...to believe that any amount of global warming will be a *bad* thing overall, by any economic metric.
(1) Rising sea levels, flooding coastal areas, including most of the world's major cities. (2) Increased temperatures rendering parts of the world uninhabitable.
(2.1) Newly warmed / Ice free land not immediately suitable for 'easy' intensive agriculture / habitation to replace what's been lost (3) Increased costs due to extreme weather events. (4) Increased loss of life (and concomitant costs) due to extreme weather.
Ah wait, the points above are not purely economic. So we needn't worry about them, right?
Anyone who pretends otherwise is extending their confidence into a realm that doesn't deserve it.
Wrong!
Anyone who suggests otherwise is, literally, a sociopath, using false uncertainty to justify the moral vacuum they inhabit.
It's great that we're trying to get ahead of this issue but I'm not sure there's a 'right' answer to this question.
And if there is a right answer I'd be inclined to say it's "No".
In my mind part of the difficulty in thinking about artificial intelligence, and, more generally, artificial consciousness, is what happens at the boundary - that crossover point between an 'object' and a 'sentience'. We can own objects, we can't own people. Objects don't have rights, creatures and people do - albeit rights that we (society) assigns them. In fact it was only in thinking about the notion of a conscious program that I came to the conclusion that one of the rights we must have is the right to self terminate (or, more humanely, we have the right to end our own life, and, as a corollary, we have the right to grant others a, time-limited, right to end our life). I'll leave the full reasoning as an exercise for the reader...;-)
I do agree with the author of the NYT's article that AI's should be required to follow the law (Duh!), which, in the EU at least, already includes his third point, but I have no idea of how you'd enforce that in programming any more than you can enforce that in people. In other words - you can't! All you can do is try to teach or encourage people to behave appropriately and punish those that don't, i.e. those that break the law. At this point the question becomes one of responsibility, and even this seemingly simple question has become fiendishly difficult, even for human law breakers, in our present day court system.
Of course, most of this is, for the moment, purely hypothetical. We don't have true AI, we just have software agents, essentially, increasingly ever more sophisticated bots. So we can sidestep the 'difficult' questions, as the headline does, and as we all know: simple questions have simple answers...
Q: Should bots be required to tell you they're not human? A: No!
Q: Should bots be required to tell you who's funding them / their posts? A: Only if a human would have the same restrictions.
Q: Should a bot be required to follow the law? A: Yes!
Q: If a bot doesn't follow the law, who is responsible? A: The person giving, or who gave, the bot their instructions.
Like the subject (^) says though, what we're facing now is just the tip of the iceberg. We've some interesting times ahead, and some interesting decisions to make. I, simultaneously, can't wait, and dread to see just how much of a hash 'we' can make of it!
The Turning (sic) Test is trivial to pass on a short enough timeline...
The current day interpretation of the Turing Test might be trivial enough to pass, but...
... especially if (A) I get to control where and when the conversation occurs, (B) That conversation is usually formulaic anyway (arranging an appointment), and (C) The human in the loop doesn't care that much (e.g. the person taking the appointment at the salon wants off the phone).
...that's not actually the Turing Test.
I can write an AI that tricks you into thinking it's a person, for a reasonablish amount of time.
While this might depend on your definition of 'reasonable' I'm going to disagree: No, you really can't. You might be able to write an AI that tricks me into thinking, after a minute or so, that it's a person I have no desire to converse with - but at that point I'm no longer conversing with it.
I'm not sure I see 'the win'.
Now, I'm sorry to come across all pedantic, but with a broadening of the terminology comes a weakening of the meaning. I'm not sure that's helpful in an informed discussion of the subject.
I also occasionally support my local libraries by paying exorbitant overdue fines. best way of being taxed in a way where I know the money is going...
Ditto!
Though I'm not quite sure if, in my case, it's because I'm too damn lazy to renew or return them on time, or if it is a (sub)conscious decision to give them additional funding.
GP is not the only poster to point out that "no one uses it" (the library), and go on to detail the few people who hang out there......but hang on there!
How does GP know how many people / who uses the library, at any time?
Since the simple answer is often correct I'll posit: They don't know! They're simply having a grumble at what they perceive as another example of government waste (their real beef) whilst having no clue as to what they're talking about.
Unless you're a regular visitor, across all times of day and days of the year, it's not possible to comment on who & how many use the library. And if you are a regular visitor then that puts a lie to any statement that the library is obsolete or unused.
