This may be slightly off-topic. but it seems to me that if we improve drilling technology enough to breach the Earth's Mantle, there lies an almost endless supply of heat energy. According to http://zebu.uoregon.edu/ph162/l18.html, the average thermal gradient is 30 degrees C per kilometer, so that at a depth of 20,000 feet, the temperature is 190 degrees C. The problem is that in solids the heat can only be replenished by diffusion, so that steam extraction of heat would occur faster than the heat can be replenished. However, if we could dig deep enough to where heat could be replenished by convection, then the concept of geothermal heat extraction could be feasible.
Another alternative that may currently be feasible is to detonate small H-bombs in deep cavities to replenish the heat. This, in fact, was already done in the PACER project, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER. The major problem in the Pacer project was the reliance of plutonium fission bombs to initiate the fusion reaction, which created problems with radioactive waste. If a "Fusion Fuse" other than fission could be devised, we could dispense with esoteric, far-in-the-future methods of controlling fusion above ground, and simply use deep cavities in the Earth to release heat via uncontrolled fusion reactions, and extract the heat.
Not only did the NY Times sit on this story for a year (an action that quite possibly changed the outcome of the 2004 Presidential Elections), but it seems that they have only come out with the story now because they were "scooped" by NBC News. The NY Times article is dated today, December 16th, but check out this article by NBC News, "updated" on December 14th:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316
Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?
Secret database obtained by NBC News tracks 'suspicious' domestic groups
By Lisa Myers, Douglas Pasternak, Rich Gardella and the NBC Investigative Unit
Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2005
WASHINGTON - A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.
A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a "threat" and one of more than 1,500 "suspicious incidents" across the country over a recent 10-month period.
[...]
The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.
[...](go to link above to read the entire article)
One of the striking aspects of this is that the U.S. military is directly involved in spying on American citizens. Such activity has not been known to occur, publicly, since the Civil War, and is in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878:
20 Stat. L., 145
June 18, 1878
CHAP. 263 - An act making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, and for other purposes.
SEC. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section And any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Nommo are ancestral spirits (sometimes referred to as deities) worshipped by the Dogon tribe of Mali, Africa. The word Nommos is derived from a Dogon word meaning, "to make one drink"
Considering how the slashdot mods tapped into this thread and harvested 2-3 Karma pints^^^^^points from every contributor, yes, it does seem appropriate
The Dogon reportedly related to Griaule and Dieterlen a belief that the Nommos were inhabitants of a world circling the star Sirius
Sorry , Funny.
Now Please mod us all down some more because on of the Official Slashdot Mods (OSM) originally zinged the parent before he had his coffee.
Oh, BTW, cooperate with the DIA, much?
Not so much?
Much too much!
Perhaps the Mod thought the parent post was suggesting that "the advanced Siriusian aliens were planning to hit the Earth with Sirius B. Obviously the Siriusians are an advanced corporate culture, and are intent on "downsizing" their system, cutting their aging former stars loose, in an attempt to get lean and (very) mean, and to eliminate possible future competition from other evolving corporatized systems."
"Sirius A is about twice the size of the sun and about 20 times as luminous. It is also one of the nearest stars, lying at a distance of 8.7 light-years, so that it has been studied extensively. From an analysis of its motions, F. W. Bessel concluded (1844) that it had an unseen companion, which was later (1862) confirmed by observation. The companion, Sirius B, is a white-dwarf star and has also been the object of considerable study because it is the first white dwarf whose spectrum was found to exhibit a gravitational red shift, as predicted by the General Theory of Relativity."
Wrong, neither hypothetical case is a "hate crime" by any definition. The reasons: lack of premeditation, verbal confrontation, fighting.
Really, try to pick an actual case of a hate crime and analyze it. The standards are much higher than you seem to imagine. Politically speaking, this seems to be just another wedge issue propagated by the right wing masters of propaganda. You are distracted, you are controlled.
Paranoia runs deep, into your life it will creep.
It starts when you're always afraid. Step out of line, the Man comes and takes you away.
