The internet is an amazing tool, but I think it needs discipline and will to use it efficiently; under the current net neutrality paradigm, it can achieve neither, so its potential can't be realized. I think a tiered internet means a controllable internet, one that would be more useful (and profitable) than the media chaos that reigns there now. Absent attribution and consequences, the internet is an obstacle to control, in much the same way equal access and fairness doctrines impeded the usefulness of broadcast mass media in the last century, or easy and cheap access to printed mass media impeded the usefulness of newspapers and magazines in the century prior to that one. We've had a few centuries since the invention of the printing press to understand the ramifications of mass media on the population -- I think it would be irrational in the extreme to not apply that understanding to the internet.
operate without a judge, a jury, or a set of laws. no due process, no checks and balances. just a bunch of megacorporations, unaccountable to anyone, going out there and 'hunting down' people they dont like.
i.e. barbarianism.
operate without a judge, a jury, or a set of laws. no due process, no checks and balances. just a bunch of megacorporations, unaccountable to anyone, going out there and 'hunting down' people they dont like.
i.e. barbarianism.
I don't think it is that dire. Megacorporations actually are accountable, in ways that politicians can never be. You can't get accountability from somebody who has to woo the public to stay in office. Megacorps are accountable to their board of directors and to their stock holders, a far more important and influential constituency than fickle voters. I trust the CEOs of megacorporations to keep my best interest at heart far more than I trust politicians from any party, because CEOs can't hide from the bottom line. Politicians can change like the weather, reflecting the mood of their constituents, but a CEO has a come-to-Jesus moment every quarter. Accountability (and it's enabler, transparency) are anathema to political leadership for this very reason. It's taken a couple hundred years for it to become apparent in the American experiment, but the writing is on the wall. What is emerging in America is an oligarchy, where accountability and transparency are woven into the economic fabric of the society, and aren't merely tacked on by easily loopholed legislation which is then weakly (if at all) enforced by politically-appointed judges.
That kind of attitude, while militant and progressive (for very liberal definitions of progressive) is a very good way to convince religious folk that scientists are condescending, evangelistic assholes that are no better than the ancient Crusaders whom they choose to denounce.
So? I'm interested in changing their behavior, not their irrational beliefs. You can't fix stupidity, but you *can* condition it. "Religious folk" don't give a shit about logical, well-reasoned deconstructions of their irrationality. They are going to be equally hostile to *any* threat to their belief system.
Think about it this way. You don't teach a child not to touch a hot stove by explaining the physics of heat transfer to her; you let her get burned so the lesson will *stick.* "Religious folk" have been getting a free pass in public discourse, because most rational people are too polite to call them out for it. I aim to end that, by encouraging rational people to be far less polite towards them than they have been. If "religious folk" are going to publicly display their irrationality, then they can damn well expect to be publicly burned for it.
Hold on. Buying second hand is now stealing? That's AWESOME news, since selling second hand games would then be dealing in stolen property, and we can put gamestop out of our misery!
you jest, but in the EU, it would not get a laugh. EU copyright laws, unlike their American counterparts, do not recognize the doctrine of first sale. it is fine for you to sell your legally acquired CD or DVD to a second-hand store in the US, but it is absolutely illegal to do that in the EU, or just about anywhere else on the planet.
Certainly. Ever been outside the US? The doctrine of first sale exists only in American copyright laws. It certainly doesn't exist in European Union copyright laws.
Let me just be the latest to pile on and ask you where the hell you got the idea that buying a used item constitutes stealing.
Are you really that god-damn stupid, or is it just an act?
Neither an act, nor is it stupid. Americans believe they have the right to sell a music or game disc when they are done with it. This is because of a doctrine called "first sale," which explicitly grants the legal owner of a copyrighted work the right to resell it without compensating the creator. The copyright laws in the European Union do not recognize the doctrine of first sale. That is why it is okay in the US to sell a legally purchased CD or game DVD to somebody, but it is not legal to do that in the EU. Try to get some perspective; you are the one looking stupid right now.
id like to think you just missed where he said he was buying it 2nd hand. but you went and put that quote in your comment, so i have to conclude that your are so fucking stupid as to think buying things 2nd hand is stealing.
dude, you are the one being stupid. do you think everybody on the planet has to live by American laws? You might not believe it, but almost anywhere on the planet except in america, selling a work of art second hand *is* illegal. There are other places on the planet besides the US, you know. And they have a lot of rules that are different than the ones that Americans have to live by. try to get a little perspective, eh?