Completely off-topic but, as another example of bizarre Microsoft behaviour:
I was configuring a new laptop for my father the other day, one he'd bought with Windows 10. Obviously in order to download a new browser I had to fire up Edge, but the initial splash screen was annoying me so I changed the default start page to the 'blank page' option.
On restarting Edge I'm presented with a 'blank page' containing a message along the lines of: "This page uses cookies etc. etc."
Whilst I am generally in favour of the principle of the EU, and would much rather the UK remain part of it, I am one of the first to admit that it is not a perfect institution, and it certainly doesn't always rule as I would wish. I also tend to think that "ever closer union" is not necessarily a good thing, especially when considering the pace of change in relation to 'social inertia', and with consideration for global economics and the wider geopolitical environment.
That being said, I find that discussions regarding EU legislation, mostly because of the ongoing Brexit farce, still make me rather angry. I'm trying to not be angry...
So, I've just deleted most of my original response, but I will make a few 'points' before I give up completely:
Regulation 2257/94 was replaced by Regulation 1333/2011, not Regulation 1221/2008 - despite what the wiki article or various UK newspapers might have you believe.
Speaking of UK newspapers, the article you link to is an almost perfect example of the genre. The clever conflation of the description of Class 1 cucumbers with the idea of not meeting minimum standards (which are actually more concerned with the food being mouldy, rotten, riddled with pests or otherwise inedible), the implication that the Agriculture Commissioner said more than she did, and the absolute contradiction regarding unfairly protecting (their) farmers yet forcing them to throw good food away... it's a masterpiece of suggestive manipulation. While almost every statement is technically true the overall impression you're left with is far from the reality.
When it comes to: "I.e. when the regulation was in place producers had to throw away or destroy fruits and vegetables that didn't meet the standard." this is not true, unless the produce was unfit for consumption. One obvious exception would be (from the regulation) "bananas intended for industrial processing... are not covered". The regulations are freely available. Perhaps if people actually read them, preferably with an open mind as opposed to having their opinions made for them by an agenda driven media, I would have a lower blood pressure.
Finally:
It's a typical EU common agricultural policy rule that is designed to limit supply of agricultural stuff to push up prices.... the EU has a lot of rules which are designed to benefit EU producers at the cost to EU consumers and to shield those producers from foreign competitors
You are both right and wrong.
The CAP, like the CFP, is an abomination. Some of my main objections to the EU are these very policies. However they are not designed or intended to be anti-consumer, merely pro-producer. You are right that the rules (and subsidies) are designed to shield domestic producers from foreign ones, but they are also intended to help consumers (subsidies to famers --> cheaper food to consumers, if we ignore the tax implications for a moment). One of the key pillars of the EU, free movement of goods, also has the direct effect of lowering prices to consumers.
Ah well, I'm done. What really frustrates me is: there's enough wrong with the EU, as it currently stands, without making shit up. If we'd actually focused on the real problems rather than the manufactured outrage we might have stood a chance of improving things. Now, short of a miracle, we're likely to trigger another 'lost decade' for half a billion people. Genius!
Presumably you think this somehow contradicts what I said. Well, it might, but almost certainly doesn't.
The regulation in question has as one of its first paragraphs:"These provisions state that fruit and vegetables which are intended to be sold fresh to the consumer, may only be marketed if they are sound, fair and of marketable quality and if the country of origin is indicated. In the interest of harmonisation of the implementation of this provision, it is appropriate to define these characteristics in providing for a general marketing standard for all fresh fruits and vegetables."
Like I said, it was basically about marketing - essentially it's not ok to mislead consumers about your produce.
As for "Some sources have claimed this to be an admission that the original regulations did indeed ban "bent bananas", or that it was accepted that it was "a farce"", you might not be aware that Boris Johnson was the Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph between 1989 and 1994 (the period of the original legislation quoted in your wikipedia article). His anti-EU sensationalist tripe almost certainly played a large part in shaping public opinion regarding the EU, and, I might go so far as to say, laid the foundations for the ground work that led to the subsequent referendum result two decades later.
(What price sensationalism for the purposes of, what, self aggrandisement!? Shame!)
To be fair that was a fairly interesting article, especially in the fact that it specifically mentions that jury sizes other than 12 have been discussed or tried.
That being said, the historical 'fact' of "why today's juries tend to have 12 people is that the Welsh king Morgan of Gla-Morgan, who established jury trials in 725 A.D., decided upon the number" is sketchy at best (Glamorgan* not even being a dream by that date - this was almost certainly prior, even, to Glywysing being renamed Morgannwg because of the family name), and the rationale for it, attributed to Morgan is, as far as I can tell, a fantasy by the author if the article.