Mr. AC, I guess this is really a hot button issue for you. Try to understand: what is the difference between first degree murder and second degree murder, under the law? So if a jury convicts for first degree murder instead of second degree murder or manslaughter, are they convicting the murderer for a "thought crime"? No, it is the motivation and the state of mind that matters. It is what the murderer was thinking before and during the commission of the crime that matters. This is not "thought crime", it is common law.
Yes, those pedaphile priests were despicable, but they were not murderers, and they did not commit hate crimes. They were sick bastards.
If I am "part of the problem", then you must have some very strange problems in your life.
That observation pretty much ends anything useful I have to contribute to this flamage.
I am advocating tolerance, not intolerance. Your logic chain makes no sense to me: of course you have the "right" to be a racist, but being a racist implies irrational hatred of an entire class of innocent people. If you murder an innocent person out of that hatred, then why isn't it a premeditated hate crime? Murdering for race is worse than murdering for money; it is more senseless and therefore more abhorrent.
I am sure you know the particular crime I am alluding to.
But I agree with you, if it is done as an overt act of racism, it is just as heinous. But, for some reason, seemingly not as common, heh?
Odd, I can recall a case of two thugs seducing a gay person, then tying him to a barb wired fence and beating him to a pulp, leaving him overnight to die in the cold. But I cannot recall any cases involving a gang of gay thugs doing the same to a straight person. Strange, isn't it?
At different times, I have both benefited and been discriminated against because of my race, gender and/or religious beliefs. I still maintain that intolerence in a pluralistic society due to race, gender or beliefs is especially damaging to society, and perpetrators should be treated with extraordinary measures by the law.
Now what does this have to do with Orwell's ideas expressed in his book 1984? Maybe you can remind me how "hate crimes" relate to his work. Thought crimes? No, sorry. It is the state of mind of the murderer that distinguishes the degree of his crime.
Funny you should object to "hate crimes" but not to the "Patriot Act". Even the name "Patriot Act" reeks of doublespeak.
On the other hand, tying a random innocent black person to the back of your pickup truck and dragging him until he is decapitated is far more heinous than your average crime of passion. Such crimes should be dealt with more harshly, the perpetrators are an especially dangerous type of psychopath.
OK, I admit that was a little too easy, sorry. Any constructive and specific suggestions? I still think the best way to fight this is to donate to organizations that can act as our lobbbyists, researchers, and journalists. I also donated to Representative John Conyers, to help support his investigation of the Ohio elections, even though I do not live in his MI district. He is one of the few politicians with the guts to bring the issue into the mainstream discourse.
On the other hand, if what you are trying to say is something like "put your efforts somewhere where they will be more effective", then, yes, a donation to http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ has been given.
Yes, sorry, your original question. Please see ACs response. Especially his points that the voting system is "presumed" to be valid, and if it is not, why not use the money fix the process itself?
I fixate on the first challenge along this path, to convince the "sleeping majority" that the process is broken.
I am glad you appreciated my previous post, LegendLength, but I do not agree with your comment below:
Note that if you argue it is because it is wrong on occasion, then surely that is enough to stop it being used in any serious argument.
As you may well know, the error function is Gaussian, the PDF extends out to infinity both positive and negative. I reject the argument that we need to "mathematically" prove that fraud has occurred, we only need to prove it to satisfy legal standards; "beyond a reasonable doubt". For example, the differences between exit polls and "recorded votes" in 2004 were extraordinary, and in all of the key "battleground" states the swings were towards George W. Bush. Dr Stephen F. Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania calculated that the odds of just three of the major swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania all swinging as far as they did against their respective exit polls were 250 million to 1. (See, for example,
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/2004votefraud.ht ml
Awareness of these atrocities is growing around the fringes of "permissible political discourse" in this country. My fervent hope is that it will not be long until the issue explodes into the public consciousness and the criminals are exposed. In a court of law, where we will see which standard of proof satisfies justice
It's funny though because I've never seen the Democratics argue for a system that includes formal checks against exit polls for these apparently obvious anomalies.
