and "tax avoidance" is a completely unfair term. The tax code is written with the assumption that taxpayers will take all legally permissible deductions and credits. If you take an allowed deduction, that's not a "loophole", and it's not "tax avoidance", it's just following the rules as THEY set them up.
Paradoxically, the more the laws are refined to "close loopholes", the more opportunities it creates for taxpayers to take advantage of the ripple effects caused by those very changes. Like a dog chasing its own tail, changes to the tax code begat yet more changes, and only the rich and powerful eventually can afford to truly leverage all the opportunities.
Simpler tax schemes such as a flat rate on retail sales are much, much more difficult to game. We could dispense with most tax accounting entirely with a simple, broad approach, but this is America. As the Brits know well, we can usually be counted on to do the right thing, but only after all the other alternatives have been tried and discarded.
No one denies that climate changes -- no one. I can walk outside and show you the geologic evidence of our last ice age, and boy, has the climate sure changed since then. The climate has also been much hotter, much wetter, and with far higher levels of CO2 than today, and there is plenty of geologic evidence for that, too.
The question is whether people are causing warming, not whether the climate is changing.
Call me unconvinced. I have yet to hear any theory that adequately explains both the changes we see in the geologic record, and the changes reportedly caused by Man. It takes a huge amount of warming to move from an ice age to today. Where did that warming come from, if not from humans, and may it, not humans, be responsible for any warming we are seeing today?
These don't seem to be unreasonable questions to me, and telling me that 97% of climate scientists think the world is warming is irrelevant and doesn't answer the question.
If evolution is an absolute fact and can never be proved wrong (as some here seem to be implying), then it is no longer a theory grounded in evidence, but a statement of belief. Evolution is far from perfect as a theory. For example, it fails to explain the origins of life ("survival of the fittest" presupposes existence of both the fit and the non-fit.) Its mechanism of random mutation followed by environmental selection does a poor job explaining the development of systems, and poses really difficult chicken-and-egg problems around the order in which system components were evolved. And, there are difficulties with the almost vanishingly-small probability that life exists at all, again, a problem that classic evolution does little to help us understand.
Personally, I think it's way to early to call it quits on trying to understand the mechanics of life. Evolution seems more like a really good insight rather than a fully-formed "law" of science. I think there must be some natural form of self-organization at work, something not explained by random mutation and selection, but much more directed. What it could possibly be, I have no idea. But I'm pretty sure classic evolution is not there, yet.
My basic commute (90% local, stop-and-go traffic) bears little resemblance to the EPA drive cycle. I get between 24-26MPG, well below the rated 33MPG, exactly what I would expect given my drive cycle. When I take trips, I routinely exceed the 40MPG rating, no doubt due to the 6-gear transmission and low rolling-resistance tires.
In all other respects, the 2013 Elantra is a wonderful little car, very nicely designed and solidly built. Couldn't be happier.
If paper is so great, let's use it for ALL our testing! Want to test that fancy new function you wrote. Here's how QA should really test it:
Write down a list of known inputs ON PAPER and known outputs ON PAPER
Run the functions while hand-typing in the parameters. Write down the outputs ON PAPER
Get our your No. 2 pencils and hand-calculate the correct answers ON PAPER. For every test.
Now manually compare your QA person's answers to the test results, tracking it ON PAPER, of course
I can't believe that on slashdot, of all places, people don't understand that we invented computing machines explicitly to remove people from doing mundane, repetitive tasks because people suck at it. They make mistakes. They get tired. The paper gets lost, mangled, or stolen.
Using machines isn't the problem. The problem is mis-applying a human-centric testing methodology (hand recounts) to a machine context. The proper way to test a machine IS WITH ANOTHER MACHINE.
See page 20 of the report. I think they destroy their own argument there, showing that Romney was a back-bencher in 2008, and his slope was flat (like the others), and his slope isn't consistently flat even in all the 2012 races.
Also, the fact that they chose a primary election instead of a general election is very, very significant. The turnout for primary races is front-runner when turnout is that low. An extra 100 people showing up in a more-populated area would be enough to produce the "suspicious slope" effect is my off-the-cuff guess. I doubt this effect is repeated in a normal election.
