>Testicles sit outside of the body (because sperm can't handle internal body temperatures for too long)
This is indeed what people are typically taught, but this line of thinking should be questioned; correlation isn't causation. If mother nature wanted sperm that could handle high temperatures, she bloody well would have made some (and there are indeed examples of mammals with internal testicles.) As things go, evolution has solved far more complex problems than sperm unable to deal with high temperatures. And the currently solution is just plain stupid/inelegant.
One interesting alternative hypothesis is that the evolution of exterior testicles is a form of machismo. If, in evolutionary terms, the whole point of a male animal's life is to get his seed to a female, then it is a form of bad-assery to put the sperm tanks on the outside of the body in the most vulnerable position possible.
Interestingly, I'd argue that this hypothesis is reflected in language: An individual with "balls" is brave, strong, aggressive or perhaps risk-taking. On the surface, it would seem that saying a person is brave by citing the most vulnerable part of the body is ironic, but perhaps it's really not.
>If rewriting historical facts is a recognized function of the German justice system, then Germany is already careening out of control towards fascism again.
Court systems around the world do this. In the US we call it expungement. We don't typically bring it up to such a high level, but I've read newspaper articles that one day mentioned a person's crime, and the next day a new article does not, because an expungement had occurred.
>it is the government's job to revise historical facts for the purpose of tricking me
Technically that's not occurring though. The newspapers of twenty years ago are intact. German law only changes active disclosure of today, which is why the current German wikipedia article has been written, but I'd suspect that the archive articles show their names.
Having said that, the court system is not your personal background assessing service. It has law and order responsibilities to society as a whole, not to jipn4. If you desire not to involve yourself with murderers, then you can hire a background checking firm who collects public records from decades ago when they were still available.
I used to work in background checking...in an expungement the court system (in my county at least) deletes the person's record from the index, but not from the microfiche. So some background checking firms scanned every single microfiche film to find expunged records.
On a serious note, you also forgot to mention that Placebo(tm) has likely cured more ailments and saved more lives than anything that pharmacology has developed, except for antibiotics.
We spend billions of dollars on pharma testing, and I always wondered, based on the strength of the placebo, if we'd be better off simply trying to figure out how to make that effect more significant.
I think of this as just being an intermediate step to self-driving cars.
A slightly different application of this would be to have the guidance system sending the data to a remote sighted operator, who was then driving the vehicle.
Ohio State was one of the first (if not the first) universities to transition to Peoplesoft. Originally budgeted at $10-12 million the project ended up costing $100-$120 million.
I'm not sure how projects today are done, but Peoplesoft was running on NT 3.51 servers and people accessed the program by opening up a Citrix Winframe session.
At that time, Peoplesoft had never really done a university project before, and found that the corporate payroll package that it had was entirely inadequate for the university setting. (Supposedly they now have a college/university payroll package.)
It would show the normal black squares found on automatic toilets and urinals. But it would move into the wall to show employees sitting behind those squares, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being a unionized toilet flusher.
Think of it done in the style of the BBC's remarkable Look Around You series.
I have found people surprisingly creeped out by this idea.
Saranko indicated that authorities decided to file
I just confirmed that the Westmoreland County District Attorney's office will be handling this case.
I'd ask any interested slashdotters to call the Westmoreland District Attorney's office and tell them that the prosecution of these individuals:
a.) is not in the interest of the individuals involved b.) is not upholding the intent of the statutes as written c.) is completely stupid, without merit and lacking in common sense c.) will be an embarrassment to the district attorney when he runs for re-election in 2010, should the voters of Westmoreland County find out that that valuable public resources will be used prosecuting teens for something which is hardly threatening the public.
Well that makes perfect sense. She *is* the Queen of Canada, and she was making an official visit to her kingdom. So naturally the costs of the visit are borne by Canada.
The queen does not fly by scheduled air travel. She has access to Royal Air Force aircraft for any purpose she desires.
The Royal family can fly by RAF jets for state purposes (at the queen's discretion. This was discussed in the movie The Queen. Prince Charles obtained his mother's permission to use an RAF jet to fly to Paris and pick up the body of Lady Diana.)