However, my certitude as to the origins of the number or jurors was almost certainly a 'mis-speaking', or a verbal shortcut to the result, as my experience of the mathematics of jury size was covered in a university maths class back in the late 90's, but that certainly only accounts for why we continue to use 12 people, not why we started using 12 people. The hypothesis of Jesus and his disciples, or the 12 tribes of Israel, are perhaps as valid as the "Thing" which was introduced from, I believe, a non-Jewish, non-Christian culture.
Either way, the primary point remains: 13 people is, for a small degree of error, a valid sample size. Clearly larger would be better, but to dismiss the study entirely, based purely on a misguided notion that a sample of 13 people is not 'significant', would be a mistake.
*fwiw, which ain't much I'll grant, this (Glamorgan) is where I live...
Ah, the sour sweet tingling pop of popping candy exploding in your mouth. If my watering mouth is anything to go by it seems just like yesterday. Who knew 40 years would pass so quickly?
TFA doesn't say that this is the only shoe that shows a performance difference, period. It says that this is the only shoe that shows a significant performance difference versus the prior generation of racing shoes.
On reading the summary I found myself wondering if they tested Enko's running shoes. Then I realised, they didn't actually test any shoes at all, just performed some analysis on runners and their times.
The various quotes however, from you and parents, do go some way towards answering the question I've had since I first saw those shoes (rather ironically from an ad. on/.): Would they even be 'legal' to run in, in any 'proper' race. But then, given the following quote from the article, I find myself wondering what the difference is apart from one pair of shoes has a visible spring, while the other is less 'honest' about how it works:
"Nested in the central part of the shoe is a piece of carbon fiber that stores and releases energy every time it hits the floor. Imagine an ACME spring-powered shoe from a Looney Tunes cartoon. Except this shoe, unlike the ones used by Wile E. Coyote, actually work–and work well.
I guess the one thing it does show though is that athletic records aren't (necessarily) being beaten today by superior athletes just by athletes with superior equipment. That has to cheapen any sense of achievement, surely?
Correct. A sample size of 13 is utterly worthless statistically. No useful information can be had from such an experiment.
Incorrect. A sample size of 13 does give statistically significant results (for a fairly specific version of significant), and is, in fact, the smallest sample size to do so.
It might never have occurred to you to wonder why legal trials have a judge and 12 people on a jury - making 13 people. Perhaps you should look into that: mathematically it's quite interesting.
It should be taken as a given that anyone who has actually spent the merest moment thinking about the issues related to comparative healthcare reads, and intentionally uses, "free medical care" as a shortcut for "medical care that's free at point of use".
If anyone is having trouble parsing the above, allow me to rephrase: free medical care doesn't mean that no-one's paying for it, it means the recipient of the care doesn't have to pay anything when they, for example, chip up to A&E with a broken arm, or (since I understand even the US system doesn't allow A&E's to refuse administering lifesaving attention) when they turn up to hospital for a scheduled hip replacement operation.
Arguing over whether socialised medicine is "free" is a deflection, pure and simple!
Now, allow me to confess that, while you're not the only person commenting that "free medical care isn't actually free" (well, duh!), the reason I'm replying to you is that your post got highly moderated. Rightly so! The rest of what you wrote was informative and insightful. Apologies if you felt that the 'rant' above was targeted at you.
Thank you for those links. Extremely interesting and informative!
Alas, having posted elsewhere, I cannot give you a mod point, hence the reply.
Parliamentary lists are, in my opinion, the antithesis of democracy, especially these days when parliaments are dominated by large political parties. The first of your linked articles has added another data point to the mountain of evidence that supports this contention.
I think it would be worth the effort to separate opinion and speech from news.
While I tend to agree with you on this, it's unfortunately not nearly as simple to implement such a policy as many people seem to believe it would be, and that's completely ignoring any bias introduced by deciding what not to report on. Moreover, opinion and bias can be inferred by the viewer, rather than explicit, so we consequently end up with a situation where we (the hypothetical judges, deciding how to separate facts from opinion) can't agree on what constitutes what.
The FCC should re-adopt the fairness doctrine and make it apply to a wider variety of media. If you want to be considered a "news" source, then you should be required to provide time and/or space to opposing points of view.