Checks of voting results against exit polls are traditionally an "informal" function of the Fourth Estate. These duties are contracted out to organizations made up of trained professionals (e.g. statistician, sociologists) who specialize in compensating for extraneous variables to remove bias and assure a degree of confidence in the results. In return, the media organizations that pay for these polls gain prestige and a reputation for journalistic integrity as a function of the accuracy of the polls. An infamous counterexample is the Chicago Tribune's erroneous headline "Dewey Beats Truman" in 1948, which was based on a biased sampling methodology, due to phone polling when, in 1948, the distribution of telephones favored wealthy Dewey voters rather than poor Truman supporters. Certainly the reputation of the Tribune suffered, and they must still blush whenever the famous picture of Truman holding up their front page comes up.
Since then, the sophistication of polling has increased dramatically. A good article with reference can be found here:
"...prominent survey researchers (e.g., Asner 1999, Cantril 1991:142), political scientists (e.g., Edwards & Wayne 1999:84), and journalists (e.g., Jurkowitz 2000) concur that they (exit polls) are highly reliable. As far back as 1987, political columnist David Broder wrote that exit polls "are the most useful analytic tool developed in my working life" (1987:253). Edwards & Wayne (1999:84) caution only that, "... the problem with exit polls lies in their accuracy (rather than inaccuracy). They give the press access to predict the outcome before the elections have been concluded."
"An exit pollster himself for more than 20 years, St. Louis University Professor of Political Science Ken Warren (2003) has never had an error greater than 2 percent, except one time--in a 1982 St. Louis primary. In that election, massive voter fraud was subsequently uncovered."
"Temple University professor of mathematics John Allen Paulos wrote in a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer that... "huge differences between the final tallies and the exit poll percentages occurred in 10 of the 11 battleground states, all of them in Bush's favor. If the people sampled in the exit polls were a random sample of voters, Freeman's standard statistical techniques show that these large discrepancies are way, way beyond the margins of error." (In regards to Mr. Baker's charge of unimpressive credentials, I note that Paulos, a prominent mathematician and author, was the winner of the 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science award for the promotion of public understanding of science).
"Because of their reliability, exit polls are used to verify elections around the world. When exit polls deviated from the official count in Serbia and the former Soviet Republics of Belarus, Georgia, and the Ukraine; the world--led by the United States--accepted exit poll numbers over the official count, and in three of these nations, the election results were successfully overturned."
As for further sources, there is a wealth of links in other posts under this topic. I have been though and read the majority of these links for myself, and I stand by my statements based on the extensive research that has been done. My real research topic for tonight was supposed to be "Bubble-like visualization of UWB propagation in immersive environments", so you will forgive me if I invite you to get in touch with your own "Inner Google Monkey", if you really want to find out the truth.
to the "true believers" that remain among my fellow Americans, but firing Walden W. O'Dell will not automagically bring back integrity to the voting system here in the U.S. Most slashdotters are savvy enough to know that paperless voting using secret, proprietary code can be easily manipulated. We will not be safe from this type of fraud until paperless voting is outlawed in ALL states.
Also, many slashdotters have knowledge of the "Law of Large Numbers", and know that a well-designed exit poll should be accurate within its designed level of confidence. Large statistical "anomalies" between exit polling and "recorded votes" associated with the 2002 (Georgia, Minnesota), 2004 (Presidential election, many states) and 2005 (Ohio referendums) verge on the quasi-impossible, until you factor in deliberate fraud. Exit polls do not lie, and when the margin of error is exceeded time and again, all with identical bias, we can be sure that the system is being gamed. Exit polls, after all, are how the fairness of elections is assessed in those "corrupt, third-world" countries.
At least be comforted the "powers that be" that really control the country still feel the need to throw us dogs the "bones" of legitimacy. In the words of Frank Zappa,
"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see a brick wall at the back of the theater."
After seeing others get grants, I think I want to go back to university and get a Ph.D. in sociology. I'll do my Ph.D. on the effects of having a million dollar trust fund and driving a ferrari. Now I just need to fill out that application for the grant.
