But he is still right, the USA constitution, while it does have a "bill of rights" attached, the main purpose of the document is to list the FEW things the government is allowed to do, state many things it cannot do, and decaalre that its citizens can do as they please within this framework.
Contigency cases are a good way for people with few means to pursue strong lawsuits. They are illegal in Ontario, Canada (except for class actions), but legal for most civil cases in the rest of the coutry. The 'loser pays' rule along with caps on punative damages makes 'lawsuit bingo' very rare in Canada. No lawyer is going to take on a weak cas eon contigency if she thinks she might get lose and stuck with the winners bills.
In Canada there are laws that force companies to put chains on valves that would kill someone if opened. You would NOT be sued, you'd be going to jail if you did something like that as it would be a criminal matter. If companies are playing with lives where you live, you shouldn't be worrying about Tort reform, you should be pressing the government to pass some basic industrial safety regulations.
Caps on punative damages help prevent 'lawsuit bingo'.
All companies doing real risk analysis do have to put a price on human life. They never advertise the fact, but its the only way to do it properly.
The loser should pay the winners legal fees to prevent abuse. It works great in Canada. We also have caps on punative damages. This means there NEVER billion dollar awards for pain and suffering. You can get back whatever is required to make up whtever loss your are suing for, plus reasonable damages (the cap is around $100,000). These two simple rules make silly lawsuits very rare up her in the Great White North.
This in no way stops the little guy from suing - when he is in the right. It makes it easier because when he wins he has NO LEGAL BILLS to worry about. Of course, if you are sure you are going to win you think twice about starting, but that is a GOOD thing.
Big coprs still try SLAPP suits, but many jurisdictions have anti-SLAPP legislation. All in all, this system works very well, not just in Canada, but in many countires whose law is based on English Common Law.
I've seen one meteorite - it was at the local Science World. It was an iron one, about the size of 3 softballs mushed together. It was hanging from 3 chains on a stand so you could lift it up to see how heavy it was. The had drilled and placed three large hooks into the thing - not something I'd expect to happen to something worth a million dollars.
Kinda cool to pick up something from 'outer space'.
Most handi-capped people are not in motorized scooters. Many handicapped people don't even use a cane, but walking is very difficult, slow, painful, or a combination of all three. There are generally rules about who can have one of those handi-capped parking tickets for your car. So the next time you seem someone walking from a handi-capped stall, just feel lucky you don't have whatever it is they have.
All people are NOT created equal. This is obvious.
The important thing is that all people are equal before the law. Being rich, or famous, or friends with the Mayor shouldn't give you any special privleges.
The laws forcing people who have public facilities to provide access to the disabled fly in the face of ultra-liberatarian thought, but have certainly made life easier for a rather powerless segment of the population.
Despite the fact that my children are perfectly aware of the difference between fantasy and reality there are still some games I won't let them play. Games with realistic human violence, or 'themes' I don't like are not played in the home. I don't like GTA - any version. Soldier of fortune had to have the 'gore' turned off and the parental lock turned on.
BUT this decision does NOT require a law. As a parent I already have the authority to make this decision. If I can't trust my kids to follow my rules out of my sight then I'm not doing much of a job as a parent.
I don't even want calculaters in the class room until grade 8, much less video games. My kids go to school to LEARN, not to be entertained. I don't want them to be misreable of course, but learning without video eye candy should be stimulating and interesting all on its own. Any teacher that is considering video games as an education aid should stop and reavaluate how they are teaching.
I did try out a couple of "education" games with my kids at home. The kids thought they were ok games, but they didn't stick at them long enough to improve any math or reading skills. I had much better success with flash-cards and reading together. The kids like the one on one time, and the much more flexible and intuitive 'DAD' interface. That's right - I can much more quickly answer the kids questions and adjust to the pace they are learning at than any video game. I can handle changing subjects if something we reads brings up a question about atronomy or history.
So put away the games and spend some time reading with your kids, helping with the home work, doing flash cards (my daughter actually has a favorite question that I have to keep re-insterting into the deck over and over until its last question).
