OK, some of the people here on Slashdot think that Hillary Clinton is a multiple murderer. Without (ahem!) a smoking gun. However, you're bright guys. Two goals are posited for the murders: defend the reputations of the Clintons and make sure that Hillary is elected President. So let's make a different list, a list of people who would be the best targets to ensure those goals. Now, Monica Lewinsky would have been on that list, back before that whole scandal broke out, but she's still going. I propose that Donald Trump himself should be on the list. Maybe we could even take out his vice-presidential running mate at the same time. It's certainly possible. Think of how most of the South Korean cabinet got wiped out: The Rangoon Bombing.
With a Dead Pool created, we can make predictions. If those people start dropping off, maybe we've got something there. But I doubt it. I gave up on this kind of evidence way back when, despite all the evidence, I found out that Paul McCartney isn't dead.
Please, check out the Snopes page on this. (http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/bodycount.asp). I'd like to point out that a version of this page has been debunking a version of this "body count list" since 1998! Many of the names on the list are misspelled (which tells you something), many have "links" to the Clintons that are ludicrously thin or entirely absent, and the last paragraph of the page is something that never gets brought up by the believers:
One final question to ask yourself before falling for any Clinton Body Count list: If the Chief Executive was having people bumped off left, right, and center, why aren't Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp on this list? At the time of Mary Mahoney's death — a death this list hints was ordered by Clinton — neither Tripp nor Lewinsky were the high-profile household names they now are; they were complete unknowns. It would be another six months before information about them would explode into the news. If the President were in the habit of having those dangerous to his presidency put in the ground, why didn't he order these deaths?
I have to say that I'm against life extension research. My one comfort, when some bad person gets the firmest of grips on a suffering country, is that the bad person will die, and someone else with different views will take over. Imagine Stalin remaining in power till 1978 (he'd be only a hundred) instead of dying in 1953. Or Mao Zedong in power till 2045. Does anyone think the world will be better off? I don't like what President Erdogan's doing to Turkey. I honestly take some comfort in the fact he was born in 1954, and he's unlikely to be on the scene in ten years' time.
I think the US system is a lot more flexible than the European system, since it's a lot harder to create and organize a new party in Europe than to shift the direction of one of the US parties. The latter can be done one politician at a time.
Well, now, I wouldn't think that was true. It's easier to create a small boat than turn around an aircraft carrier. In Canada, which is arguably similar to Europe, parties start up, balloon up, and pop on a regular basis. Similarly, in Europe, I'd argue that it was easier to make the German Green Party or the Pirate Party an electoral success, at least enough to get its points heard in parliament and the press, than to turn the Democrats or Republicans into a Green Party or a Pirate Party. Think of the votes one of those big tent American parties would lose nationwide if they actually adopted a (for now) minority viewpoint. The urge to govern the nation squishes minority opinions, even when they are well-regarded and electable in one region.
LiveCode is great in many ways, and I really appreciate that it is now a free download, but it lacks one feature that really made a difference to people who were learning HyperCard. In Livecode, every object is its own layer. In HyperCard, there was a simple, useful distinction between the background layer and the card (foreground) layer. People quickly grasped how to make a picture or button show up on every card or just one. Now, if you google "livecode background layers," you're likely to get instructions to add a background to a single card. I hate to say it, but I don't think that LiveCode, even free, can build the same kind of community that HyperCard has...simply because of this choice. It's not a trivial difference.
You know, I think the surest way to keep politicians semi-honest is to have a multi-party system and its corollary, the minority government. Just in my own lifetime I've seen a prairie protest party (Social Credit by name, not nature) disappear, a major party on the right (Progressive Conservative) go from the largest parliamentary majority ever to extinction, a party that wants to break the country in two become the Official Opposition, another prairie protest party on the right (Reform) try to take national power, a socialist party (NDP) go from perennial third or fourth party status to being the Official Opposition, Canada's other major party, the Liberals, drop down to a poor third, the party on the right reconstitute itself, the Green Party get a member in parliament for the first time... And I'm simplifying. New parties are always bubbling up, and the three biggest parties go up and down and sometimes disappear.