Again, while I tend to agree with you (not that the FCC's rules are any of my 'business', not being an American, and with the BBC already supposedly subscribing to such a doctrine), there has always been a huge flaw in virtually every implementation of the fairness doctrine, probably due to 'erring on the side of caution' by broadcasters not wanting to violate the rules(1): "Crackpots" get far more legitimacy and airtime than 'common sense' would suggest they should. One obvious (albeit contentious) example of this would be evolution(2). e.g. A news report detailing new hominid finds in Asia, along with the results of DNA testing, which shed further light on our 'deep-time' family tree as well as our historical movements would give equal time to a religious fundamentalist whose 'facts' to counter the narrative would come almost exclusively from their religious text(s) or their personal revelations. All of a sudden the fair and balanced reporting becomes ludicrously supportive of a fanciful minority viewpoint.
Of course something be difficult to implement is no good reason not to try, but I'd be very wary of simple solutions to complex (read emotive) problems...
Something that's presented as "news" should be prominently retracted or corrected when proven to false, - like what ABC news did when they mistakenly showed a banner that said Manafort had plead guilty to 5 counts of manslaughter. If a site/network/station is not willing to be held to that level of accountability then they should clearly identify themselves as a source of opinion and not news.
With this I can completely agree. And when you say 'prominently', may I add: with equal or greater prominence than the original misinformation. A 'lie' on the front page of a daily newspaper should not be corrected by anything less than the front page.
There's a reason for the saying "A lie has reached the far side of the globe before the truth has even got its boots on"...
(1) Well, more likely not wanting to be fined or otherwise punished for being found liable for violating the rules, but the end result is essentially the same.
(2) I'm sure you can think of your own, better, examples. I was originally going to use one (*cough* climate change) but... <Flamebait>
While this sounds almost sensible it also kinda sounds like complete hogwash.
It's cheaper to 'make' titanium from scratch than it is to start from a highly concentrated source of titanium. Really?
Any chance you could link to or list reputable sources for your comment?
I will take a browse myself, after lunch, if only because I have no idea how one would go about 3D printing something made of titanium, but a good starting point would be appreciated.
There are numerous ways of looking at the whole roads / vehicles / fuel / taxation shebang, but clearly the way you're looking at it could not explain the building of said infrastructure in the first place.
One view on taxation, at least on things that are demonstrably harmful, is that it is a deterrent. Smoking bad, tax tobacco. Pumping CO2 into the atmosphere bad, tax gas.
On the other hand, if you want to pay for maintenance of your vehicle related infrastructure then tax vehicles and / or those who drive them, introduce tolls on said infrastructure, or use general taxation on the principle that everyone benefits from that infrastructure (food gets to the shops, post gets delivered, etc.).
As for:
EVs will remain cheaper than ICE vehicles as long as...
Good! That means that more and more people will consider switching to EV's when they buy a new vehicle. Seems like an incentive that's doing exactly what it's supposed to, encourage people to do the 'right thing'.
Of course, like all incentives, we should not forget the "Three T's": Targeted - From your 'complaint' it seems they work only for EV's and not ICE's, so... Check! Timely - Well, they're happening now, and most people agree we need to be reducing CO2 emissions now (if not yesterday), so... Check! Temporary - Once the incentive has served its purpose* it should be removed. Given the subject of this entire thread... Check!
I hold my hand up to a vast oversimplification of the subject, but would suggest that, similarly, your post was a rather simplistic consideration of the issue.
*This last is perhaps questionable, but with the introduction of cheaper EV's one could certainly argue that the incentives served their purpose in getting us to this point, and the cheaper EV's are now affordable in their own right.
If you want to have (tiny) epic fame forever, create a 3d printable mirror grinding machine.
Since a fairly simple device was designed, over 500 years ago, for just such a purpose I'm not sure there's any epic fame left over for simply converting those plans for use in a 3D printer.
Slashdot Mirror
We literally have no reason ...
Well, some of us clearly don't...
...to believe that any amount of global warming will be a *bad* thing overall, by any economic metric.
(1) Rising sea levels, flooding coastal areas, including most of the world's major cities.
(2) Increased temperatures rendering parts of the world uninhabitable.
(2.1) Newly warmed / Ice free land not immediately suitable for 'easy' intensive agriculture / habitation to replace what's been lost
(3) Increased costs due to extreme weather events.
(4) Increased loss of life (and concomitant costs) due to extreme weather.
Ah wait, the points above are not purely economic. So we needn't worry about them, right?
Anyone who pretends otherwise is extending their confidence into a realm that doesn't deserve it.
Wrong!
Anyone who suggests otherwise is, literally, a sociopath, using false uncertainty to justify the moral vacuum they inhabit.
