IMHO - Natalie still seems much like a girl, compared to the others above that seem like women. Maybe it's because I grew up with them
Maybe that's because the ones you grew up with didn't have to live in an era where a woman over 120 lbs is considered fat. Of the nations top female models, something like 2/3 are considered "malnourished" under the UN guidelines for nutrition and human rights. Just a random factoid, but somewhat telling about our society eh?
What with all the hub bub about cell phones causing cancer, is there a risk that having a flipping cell phone antenna on top of the pay phone booth could cause problems? I mean, you'd have the things on street level basicly blasting out microwaves a few feet from the heads of hundreds of passersby. Saturate an area in those things and you're talking a sea of radiation.
As for racism, I think you're grasping for straws. There are racial stereotypes certainly, but it's hard to establish a never before heard of race and not stereotype it as "agressive" or "funny" or "ill tempered".... However, in order to classify as "racism", I think you would have to actually introduce an *existing* racial stereotype or clearly attempt to sway the audience to hatred on the basis of race alone. SW never does this, AFAICR.
I agree and disagree. I don't think Lucas intended anything racist in his recent debacle. However, few can argue that the startling Japanese portrayal of the Trade Federation or the Black Face commedy that characterized Jar Jar does not characterize "an existing racial sterotype." Many of us have preexisting notions of what a ruthless capitalist empire should look and act like. Many who remember the booming Japanese economy of the 1980s equate the Japenese with this.
Similarly, slapstick commedy has its roots in the racist black face commedy of the old south. Jar Jar's bizarre accent sounds just southern enough to make his strange humor seem racist. Did Lucas intend it? I doubt it... nonetheless, the message is there.
I guess what I'm saying is that TPM is unquestionably racist in its outlook. Does that make Lucas racist? Oddly no. But he should have been more carefull.
Land a man on the moon? What the hell's the point of that? What's on the moon that we're so keen to get at anyhow? Why bother going?
Usefull things we have the space program to thank for...
1.) Ball Point Pens
2.) Synthetic Fibers
3.) Advanced aerospace design (military aircraft, commercial aircraft, nerf gliders)
4.) Noise Reduction (satelite TV etc)
5.) Bar Coding
6.) Modern vision tests
7.) Non mercury temperature sensors (ear thermometer)
8.) Cordless tools
9.) Joysticks
10.) Most plastics
What will the Human Genome Project yeild? I'll be curious to see. I've already had a few friends lives saved from Class A Experimental Genetic Treatments. Is this just the begining?
People want to watch TV shows but do not wish to watch ads.
Consequently they skip the adds.
If the ads are made more amusing and more interesting people will want to watch the ads as well.
The clear example of this is the Super Bowl. My fiancee, who thinks football is a barbaric, mindless, tiresome practice that somehow vents our twisted societies need to experiance violence, religiously watches the Super Bowl every year explicitly for the comercials.
The success of sites like AdCritic indicates that people will, if the content is good enough, actualy go out of their way to watch comercials. Hell, the 7up commercials had me laughing so hard I fell out of my chair once. Lo and behold I find myself drinking more 7up.
If advertisers are pissed because people won't watch their shit the clear solution is to make better commercials.
I think, as usual, we've got a case of journalist not being able to find his ass with both hands. Cyborgs are, as clearly demonstrated, all around us.
Go through the entire artical and mentaly replace the word "Cyborg" with "Mind/Machine Interface." While it FUBARs the grammer pretty bad, it makes the article somewhat more accurate.
This is farily off topic but I'm trying to answer a question here. Moderators, please be kind.
Firstly I did not mean to imply that Soviet atrocities began with Stalin. A better way to put it might be that Soviet attrocities began to be put into common everyday practice under Stalin. The link included later in this discussion addresses the noteable failure of Lenin's ambitious program of "War Communism" which failed miserably resulting in famine and widespread starvation. Most scholars agree that Lenin did not intentionaly starve the population out (remember, Lenin was still consolodating his power at this point, starving people to death does not win them to your cause) but rather placed to much faith in a plan that hindsight tells us was doomed from the outset.
The Cold War is a facinating topic, one which I'll try to sumarize in breif. One of the dominant thories explaining US victory in the Cold War (espoused by Phillip Zelikow but well articulated by John Lewis Gaddis in We Now Know) is that Stalin's reign placed pressure on Soviet society. Mao, a follower of Stalin, tried similar tactics during his "Great Leap Forward." As the Soviet Union and the PRC diverged after the Sino-Soviet Split however, the USSR became fist more centralist, then more hardline, and then back to centralist (Khruschev -> Andropov and Chernynkeo -> Gorby). Gorbachev's willingness to take pressure off of the people and his unwillingness to use force to suppress rebellion is in diametric opposition to the willingness of the PRC to use force to quash rebellions (see Tiananmen Square). It is these revolts that would eventualy cause the breakup of the Soviet Union, culminating in Gorabachev's resignation as Premire on December 25, 1991.