Actually, I value their "wonderful content" so much that I wait for the actual retail price to drop below 20$, THEN buy it second hand, and then only on a whim to see if it was even worth the effort.
Also, second hand sales are not stealing. Stop drinking the industry koolaid.
Why don't you stop ignoring reality? The last time I checked, America is one of the few places on the planet where second hand sales *aren't* illegal. It may come as a surprise to you, but the doctrine of first sale is as antiquated as gutenberg's press, ironically and precisely because it does not address the fact that digital copies are trivial to produce and distribute. Limitations on copyright based on this doctrine (as codified in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 109) need to be stricken from the US books. A more reasonable and artist-friendly doctrine, like the one used in the EU and the rest of the civilized world, should be used instead.
But hey, maybe you know something I don't. Lets say Bachmann becomes President. And Congress gets a veto-proof majority of Republicans. Now what? What is the mechanism that the US is "Destroyed"?
Read up on the Patriot Act, if you don't actually think the Constitution can be weakened and subverted. When I was growing up (the Seventies) the clauses in the Patriot Act were merely the subject of wild-ass speculative fiction, like in this popular political pot-boiler from when I was in high school. I scoffed at the idea when I was 15; now that i'm 50 and have seen a real-life version of "The R Document," I'm not so skeptical anymore. The problem with a democracy is that without active participation from the citizens, it simply slides into some kind of tyranny. Since you mentioned Bachmann, I would say the "destruction" will be in the form of an oligarchy, with an able assist from the more pragmatic wing of the religious right, of which Bachmann (and Perry) are notable examples.
What's left is damage control and trying to minimize the size of events and losses when they do happen. I guess that's what is being done now.
Nice post, but what is left is not just damage control. If you are in a position of power you exploit the situation, which is exactly what is going to happen in this case. Whether or not this particular suspect was a terrorist is immaterial -- the public will be fed steady stream of soundbites and PR designed to keep them on edge and in the dark about the case. Creating, then feeding, on fear and ignorance is a pretty good strategy for maintaining power.
By America's rules, that isn't an act of war though.
Where have you been for the last decade? The executive branch no longer needs a war declared by the legislative branch to suspend a citizen's Constitutional rights. The Constitution was effectively bypassed by the Patriot Act ten fucking years ago.
It sounds like all the FBI did in this case was give him someone to talk to, and some fake weapons/explosives. Everything else this guy did indicated he was entirely serious about this all on his own. He was even given a chance to back down and didn't. Its probably for the best the FBI picked him up prior to him finding someone that actually had malicious intent.
Sometimes tinfoil is just for baking people...
I think the FBI have learned lessons from their past attempts to manage information flow around high-profile terrorism cases. The purpose of a press release is to influence public opinion -- the suspect-didn't-back-down gambit in the PR (something that has not occurred in previous terror-related FBI PRs) is obviously designed to get the FBI off the entrapment hook in the public's eye. But I can see an astute defense lawyer demanding the FBI prove that the suspect would have continued his activities absent the offer of materiel support, if this case ever comes to a public trial. That would provide a serious amount of negative PR opportunities for the FBI if they failed to demonstrate the suspect's resolve. I would predict the FBI maneuvers to never let this case see the light of day, for that reason alone. If it does reach the public courts though, I really hope a high-profile defense lawyer steps up and takes the FBI to school on this one.
No scientist worthy of the title tolerates supernatural explanations for anything, including the moral or ethical behavior humans exhibit. Appealing to deity to explain/justify human behavior is just as fucking stupid and irrational as appealing to deity to explain gravity, or the origin of the cosmos. No rational scientist would accept such explanations for cosmology; why on earth should morality or ethics be treated any different?
If you passively tolerate religious people, you are part of the problem. You are doing yourself, your friends, and your species a disservice. Get in their face about their irrationality -- don't be easy or gentle on them. If you are savvy enough to be reading slashdot, you know that religion delayed the Enlightenment by a millenia and a half -- if you feel the need to pull your punches in this fight, I urge you to think about where we might be as a species right now, if fucking religion hadn't stifled scientific progress for 1500 years. And make no mistake -- it is a fight, and the stakes are pretty high. Ignorance and fear vs knowledge and rationality, with the future viability of our species in the balance.