It's great that we're trying to get ahead of this issue but I'm not sure there's a 'right' answer to this question.
And if there is a right answer I'd be inclined to say it's "No".
In my mind part of the difficulty in thinking about artificial intelligence, and, more generally, artificial consciousness, is what happens at the boundary - that crossover point between an 'object' and a 'sentience'. We can own objects, we can't own people. Objects don't have rights, creatures and people do - albeit rights that we (society) assigns them. In fact it was only in thinking about the notion of a conscious program that I came to the conclusion that one of the rights we must have is the right to self terminate (or, more humanely, we have the right to end our own life, and, as a corollary, we have the right to grant others a, time-limited, right to end our life). I'll leave the full reasoning as an exercise for the reader... ;-)
I do agree with the author of the NYT's article that AI's should be required to follow the law (Duh!), which, in the EU at least, already includes his third point, but I have no idea of how you'd enforce that in programming any more than you can enforce that in people. In other words - you can't! All you can do is try to teach or encourage people to behave appropriately and punish those that don't, i.e. those that break the law. At this point the question becomes one of responsibility, and even this seemingly simple question has become fiendishly difficult, even for human law breakers, in our present day court system.
Of course, most of this is, for the moment, purely hypothetical. We don't have true AI, we just have software agents, essentially, increasingly ever more sophisticated bots. So we can sidestep the 'difficult' questions, as the headline does, and as we all know: simple questions have simple answers...
Q: Should bots be required to tell you they're not human?
A: No!
Q: Should bots be required to tell you who's funding them / their posts?
A: Only if a human would have the same restrictions.
Q: Should a bot be required to follow the law?
A: Yes!
Q: If a bot doesn't follow the law, who is responsible?
A: The person giving, or who gave, the bot their instructions.
Like the subject (^) says though, what we're facing now is just the tip of the iceberg. We've some interesting times ahead, and some interesting decisions to make. I, simultaneously, can't wait, and dread to see just how much of a hash 'we' can make of it!
The Turning (sic) Test is trivial to pass on a short enough timeline ...
The current day interpretation of the Turing Test might be trivial enough to pass, but...
... especially if (A) I get to control where and when the conversation occurs, (B) That conversation is usually formulaic anyway (arranging an appointment), and (C) The human in the loop doesn't care that much (e.g. the person taking the appointment at the salon wants off the phone).
...that's not actually the Turing Test.
I can write an AI that tricks you into thinking it's a person, for a reasonablish amount of time.
While this might depend on your definition of 'reasonable' I'm going to disagree: No, you really can't. You might be able to write an AI that tricks me into thinking, after a minute or so, that it's a person I have no desire to converse with - but at that point I'm no longer conversing with it.
I'm not sure I see 'the win'.
Now, I'm sorry to come across all pedantic, but with a broadening of the terminology comes a weakening of the meaning. I'm not sure that's helpful in an informed discussion of the subject.
I also occasionally support my local libraries by paying exorbitant overdue fines. best way of being taxed in a way where I know the money is going...
Ditto!
Though I'm not quite sure if, in my case, it's because I'm too damn lazy to renew or return them on time, or if it is a (sub)conscious decision to give them additional funding.
GP is not the only poster to point out that "no one uses it" (the library), and go on to detail the few people who hang out there... ...but hang on there!
How does GP know how many people / who uses the library, at any time?
Since the simple answer is often correct I'll posit: They don't know! They're simply having a grumble at what they perceive as another example of government waste (their real beef) whilst having no clue as to what they're talking about.
Unless you're a regular visitor, across all times of day and days of the year, it's not possible to comment on who & how many use the library. And if you are a regular visitor then that puts a lie to any statement that the library is obsolete or unused.
Logic, it's not just for gates!
The four models have been S, 3, X, and now Y.
And seeing the model numbers lined up like that their naming scheme now makes perfect sense to me!
Completely off-topic but, as another example of bizarre Microsoft behaviour:
I was configuring a new laptop for my father the other day, one he'd bought with Windows 10. Obviously in order to download a new browser I had to fire up Edge, but the initial splash screen was annoying me so I changed the default start page to the 'blank page' option.
On restarting Edge I'm presented with a 'blank page' containing a message along the lines of: "This page uses cookies etc. etc."
I was like what. the. fuck.