She didn't hate her censor, she was tired and disgusted with the system, and decided to not support it in any way. I've changed several jobs in my career for the same reason. For example, I wrote tax software for a decade, but eventually became tired and disgusted with how rigged "the system" is, and found work for a better cause. Perfectly understandable.
What you're forgetting is that the supremacy clause doesn't trump the rest of the Constitution. Article 1, Section 4. A foreign treaty (which this is NOT, by the way) that over-rode the rights of States to run elections in the manner of their own choosing would not be legally binding because it is un-Constitutional. States are only required to follow laws that are Constitutional.
My state, Virginia, has laws very similar to Texas in this regard. Election watchers must also be registered to vote in the state, and be nominated by the party on whose behalf they are watching. I would imagine that this is a very common practice.
"They are not subject to Texas law." In Texas they sure are. There is no such thing as a national "State" in the US, there are 51 governments federated together into 1 Union.
What I'm waiting for is a full, wall-sized replacement for the humble whiteboard, where instead of drawing with a smelly, messy dry erase marker, we just draw with our finger and erase with a wipe of our hands. I want my screens in two sizes: small enough to carry, and large enough to fill a wall.
All points well taken (and well stated, too, which is even rarer.) Yet, even taking the Bible in its proper context, there is still quite a lot that it says about a theory like evolution. For example, according to the Bible, the universe is a created artifact. Yes, while the description of the universe as being "formless and void" before God said, "let there be light" is not a technical one, there is no mistaking the idea of God as the author and creator of everything.
It is on this metaphysical plane, not the physical, that the 19th Century worldview of evolution runs smack into the much more ancient worldview of the Bible.
I'd be more than happy to contribute to a united fund that pools tax-deductible donations to OSS projects, like United Way does for its charitable causes. The key here is to make the donations recurring and automatic. It used to be that payroll deductions were the only way to achieve that, but now there may be more options. I don't want to give to just one organization, I'd like to spread the love around. And, I only want to be asked once a year, not every time I download something.
If government were run like a business it would not only be taking care of the disabled, it would be doing it while making a profit. Nearly every convenience of modern life, from the food you eat, to the clothes you wear, to the shiny smartphone in your hand was made by a private business business, not government.
You can get a lot done in this world if you don't care about people and give yourself free reign to push, abuse, over-praise, or cajole them to get where you want them to go. Its too bad you have to be horrible person to bring out the best in people.
Every now and then we run into those people who have that rare gift of crystallizing things in an elegant way. On whose shoulders have you stood over the years?
Calling someone names is what passes for persuasion these days. No wonder people don't agree with you; agree with what? That you think they're a fucking moron? Yeah, that works.
An interesting and informative blog. She points to America Hears as one of the very few vendors who sell a software interface to their hearing aids so users can self-tune.
Watts published an entire paper on siting problems for temperature recording stations. But in any event, even temperature going "all the way back" to the 1800s doesn't do much to help us with the problem of a geologic time scale. We can see that temperatures are cyclical, but on which side of the slope are we? Probably something in the magnitude of the interval between ice ages is about as fine as one should cut it.
One thing you're missing is the condition of the data. Unfortunately, it's not very good, especially temperature data. There are gaps, there are insturmentation issues, there are siting issues, and, the 800lb gorilla in the room, there's just the simple fact that climate changes happen in geologic time frames, and we literally don't have any direct measurements of that scale.
So we must proxy, and normalize, and adjust, and model. Really, I don't think anyone can definitively prove anything one way or the other yet. It's not like people have no legitimate reason for doubting claims on either side.
"Public records" means all writings and recordings that consist of letters, words or numbers, or their equivalent, set down by handwriting, typewriting, printing, photostatting, photography, magnetic impulse, optical or magneto-optical form, mechanical or electronic recording or other form of data compilation, however stored, and regardless of physical form or characteristics, prepared or owned by, or in the possession of a public body or its officers, employees or agents in the transaction of public business. Records that are not prepared for or used in the transaction of public business are not public records." VA Code 2.2-3701
IANAL, but it seems this case would likely hinge upon whether Prof. Mann is considered an employee of the State, and whether his emails were documenting transactions of public business.
It's impossible to argue that someone should believe in something that most likely doesn't exist,
You can't "know" that it doesn't likely exist, because these claims are, by definition, beyond human knowledge. Science can neither prove nor disprove the existence (or non-existence) of God.