Within the past couple of years the rate of acceptance for NSF proposals has dipped to as low as 2-3%. Recently, I heard that their new goal is to increase their acceptance rate to a whopping 5%. Also, do not totally buy into the belief that peer-review leads to pure merit-based grant awards; there is still a whopping "who you know" factor.
Maybe we should hurry global warming along to melt the polar ice caps sooner so we have enough water to fill that new ocean.
Or maybe we should help that fissure open more quickly so as to reduce the rise in sea level caused by the positive feedback loop-induced, hurried pace of worldwide greenhouse warming?
AC - This is an interesting point. I have a teacher who is attempting to instruct me in the finer arts of a physical activity. One thing that is required is very fast reaction time. These motions cannot come from the "intellect". She freely admits that one of her teaching strategies is to distract my intellect with irrelevancies while simultaneously attempting to "train my body".
People often question authority and rebel against those who would instruct us.
Dialectics and the Socratic method both involve a level of subterfuge. Sometimes we must "hit bottom" before we can see the truth.
I disagree. Evolution is not mentiond at all in the Bible, so religious fundamentalists must reject it. Catholicism has more basis in rationalism. For example (excerpted from "The Vatican's View of Evolution")
Excerpt: "Pope Paul II revisited the question of evolution in a 1996 a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Unlike Pius XII, John Paul is broadly read, and embraces science and reason. He won the respect of many scientists in 1993, when in April 1993 he formally acquitted Galileo, 360 years after his indictment, of heretical support for Copernicus's heliocentrism. The pontiff began his statement with the hope that "we will all be able to profit from the fruitfulness of a trustful dialogue between the Church and science." Evolution, he said, is "an essential subject which deeply interests the Church." He recognized that science and Scripture sometimes have "apparent contradictions," but said that when this is the case, a "solution" must be found because "truth cannot contradict truth." The Pope pointed to the Church's coming to terms with Galileo's discoveries concerning the nature of the solar system as an example of how science might inspire the Church to seek a new and "correct interpretation of the inspired word."
When the pope came to the subject of the scientific merits of evolution, it soon became clear how much things had changed in the nearly since the Vatican last addressed the issue. John Paul said:
"Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."
Evolution, a doctrine that Pius XII only acknowledged as an unfortunate possibility, John Paul accepts forty-six years later "as an effectively proven fact." (ROA, 82)"
You are actually quite humorous, Mr. Coward.
Actually I am far from a dogmatic atheist, more like a doubting agnostic.
I realize that science as it exists today does not and can not explain the totality of our existence.
But religious fundamentalists and extreme nationalists: they are obviously operating at a very low level of the awareness spectrum in the "reality-based" "here and now". (Note the use of more "scare quotes" - maybe you should "take heed").
1. Dogmatic Christians pushing their belief system as the anti-science.
2. Dogmatic Athiests pushing their belief system as the anti-religion.
3. The Rest Of Us.
No, Not Really "Insightful" Let's try:
1. Irrational religious fundamentalists who believe their "Holy Book" is literal truth
and is the direct "Word of God".
2. Scientists, mathematicians and philosophers who point out that the "Holy Book" contain contradictions and therefor cannot be literally true.
3. Religious people who are also rational and accept that their "Holy Book" contains metaphors, literal contradictions, and corrections (as in "Old Testament vs. New Testament)", so that the book must be "interpreted".
4. People who realize that science, philosophy or mathematics can neither prove nor disprove the existence of "God" (Not necessarily exclusive of categories 2 and 3).
Slashdot Mirror
This may be slightly off-topic. but it seems to me that if we improve drilling technology enough to breach the Earth's Mantle, there lies an almost endless supply of heat energy. According to http://zebu.uoregon.edu/ph162/l18.html, the average thermal gradient is 30 degrees C per kilometer, so that at a depth of 20,000 feet, the temperature is 190 degrees C. The problem is that in solids the heat can only be replenished by diffusion, so that steam extraction of heat would occur faster than the heat can be replenished. However, if we could dig deep enough to where heat could be replenished by convection, then the concept of geothermal heat extraction could be feasible.