As to what caused to revolts themselves? Many theories. Consumer goods are hard to find in communist societies. Wealth is absent from the majority of the population and many people simply don't like living that way. The Capitalist model is simply better adapted to producing consumer goods as well as military goods en masse and this production deficit had devistating consequences for the USSR. Political repression in the USSR also tended to come in waves, a particularly bad idea. For quite some time in, for example, the State of Virginia, it was illegal to carry a concealed weapon. Legislation in the 1990s made this legal (with a permit). Were the virginia legislature to attempt to revoke this privilage it would meet with stiff resistance, while there was little resistance to the origional law forbiding it in the first place. Take this same idea on a much more massive scale and you have the fundamental cause of the USSRs breakup. Once you give an oppressed people liberties, you can not take those liberties back without a fight. Gorbachev after granting marginal degrees of freedom, was unwilling to fight to restore Soviet rule.
Although the star's core would be neither solid nor crystal nor faceted, apparently it would reflect some light at its boundaries and otherwise resemble a diamond
So last I checked, we'd call that "carbon" right? I mean, if it's a big, non-crystaline chunk of carbon, it's not a diamond right? That's at least my understanding of what a diamond is....
Even the hard core right wingers I so often disagree with will espouse the law (note that word, law) of supply and demand.
If people are willing to watch it, it may not reflect the truth, but it does reflect what they want. They wouldn't watch it otherwise would they? So dosn't it follow logicly that the media does give us a pretty good idea of what the people as a whole want to see?
I'm not saying one particular station/paper/mag. I'm talking about the media as a collective entity.
So holding a degree in Russian History I feel compelled is get really annoyed when people make comments like this.
Firstly, Bolshiviks are different then Communists. W.E.B. DeBouis was a communist. He wasn't a brutal inhuman monster, he was a central figgure in the US civil rights movement, something few people (but the insanely ignorent and bigoted) will be willing to denounce as "brutal [and] inhuman"
Secondly, equating Bolshivism with US leftism is like equating an M80 with a tacnuke. US leftism embrases the ideals (admitedly corrupted by the politicians that enact them) of egalitarianism and equality. US Leftists don't want to abolish the capitalism system, they don't want to set up a system of single party rule, they don't want to nationalize every single industry in the country, and they certainly don't want to deport the population of say, Georgia, to parts of Siberia (little historical joke there, don't expect the fanatic right winger I'm responding to to get this one).
Finaly, to equate even Bolshivism, which was the ideological construct utilized by Lenin in his government with the perverted monstrosity that was Stalinism is another classic historical blunder. Stalin's reign of terror over the USSR changed completely and totaly the nature of the government of the country. Khruschev, Stalin's successor, and Premire of the USSR during the period mentioned (1957-1959) was a follower of Stalin's who broke with Stalin shortly after his death (Stalin's that is, not Khruschev's).
Khruschev's willingness to sacrifice human lives in the interest of science are not really that different then the COUNTLESS crimes our government (as well as the Soviet government) committed against her own citizens. Sending soliders into a nuclear blast zone to test the effects of radiation on troops comes to mind for instance.
Yes, the USSR was a dictatorship. Yes this is a deploreable and horrid thing. But the arrogance of the American people to assume that our system is that terribly much better then theirs is one of the greatest mistakes this country can make. The USSR has much yet to teach us. For example, before Stalin's death in 1953 the USSR claimed (rightfully) a 100% literacy rate. Pretty impressive for a backwards basicly 3rd world nation. Yes, we won the cold war. Yes, capitalism triumphed. But let's try to learn something from our fallen enemy, rather then continuing to blindly demonize him to prop up our own sordid nation.
I'm not even going after the obvious abortion trolls.
I don't want to be repetitive, but the other reply is a bit vauge.
The Miranda decision forbids the prosecution from using anything you say prior to being informed of your Miranda rights (i.e. Keep silent, have a laywer etc) against you. In short, untill you've been told you don't HAVE to say anything, you can be considered to be confessing under duress, and thus whatever you say is null and void.
If Amtrak is basically a government agency, as many of the posts here seem to indicate, then this behaviour seems unconstitutional to me.
It's only unconstitutional if Amtrack forces you to give them that data with the understanding that if you attempt to resist they will take it anyway. That's what a search is.