Don't become a parent unless you want to spend a lot of time being a parent. The TV is not a baby-siter, the computer is not a teacher.
The company paid for the lab, the materials, the energy, the scientist's time - everything. The company had no guarantee that the research they paid the scientist to do would pay off. The company took a calculated risk, and in this case it paid off.
The scientist entered into an agrement to work for wages, and he knew that any inventions he came up with would be property of the company. The scientist is trading a steady wage for the risk of inventing, or not, something valuable.
If you strongly feel you have a great idea, don't become an employee.
That is correct, all rights are artificial. There are no natural rights. Your rights should be a short list of things you can't do - all else is allowed. This is called negative rights. The opposite system is where your rights are enumerated, and you cannot do anything not on your list of rights. This is called positive rights.
Rights should never be based on the "good of society". This always leads to the suppression and exploitation of the individual.
In my opinion your rights should be, You may not directly harm other people.
The ony trick is to define "harm".
For a continous and acrimonious discuss of rights, libertarian and anarchist society see the newsgroup alt.society.anarchy
There is no element of chance in chess. All the pieces are in plain sight, and you can make any legal move. You may choose to make a less than perfect move, but that has nothing to do with chance - only your skill.
A game of chance is poker, backgammon, roulette, and other games where some sort of randomness is an intregal part of the game.
We are quite a ways from the nearest stars. The amount the sun moves in a year compared to this distance is negligable. Therefore, we can use the position of the Earth at time zero, and zero+6 months as the base of a large triangle, and using basic trig get the distance to nearby stars. This only works for nearby stars as the angles involved get very small for farther away stars.
Put aside at lest 10% of your gross income, starting at age 20 (earlier the better) and invest in low risk things and you won't have to work when you hit 65 (assuming you will live to 80 or so). Live within your means. Stay debt free except for your mortage. No one needs more than one credit card. Pay your credit card in FULL each month.
Do not depend on the government for your retirment.
Your job is just a way to make money for you and your family so you can have a nice life. Your job shouldn't be your life. Balance in all things generally leads to happiness.
During the dot-com boom I passed up a number of offers for big bucks which would have entailed much longer hours, and less time off than where I am working now. I decided that the time off was more valuable to me than the cash. As it turns out this was also a good decision finacially. You have to decide what your priorities are. When your are young, single, and without dependants you can work the long hours, and you can also QUIT to try something else. I found that once my second child was born I started to value time off and a steady paycheck much more than the high risk, long hours, and big paychecks of consulting.
I would NEVER work 15 hour days unless I was getting double-time, or at least equivelent time-off. Life is too short.
The theory of relativity says that as you try to approach the speed of light, it will take more amd more energy to speed up just a little bit more, and it will take an infinte amount of energy to actually reach the speed of light (of course you can't actually expend an infinite amount of energy).
Your two objects have a velocity of 1/2 e only to the observer standing still at 0.0.0. Niether object has exceed the speed of light. At relatvisic speeds you can not simply add the velocity vectors to get the apparent speed. That is the whole point of relativity.
The Speed of light is NOT infinte. It is quite slow if one is trying to cross a galaxy. As you speed up you local times slows down. If you could reach the speed of light your clock would stop, and it would seem like you reach any destination in no time which implies an infinite speed. As far as we know, anything with mass cannot reach the speed of light (not by simply accelerating anyways).
So what has been proved? Clocks DO slow down when they travel fast. Light is bent by strong gravitational fields. In fact, everything we have the ability to currently test, predicted by the theory of relativity has check out so far.
Evolution is not a random process. Mutation is a random process. The 'bad' mutations are quickly weeded out by evolution because they DIE, or fail to breed.
Evolution is the process by which a few succesful mutations are choosen to be passed on to the organisms offspring, out of the myraid mutations that are not improving the organisms chances of breeding.
