Re:Still disappointed with the ending
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The Chronoliths
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· Score: 2
As far as the Hugos go my favorite this year is American Gods. I thought I'd hate the book, judging from its title and the fact that I'm not American at all. I nearly didn't read it, but in the end decided I couldn't make a fair judge of the other Hugo nominees without reading it. I am very glad I did. The American in the title refers to being of all of America, not just the USA. Neil Gaiman's Coraline just came out as well, and my copy's already in the mail.
I didn't think that I would like American Gods very much, but I picked it up on the recommendation of Uncle Willy and found out that I enjoyed it quite a bit. In fact, I just reread it again a couple weeks ago beore I started passing it around to my friends. It's not particularly dense reading (I finished it in one lazy Saturday) but is still quite entertaining.
I wonder if she's related to Lady 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool...;-)
It's funny how concepts like these move in groups in my life. I had read "Neuromancer" about 15 years ago and had forgotten most of it. Earlier today I read the thread on the new Star Wars game. In that thread there was a post by a Bioware employee using the nickname Dixie Flatline (I normally don't even read nicknames on Slashdot, except in this case I wanted to see who it was that worked at Bioware). The name Dixie Flatline rang a bell with me because I used to use the same handle on a BBS many years ago, but I couldn't remember where I had gotten the name from. Then "Neuromancer" clicked in my head, so I went to E2 to refresh my memory of who Dixie Flatline was. To make a long story short (too late) I spent the better part of an hour reading the various "Neuromancer" and William Gibson related nodes, one of which was titled "Lady 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool."
Err...the gist of this is that I would have had no idea who you referring to (much less gotten the joke) had I not inadvertantly caught that comment in the Star Wars game thread and done some reading up on it. My life is frequently like this...a never-used memory is suddnely jogged by something during the day which then turns up several more times over the course of the day. I think that's proof that everything really is connected.
Are you kidding? The original X-Wing was so amazingly better than TIE Fighter. You flew for the good side, and (resisting urge to hit caps lock) you got to fly the trench run. THE TRENCH RUN! (sorry). When you drop that torpedo into the port, it is just the coolest thing ever. The original SW sit down video game had a trench run that was pretty excellent, but the graphics where green lines, which isn't too immersive. TIE Fighter was good. Rogue Squadrod had it's moments. But due almost entirely to the trench run, X-Wing will always be one of my favorite games.
How about X-Wing Alliance? It has everything that you liked about X-Wing and TIE Fighter, it has the excellent multiplayer parts of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, but it lets you fly even more different ships, including the Millenium Falcon. If that's not enough, you also get to fly the Falcon into the Death Star MkII and take out the reactors yourself, then fly back out all the while being chansed by squads of TIE Fighters! Now I'm telling you, that's excitement!
I've played Dark Forces, Dark Forces II/Jedi Knight I, Jedi Knight II, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, and X-Wing Alliance. Those two games very nicely sum up the total experience of the Star Wars universe for me. The only way you could make it better would be to merge the two genres while retaining the depth of each individual genre.
Of course, that will never happen. I mean, why make a game that combines genres like that instead of making 2 separate games? If you make a combined game it will cost you almost as much as making 2 separate games. If you make them separaretly then the people like me who love both genres will buy both separate games. If you make a combined game then you risk alienating the Flight Sim purists or FPS purists, and you only get sales from one game. That's the real injustice of the Star Wars license.
Re:EBay and PayPal ... not my favorites
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Ebay buys PayPal
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· Score: 2
PayPal, while secure, isn't exactly cheap. While it's quick and secure, if you use credit cards and direct deposit. The fees for transfering funds are outrageous. I think PayPal starts to make up for it through the services they provide that are similar to any other bank.
They don't tell you this in big bold unambiguous neon letters, but Paypal is not a bank. If they were a bank they would be regulated like a bank. They would have to adhere to reasonable consumer protection laws. They would be better equipped to handle fraud, and the accountholders would also be insured. As it stands now, Paypal is just a company that shuffles money around for you...sometimes.
If you've ever read the T&C's you'll see that they have a great deal of freedom to do whatever they want with your paypal account and any bank/credit card accounts that are associated with it. If you've ever read Paypalsucks (you can also get to it at www.nopaypal.com if your firewall is picky) you can see that they often do just that. If you have $1000 in your Paypal account and someone disputes a $10 charge from your account Paypal will confiscate all of the money in your account, no questions asked (and no due process given, either). Do you think that a bank could get away with that? It is a very dangerous misconception that Paypal is a bank, one that Paypal tried very hard not to undermine.