Nothing keeps the rascals on their toes like fear of the electorate.
England is a country that has been incorporated into an artificial conglomerate along with the countries of Scotland and Whales. These artificial constructs tend to come apart anywhere in the timespan of a few decades to one or two centuries. In fact, the secession movement in Scotland is gaining more ground recently than ever before. And similarly, there are now some new countries to appear as well as among many others the California Republic and the Texas Republic secede from the United States
Hilarious. The artificial construct that you expect to come apart in two centuries at most was established by the Act of Union in 1707 when the UK was formed. Wales and England were joined into one kingdom starting back in 1535. We've had an odd period of dissolving nations, mostly in Europe, since the end of the Cold War, but notice that Quebec rejected independence in two plebiscites already and Scotland is likely to reject independence in its own plebiscite, according to all the polls.
I suppose we can solve the problems with Iran by waiting for the Medes and the Persians to split into two nations? No? Surely they're overdue by now, having been united in 550 BC. Don't hold your breath, though, because one man's Mede is another man's Persian these days.
Live performances of plays take place in the Star Trek Universe (proof) although holograms, by providing dress rehearsal opportunities, may help actors to prepare for their roles.
The problem with garbage jobs is salary. Don't put a salary only related to the skills needed, but also to the "unpleasenes" of the job. You will have all the garbage mans you want.
I think it was HG Wells who said that it was unfair that the pleasant, rewarding, challenging jobs were also the best paid ones. The shit jobs should be the best paid ones because they have the fewest intrinsic rewards.
-Gareth
Star Trek Economics equals Social Credit?
on
Star Trek Economics
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· Score: 1
My blog has an article, one of my most popular ones, on the topic of economics in Star Trek. It contains some relevant facts from Star Trek's "future history," debunks claims that such an economy is either fascist or communist, and sugges ts that it has similarities to Major C.H. Douglas's Social Credit theory.
They have indeed. They have also repeatedly retracted those apologies. The strongest apologies have come from lower level officials. Even an apology by the prime minister is really like John Boehner apologizing for America. An clear and unambiguous apology by the emperor would carry far more weight.
Not exactly. An apology from a prime minister (and there are quite a few on the linked Wikipedia page) is like an apology from the President of the US. Prime Minister=head of the government. If you want one from the head of state, however, the emperor, then how about this one on the same page?
October 8, 1996: Emperor Akihito said in a speech at a dinner with the South Korean president, Kim Dae Jung: "There was a period when our nation brought to bear great sufferings upon the people of the Korean Peninsula." "The deep sorrow that I feel over this will never be forgotten".
Apparently you're the dick with no clue whatsoever.
It's similar in size to the next British carrier class which has been sized for 36 JSFs.
Sorry your shitty segue onto a pet topic didn't work out.
If you're refering to the HMS Illustrious, which is the last of a set of three, as being about the same size as the Izumo, then you have a point. The Illustrious is 22,000 tons and the Izumo, 27,000 (full load). The Illustrious did act as an aircraft carrier while the British still had Harriers, but those are gone and it's helicopters and marines for her now. On the other hand, the "next British carrier class which is sized for 36 JSFs" is the Queen Elizabeth class. The latest estimate of the displacement on those ships is 70,600 tons. Not really in the same league as the Izumo, is it?
On the other hand, if Japan buys F35B planes (the VTOL ones) then I bet they could be landing and taking off of the Izumo's flight deck really quickly.
[snip] Do you know what happens when a student tries to make their lab report in LibreOffice, or on a mac or something, and then uses a school windows computer to print it 2 minutes before class? The formatting gets all messed up, and I doc them points because of it. So you make extra work for yourself. You either have to save time to re work on your document, or you have to own your own printer and save time to use it before class.
Can someone tell me why a readership that embraces every speculative technology suddenly gets downright angry about the very thought of an electric car?
Or for that matter any mention of energy produced by any alternative means?
Because many of those 'alternative energy' technologies are scams and most of the rest are subsidized by our taxes because they make no financial sense.