The argument that the chances of Evolution creating eyes is too low to happen is only made by people who do not understand how evolution works, how statistics work, or have a bias against evolution for personal reasons.
A better comparison would be to decide ahead of time that I am going to stop tossing coins when I get 100 heads in row (a small useful mutaiton), 1000 times (a bunch of good mutations). This may take a while, but it will happen.
I don't want my family wasting money on useless gimmicks like coffins and diamonds when I'm dead.
I'll be arranging cremation, headstone, and a small plot, ahead of time, to save my family the trouble at a time when they don't need any extra agravation. I'll be DEAD and I won't care what happens to my ashes, but it is nice to visit a departed relative, so I will arrange for the burial of my cremated remains. I'll be DEAD, but I'll want what is left of my estate to go to my living relatives, not useless ornamation.
Its a bit off topic, but make sure you have a will if you have any dependants!
Slashdot Mirror
Contigency cases are a good way for people with few means to pursue strong lawsuits. They are illegal in Ontario, Canada (except for class actions), but legal for most civil cases in the rest of the coutry. The 'loser pays' rule along with caps on punative damages makes 'lawsuit bingo' very rare in Canada. No lawyer is going to take on a weak cas eon contigency if she thinks she might get lose and stuck with the winners bills.
Caps on punative damages help prevent 'lawsuit bingo'.
All companies doing real risk analysis do have to put a price on human life. They never advertise the fact, but its the only way to do it properly.
This in no way stops the little guy from suing - when he is in the right. It makes it easier because when he wins he has NO LEGAL BILLS to worry about. Of course, if you are sure you are going to win you think twice about starting, but that is a GOOD thing.
Big coprs still try SLAPP suits, but many jurisdictions have anti-SLAPP legislation. All in all, this system works very well, not just in Canada, but in many countires whose law is based on English Common Law.
So we won't get a nice simple elipse.
Also, sine and cosine look-ups use the same table with different offsets.
Kinda cool to pick up something from 'outer space'.
Most handi-capped people are not in motorized scooters. Many handicapped people don't even use a cane, but walking is very difficult, slow, painful, or a combination of all three. There are generally rules about who can have one of those handi-capped parking tickets for your car. So the next time you seem someone walking from a handi-capped stall, just feel lucky you don't have whatever it is they have.
The important thing is that all people are equal before the law. Being rich, or famous, or friends with the Mayor shouldn't give you any special privleges.
The laws forcing people who have public facilities to provide access to the disabled fly in the face of ultra-liberatarian thought, but have certainly made life easier for a rather powerless segment of the population.
BUT this decision does NOT require a law. As a parent I already have the authority to make this decision. If I can't trust my kids to follow my rules out of my sight then I'm not doing much of a job as a parent.
I'll have to get out my Beagle Brothers peek and pokes chart and look it up...
I don't even want calculaters in the class room until grade 8, much less video games. My kids go to school to LEARN, not to be entertained. I don't want them to be misreable of course, but learning without video eye candy should be stimulating and interesting all on its own. Any teacher that is considering video games as an education aid should stop and reavaluate how they are teaching.
I did try out a couple of "education" games with my kids at home. The kids thought they were ok games, but they didn't stick at them long enough to improve any math or reading skills. I had much better success with flash-cards and reading together. The kids like the one on one time, and the much more flexible and intuitive 'DAD' interface. That's right - I can much more quickly answer the kids questions and adjust to the pace they are learning at than any video game. I can handle changing subjects if something we reads brings up a question about atronomy or history.
So put away the games and spend some time reading with your kids, helping with the home work, doing flash cards (my daughter actually has a favorite question that I have to keep re-insterting into the deck over and over until its last question).
Don't become a parent unless you want to spend a lot of time being a parent. The TV is not a baby-siter, the computer is not a teacher.
The scientist entered into an agrement to work for wages, and he knew that any inventions he came up with would be property of the company. The scientist is trading a steady wage for the risk of inventing, or not, something valuable.
If you strongly feel you have a great idea, don't become an employee.
