"I think that Jon Stewart and the Daily Show said it well when they said we have to change our attitude and culture around guns. They likened it to smoking."
Jon Stewart borrowed this mode of thinking from the current administration's justice department (the same one that ran illegal guns across the border and sold them specifically to gang members and drug dealers. Also the same justice department that would deny your right to due process by attacking you with a drone).Changing society's view of a gun to associate with everything negative isn't the answer, it's indoctrination, and it's wrong.
Video games aren't the problem. Guns aren't the problem. Violent movies are also not the problem (although they fit the same category you describe of those that "need to take responsibility for this"). The problem is that parents need to be parents to their children and teach them the difference between right and wrong. The problem is that people in the world need to view human life as precious, and learn to treat each other's lives with respect.
But part of the problem IS the parents... parents are the ones watching all those damn crime shows / movies / News / and now parents play VIDEO GAMES. You can tell your kids all day long what is right and wrong... but if you sit around and play FPS on a giant screen tv and they see you excited and having fun, they absorb that. So I agree with you.. but parents - and quite frankly our government - are part of our society. Yeah - our government needs to change too. When I say we all need to change I mean ALL. I don't know how exactly, it isn't an easy or quick thing to do. It's a slow process that got us here and it will prob be a slow one to reverse. What kills me is that everyone gets so defensive and doesn't even want to talk about changing. I don't understand what people fear so much about admitting that we all have a responsibility and spend more time trying to pinpoint what everyone ELSE can do about it. Bottom line is our legal and governmental systems can't change it, it has to come from our society in general and if overall we aren't willing to admit there is an issue, it won't change. You miss 100% of the shots you never take.
I don't *blame* the gaming industry any more than the gun industry or the entertainment industry for these shootings. If it wasn't an AR-15 it would have been a rifle or shotgun or something else. If there were no guns, obviously shootings wouldn't happen but violence would still exist. But that isn't the world we live in, and we make violence "easy". And before that little switch in your brain flips and you think for a second that I am saying we should ban or take away ANYTHING (guns, video games, movies) then you are 100% wrong. More laws are not the answer and are far from it.
What I think needs to change is our attitudes towards violence. OUR attitude. EVERYONE has a part to play in this, and it has to be voluntary. The NRA needs to get their heads out of their asses and realize that providing access to any type of firearm with no restrictions or checks will make it much easier for everyone to have guns - and that includes people who really shouldn't have them. (and yes, I know that determining WHO that is would be nearly impossible). But we have to try. Movies/TV/Entertainment companies (including video gaming industry) needs to understand that they DO glorify violence. We are inundated with violence, from FPS games to movies to TV shows. I don't watch any of them, but there are entire series of TV shows around horribly violent acts (CSI, etc). If you can step back for a second and look at it all holistically - it is very saddening.
I think that Jon Stewart and the Daily Show said it well when they said we have to change our attitude and culture around guns. They likened it to smoking. The message has to change, the overall general attitude towards things. Think about these trials that occur, like the Jodi Arias trial. It was a horrible murder, but let's be honest - in this country and world it happens a lot. But there are shows that are dedicated to follow the trial, to examine it, to discuss it in such desensitizing detail that it is sickening. I really don't get the whole obsession that people have with violence. It's why I quit watching the local news. Over time, I think that it really starts to alter your way of thinking about the world. If any of you have kids, especially boys, then there are nerf guns and foam swords and killing this and that, good guys vs bad guys... again, nothing new. But that can't be our only message that they see, and it is harder and harder to shield them from that. My own kids had to go through a "shooter" drill at school, and that is how they learned about the Newtown shootings. They are in K and 2nd grade!
What I would really like to see is the video gaming industry to take some kind of responsibility for this - not because they are at fault, but because it is the right thing to do. And not by slapping ratings on games, or limiting sales to minors, or anything like that. But by really taking an internal look at what they are producing and self-regulate it. They have the power to influence through what they do, and I think the message being sent is a very harmful one.
That sounds horrible. You are starving yourself, and your body will hate it. Although it is not just about weight loss, I've lost about 13 lbs in 3 months by eating high-quality fat, meat, nuts/seed, vegetables, and cheese. Low-carb - no grains, no sugar. Here's the thing - your body doesn't need carbs in the massive quantities people eat them in. All it does is train your body to live off of glucose as a by-product of insulin production. Not to mention that the way you are eating is not how humans have been eating for 99.99% of the time we've been around. Fat is over twice as dense as an energy source, and fat does NOT make you fat. If you cut out grains, your body will operate off of fat as an energy source. Even if you skip meals, you aren't ravenously hungry because your body can process the fat in your body and use it as energy. You can't do this now, because you are dependent on carbs.
Don't kill yourself - read "Good Calories Bad Calories" or "Why We Get Fat" (a kind of layman's version of GCBC by Gary Taubes. Then read The Primal Blueprint. It will change your life.
The human body is a badly designed, self-destructing patchwork of bits that are perpetually one bad jolt away from a breakdown, so it's not surprising that they've discovered yet again, that excessive quantities of things we need to live will also kill us.