Re:Smart Move for Ebay, bad for paypal people.
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Ebay buys PayPal
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· Score: 2
Who else can see paypal becoming a "have money sent to you, but only be allowed to be spent on ebay" type of service?
It'll never happen. The whole point of selling something on Ebay is to trade something that you have no use for to get money in return. If you can't get your money out of the system then you either won't sell your items on Ebay or you will use a different payment system (like money order). This will hurt Ebay, so it makes no sense for them to change it.
What I can see happening is having Billpoint and Paypal merged into the leading online micropayment solution. I can see Ebay integrating Billpoint/Paypal more thoroughly into the "Ebay experience". You'll probably see more Ebay merchants accepting these payment systems, and with any luck you might actually see Ebay branch out into escrow services for merchants and customers (since Ebay runs the risk of being caught holding the bag in instances of fraud).
It may require a bit of looking around. I used to work for the company that actually ran Dellhost...not just the servers, but also the technical support side. At that time (2001) The only relationship between Dell and Dellhost is the name and the fact that they actually used Dell servers (or so they claimed.) Otherwise, Dellhost is run by a completely different operation (and not a very good one either, but i may have a bit of angst against a former employer.:-)
Yes, they did actually use Dell servers. I also worked for Interliant briefly, but not in the DellHost division (though I did support the DellHost teams). And you're right, it wasn't all that great of a company to work for. The pay was above average at first, but then the organization took a serious downhill slide and starting laying off most of the employees that they had acquired in mergers. Fortunately I got out before they popped. It wouldn't suprise me that they tried to solicit business from King George II.
Leaving that aside for the moment, one wonders why the fact you know all these things is bad.
Because I live on the other side of the country and this information is not only useless to me, making sure that I know it does nothing to help the cause of finding Elizabeth Smart. But on to the point...
If you know them, maybe others know them, and maybe we have thousands informed people whose eyes are on the lookout. It seems like a good thing.
I think the better question than "why is this getting attention" would be "can we scale this effect for good"?
That's just it, you can't scale this effect for good. Scaling this effect is bad! Sure, we can publicize the lurid details of a single child abduction on a nationwide scale, but what good does it do? They are hyping the abduction of a single child, one of thousands who is abducted on a daily basis and one who (in all likelihood) is already dead. Hyping this single case works to the detriment of all the thousands of other kids who have been abducted and haven't been hyped. The more time NBC, CBS, and ABC spend on the Smart case the less time they are spending on the Patterson case or many others like it. And what purpose does all the hype serve? None. What good did the JonBenet Ramsey hype do? What about Chandra Levy? What about Danielle Van Dam? They were all dead long before the nationwide hype machine swung into full gear but that didn't keep the networks from hyping them anyways.
The point of the article is that Elizabeth Smart's abduction is merely a single incident out of thousands that are no less newsworthy. The only reason that the Smart case is deemed newsworthy is because it isn't usually the rich man's kid who is kidnapped. The message is that unless you have lots of money then your kid isn't worth the hype because you aren't the media's "target demographics."
It's just ridiculous how much "news" time is devoted to following one story that really isn't remotely important on a national scale. Obviously any kidnapping/murder is a tragedy, but isn't there anything more significant to devote hours and hours of breathless reporting to? JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, whoever this little girl is -- these stories are not news, they're human interest.
If I had a local news station, I'd pepper the regular programming with commercials saying things like "Are you sick of hearing about Chandra Levy? We are too! Tune in to Channel 4 News at 11:00 PM, now 100% Chandra Free!"
The funny thing is, I don't know anybody who doesn't complain about this kind of coverage. You'd think that a TV news station would catch on and realize that they could gain marketshare by not beating a dead horse (or intern) and advertising that fact. It really is sickening that 10 minutes of every national newscast has to be dedicated to a local interest story simply so that they can say "there's nothing new to report in this case today, so we're just going to keep re-hashing the same old shit we've been telling you for days."
WTF is up with that. CNN Headline News used to be a somewhat reliable source of important news. Now they lead with how Britney Spears is starting her concert tour, and then 18 minutes into the half our, they mention a little blurb about bombing in Israel or something
I don't watch CNN so much, but I do hit their web site a few times a day. What I've noticed lately (and I say this at the risk of being labelled as anti-semitic) is an overdose of news coverage about the violence in the Middle East. Sure, a bomb goes off and it's "headline news". That makes sense. But for several days in a row during the last week the "headline story" on the CNN website has been something like, "Bus drivers fear more bombings" or "Israelis live in fear." Well, no shit. But was there another bombing that day? No. Were there certainly more newsworthy articles to have as the headline story? Yes. But they all got bumped to a lesser position so that CNN can run a "headline story" about an Israeli bus driver who is afraid that his bus will be the next to blow up. That's not a "headline story". That's not even news. That's simply common sense.