No one makes you buy an Amtrack ticket, and if you don't buy a ticket you don't have to deal with Amtrack selling your data to the DEA. Since that data was given willingly it's use by the DEA does not constitute aquisition through an illegal search, it was given freely.
Since Amtrack is not a law enforcement agency (even though it may or may not be an arm of the federal government) what you tell it is not protected by Miranda. Consequently, what you say can be used against you in a court of law.
It's always been this way. Computers just make it faster and it now involves lots less paper to keep track of.
I always thought agencies like the ATF (known for "draconian" tactics), the FBI (known as THEM), the NSA (always a sketchy group, see Enemy of the State etc), and (of course) the IRS were the ones that people disliked.
Perhaps I'm drawing the trend to far, but I'm assuming that Joe and Jane Sixpack of Nowheresville USA want little Joey and Suzie protected from all the evil Drug Dealers out there and that they therefor support the DEA who, unlike the afforementioned agencies, generaly dosn't get much media coverage. Since the DEA at least tells everyone they are out there keeping the streets free of drugs and thus safe for America's Young People I figgured they had a pretty good wrap. Am I wrong on this? I've never really seen any high level media damnation of the DEA [e.g. Waco].
Because hospitals have regulations called Patient Confidentiality. These are enforced BY the hospitals to protect their clients. Amtrack does not have such agreements. Furthermore, if the hospital is subpeonaed (sp?) by the court for the information it can be forced to provide it, just a shrink can be forced to provide data on a subject in a court of law.
Warning: IANAL, all thoughts, opinions, and ideas expressed in this post are those of the poster alone. Don't argue this in front of the Supreme Court, or indeed even your mother.
The DEA, can, as far as I know, use informants if they so choose. Corporations make wonderfull informants as they rarely have a sence of morality attached to them. Were the DEA forcing Amtrack to give these passanger lists over, that would be a Constitutional question (unreasonable search etc) but paying them is something else entirely.
I'm not debating the moral question, I think it sucks. But there's not diddly squat that I can think of that prevents Amtrack from selling that data to anyone else, be they a marketing agency or the US Governemnt.
More to the point, who's really going to come down on the DEA for buying passenger lists from Amtrack? It's hard to find a Fed Law Enforcement group more well received by the American People then the DEA.
Columbus wasn't even the first european to land in N. America. Indeed, Norse fishermen had been fishing off the coast of Northern Canada for centuries before Columbus even thought about sailing West.
There wasn't much in the way of gold in the Americas anyway. And ironicly, the presence of the Europeans in the Greater Antilles was welcomed by the Arawak tribes that dominated the area at the time. Carib tribesmen from Brazil were moving steadily up the islands starting with the southern most island of Trinidad. The Caribs were a very warlike people, and among other things used canibalism as part of a ritual war rite.
This is not intended to excuse the actions of the Spaniards, but rather to provide an explanation of why the Arawaks were so welcoming to the Spaniards. Columbus viewed the Arawaks in a typical European fassion, seeing them as fit for slavery. A "docile" people, Columbus assumed that they would be easily dominated and that their "primitive" tribal work structure would benefit from hard labor.
The Arawaks were nearly wiped out in a generation.
By 1661 the first Slave Act was passed, allowing the importation of "Nego" (I use this word for historical accuracy, not out of bigotry. These men and women were not yet "african americans" and, deprived of their culture, ceased to be "Africans" the moment they steped on the slave ship) slaves from the Africas.
Well what's the point of all this you ask? I'm proving a point. It's an academic point, but it's a valid one. European explorers, or should Isay opressors, in the Islands were never really able to extract gold from the islanders. Columbus confined his explorations and explotations to the Antilles and the northern coast of Venezuela.
Spanish mining efforts on the mainland are a better example of what you're talking aobut. Though slavery does not equate to genocide... neither is what I'd consider an action to be encouraged. Admittedly, the Spanish did massacre some 90 Million (maximum) natives. Most of these deaths were caused by smallpox and other diseases unintentionaly introduced by the Europeans. This isn't to say that the European conduct in the area was anything short of deplorable, but the actions of the Japanese in WWII were about a million times worse. I'm actualy not able to relate the actions of the Japanese in this message, they are simply to horrible to place on paper. Read The Rape of Nanking for more data.
One major downside to this. According to this post on ZDnet there could be some problems with the basic idea we're all floating.
I'm not going to vouch for his credibility, as there's really not enough data. But he claims that "only one or two users connected to each cell site can use the 2MB speed, and if they do, no one else can use ANY data services."