Rights should never be based on the "good of society". This always leads to the suppression and exploitation of the individual.
In my opinion your rights should be, You may not directly harm other people.
The ony trick is to define "harm". For a continous and acrimonious discuss of rights, libertarian and anarchist society see the newsgroup alt.society.anarchy
The following list of words should NOT be used:
Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics
by Gary Zukav, David Finkelstein
Mass Market Paperback - 384 pages Reissue edition (September 1, 1984)
Language: English
Bantam; ISBN: 055326382X
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
by Brian Greene, B. Greene
Paperback - 464 pages 1 edition (February 29, 2000)
Language: English
Vintage; ISBN: 0375708111
Read the Dancing Wu Li Masters first, then Elegant Universe to get an excellent overview of quantum physics over the last 100 years or so.
I've read them both twice, and I still can't honestly say I grok quantum physics.
There is no element of chance in chess. All the pieces are in plain sight, and you can make any legal move. You may choose to make a less than perfect move, but that has nothing to do with chance - only your skill.
A game of chance is poker, backgammon, roulette, and other games where some sort of randomness is an intregal part of the game.
We are quite a ways from the nearest stars. The amount the sun moves in a year compared to this distance is negligable. Therefore, we can use the position of the Earth at time zero, and zero+6 months as the base of a large triangle, and using basic trig get the distance to nearby stars. This only works for nearby stars as the angles involved get very small for farther away stars.
Do not depend on the government for your retirment.
Your job is just a way to make money for you and your family so you can have a nice life. Your job shouldn't be your life. Balance in all things generally leads to happiness.
During the dot-com boom I passed up a number of offers for big bucks which would have entailed much longer hours, and less time off than where I am working now. I decided that the time off was more valuable to me than the cash. As it turns out this was also a good decision finacially. You have to decide what your priorities are. When your are young, single, and without dependants you can work the long hours, and you can also QUIT to try something else. I found that once my second child was born I started to value time off and a steady paycheck much more than the high risk, long hours, and big paychecks of consulting.
I would NEVER work 15 hour days unless I was getting double-time, or at least equivelent time-off. Life is too short.
Interesting, but the site is the work of a crankpot. Jumping from v = dx/dt to v = dt/dt with one wave of the hand!
Your two objects have a velocity of 1/2 e only to the observer standing still at 0.0.0. Niether object has exceed the speed of light. At relatvisic speeds you can not simply add the velocity vectors to get the apparent speed. That is the whole point of relativity.
The Speed of light is NOT infinte. It is quite slow if one is trying to cross a galaxy. As you speed up you local times slows down. If you could reach the speed of light your clock would stop, and it would seem like you reach any destination in no time which implies an infinite speed. As far as we know, anything with mass cannot reach the speed of light (not by simply accelerating anyways).
So what has been proved? Clocks DO slow down when they travel fast. Light is bent by strong gravitational fields. In fact, everything we have the ability to currently test, predicted by the theory of relativity has check out so far.
So how do you explain all the living, ordered, things on the Earth?
Evolution is the process by which a few succesful mutations are choosen to be passed on to the organisms offspring, out of the myraid mutations that are not improving the organisms chances of breeding.
The argument that the chances of Evolution creating eyes is too low to happen is only made by people who do not understand how evolution works, how statistics work, or have a bias against evolution for personal reasons.
A better comparison would be to decide ahead of time that I am going to stop tossing coins when I get 100 heads in row (a small useful mutaiton), 1000 times (a bunch of good mutations). This may take a while, but it will happen.
Most people have kids who want a sort of immortality.
I'll be arranging cremation, headstone, and a small plot, ahead of time, to save my family the trouble at a time when they don't need any extra agravation. I'll be DEAD and I won't care what happens to my ashes, but it is nice to visit a departed relative, so I will arrange for the burial of my cremated remains. I'll be DEAD, but I'll want what is left of my estate to go to my living relatives, not useless ornamation.
Its a bit off topic, but make sure you have a will if you have any dependants!