Do you live in Milwaukee? Have you ever been to Milwaukee? Do you realize that for the past two months (or however long she's been missing) it's been on the news almost every day in Milwaukee? There are flyers in most local businesses with her picture. There are tons of things in the paper.
I've never said anything, JonKatz, about your unwarranted rantings, but this is too far. Oh, and by the way, how did you find out about Alexis Patterson? Doing an internet search about missing kids in the recent past and running across some media coverage of the story?
Err...I don't live in Milwaukee. I haven't the slightest clue who Alexis Patterson is, or rather I didn't until she was referenced in this article. This is the first that I've heard of her or her abduction.
Neither do I live in Salt Lake City. I live in Ohio. I've heard of Elizabeth Smart. I not only know who she is, I can tell you exactly what she looks like and what she was wearing when she was abducted. I can tell you what her abductor was reportedly wearing the night of the abduction.
Not only that, I can name each of Elizabeth's siblings, her parents, and even her uncle. I can tell you what suburb of Salt Lake City they live in. I can tell the name of the handyman who has done construction work for the family and is now a chief suspect. I can tell you what he was paid for his work. I can tell you what kind of car the handyman drives. I can tell you that the handyman lives in a mobile home nextdoor to his in-laws who also live in a mobile home. I can tell you that he has pet cats.
I can tell you that Elizabeth's younger sister has told two different stories of what happened the night that Elizabeth disappeared. I can tell you that there was a statewide search during which someone claims to have seen a suspect matching the abductor's description acting strangely in a wooded ravine area, but that further investigation turned up nothing. I can tell you that police have investigated false sightings of Elizabeth as far away as Texas, and that there was also a nationwide manhunt for a material witness who was found after a week in a hospital in the eastern US.
I have no interest whatsoever in either of these abduction cases. The chances of me ever needing to use any of this information is so far beyond miniscule as to be laughable, but it has all been imprinted in my head, and I don't even watch the news that much.
Milwaukee may be saturated with news of the abduction of Alexis Patterson, but that saturation doesn't even touch the surface of the nationwide saturation of news regarding Elizabeth Smart. This is in addition to the local saturation in Salt Lake City that I'm sure is every bit as bad as that in Milwaukee. Your post is seriously off base when considering the vast difference in the scale of media hype.
Also, I don't recall the phrase "I pledge allegiance to the United States government" being anywhere in the pledge. You are pledging allegiance to your country when you recite it
The phrase that has you pledging allegiance is "and to the Republic, for which it stands." This is quite clearly not a pledge to a country but a pledge to the government of that country (actually a specific model of government that this country has).
The ruling was not put forth by the entire court, just by a three judge panel, with one of the panel members noting that the supreme court already found the pledge constitutional.
I'd definitely like to see your source on that last part. After having read Judge Fernandez's dissenting opinion I can say that I saw no such reference to the Supreme Court ruling that the pledge as it stands is constitutional. Furthermore, if the SCOTUS had in fact actually made such a ruling in the past there's very little chance that the case would have even gotten as far as it had, let alone been overturned in such a manner.
Actually I wish the entire idea of a forced Pledge of Allegiance would be done away with.
Exactly. Added to your other points (which I have not quoted here), it is not uncommon for citizens of foreign countries to attend US schools. Why should a Swedish exchange student (like a good friend of mine) be forced to pledge allegiance to the US government? More to the point, why should a US citizen be forced to pledge allegiance to the US government? I'm a US citizen and there are many things that our government does that I don't agree with. I shouldn't have to blindly agree to give the government my undying loyalty if I'm not taking a public office or entering the military.
Not a stupid question at all. The answers are...no, and nothing. Critics will argue that the kids who do not participate will 'feel bad' or something like that, but participation is entirely voluntary.
As an athiest and a patriot I have been waiting for this for years! Think about it. What would the founding fathers think of us pledging that we will accept the impetus of government and deny our own right to rebel on a daily basis. In god we trust is the only thing left on the chopping block!
As a fellow atheist and patriot (contrary to what ***king George the First claims), I was quite excited to learn of the ruling too. In addition to "In God We Trust", we also need to make sure that Ohio's state motto "With god all things are possible" gets the axe as well. Then we can really celebrate.
Actually, the founding fathers would have been appalled at such a ruling. Perhaps you forgot a portion of the Declaration of Independence:
"endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,..."