If this is accurate, the entire thing is basicly for naught.
Are you, per chance, insane? This can't work. There's only two ways such a bomb could function.
1.) Combustion. Burn all the hydrogen. But then you start running into oxygen consumption problems.
2.) Fusion, but fusion requires a very small space with loads of energy in it. Just setting off a nuke in a bunch of hydrogen dosn't trigger a chain fusion reaction. You need to compress the hydrogen fuel while you head it. Usualy shaped fins of Uranium 238 do this.
Then there's the element of cost. It's just prohibitivly expensive to build a hugeass hydrogen container in space (cause you can't launch it from eath).
Lots of misconceptions on the topic of nukes here. Lets see if we can start debunking them.
Firstly, depending on the size of the rock in question a fairly substantial blast could be generated. A 60 mile radius of total desctuction is quite substantial, probably well in excess the most sophisticated "city buster" weapons still deployed today.
As to the concept of radiation, yes and no. Most of the "fall out" you hear about when nukes are involved is dirt and debree kicked up by the blast that small bits of fissile material have attached themselves to. This is why air burst explosions are typicaly cleaner than ground burst explosions. A space based blast would have very little in the way of fallout simply because of the very low escape velocity of such an asteroid. Most of the dust would just go casualy wizzing about space. The rock itself would have radioactivity not significantly in excess of background radioactivity
It's a piddling point, but your average 1 megaton nuke is probably a plutonium implosion device with a tritium fusion booster core. The "small" atomic bombs droped on Japan in 1945 were very fission inefficient, thus accounting for their yeilds (both less than 20 kilotons).
A FAQ on Nukes and other such toys is available HERE
Normaly I'd direct you to the NUKEOTRON to play with burst effects, but that's down, so wander around WOMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) for a more interactive tour
Ok, well, sure they could. But they don't. Why? Because teaching sucks no one wants to teach, not anyone in their right minds anyhow. Basicly you have to take shity wages for the privilages of standing in front of a class room full of bitter, hostile, and (more and more frequently) armed teenagers with unstable hormonal ballances.
Small wonder there's a teacher shortage. Which is why we have so many shitty teachers. Something is better than nothing. That's why we have football coaches teaching history. That's why any nimrod can get a job teaching your children.
Now you'd think that supply and demand would catch up with this system, but it hasn't yet. I for the life of me can't figgure out why. If you started paying teachers 45,000 to 50,000 a year you could start demanding a hell of a lot more of them. More to the point, there are a lot of people who have teaching cirtificates as a "backup" who might make awsome teachers. Start paying a reasonably sane wage and they might go ahead and give it a try. Can't hurt.
Of course, the final problem is the fact that teachers have to deal with parrents. Seriously, you go the the doctor, he diagnoses that pain in your ear as an ear infection, gives you antibiodics. You take them... why? Cause he's a doctor, he knows what he's talking about right? Same thing if your lawyer tells you that clause in your will is full of holes, you fix it. Why? Cause he's a lawyer, he knows his shit. But when a teacher tells you that you need to spend more time reading to your kid and helping him with his homework, or that your kid might have a learning disability... that's for some reason unaccecptable. People actualy go off a teachers for this sort of thing. Teachers have lost their jobs (yes I know people this happened to) for this stuff.
You've REALLY gotta love those kids to put up with that shit. That's the argument for keeping the job horrid. Of course, you might not love them, you might just be a lazy bastard that dosn't want to have to strain intelectualy. Sounds like we've encountered both kinds. I'm open to any solution, but I've yet to hear one that will be 100% effective.
I'm at UVA and, while I've never bothered to figgure out what they are, we have these ancient looking wall muonted routers in a few buildings. Teh case looks almost, but not exactly, unlike a compute... very flat and thin. If you didn't know better you'd think it was a telephone switcher or something like that. I can see that getting walled up. To say nothing of the fact that most of the housing/buildings/grounds staff here comes up about 3 IQ points short of self aware.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO - Natalie still seems much like a girl, compared to the others above that seem like women. Maybe it's because I grew up with them
Maybe that's because the ones you grew up with didn't have to live in an era where a woman over 120 lbs is considered fat. Of the nations top female models, something like 2/3 are considered "malnourished" under the UN guidelines for nutrition and human rights. Just a random factoid, but somewhat telling about our society eh?
This has been another useless post from....
Why else? They'll be garunteed about 100k sales if they make it penguin shaped like that April Fools joke Transmeta ran with a while ago.
This has been another useless post from....