If you want to do computer science, I would stay away from IT departments. You might derive some benefit (mostly of the people-skills type) from working in an IT department, but you won't be doing any CS as a sysadmin or tech support monkey. Fwiw, I did CS (BS from the University of Arizona in 1997) because I wanted to understand how computers worked and to become a computer programmer. This was a mistake on my part; I soon discovered that you need to take electrical engineering to really understand how they work. I also discovered that I absolutely loathe coding -- it seems to me to require an attention to detail that only OCDs could tolerate. I had to finish in CS, or I would have lost my scholarship, so I stuck it out. But -- being able to put "BS in CS" from a good university on an application got my foot in the door for a lot of IT jobs, and I settled for a fairly high paying one (high five figures) as a sysadmin with a large defense contractor, where I was relatively happy for eleven years, and never used any of my CS knowledge at all.
Having children isn't the end-all. How many of them die from complications arising from the STDs? What are the socioeconomic ramifications of the disease and how do they reflect upon any surviving children? How will social stigmas affect copulation opportunities? These and other feedback mechanisms cannot be marginalized by hyperbole.
Really? The GP points out why you were wrong about natural selection, and all you can do is accuse him of engaging in hyperbole, while piling on with even more rhetoric? Let's cut through the haze. Natural selection doesn't give a rat's ass about the economics or social environment in which it operates. It simply ensures, given enough time to operate, that only those strategies will be selected for that enable organisms to successfully reproduce. Abstinence as a reproductive strategy is obviously a non-starter. And abstinence would not protect people who caught AIDS from blood transfusions, like tennis pro Arthur Ashe, or author Isaac Asimov. But never mind that -- abstinence, especially for males, just isn't part of the genetic equation. Here's something to chew on, while you are contemplating your copulation opportunities. Research into DNA shows that we are descended from males who had multiple female partners. Rape, slavery, harems -- use whatever socially ramified term you would like -- these are part of our civilization, and unless something happens to render these strategies impotent (I use the term deliberately) you can be certain they always will be. You can't argue with reproductive success, dude -- that is what natural selection is all about.
Dude, the sky is not falling. We've had Jupiter sweeping out the solar system for billions of years; the extinction-level event that you are referring to occurred 65M years ago, and there are no impact events even remotely on that scale since. Indeed, current theories now suggest that the die off took much longer than previously believed, and that many other factors were involved that contributed to the event, significantly reducing the role played by the impact event. We are far more likely to wipe ourselves out before another impact can do it for us.
...and make it economically? The scientists are conjecturing, based on observations from an inelastic neutron scattering experiment on activated carbon coated with a platinum catalyst, that a low pressure H2 storage system could be developed, but seem to acknowledge that it would be expensive. If they'd actually constructed a storage device, I might be less cynical, but this seems to be another case of the theoretically possible being interesting but not economically feasible. From the article:
The team also hopes to identify a catalyst that isn't quite as expensive as platinum.
For what it is worth, a similar low pressure system using rhodium to bind hydrogen was conjectured half a dozen years ago, but I can't find evidence that a working prototype ever emerged. Using a platinum catalyst is an expensive way to bind hydrogen. I remember enough chemistry to know that the platinum group of elements (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum) all have similar hydrogen binding abilities, but all seem to be fairly expensive to produce in commercial quantities.
Three people died in the 2009 Detroit Marathon, so should road races be run by individuals? Or hell, it's a "gladiatorial combat" and should be banned?
Now to your point about Indianapolis, only 17 drivers have died there during races, not 56. 33 died in single driver testing or qualifications, the very model you advocate.
I'll concede your numbers -- I'd wished I'd found your source, because I was really more interested in spectator deaths at Indy, to balance the 80 spectators who died at Le Mans. I'll take the round dozen that your source identifies, with great appreciation. fwiw here's the source for my 56 drivers
With that said, you really haven't justfied even one death, let alone 17. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and kills people when it's wheels fly completely out of the venue and kill a twelve year old boy playing in his front yard, it's a blood sport, okay?
