Seems like it should legitimately become a federal issue when there are transactions that occur across state lines with different laws affecting the same transaction.
For instance, if someone in a "one party notice" receives a phone call from someone in a "two party notice" state, and has an app on their phone that automatically records all calls... what happens? Which set of laws apply?
Does it change if the "one party notice" person is the one originating the call?
Does it matter if the person knows the laws of the other state?
Does it matter if the person doesn't even know which state he's calling?
How about if it's a New York phone number but it's routed to a call center in India?
I'm all for limiting the power of the federal government but sometimes it actually makes sense. In the case of inter-state phone calls, there either needs to be a federal law establishing which state's laws apply so that we all know once and for all, or (my preference since it's simpler) a federal law unifying all the state laws. Otherwise it's chaos!
It wouldn't be racist to just state that fact, but it would indeed be racist to use it to imply an unfair advantage.
If you just state that fact, some people will see it as implying blacks have an unfair advantage and therefore racist. Those people will say that simply doing the research, asking the question, and stating the results is racist even if you don't explicitly add "And therefore blacks have an unfair advantage."
It wasn't proven that every black person has better muscles than every person of any other race.
This kind of racism-disguised-as-science was common throughout 18th and 19th centuries
Scientific discussion of racial differences is not the same as racism. It's amazing how afraid some people are of frank discussion about race. They want to shut it down as soon as it begins, typically by denying the question ("there's no such thing as race!!") or personal attacks like you're doing ("you're racist for even suggesting that!!!").
for anything to be science, you must have a hypothesis, which suggests a logically coherent explanation of all observed facts, makes testable predictions
You typically start with data gathering and classification before hypotheses are even formed. But that step of the process is still "science." So no.
So, black people are violent (meaning 'primitive'?), Chinese are cunning ('good at business') and The White Man is the epitome of civilisation? And this is not racism - how? This is just a worthless rehash of junk from the days of the colonialism.
So, you're making your own ridiculous assumptions (good at business = cunning? really? how so?) and ascribing them to the book and then labeling it racist.
Teach him to read numbers well, then start looking for things with numbers. I'm looking at my car registration renewal letter and it has dollar figures, dates, descriptions, rates ("tax rate per $100 value"), tabular data, etc. You can make math problems out of these, like "what is the total of city and county tax?" that will require him to read words like "city" and "county" in the table.
I don't know how serious of a reading problem your son has, but if he's clearly behind a 1st grade class I'm guessing he's having trouble even reading words aloud. Even short things like this letter might help him get started.
Of course if you just mean he's behind a little bit because he isn't interested in reading, but knows the fundamentals, that's a different matter.
If anything, she will benefit more from the extra time devoted to mastering times tables than my other kids would benefit from learning a little more geometry.
Out of curiosity, why do you think that? It seems to me if your daughter spent that extra time working on something she enjoys and is good at, and the other kid spends extra time working on math, they'd both benefit more than if they spent extra time working on what they are not interested in. Of course some minimum level of achievement is necessary in all subjects, but it seems like you're talking about how time should be budgeted when going beyond the minimum.
I'm reminded a bit of some economics class I took once talking about international trade and specialization. If your country has a climate suited to coffee and another country is more suited to beets, then you produce coffee and trade for beets with the other country. No point wasting resources producing beets yourself, you're just not as good at it.
You're confusing mean with median. The median is the midpoint of the data, where 50% are greater than (or equal to) the median and 50% are less than (or equal to) the median.
Minerals and grain don't go on "super-tankers". They can go on normal cargo ships, and transit through the Panama canal.
Perhaps that was true at one time but it's changed and continues to change. Now there's a standard called Chinamax which is specifically designed for, well, China.
Unlike Suezmax and Panamax, Chinamax is not determined by locks or channels, or bridges - the Chinamax standard is aimed at port provisions and the name is derived from the massive dry-bulk (ore) shipments that China receives from around the globe. [...] The deadweight tonnage of Chinamax vessels is 380,000–400,000 DWT. The Brazilian iron ore company Vale is currently buying a fleet of 35 very large ore carriers (VLOC) with a deadweight tonnage within this range, referred to as the Valemax vessels.
A Panamax cargo ship would typically have a DWT of 65,000–80,000 tonnes, but its maximum cargo would be about 52,500 tonnes during a transit due to draft limitations in the canal.
Your source says the Panama Canal generated $800 million profit last year. If you look at their budget (same page) of $2.4 billion you can see there are a lot of costs as well, so revenue is much higher than $800 million.. we can estimate $3.2 billion if the 2015 budget is similar to the expenditures for last year.
The reason I bring up revenue instead of profit is that the new canal will not necessarily face the same costs as the Panama Canal. For example, the Panama Canal is currently undergoing an expansion program at a cost of about $6 billion since 2006, which is included in their budget and thus affects profits. Clearly the newly built Nicaraguan Canal would not need an expansion program, so that cost should be ignored and counted as profit.