Sometimes though they will charter an aircraft for state purposes (Prince Charle's most recent trip to the US was on a chartered British Airways 777.)
The younger and "lesser" Royals choose to fly commercial for vacations and such.
The Prime Minister flies commercial when he's going on vacation, and is not performing a state duty. Otherwise, he gets an RAF jet or a chartered jet (typically a British Airways one.)
This topic has been the source of significant debate. Many in Parliament believe that the Prime Minister should have his own jet. I suspect that in time they will approve one.
Apparently Ohioans don't understand the term "passing lane".
We don't. I've got theories but at some point in time the go left pass right thing just got deleted from our driving culture.
It's come to the point that I only pass on the left when I have to. I feel safer passing on the right...probably because I feel I'm less likely to be seen by highway patrol passing on the right than the left.
That would require an Amendment to the Constitution. For no good reason.
Huh? No, that's not the case at all. Congress has the constitutional power to create laws which affect federal elections. If a state or city wanted to conduct a local election differently, they certainly are allowed to do so. But almost all federal elections matters may be subject to Congressional approval.
Examples:
*The federal Help America Vote Act covers registration, voting and voting machine issues for federal elections. For the purposes of simplicity, states just use the same registration, voting and machine requirements for all other elections.
There are a few counter examples however. Takoma Park, Maryland allows non-citizens who are residents of the city to vote in local elections. Those individuals are maintained in a separate non-HAVA compliant database.
*Over the decades, there have been numerous bills introduced in Congress to require that states put minor party candidates on the ballot for congressional and presidential offices. One of these was introduced by none other than Rep. Ron Paul. Again, Congress can make states put minor party candidates on the ballot for congress, but not state legislature.
They didn't take the time to understand the Apple ads, so now they're lashing back at thin air.
I respectfully disagree. If anything, Apple didn't understand their own ads.
Apple's ads were popular, memorable and successful because of a blundering but lovable fool called PC. PC, as The Economist said, is the one you'd invite over for dinner.
Mac is cool and easy going but he's smug and comes off as a twat. He's not as likeable as PC which is funny considering the fact that he's the one who is representing the product that Apple is trying to sell.
So the ad company that Microsoft chose saw an opportunity--they would build on the likeability of PC.
That was the point of the Gates/Seinfeld commercials...Gates *is* PC, and they are showing the two of them tool around in ways that make PC seem even more likeable. The new ad furthers that by saying that everyone is a PC in their own way.
I bothered looking up the notations/case law on this statute.
There's no case law but there is an Attorney General opinion from the 50's ruling that the law didn't affect hourly/commission/"piece-work" employees. (Which is what you brought up with point 3.)
In response to point 1...reasonable is of course a thing that you'd have to prove to a judge. I think that if there were widespread reports of 3 hours lines, or you could prove a 3 hour line at your own precinct, then that would constitute a reasonable amount of time.
In regards to point 2..."employment at will" doesn't completely exist like people claim it does. In fact, this law is listed as one of the "erosions" of employment at will in Ohio (in an article on that very topic.)
So you could take the employer to court and get them to say under oath why you were fired.
except for the simple fact that one has to be a registered Democrat or Republican to be a poll worker in Ohio
This is (bizarrely enough) a county by county thing. Some counties read Ohio law and require that the person be a registered D or R.
My county (Franklin) doesn't read the law that way and only requires you to be a registered voter. I've served as a pollworker, first as a registered Libertarian, and then as an independent...for about 6 elections...and in all those elections I was fulfilling the role of a "Democrat". (I came to be aware of this issue when I was involve in libertarian politics, and was finding out that in some counties libertarians could be pollworkers, and in others they were rejected for not being a D or an R.)
This is an opportunity for the Secretary of State to step in and issue a directive which would standardize this issue statewide.
Last time I checked, Ohio has no law requiring employers to give time off to vote, and I know (second hand) that if there is such a law it gets ignored frequently.