What with all the hub bub about cell phones causing cancer, is there a risk that having a flipping cell phone antenna on top of the pay phone booth could cause problems? I mean, you'd have the things on street level basicly blasting out microwaves a few feet from the heads of hundreds of passersby. Saturate an area in those things and you're talking a sea of radiation.
Or I could be completely wrong.
This has been another useless post from....
As for racism, I think you're grasping for straws. There are racial stereotypes certainly, but it's hard to establish a never before heard of race and not stereotype it as "agressive" or "funny" or "ill tempered". ... However, in order to classify as "racism", I think you would have to actually introduce an *existing* racial stereotype or clearly attempt to sway the audience to hatred on the basis of race alone. SW never does this, AFAICR.
I agree and disagree. I don't think Lucas intended anything racist in his recent debacle. However, few can argue that the startling Japanese portrayal of the Trade Federation or the Black Face commedy that characterized Jar Jar does not characterize "an existing racial sterotype." Many of us have preexisting notions of what a ruthless capitalist empire should look and act like. Many who remember the booming Japanese economy of the 1980s equate the Japenese with this.
Similarly, slapstick commedy has its roots in the racist black face commedy of the old south. Jar Jar's bizarre accent sounds just southern enough to make his strange humor seem racist. Did Lucas intend it? I doubt it... nonetheless, the message is there.
I guess what I'm saying is that TPM is unquestionably racist in its outlook. Does that make Lucas racist? Oddly no. But he should have been more carefull.
This has been another useless post from....
Land a man on the moon? What the hell's the point of that? What's on the moon that we're so keen to get at anyhow? Why bother going?
Usefull things we have the space program to thank for...
1.) Ball Point Pens
2.) Synthetic Fibers
3.) Advanced aerospace design (military aircraft, commercial aircraft, nerf gliders)
4.) Noise Reduction (satelite TV etc)
5.) Bar Coding
6.) Modern vision tests
7.) Non mercury temperature sensors (ear thermometer)
8.) Cordless tools
9.) Joysticks
10.) Most plastics
What will the Human Genome Project yeild? I'll be curious to see. I've already had a few friends lives saved from Class A Experimental Genetic Treatments. Is this just the begining?
This has been another useless post from....
Again, the market comes into play on this.
People want to watch TV shows but do not wish to watch ads.
Consequently they skip the adds.
If the ads are made more amusing and more interesting people will want to watch the ads as well.
The clear example of this is the Super Bowl. My fiancee, who thinks football is a barbaric, mindless, tiresome practice that somehow vents our twisted societies need to experiance violence, religiously watches the Super Bowl every year explicitly for the comercials.
The success of sites like AdCritic indicates that people will, if the content is good enough, actualy go out of their way to watch comercials. Hell, the 7up commercials had me laughing so hard I fell out of my chair once. Lo and behold I find myself drinking more 7up.
If advertisers are pissed because people won't watch their shit the clear solution is to make better commercials.
If you build it they will come
This has been another useless post from....
I think, as usual, we've got a case of journalist not being able to find his ass with both hands. Cyborgs are, as clearly demonstrated, all around us.
Go through the entire artical and mentaly replace the word "Cyborg" with "Mind/Machine Interface." While it FUBARs the grammer pretty bad, it makes the article somewhat more accurate.
This has been another useless post from....
This is farily off topic but I'm trying to answer a question here. Moderators, please be kind.
Firstly I did not mean to imply that Soviet atrocities began with Stalin. A better way to put it might be that Soviet attrocities began to be put into common everyday practice under Stalin. The link included later in this discussion addresses the noteable failure of Lenin's ambitious program of "War Communism" which failed miserably resulting in famine and widespread starvation. Most scholars agree that Lenin did not intentionaly starve the population out (remember, Lenin was still consolodating his power at this point, starving people to death does not win them to your cause) but rather placed to much faith in a plan that hindsight tells us was doomed from the outset.
The Cold War is a facinating topic, one which I'll try to sumarize in breif. One of the dominant thories explaining US victory in the Cold War (espoused by Phillip Zelikow but well articulated by John Lewis Gaddis in We Now Know) is that Stalin's reign placed pressure on Soviet society. Mao, a follower of Stalin, tried similar tactics during his "Great Leap Forward." As the Soviet Union and the PRC diverged after the Sino-Soviet Split however, the USSR became fist more centralist, then more hardline, and then back to centralist (Khruschev -> Andropov and Chernynkeo -> Gorby). Gorbachev's willingness to take pressure off of the people and his unwillingness to use force to suppress rebellion is in diametric opposition to the willingness of the PRC to use force to quash rebellions (see Tiananmen Square). It is these revolts that would eventualy cause the breakup of the Soviet Union, culminating in Gorabachev's resignation as Premire on December 25, 1991.