Furthermore, the reason they are expanding the Panama Canal is to allow bigger ships and more traffic which will increase revenue. The Nicaragua Canal is designed to allow bigger ships as well so those projected numbers are perhaps more applicable. Based on http://www.commerce.gov/blog/2... they expect profits after the expansion program is complete to be around $3 billion per year.
If the Nicaraguan Canal is similar to that figure, it's looking like a pretty good investment, especially since as others have pointed out they have more to gain than just profits from tolls... substantial control of a major shipping lane is worth something.
These kinds of concerns are why the high speed rail "project" (I hesitate to call it that.. more like "pipe dream") near where I live has been in planning and environmental impact studies for 10 years, whereas the Chinese estimate for building the whole canal is 5 years.
This project, even if it fails miserably, will create more jobs and pump more money into the economy than surf tourism would in 100 years I wager. The canal budget is 4 times the entire GDP of Nicaragua. What percent of GDP does surf tourism provide?
People tend to think of average as mean, so it's entirely possible (and likely I think) that most drivers are better than the mean.
That's because there are a bunch of decent drivers, and a few who are really atrocious and shouldn't be driving. I'm guessing the distribution looks something like:
2% Excellent: not only do they not cause accidents, they avoid them and make everybody safer with their driving habits 88% Good: not always 100% defensive so susceptible to things like sudden braking, but generally good drivers if nothing unexpected happens 10% Bad: weaving through traffic, speeding in residential areas, turning or backing up without looking, etc
So 90% of the population is "above average" (mean).
Those are excellent people to have on a watchlist. If the FBI can "groom" them, they would presumably be responsive to real terrorist groups that contacted them as well.
How many of those people up in Dearborn Heights that can't travel are actually just being declared terrorists for having a funny name and living down the street from someone interesting?
Probably not many. There are plenty of crazy looking, crazy sounding Muslims in Dearborn. Just watch the Youtube videos of the response to Christian provocateurs who protest during the yearly Arab culture festival there. Most of the Muslims in those videos should be on watchlists.
It's probably not something like MD5 or SHA1 since they're dealing with images. More like http://research.microsoft.com/... which says:
The algorithm uses randomized signal processing strategies for a non-reversible compression of images into random binary strings, and is shown to be robust against image changes due to compression, geometric distortions, and other attacks.
Every perceptual hash algorithm that I have come across has the same basic properties: images can be scaled larger or smaller, have different aspect ratios, and even minor coloring differences (contrast, brightness, etc.) and they will still match similar images.
Statistically speaking there are more very tall black African Americans than white Americans.
Height is only one factor to consider in a basketball player. If not, there isn't a shortage of tall white guys to put on the team. Problem is most tall people lack other characteristics that make a good basketball player.
But let's say you're right. Whatever characteristics make a good basketball player, including height, are somehow more amply found in blacks. In another industry, a setup that catered to characteristics specific to one race would be called racist. These problems have easy solutions after all. For example, if white people aren't tall enough, then make basketball hoops shorter. There's no *reason* they're so tall, it's arbitrary and according to you tilts the field in favor of one race over others.
I'm not sure that statistically African Americans are dumber though, if you were to somehow measure raw intelligence and potential rather than academic results.
Forget raw intelligence, we don't need it in this discussion. Let's say a company or school screens applicants not on "raw intelligence" but on "how well you do on SATs" or "what your high school GPA is." Perfectly objective measures, just like height. It would be the same standard, applied equally to everyone. But people call it racist because the SATs are culturally biased against blacks. It's arbitrary, just like some of the tests the NBA has (like height). It has different outcomes based on race, just like the NBA.
Are you okay with that, as long as we add the caveat that it's measuring the applicants performance on the SAT, not raw intelligence?
With physical books that take up shelf space, sure that's a concern. With electronic books, why would Amazon NOT carry a book? They carry all kinds of stuff right now, publisher disagreements excepted, including really funny self-published books. I read a funny article about the "monster erotica" cottage industry that is rapidly growing and profitable thanks to Amazon. Even with fierce competition between dozens of national bookstores, or hundreds of mom and pop bookstores, I would be pretty surprised to see them carrying a physical copy of "Taken by the Pterodactyl" (http://www.amazon.com/Taken-Pterodactyl-Dinosaur-Erotica-Christie-ebook/dp/B00FI9JE00)
This is not complicated. Think of it as a series of tubes... ICANN decides which tube connects to which name. Right now ".ir" is connected to "the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences" in Tehran, Iran (http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db). The plaintiffs want to force ICANN to disconnect that tube and hook it up to "Some New Registrar Inc." which they will presumably set up. Then they get to decide the rules under which domain names can be registered under ".ir" and also collect the fees for doing so, which right now go to Iran.