I dunno about that. Creator could mean nature, the universe, the process of evolution, or parents. It's a far cry from proclaiming and endorsing a monotheistic view of the world.
The 9th Circuit is the most liberal and the most overturned appeals court in the country.
If this is true, this could be overturned.
I don't know if it is the most, but it is pretty liberal and pretty frequently overturned. It also frequently reverses itself. In this case, however, it appears that they have sided fairly strongly with legal precedent set forth in the Supreme Court cases Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) and Lynch v. Donnelly (1984). As counter-intuitive as the decision may seem, it appears to be on fairly solid legal ground. All it would take to make the pledge constitutionally acceptable would be to remove the words "under god" which were added to it in 1954, so it should be an easy situation to remedy.
This is especially true when citizens are not guaranteed their first amendment right of freely exercising their religion in school.
What? Where in the constitution does it guarantee the right to freely exercise religion in school? BTW, you are aware that children do not have the same constitutionally protected rights as adults right? Especially children in state schools...
Many schools have claimed that for children to pray in school (or otherwise exercise their right of religion as stated in the constitution) breaks the "Separation of Church and State" clause, which doesn't exist!
The "Separation of Church and State" clause generally refers to the First Ammendment of the constitution which states Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." While it does not use the specific words "separation of church and state", it does in fact express that concept. This has been explicitly stated several times by the US Supreme court in Reynolds v. United States (1878) and Everson v. Board of Education (1947). It has also been further expounded upon by the Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) and Lynch v. Donnelly (1984).
It's very common for the "christian right" to try to use the same fallacious argument as you have to decieve people into thinking that there is no such thing as a separation of church and state, even though such fraudulent claims fly in the face of common sense and over 120 years of legal history. If it's such a big deal for your kids to be able to have an official group prayer 3 times a day, send them to a private christian school.
This is indeed true. There is no such clause in the constitution.
Just like the phrases "original sin" and "trinity" don't exist in the christian bible. But then that doesn't stop christians from using them to describe cornerstones of their faith, does it?
The Constitution doesstate that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". What does this mean? Well, the US Supreme court used the words "separation of church and state" to put this concept into simple to understand words. Incorporating notions of theism and monism into the pledge clearly shows an endorsement of these concepts over others. That is why it is unconstitutional.
The nonexistance of the phrase "separation of church and state" in the Constitution is not only not insightful, it's not even relevant. It is however a quite misleading.
Oh, and, as a tip, don't quote Friends' writers for something topical to the real world... it just makes everyone involved look all that much sillier for trying.
Speaking as somebody who read the Trilogy back in about 1974, and can't understand why ANYBODY wouldn't have already read the books:
Where the fuck have you been? Watching TeeVee?
To paraphrase from Joey on "Friends" when Ross asks him why he didn't read Lord of the Rings in high school:
"I was getting laid in high school."
Though in my case it was more like getting laid and reading lots of non-fiction. I've perpetually got a stack of unread books in my office about 4 feet high, and the rest of the LotR books are currently in it. But there's plenty of other books that are far more interesting and/or better written than the LotR series. Do I appreciate that Tolkien wrote the books that forever defined the Fantasy genre in books? Yes. Does that mean that I think someone who hasn't read them is some kind of idiot who is spoiling or wasting their life? No.
My original post was merely pointing out the hypocrisy of Bonker's complaining about the spoiler in the trailer when he did the same thing in his post.
So here they come and spoil the fuck out of it for the non-readers with the damn trailer. Thanks a whole fucking lot, Peter Jackson.
Err...speaking as someone who has not read past FotR and who has not yet seen the trailer for The Two Towers, I have to say that your post was every bit as much a spoiler as the trailer. There were other posts in this thread that stated that there were spoilers in the trailer without spelling out what they were. So I guess to paraphrase:
You stick a CD-Label on the non-date side. Duhhh. The whole *POINT* of this article is that it can non-destructively burn a visible image in amongst the data, and someone makes a post about the data side not being the label side. omg.
Errr...no. For those of us who read the article, the point was that you can burn images into the data side of a CD in the unused space. All of you fantasizing about burning images of Tux into your distribution CD's can pretty much forget about it since your data will consume all of the usable space. You absolutely cannot use this device to "non-destructively burn a visible image in amongst the data". omg.
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As far as the Hugos go my favorite this year is American Gods. I thought I'd hate the book, judging from its title and the fact that I'm not American at all. I nearly didn't read it, but in the end decided I couldn't make a fair judge of the other Hugo nominees without reading it. I am very glad I did. The American in the title refers to being of all of America, not just the USA.
Neil Gaiman's Coraline just came out as well, and my copy's already in the mail.