"No employer, his officer or agent, shall discharge or threaten to discharge an elector for taking a reasonable amount of time to vote on election day; or require or order an elector to accompany him to a voting place upon such day; or refuse to permit such elector to serve as an election official on any registration or election day; or indirectly use any force or restraint or threaten to inflict any injury, harm, or loss; or in any other manner practice intimidation in order to induce or compel such person to vote or refrain from voting for or against any person or question or issue submitted to the voters.
Whoever violates this section shall be fined not less than fifty nor more than five hundred dollars."
For example, the French have no problem with an overbearing State that nitpickingly regulates every aspect of their life, but since their culture will not demean the State, working for the State is not viewed as something bad...
Yes, true, but it goes farther than that. There's a saying that goes "In America children want to be entrepreneurs when they grow up, but in France children grow up wanting to be civil servants."
The state is tolerated and respected because, in the long run, the French have a strong affection for stability and security. They will take stability over opportunity, up to the point that career success is defined by how tenured you are.
By all means other European countries are similar. Then again, the Western European countries and are finding out that the East's experience with communism has made them much more anti-state in the Anglo-Saxon model than pro-state in French/German model. Now that some of those countries are in the EU, it's causing the French and Germans fits.
To have no age of consent is equal to having the drinking age be different in every state
This was the case for a couple decades...between the setting of the national drinking age and several decades after prohibition (when age became important in the US.)
That Supreme Court case had to do with whether a treaty signed by the US could be enforced by the president.
Apparently, that particular treaty didn't have any legislation passed by congress backing it up and/or the treaty didn't include say anything about how it would affect the states.
"Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said that because the treaty did not explicitly say its provisions were binding, and because there was no legislation to make the treaty binding, the president could not on his own force the states to comply." From here.
I've seen several posts on here (like yours) suggesting that paranoia is a source of the security mindset.
I'm sure it is in some people, but it's not in me. The motivator in me is a desire to cause a bit of troublemaking. Enjoying seeing institutions have egg on their face when I point out they have a lousy design/lame thinking.
I don't know what motivates Schneier but if anything he has much more "anti-paranoia" than anything--he spends more time debunking security fears than actually talking about potential exploits.
All the dealership wanted was a photocopy of my driver license...
Which incidentally provides invaluable information for the dealer (since it has an address on it, it's good for marketing purposes.) Once I get return from my test drive, I ask for that photocopy back. They always give it back, but they're often not happy about it.
I think it's great to mention this, just in case we forget. I think aviation safety is one of humanity's most impressive achievements. We take hundreds of people, stick them in a tube, and hurl them across the skies at 500mph thousands of times per day--and we can go years (in the US) without a fatal accident--all while the airlines themselves are operating on cost/profit margins that work out to a penny per passenger.
If it's not that big a deal, why do people have to be forced to have one?
Having said that there are two national models for ID cards--either a country has terrible fraud or the country doesn't need the ID card in the first place.
The Continental European model is the latter. Most of what the ID card does is done without problems without ID cards in other nations. The value of the card isn't all that much so there's no reason to try get it fraudulently. It's a bureaucratic document which is used in low-risk/low-value transactions. (Voting and your state exam are good examples of that.)
Continental Europe doesn't embrace the US-model of giving huge amounts of credit on the spot just for asking (and the maintenance of the database which supports that) which is why national ID numbers there don't make much of a difference if they're known to others.
An example would be the treatment that travelers who show identification at airports in the US receive - they are treated as being more 'legitimate' than people who are unwilling or unable to show id, and then subjected to a lower average level of scrutiny. The problem with this is that the cursory checks performed on the id aren't going to detect forgeries or falsely obtained official identification, making the whole process a pointless waste of time.
I consider that a minor problem. The more major problem is that the logic that created this security scenario is inherently faulty.
There is no reason why a person with a photo ID card is somehow less dangerous/less risky than a person without a photo ID card. The cheap plastic card does not make the person any safer.
Slashdot Mirror
>Testicles sit outside of the body (because sperm can't handle internal body temperatures for too long)
This is indeed what people are typically taught, but this line of thinking should be questioned; correlation isn't causation. If mother nature wanted sperm that could handle high temperatures, she bloody well would have made some (and there are indeed examples of mammals with internal testicles.) As things go, evolution has solved far more complex problems than sperm unable to deal with high temperatures. And the currently solution is just plain stupid/inelegant.