Whilst I am generally in favour of the principle of the EU, and would much rather the UK remain part of it, I am one of the first to admit that it is not a perfect institution, and it certainly doesn't always rule as I would wish. I also tend to think that "ever closer union" is not necessarily a good thing, especially when considering the pace of change in relation to 'social inertia', and with consideration for global economics and the wider geopolitical environment.
That being said, I find that discussions regarding EU legislation, mostly because of the ongoing Brexit farce, still make me rather angry. I'm trying to not be angry...
So, I've just deleted most of my original response, but I will make a few 'points' before I give up completely:
Regulation 2257/94 was replaced by Regulation 1333/2011, not Regulation 1221/2008 - despite what the wiki article or various UK newspapers might have you believe.
Speaking of UK newspapers, the article you link to is an almost perfect example of the genre. The clever conflation of the description of Class 1 cucumbers with the idea of not meeting minimum standards (which are actually more concerned with the food being mouldy, rotten, riddled with pests or otherwise inedible), the implication that the Agriculture Commissioner said more than she did, and the absolute contradiction regarding unfairly protecting (their) farmers yet forcing them to throw good food away ... it's a masterpiece of suggestive manipulation. While almost every statement is technically true the overall impression you're left with is far from the reality.
When it comes to: "I.e. when the regulation was in place producers had to throw away or destroy fruits and vegetables that didn't meet the standard." this is not true, unless the produce was unfit for consumption. One obvious exception would be (from the regulation) "bananas intended for industrial processing ... are not covered". The regulations are freely available. Perhaps if people actually read them, preferably with an open mind as opposed to having their opinions made for them by an agenda driven media, I would have a lower blood pressure.
Finally:
It's a typical EU common agricultural policy rule that is designed to limit supply of agricultural stuff to push up prices. ... the EU has a lot of rules which are designed to benefit EU producers at the cost to EU consumers and to shield those producers from foreign competitors
You are both right and wrong.
The CAP, like the CFP, is an abomination. Some of my main objections to the EU are these very policies. However they are not designed or intended to be anti-consumer, merely pro-producer. You are right that the rules (and subsidies) are designed to shield domestic producers from foreign ones, but they are also intended to help consumers (subsidies to famers --> cheaper food to consumers, if we ignore the tax implications for a moment). One of the key pillars of the EU, free movement of goods, also has the direct effect of lowering prices to consumers.
Ah well, I'm done. What really frustrates me is: there's enough wrong with the EU, as it currently stands, without making shit up. If we'd actually focused on the real problems rather than the manufactured outrage we might have stood a chance of improving things. Now, short of a miracle, we're likely to trigger another 'lost decade' for half a billion people. Genius!
Next you'll be telling me you resolved a 50-50 chance by rolling d100, then using that as a target to beat when rolling d100.
You mean that's not how you're supposed to do it?
I'n not sure what you think you've found there.
Presumably you think this somehow contradicts what I said. Well, it might, but almost certainly doesn't.
The regulation in question has as one of its first paragraphs:"These provisions state that fruit and vegetables which are intended to be sold fresh to the consumer, may only be marketed if they are sound, fair and of marketable quality and if the country of origin is indicated. In the interest of harmonisation of the implementation of this provision, it is appropriate to define these characteristics in providing for a general marketing standard for all fresh fruits and vegetables."
Like I said, it was basically about marketing - essentially it's not ok to mislead consumers about your produce.
As for "Some sources have claimed this to be an admission that the original regulations did indeed ban "bent bananas", or that it was accepted that it was "a farce"", you might not be aware that Boris Johnson was the Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph between 1989 and 1994 (the period of the original legislation quoted in your wikipedia article). His anti-EU sensationalist tripe almost certainly played a large part in shaping public opinion regarding the EU, and, I might go so far as to say, laid the foundations for the ground work that led to the subsequent referendum result two decades later.
(What price sensationalism for the purposes of, what, self aggrandisement!? Shame!)
To be fair that was a fairly interesting article, especially in the fact that it specifically mentions that jury sizes other than 12 have been discussed or tried.
That being said, the historical 'fact' of "why today's juries tend to have 12 people is that the Welsh king Morgan of Gla-Morgan, who established jury trials in 725 A.D., decided upon the number" is sketchy at best (Glamorgan* not even being a dream by that date - this was almost certainly prior, even, to Glywysing being renamed Morgannwg because of the family name), and the rationale for it, attributed to Morgan is, as far as I can tell, a fantasy by the author if the article.