I didn't think that I would like American Gods very much, but I picked it up on the recommendation of Uncle Willy and found out that I enjoyed it quite a bit. In fact, I just reread it again a couple weeks ago beore I started passing it around to my friends. It's not particularly dense reading (I finished it in one lazy Saturday) but is still quite entertaining.
I wonder if she's related to Lady 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool... ;-)
It's funny how concepts like these move in groups in my life. I had read "Neuromancer" about 15 years ago and had forgotten most of it. Earlier today I read the thread on the new Star Wars game. In that thread there was a post by a Bioware employee using the nickname Dixie Flatline (I normally don't even read nicknames on Slashdot, except in this case I wanted to see who it was that worked at Bioware). The name Dixie Flatline rang a bell with me because I used to use the same handle on a BBS many years ago, but I couldn't remember where I had gotten the name from. Then "Neuromancer" clicked in my head, so I went to E2 to refresh my memory of who Dixie Flatline was. To make a long story short (too late) I spent the better part of an hour reading the various "Neuromancer" and William Gibson related nodes, one of which was titled "Lady 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool."
Err...the gist of this is that I would have had no idea who you referring to (much less gotten the joke) had I not inadvertantly caught that comment in the Star Wars game thread and done some reading up on it. My life is frequently like this...a never-used memory is suddnely jogged by something during the day which then turns up several more times over the course of the day. I think that's proof that everything really is connected.
Are you kidding? The original X-Wing was so amazingly better than TIE Fighter. You flew for the good side, and (resisting urge to hit caps lock) you got to fly the trench run. THE TRENCH RUN! (sorry). When you drop that torpedo into the port, it is just the coolest thing ever. The original SW sit down video game had a trench run that was pretty excellent, but the graphics where green lines, which isn't too immersive. TIE Fighter was good. Rogue Squadrod had it's moments. But due almost entirely to the trench run, X-Wing will always be one of my favorite games.
How about X-Wing Alliance? It has everything that you liked about X-Wing and TIE Fighter, it has the excellent multiplayer parts of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, but it lets you fly even more different ships, including the Millenium Falcon. If that's not enough, you also get to fly the Falcon into the Death Star MkII and take out the reactors yourself, then fly back out all the while being chansed by squads of TIE Fighters! Now I'm telling you, that's excitement!
I've played Dark Forces, Dark Forces II/Jedi Knight I, Jedi Knight II, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, and X-Wing Alliance. Those two games very nicely sum up the total experience of the Star Wars universe for me. The only way you could make it better would be to merge the two genres while retaining the depth of each individual genre.
Of course, that will never happen. I mean, why make a game that combines genres like that instead of making 2 separate games? If you make a combined game it will cost you almost as much as making 2 separate games. If you make them separaretly then the people like me who love both genres will buy both separate games. If you make a combined game then you risk alienating the Flight Sim purists or FPS purists, and you only get sales from one game. That's the real injustice of the Star Wars license.
PayPal, while secure, isn't exactly cheap. While it's quick and secure, if you use credit cards and direct deposit. The fees for transfering funds are outrageous. I think PayPal starts to make up for it through the services they provide that are similar to any other bank.
They don't tell you this in big bold unambiguous neon letters, but Paypal is not a bank. If they were a bank they would be regulated like a bank. They would have to adhere to reasonable consumer protection laws. They would be better equipped to handle fraud, and the accountholders would also be insured. As it stands now, Paypal is just a company that shuffles money around for you...sometimes.
If you've ever read the T&C's you'll see that they have a great deal of freedom to do whatever they want with your paypal account and any bank/credit card accounts that are associated with it. If you've ever read Paypalsucks (you can also get to it at www.nopaypal.com if your firewall is picky) you can see that they often do just that. If you have $1000 in your Paypal account and someone disputes a $10 charge from your account Paypal will confiscate all of the money in your account, no questions asked (and no due process given, either). Do you think that a bank could get away with that? It is a very dangerous misconception that Paypal is a bank, one that Paypal tried very hard not to undermine.
Who else can see paypal becoming a "have money sent to you, but only be allowed to be spent on ebay" type of service?
It'll never happen. The whole point of selling something on Ebay is to trade something that you have no use for to get money in return. If you can't get your money out of the system then you either won't sell your items on Ebay or you will use a different payment system (like money order). This will hurt Ebay, so it makes no sense for them to change it.
What I can see happening is having Billpoint and Paypal merged into the leading online micropayment solution. I can see Ebay integrating Billpoint/Paypal more thoroughly into the "Ebay experience". You'll probably see more Ebay merchants accepting these payment systems, and with any luck you might actually see Ebay branch out into escrow services for merchants and customers (since Ebay runs the risk of being caught holding the bag in instances of fraud).