And attempting a reductio ad absurdum by comparing a bunch of joggers with the Indy 500 is so fucking stupid I had to read it twice to make sure that was your intent. Do you really *not* understand the difference between a person on foot and a person at the controls of a fairly massive machine moving at a significant fraction of Mach? If you don't, you are wasting my time, dude.
Your point, sir, if you have one? You provide a hell of a lot of assertions without providing any kind of supporting evidence, particularly about the motivations and reasoning processes of scientists, government officials, businessmen, and citizens, so I'm pretty much inclined to dismiss you as a troll.
It's a tragedy because not enough people died for it to be mere statistics.
Oh and you could call time trials 'races', but the ability to jockey and pass during auto races is one of the skills which makes a given racer better or worse than another...
Hmmm..."not enough people died for it to be mere statistics." Taken in isolation, this could be true -- a driver here, a driver there, a few spectators here, a few spectators there, though the Le Mans disaster in 1955 (81 dead -- the driver and 80 spectators) probably effectively shuts down your argument. But since we do have a memory, and can put perspective on this sport, you can see that the statistics start to pile up. Just google "spectator and driver related deaths in motorsports" and I think you'll understand why your position is untenable.
The ability to jockey and pass during auto races (from my perspective it is more the *lack* of this ability that is salient) may be a component to the competition, but it is not the only one. What is key is that it is the single component that is responsible for all the carnage. Removing that component still leaves competition, and more importantly, it prevents deaths. Automobile racing is a bloodsport, no different in principle than the gladitorial combat that the Romans used to divert their populations during periods of civil unrest. Fwiw, given the political alignment of the fans that support auto racing, the parallels between NASCAR and the Roman arena are stunning.
You don't understand the concept of a "race" do you?
A race has multiple competitors on the field. A time trial or technical event is a timed event were competitors go one at a time to try and establish the best time for the course.
As for auto racing, (you can't just single out NASCAR), they do time trials in the qualification part of a race week to establish starting position.
You make my point for me...you just demonstrated that time-trials are not enough for the fans, because the racing promoters apparently feel they *still* have to send multiple cars out. Historically, the number of driver and spectator deaths over the past century has turned automobile and air racing into bloodsports, and bloodsports are indefensible, period. A driver crashed at Le Mans in 1955, and took not only his own life, but the lives of 80 spectators. Ditto Indianapolis Raceway in the US, where 56 drivers have lost their lives. There has to be some reason racing promoters still insist on having multiple cars in the field simultaneously, and the reason is blood. They know the fans want it, and they also know that the fans wouldn't spend a dime on racing if there wasn't a chance they'd get some blood. Can you look the shades of all the dead drivers and spectators in the eye and still maintain that your narrow-minded concept of competition is justifiable?
And, fwiw, if you are still reading this, I do indeed understand the concept of competition -- I race my Ducati and my 'Vette in time-trials, achieving spectacular velocities with zero danger to anybody but myself, and the roar of the fans when somebody breaks 250mph on a streetable machine is no less enjoyable because we didn't try to (stupidly) achieve those velocities simultaneously. Competition is more than just the simultaneous display of skills among vehicle operators; competition would still exist without it. And you seem to be eliding the fact that the drivers' skills are kinda pointless without the skills of the engineering and support teams that provide a competition-worthy vehicle in the first place. Our competition is more about technical skill than reflexes, though you still need those at 200mph on a swerving and swooping track. You can have the best reflexes on the planet, but without the skills to turn a wrench or program an engine control unit, you might as well stick to gladitorial combat.
The investigators probably should have demanded an explanation for why the subject thought extrapolating from one data point was reasonable. His comment about assuming a random distribution when he had only one data point (7 (4 swimming, 3 dead) bears across a sector comprising 11% of the bear's range) went right past those investigators. I don't think an investigator with training in statistical methods would have let that assertion slide.