As to what caused to revolts themselves? Many theories. Consumer goods are hard to find in communist societies. Wealth is absent from the majority of the population and many people simply don't like living that way. The Capitalist model is simply better adapted to producing consumer goods as well as military goods en masse and this production deficit had devistating consequences for the USSR. Political repression in the USSR also tended to come in waves, a particularly bad idea. For quite some time in, for example, the State of Virginia, it was illegal to carry a concealed weapon. Legislation in the 1990s made this legal (with a permit). Were the virginia legislature to attempt to revoke this privilage it would meet with stiff resistance, while there was little resistance to the origional law forbiding it in the first place. Take this same idea on a much more massive scale and you have the fundamental cause of the USSRs breakup. Once you give an oppressed people liberties, you can not take those liberties back without a fight. Gorbachev after granting marginal degrees of freedom, was unwilling to fight to restore Soviet rule.
The topic really is more complex then that and I'm sure I didn't address some people's pet theories. I would direct those interested in the topic to We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History and From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How they won the Cold War
This has been another useless post from....
Although the star's core would be neither solid nor crystal nor faceted, apparently it would reflect some light at its boundaries and otherwise resemble a diamond
So last I checked, we'd call that "carbon" right? I mean, if it's a big, non-crystaline chunk of carbon, it's not a diamond right? That's at least my understanding of what a diamond is....
This has been another useless post from....
Even the hard core right wingers I so often disagree with will espouse the law (note that word, law) of supply and demand.
If people are willing to watch it, it may not reflect the truth, but it does reflect what they want. They wouldn't watch it otherwise would they? So dosn't it follow logicly that the media does give us a pretty good idea of what the people as a whole want to see?
I'm not saying one particular station/paper/mag. I'm talking about the media as a collective entity.
This has been another useless post from....
So holding a degree in Russian History I feel compelled is get really annoyed when people make comments like this.
Firstly, Bolshiviks are different then Communists. W.E.B. DeBouis was a communist. He wasn't a brutal inhuman monster, he was a central figgure in the US civil rights movement, something few people (but the insanely ignorent and bigoted) will be willing to denounce as "brutal [and] inhuman"
Secondly, equating Bolshivism with US leftism is like equating an M80 with a tacnuke. US leftism embrases the ideals (admitedly corrupted by the politicians that enact them) of egalitarianism and equality. US Leftists don't want to abolish the capitalism system, they don't want to set up a system of single party rule, they don't want to nationalize every single industry in the country, and they certainly don't want to deport the population of say, Georgia, to parts of Siberia (little historical joke there, don't expect the fanatic right winger I'm responding to to get this one).
Finaly, to equate even Bolshivism, which was the ideological construct utilized by Lenin in his government with the perverted monstrosity that was Stalinism is another classic historical blunder. Stalin's reign of terror over the USSR changed completely and totaly the nature of the government of the country. Khruschev, Stalin's successor, and Premire of the USSR during the period mentioned (1957-1959) was a follower of Stalin's who broke with Stalin shortly after his death (Stalin's that is, not Khruschev's).
Khruschev's willingness to sacrifice human lives in the interest of science are not really that different then the COUNTLESS crimes our government (as well as the Soviet government) committed against her own citizens. Sending soliders into a nuclear blast zone to test the effects of radiation on troops comes to mind for instance.
Yes, the USSR was a dictatorship. Yes this is a deploreable and horrid thing. But the arrogance of the American people to assume that our system is that terribly much better then theirs is one of the greatest mistakes this country can make. The USSR has much yet to teach us. For example, before Stalin's death in 1953 the USSR claimed (rightfully) a 100% literacy rate. Pretty impressive for a backwards basicly 3rd world nation. Yes, we won the cold war. Yes, capitalism triumphed. But let's try to learn something from our fallen enemy, rather then continuing to blindly demonize him to prop up our own sordid nation.
I'm not even going after the obvious abortion trolls.
This has been another useless post from....
I don't want to be repetitive, but the other reply is a bit vauge.
The Miranda decision forbids the prosecution from using anything you say prior to being informed of your Miranda rights (i.e. Keep silent, have a laywer etc) against you. In short, untill you've been told you don't HAVE to say anything, you can be considered to be confessing under duress, and thus whatever you say is null and void.
This has been another useless post from....
If Amtrak is basically a government agency, as many of the posts here seem to indicate, then this behaviour seems unconstitutional to me.
It's only unconstitutional if Amtrack forces you to give them that data with the understanding that if you attempt to resist they will take it anyway. That's what a search is.