It may require a bit of looking around. I used to work for the company that actually ran Dellhost...not just the servers, but also the technical support side. At that time (2001) The only relationship between Dell and Dellhost is the name and the fact that they actually used Dell servers (or so they claimed.) Otherwise, Dellhost is run by a completely different operation (and not a very good one either, but i may have a bit of angst against a former employer. :-)
Yes, they did actually use Dell servers. I also worked for Interliant briefly, but not in the DellHost division (though I did support the DellHost teams). And you're right, it wasn't all that great of a company to work for. The pay was above average at first, but then the organization took a serious downhill slide and starting laying off most of the employees that they had acquired in mergers. Fortunately I got out before they popped. It wouldn't suprise me that they tried to solicit business from King George II.
Leaving that aside for the moment, one wonders why the fact you know all these things is bad.
Because I live on the other side of the country and this information is not only useless to me, making sure that I know it does nothing to help the cause of finding Elizabeth Smart. But on to the point...
If you know them, maybe others know them, and maybe we have thousands informed people whose eyes are on the lookout. It seems like a good thing.
I think the better question than "why is this getting attention" would be "can we scale this effect for good"?
That's just it, you can't scale this effect for good. Scaling this effect is bad! Sure, we can publicize the lurid details of a single child abduction on a nationwide scale, but what good does it do? They are hyping the abduction of a single child, one of thousands who is abducted on a daily basis and one who (in all likelihood) is already dead. Hyping this single case works to the detriment of all the thousands of other kids who have been abducted and haven't been hyped. The more time NBC, CBS, and ABC spend on the Smart case the less time they are spending on the Patterson case or many others like it. And what purpose does all the hype serve? None. What good did the JonBenet Ramsey hype do? What about Chandra Levy? What about Danielle Van Dam? They were all dead long before the nationwide hype machine swung into full gear but that didn't keep the networks from hyping them anyways.
The point of the article is that Elizabeth Smart's abduction is merely a single incident out of thousands that are no less newsworthy. The only reason that the Smart case is deemed newsworthy is because it isn't usually the rich man's kid who is kidnapped. The message is that unless you have lots of money then your kid isn't worth the hype because you aren't the media's "target demographics."
It's just ridiculous how much "news" time is devoted to following one story that really isn't remotely important on a national scale. Obviously any kidnapping/murder is a tragedy, but isn't there anything more significant to devote hours and hours of breathless reporting to? JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, whoever this little girl is -- these stories are not news, they're human interest.
If I had a local news station, I'd pepper the regular programming with commercials saying things like "Are you sick of hearing about Chandra Levy? We are too! Tune in to Channel 4 News at 11:00 PM, now 100% Chandra Free!"
The funny thing is, I don't know anybody who doesn't complain about this kind of coverage. You'd think that a TV news station would catch on and realize that they could gain marketshare by not beating a dead horse (or intern) and advertising that fact. It really is sickening that 10 minutes of every national newscast has to be dedicated to a local interest story simply so that they can say "there's nothing new to report in this case today, so we're just going to keep re-hashing the same old shit we've been telling you for days."
WTF is up with that. CNN Headline News used to be a somewhat reliable source of important news. Now they lead with how Britney Spears is starting her concert tour, and then 18 minutes into the half our, they mention a little blurb about bombing in Israel or something
I don't watch CNN so much, but I do hit their web site a few times a day. What I've noticed lately (and I say this at the risk of being labelled as anti-semitic) is an overdose of news coverage about the violence in the Middle East. Sure, a bomb goes off and it's "headline news". That makes sense. But for several days in a row during the last week the "headline story" on the CNN website has been something like, "Bus drivers fear more bombings" or "Israelis live in fear." Well, no shit. But was there another bombing that day? No. Were there certainly more newsworthy articles to have as the headline story? Yes. But they all got bumped to a lesser position so that CNN can run a "headline story" about an Israeli bus driver who is afraid that his bus will be the next to blow up. That's not a "headline story". That's not even news. That's simply common sense.
Do you live in Milwaukee? Have you ever been to Milwaukee? Do you realize that for the past two months (or however long she's been missing) it's been on the news almost every day in Milwaukee? There are flyers in most local businesses with her picture. There are tons of things in the paper.
I've never said anything, JonKatz, about your unwarranted rantings, but this is too far. Oh, and by the way, how did you find out about Alexis Patterson? Doing an internet search about missing kids in the recent past and running across some media coverage of the story?