However, my certitude as to the origins of the number or jurors was almost certainly a 'mis-speaking', or a verbal shortcut to the result, as my experience of the mathematics of jury size was covered in a university maths class back in the late 90's, but that certainly only accounts for why we continue to use 12 people, not why we started using 12 people. The hypothesis of Jesus and his disciples, or the 12 tribes of Israel, are perhaps as valid as the "Thing" which was introduced from, I believe, a non-Jewish, non-Christian culture.
Either way, the primary point remains: 13 people is, for a small degree of error, a valid sample size. Clearly larger would be better, but to dismiss the study entirely, based purely on a misguided notion that a sample of 13 people is not 'significant', would be a mistake.
*fwiw, which ain't much I'll grant, this (Glamorgan) is where I live...
It was, but the drug was aimed at children...
Ah, the sour sweet tingling pop of popping candy exploding in your mouth. If my watering mouth is anything to go by it seems just like yesterday. Who knew 40 years would pass so quickly?
It does not regulate shape of pen... cucumber, that EU lawmakers blundered into.
Careful your bias is showing...
The EU did not, nor did they attempt to, regulate the shape of cucumbers. They legislated on the labeling (or marketing, if you prefer) of cucumbers.
It should require but a moments thought to differentiate between the two.
(if you're still unclear on the difference, there's a bloke over there who has a green banana to sell you - just don't put it in a fruit salad!)
TFA doesn't say that this is the only shoe that shows a performance difference, period. It says that this is the only shoe that shows a significant performance difference versus the prior generation of racing shoes.
On reading the summary I found myself wondering if they tested Enko's running shoes. Then I realised, they didn't actually test any shoes at all, just performed some analysis on runners and their times.
The various quotes however, from you and parents, do go some way towards answering the question I've had since I first saw those shoes (rather ironically from an ad. on /.): Would they even be 'legal' to run in, in any 'proper' race. But then, given the following quote from the article, I find myself wondering what the difference is apart from one pair of shoes has a visible spring, while the other is less 'honest' about how it works:
"Nested in the central part of the shoe is a piece of carbon fiber that stores and releases energy every time it hits the floor. Imagine an ACME spring-powered shoe from a Looney Tunes cartoon. Except this shoe, unlike the ones used by Wile E. Coyote, actually work–and work well.
I guess the one thing it does show though is that athletic records aren't (necessarily) being beaten today by superior athletes just by athletes with superior equipment. That has to cheapen any sense of achievement, surely?
Correct. A sample size of 13 is utterly worthless statistically. No useful information can be had from such an experiment.
Incorrect. A sample size of 13 does give statistically significant results (for a fairly specific version of significant), and is, in fact, the smallest sample size to do so.
It might never have occurred to you to wonder why legal trials have a judge and 12 people on a jury - making 13 people. Perhaps you should look into that: mathematically it's quite interesting.
...but drugs are not the answer.
Pfft, there's not one question for which drugs are not the answer...
...oh wait, you were talking about Ritalin...
...my bad, carry on!
No country has free medical care.
It should be taken as a given that anyone who has actually spent the merest moment thinking about the issues related to comparative healthcare reads, and intentionally uses, "free medical care" as a shortcut for "medical care that's free at point of use".
If anyone is having trouble parsing the above, allow me to rephrase: free medical care doesn't mean that no-one's paying for it, it means the recipient of the care doesn't have to pay anything when they, for example, chip up to A&E with a broken arm, or (since I understand even the US system doesn't allow A&E's to refuse administering lifesaving attention) when they turn up to hospital for a scheduled hip replacement operation.
Arguing over whether socialised medicine is "free" is a deflection, pure and simple!
Now, allow me to confess that, while you're not the only person commenting that "free medical care isn't actually free" (well, duh!), the reason I'm replying to you is that your post got highly moderated. Rightly so! The rest of what you wrote was informative and insightful. Apologies if you felt that the 'rant' above was targeted at you.
Thank you for those links. Extremely interesting and informative!
Alas, having posted elsewhere, I cannot give you a mod point, hence the reply.
Parliamentary lists are, in my opinion, the antithesis of democracy, especially these days when parliaments are dominated by large political parties. The first of your linked articles has added another data point to the mountain of evidence that supports this contention.
Stay safe!
I think it would be worth the effort to separate opinion and speech from news.
While I tend to agree with you on this, it's unfortunately not nearly as simple to implement such a policy as many people seem to believe it would be, and that's completely ignoring any bias introduced by deciding what not to report on. Moreover, opinion and bias can be inferred by the viewer, rather than explicit, so we consequently end up with a situation where we (the hypothetical judges, deciding how to separate facts from opinion) can't agree on what constitutes what.