Belief and non-belief are both judgments, not facts. They are conclusions one reaches upon examining the world, and there Science may help you. But Science ends at material things.
Slashdot Mirror
and "tax avoidance" is a completely unfair term. The tax code is written with the assumption that taxpayers will take all legally permissible deductions and credits. If you take an allowed deduction, that's not a "loophole", and it's not "tax avoidance", it's just following the rules as THEY set them up.
Paradoxically, the more the laws are refined to "close loopholes", the more opportunities it creates for taxpayers to take advantage of the ripple effects caused by those very changes. Like a dog chasing its own tail, changes to the tax code begat yet more changes, and only the rich and powerful eventually can afford to truly leverage all the opportunities.
Simpler tax schemes such as a flat rate on retail sales are much, much more difficult to game. We could dispense with most tax accounting entirely with a simple, broad approach, but this is America. As the Brits know well, we can usually be counted on to do the right thing, but only after all the other alternatives have been tried and discarded.
No one denies that climate changes -- no one. I can walk outside and show you the geologic evidence of our last ice age, and boy, has the climate sure changed since then. The climate has also been much hotter, much wetter, and with far higher levels of CO2 than today, and there is plenty of geologic evidence for that, too.
The question is whether people are causing warming, not whether the climate is changing.
Call me unconvinced. I have yet to hear any theory that adequately explains both the changes we see in the geologic record, and the changes reportedly caused by Man. It takes a huge amount of warming to move from an ice age to today. Where did that warming come from, if not from humans, and may it, not humans, be responsible for any warming we are seeing today?
These don't seem to be unreasonable questions to me, and telling me that 97% of climate scientists think the world is warming is irrelevant and doesn't answer the question.
If evolution is an absolute fact and can never be proved wrong (as some here seem to be implying), then it is no longer a theory grounded in evidence, but a statement of belief. Evolution is far from perfect as a theory. For example, it fails to explain the origins of life ("survival of the fittest" presupposes existence of both the fit and the non-fit.) Its mechanism of random mutation followed by environmental selection does a poor job explaining the development of systems, and poses really difficult chicken-and-egg problems around the order in which system components were evolved. And, there are difficulties with the almost vanishingly-small probability that life exists at all, again, a problem that classic evolution does little to help us understand.
Personally, I think it's way to early to call it quits on trying to understand the mechanics of life. Evolution seems more like a really good insight rather than a fully-formed "law" of science. I think there must be some natural form of self-organization at work, something not explained by random mutation and selection, but much more directed. What it could possibly be, I have no idea. But I'm pretty sure classic evolution is not there, yet.
My basic commute (90% local, stop-and-go traffic) bears little resemblance to the EPA drive cycle. I get between 24-26MPG, well below the rated 33MPG, exactly what I would expect given my drive cycle. When I take trips, I routinely exceed the 40MPG rating, no doubt due to the 6-gear transmission and low rolling-resistance tires.
In all other respects, the 2013 Elantra is a wonderful little car, very nicely designed and solidly built. Couldn't be happier.
I can't believe that on slashdot, of all places, people don't understand that we invented computing machines explicitly to remove people from doing mundane, repetitive tasks because people suck at it. They make mistakes. They get tired. The paper gets lost, mangled, or stolen.
Using machines isn't the problem. The problem is mis-applying a human-centric testing methodology (hand recounts) to a machine context. The proper way to test a machine IS WITH ANOTHER MACHINE.
See page 20 of the report. I think they destroy their own argument there, showing that Romney was a back-bencher in 2008, and his slope was flat (like the others), and his slope isn't consistently flat even in all the 2012 races.
Also, the fact that they chose a primary election instead of a general election is very, very significant. The turnout for primary races is front-runner when turnout is that low. An extra 100 people showing up in a more-populated area would be enough to produce the "suspicious slope" effect is my off-the-cuff guess. I doubt this effect is repeated in a normal election.
She didn't hate her censor, she was tired and disgusted with the system, and decided to not support it in any way. I've changed several jobs in my career for the same reason. For example, I wrote tax software for a decade, but eventually became tired and disgusted with how rigged "the system" is, and found work for a better cause. Perfectly understandable.
What you're forgetting is that the supremacy clause doesn't trump the rest of the Constitution. Article 1, Section 4. A foreign treaty (which this is NOT, by the way) that over-rode the rights of States to run elections in the manner of their own choosing would not be legally binding because it is un-Constitutional. States are only required to follow laws that are Constitutional.