One interesting alternative hypothesis is that the evolution of exterior testicles is a form of machismo. If, in evolutionary terms, the whole point of a male animal's life is to get his seed to a female, then it is a form of bad-assery to put the sperm tanks on the outside of the body in the most vulnerable position possible.
Interestingly, I'd argue that this hypothesis is reflected in language: An individual with "balls" is brave, strong, aggressive or perhaps risk-taking. On the surface, it would seem that saying a person is brave by citing the most vulnerable part of the body is ironic, but perhaps it's really not.
>If rewriting historical facts is a recognized function of the German justice system, then Germany is already careening out of control towards fascism again.
Court systems around the world do this. In the US we call it expungement. We don't typically bring it up to such a high level, but I've read newspaper articles that one day mentioned a person's crime, and the next day a new article does not, because an expungement had occurred.
>it is the government's job to revise historical facts for the purpose of tricking me
Technically that's not occurring though. The newspapers of twenty years ago are intact. German law only changes active disclosure of today, which is why the current German wikipedia article has been written, but I'd suspect that the archive articles show their names.
Having said that, the court system is not your personal background assessing service. It has law and order responsibilities to society as a whole, not to jipn4. If you desire not to involve yourself with murderers, then you can hire a background checking firm who collects public records from decades ago when they were still available.
I used to work in background checking...in an expungement the court system (in my county at least) deletes the person's record from the index, but not from the microfiche. So some background checking firms scanned every single microfiche film to find expunged records.
On a serious note, you also forgot to mention that Placebo(tm) has likely cured more ailments and saved more lives than anything that pharmacology has developed, except for antibiotics.
We spend billions of dollars on pharma testing, and I always wondered, based on the strength of the placebo, if we'd be better off simply trying to figure out how to make that effect more significant.
I think of this as just being an intermediate step to self-driving cars.
A slightly different application of this would be to have the guidance system sending the data to a remote sighted operator, who was then driving the vehicle.
Think of it as TTY, but with cars instead. :-)
Ohio State was one of the first (if not the first) universities to transition to Peoplesoft. Originally budgeted at $10-12 million the project ended up costing $100-$120 million.
I'm not sure how projects today are done, but Peoplesoft was running on NT 3.51 servers and people accessed the program by opening up a Citrix Winframe session.
At that time, Peoplesoft had never really done a university project before, and found that the corporate payroll package that it had was entirely inadequate for the university setting. (Supposedly they now have a college/university payroll package.)
I had this idea once for a short youtube feature.
It would show the normal black squares found on automatic toilets and urinals. But it would move into the wall to show employees sitting behind those squares, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being a unionized toilet flusher.
Think of it done in the style of the BBC's remarkable Look Around You series.
I have found people surprisingly creeped out by this idea.
Saranko indicated that authorities decided to file
I just confirmed that the Westmoreland County District Attorney's office will be handling this case.
I'd ask any interested slashdotters to call the Westmoreland District Attorney's office and tell them that the prosecution of these individuals:
a.) is not in the interest of the individuals involved
b.) is not upholding the intent of the statutes as written
c.) is completely stupid, without merit and lacking in common sense
c.) will be an embarrassment to the district attorney when he runs for re-election in 2010, should the voters of Westmoreland County find out that that valuable public resources will be used prosecuting teens for something which is hardly threatening the public.
John Peck, District Attorney
Phone: 724.830.3949
da@co.westmoreland.pa.us
Well that makes perfect sense. She *is* the Queen of Canada, and she was making an official visit to her kingdom. So naturally the costs of the visit are borne by Canada.
The queen does not fly by scheduled air travel. She has access to Royal Air Force aircraft for any purpose she desires.
The Royal family can fly by RAF jets for state purposes (at the queen's discretion. This was discussed in the movie The Queen. Prince Charles obtained his mother's permission to use an RAF jet to fly to Paris and pick up the body of Lady Diana.)
Sometimes though they will charter an aircraft for state purposes (Prince Charle's most recent trip to the US was on a chartered British Airways 777.)
The younger and "lesser" Royals choose to fly commercial for vacations and such.