Actually I draw the opposite conclusion from this. The human body is so amazingly flexible and adaptable, that it can survive on a huge variety of diets, and can compensate for poor diets so well that it can be difficult to realize the long-term effects that these poor diets are having, given the relatively benign short-term symptoms.
Look at the history of mankind and what we ate in order to evolve to this point. As is pointed out in the documentary "in search of the perfect human diet" if you started at the goal line of a football field and if that was the "dawn of man", and walked all the way to the other goal line, the span of time that we have been eating grains and sugars in large quantities would take up the last 1/2". For 2.5 million years our ancestors were meat-eating primates. The time we have been eating grains (10-20k years ago) is but a blink of an eye. Our bodies evolved eating high-fat diets, so all this low-fat high-carb stuff is literally killing us.
I've been doing a lot of reading on dietary topics, and it is quite amazing how many opinions about our dietary needs are based on nothing but opinion or the opinions of other people. Even the scientific results can be mis-interpreted or looked at in so many ways that you can seemingly show whatever you want from these studies. There's a ton of stuff out there, like the book "Good Calories Bad Calories" that covers it in depth, but watch this video by Dr Peter Attia. I think it sums it up pretty well. The limits of scientific evidence and the ethics of dietary guidelines -- 60 years of ambiguity
I've been following the Primal Blueprint lifestyle for a few months, and the effects have been pretty amazing.
what we do know is that the intent of his efforts were to try and improve things[...]
No, no you do not know that. He got in office on a bunch of promises and falsehoods (nothing new there) that huge numbers of highly gullible people bought wholesale. Once in office he did exactly nothing to make anything better and in fact has made things far worse.
I think "worse" is debatable... a trillion dollar / hundreds-of-thousands-lives-lost nonsense occupation of Iraq, Guantanamo (which he didn't close), and failing economy is hard to fix. Did he fix the economy? Well, not really. Do we know that he prevented another depression? No. Is this something that CAN be fixed in a couple of years? Probably not. Was it something that was created in only a couple of years? Probably not.
more importantly his policies have not directly led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and others around the world.
Ask Pakistan and other locations about near constant drone strikes before you say that. The difference between this and the former president is there, but not in the way you're thinking.
While that is not a good situation, it is a far far cry from the Iraq war. I agree with that Bush did with Afganistan. Iraq? No explanation, no reason has ever come close to justifying it. There will always likely be military actions that will be questionable. They know things we will never know, and will have to make the most difficult decisions. Look at the big picture, and who had a positive message and who tried (and succeeded) to keep us afraid with a "war on terror".
Sadly, the president can't fix the system that he's elected into, so as much as people want to complain about president A or B, the entire system is fucked, and even if someone wanted to un-fuck it there is no easy or simple way to do that.
Funny, in your response you didn't say what that reason was. Wikipedia is not the be-all-end-all of information, but I didn't see a reason listed there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War. And wouldn't you think that if you are going to overthrow a country, and not even declare war, and kill thousands upon thousands of your own people - let alone many many others around the world, and spend well over a trillion dollars, that there would have to be a pretty good reason? And that everyone would know what that reason was?
I'm not going to say that we will ever know the reasons behind all of our military actions, there's lots of things that go on that we don't know or probably need to know. Those are big decisions even if one person dies. This President has to make those calls, so will the next one... and all the ones before them. Bush had to deal with 9/11, and he went after them in Afganistan. He set the course for catching Bin Laden, which ended up happening in the Obama administration. To many, that was what needed to happen.
I'm not saying Obama's administration hasn't done this. But let's not just tell part of the story here... from the link you provided "George W. Bush vastly-accelerated the drone strikes the final year of his presidency. A list of the high-ranking victims of the drones was provided to Pakistan in 2009.[22] Obama has broadened these attacks to include targets seeking to destabilize Pakistani civilian government and the attacks of 14 and 16 February 2009 were against training camps run by Baitullah Mehsud"
Look - military stuff happens, CIA stuff happens, etc etc. I don't think that we fully understand it all or that we are in a position to analyze these things. Obama said that he would close Guantanamo (which, he inherited). It's still open. I honestly think that the President learns things when they get in office that not too many people know. That can certainly change their atitude on things. We don't know what he knows.
HOWEVER - you have to consider the scale of the military actions they've undertaken. Do I really need to point to the wiki article that shows the Iraq war and the number of deaths? There has never even been a reasonable explanation for that one, at least not one that would authorize it. Vendettas don't count.
Obama is standing on the shoulders of giants. Funny that you say "expansion" and not creation. See, he is expanding what is already there. I'm not saying it's right, but that's fact. Our entire legal system is built on this principle.
REAL abuse of executive power is invading a soverign nation and overthrowing its government with no just cause, and in the process fabricating evidence to try and gain support for your actions. To this DAY there has never been a reasonable explanation for our invasion and occupation of Iraq. While Obama hasn't fixed the mess he inherited in our country, and may have made some things worse, what we do know is that the intent of his efforts were to try and improve things, and more importantly his policies have not directly led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and others around the world. That is where I see a massive difference between this and the former president.