Another alternative that may currently be feasible is to detonate small H-bombs in deep cavities to replenish the heat. This, in fact, was already done in the PACER project, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER. The major problem in the Pacer project was the reliance of plutonium fission bombs to initiate the fusion reaction, which created problems with radioactive waste. If a "Fusion Fuse" other than fission could be devised, we could dispense with esoteric, far-in-the-future methods of controlling fusion above ground, and simply use deep cavities in the Earth to release heat via uncontrolled fusion reactions, and extract the heat.
Bottom Line: I am not buying into the "Peak Oil Doomsday Scenario" http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html just yet.
Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?
Secret database obtained by NBC News tracks 'suspicious' domestic groups
By Lisa Myers, Douglas Pasternak, Rich Gardella and the NBC Investigative Unit
Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2005
WASHINGTON - A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.
A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a "threat" and one of more than 1,500 "suspicious incidents" across the country over a recent 10-month period.
[...]
The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.
[...](go to link above to read the entire article)
One of the striking aspects of this is that the U.S. military is directly involved in spying on American citizens. Such activity has not been known to occur, publicly, since the Civil War, and is in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878:
20 Stat. L., 145
June 18, 1878
CHAP. 263 - An act making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, and for other purposes.
SEC. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section And any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.
It is also worth recalling the quaint document that George W. Bush has called "just a goddamned piece of paper" http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/arti cle_7779.shtml, the U.S. Constitution. In particular, the Bill of Rights:
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Nommo are ancestral spirits (sometimes referred to as deities) worshipped by the Dogon tribe of Mali, Africa. The word Nommos is derived from a Dogon word meaning, "to make one drink"
Considering how the slashdot mods tapped into this thread and harvested 2-3 Karma pints^^^^^points from every contributor, yes, it does seem appropriate
The Dogon reportedly related to Griaule and Dieterlen a belief that the Nommos were inhabitants of a world circling the star Sirius
Oh, yeah and that too.
Sorry , Funny. Now Please mod us all down some more because on of the Official Slashdot Mods (OSM) originally zinged the parent before he had his coffee. Oh, BTW, cooperate with the DIA, much? Not so much? Much too much!
Perhaps the Mod thought the parent post was suggesting that "the advanced Siriusian aliens were planning to hit the Earth with Sirius B. Obviously the Siriusians are an advanced corporate culture, and are intent on "downsizing" their system, cutting their aging former stars loose, in an attempt to get lean and (very) mean, and to eliminate possible future competition from other evolving corporatized systems."
not mentioned in the article, at http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/Sirius
Selected excerpt:
"Sirius A is about twice the size of the sun and about 20 times as luminous. It is also one of the nearest stars, lying at a distance of 8.7 light-years, so that it has been studied extensively. From an analysis of its motions, F. W. Bessel concluded (1844) that it had an unseen companion, which was later (1862) confirmed by observation. The companion, Sirius B, is a white-dwarf star and has also been the object of considerable study because it is the first white dwarf whose spectrum was found to exhibit a gravitational red shift, as predicted by the General Theory of Relativity."
Wrong, neither hypothetical case is a "hate crime" by any definition. The reasons: lack of premeditation, verbal confrontation, fighting.
Really, try to pick an actual case of a hate crime and analyze it. The standards are much higher than you seem to imagine. Politically speaking, this seems to be just another wedge issue propagated by the right wing masters of propaganda. You are distracted, you are controlled.
Paranoia runs deep, into your life it will creep. It starts when you're always afraid. Step out of line, the Man comes and takes you away.Mr. AC, I guess this is really a hot button issue for you. Try to understand: what is the difference between first degree murder and second degree murder, under the law? So if a jury convicts for first degree murder instead of second degree murder or manslaughter, are they convicting the murderer for a "thought crime"? No, it is the motivation and the state of mind that matters. It is what the murderer was thinking before and during the commission of the crime that matters. This is not "thought crime", it is common law.
