why does internet service have greater penetration in poor neighborhoods than telephone service (which is subsidized for those neighborhoods)? Could it be that individuals are better equipped to determine what services are best for them.
Yep, if you want the government to provide basic services then that's just what you'll get, BASIC services.
You should read part of the PDR sometime; many medicines are quite toxic and their pages look exactly like the ones that are less toxic. Sometimes, the result of taking a toxin is better than not taking it for a particular patient.
But, more to your point, you seem to suggest that because someone doesn't take the time to read the FUCKING BOLD PRINT that we should then hold the author accountable for mistakes the reader makes in comprehension. Your "courage to say no" sounds an awful lot like infringing someone's free speech because some idiot reader couldn't comprehend the plain language of the document or simply decided not to read it.
I'll go ahead and judge who actually did wrong - it was a presumably well-educated man who made a mistake and sought to place the blame elsewhere.
Perhaps we really do need a take-it-back button. We did this with the airlines who are now required to offer refunds on non-refundable tickets for 24 hours after purchase. If we extend the idea far enough then perhaps all those poor saps who contributed to Obama expecting him to close Gitmo, or who really thought they could keep their health insurance should be entitled to refunds as well.
From the summary: 'Dr. Ray Bellamy, the Tampa Bay donor mentioned above, intended to give money to candidate Alex Sink, but evidently didn't notice this line in bold print, just above the "Donate" button: "Make a contribution today to help defeat Alex Sink and candidates like her."'
Is this how you want your doctor reading the physicians desk reference?
If you look at the web site or the photos in the article it's pretty hard to miss that one is contributing to "help defeat Alex Sink."
Yep, let's start protecting ourselves from more than just the fine print. Let's protect ourselves from the bolded headlines also. A little reading comprehension may have helped the good doctor realize just what he was doing.
I started back in 1978 and I remember someone coming in to pitch a database technology in 2006 for which they had patents pending and it would replace relational databases. They kept describing it using catch phrases and turning rows into columns and I just couldn't grasp WTF they were talking about. I finally asked them to draw a picture and they mapped it out on the white board.
I then asked if they had ever read about IMS and hierarchical databases. They had not. I wished them good luck on their patents and sent them packing.
I dropped out of college back in 1983 but did very well in the computer science classes I took. After dropping out I started tutoring computer science students at a rate of $10/hour for a little scratch. My tutored students did very well on their projects and exams and I soon had a growing list of students interested in my services.
What scares me about these types of regulatory schemes is we are replacing the market and individual choice and responsibility with government oversight that is incapable or uninterested in measuring results. Rather than allowing the market to decide on a product based on results we are implementing entry thresholds to be sure the "right people" are delivering the services. However, when we seek to abdicate all market responsibility to the government we simply create a set of rules so that our educators look the way the government wants them to look.
Some argue that the government should have the power to regulate because some of these students are using government money and that, in my opinion, is the ultimate issue. Once we start using public funds we create more opportunity for corruption. It is not longer necessary to rip off one student at a time and hope the market doesn't catch on because you can meet some bureaucratic threshold and be fed a steady stream of students who have no personal investment in the process outside of their own time.
Once we accept regulatory schemes such as this we open ourselves up to whatever whims the bureaucrats decide upon. We'll move from meeting a threshold of requirements in order to teach to a system where the content becomes mandated.
I don't expect the government to be making ANY social economic decisions, informed or otherwise.
Expecting, or even allowing, the government to make those decisions reverses the relationship that should exist between citizen and government. If, on the other hand, we were subjects then they could probably do damn well as they please.
"Amazon, with its immense resources,"
Amazon, on sales of $2.98 Billion for the 12 months ending September 30, 2013, had net income of $130 million.
You say the budgetary impact wouldn't even be a blip. How about putting a hard number on it?
There's a difference between a company being big and having "immense resources" to spend on staffing "a 24x7 abuse desk with very senior people."