No one makes you buy an Amtrack ticket, and if you don't buy a ticket you don't have to deal with Amtrack selling your data to the DEA. Since that data was given willingly it's use by the DEA does not constitute aquisition through an illegal search, it was given freely.
Since Amtrack is not a law enforcement agency (even though it may or may not be an arm of the federal government) what you tell it is not protected by Miranda. Consequently, what you say can be used against you in a court of law.
It's always been this way. Computers just make it faster and it now involves lots less paper to keep track of.
This has been another useless post from....
I always thought agencies like the ATF (known for "draconian" tactics), the FBI (known as THEM), the NSA (always a sketchy group, see Enemy of the State etc), and (of course) the IRS were the ones that people disliked.
Perhaps I'm drawing the trend to far, but I'm assuming that Joe and Jane Sixpack of Nowheresville USA want little Joey and Suzie protected from all the evil Drug Dealers out there and that they therefor support the DEA who, unlike the afforementioned agencies, generaly dosn't get much media coverage. Since the DEA at least tells everyone they are out there keeping the streets free of drugs and thus safe for America's Young People I figgured they had a pretty good wrap. Am I wrong on this? I've never really seen any high level media damnation of the DEA [e.g. Waco].
This has been another useless post from....
Because hospitals have regulations called Patient Confidentiality. These are enforced BY the hospitals to protect their clients. Amtrack does not have such agreements. Furthermore, if the hospital is subpeonaed (sp?) by the court for the information it can be forced to provide it, just a shrink can be forced to provide data on a subject in a court of law.
This has been another useless post from....
Warning: IANAL, all thoughts, opinions, and ideas expressed in this post are those of the poster alone. Don't argue this in front of the Supreme Court, or indeed even your mother.
The DEA, can, as far as I know, use informants if they so choose. Corporations make wonderfull informants as they rarely have a sence of morality attached to them. Were the DEA forcing Amtrack to give these passanger lists over, that would be a Constitutional question (unreasonable search etc) but paying them is something else entirely.
I'm not debating the moral question, I think it sucks. But there's not diddly squat that I can think of that prevents Amtrack from selling that data to anyone else, be they a marketing agency or the US Governemnt.
More to the point, who's really going to come down on the DEA for buying passenger lists from Amtrack? It's hard to find a Fed Law Enforcement group more well received by the American People then the DEA.
This has been another useless post from....
Hydrogen, does not let off some kind of devastating explosion
I'm going to be captain obvious again and point out the following three images. No I'm not goatsexing any of these...
1,2,3
This has been another useless post from....
Columbus wasn't even the first european to land in N. America. Indeed, Norse fishermen had been fishing off the coast of Northern Canada for centuries before Columbus even thought about sailing West.
There wasn't much in the way of gold in the Americas anyway. And ironicly, the presence of the Europeans in the Greater Antilles was welcomed by the Arawak tribes that dominated the area at the time. Carib tribesmen from Brazil were moving steadily up the islands starting with the southern most island of Trinidad. The Caribs were a very warlike people, and among other things used canibalism as part of a ritual war rite.
This is not intended to excuse the actions of the Spaniards, but rather to provide an explanation of why the Arawaks were so welcoming to the Spaniards. Columbus viewed the Arawaks in a typical European fassion, seeing them as fit for slavery. A "docile" people, Columbus assumed that they would be easily dominated and that their "primitive" tribal work structure would benefit from hard labor.
The Arawaks were nearly wiped out in a generation.
By 1661 the first Slave Act was passed, allowing the importation of "Nego" (I use this word for historical accuracy, not out of bigotry. These men and women were not yet "african americans" and, deprived of their culture, ceased to be "Africans" the moment they steped on the slave ship) slaves from the Africas.
Well what's the point of all this you ask? I'm proving a point. It's an academic point, but it's a valid one. European explorers, or should Isay opressors, in the Islands were never really able to extract gold from the islanders. Columbus confined his explorations and explotations to the Antilles and the northern coast of Venezuela.
Spanish mining efforts on the mainland are a better example of what you're talking aobut. Though slavery does not equate to genocide... neither is what I'd consider an action to be encouraged. Admittedly, the Spanish did massacre some 90 Million (maximum) natives. Most of these deaths were caused by smallpox and other diseases unintentionaly introduced by the Europeans. This isn't to say that the European conduct in the area was anything short of deplorable, but the actions of the Japanese in WWII were about a million times worse. I'm actualy not able to relate the actions of the Japanese in this message, they are simply to horrible to place on paper. Read The Rape of Nanking for more data.