5 CHARLES MONNETT: And, um, then we said if they accurately
6 reflect 11 percent of the bears present so, in other words,
7 theyre just distributed randomly, so we looked at 11 percent
Slashdot Mirror
The internet is an amazing tool, but I think it needs discipline and will to use it efficiently; under the current net neutrality paradigm, it can achieve neither, so its potential can't be realized. I think a tiered internet means a controllable internet, one that would be more useful (and profitable) than the media chaos that reigns there now. Absent attribution and consequences, the internet is an obstacle to control, in much the same way equal access and fairness doctrines impeded the usefulness of broadcast mass media in the last century, or easy and cheap access to printed mass media impeded the usefulness of newspapers and magazines in the century prior to that one. We've had a few centuries since the invention of the printing press to understand the ramifications of mass media on the population -- I think it would be irrational in the extreme to not apply that understanding to the internet.
rats...I really didn't need to include the parent twice. :(
operate without a judge, a jury, or a set of laws. no due process, no checks and balances. just a bunch of megacorporations, unaccountable to anyone, going out there and 'hunting down' people they dont like.
i.e. barbarianism.
operate without a judge, a jury, or a set of laws. no due process, no checks and balances. just a bunch of megacorporations, unaccountable to anyone, going out there and 'hunting down' people they dont like.
i.e. barbarianism.
I don't think it is that dire. Megacorporations actually are accountable, in ways that politicians can never be. You can't get accountability from somebody who has to woo the public to stay in office. Megacorps are accountable to their board of directors and to their stock holders, a far more important and influential constituency than fickle voters. I trust the CEOs of megacorporations to keep my best interest at heart far more than I trust politicians from any party, because CEOs can't hide from the bottom line. Politicians can change like the weather, reflecting the mood of their constituents, but a CEO has a come-to-Jesus moment every quarter. Accountability (and it's enabler, transparency) are anathema to political leadership for this very reason. It's taken a couple hundred years for it to become apparent in the American experiment, but the writing is on the wall. What is emerging in America is an oligarchy, where accountability and transparency are woven into the economic fabric of the society, and aren't merely tacked on by easily loopholed legislation which is then weakly (if at all) enforced by politically-appointed judges.
That kind of attitude, while militant and progressive (for very liberal definitions of progressive) is a very good way to convince religious folk that scientists are condescending, evangelistic assholes that are no better than the ancient Crusaders whom they choose to denounce.
So? I'm interested in changing their behavior, not their irrational beliefs. You can't fix stupidity, but you *can* condition it. "Religious folk" don't give a shit about logical, well-reasoned deconstructions of their irrationality. They are going to be equally hostile to *any* threat to their belief system.
Think about it this way. You don't teach a child not to touch a hot stove by explaining the physics of heat transfer to her; you let her get burned so the lesson will *stick.* "Religious folk" have been getting a free pass in public discourse, because most rational people are too polite to call them out for it. I aim to end that, by encouraging rational people to be far less polite towards them than they have been. If "religious folk" are going to publicly display their irrationality, then they can damn well expect to be publicly burned for it.
Hold on. Buying second hand is now stealing? That's AWESOME news, since selling second hand games would then be dealing in stolen property, and we can put gamestop out of our misery!
you jest, but in the EU, it would not get a laugh. EU copyright laws, unlike their American counterparts, do not recognize the doctrine of first sale. it is fine for you to sell your legally acquired CD or DVD to a second-hand store in the US, but it is absolutely illegal to do that in the EU, or just about anywhere else on the planet.
Stealing? You equate reselling with stealing?
Certainly. Ever been outside the US? The doctrine of first sale exists only in American copyright laws. It certainly doesn't exist in European Union copyright laws.
Let me just be the latest to pile on and ask you where the hell you got the idea that buying a used item constitutes stealing.
Are you really that god-damn stupid, or is it just an act?
Neither an act, nor is it stupid. Americans believe they have the right to sell a music or game disc when they are done with it. This is because of a doctrine called "first sale," which explicitly grants the legal owner of a copyrighted work the right to resell it without compensating the creator. The copyright laws in the European Union do not recognize the doctrine of first sale. That is why it is okay in the US to sell a legally purchased CD or game DVD to somebody, but it is not legal to do that in the EU. Try to get some perspective; you are the one looking stupid right now.
id like to think you just missed where he said he was buying it 2nd hand. but you went and put that quote in your comment, so i have to conclude that your are so fucking stupid as to think buying things 2nd hand is stealing.
dude, you are the one being stupid. do you think everybody on the planet has to live by American laws? You might not believe it, but almost anywhere on the planet except in america, selling a work of art second hand *is* illegal. There are other places on the planet besides the US, you know. And they have a lot of rules that are different than the ones that Americans have to live by. try to get a little perspective, eh?