I think we would be getting smarter because there's a greater wealth of knowledge for us to draw on. We stand on the shoulders that have come before us. We don't have to do as much trial and error when we know some things to be fact... which means we can figure out new things.
Since a century is but a blip of time, it might be hard to really get a solid measurement on it. The real question is, 100 years ago did they ask the question about whether or not they were smarter than the people from 100 years before that?:)
In Texas it is seen as a sign of weakness if you have to get closer than 100 feet to cast your vote. That's because Texans vote by shooting at their ballots. "If you have to get closer than 100 feet, you need to practice your shooting more. YEE-HAW!" *bang* *bang* *bang*
Or sometimes it is the SMART thing to do if IT doesn't want to create extra work for themselves. I work for a very large company, and I still use XP. There is a program in place to migrate to Win7, but it's been going on for over a year now. It takes time. And when I say large, I mean LARGE... think 250k+ employees around the world. If you want to migrate that many people away from WinXP to Win7, and still have internal support, you'd better have a good plan and it will take lots of time.
I used to run Kubuntu, until some runaway process kept bringing my quad processor to its knees on occasion. So for over a year I've been running XFCE on top of Kubuntu. Why haven't I switched to Xubuntu? Because I don't want to do a fresh install. Upgrading has been pretty great so far. I may eventually go back to KDE, but for now XFCE is fitting the bill.
I will, however, learn this time around and not upgrade right away. Last time I upgraded the day after it came out, and it took about 18 hours to download all the updates. That just makes me nervous. I would like to find a faster approach this time around.
No president does anything single-handedly? How about getting us INTO a war that never ever should have happened? Now, you could argue that it wasn't just GWB who did it, he had all his advisors, etc. But he was the guy. He made the call. He had no evidence of weapons, anything close to it has been falsified, and it had nothing to do with his "war on terror". There has never ever been any reasonable explanation for invading and overthrowing the government of a sovereign nation.
Obama may not have been able to live up to his promises, and he hasn't fixed everything he inherited. He inherited a deficet that GWB built, and made it even bigger. He made some promises he didn't keep. But here's the thing - his mistakes had the INTENT to fix things, and didn't cost thousands of lives. THAT is the difference between Obama and his predecessor.
I understand what he meant by that, and I don't think it is as bad as it reads. I think he just meant that those things are the key components, they are just part of the process, if you want to do it right.
I spent the last 3 years managing a testing teams on an Agile project. And it was at a very very large company that is most certainly concerned with money. What I saw Agile do was amazing... and yet, we had to compromise it somewhat. We didn't do pair programming. Our TDD wasn't as good as it could have been. We faced challenges with it, but we had contraints that we had to deal with, especially after our first release. But I will say that the quality and volume of what we put out was far and above anything else around us.
IMO, Agile isn't for every software project, and there are some that I think it simply just wouldn't work for... but it is very very useful when it fits. BUT - you have to really adopt it. It really is a team effort, and if it's not, or if you ignore or sabotage some of the key components of it, you will fail. To one of your points, calling velocity a "nonsense construct" tells me immediately that you've never done Agile, at least not successfully. I'll take a moment to explain....
You actually aren't far off... it kind of is a nonsense construct. What?! Yeah. It is a unit of effort. Here is how we did it. Each story is written to describe the functionality desired. It should follow good story principles of INVEST (look it up). Once you have that, the development and test team review it, and quickly put an estimate on it. We used a point scale. 1,2,4,8,16,32. You have to pick one of those values, there is no 12 for example. This forces a decision on it. If you had a 1 to 10 scale, there's really no differentiating factor between a 7 and an 8. You get the idea.
So what we did was the dev team came up with their estimate for each story, and test did the same. Then the story was assigned the larger of the two numbers. Since you have to dev and test it during the iteration, larger number wins. Then as a team you commit to X number of points for an iteration (we used 2 weeks). At the end of the iteration, whatever stories are accepted as delivered are counted up, and that is your velocity for the iteration. The NEXT iteration, you can only commit to doing that number or less. You can certainly deliver more, but you can only commit up to that. Over time, your velocity will fluctuate, and then STABILIZE. That is the point where you know as a team how many points you can deliver in a 2 week period, in theory indefinitely. Now some people want to know how accurate your estimates were - i.e. we said this story was 16 points.. how many was it actually? Don't do that. That is exactly why we didn't use hours. It's irrelevant. What is relevant is how many points you delivered. By making the points a non-quantifiable number you can't do that. It let's you focus on what is really important, and that is determining the team's sustainable velocity.
It is a foreign concept. But we did it for 3 years. Actually the project is still going, I just left and took on a different positon in the company. Yeah, we had challenges, funding and otherwise, but we were able to deal with them. We had to cut about 1/2 our team at one point, and our velocity suffered. But we got to the point where when we said we could deliver something by a certain date, we could. I really don't see that very often, and it wasn't the case with all of the projects around us struggling with Waterfall. Again, it's not a panacea, but it can work and to discount something just because you don't understand it or have never actually done it is foolish.