This has been another useless post from....
Bastard! Beet me to it. This one is also good for that sort of thing.
This has been another useless post from....
One major downside to this. According to this post on ZDnet there could be some problems with the basic idea we're all floating.
I'm not going to vouch for his credibility, as there's really not enough data. But he claims that "only one or two users connected to each cell site can use the 2MB speed, and if they do, no one else can use ANY data services."
If this is accurate, the entire thing is basicly for naught.
This has been another useless post from....
Are you, per chance, insane? This can't work. There's only two ways such a bomb could function.
1.) Combustion. Burn all the hydrogen. But then you start running into oxygen consumption problems.
2.) Fusion, but fusion requires a very small space with loads of energy in it. Just setting off a nuke in a bunch of hydrogen dosn't trigger a chain fusion reaction. You need to compress the hydrogen fuel while you head it. Usualy shaped fins of Uranium 238 do this.
Then there's the element of cost. It's just prohibitivly expensive to build a hugeass hydrogen container in space (cause you can't launch it from eath).
This has been another useless post from....
Um.... the asteroid rotates about its center of mass.... just like every other spinning object in the universe. That's one calculation down....
This has been another useless post from....
Lots of misconceptions on the topic of nukes here. Lets see if we can start debunking them.
Firstly, depending on the size of the rock in question a fairly substantial blast could be generated. A 60 mile radius of total desctuction is quite substantial, probably well in excess the most sophisticated "city buster" weapons still deployed today.
As to the concept of radiation, yes and no. Most of the "fall out" you hear about when nukes are involved is dirt and debree kicked up by the blast that small bits of fissile material have attached themselves to. This is why air burst explosions are typicaly cleaner than ground burst explosions. A space based blast would have very little in the way of fallout simply because of the very low escape velocity of such an asteroid. Most of the dust would just go casualy wizzing about space. The rock itself would have radioactivity not significantly in excess of background radioactivity
It's a piddling point, but your average 1 megaton nuke is probably a plutonium implosion device with a tritium fusion booster core. The "small" atomic bombs droped on Japan in 1945 were very fission inefficient, thus accounting for their yeilds (both less than 20 kilotons).
A FAQ on Nukes and other such toys is available HERE
Normaly I'd direct you to the NUKEOTRON to play with burst effects, but that's down, so wander around WOMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) for a more interactive tour
This has been another useless post from....
Unions have nothing to do with it
Ok, well, sure they could. But they don't. Why? Because teaching sucks no one wants to teach, not anyone in their right minds anyhow. Basicly you have to take shity wages for the privilages of standing in front of a class room full of bitter, hostile, and (more and more frequently) armed teenagers with unstable hormonal ballances.
Small wonder there's a teacher shortage. Which is why we have so many shitty teachers. Something is better than nothing. That's why we have football coaches teaching history. That's why any nimrod can get a job teaching your children.
Now you'd think that supply and demand would catch up with this system, but it hasn't yet. I for the life of me can't figgure out why. If you started paying teachers 45,000 to 50,000 a year you could start demanding a hell of a lot more of them. More to the point, there are a lot of people who have teaching cirtificates as a "backup" who might make awsome teachers. Start paying a reasonably sane wage and they might go ahead and give it a try. Can't hurt.
Of course, the final problem is the fact that teachers have to deal with parrents. Seriously, you go the the doctor, he diagnoses that pain in your ear as an ear infection, gives you antibiodics. You take them... why? Cause he's a doctor, he knows what he's talking about right? Same thing if your lawyer tells you that clause in your will is full of holes, you fix it. Why? Cause he's a lawyer, he knows his shit. But when a teacher tells you that you need to spend more time reading to your kid and helping him with his homework, or that your kid might have a learning disability... that's for some reason unaccecptable. People actualy go off a teachers for this sort of thing. Teachers have lost their jobs (yes I know people this happened to) for this stuff.
You've REALLY gotta love those kids to put up with that shit. That's the argument for keeping the job horrid. Of course, you might not love them, you might just be a lazy bastard that dosn't want to have to strain intelectualy. Sounds like we've encountered both kinds. I'm open to any solution, but I've yet to hear one that will be 100% effective.
This has been another useless post from....
I'm at UVA and, while I've never bothered to figgure out what they are, we have these ancient looking wall muonted routers in a few buildings. Teh case looks almost, but not exactly, unlike a compute... very flat and thin. If you didn't know better you'd think it was a telephone switcher or something like that. I can see that getting walled up. To say nothing of the fact that most of the housing/buildings/grounds staff here comes up about 3 IQ points short of self aware.
This has been another useless post from....