Actually, I value their "wonderful content" so much that I wait for the actual retail price to drop below 20$, THEN buy it second hand, and then only on a whim to see if it was even worth the effort.
Also, second hand sales are not stealing. Stop drinking the industry koolaid.
Why don't you stop ignoring reality? The last time I checked, America is one of the few places on the planet where second hand sales *aren't* illegal. It may come as a surprise to you, but the doctrine of first sale is as antiquated as gutenberg's press, ironically and precisely because it does not address the fact that digital copies are trivial to produce and distribute. Limitations on copyright based on this doctrine (as codified in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 109) need to be stricken from the US books. A more reasonable and artist-friendly doctrine, like the one used in the EU and the rest of the civilized world, should be used instead.
But hey, maybe you know something I don't. Lets say Bachmann becomes President. And Congress gets a veto-proof majority of Republicans. Now what? What is the mechanism that the US is "Destroyed"?
Read up on the Patriot Act, if you don't actually think the Constitution can be weakened and subverted. When I was growing up (the Seventies) the clauses in the Patriot Act were merely the subject of wild-ass speculative fiction, like in this popular political pot-boiler from when I was in high school. I scoffed at the idea when I was 15; now that i'm 50 and have seen a real-life version of "The R Document," I'm not so skeptical anymore. The problem with a democracy is that without active participation from the citizens, it simply slides into some kind of tyranny. Since you mentioned Bachmann, I would say the "destruction" will be in the form of an oligarchy, with an able assist from the more pragmatic wing of the religious right, of which Bachmann (and Perry) are notable examples.
What's left is damage control and trying to minimize the size of events and losses when they do happen. I guess that's what is being done now.
Nice post, but what is left is not just damage control. If you are in a position of power you exploit the situation, which is exactly what is going to happen in this case. Whether or not this particular suspect was a terrorist is immaterial -- the public will be fed steady stream of soundbites and PR designed to keep them on edge and in the dark about the case. Creating, then feeding, on fear and ignorance is a pretty good strategy for maintaining power.
By America's rules, that isn't an act of war though.
Where have you been for the last decade? The executive branch no longer needs a war declared by the legislative branch to suspend a citizen's Constitutional rights. The Constitution was effectively bypassed by the Patriot Act ten fucking years ago.
It sounds like all the FBI did in this case was give him someone to talk to, and some fake weapons/explosives. Everything else this guy did indicated he was entirely serious about this all on his own. He was even given a chance to back down and didn't. Its probably for the best the FBI picked him up prior to him finding someone that actually had malicious intent.
Sometimes tinfoil is just for baking people...
I think the FBI have learned lessons from their past attempts to manage information flow around high-profile terrorism cases. The purpose of a press release is to influence public opinion -- the suspect-didn't-back-down gambit in the PR (something that has not occurred in previous terror-related FBI PRs) is obviously designed to get the FBI off the entrapment hook in the public's eye. But I can see an astute defense lawyer demanding the FBI prove that the suspect would have continued his activities absent the offer of materiel support, if this case ever comes to a public trial. That would provide a serious amount of negative PR opportunities for the FBI if they failed to demonstrate the suspect's resolve. I would predict the FBI maneuvers to never let this case see the light of day, for that reason alone. If it does reach the public courts though, I really hope a high-profile defense lawyer steps up and takes the FBI to school on this one.
No scientist worthy of the title tolerates supernatural explanations for anything, including the moral or ethical behavior humans exhibit. Appealing to deity to explain/justify human behavior is just as fucking stupid and irrational as appealing to deity to explain gravity, or the origin of the cosmos. No rational scientist would accept such explanations for cosmology; why on earth should morality or ethics be treated any different?
If you passively tolerate religious people, you are part of the problem. You are doing yourself, your friends, and your species a disservice. Get in their face about their irrationality -- don't be easy or gentle on them. If you are savvy enough to be reading slashdot, you know that religion delayed the Enlightenment by a millenia and a half -- if you feel the need to pull your punches in this fight, I urge you to think about where we might be as a species right now, if fucking religion hadn't stifled scientific progress for 1500 years. And make no mistake -- it is a fight, and the stakes are pretty high. Ignorance and fear vs knowledge and rationality, with the future viability of our species in the balance.