Have you considered this: things that make no financial sense may make no financial sense because of the way that accountants arbitrarily add in only a few of the costs of the existing technologies. The rest, like the cost of sick days from polluted air, high building maintenance or replacement costs because of acid rain, the contribution towards the costs of global warming, these are all called "externalities" and not considered. Add in those, and some of the alternative sources of energy might have a lower cost than the traditional ones. If not, then do the comparison after the R&D for the alternative energy sources is paid off. For example, I was reading Flibe Energy's estimate that the thorium-liquid salt reactor they want to mass produce will cost $100 million to develop. On the other hand, once it's developed, many of the (pollution, scarcity, radioactive waste processing and storage, high cost of manufacture) issues of other forms of energy production will virtually go away. I note that business may not fund this because it provides no short-term financial return, so they're going after military funding. It's also government money in the form of military funding that's keeping Polywell research alive.
Her allowance is paid out of the income from the Windsor's family Land... the Government would be loath to lose the 94% of this they currently keep...
We don't have a dismissable monarchy, it would require great constitutional change to get rid of the Royal's, and even then they would still be the monarch of 15 other countries and head of the Commonwealth...
Just how did they come by this land? Was it the land that belong to the monarch that they inherited when George I was offered the crown and the House of Hanover took over from the Stuarts as monarch? In that case it's not really their land, but rather the land of the monarch, whoever that may be. Its wrong to think of it as the Windsor's family land in that sense, rather the income from that land is used to fund them and their endeavours. If the monarchy were to be removed I would see those lands as largely reverting to the state.
How the current owners of land came by it does not bear scrutiny _anywhere_. See: Conquistadores, American wars against the Indians, etc. The best we can do is accept the current state of play and remedy the worst inequities to a degree.
If you read the Canadian Constitution the Queen (it actually says "she," because at the time Victoria was Queen) is hiring ministers, firing ministers, and basically the only check on her power is that a) nobody can mess with the provinces (but she also hires and fires their governments), and b) she has to have one guy a "Chair of her Majesty's Privy Council," who does a lot of the actual scut work.
Turns out the Chair of the Privy Council is the Prime Minister, and if he got half of Parliament to sign a decree replacing the Queen with Swiss Cheese the Courts would go along with it.
Half of parliament and all of the provincial parliaments, actually. And Canada has _never_ had unanimity in a constitutional matter since 1867, when unanimity created the country itself. Anyway, here's what the Constitution Act (1982) says on the matter.
41. An amendment to the Constitution of Canada in relation to the following matters may be made by proclamation issued by the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada only where authorized by resolutions of the Senate and House of Commons and of the legislative assembly of each province:
(a) the office of the Queen, the Governor General and the Lieutenant Governor of a province;
It is, however, a witch-hunt all the same. By encouraging others not to buy products by a person due to his beliefs (and such encouragement is inherent in the nature of an organized boycott; it is, after all, what a boycott is), you are essentially calling for that person to be rendered de facto unemployable. One can argue that this is sometimes justified, but can a person's beliefs really be considered such a situation?
Yes, yes it is. A boycott is simply a personal choice writ large. I can refuse to patronize a restaurant because it's not kosher, or because it's dirty, or I had a dirty look from the waiter, or it once mistreated a friend of mine. I haven't made the choice to boycott Card, although it's been a while since I've read him, and my reaction to his books is very uneven. If I choose to not buy his work, though, and other people make that choice, there's not much to be said unless you're willing to argue against choice. I believe that Mr. Card would agree.
Slashdot Mirror
What I'd like to see is
Send up a hub.
Slot the used Centaurs into the hub as spokes
Connect the spokes on the outside rim
Spin 'er up as a rotating wheel space station.
You've always known you want one of these!
OK, some of the people here on Slashdot think that Hillary Clinton is a multiple murderer. Without (ahem!) a smoking gun. However, you're bright guys. Two goals are posited for the murders: defend the reputations of the Clintons and make sure that Hillary is elected President. So let's make a different list, a list of people who would be the best targets to ensure those goals. Now, Monica Lewinsky would have been on that list, back before that whole scandal broke out, but she's still going. I propose that Donald Trump himself should be on the list. Maybe we could even take out his vice-presidential running mate at the same time. It's certainly possible. Think of how most of the South Korean cabinet got wiped out: The Rangoon Bombing.