ICANN is basically arguing that a contract is not property, which is probably wrong in this age of intellectual property, but regardless, contracts certainly have value and can be bought and sold and reassigned and modified and seized in lawsuits and what-not. Kind of like when a bank goes bankrupt, that doesn't mean all the mortgages (which are financial contracts) they have get forgiven. And even when another bank comes in and buys the mortgages at a discount, you the mortgagee don't get any sort of discount on what you owe the new bank.
It's not really analogous to zip codes because zip codes are an internal system of the post office. But authority for TLDs is farmed out to various agencies, governments, or companies, who make money off them and get to decide the rules for registering names under that TLD. See http://www.iana.org/domains/ro...
So.ir is under the authority of the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (http://www.ipm.ac.ir/25/index.jsp) which is "a government-sponsored advanced research institute founded in 1989 in Tehran, Iran. The institute was the first Iranian organization to connect to the Internet. It is also the domain name registry of.ir domain names." (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...)
It's that authority that the plaintiffs want to take away from Iran, not the name of Iran or the letters ".ir" or whatever.
Tech isn't about equal rights. It's about if you are smart enough to get it done.
That's the fucking definition of equal rights.
Not anymore... there's a big confusion over equal opportunity vs equal outcome. Conservatives typically believe in equal opportunity, liberals mostly believe in equal opportunity with some leanings towards equal outcome (that is the justification for affirmative action).
If you don't believe me, look up the legal terms "disparate impact" and "unintentional discrimination."
Another example is from a few years ago in the height of the financial crisis. When banks tightened credit requirements for loans, there was disparate impact against blacks. Same standards being applied to everyone, but blacks were affected more. Apparently that is racist, e.g. http://racism.org/index.php?op... says
In a recent article, attorneys at K&L Gates asserted "even the most basic lending standards, such as credit scores and [loan-to-value] requirements, impact' racial and ethnic groups differently." While some in the financial industry have recently discussed the existence of the disparate-impact theory under the Fair Housing Act and other long-established laws, all eleven circuit courts that have considered the matter recognized disparate impact as a legally acceptable means by which parties can assert claims under the Act.
Are you saying that white people are inherently less physically able than black people? How do you measure physical ability? There are physical sports where white people are overrepresented (like hockey), so let's not pretend that top white athletes are not competitive. It's entirely possible that there is systemic racism in basketball. Are childhood training dollars spent disproportionately in black communities? For instance I remember Clinton's midnight basketball program.. how many white kids showed up to that?
Are there systemic racially biased issues with player selection? For instance, some players are recruited straight from high school. Blacks are less likely to go to college than whites, so this disproportionately helps blacks.
What about the rules of basketball? Is there a systemic problem that gives an advantage to one race or culture?
I'm like 75% serious about this, even though it started as a joke. These are the exact same things you hear people say about institutional racism against blacks in any area where whites seem to have an overrepresentation.
Tech companies value mental ability. Are you saying that black people are inherently less intelligent than white people? It's a theory that has been researched and mostly rejected.
It has been rejected as a matter of principle by the scientific community, not as a matter of fact. Most of the research I've seen is looking into why whites do better on intelligence tests, have higher academic performance, and better career performance (judged by employment numbers and salaries), etc, as an attempt to explain why these tests are biased against blacks. Some of the difference can be explained by adjusting for socioeconomic status, exposure to lead, etc.. but I've never seen a comprehensive explanation that accounts for the entire difference. And, uncharacteristic of traditional science, that unexplained difference is not accepted as legitimate, it is labeled as simply "not known YET."
You're contradicting yourself.. if you're saying whoever rents or leases it is responsible, then if you're renting an antenna from Aereo, you are the one using the equipment and its use falls under your responsibilities and rights.
In fact, when he was first introduced, it was as a normal human finding Thor's hammer in a cave and turning into Thor. There already have been "what if?" stories exploring the scenario where his wife/girlfriend found the hammer instead. Storm has wielded Mjolnier on several occasions and turned into Thor. An alien has turned into Thor.
The big difference between now and then is that the movies including Thor have brought a lot more attention to the issue. I didn't even know Thor was a comic book character before the movies. If a comic that appeals to a small percentage of the public plays with ideas like that, good for them. But when it's exposed to more people who don't know the background, and frankly don't care much about the comic book version compared to the "real" (mythological) thing, it's a different situation entirely.
Did it take anything away? To a lot of people, it most certainly did add something. There was nothing stupid about making him black.
No, because like I said, that's a minor character. And Idris Elba is awesome anyway...
I feel like we're getting to the heart of the matter here. You associate black with "otherness". Let me guess: you are white? And male? Do you associate female also with "otherness"?
Black would be a strong visual indication of otherness in the entirely white pantheon of gods (umm, except Heimdall) that are in the movie. They already made Loki unnaturally pale and gave him black hair. He is SUPPOSED to be different. I mean you saw the movie right?