Use an algorithm. Use real answers, but replace vowels with the letter Q. (for example) Mother's maiden name: Smith => SmQth First pet: Spot => SpQt
Just make up a general rule. This is what I do with my passwords. They are based on a rule that I can remember. Then you can apply that rule to any password. Like switch the first and last letters. Smith = hmitS, Spot = tpoS. Or use numbers. Or a combination. It quickly looks like nonsense, but if you use a rule then you can apply it. Or change it. If you have to change a password, then switch from using Q to W, then E, then R, then T, etc.
You can even write down your rule in plain site. If I wrote down "flip Q" as a reminder, it would remind me to flip the first and last letters, then replace vowels with Q.
And I just came up with this one for this post. The one I actually used is based on something nobody could guess, and has been altered over the years so that I am the only one that knows it. And it works! I still remember an intern at my first job left to go back to school in 1994, and he told me his unix password in case I needed to get into his account. It was CIrpotb, (Clearly I remember picking on the boy,) from Pearl Jam's song Jeremy.
I used to think Mormons were crazy. Then I got to know a few of them (I live in AZ). They seemed like really nice, decent people. Then I got to know them much better... and realized they are very good at hiding their craziness. They have a system and a program in place on how to show you and convince you they aren't crazy. They get points for bringing people into their faith. Their religion is very organized, and a lot of what they do is under a veil of "community". They are staunch conservative Republicans. And the ones I know talk out of one side of their mouth about how horrible liberals are, how Obama is the worst thing to happen to this country - while at the same time leeching off of the system they abhor. Unemployed, collecting public aid and welfare (sometimes from two states at once), and being very shady in general. There is a creepy sense of "entitlement". And I know people who are no longer in the Mormon church... and getting out is not a simple thing. That should tell you something.
I can't generalize all Mormons of course, but I have seen these things on more than one occasion. Knowing what I know first-hand about Mormons, there is no way I want one in the White House. And you are probably thinking that Christians aren't much better.. but I can tell you that in general I agree, but it's not always about choosing the best person it's about choosing the one that is less dangerous. Look up Prop 8, there's tons of info out there.
Honestly, XP was stable enough for me, Win 7 seems ok. But that's irrelevant. Linux does what I want it to do, it works the way I want it to work. Windows does not. Mac does not. Period. I love Linux, and not because I hate Windows. I've been using it exclusively on my computer since 1998, and I have no reason to change.
It's happened with all the big companies I've worked for. It does suck. It sucked for me because I had hand-picked my team and built it up. So I effectively argued that I didn't have any weak memebers, and I won that argument. The idea is that there should be a percentage OVERALL that is stacked. And the idea isn't that you just identify those who are weaker to eliminate them, the idea is to then train those people. But it's a paradox, because at some point (in theory) you won't have any bottom percenters.
In the end, it's a bad management tool. Nobody hardly ever used it like that though.
Replace MPAA with RIAA and Netflix with MP3s and it is the exact same argument from the late 90s.
They have the same MO. They create this desire, the NEED for this entertainment. Then they have to control how you get it. People will either get turned off to it, or find ways around it. It happened with MP3s. It was all about ripping/sharing/DLing (napster). What the RIAA *should* have done was embraced MP3s, converted their massive backlog of music to that format, and set up a cheap pricing structure and ways for people to get them. Instead, they fought to destroy digital music. We see how well that worked.
Hell, this is the 2nd time around for the MPAA, they fought in court to get VCRs banned, declared illegal. Look how much money they made off of VHS/DVD sales.
I love Netflix, we've watched all kinds of stuff we wouldn't have set out to watch otherwise. Just got done with United States of Tara. We do the DVD and streaming options, with kids it's well worth it. I hope Netflix thrives despite the licensing challenges ahead of them.
I agree. You don't have to be negative, but you don't have to be positive either. Q: "How did you get along with your boss?" Don't be brutally honest and say "I didn't, he's a clueless asshole". You could just as easily say "We didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things"... if they ask you to expand on that, you can say "I'd rather not". Saying you don't want to talk about something does actually say something. Or you can talk about things/processes without targeting individuals.
There are ways to say things, and those people paying attention will get your meaning. I find it much more effective whether in an exit interview or not. I've gone into exit interviews with the intention of telling them everything that I thoguht was wrong, and always ended up just not doing it. I just wanted to walk away. With the one exception being where they let me go for telling them I couldn't do something they asked of me (which was impossible BTW). They told me they brought in someone who could do it. I said "he won't be able to". That guy was gone in 3 months, and the company folded after another 6. That company got exactly what it deserved. I've since received linkedin requests from the clueless execs of that company, and again - instead of telling them to fuck off I just ignored the requests. I'm at peace with that.
I am into motorcycles, and it's something you either get or don't. But this is a good video to watch and listen to.. it's more about losing the can-do spirit than specifically being a farmer or building your own house. I too grew up on a farm but I also have a computer science degree (from '93) and I try to apply it to that as well. It's why I've been exclusively a Linux user since '98. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdNEJAFfFLA
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"I think that Jon Stewart and the Daily Show said it well when they said we have to change our attitude and culture around guns. They likened it to smoking."