The FCC should re-adopt the fairness doctrine and make it apply to a wider variety of media. If you want to be considered a "news" source, then you should be required to provide time and/or space to opposing points of view.
Again, while I tend to agree with you (not that the FCC's rules are any of my 'business', not being an American, and with the BBC already supposedly subscribing to such a doctrine), there has always been a huge flaw in virtually every implementation of the fairness doctrine, probably due to 'erring on the side of caution' by broadcasters not wanting to violate the rules(1): "Crackpots" get far more legitimacy and airtime than 'common sense' would suggest they should. One obvious (albeit contentious) example of this would be evolution(2). e.g. A news report detailing new hominid finds in Asia, along with the results of DNA testing, which shed further light on our 'deep-time' family tree as well as our historical movements would give equal time to a religious fundamentalist whose 'facts' to counter the narrative would come almost exclusively from their religious text(s) or their personal revelations. All of a sudden the fair and balanced reporting becomes ludicrously supportive of a fanciful minority viewpoint.
Of course something be difficult to implement is no good reason not to try, but I'd be very wary of simple solutions to complex (read emotive) problems...
Something that's presented as "news" should be prominently retracted or corrected when proven to false, - like what ABC news did when they mistakenly showed a banner that said Manafort had plead guilty to 5 counts of manslaughter. If a site/network/station is not willing to be held to that level of accountability then they should clearly identify themselves as a source of opinion and not news.
With this I can completely agree. And when you say 'prominently', may I add: with equal or greater prominence than the original misinformation. A 'lie' on the front page of a daily newspaper should not be corrected by anything less than the front page.
There's a reason for the saying "A lie has reached the far side of the globe before the truth has even got its boots on"...
(1) Well, more likely not wanting to be fined or otherwise punished for being found liable for violating the rules, but the end result is essentially the same.
(2) I'm sure you can think of your own, better, examples. I was originally going to use one (*cough* climate change) but ... <Flamebait>
Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for.
While this sounds almost sensible it also kinda sounds like complete hogwash.
It's cheaper to 'make' titanium from scratch than it is to start from a highly concentrated source of titanium. Really?
Any chance you could link to or list reputable sources for your comment?
I will take a browse myself, after lunch, if only because I have no idea how one would go about 3D printing something made of titanium, but a good starting point would be appreciated.
Cheers.
Gallons wasn't counter-intuitive enough...
They were talking, specifically, about gallons of coffee.
I'm still trying to work out how many gallons of Brawndo this equates to...
There are numerous ways of looking at the whole roads / vehicles / fuel / taxation shebang, but clearly the way you're looking at it could not explain the building of said infrastructure in the first place.
One view on taxation, at least on things that are demonstrably harmful, is that it is a deterrent. Smoking bad, tax tobacco. Pumping CO2 into the atmosphere bad, tax gas.
On the other hand, if you want to pay for maintenance of your vehicle related infrastructure then tax vehicles and / or those who drive them, introduce tolls on said infrastructure, or use general taxation on the principle that everyone benefits from that infrastructure (food gets to the shops, post gets delivered, etc.).
As for:
EVs will remain cheaper than ICE vehicles as long as...
Good! That means that more and more people will consider switching to EV's when they buy a new vehicle. Seems like an incentive that's doing exactly what it's supposed to, encourage people to do the 'right thing'.
Of course, like all incentives, we should not forget the "Three T's": ... Check! ... Check!
Targeted - From your 'complaint' it seems they work only for EV's and not ICE's, so
Timely - Well, they're happening now, and most people agree we need to be reducing CO2 emissions now (if not yesterday), so
Temporary - Once the incentive has served its purpose* it should be removed. Given the subject of this entire thread... Check!
I hold my hand up to a vast oversimplification of the subject, but would suggest that, similarly, your post was a rather simplistic consideration of the issue.
*This last is perhaps questionable, but with the introduction of cheaper EV's one could certainly argue that the incentives served their purpose in getting us to this point, and the cheaper EV's are now affordable in their own right.
Pellegrino, who represented herself, said she was reviewing the decision.
My working hypothesis is that 99,9% of people who represent themselves in court are idiots, so I'm not reading anything the courts decision.
Often phrased as: A lawyer who represents themself in court has a fool for a client.
If you want to have (tiny) epic fame forever, create a 3d printable mirror grinding machine.
Since a fairly simple device was designed, over 500 years ago, for just such a purpose I'm not sure there's any epic fame left over for simply converting those plans for use in a 3D printer.