I'm not sure why you suddenly started talking about me personally. I mean I know why.. you're trying to say I'm an uncultured, provincial, naive racist. And that's stupid.
And no, women and blacks don't represent "otherness" to me personally.
But having Loki be black would bring a lot of interesting issues to the forefront of his character. He was taken out of his society and raised by the white gods in Asgard. He's distrusted by his peers and his "father" (authority figure). There's a whole lot of "but look at what we've given to you, why are you betraying us!" in the movie that ignores his true history as a hostage. They should have had Idris Elba play Loki and leave Heimdall as another generic Nordic white guy.
I guess you don't see that stuff and you think you're awesome for being more color blind than me or something... whatever makes you feel better.
Do you realize that there are people like you who are black and/or female?
Wow, really, there are black people??? Like, in real life??? And women?? Now I know you're joking!
Jeeze, get over yourself bud.
That to them, there's nothing "other" about black or female?
The role of a good movie is not to make people feel included. When I watched "The Wire" (took this example because of Idris Elba) I wasn't thinking "Gee, I would like this so much more if they made the criminals a multicultural rainbow so that it's not so stereotypical... there should be a Chinese sidekick who knows kung-fu, a couple thuggish and irredeemable white guys (ooo make one of them Italian), a tough but funny Hispanic chick, a few black thugs who secretly have hearts of gold, and a hidden mastermind who is white because we all know minorities are only criminals when they're duped into it by a nefarious smart white guy... oh that would be awesome!" No, that would make it completely retarded like so many bad 80s "urban" crime movies.
The people chosen to portray characters in a movie are more than their acting skills. They are also, like it or not, all the baggage and preconceived notions the audience brings with it. Sometimes that gets in the way of the character, other times it actually adds to it and lets them represent the character in a way that would be impossible for others.
Then do explain: how does a libertarian government not become the current one? I mean, outside of being fully staffed by libertarians, who all adhere to the same notions of government, property, and morality?
It's just like any political party in a democracy, you hope that people see the positive aspects of what you're doing and continue to support you.
I can create a central government in my house that has overreaching power in areas that... well, pick whatever you want.
I know you're being funny, but that's completely wrong. In your own house you can't impose taxes on guests, put people in your basement jail, raise an army, build a nuclear power plant, kill people who break your laws, etc. You have some special rights within your own house but they pale next to the government's rights *everywhere*. Including your house. That said, there are plenty of aspects of life where you should have the freedom to do what you please in your own house without government interference.
The reason that Somalia and Sudan are important is because they show what happens when a central government is unable to enforce its laws.
I'll go one step further than that and add that it shows what happens when too much of your population has certain harmful mentalities. In Somalia and Sudan's case it's extremist Islam which has wide ranging impacts on many areas of life. It could also be welfare, extreme social conservatism, communism, etc. If too many people in your society are violent, or lazy, or stupid, or selfish, or a host of other things... then no system of government is going to turn that into a highly functional country.
As you pointed out, another type of government replaces it - automatically. Maybe not in the same territory, but as you said, it always starts somewhere in the territory of the old government, because the old government doesn't care, doesn't have the resources to care, or can't enforce the fact that it cares. In the case of Somalia and Sudan, it's a combination of all three.
Yes and I agree with you completely, even a libertarian minded government needs to be strong enough that it can maintain the writ of the state. You won't find many libertarians who disagree with that.. the question is how strong is it necessary to be? And that depends largely on what I said before, what qualities your society has. Every society is different.
If libertarians would be really so keen to cast off the shackles of the old government, those places are great to start from scratch. I mean, resource wise it stinks, but at least there's so much chaos that you can quickly create your own state according to your own rules, and you'll be much more likely to be able to enforce your own ideals than anywhere else.
That's a terrible idea. Why would you want to start a new nation in a resource poor area with overtly hostile neighbors? I mean seriously, that sounds like the founding of Israel. They have survived thus far but it's been with enormous international help, especially at the beginning. Ignoring whether you support Israel or not, consider how many times their Muslim neighbors instigated wars against them. Israel was given massive amounts of military and civilian aid by America and Europe, otherwise they would have been wiped out.
I mean come on.. you can put down the pretense that you're serious about Somalia and Sudan being libertarian wet dreams. It's a dumb idea, and you know it, and the only reason people say it is for the shock factor. I know you don't really think it's a good idea so I honestly don't know why you put in so much effort just now to rationalize it.
Since you're quite anti-libertarian, I'm sure you know quite a bit about it, and you've heard of things like the "free state project" which are much, much better ideas than moving to Somalia. And you know that...
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Seems like it should legitimately become a federal issue when there are transactions that occur across state lines with different laws affecting the same transaction.
For instance, if someone in a "one party notice" receives a phone call from someone in a "two party notice" state, and has an app on their phone that automatically records all calls... what happens? Which set of laws apply?