Jon Stewart borrowed this mode of thinking from the current administration's justice department (the same one that ran illegal guns across the border and sold them specifically to gang members and drug dealers. Also the same justice department that would deny your right to due process by attacking you with a drone).Changing society's view of a gun to associate with everything negative isn't the answer, it's indoctrination, and it's wrong.
Video games aren't the problem. Guns aren't the problem. Violent movies are also not the problem (although they fit the same category you describe of those that "need to take responsibility for this"). The problem is that parents need to be parents to their children and teach them the difference between right and wrong. The problem is that people in the world need to view human life as precious, and learn to treat each other's lives with respect.
But part of the problem IS the parents... parents are the ones watching all those damn crime shows / movies / News / and now parents play VIDEO GAMES. You can tell your kids all day long what is right and wrong... but if you sit around and play FPS on a giant screen tv and they see you excited and having fun, they absorb that. So I agree with you.. but parents - and quite frankly our government - are part of our society. Yeah - our government needs to change too. When I say we all need to change I mean ALL. I don't know how exactly, it isn't an easy or quick thing to do. It's a slow process that got us here and it will prob be a slow one to reverse. What kills me is that everyone gets so defensive and doesn't even want to talk about changing. I don't understand what people fear so much about admitting that we all have a responsibility and spend more time trying to pinpoint what everyone ELSE can do about it. Bottom line is our legal and governmental systems can't change it, it has to come from our society in general and if overall we aren't willing to admit there is an issue, it won't change.
You miss 100% of the shots you never take.
I don't *blame* the gaming industry any more than the gun industry or the entertainment industry for these shootings.
If it wasn't an AR-15 it would have been a rifle or shotgun or something else. If there were no guns, obviously shootings wouldn't happen but violence would still exist. But that isn't the world we live in, and we make violence "easy". And before that little switch in your brain flips and you think for a second that I am saying we should ban or take away ANYTHING (guns, video games, movies) then you are 100% wrong. More laws are not the answer and are far from it.
What I think needs to change is our attitudes towards violence. OUR attitude. EVERYONE has a part to play in this, and it has to be voluntary. The NRA needs to get their heads out of their asses and realize that providing access to any type of firearm with no restrictions or checks will make it much easier for everyone to have guns - and that includes people who really shouldn't have them. (and yes, I know that determining WHO that is would be nearly impossible). But we have to try. Movies/TV/Entertainment companies (including video gaming industry) needs to understand that they DO glorify violence. We are inundated with violence, from FPS games to movies to TV shows. I don't watch any of them, but there are entire series of TV shows around horribly violent acts (CSI, etc). If you can step back for a second and look at it all holistically - it is very saddening.
I think that Jon Stewart and the Daily Show said it well when they said we have to change our attitude and culture around guns. They likened it to smoking. The message has to change, the overall general attitude towards things. Think about these trials that occur, like the Jodi Arias trial. It was a horrible murder, but let's be honest - in this country and world it happens a lot. But there are shows that are dedicated to follow the trial, to examine it, to discuss it in such desensitizing detail that it is sickening. I really don't get the whole obsession that people have with violence. It's why I quit watching the local news. Over time, I think that it really starts to alter your way of thinking about the world. If any of you have kids, especially boys, then there are nerf guns and foam swords and killing this and that, good guys vs bad guys... again, nothing new. But that can't be our only message that they see, and it is harder and harder to shield them from that. My own kids had to go through a "shooter" drill at school, and that is how they learned about the Newtown shootings. They are in K and 2nd grade!
What I would really like to see is the video gaming industry to take some kind of responsibility for this - not because they are at fault, but because it is the right thing to do. And not by slapping ratings on games, or limiting sales to minors, or anything like that. But by really taking an internal look at what they are producing and self-regulate it. They have the power to influence through what they do, and I think the message being sent is a very harmful one.
That sounds horrible. You are starving yourself, and your body will hate it. Although it is not just about weight loss, I've lost about 13 lbs in 3 months by eating high-quality fat, meat, nuts/seed, vegetables, and cheese. Low-carb - no grains, no sugar. Here's the thing - your body doesn't need carbs in the massive quantities people eat them in. All it does is train your body to live off of glucose as a by-product of insulin production. Not to mention that the way you are eating is not how humans have been eating for 99.99% of the time we've been around. Fat is over twice as dense as an energy source, and fat does NOT make you fat. If you cut out grains, your body will operate off of fat as an energy source. Even if you skip meals, you aren't ravenously hungry because your body can process the fat in your body and use it as energy. You can't do this now, because you are dependent on carbs.
Don't kill yourself - read "Good Calories Bad Calories" or "Why We Get Fat" (a kind of layman's version of GCBC by Gary Taubes.
Then read The Primal Blueprint. It will change your life.
The human body is a badly designed, self-destructing patchwork of bits that are perpetually one bad jolt away from a breakdown, so it's not surprising that they've discovered yet again, that excessive quantities of things we need to live will also kill us.
Actually I draw the opposite conclusion from this. The human body is so amazingly flexible and adaptable, that it can survive on a huge variety of diets, and can compensate for poor diets so well that it can be difficult to realize the long-term effects that these poor diets are having, given the relatively benign short-term symptoms.