"A quarter of black Americans do not have ID."
Do you have any proof of this claim at all? Where did you come up with such a number?
My state, Virginia, has laws very similar to Texas in this regard. Election watchers must also be registered to vote in the state, and be nominated by the party on whose behalf they are watching. I would imagine that this is a very common practice.
"They are not subject to Texas law." In Texas they sure are. There is no such thing as a national "State" in the US, there are 51 governments federated together into 1 Union.
What I'm waiting for is a full, wall-sized replacement for the humble whiteboard, where instead of drawing with a smelly, messy dry erase marker, we just draw with our finger and erase with a wipe of our hands. I want my screens in two sizes: small enough to carry, and large enough to fill a wall.
All points well taken (and well stated, too, which is even rarer.) Yet, even taking the Bible in its proper context, there is still quite a lot that it says about a theory like evolution. For example, according to the Bible, the universe is a created artifact. Yes, while the description of the universe as being "formless and void" before God said, "let there be light" is not a technical one, there is no mistaking the idea of God as the author and creator of everything.
It is on this metaphysical plane, not the physical, that the 19th Century worldview of evolution runs smack into the much more ancient worldview of the Bible.
I'd be more than happy to contribute to a united fund that pools tax-deductible donations to OSS projects, like United Way does for its charitable causes. The key here is to make the donations recurring and automatic. It used to be that payroll deductions were the only way to achieve that, but now there may be more options. I don't want to give to just one organization, I'd like to spread the love around. And, I only want to be asked once a year, not every time I download something.
If government were run like a business it would not only be taking care of the disabled, it would be doing it while making a profit. Nearly every convenience of modern life, from the food you eat, to the clothes you wear, to the shiny smartphone in your hand was made by a private business business, not government.
You can get a lot done in this world if you don't care about people and give yourself free reign to push, abuse, over-praise, or cajole them to get where you want them to go. Its too bad you have to be horrible person to bring out the best in people.
Tell me about your family of origin. What do you admire about your parents?
Every now and then we run into those people who have that rare gift of crystallizing things in an elegant way. On whose shoulders have you stood over the years?
Calling someone names is what passes for persuasion these days. No wonder people don't agree with you; agree with what? That you think they're a fucking moron? Yeah, that works.
An interesting and informative blog. She points to America Hears as one of the very few vendors who sell a software interface to their hearing aids so users can self-tune.
Watts published an entire paper on siting problems for temperature recording stations. But in any event, even temperature going "all the way back" to the 1800s doesn't do much to help us with the problem of a geologic time scale. We can see that temperatures are cyclical, but on which side of the slope are we? Probably something in the magnitude of the interval between ice ages is about as fine as one should cut it.
... and that would be a proxy for temperature, not a direct measurement.
One thing you're missing is the condition of the data. Unfortunately, it's not very good, especially temperature data. There are gaps, there are insturmentation issues, there are siting issues, and, the 800lb gorilla in the room, there's just the simple fact that climate changes happen in geologic time frames, and we literally don't have any direct measurements of that scale.
So we must proxy, and normalize, and adjust, and model. Really, I don't think anyone can definitively prove anything one way or the other yet. It's not like people have no legitimate reason for doubting claims on either side.
"Public records" means all writings and recordings that consist of letters, words or numbers, or their equivalent, set down by handwriting, typewriting, printing, photostatting, photography, magnetic impulse, optical or magneto-optical form, mechanical or electronic recording or other form of data compilation, however stored, and regardless of physical form or characteristics, prepared or owned by, or in the possession of a public body or its officers, employees or agents in the transaction of public business. Records that are not prepared for or used in the transaction of public business are not public records." VA Code 2.2-3701
IANAL, but it seems this case would likely hinge upon whether Prof. Mann is considered an employee of the State, and whether his emails were documenting transactions of public business.
It's impossible to argue that someone should believe in something that most likely doesn't exist,
You can't "know" that it doesn't likely exist, because these claims are, by definition, beyond human knowledge. Science can neither prove nor disprove the existence (or non-existence) of God. Belief and non-belief are both judgments, not facts. They are conclusions one reaches upon examining the world, and there Science may help you. But Science ends at material things.