Err...I don't live in Milwaukee. I haven't the slightest clue who Alexis Patterson is, or rather I didn't until she was referenced in this article. This is the first that I've heard of her or her abduction.
Neither do I live in Salt Lake City. I live in Ohio. I've heard of Elizabeth Smart. I not only know who she is, I can tell you exactly what she looks like and what she was wearing when she was abducted. I can tell you what her abductor was reportedly wearing the night of the abduction.
Not only that, I can name each of Elizabeth's siblings, her parents, and even her uncle. I can tell you what suburb of Salt Lake City they live in. I can tell the name of the handyman who has done construction work for the family and is now a chief suspect. I can tell you what he was paid for his work. I can tell you what kind of car the handyman drives. I can tell you that the handyman lives in a mobile home nextdoor to his in-laws who also live in a mobile home. I can tell you that he has pet cats.
I can tell you that Elizabeth's younger sister has told two different stories of what happened the night that Elizabeth disappeared. I can tell you that there was a statewide search during which someone claims to have seen a suspect matching the abductor's description acting strangely in a wooded ravine area, but that further investigation turned up nothing. I can tell you that police have investigated false sightings of Elizabeth as far away as Texas, and that there was also a nationwide manhunt for a material witness who was found after a week in a hospital in the eastern US.
I have no interest whatsoever in either of these abduction cases. The chances of me ever needing to use any of this information is so far beyond miniscule as to be laughable, but it has all been imprinted in my head, and I don't even watch the news that much.
Milwaukee may be saturated with news of the abduction of Alexis Patterson, but that saturation doesn't even touch the surface of the nationwide saturation of news regarding Elizabeth Smart. This is in addition to the local saturation in Salt Lake City that I'm sure is every bit as bad as that in Milwaukee. Your post is seriously off base when considering the vast difference in the scale of media hype.
*and* it had a very bad typo.
That wasn't a typo, it was intentional. I think it was actually suppposed to be some sort of meta-joke. A very bad meta-joke, though.
The source of this was "All Things Considered", the afternoon news program on NPR. I can't remember who the comentator was.
2 602opn.pdf
OK, here's my source:
http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/conlaw/newdowus6
Also, I don't recall the phrase "I pledge allegiance to the United States government" being anywhere in the pledge. You are pledging allegiance to your country when you recite it
The phrase that has you pledging allegiance is "and to the Republic, for which it stands." This is quite clearly not a pledge to a country but a pledge to the government of that country (actually a specific model of government that this country has).
The ruling was not put forth by the entire court, just by a three judge panel, with one of the panel members noting that the supreme court already found the pledge constitutional.
I'd definitely like to see your source on that last part. After having read Judge Fernandez's dissenting opinion I can say that I saw no such reference to the Supreme Court ruling that the pledge as it stands is constitutional. Furthermore, if the SCOTUS had in fact actually made such a ruling in the past there's very little chance that the case would have even gotten as far as it had, let alone been overturned in such a manner.
Actually I wish the entire idea of a forced Pledge of Allegiance would be done away with.
Exactly. Added to your other points (which I have not quoted here), it is not uncommon for citizens of foreign countries to attend US schools. Why should a Swedish exchange student (like a good friend of mine) be forced to pledge allegiance to the US government? More to the point, why should a US citizen be forced to pledge allegiance to the US government? I'm a US citizen and there are many things that our government does that I don't agree with. I shouldn't have to blindly agree to give the government my undying loyalty if I'm not taking a public office or entering the military.
Not a stupid question at all. The answers are...no, and nothing. Critics will argue that the kids who do not participate will 'feel bad' or something like that, but participation is entirely voluntary.
Not true. There are some states that mandate the recitation of the pledge. Even in states that don't, many school districts do. And even if your state or school district makes it optional, what happens if your son's first grade teacher decides that your son is a trouble maker and gives him detention because he doesn't want to recite the pledge, or wants to recite it without the "under god" line, or in some other way deviates from what that teacher thinks he should do? I know, it sounds ridiculously far-fetched, but then again having an assistant principal checking girls underwear at a high school dance (in the presence of a police officer no less!) to make sure that they weren't wearing thongs sounded ridiculously far-fetched to me a month ago. (That's a cached Goodle page, BTW.)
As an athiest and a patriot I have been waiting for this for years! Think about it. What would the founding fathers think of us pledging that we will accept the impetus of government and deny our own right to rebel on a daily basis. In god we trust is the only thing left on the chopping block!
As a fellow atheist and patriot (contrary to what ***king George the First claims), I was quite excited to learn of the ruling too. In addition to "In God We Trust", we also need to make sure that Ohio's state motto "With god all things are possible" gets the axe as well. Then we can really celebrate.