If you want to do computer science, I would stay away from IT departments. You might derive some benefit (mostly of the people-skills type) from working in an IT department, but you won't be doing any CS as a sysadmin or tech support monkey. Fwiw, I did CS (BS from the University of Arizona in 1997) because I wanted to understand how computers worked and to become a computer programmer. This was a mistake on my part; I soon discovered that you need to take electrical engineering to really understand how they work. I also discovered that I absolutely loathe coding -- it seems to me to require an attention to detail that only OCDs could tolerate. I had to finish in CS, or I would have lost my scholarship, so I stuck it out. But -- being able to put "BS in CS" from a good university on an application got my foot in the door for a lot of IT jobs, and I settled for a fairly high paying one (high five figures) as a sysadmin with a large defense contractor, where I was relatively happy for eleven years, and never used any of my CS knowledge at all.
Having children isn't the end-all. How many of them die from complications arising from the STDs? What are the socioeconomic ramifications of the disease and how do they reflect upon any surviving children? How will social stigmas affect copulation opportunities? These and other feedback mechanisms cannot be marginalized by hyperbole.
Really? The GP points out why you were wrong about natural selection, and all you can do is accuse him of engaging in hyperbole, while piling on with even more rhetoric? Let's cut through the haze. Natural selection doesn't give a rat's ass about the economics or social environment in which it operates. It simply ensures, given enough time to operate, that only those strategies will be selected for that enable organisms to successfully reproduce. Abstinence as a reproductive strategy is obviously a non-starter. And abstinence would not protect people who caught AIDS from blood transfusions, like tennis pro Arthur Ashe, or author Isaac Asimov. But never mind that -- abstinence, especially for males, just isn't part of the genetic equation. Here's something to chew on, while you are contemplating your copulation opportunities. Research into DNA shows that we are descended from males who had multiple female partners. Rape, slavery, harems -- use whatever socially ramified term you would like -- these are part of our civilization, and unless something happens to render these strategies impotent (I use the term deliberately) you can be certain they always will be. You can't argue with reproductive success, dude -- that is what natural selection is all about.
Dude, the sky is not falling. We've had Jupiter sweeping out the solar system for billions of years; the extinction-level event that you are referring to occurred 65M years ago, and there are no impact events even remotely on that scale since. Indeed, current theories now suggest that the die off took much longer than previously believed, and that many other factors were involved that contributed to the event, significantly reducing the role played by the impact event. We are far more likely to wipe ourselves out before another impact can do it for us.
...and make it economically? The scientists are conjecturing, based on observations from an inelastic neutron scattering experiment on activated carbon coated with a platinum catalyst, that a low pressure H2 storage system could be developed, but seem to acknowledge that it would be expensive. If they'd actually constructed a storage device, I might be less cynical, but this seems to be another case of the theoretically possible being interesting but not economically feasible. From the article:
The team also hopes to identify a catalyst that isn't quite as expensive as platinum.
For what it is worth, a similar low pressure system using rhodium to bind hydrogen was conjectured half a dozen years ago, but I can't find evidence that a working prototype ever emerged. Using a platinum catalyst is an expensive way to bind hydrogen. I remember enough chemistry to know that the platinum group of elements (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum) all have similar hydrogen binding abilities, but all seem to be fairly expensive to produce in commercial quantities.
Three people died in the 2009 Detroit Marathon, so should road races be run by individuals? Or hell, it's a "gladiatorial combat" and should be banned?
Now to your point about Indianapolis, only 17 drivers have died there during races, not 56. 33 died in single driver testing or qualifications, the very model you advocate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indianapolis_500_fatal_accidents
I'll concede your numbers -- I'd wished I'd found your source, because I was really more interested in spectator deaths at Indy, to balance the 80 spectators who died at Le Mans. I'll take the round dozen that your source identifies, with great appreciation. fwiw here's the source for my 56 drivers
With that said, you really haven't justfied even one death, let alone 17. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and kills people when it's wheels fly completely out of the venue and kill a twelve year old boy playing in his front yard, it's a blood sport, okay?