Look at the history of mankind and what we ate in order to evolve to this point. As is pointed out in the documentary "in search of the perfect human diet" if you started at the goal line of a football field and if that was the "dawn of man", and walked all the way to the other goal line, the span of time that we have been eating grains and sugars in large quantities would take up the last 1/2". For 2.5 million years our ancestors were meat-eating primates. The time we have been eating grains (10-20k years ago) is but a blink of an eye. Our bodies evolved eating high-fat diets, so all this low-fat high-carb stuff is literally killing us.
I've been doing a lot of reading on dietary topics, and it is quite amazing how many opinions about our dietary needs are based on nothing but opinion or the opinions of other people. Even the scientific results can be mis-interpreted or looked at in so many ways that you can seemingly show whatever you want from these studies.
There's a ton of stuff out there, like the book "Good Calories Bad Calories" that covers it in depth, but watch this video by Dr Peter Attia. I think it sums it up pretty well. The limits of scientific evidence and the ethics of dietary guidelines -- 60 years of ambiguity
I've been following the Primal Blueprint lifestyle for a few months, and the effects have been pretty amazing.
Two quotes that I try to remember, and wished that everyone else would remember as well...
Believe those who are seeking the truth ; doubt those who find it.
The second is in my signature...
what we do know is that the intent of his efforts were to try and improve things[...]
No, no you do not know that. He got in office on a bunch of promises and falsehoods (nothing new there) that huge numbers of highly gullible people bought wholesale. Once in office he did exactly nothing to make anything better and in fact has made things far worse.
I think "worse" is debatable... a trillion dollar / hundreds-of-thousands-lives-lost nonsense occupation of Iraq, Guantanamo (which he didn't close), and failing economy is hard to fix. Did he fix the economy? Well, not really. Do we know that he prevented another depression? No. Is this something that CAN be fixed in a couple of years? Probably not. Was it something that was created in only a couple of years? Probably not.
more importantly his policies have not directly led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and others around the world.
Ask Pakistan and other locations about near constant drone strikes before you say that. The difference between this and the former president is there, but not in the way you're thinking.
While that is not a good situation, it is a far far cry from the Iraq war. I agree with that Bush did with Afganistan. Iraq? No explanation, no reason has ever come close to justifying it. There will always likely be military actions that will be questionable. They know things we will never know, and will have to make the most difficult decisions. Look at the big picture, and who had a positive message and who tried (and succeeded) to keep us afraid with a "war on terror".
Sadly, the president can't fix the system that he's elected into, so as much as people want to complain about president A or B, the entire system is fucked, and even if someone wanted to un-fuck it there is no easy or simple way to do that.
Funny, in your response you didn't say what that reason was. Wikipedia is not the be-all-end-all of information, but I didn't see a reason listed there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War. And wouldn't you think that if you are going to overthrow a country, and not even declare war, and kill thousands upon thousands of your own people - let alone many many others around the world, and spend well over a trillion dollars, that there would have to be a pretty good reason? And that everyone would know what that reason was?
I'm not going to say that we will ever know the reasons behind all of our military actions, there's lots of things that go on that we don't know or probably need to know. Those are big decisions even if one person dies. This President has to make those calls, so will the next one... and all the ones before them. Bush had to deal with 9/11, and he went after them in Afganistan. He set the course for catching Bin Laden, which ended up happening in the Obama administration. To many, that was what needed to happen.
I'm not saying Obama's administration hasn't done this. But let's not just tell part of the story here... from the link you provided "George W. Bush vastly-accelerated the drone strikes the final year of his presidency. A list of the high-ranking victims of the drones was provided to Pakistan in 2009.[22] Obama has broadened these attacks to include targets seeking to destabilize Pakistani civilian government and the attacks of 14 and 16 February 2009 were against training camps run by Baitullah Mehsud"
Look - military stuff happens, CIA stuff happens, etc etc. I don't think that we fully understand it all or that we are in a position to analyze these things. Obama said that he would close Guantanamo (which, he inherited). It's still open. I honestly think that the President learns things when they get in office that not too many people know. That can certainly change their atitude on things. We don't know what he knows.
HOWEVER - you have to consider the scale of the military actions they've undertaken. Do I really need to point to the wiki article that shows the Iraq war and the number of deaths? There has never even been a reasonable explanation for that one, at least not one that would authorize it. Vendettas don't count.
Obama is standing on the shoulders of giants. Funny that you say "expansion" and not creation. See, he is expanding what is already there. I'm not saying it's right, but that's fact. Our entire legal system is built on this principle.
REAL abuse of executive power is invading a soverign nation and overthrowing its government with no just cause, and in the process fabricating evidence to try and gain support for your actions. To this DAY there has never been a reasonable explanation for our invasion and occupation of Iraq. While Obama hasn't fixed the mess he inherited in our country, and may have made some things worse, what we do know is that the intent of his efforts were to try and improve things, and more importantly his policies have not directly led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and others around the world. That is where I see a massive difference between this and the former president.
I think we would be getting smarter because there's a greater wealth of knowledge for us to draw on.