With a Dead Pool created, we can make predictions. If those people start dropping off, maybe we've got something there. But I doubt it. I gave up on this kind of evidence way back when, despite all the evidence, I found out that Paul McCartney isn't dead.
-Gareth
Please, check out the Snopes page on this. (http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/bodycount.asp). I'd like to point out that a version of this page has been debunking a version of this "body count list" since 1998! Many of the names on the list are misspelled (which tells you something), many have "links" to the Clintons that are ludicrously thin or entirely absent, and the last paragraph of the page is something that never gets brought up by the believers:
One final question to ask yourself before falling for any Clinton Body Count list: If the Chief Executive was having people bumped off left, right, and center, why aren't Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp on this list? At the time of Mary Mahoney's death — a death this list hints was ordered by Clinton — neither Tripp nor Lewinsky were the high-profile household names they now are; they were complete unknowns. It would be another six months before information about them would explode into the news. If the President were in the habit of having those dangerous to his presidency put in the ground, why didn't he order these deaths?
I have to say that I'm against life extension research. My one comfort, when some bad person gets the firmest of grips on a suffering country, is that the bad person will die, and someone else with different views will take over. Imagine Stalin remaining in power till 1978 (he'd be only a hundred) instead of dying in 1953. Or Mao Zedong in power till 2045. Does anyone think the world will be better off? I don't like what President Erdogan's doing to Turkey. I honestly take some comfort in the fact he was born in 1954, and he's unlikely to be on the scene in ten years' time.
-Gareth
Well, now, I wouldn't think that was true. It's easier to create a small boat than turn around an aircraft carrier. In Canada, which is arguably similar to Europe, parties start up, balloon up, and pop on a regular basis. Similarly, in Europe, I'd argue that it was easier to make the German Green Party or the Pirate Party an electoral success, at least enough to get its points heard in parliament and the press, than to turn the Democrats or Republicans into a Green Party or a Pirate Party. Think of the votes one of those big tent American parties would lose nationwide if they actually adopted a (for now) minority viewpoint. The urge to govern the nation squishes minority opinions, even when they are well-regarded and electable in one region.
Didn't in Britain. Or Canada.
-Gareth
LiveCode is great in many ways, and I really appreciate that it is now a free download, but it lacks one feature that really made a difference to people who were learning HyperCard. In Livecode, every object is its own layer. In HyperCard, there was a simple, useful distinction between the background layer and the card (foreground) layer. People quickly grasped how to make a picture or button show up on every card or just one. Now, if you google "livecode background layers," you're likely to get instructions to add a background to a single card. I hate to say it, but I don't think that LiveCode, even free, can build the same kind of community that HyperCard has...simply because of this choice. It's not a trivial difference.
-Gareth
You know, I think the surest way to keep politicians semi-honest is to have a multi-party system and its corollary, the minority government. Just in my own lifetime I've seen a prairie protest party (Social Credit by name, not nature) disappear, a major party on the right (Progressive Conservative) go from the largest parliamentary majority ever to extinction, a party that wants to break the country in two become the Official Opposition, another prairie protest party on the right (Reform) try to take national power, a socialist party (NDP) go from perennial third or fourth party status to being the Official Opposition, Canada's other major party, the Liberals, drop down to a poor third, the party on the right reconstitute itself, the Green Party get a member in parliament for the first time... And I'm simplifying. New parties are always bubbling up, and the three biggest parties go up and down and sometimes disappear.
Nothing keeps the rascals on their toes like fear of the electorate.
-Gareth
Stone knapping, obviously, along with fire making. Familiarity with local sources of rocks exhibiting conchoidal fracture would also be good.
I'll make your arrowheads; you provide me with rabbits.
-Gareth
Rats did not live there (and mostly still don't)
Hahahah yea, sure they don't.
There are rats on Antarctica, someone in Iceland is just living in denial.
Where people go, rats and roaches go.
Just for your information, there are no rats in Alberta. That may be a good place to go if bubonic plague breaks out again.