Actually, the founding fathers would have been appalled at such a ruling. Perhaps you forgot a portion of the Declaration of Independence:
..."
"endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
I dunno about that. Creator could mean nature, the universe, the process of evolution, or parents. It's a far cry from proclaiming and endorsing a monotheistic view of the world.
The 9th Circuit is the most liberal and the most overturned appeals court in the country.
If this is true, this could be overturned.
I don't know if it is the most, but it is pretty liberal and pretty frequently overturned. It also frequently reverses itself. In this case, however, it appears that they have sided fairly strongly with legal precedent set forth in the Supreme Court cases Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) and Lynch v. Donnelly (1984). As counter-intuitive as the decision may seem, it appears to be on fairly solid legal ground. All it would take to make the pledge constitutionally acceptable would be to remove the words "under god" which were added to it in 1954, so it should be an easy situation to remedy.
This is especially true when citizens are not guaranteed their first amendment right of freely exercising their religion in school.
What? Where in the constitution does it guarantee the right to freely exercise religion in school? BTW, you are aware that children do not have the same constitutionally protected rights as adults right? Especially children in state schools...
Many schools have claimed that for children to pray in school (or otherwise exercise their right of religion as stated in the constitution) breaks the "Separation of Church and State" clause, which doesn't exist!
The "Separation of Church and State" clause generally refers to the First Ammendment of the constitution which states Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." While it does not use the specific words "separation of church and state", it does in fact express that concept. This has been explicitly stated several times by the US Supreme court in Reynolds v. United States (1878) and Everson v. Board of Education (1947). It has also been further expounded upon by the Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) and Lynch v. Donnelly (1984).
It's very common for the "christian right" to try to use the same fallacious argument as you have to decieve people into thinking that there is no such thing as a separation of church and state, even though such fraudulent claims fly in the face of common sense and over 120 years of legal history. If it's such a big deal for your kids to be able to have an official group prayer 3 times a day, send them to a private christian school.
This is indeed true. There is no such clause in the constitution.
Just like the phrases "original sin" and "trinity" don't exist in the christian bible. But then that doesn't stop christians from using them to describe cornerstones of their faith, does it?
The Constitution does state that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". What does this mean? Well, the US Supreme court used the words "separation of church and state" to put this concept into simple to understand words. Incorporating notions of theism and monism into the pledge clearly shows an endorsement of these concepts over others. That is why it is unconstitutional.
The nonexistance of the phrase "separation of church and state" in the Constitution is not only not insightful , it's not even relevant. It is however a quite misleading.
Oh, and, as a tip, don't quote Friends' writers for something topical to the real world ... it just makes everyone involved look all that much sillier for trying.
It was what we like to refer to as "a joke".
Speaking as somebody who read the Trilogy back in about 1974, and can't understand why ANYBODY wouldn't have already read the books:
Where the fuck have you been? Watching TeeVee?
To paraphrase from Joey on "Friends" when Ross asks him why he didn't read Lord of the Rings in high school:
"I was getting laid in high school."
Though in my case it was more like getting laid and reading lots of non-fiction. I've perpetually got a stack of unread books in my office about 4 feet high, and the rest of the LotR books are currently in it. But there's plenty of other books that are far more interesting and/or better written than the LotR series. Do I appreciate that Tolkien wrote the books that forever defined the Fantasy genre in books? Yes. Does that mean that I think someone who hasn't read them is some kind of idiot who is spoiling or wasting their life? No.
My original post was merely pointing out the hypocrisy of Bonker's complaining about the spoiler in the trailer when he did the same thing in his post.
So here they come and spoil the fuck out of it for the non-readers with the damn trailer. Thanks a whole fucking lot, Peter Jackson.
Err...speaking as someone who has not read past FotR and who has not yet seen the trailer for The Two Towers, I have to say that your post was every bit as much a spoiler as the trailer. There were other posts in this thread that stated that there were spoilers in the trailer without spelling out what they were. So I guess to paraphrase:
Thanks a whole fucking lot, Bonker.
You stick a CD-Label on the non-date side. Duhhh. The whole *POINT* of this article is that it can non-destructively burn a visible image in amongst the data, and someone makes a post about the data side not being the label side. omg.
Errr...no. For those of us who read the article, the point was that you can burn images into the data side of a CD in the unused space . All of you fantasizing about burning images of Tux into your distribution CD's can pretty much forget about it since your data will consume all of the usable space. You absolutely cannot use this device to "non-destructively burn a visible image in amongst the data". omg.