Yes, those pedaphile priests were despicable, but they were not murderers, and they did not commit hate crimes. They were sick bastards.
If I am "part of the problem", then you must have some very strange problems in your life.
That observation pretty much ends anything useful I have to contribute to this flamage.
I am advocating tolerance, not intolerance. Your logic chain makes no sense to me: of course you have the "right" to be a racist, but being a racist implies irrational hatred of an entire class of innocent people. If you murder an innocent person out of that hatred, then why isn't it a premeditated hate crime? Murdering for race is worse than murdering for money; it is more senseless and therefore more abhorrent.
I am sure you know the particular crime I am alluding to. But I agree with you, if it is done as an overt act of racism, it is just as heinous. But, for some reason, seemingly not as common, heh? Odd, I can recall a case of two thugs seducing a gay person, then tying him to a barb wired fence and beating him to a pulp, leaving him overnight to die in the cold. But I cannot recall any cases involving a gang of gay thugs doing the same to a straight person. Strange, isn't it? At different times, I have both benefited and been discriminated against because of my race, gender and/or religious beliefs. I still maintain that intolerence in a pluralistic society due to race, gender or beliefs is especially damaging to society, and perpetrators should be treated with extraordinary measures by the law. Now what does this have to do with Orwell's ideas expressed in his book 1984? Maybe you can remind me how "hate crimes" relate to his work. Thought crimes? No, sorry. It is the state of mind of the murderer that distinguishes the degree of his crime.
Funny you should object to "hate crimes" but not to the "Patriot Act". Even the name "Patriot Act" reeks of doublespeak.
On the other hand, tying a random innocent black person to the back of your pickup truck and dragging him until he is decapitated is far more heinous than your average crime of passion. Such crimes should be dealt with more harshly, the perpetrators are an especially dangerous type of psychopath.
OK, I admit that was a little too easy, sorry. Any constructive and specific suggestions? I still think the best way to fight this is to donate to organizations that can act as our lobbbyists, researchers, and journalists. I also donated to Representative John Conyers, to help support his investigation of the Ohio elections, even though I do not live in his MI district. He is one of the few politicians with the guts to bring the issue into the mainstream discourse.
The terms I actually used, "most slashdotters", and "many slashdotters", are not logically equivalent to "all slashdotters".
You may want to review the laws of formal logic regarding quantifiers. Try http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Formal_Logic/Predicat e_Logic/The_Predicate_Language
Just a thought
On the other hand, if what you are trying to say is something like "put your efforts somewhere where they will be more effective", then, yes, a donation to http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ has been given.
Yes, sorry, your original question. Please see ACs response. Especially his points that the voting system is "presumed" to be valid, and if it is not, why not use the money fix the process itself?
I fixate on the first challenge along this path, to convince the "sleeping majority" that the process is broken.
I am glad you appreciated my previous post, LegendLength, but I do not agree with your comment below:
Note that if you argue it is because it is wrong on occasion, then surely that is enough to stop it being used in any serious argument.
As you may well know, the error function is Gaussian, the PDF extends out to infinity both positive and negative. I reject the argument that we need to "mathematically" prove that fraud has occurred, we only need to prove it to satisfy legal standards; "beyond a reasonable doubt". For example, the differences between exit polls and "recorded votes" in 2004 were extraordinary, and in all of the key "battleground" states the swings were towards George W. Bush. Dr Stephen F. Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania calculated that the odds of just three of the major swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania all swinging as far as they did against their respective exit polls were 250 million to 1. (See, for example, http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/2004votefraud.ht ml
The swings in the 2005 Ohio referendum are even more extraordinary (http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2 005/1559, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-friedman/the-st aggeringly-impossib_b_10589.html)
Again, these swings were in the "preferred" Republican direction
Awareness of these atrocities is growing around the fringes of "permissible political discourse" in this country. My fervent hope is that it will not be long until the issue explodes into the public consciousness and the criminals are exposed. In a court of law, where we will see which standard of proof satisfies justice
It's funny though because I've never seen the Democratics argue for a system that includes formal checks against exit polls for these apparently obvious anomalies.