-Gareth
England is a country that has been incorporated into an artificial conglomerate along with the countries of Scotland and Whales. These artificial constructs tend to come apart anywhere in the timespan of a few decades to one or two centuries. In fact, the secession movement in Scotland is gaining more ground recently than ever before. And similarly, there are now some new countries to appear as well as among many others the California Republic and the Texas Republic secede from the United States
Hilarious. The artificial construct that you expect to come apart in two centuries at most was established by the Act of Union in 1707 when the UK was formed. Wales and England were joined into one kingdom starting back in 1535. We've had an odd period of dissolving nations, mostly in Europe, since the end of the Cold War, but notice that Quebec rejected independence in two plebiscites already and Scotland is likely to reject independence in its own plebiscite, according to all the polls.
I suppose we can solve the problems with Iran by waiting for the Medes and the Persians to split into two nations? No? Surely they're overdue by now, having been united in 550 BC. Don't hold your breath, though, because one man's Mede is another man's Persian these days.
-Gareth
Live performances of plays take place in the Star Trek Universe (proof) although holograms, by providing dress rehearsal opportunities, may help actors to prepare for their roles.
-Gareth
The problem with garbage jobs is salary. Don't put a salary only related to the skills needed, but also to the "unpleasenes" of the job. You will have all the garbage mans you want.
I think it was HG Wells who said that it was unfair that the pleasant, rewarding, challenging jobs were also the best paid ones. The shit jobs should be the best paid ones because they have the fewest intrinsic rewards.
-Gareth
My blog has an article, one of my most popular ones, on the topic of economics in Star Trek. It contains some relevant facts from Star Trek's "future history," debunks claims that such an economy is either fascist or communist, and sugges ts that it has similarities to Major C.H. Douglas's Social Credit theory.
-Gareth
snip
On the surface, it seems like the Japanese government has repeatedly acknowledged its crimes during World War II. See List of war apology statements issued by Japan.
They have indeed. They have also repeatedly retracted those apologies. The strongest apologies have come from lower level officials. Even an apology by the prime minister is really like John Boehner apologizing for America. An clear and unambiguous apology by the emperor would carry far more weight.
Not exactly. An apology from a prime minister (and there are quite a few on the linked Wikipedia page) is like an apology from the President of the US. Prime Minister=head of the government. If you want one from the head of state, however, the emperor, then how about this one on the same page?
October 8, 1996: Emperor Akihito said in a speech at a dinner with the South Korean president, Kim Dae Jung: "There was a period when our nation brought to bear great sufferings upon the people of the Korean Peninsula." "The deep sorrow that I feel over this will never be forgotten".
-Gareth
Apparently you're the dick with no clue whatsoever.
It's similar in size to the next British carrier class which has been sized for 36 JSFs.
Sorry your shitty segue onto a pet topic didn't work out.
If you're refering to the HMS Illustrious, which is the last of a set of three, as being about the same size as the Izumo, then you have a point. The Illustrious is 22,000 tons and the Izumo, 27,000 (full load). The Illustrious did act as an aircraft carrier while the British still had Harriers, but those are gone and it's helicopters and marines for her now. On the other hand, the "next British carrier class which is sized for 36 JSFs" is the Queen Elizabeth class. The latest estimate of the displacement on those ships is 70,600 tons. Not really in the same league as the Izumo, is it?
On the other hand, if Japan buys F35B planes (the VTOL ones) then I bet they could be landing and taking off of the Izumo's flight deck really quickly.
Gareth
[snip] Do you know what happens when a student tries to make their lab report in LibreOffice, or on a mac or something, and then uses a school windows computer to print it 2 minutes before class? The formatting gets all messed up, and I doc them points because of it. So you make extra work for yourself. You either have to save time to re work on your document, or you have to own your own printer and save time to use it before class.
Save as pdf. Print the pdf. Where's the problem?
I'm no fan of monopoly.
-Gareth
Who is claiming everything started with the Egyptians?
Grafton Elliot Smith and and William James Perry did.
-Gareth
Can someone tell me why a readership that embraces every speculative technology suddenly gets downright angry about the very thought of an electric car?
Or for that matter any mention of energy produced by any alternative means?
Because many of those 'alternative energy' technologies are scams and most of the rest are subsidized by our taxes because they make no financial sense.
Have you considered this: things that make no financial sense may make no financial sense because of the way that accountants arbitrarily add in only a few of the costs of the existing technologies. The rest, like the cost of sick days from polluted air, high building maintenance or replacement costs because of acid rain, the contribution towards the costs of global warming, these are all called "externalities" and not considered. Add in those, and some of the alternative sources of energy might have a lower cost than the traditional ones. If not, then do the comparison after the R&D for the alternative energy sources is paid off. For example, I was reading Flibe Energy's estimate that the thorium-liquid salt reactor they want to mass produce will cost $100 million to develop. On the other hand, once it's developed, many of the (pollution, scarcity, radioactive waste processing and storage, high cost of manufacture) issues of other forms of energy production will virtually go away. I note that business may not fund this because it provides no short-term financial return, so they're going after military funding. It's also government money in the form of military funding that's keeping Polywell research alive.
-Gareth
Her allowance is paid out of the income from the Windsor's family Land ... the Government would be loath to lose the 94% of this they currently keep ...
We don't have a dismissable monarchy, it would require great constitutional change to get rid of the Royal's, and even then they would still be the monarch of 15 other countries and head of the Commonwealth ...
Just how did they come by this land? Was it the land that belong to the monarch that they inherited when George I was offered the crown and the House of Hanover took over from the Stuarts as monarch? In that case it's not really their land, but rather the land of the monarch, whoever that may be. Its wrong to think of it as the Windsor's family land in that sense, rather the income from that land is used to fund them and their endeavours. If the monarchy were to be removed I would see those lands as largely reverting to the state.
How the current owners of land came by it does not bear scrutiny _anywhere_. See: Conquistadores, American wars against the Indians, etc. The best we can do is accept the current state of play and remedy the worst inequities to a degree.
-Gareth
All the Commonwealth realms are like this.
If you read the Canadian Constitution the Queen (it actually says "she," because at the time Victoria was Queen) is hiring ministers, firing ministers, and basically the only check on her power is that a) nobody can mess with the provinces (but she also hires and fires their governments), and b) she has to have one guy a "Chair of her Majesty's Privy Council," who does a lot of the actual scut work.
Turns out the Chair of the Privy Council is the Prime Minister, and if he got half of Parliament to sign a decree replacing the Queen with Swiss Cheese the Courts would go along with it.
Half of parliament and all of the provincial parliaments, actually. And Canada has _never_ had unanimity in a constitutional matter since 1867, when unanimity created the country itself. Anyway, here's what the Constitution Act (1982) says on the matter.
41. An amendment to the Constitution of Canada in relation to the following matters may be made by proclamation issued by the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada only where authorized by resolutions of the Senate and House of Commons and of the legislative assembly of each province:
(a) the office of the Queen, the Governor General and the Lieutenant Governor of a province;
As it is Liz seems unable to produce a smile. Her frowning face isn't exactly the best way to promote our country and its heritage.
It's not a big point, but I'll bite. She's capable of smiling.
-Gareth
The speed of light in a vacuum or in a Bose-Einstein condensate? There's a big difference :-)
-Gareth
So does Larry Niven, darn it. (And you don't want to mess with someone who's on speaking terms with tnuctipun).
-Gareth
It is, however, a witch-hunt all the same. By encouraging others not to buy products by a person due to his beliefs (and such encouragement is inherent in the nature of an organized boycott; it is, after all, what a boycott is), you are essentially calling for that person to be rendered de facto unemployable. One can argue that this is sometimes justified, but can a person's beliefs really be considered such a situation?
Yes, yes it is. A boycott is simply a personal choice writ large. I can refuse to patronize a restaurant because it's not kosher, or because it's dirty, or I had a dirty look from the waiter, or it once mistreated a friend of mine. I haven't made the choice to boycott Card, although it's been a while since I've read him, and my reaction to his books is very uneven. If I choose to not buy his work, though, and other people make that choice, there's not much to be said unless you're willing to argue against choice. I believe that Mr. Card would agree.
-Gareth