And attempting a reductio ad absurdum by comparing a bunch of joggers with the Indy 500 is so fucking stupid I had to read it twice to make sure that was your intent. Do you really *not* understand the difference between a person on foot and a person at the controls of a fairly massive machine moving at a significant fraction of Mach? If you don't, you are wasting my time, dude.
Your point, sir, if you have one? You provide a hell of a lot of assertions without providing any kind of supporting evidence, particularly about the motivations and reasoning processes of scientists, government officials, businessmen, and citizens, so I'm pretty much inclined to dismiss you as a troll.
It's a tragedy because not enough people died for it to be mere statistics.
Oh and you could call time trials 'races', but the ability to jockey and pass during auto races is one of the skills which makes a given racer better or worse than another...
Hmmm..."not enough people died for it to be mere statistics." Taken in isolation, this could be true -- a driver here, a driver there, a few spectators here, a few spectators there, though the Le Mans disaster in 1955 (81 dead -- the driver and 80 spectators) probably effectively shuts down your argument. But since we do have a memory, and can put perspective on this sport, you can see that the statistics start to pile up. Just google "spectator and driver related deaths in motorsports" and I think you'll understand why your position is untenable.
The ability to jockey and pass during auto races (from my perspective it is more the *lack* of this ability that is salient) may be a component to the competition, but it is not the only one. What is key is that it is the single component that is responsible for all the carnage. Removing that component still leaves competition, and more importantly, it prevents deaths. Automobile racing is a bloodsport, no different in principle than the gladitorial combat that the Romans used to divert their populations during periods of civil unrest. Fwiw, given the political alignment of the fans that support auto racing, the parallels between NASCAR and the Roman arena are stunning.
You don't understand the concept of a "race" do you?
A race has multiple competitors on the field. A time trial or technical event is a timed event were competitors go one at a time to try and establish the best time for the course.
As for auto racing, (you can't just single out NASCAR), they do time trials in the qualification part of a race week to establish starting position.
You make my point for me...you just demonstrated that time-trials are not enough for the fans, because the racing promoters apparently feel they *still* have to send multiple cars out. Historically, the number of driver and spectator deaths over the past century has turned automobile and air racing into bloodsports, and bloodsports are indefensible, period. A driver crashed at Le Mans in 1955, and took not only his own life, but the lives of 80 spectators. Ditto Indianapolis Raceway in the US, where 56 drivers have lost their lives. There has to be some reason racing promoters still insist on having multiple cars in the field simultaneously, and the reason is blood. They know the fans want it, and they also know that the fans wouldn't spend a dime on racing if there wasn't a chance they'd get some blood. Can you look the shades of all the dead drivers and spectators in the eye and still maintain that your narrow-minded concept of competition is justifiable?
And, fwiw, if you are still reading this, I do indeed understand the concept of competition -- I race my Ducati and my 'Vette in time-trials, achieving spectacular velocities with zero danger to anybody but myself, and the roar of the fans when somebody breaks 250mph on a streetable machine is no less enjoyable because we didn't try to (stupidly) achieve those velocities simultaneously. Competition is more than just the simultaneous display of skills among vehicle operators; competition would still exist without it. And you seem to be eliding the fact that the drivers' skills are kinda pointless without the skills of the engineering and support teams that provide a competition-worthy vehicle in the first place. Our competition is more about technical skill than reflexes, though you still need those at 200mph on a swerving and swooping track. You can have the best reflexes on the planet, but without the skills to turn a wrench or program an engine control unit, you might as well stick to gladitorial combat.
The investigators probably should have demanded an explanation for why the subject thought extrapolating from one data point was reasonable. His comment about assuming a random distribution when he had only one data point (7 (4 swimming, 3 dead) bears across a sector comprising 11% of the bear's range) went right past those investigators. I don't think an investigator with training in statistical methods would have let that assertion slide.
5 CHARLES MONNETT: And, um, then we said if they accurately
6 reflect 11 percent of the bears present so, in other words,
7 theyre just distributed randomly, so we looked at 11 percent
8 of the area.
For what it's worth, two terms that apply to this phenomenon are iron triangle and regulatory capture.
Heh...we call that "working the refs."
Opinions are not valid just because you have them. Unless they're backed up with facts and logic, they're worse than useless.
You, sir, will never have a career in public relations, politics, or at Fox News.