We stand on the shoulders that have come before us. We don't have to do as much trial and error when we know some things to be fact... which means we can figure out new things.
Since a century is but a blip of time, it might be hard to really get a solid measurement on it. The real question is, 100 years ago did they ask the question about whether or not they were smarter than the people from 100 years before that? :)
Because someone else will clean it up.
Sounds pretty smart to me. And if they're lucky, they get a boob in their mouth when they cry.
In Texas it is seen as a sign of weakness if you have to get closer than 100 feet to cast your vote.
That's because Texans vote by shooting at their ballots. "If you have to get closer than 100 feet, you need to practice your shooting more. YEE-HAW!" *bang* *bang* *bang*
Or sometimes it is the SMART thing to do if IT doesn't want to create extra work for themselves. I work for a very large company, and I still use XP. There is a program in place to migrate to Win7, but it's been going on for over a year now. It takes time. And when I say large, I mean LARGE... think 250k+ employees around the world. If you want to migrate that many people away from WinXP to Win7, and still have internal support, you'd better have a good plan and it will take lots of time.
I suppose Slashdot should pay someone for bringing us this story then?
I used to run Kubuntu, until some runaway process kept bringing my quad processor to its knees on occasion. So for over a year I've been running XFCE on top of Kubuntu. Why haven't I switched to Xubuntu? Because I don't want to do a fresh install. Upgrading has been pretty great so far.
I may eventually go back to KDE, but for now XFCE is fitting the bill.
I will, however, learn this time around and not upgrade right away. Last time I upgraded the day after it came out, and it took about 18 hours to download all the updates. That just makes me nervous. I would like to find a faster approach this time around.
No president does anything single-handedly? How about getting us INTO a war that never ever should have happened? Now, you could argue that it wasn't just GWB who did it, he had all his advisors, etc. But he was the guy. He made the call. He had no evidence of weapons, anything close to it has been falsified, and it had nothing to do with his "war on terror". There has never ever been any reasonable explanation for invading and overthrowing the government of a sovereign nation.
Obama may not have been able to live up to his promises, and he hasn't fixed everything he inherited. He inherited a deficet that GWB built, and made it even bigger. He made some promises he didn't keep. But here's the thing - his mistakes had the INTENT to fix things, and didn't cost thousands of lives. THAT is the difference between Obama and his predecessor.
I understand what he meant by that, and I don't think it is as bad as it reads. I think he just meant that those things are the key components, they are just part of the process, if you want to do it right.
I spent the last 3 years managing a testing teams on an Agile project. And it was at a very very large company that is most certainly concerned with money. What I saw Agile do was amazing... and yet, we had to compromise it somewhat. We didn't do pair programming. Our TDD wasn't as good as it could have been. We faced challenges with it, but we had contraints that we had to deal with, especially after our first release. But I will say that the quality and volume of what we put out was far and above anything else around us.
IMO, Agile isn't for every software project, and there are some that I think it simply just wouldn't work for... but it is very very useful when it fits. BUT - you have to really adopt it. It really is a team effort, and if it's not, or if you ignore or sabotage some of the key components of it, you will fail. To one of your points, calling velocity a "nonsense construct" tells me immediately that you've never done Agile, at least not successfully. I'll take a moment to explain....
You actually aren't far off... it kind of is a nonsense construct. What?! Yeah. It is a unit of effort. Here is how we did it. Each story is written to describe the functionality desired. It should follow good story principles of INVEST (look it up). Once you have that, the development and test team review it, and quickly put an estimate on it. We used a point scale. 1,2,4,8,16,32. You have to pick one of those values, there is no 12 for example. This forces a decision on it. If you had a 1 to 10 scale, there's really no differentiating factor between a 7 and an 8. You get the idea.
So what we did was the dev team came up with their estimate for each story, and test did the same. Then the story was assigned the larger of the two numbers. Since you have to dev and test it during the iteration, larger number wins. Then as a team you commit to X number of points for an iteration (we used 2 weeks). At the end of the iteration, whatever stories are accepted as delivered are counted up, and that is your velocity for the iteration. The NEXT iteration, you can only commit to doing that number or less. You can certainly deliver more, but you can only commit up to that. Over time, your velocity will fluctuate, and then STABILIZE. That is the point where you know as a team how many points you can deliver in a 2 week period, in theory indefinitely. Now some people want to know how accurate your estimates were - i.e. we said this story was 16 points.. how many was it actually? Don't do that. That is exactly why we didn't use hours. It's irrelevant. What is relevant is how many points you delivered. By making the points a non-quantifiable number you can't do that. It let's you focus on what is really important, and that is determining the team's sustainable velocity.
It is a foreign concept. But we did it for 3 years. Actually the project is still going, I just left and took on a different positon in the company. Yeah, we had challenges, funding and otherwise, but we were able to deal with them. We had to cut about 1/2 our team at one point, and our velocity suffered. But we got to the point where when we said we could deliver something by a certain date, we could. I really don't see that very often, and it wasn't the case with all of the projects around us struggling with Waterfall. Again, it's not a panacea, but it can work and to discount something just because you don't understand it or have never actually done it is foolish.