Generally speaking, Amazon has been happy incurring a lot of losses in their bid for world domination. You may disagree with their allocation of resources as a company but it's difficult to conclude they have immense, unallocated resources sitting by and "they just don't want to" fix the problem.
I'm curious as to what you think the solution is that would be so easy for their smart people to fix.
This...
If you go beyond the abstract and read the paper you'll notice that they chose a TPC-H scale factor of 1 (1 GB of data) so that the entire dataset would fit in the GPU.
The question they seem to really be asking is more akin to, "Why don't we make our datasets small enough for complex queries that it can all fit in the storage attached to a processor we like?"
They continue to answer their own question when discussing results and admit they can't compare costs of "traditional" implementations because those tests were all run with scale of 100 (100 GB of data).
They say the comparison is difficult against complete systems because of the scaling factor and "...this paper is about the effectiveness of mapping relational queries to utilize the compute throughput [of] GPUs".
So, it seems to boil down to a test of compute power on data sets small enough to fit in memory rather than an effective test of relational query processing, though they did use relational queries as their base testing model.
There are 19 states that impose some "duty to retreat".
It is not reasonable to think that deadly force, or any force for that matter, is a justified response when "any" physical act is visited upon you.
However, a duty to retreat is very complicated and requires a jury to agree with your point of view; whether you are the prosecutor or the defendant.
I teach defensive firearm classes and concealed handgun permit classes. One of the things I teach is that if you're paying attention you should never have to draw your weapon and, if you do, it is unlikely you will have to fire a shot. However, students always raise a ton of "what if" questions.
I always answer the "what if" questions by explaining that if you're able to stand there and objectively go through a check list justifying why you're in fear of losing your life or of grievous bodily harm then you are probably not justified in using deadly force. When faced with impending death or serious bodily injury you will not be analyzing legal options; you will be trying to survive. When trying to survive, the firearm becomes one of many tools available to you to aid in your survival. Another tool includes tactically retreating.
I apologize when someone bumps into me even when it's their fault. I back away from aggressive drivers to avoid road rage incidents. I tend to be quite deferential to jerks and their rude behaviors. I want to avoid trouble and I go out of my way to make sure I do. I understand that someone might be acting like a jerk because they've had a rough morning or are just having a bad life in general. They aren't my problem and I will do whatever I can to keep them from becoming my problem.
On the other hand, if someone punches me it will be difficult for me to believe it is anything other than the start of an ongoing attack and will do whatever I have to do to survive. If increasing distance from my attacker is possible then I will do so because it is the safest, most efficient way to stop the immediate threat and to ready myself to respond with greater force if necessary.
In force-on-force simulations it is not unusual to see someone "run away" from the danger presented. The analysis and de-brief after the exercise centers on whether the person being attacked ran away in the safest and most effective way possible. The de-brief doesn't include admonition on why the student should have used their gun to stop the attack. Running away safely is a valid tool to survival.
I get nervous and become uncomfortable when someone, even joking, threatens violence. I winced when I read the parent post that started this discussion where the poster said, "doesn't mean I can't punch someone in the face." That attitude of justifiable violence for being offended is what scares me and it's fairly prevalent in these comments. Then again, I suspect that most of the people advocating a punch to the face are, as you call them, "internet tough guys" and, I hope, wouldn't actually commit the act of violence they are so quick to advocate.
There is nothing obsolete about the design.
The M1911 was designed well before 1911 by John Browning and was a standard in U.S. military forces until the 1970s when, some would argue due to political pressure, the U.S. and NATO adopted the European standard 9mm round.
The standard 1911 fires a .45 ACP bullet and is remarkably elegant from a design perspective. Many would argue it's still the best defensive pistol out there. I'm carrying one on my hip at the moment.
The design has been reliable enough that I can take the parts from my current 1911 and put them in a 1911 from the era when they were initially introduced and have a very functional firearm. Today, one can pay anywhere from $400 to $5,000 for a 1911 depending on the manufacturer and I would gladly carry any of them to defend myself.
Just because it was designed over 100 years ago doesn't make it obsolete in any way, shape or form.