Does it change if the "one party notice" person is the one originating the call?
Does it matter if the person knows the laws of the other state?
Does it matter if the person doesn't even know which state he's calling?
How about if it's a New York phone number but it's routed to a call center in India?
I'm all for limiting the power of the federal government but sometimes it actually makes sense. In the case of inter-state phone calls, there either needs to be a federal law establishing which state's laws apply so that we all know once and for all, or (my preference since it's simpler) a federal law unifying all the state laws. Otherwise it's chaos!
It wouldn't be racist to just state that fact, but it would indeed be racist to use it to imply an unfair advantage.
If you just state that fact, some people will see it as implying blacks have an unfair advantage and therefore racist. Those people will say that simply doing the research, asking the question, and stating the results is racist even if you don't explicitly add "And therefore blacks have an unfair advantage."
It wasn't proven that every black person has better muscles than every person of any other race.
Unnecessary. Irrelevant in fact.
This kind of racism-disguised-as-science was common throughout 18th and 19th centuries
Scientific discussion of racial differences is not the same as racism. It's amazing how afraid some people are of frank discussion about race. They want to shut it down as soon as it begins, typically by denying the question ("there's no such thing as race!!") or personal attacks like you're doing ("you're racist for even suggesting that!!!").
for anything to be science, you must have a hypothesis, which suggests a logically coherent explanation of all observed facts, makes testable predictions
You typically start with data gathering and classification before hypotheses are even formed. But that step of the process is still "science." So no.
So, black people are violent (meaning 'primitive'?), Chinese are cunning ('good at business') and The White Man is the epitome of civilisation? And this is not racism - how? This is just a worthless rehash of junk from the days of the colonialism.
So, you're making your own ridiculous assumptions (good at business = cunning? really? how so?) and ascribing them to the book and then labeling it racist.
Why's that, do the Christians in those videos promote violence? Do they threaten harm to others?
Just another false equivalence between Islam and other religions.
Skin color certainly does not define race. It is part of it though, which you're admitting is genetically determined.
So the question how do you define race, and which parts are not genetically determined?
Teach him to read numbers well, then start looking for things with numbers. I'm looking at my car registration renewal letter and it has dollar figures, dates, descriptions, rates ("tax rate per $100 value"), tabular data, etc. You can make math problems out of these, like "what is the total of city and county tax?" that will require him to read words like "city" and "county" in the table.
I don't know how serious of a reading problem your son has, but if he's clearly behind a 1st grade class I'm guessing he's having trouble even reading words aloud. Even short things like this letter might help him get started.
Of course if you just mean he's behind a little bit because he isn't interested in reading, but knows the fundamentals, that's a different matter.
If anything, she will benefit more from the extra time devoted to mastering times tables than my other kids would benefit from learning a little more geometry.
Out of curiosity, why do you think that? It seems to me if your daughter spent that extra time working on something she enjoys and is good at, and the other kid spends extra time working on math, they'd both benefit more than if they spent extra time working on what they are not interested in. Of course some minimum level of achievement is necessary in all subjects, but it seems like you're talking about how time should be budgeted when going beyond the minimum.
I'm reminded a bit of some economics class I took once talking about international trade and specialization. If your country has a climate suited to coffee and another country is more suited to beets, then you produce coffee and trade for beets with the other country. No point wasting resources producing beets yourself, you're just not as good at it.
You're confusing mean with median. The median is the midpoint of the data, where 50% are greater than (or equal to) the median and 50% are less than (or equal to) the median.
That's "mode" which is a different measure of average. Like I said, most people think of average as "mean."
Minerals and grain don't go on "super-tankers". They can go on normal cargo ships, and transit through the Panama canal.
Perhaps that was true at one time but it's changed and continues to change. Now there's a standard called Chinamax which is specifically designed for, well, China.
Unlike Suezmax and Panamax, Chinamax is not determined by locks or channels, or bridges - the Chinamax standard is aimed at port provisions and the name is derived from the massive dry-bulk (ore) shipments that China receives from around the globe.
[...]
The deadweight tonnage of Chinamax vessels is 380,000–400,000 DWT. The Brazilian iron ore company Vale is currently buying a fleet of 35 very large ore carriers (VLOC) with a deadweight tonnage within this range, referred to as the Valemax vessels.
Panamax ships on the other hand, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
A Panamax cargo ship would typically have a DWT of 65,000–80,000 tonnes, but its maximum cargo would be about 52,500 tonnes during a transit due to draft limitations in the canal.
Your source says the Panama Canal generated $800 million profit last year. If you look at their budget (same page) of $2.4 billion you can see there are a lot of costs as well, so revenue is much higher than $800 million.. we can estimate $3.2 billion if the 2015 budget is similar to the expenditures for last year.