Use an algorithm.
Use real answers, but replace vowels with the letter Q. (for example)
Mother's maiden name: Smith => SmQth
First pet: Spot => SpQt
Just make up a general rule. This is what I do with my passwords. They are based on a rule that I can remember. Then you can apply that rule to any password.
Like switch the first and last letters. Smith = hmitS, Spot = tpoS. Or use numbers. Or a combination. It quickly looks like nonsense, but if you use a rule then you can apply it. Or change it. If you have to change a password, then switch from using Q to W, then E, then R, then T, etc.
You can even write down your rule in plain site. If I wrote down "flip Q" as a reminder, it would remind me to flip the first and last letters, then replace vowels with Q.
And I just came up with this one for this post. The one I actually used is based on something nobody could guess, and has been altered over the years so that I am the only one that knows it. And it works! I still remember an intern at my first job left to go back to school in 1994, and he told me his unix password in case I needed to get into his account. It was CIrpotb, (Clearly I remember picking on the boy,) from Pearl Jam's song Jeremy.
I used to think Mormons were crazy.
Then I got to know a few of them (I live in AZ). They seemed like really nice, decent people.
Then I got to know them much better... and realized they are very good at hiding their craziness. They have a system and a program in place on how to show you and convince you they aren't crazy. They get points for bringing people into their faith. Their religion is very organized, and a lot of what they do is under a veil of "community". They are staunch conservative Republicans. And the ones I know talk out of one side of their mouth about how horrible liberals are, how Obama is the worst thing to happen to this country - while at the same time leeching off of the system they abhor. Unemployed, collecting public aid and welfare (sometimes from two states at once), and being very shady in general. There is a creepy sense of "entitlement". And I know people who are no longer in the Mormon church... and getting out is not a simple thing. That should tell you something.
I can't generalize all Mormons of course, but I have seen these things on more than one occasion. Knowing what I know first-hand about Mormons, there is no way I want one in the White House. And you are probably thinking that Christians aren't much better.. but I can tell you that in general I agree, but it's not always about choosing the best person it's about choosing the one that is less dangerous. Look up Prop 8, there's tons of info out there.
Honestly, XP was stable enough for me, Win 7 seems ok. But that's irrelevant. Linux does what I want it to do, it works the way I want it to work. Windows does not. Mac does not. Period. I love Linux, and not because I hate Windows. I've been using it exclusively on my computer since 1998, and I have no reason to change.
It's happened with all the big companies I've worked for. It does suck. It sucked for me because I had hand-picked my team and built it up. So I effectively argued that I didn't have any weak memebers, and I won that argument. The idea is that there should be a percentage OVERALL that is stacked. And the idea isn't that you just identify those who are weaker to eliminate them, the idea is to then train those people. But it's a paradox, because at some point (in theory) you won't have any bottom percenters.
In the end, it's a bad management tool. Nobody hardly ever used it like that though.
Replace MPAA with RIAA and Netflix with MP3s and it is the exact same argument from the late 90s.
They have the same MO. They create this desire, the NEED for this entertainment. Then they have to control how you get it. People will either get turned off to it, or find ways around it. It happened with MP3s. It was all about ripping/sharing/DLing (napster). What the RIAA *should* have done was embraced MP3s, converted their massive backlog of music to that format, and set up a cheap pricing structure and ways for people to get them. Instead, they fought to destroy digital music.
We see how well that worked.
Hell, this is the 2nd time around for the MPAA, they fought in court to get VCRs banned, declared illegal. Look how much money they made off of VHS/DVD sales.
I love Netflix, we've watched all kinds of stuff we wouldn't have set out to watch otherwise. Just got done with United States of Tara. We do the DVD and streaming options, with kids it's well worth it. I hope Netflix thrives despite the licensing challenges ahead of them.
I agree. You don't have to be negative, but you don't have to be positive either.
Q: "How did you get along with your boss?"
Don't be brutally honest and say "I didn't, he's a clueless asshole". You could just as easily say "We didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things"... if they ask you to expand on that, you can say "I'd rather not". Saying you don't want to talk about something does actually say something. Or you can talk about things/processes without targeting individuals.
There are ways to say things, and those people paying attention will get your meaning. I find it much more effective whether in an exit interview or not. I've gone into exit interviews with the intention of telling them everything that I thoguht was wrong, and always ended up just not doing it. I just wanted to walk away. With the one exception being where they let me go for telling them I couldn't do something they asked of me (which was impossible BTW). They told me they brought in someone who could do it. I said "he won't be able to". That guy was gone in 3 months, and the company folded after another 6. That company got exactly what it deserved. I've since received linkedin requests from the clueless execs of that company, and again - instead of telling them to fuck off I just ignored the requests. I'm at peace with that.
I am into motorcycles, and it's something you either get or don't. But this is a good video to watch and listen to.. it's more about losing the can-do spirit than specifically being a farmer or building your own house. I too grew up on a farm but I also have a computer science degree (from '93) and I try to apply it to that as well. It's why I've been exclusively a Linux user since '98.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdNEJAFfFLA