I went to the flickr gallery and was stunned and fascinated (shocked and awed?) at the exhibit which "explained" where Cain got his wife and why it was okay for him to marry (and have sex, although the "S" word is never used) his sister.
For your edification I copied out the central "argument" for you to mock (er, I mean discuss.)
"The farther back in history one goes (back towards the Fall of Adam), the less of a problem mutation in the human population would be.
At the time of Adam and Eve's children, there would have been very few mutations in the human genome--thus close relatives could marry, and provided it was one man for one woman (the biblical doctrine of marriage), there was nothing wrong with close relatives marrying in early biblical history."
B.S. (Bedevere Science) all. (SIR BEDEVERE: And that, my liege, is how we know the earth to be banana-shaped.
ARTHUR: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.)
Yeah. I found one computer a woman was using to run her small catering business and she had all her complete credit cards numbers in a budget spreadsheet.
Another one I found had two users on it, man and wife. The internet accounts were hilarious. Hers was all home and garden sites, his was all porn!
I don't throw hard drives away anymore, I just pop 'em and toss 'em into a box that gathers dust in the back corner of a desk cabinet. When I die, someone will have a field day rifling through them all, but at least I won't be too worried about identity theft at that point!
People used to throw their computers out in the dumpster at my apartment in Minneapolis. On a weekly basis, I could count on retrieving the hard drive from at least one computer. From those hard drives I retrieved thousands of mp3s.
That is what I think of when I hear about digital recycling.
I've worked a lot in the financial services industry. Any company that is involved in buying, selling, trading securities is regulated by the SEC and all employees have to have a background check and get fingerprinted.
Oddly enough, some of the companies I've worked for that required fingerprinting, didn't require drug screening. (American Express, for example). The company I'm now with is big on the drug checking, but no fingerprinting (they are a retailer).
The weirdest one I ever had was when I worked for the Toro company (lawnmowers, snowthrowers) and they made me go through a psychological evaluation. It was a great company to work for. Maybe that was why!
There really isn't any need for bloodshed
Just do it with a little more finesse
If you can slip a tablet into someone's coffee
Then it avoids an awful lot of mess
I guess the point of terrorism is to make a really big bang, not just commit "murder by numbers".
(Northwest Herald) CARY, Ill. In addition to telling his teacher she could inspire the first shooting at Cary-Grove High School, Allen Lee also wrote about stabbing, drug use and a dream about a shooting spree in an essay for his English class, records show.
But Lee said Thursday night that the excerpts were taken out of context in an assignment that explicitly instructed students not to judge or censor their writing.
Lee said a friend planned to distribute the complete essay and assignment to Cary-Grove students today to provide context to a story that has gained national attention.
"It's not the full [essay], or with the assignment," Lee said of a criminal complaint in which prosecutors charged him with disorderly conduct Thursday. "People are already judging this without seeing the assignment.... None of it was meant to be threatening or harmful to anyone."
Louis Bianchi, McHenry County state's attorney, said Thursday he would prosecute Lee on the misdemeanor charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine.
"I think the teacher did the appropriate thing," Bianchi said. "Now, it's going to be brought to the attention of the courts."
Cary Police arrested Lee, 18, near his home Tuesday morning on disorderly conduct charges after Cary-Grove Principal Susan Popp called police.
Lee, who plans to enter boot camp for the Marines in October, said teacher Nora Capron told the class to write about whatever they wanted.
A copy of the assignment obtained Thursday night included the following guidelines for a "free writing" exercise:
"Write nonstop for a set period of time."
"Do not make corrections as you write."
"Keep writing, even if you have to write something like, 'I don't know what to write.' "
"Write whatever comes into your mind."
"Do not judge or censor what you are writing."
The assignment included additional guidelines such as, "If your free writing is neat and coherent, you probably haven't loosened up enough."
The Lee family met with representatives of High School District 155 Thursday to discuss potential disciplinary measures, said Dane Loizzo, whose law firm is representing Lee.
"We're attempting to get Allen back into the school with his friends and peers as quickly and judiciously as possible," said Loizzo, of the Woodstock-based Law Offices of Loizzo and Loizzo.
Messages left with district Superintendent Jill Hawk and district spokesman Jeff Puma were not immediately returned Thursday night.
Criminal Charges School officials allege that in an essay for his ninth-period English class on Monday, Lee wrote about a dream where he went into a building, started shooting people with guns, had sex with the dead bodies. He then retracted it saying, "but it would be funny if I did."
A person can be charged with disorderly conduct if their actions are alarming or disturbing to others.
The district responded to another threat made last week at Crystal Lake Central High School. About half the students at Central stayed home Friday and police presence at the school was increased after threatening graffiti was found on a bathroom wall. The graffiti was determined to be a prank, officials have said.
Capron read Lee's essay Monday night and called her department chair, who then spoke with Cary-Grove Principal Susan Popp.
Popp called police and signed the disorderly conduct complaint shortly afterward, prosecutors said, and Lee was arrested Tuesday morning.
Attorney Thomas Loizzo said the student complied with the assignment.
"How is the student supposed to know where the line is between creativity and censorship?" he said. "The assignment didn't specify that if you wrote something that the teacher thought would be offensive, that you could then be prosecuted criminally."
Crap! You mean they can subpoena Blizzard and find out that I'm the one who slaughtered all those Shadethicket Stone Movers and Bark Rippers near Fallen Sky Lake on Sunday night?
Will they come with a knife, rubber mallet, bb gun, tubing and pepper spray? You never know when an astronaut might need those things. (I'm assuming the diapers will still be included.)
It seems somehow wrong to me that you can be suspected of murder based on an internet search, but if you've already been acquited of murder you can sign a book deal on how you "hypothetically" might have committed the murder you were acquited of.
Maybe she should write a book entitled, "How I would have searched for murder methods using Google." Then she could use the Chewbacca . . . er, OJ defense.
The idea of "eroding" the concept of free will is fraught with all kinds of philosophical baggage. And, as some have already pointed out, it doesn't really do much to address the question of what to do with the criminal who clearly commited a crime.
The more pertinent question is whether our justice system should be based on retribution or rehabilitation. Although some small amount of rehabilitation is attempted in our penal facilities, we are largely more interested, at present, in a retributive system of justice. I think part of the reason for that state of affairs is that we have never really been sure how to rehabilitate most criminals.
Now along comes a someone who says they can rehabilitate a pedophile by removing a tumor from their brain. Great! Let's do it. But wait. How far do we go with this? Lobotomies could be viewed as "rehabilitative". Okay, you say, only rehabilitate someone if the system of rehabilitation doesn't have an adverse effect of the perpetrator. So now instead of a prison system full of guards and wardens, we have a system staffed by doctors and psychologists.
I think that's largely where things have been heading anyway.
ps--My favorite line on the topic of free will is "John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, on a half a pint of shanty was particularly ill"
"The administration does not want to be in the position of having to adapt all of the Iraq Study Group report's recommendations, U.S. officials say, and its own review will provide an opportunity to pick and choose options."
Shouldn't that be "adopt" instead of "adapt"? Big difference.
Someone at the Washington Post is relying too much on spell checker instead of actually reading their own work.
In ancient times, Grecian astronomers noted how certain lights moved across the sky in relation to the other stars. These objects were believed to orbit the Earth, which was considered to be stationary. The "wandering" lights were called planets, a Greek term meaning "wanderer".
****
Why not just stick to this original definition? If it "wanders" among the stationary celestial lights and casts light visible to the naked eye, it's a planet.
Everything else can be labeled SAO "speculative astronomical object."
As you read the blog post, just substitute the name of your company for "WoW", "paycheck" for "loot" and it pretty much sums up corporate America.
It's no big shocker that people relate so well to WoW. Most of them live it in their "real" jobs every day!
Sounds like WoW just accelerates the experience. Perhaps Blizzard could come up with an end game in which you collect a token Social Security check and bitch to your friends about how your kids never come to visit you.
I read in Smithsonian magazine last night that the US allows more legal immigrants than the rest of the countries in the world combined. Kind of blew me away.
Slashdot Mirror
I went to the flickr gallery and was stunned and fascinated (shocked and awed?) at the exhibit which "explained" where Cain got his wife and why it was okay for him to marry (and have sex, although the "S" word is never used) his sister.
For your edification I copied out the central "argument" for you to mock (er, I mean discuss.)
"The farther back in history one goes (back towards the Fall of Adam), the less of a problem mutation in the human population would be.
At the time of Adam and Eve's children, there would have been very few mutations in the human genome--thus close relatives could marry, and provided it was one man for one woman (the biblical doctrine of marriage), there was nothing wrong with close relatives marrying in early biblical history."
B.S. (Bedevere Science) all. (SIR BEDEVERE: And that, my liege, is how we know the earth to be banana-shaped. ARTHUR: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.)
This is from the same institution that brought you cold fusion (not the markup language) a few years back.
I'm just sayin' . . .
Yeah. I found one computer a woman was using to run her small catering business and she had all her complete credit cards numbers in a budget spreadsheet.
Another one I found had two users on it, man and wife. The internet accounts were hilarious. Hers was all home and garden sites, his was all porn!
I don't throw hard drives away anymore, I just pop 'em and toss 'em into a box that gathers dust in the back corner of a desk cabinet. When I die, someone will have a field day rifling through them all, but at least I won't be too worried about identity theft at that point!
People used to throw their computers out in the dumpster at my apartment in Minneapolis. On a weekly basis, I could count on retrieving the hard drive from at least one computer. From those hard drives I retrieved thousands of mp3s.
That is what I think of when I hear about digital recycling.
I've worked a lot in the financial services industry. Any company that is involved in buying, selling, trading securities is regulated by the SEC and all employees have to have a background check and get fingerprinted.
Oddly enough, some of the companies I've worked for that required fingerprinting, didn't require drug screening. (American Express, for example). The company I'm now with is big on the drug checking, but no fingerprinting (they are a retailer).
The weirdest one I ever had was when I worked for the Toro company (lawnmowers, snowthrowers) and they made me go through a psychological evaluation. It was a great company to work for. Maybe that was why!
There really isn't any need for bloodshed
Just do it with a little more finesse
If you can slip a tablet into someone's coffee
Then it avoids an awful lot of mess
I guess the point of terrorism is to make a really big bang, not just commit "murder by numbers".
"This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes."
It's a shitty thing to do to someone. But it's not a crime.
What is and isn't a crime changes based on the norms of acceptable behavior in a society. Consider the U.S.:
Slavery used to not be a crime, now it is.
Sodomy between consenting adults used to be a crime, now it isn't. (In most states)
IANAL, but my guess is that virtual rape is not a crime . . . yet.
Will it be a crime tomorrow? That is the real interesting question to arise from this article.
Death in space. That's gonna be nasty.
Back to Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land:
Why waste food?
(Northwest Herald) CARY, Ill. In addition to telling his teacher she could inspire the first shooting at Cary-Grove High School, Allen Lee also wrote about stabbing, drug use and a dream about a shooting spree in an essay for his English class, records show.
... None of it was meant to be threatening or harmful to anyone."
But Lee said Thursday night that the excerpts were taken out of context in an assignment that explicitly instructed students not to judge or censor their writing.
Lee said a friend planned to distribute the complete essay and assignment to Cary-Grove students today to provide context to a story that has gained national attention.
"It's not the full [essay], or with the assignment," Lee said of a criminal complaint in which prosecutors charged him with disorderly conduct Thursday. "People are already judging this without seeing the assignment.
Louis Bianchi, McHenry County state's attorney, said Thursday he would prosecute Lee on the misdemeanor charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine.
"I think the teacher did the appropriate thing," Bianchi said. "Now, it's going to be brought to the attention of the courts."
Cary Police arrested Lee, 18, near his home Tuesday morning on disorderly conduct charges after Cary-Grove Principal Susan Popp called police.
Lee, who plans to enter boot camp for the Marines in October, said teacher Nora Capron told the class to write about whatever they wanted.
A copy of the assignment obtained Thursday night included the following guidelines for a "free writing" exercise:
"Write nonstop for a set period of time."
"Do not make corrections as you write."
"Keep writing, even if you have to write something like, 'I don't know what to write.' "
"Write whatever comes into your mind."
"Do not judge or censor what you are writing."
The assignment included additional guidelines such as, "If your free writing is neat and coherent, you probably haven't loosened up enough."
The Lee family met with representatives of High School District 155 Thursday to discuss potential disciplinary measures, said Dane Loizzo, whose law firm is representing Lee.
"We're attempting to get Allen back into the school with his friends and peers as quickly and judiciously as possible," said Loizzo, of the Woodstock-based Law Offices of Loizzo and Loizzo.
Messages left with district Superintendent Jill Hawk and district spokesman Jeff Puma were not immediately returned Thursday night.
Criminal Charges
School officials allege that in an essay for his ninth-period English class on Monday, Lee wrote about a dream where he went into a building, started shooting people with guns, had sex with the dead bodies. He then retracted it saying, "but it would be funny if I did."
A person can be charged with disorderly conduct if their actions are alarming or disturbing to others.
The district responded to another threat made last week at Crystal Lake Central High School. About half the students at Central stayed home Friday and police presence at the school was increased after threatening graffiti was found on a bathroom wall. The graffiti was determined to be a prank, officials have said.
Capron read Lee's essay Monday night and called her department chair, who then spoke with Cary-Grove Principal Susan Popp.
Popp called police and signed the disorderly conduct complaint shortly afterward, prosecutors said, and Lee was arrested Tuesday morning.
Attorney Thomas Loizzo said the student complied with the assignment.
"How is the student supposed to know where the line is between creativity and censorship?" he said. "The assignment didn't specify that if you wrote something that the teacher thought would be offensive, that you could then be prosecuted criminally."
Attorney Dane Loizzo agreed.
This is posted under the heading "Your Rights Online". I RTFA, but I didn't see anything about this being an online event. Did I miss something?
There is a more detailed account of the story here.
Crap! You mean they can subpoena Blizzard and find out that I'm the one who slaughtered all those Shadethicket Stone Movers and Bark Rippers near Fallen Sky Lake on Sunday night?
Will they come with a knife, rubber mallet, bb gun, tubing and pepper spray?
You never know when an astronaut might need those things.
(I'm assuming the diapers will still be included.)
Your Honor, my client is not guilty by reason of a genetic deficiency that prohibited him from acquiring moral acuity.
It seems somehow wrong to me that you can be suspected of murder based on an internet search, but if you've already been acquited of murder you can sign a book deal on how you "hypothetically" might have committed the murder you were acquited of.
Maybe she should write a book entitled, "How I would have searched for murder methods using Google." Then she could use the Chewbacca . . . er, OJ defense.
most corporate firewalls do too.
The idea of "eroding" the concept of free will is fraught with all kinds of philosophical baggage. And, as some have already pointed out, it doesn't really do much to address the question of what to do with the criminal who clearly commited a crime.
The more pertinent question is whether our justice system should be based on retribution or rehabilitation. Although some small amount of rehabilitation is attempted in our penal facilities, we are largely more interested, at present, in a retributive system of justice. I think part of the reason for that state of affairs is that we have never really been sure how to rehabilitate most criminals.
Now along comes a someone who says they can rehabilitate a pedophile by removing a tumor from their brain. Great! Let's do it. But wait. How far do we go with this? Lobotomies could be viewed as "rehabilitative". Okay, you say, only rehabilitate someone if the system of rehabilitation doesn't have an adverse effect of the perpetrator. So now instead of a prison system full of guards and wardens, we have a system staffed by doctors and psychologists.
I think that's largely where things have been heading anyway.
ps--My favorite line on the topic of free will is "John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, on a half a pint of shanty was particularly ill"
FTA
"The administration does not want to be in the position of having to adapt all of the Iraq Study Group report's recommendations, U.S. officials say, and its own review will provide an opportunity to pick and choose options."
Shouldn't that be "adopt" instead of "adapt"? Big difference.
Someone at the Washington Post is relying too much on spell checker instead of actually reading their own work.
From Wikipedia:
In ancient times, Grecian astronomers noted how certain lights moved across the sky in relation to the other stars. These objects were believed to orbit the Earth, which was considered to be stationary. The "wandering" lights were called planets, a Greek term meaning "wanderer".
****
Why not just stick to this original definition? If it "wanders" among the stationary celestial lights and casts light visible to the naked eye, it's a planet.
Everything else can be labeled SAO "speculative astronomical object."
But can it whistle, or is it still like a goldfish?
I studied philosophy as well as literature. Now I work in IT.
I certainly make more money than any philosphy/lit. graduates that I know.
As you read the blog post, just substitute the name of your company for "WoW", "paycheck" for "loot" and it pretty much sums up corporate America.
It's no big shocker that people relate so well to WoW. Most of them live it in their "real" jobs every day!
Sounds like WoW just accelerates the experience. Perhaps Blizzard could come up with an end game in which you collect a token Social Security check and bitch to your friends about how your kids never come to visit you.
I read in Smithsonian magazine last night that the US allows more legal immigrants than the rest of the countries in the world combined. Kind of blew me away.
Good programmers write good code. Great programmers find it on Google!