The Prime Minister flies commercial when he's going on vacation, and is not performing a state duty. Otherwise, he gets an RAF jet or a chartered jet (typically a British Airways one.)
This topic has been the source of significant debate. Many in Parliament believe that the Prime Minister should have his own jet. I suspect that in time they will approve one.
Apparently Ohioans don't understand the term "passing lane".
We don't. I've got theories but at some point in time the go left pass right thing just got deleted from our driving culture.
It's come to the point that I only pass on the left when I have to. I feel safer passing on the right...probably because I feel I'm less likely to be seen by highway patrol passing on the right than the left.
It's funny both the slashdot summary and CNN note that the police said the pilot's license didn't have a photo.
For good reason. Pilots' licenses don't have photographs. I think the police there have never seen anything like it and are just plain perplexed.
That would require an Amendment to the Constitution. For no good reason.
Huh? No, that's not the case at all. Congress has the constitutional power to create laws which affect federal elections. If a state or city wanted to conduct a local election differently, they certainly are allowed to do so. But almost all federal elections matters may be subject to Congressional approval.
Examples:
*The federal Help America Vote Act covers registration, voting and voting machine issues for federal elections. For the purposes of simplicity, states just use the same registration, voting and machine requirements for all other elections.
There are a few counter examples however. Takoma Park, Maryland allows non-citizens who are residents of the city to vote in local elections. Those individuals are maintained in a separate non-HAVA compliant database.
*Over the decades, there have been numerous bills introduced in Congress to require that states put minor party candidates on the ballot for congressional and presidential offices. One of these was introduced by none other than Rep. Ron Paul. Again, Congress can make states put minor party candidates on the ballot for congress, but not state legislature.
They didn't take the time to understand the Apple ads, so now they're lashing back at thin air.
I respectfully disagree. If anything, Apple didn't understand their own ads.
Apple's ads were popular, memorable and successful because of a blundering but lovable fool called PC. PC, as The Economist said, is the one you'd invite over for dinner.
Mac is cool and easy going but he's smug and comes off as a twat. He's not as likeable as PC which is funny considering the fact that he's the one who is representing the product that Apple is trying to sell.
So the ad company that Microsoft chose saw an opportunity--they would build on the likeability of PC.
That was the point of the Gates/Seinfeld commercials...Gates *is* PC, and they are showing the two of them tool around in ways that make PC seem even more likeable. The new ad furthers that by saying that everyone is a PC in their own way.
Will it work? That remains to be seen.
I bothered looking up the notations/case law on this statute.
There's no case law but there is an Attorney General opinion from the 50's ruling that the law didn't affect hourly/commission/"piece-work" employees. (Which is what you brought up with point 3.)
In response to point 1...reasonable is of course a thing that you'd have to prove to a judge. I think that if there were widespread reports of 3 hours lines, or you could prove a 3 hour line at your own precinct, then that would constitute a reasonable amount of time.
In regards to point 2..."employment at will" doesn't completely exist like people claim it does. In fact, this law is listed as one of the "erosions" of employment at will in Ohio (in an article on that very topic.)
So you could take the employer to court and get them to say under oath why you were fired.
except for the simple fact that one has to be a registered Democrat or Republican to be a poll worker in Ohio
This is (bizarrely enough) a county by county thing. Some counties read Ohio law and require that the person be a registered D or R.
My county (Franklin) doesn't read the law that way and only requires you to be a registered voter. I've served as a pollworker, first as a registered Libertarian, and then as an independent...for about 6 elections...and in all those elections I was fulfilling the role of a "Democrat". (I came to be aware of this issue when I was involve in libertarian politics, and was finding out that in some counties libertarians could be pollworkers, and in others they were rejected for not being a D or an R.)
This is an opportunity for the Secretary of State to step in and issue a directive which would standardize this issue statewide.
Last time I checked, Ohio has no law requiring employers to give time off to vote, and I know (second hand) that if there is such a law it gets ignored frequently.
Such a law exists, and yes, it's not well known.