The reason I bring up revenue instead of profit is that the new canal will not necessarily face the same costs as the Panama Canal. For example, the Panama Canal is currently undergoing an expansion program at a cost of about $6 billion since 2006, which is included in their budget and thus affects profits. Clearly the newly built Nicaraguan Canal would not need an expansion program, so that cost should be ignored and counted as profit.
Furthermore, the reason they are expanding the Panama Canal is to allow bigger ships and more traffic which will increase revenue. The Nicaragua Canal is designed to allow bigger ships as well so those projected numbers are perhaps more applicable. Based on http://www.commerce.gov/blog/2... they expect profits after the expansion program is complete to be around $3 billion per year.
If the Nicaraguan Canal is similar to that figure, it's looking like a pretty good investment, especially since as others have pointed out they have more to gain than just profits from tolls... substantial control of a major shipping lane is worth something.
These kinds of concerns are why the high speed rail "project" (I hesitate to call it that.. more like "pipe dream") near where I live has been in planning and environmental impact studies for 10 years, whereas the Chinese estimate for building the whole canal is 5 years.
This project, even if it fails miserably, will create more jobs and pump more money into the economy than surf tourism would in 100 years I wager. The canal budget is 4 times the entire GDP of Nicaragua. What percent of GDP does surf tourism provide?
People tend to think of average as mean, so it's entirely possible (and likely I think) that most drivers are better than the mean.
That's because there are a bunch of decent drivers, and a few who are really atrocious and shouldn't be driving. I'm guessing the distribution looks something like:
2% Excellent: not only do they not cause accidents, they avoid them and make everybody safer with their driving habits
88% Good: not always 100% defensive so susceptible to things like sudden braking, but generally good drivers if nothing unexpected happens
10% Bad: weaving through traffic, speeding in residential areas, turning or backing up without looking, etc
So 90% of the population is "above average" (mean).
Those are excellent people to have on a watchlist. If the FBI can "groom" them, they would presumably be responsive to real terrorist groups that contacted them as well.
How many of those people up in Dearborn Heights that can't travel are actually just being declared terrorists for having a funny name and living down the street from someone interesting?
Probably not many. There are plenty of crazy looking, crazy sounding Muslims in Dearborn. Just watch the Youtube videos of the response to Christian provocateurs who protest during the yearly Arab culture festival there. Most of the Muslims in those videos should be on watchlists.
It's probably not something like MD5 or SHA1 since they're dealing with images. More like http://research.microsoft.com/... which says:
The algorithm uses randomized signal processing strategies for a non-reversible compression of images into random binary strings, and is shown to be robust against image changes due to compression, geometric distortions, and other attacks.
or
http://www.hackerfactor.com/bl...
Every perceptual hash algorithm that I have come across has the same basic properties: images can be scaled larger or smaller, have different aspect ratios, and even minor coloring differences (contrast, brightness, etc.) and they will still match similar images.
Statistically speaking there are more very tall black African Americans than white Americans.
Height is only one factor to consider in a basketball player. If not, there isn't a shortage of tall white guys to put on the team. Problem is most tall people lack other characteristics that make a good basketball player.
But let's say you're right. Whatever characteristics make a good basketball player, including height, are somehow more amply found in blacks. In another industry, a setup that catered to characteristics specific to one race would be called racist. These problems have easy solutions after all. For example, if white people aren't tall enough, then make basketball hoops shorter. There's no *reason* they're so tall, it's arbitrary and according to you tilts the field in favor of one race over others.
I'm not sure that statistically African Americans are dumber though, if you were to somehow measure raw intelligence and potential rather than academic results.
Forget raw intelligence, we don't need it in this discussion. Let's say a company or school screens applicants not on "raw intelligence" but on "how well you do on SATs" or "what your high school GPA is." Perfectly objective measures, just like height. It would be the same standard, applied equally to everyone. But people call it racist because the SATs are culturally biased against blacks. It's arbitrary, just like some of the tests the NBA has (like height). It has different outcomes based on race, just like the NBA.
Are you okay with that, as long as we add the caveat that it's measuring the applicants performance on the SAT, not raw intelligence?
With physical books that take up shelf space, sure that's a concern. With electronic books, why would Amazon NOT carry a book? They carry all kinds of stuff right now, publisher disagreements excepted, including really funny self-published books. I read a funny article about the "monster erotica" cottage industry that is rapidly growing and profitable thanks to Amazon. Even with fierce competition between dozens of national bookstores, or hundreds of mom and pop bookstores, I would be pretty surprised to see them carrying a physical copy of "Taken by the Pterodactyl" (http://www.amazon.com/Taken-Pterodactyl-Dinosaur-Erotica-Christie-ebook/dp/B00FI9JE00)
Nobody wants ownership of the bits on the HDD.