Checks of voting results against exit polls are traditionally an "informal" function of the Fourth Estate. These duties are contracted out to organizations made up of trained professionals (e.g. statistician, sociologists) who specialize in compensating for extraneous variables to remove bias and assure a degree of confidence in the results. In return, the media organizations that pay for these polls gain prestige and a reputation for journalistic integrity as a function of the accuracy of the polls. An infamous counterexample is the Chicago Tribune's erroneous headline "Dewey Beats Truman" in 1948, which was based on a biased sampling methodology, due to phone polling when, in 1948, the distribution of telephones favored wealthy Dewey voters rather than poor Truman supporters. Certainly the reputation of the Tribune suffered, and they must still blush whenever the famous picture of Truman holding up their front page comes up.
Since then, the sophistication of polling has increased dramatically. A good article with reference can be found here:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/letters_debating_ exit_polls.php
Some select quotes:
"...prominent survey researchers (e.g., Asner 1999, Cantril 1991:142), political scientists (e.g., Edwards & Wayne 1999:84), and journalists (e.g., Jurkowitz 2000) concur that they (exit polls) are highly reliable. As far back as 1987, political columnist David Broder wrote that exit polls "are the most useful analytic tool developed in my working life" (1987:253). Edwards & Wayne (1999:84) caution only that, "... the problem with exit polls lies in their accuracy (rather than inaccuracy). They give the press access to predict the outcome before the elections have been concluded."
"An exit pollster himself for more than 20 years, St. Louis University Professor of Political Science Ken Warren (2003) has never had an error greater than 2 percent, except one time--in a 1982 St. Louis primary. In that election, massive voter fraud was subsequently uncovered."
"Temple University professor of mathematics John Allen Paulos wrote in a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer that... "huge differences between the final tallies and the exit poll percentages occurred in 10 of the 11 battleground states, all of them in Bush's favor. If the people sampled in the exit polls were a random sample of voters, Freeman's standard statistical techniques show that these large discrepancies are way, way beyond the margins of error." (In regards to Mr. Baker's charge of unimpressive credentials, I note that Paulos, a prominent mathematician and author, was the winner of the 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science award for the promotion of public understanding of science).
"Because of their reliability, exit polls are used to verify elections around the world. When exit polls deviated from the official count in Serbia and the former Soviet Republics of Belarus, Georgia, and the Ukraine; the world--led by the United States--accepted exit poll numbers over the official count, and in three of these nations, the election results were successfully overturned."
As for further sources, there is a wealth of links in other posts under this topic. I have been though and read the majority of these links for myself, and I stand by my statements based on the extensive research that has been done. My real research topic for tonight was supposed to be "Bubble-like visualization of UWB propagation in immersive environments", so you will forgive me if I invite you to get in touch with your own "Inner Google Monkey", if you really want to find out the truth.
to the "true believers" that remain among my fellow Americans, but firing Walden W. O'Dell will not automagically bring back integrity to the voting system here in the U.S. Most slashdotters are savvy enough to know that paperless voting using secret, proprietary code can be easily manipulated. We will not be safe from this type of fraud until paperless voting is outlawed in ALL states.
Also, many slashdotters have knowledge of the "Law of Large Numbers", and know that a well-designed exit poll should be accurate within its designed level of confidence. Large statistical "anomalies" between exit polling and "recorded votes" associated with the 2002 (Georgia, Minnesota), 2004 (Presidential election, many states) and 2005 (Ohio referendums) verge on the quasi-impossible, until you factor in deliberate fraud. Exit polls do not lie, and when the margin of error is exceeded time and again, all with identical bias, we can be sure that the system is being gamed. Exit polls, after all, are how the fairness of elections is assessed in those "corrupt, third-world" countries.