3599.06 Employer shall not interfere with employee on election day.
"No employer, his officer or agent, shall discharge or threaten to discharge an elector for taking a reasonable amount of time to vote on election day; or require or order an elector to accompany him to a voting place upon such day; or refuse to permit such elector to serve as an election official on any registration or election day; or indirectly use any force or restraint or threaten to inflict any injury, harm, or loss; or in any other manner practice intimidation in order to induce or compel such person to vote or refrain from voting for or against any person or question or issue submitted to the voters.
Whoever violates this section shall be fined not less than fifty nor more than five hundred dollars."
For example, the French have no problem with an overbearing State that nitpickingly regulates every aspect of their life, but since their culture will not demean the State, working for the State is not viewed as something bad...
Yes, true, but it goes farther than that. There's a saying that goes "In America children want to be entrepreneurs when they grow up, but in France children grow up wanting to be civil servants."
The state is tolerated and respected because, in the long run, the French have a strong affection for stability and security. They will take stability over opportunity, up to the point that career success is defined by how tenured you are.
By all means other European countries are similar. Then again, the Western European countries and are finding out that the East's experience with communism has made them much more anti-state in the Anglo-Saxon model than pro-state in French/German model. Now that some of those countries are in the EU, it's causing the French and Germans fits.
To have no age of consent is equal to having the drinking age be different in every state
This was the case for a couple decades...between the setting of the national drinking age and several decades after prohibition (when age became important in the US.)
It really wasn't that much of an issue.
Sorry but the Supremes just declared otherwise.
That Supreme Court case had to do with whether a treaty signed by the US could be enforced by the president.
Apparently, that particular treaty didn't have any legislation passed by congress backing it up and/or the treaty didn't include say anything about how it would affect the states.
"Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said that because the treaty did not explicitly say its provisions were binding, and because there was no legislation to make the treaty binding, the president could not on his own force the states to comply." From here.
Supposedly we're all going to be in flying and/or driverless cars by 2015.
Oy. I wouldn't clump those two together. There's a lot of work that's going into the latter.
I've seen several posts on here (like yours) suggesting that paranoia is a source of the security mindset.
I'm sure it is in some people, but it's not in me. The motivator in me is a desire to cause a bit of troublemaking. Enjoying seeing institutions have egg on their face when I point out they have a lousy design/lame thinking.
I don't know what motivates Schneier but if anything he has much more "anti-paranoia" than anything--he spends more time debunking security fears than actually talking about potential exploits.
All the dealership wanted was a photocopy of my driver license...
Which incidentally provides invaluable information for the dealer (since it has an address on it, it's good for marketing purposes.) Once I get return from my test drive, I ask for that photocopy back. They always give it back, but they're often not happy about it.
I think it's great to mention this, just in case we forget. I think aviation safety is one of humanity's most impressive achievements. We take hundreds of people, stick them in a tube, and hurl them across the skies at 500mph thousands of times per day--and we can go years (in the US) without a fatal accident--all while the airlines themselves are operating on cost/profit margins that work out to a penny per passenger.
Why is it a problem?
If it's not that big a deal, why do people have to be forced to have one?
Having said that there are two national models for ID cards--either a country has terrible fraud or the country doesn't need the ID card in the first place.
The Continental European model is the latter. Most of what the ID card does is done without problems without ID cards in other nations. The value of the card isn't all that much so there's no reason to try get it fraudulently. It's a bureaucratic document which is used in low-risk/low-value transactions. (Voting and your state exam are good examples of that.)
Continental Europe doesn't embrace the US-model of giving huge amounts of credit on the spot just for asking (and the maintenance of the database which supports that) which is why national ID numbers there don't make much of a difference if they're known to others.
An example would be the treatment that travelers who show identification at airports in the US receive - they are treated as being more 'legitimate' than people who are unwilling or unable to show id, and then subjected to a lower average level of scrutiny. The problem with this is that the cursory checks performed on the id aren't going to detect forgeries or falsely obtained official identification, making the whole process a pointless waste of time.
I consider that a minor problem. The more major problem is that the logic that created this security scenario is inherently faulty.
There is no reason why a person with a photo ID card is somehow less dangerous/less risky than a person without a photo ID card. The cheap plastic card does not make the person any safer.