This is not complicated. Think of it as a series of tubes... ICANN decides which tube connects to which name. Right now ".ir" is connected to "the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences" in Tehran, Iran (http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db). The plaintiffs want to force ICANN to disconnect that tube and hook it up to "Some New Registrar Inc." which they will presumably set up. Then they get to decide the rules under which domain names can be registered under ".ir" and also collect the fees for doing so, which right now go to Iran.
ICANN is basically arguing that a contract is not property, which is probably wrong in this age of intellectual property, but regardless, contracts certainly have value and can be bought and sold and reassigned and modified and seized in lawsuits and what-not. Kind of like when a bank goes bankrupt, that doesn't mean all the mortgages (which are financial contracts) they have get forgiven. And even when another bank comes in and buys the mortgages at a discount, you the mortgagee don't get any sort of discount on what you owe the new bank.
It's not really analogous to zip codes because zip codes are an internal system of the post office. But authority for TLDs is farmed out to various agencies, governments, or companies, who make money off them and get to decide the rules for registering names under that TLD. See http://www.iana.org/domains/ro...
So .ir is under the authority of the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (http://www.ipm.ac.ir/25/index.jsp) which is "a government-sponsored advanced research institute founded in 1989 in Tehran, Iran. The institute was the first Iranian organization to connect to the Internet. It is also the domain name registry of .ir domain names." (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...)
It's that authority that the plaintiffs want to take away from Iran, not the name of Iran or the letters ".ir" or whatever.
Tech isn't about equal rights. It's about if you are smart enough to get it done.
That's the fucking definition of equal rights.
Not anymore... there's a big confusion over equal opportunity vs equal outcome. Conservatives typically believe in equal opportunity, liberals mostly believe in equal opportunity with some leanings towards equal outcome (that is the justification for affirmative action).
If you don't believe me, look up the legal terms "disparate impact" and "unintentional discrimination."
Another example is from a few years ago in the height of the financial crisis. When banks tightened credit requirements for loans, there was disparate impact against blacks. Same standards being applied to everyone, but blacks were affected more. Apparently that is racist, e.g. http://racism.org/index.php?op... says
In a recent article, attorneys at K&L Gates asserted "even the most basic lending standards, such as credit scores and [loan-to-value] requirements, impact' racial and ethnic groups differently." While some in the financial industry have recently discussed the existence of the disparate-impact theory under the Fair Housing Act and other long-established laws, all eleven circuit courts that have considered the matter recognized disparate impact as a legally acceptable means by which parties can assert claims under the Act.
The NBA values physical ability.
Are you saying that white people are inherently less physically able than black people? How do you measure physical ability? There are physical sports where white people are overrepresented (like hockey), so let's not pretend that top white athletes are not competitive. It's entirely possible that there is systemic racism in basketball. Are childhood training dollars spent disproportionately in black communities? For instance I remember Clinton's midnight basketball program.. how many white kids showed up to that?
Are there systemic racially biased issues with player selection? For instance, some players are recruited straight from high school. Blacks are less likely to go to college than whites, so this disproportionately helps blacks.
What about the rules of basketball? Is there a systemic problem that gives an advantage to one race or culture?
I'm like 75% serious about this, even though it started as a joke. These are the exact same things you hear people say about institutional racism against blacks in any area where whites seem to have an overrepresentation.
Tech companies value mental ability. Are you saying that black people are inherently less intelligent than white people? It's a theory that has been researched and mostly rejected.
It has been rejected as a matter of principle by the scientific community, not as a matter of fact. Most of the research I've seen is looking into why whites do better on intelligence tests, have higher academic performance, and better career performance (judged by employment numbers and salaries), etc, as an attempt to explain why these tests are biased against blacks. Some of the difference can be explained by adjusting for socioeconomic status, exposure to lead, etc.. but I've never seen a comprehensive explanation that accounts for the entire difference. And, uncharacteristic of traditional science, that unexplained difference is not accepted as legitimate, it is labeled as simply "not known YET."
You're contradicting yourself.. if you're saying whoever rents or leases it is responsible, then if you're renting an antenna from Aereo, you are the one using the equipment and its use falls under your responsibilities and rights.
In fact, when he was first introduced, it was as a normal human finding Thor's hammer in a cave and turning into Thor. There already have been "what if?" stories exploring the scenario where his wife/girlfriend found the hammer instead. Storm has wielded Mjolnier on several occasions and turned into Thor. An alien has turned into Thor.
The big difference between now and then is that the movies including Thor have brought a lot more attention to the issue. I didn't even know Thor was a comic book character before the movies. If a comic that appeals to a small percentage of the public plays with ideas like that, good for them. But when it's exposed to more people who don't know the background, and frankly don't care much about the comic book version compared to the "real" (mythological) thing, it's a different situation entirely.
Did it take anything away? To a lot of people, it most certainly did add something. There was nothing stupid about making him black.
No, because like I said, that's a minor character. And Idris Elba is awesome anyway...
I feel like we're getting to the heart of the matter here. You associate black with "otherness". Let me guess: you are white? And male? Do you associate female also with "otherness"?