At least be comforted the "powers that be" that really control the country still feel the need to throw us dogs the "bones" of legitimacy. In the words of Frank Zappa,
"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see a brick wall at the back of the theater."
of the day is "whopping", as in: "That is a whopping nice rift you got there".
After seeing others get grants, I think I want to go back to university and get a Ph.D. in sociology. I'll do my Ph.D. on the effects of having a million dollar trust fund and driving a ferrari. Now I just need to fill out that application for the grant.
Within the past couple of years the rate of acceptance for NSF proposals has dipped to as low as 2-3%. Recently, I heard that their new goal is to increase their acceptance rate to a whopping 5%. Also, do not totally buy into the belief that peer-review leads to pure merit-based grant awards; there is still a whopping "who you know" factor.
Good luck in your new career!
Maybe we should hurry global warming along to melt the polar ice caps sooner so we have enough water to fill that new ocean.
Or maybe we should help that fissure open more quickly so as to reduce the rise in sea level caused by the positive feedback loop-induced, hurried pace of worldwide greenhouse warming?
AC - This is an interesting point. I have a teacher who is attempting to instruct me in the finer arts of a physical activity. One thing that is required is very fast reaction time. These motions cannot come from the "intellect". She freely admits that one of her teaching strategies is to distract my intellect with irrelevancies while simultaneously attempting to "train my body". People often question authority and rebel against those who would instruct us. Dialectics and the Socratic method both involve a level of subterfuge. Sometimes we must "hit bottom" before we can see the truth.
Evolution has little place in theology
I disagree. Evolution is not mentiond at all in the Bible, so religious fundamentalists must reject it. Catholicism has more basis in rationalism. For example (excerpted from "The Vatican's View of Evolution")
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Excerpt: "Pope Paul II revisited the question of evolution in a 1996 a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Unlike Pius XII, John Paul is broadly read, and embraces science and reason. He won the respect of many scientists in 1993, when in April 1993 he formally acquitted Galileo, 360 years after his indictment, of heretical support for Copernicus's heliocentrism. The pontiff began his statement with the hope that "we will all be able to profit from the fruitfulness of a trustful dialogue between the Church and science." Evolution, he said, is "an essential subject which deeply interests the Church." He recognized that science and Scripture sometimes have "apparent contradictions," but said that when this is the case, a "solution" must be found because "truth cannot contradict truth." The Pope pointed to the Church's coming to terms with Galileo's discoveries concerning the nature of the solar system as an example of how science might inspire the Church to seek a new and "correct interpretation of the inspired word." When the pope came to the subject of the scientific merits of evolution, it soon became clear how much things had changed in the nearly since the Vatican last addressed the issue. John Paul said: "Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory." Evolution, a doctrine that Pius XII only acknowledged as an unfortunate possibility, John Paul accepts forty-six years later "as an effectively proven fact." (ROA, 82)"
Either you are part of the age of enlightenment or you are against enlightenment.
-BizarroWorld BushYou are actually quite humorous, Mr. Coward. Actually I am far from a dogmatic atheist, more like a doubting agnostic. I realize that science as it exists today does not and can not explain the totality of our existence. But religious fundamentalists and extreme nationalists: they are obviously operating at a very low level of the awareness spectrum in the "reality-based" "here and now". (Note the use of more "scare quotes" - maybe you should "take heed").
But there are really three sides to the issue:
1. Dogmatic Christians pushing their belief system as the anti-science.
2. Dogmatic Athiests pushing their belief system as the anti-religion.
3. The Rest Of Us.
No, Not Really "Insightful" Let's try:
1. Irrational religious fundamentalists who believe their "Holy Book" is literal truth and is the direct "Word of God".
2. Scientists, mathematicians and philosophers who point out that the "Holy Book" contain contradictions and therefor cannot be literally true.
3. Religious people who are also rational and accept that their "Holy Book" contains metaphors, literal contradictions, and corrections (as in "Old Testament vs. New Testament)", so that the book must be "interpreted".
4. People who realize that science, philosophy or mathematics can neither prove nor disprove the existence of "God" (Not necessarily exclusive of categories 2 and 3).