Black would be a strong visual indication of otherness in the entirely white pantheon of gods (umm, except Heimdall) that are in the movie. They already made Loki unnaturally pale and gave him black hair. He is SUPPOSED to be different. I mean you saw the movie right?
I'm not sure why you suddenly started talking about me personally. I mean I know why.. you're trying to say I'm an uncultured, provincial, naive racist. And that's stupid.
And no, women and blacks don't represent "otherness" to me personally.
But having Loki be black would bring a lot of interesting issues to the forefront of his character. He was taken out of his society and raised by the white gods in Asgard. He's distrusted by his peers and his "father" (authority figure). There's a whole lot of "but look at what we've given to you, why are you betraying us!" in the movie that ignores his true history as a hostage. They should have had Idris Elba play Loki and leave Heimdall as another generic Nordic white guy.
I guess you don't see that stuff and you think you're awesome for being more color blind than me or something... whatever makes you feel better.
Do you realize that there are people like you who are black and/or female?
Wow, really, there are black people??? Like, in real life??? And women?? Now I know you're joking!
Jeeze, get over yourself bud.
That to them, there's nothing "other" about black or female?
The role of a good movie is not to make people feel included. When I watched "The Wire" (took this example because of Idris Elba) I wasn't thinking "Gee, I would like this so much more if they made the criminals a multicultural rainbow so that it's not so stereotypical... there should be a Chinese sidekick who knows kung-fu, a couple thuggish and irredeemable white guys (ooo make one of them Italian), a tough but funny Hispanic chick, a few black thugs who secretly have hearts of gold, and a hidden mastermind who is white because we all know minorities are only criminals when they're duped into it by a nefarious smart white guy... oh that would be awesome!" No, that would make it completely retarded like so many bad 80s "urban" crime movies.
The people chosen to portray characters in a movie are more than their acting skills. They are also, like it or not, all the baggage and preconceived notions the audience brings with it. Sometimes that gets in the way of the character, other times it actually adds to it and lets them represent the character in a way that would be impossible for others.
Then do explain: how does a libertarian government not become the current one? I mean, outside of being fully staffed by libertarians, who all adhere to the same notions of government, property, and morality?
It's just like any political party in a democracy, you hope that people see the positive aspects of what you're doing and continue to support you.
I can create a central government in my house that has overreaching power in areas that... well, pick whatever you want.
I know you're being funny, but that's completely wrong. In your own house you can't impose taxes on guests, put people in your basement jail, raise an army, build a nuclear power plant, kill people who break your laws, etc. You have some special rights within your own house but they pale next to the government's rights *everywhere*. Including your house. That said, there are plenty of aspects of life where you should have the freedom to do what you please in your own house without government interference.
The reason that Somalia and Sudan are important is because they show what happens when a central government is unable to enforce its laws.
I'll go one step further than that and add that it shows what happens when too much of your population has certain harmful mentalities. In Somalia and Sudan's case it's extremist Islam which has wide ranging impacts on many areas of life. It could also be welfare, extreme social conservatism, communism, etc. If too many people in your society are violent, or lazy, or stupid, or selfish, or a host of other things... then no system of government is going to turn that into a highly functional country.
As you pointed out, another type of government replaces it - automatically. Maybe not in the same territory, but as you said, it always starts somewhere in the territory of the old government, because the old government doesn't care, doesn't have the resources to care, or can't enforce the fact that it cares. In the case of Somalia and Sudan, it's a combination of all three.
Yes and I agree with you completely, even a libertarian minded government needs to be strong enough that it can maintain the writ of the state. You won't find many libertarians who disagree with that.. the question is how strong is it necessary to be? And that depends largely on what I said before, what qualities your society has. Every society is different.
If libertarians would be really so keen to cast off the shackles of the old government, those places are great to start from scratch. I mean, resource wise it stinks, but at least there's so much chaos that you can quickly create your own state according to your own rules, and you'll be much more likely to be able to enforce your own ideals than anywhere else.
That's a terrible idea. Why would you want to start a new nation in a resource poor area with overtly hostile neighbors? I mean seriously, that sounds like the founding of Israel. They have survived thus far but it's been with enormous international help, especially at the beginning. Ignoring whether you support Israel or not, consider how many times their Muslim neighbors instigated wars against them. Israel was given massive amounts of military and civilian aid by America and Europe, otherwise they would have been wiped out.
I mean come on.. you can put down the pretense that you're serious about Somalia and Sudan being libertarian wet dreams. It's a dumb idea, and you know it, and the only reason people say it is for the shock factor. I know you don't really think it's a good idea so I honestly don't know why you put in so much effort just now to rationalize it.
Since you're quite anti-libertarian, I'm sure you know quite a bit about it, and you've heard of things like the "free state project" which are much, much better ideas than moving to Somalia. And you know that...