... I can't imagine vegetarians or vegans objecting to eating it.
I think it is merely a popular misconception, that vegetarians et al avoid meat simply because they object to the slaughter of animals and feel they have eat vegetables as a sort of penance. Maybe there are some of that kind - otherwise there wouldn't be a market for all those horrible meat-imitations. Personally, though, I tend to eat vegetables because I like them more than meat - the taste, the texture, the fact that I don't feel as if I had eaten a bowl of cement after eating etc. - and I think I have more energy for longer after eating. It's all about how you cook things - I find meat tastes about the same no matter how it is prepared (and I have tried some very well made meat dishes, believe me), but vegetables are so varied - if you know how to cook them and especially when to stop cooking. I still recall with loathing the brussel sprouts that had had all nutrition boiled out of them - as the saying went: "If you can count them, they haven't had enough".
In answer to the original question: do we need polymaths? Of course we do, but possibly not attention seekers like the two mentioned; from what I could find in a quick search, their main achievement has been to amass enough knowledge about stuff to score high on University Challenge, a TV quiz show. The real polymaths are people who are highly skilled in several advanced disciplines, who can therefore bring skills from one to the other; like when physicists start working in biology or mathematicians bring their unique insight to the world of physics. These people are extremely important, because they are able to coordinate several areas of science and often think outside the box, simply because they have not been brought up in the tradition of whichever area they are "interfering" in.
Polymaths are not "Jacks-of-all-trades". They are masters of many trades. They have incredible breadth and depth on several subjects, and are therefore incredibly rare. Due to the expanding volume of our collective knowledge, they are becoming even more rare.
They are possibly less rare than what we imagine, I suspect. Sure, if you mean people who have achieved fame or a high position in several branches of science, you don't see many of them, but on the other hand, most highly intelligent people rarely limit their interests to just their main area of professional interest. It is simply a myth that being brilliant in one sucject makes you more or less a moron in everything else; it is the kind of thing that looks good in a movie - the flawed genius, the idiot savant etc., but they are the rare ones. In the real world, if you are good at one thing, you are probably good at a wide range of things.
It's always weird when you furriners start complaining about the use of American English and US references on this American web site. It's fine if you want to eavesdrop on a conversation among Americans, but it doesn't make any sense to complain that we're speaking American to each other.
Oh, it's only for Americans? Could you keep it inside your own borders, then? Alternatively, get your head around the fact that the internet is international, and that there are a lot fewer Americans than un-Americans in the world, so stop trying to pull rank or whatever it is you imagine you are doing - we aren't impressed.
A cookie is a uk biscuit but not a us biscuit. A us biscuit would be most like a savory scone
I've wondered about this terminology. So, savoury biscuits are the salty ones, right? But then, surely the sweet ones are unsavoury? I mean, it stands to reason, doesn't it?
... both Ubuntu and Android have been going in alphabetical order (though Ubuntu has to wrap, or something, in October),...
That's the thing, though - it is so US centric (and I know, there will now be a stream of comment along the lines 'But America invented reality and everything'). Don't get me wrong, I don't hate America - there are things about you guys I love, like your absence (sorry, only joking, couldn't resist) - but when it comes to finding cool names, you are just so juvenile. And Ubuntu's naming strategy is toe-curling, IMO; what will it be when it rolls over? "Anal Abcess"?
The free market may create a self-rectifying problem. The more expensive it becomes to fish (because there are less fish) the quicker people will develop sustainable fish repositories to raise fish.
This does work to a certain extent.
One of the reasons why market self-regulation doesn't work in real life, at least when it comes to fisheries, is that as each species is fished out, they just move to a new one with little regard for the consequences. They are now heavily exploiting krill: the main prey of baleen whales like the blue whale, who are too specialised to exploit something else - the consequence may well be that they go extinct despite all the regulations and efforts the world community has put in to save them. Or take another consequence that most people are likely to feel the consequences of, if ever they venture to the beach or out to sea: we have depleted the stocks of species that prey on the larvae of jelly fish, which is why we now get reports of fishermen catching enormous loads of them. Fancy taking a dip in that?
As far as I can see, the market won't regulate itself - as long as at least some of the players are too stupid or selfish to actually hold back from making a short term profit, self-regulation isn't going to happen. We need global regulations strictly enforced by all major nations in cooperation. We do in fact have sufficient technology - such as supervising fishing vessels from satelites: they follow easily recognisable patterns when they are fishing, so it is relatively simple to follow them around until they reach harbour.
Being a communist is every bit as bad as being a neo-nazi.
Worse, actually, given how many people Marxism has killed and how much suffering they have caused.
By the same token, we should consider Christian, Jewish etc symbolism as offensive as Nazism, don't you agree? In fact, the Christian church has, over history, killed, tortured and maimed with an abandon that has rarely been matched by any other religious or ideological movement, and they were never bashful about either. But now-a-days we seem willing to forget about that and accept that the Christians have changed for the better - they are in general more tolerant of non-Christians, gays and other minorities now; so why do people like you keep referring back to the worst examples of what has called itself 'Communism'? I know why, of course - it was a rhetorical question: You have decided the conclusion a priory, and now you are constructing the arguments by filtering out any fact that doesn't support your conclusion - probably the most fundamental of all logical errors.
You also identify Marxism with Communism, Leninism, Stalinism, etc, which is in itself incorrect. Communism as such is less an ideology than simply the way smaller groups tend to function naturally - like a family, where everybody owns most things as a community, where the stronger members provide for the weaker, as needed etc. Marx used this as an inspiration for some of his thinking, but IMO Marxism is primarily an economic theory (which is in fact gaining more traction in recent years, since the financial crisis). Karl Marx famously once said, after meeting with a group of Socialists: "If that is Marxism, then I'm no Marxist" (or something to that effect) - so he certainly was aware, and disapproved, of the ways in which his name and work was being used politically; I doubt that he would have approved much of what they did in Russia and later in other places. He wasn't so much against capitalism, but he was severely critical of the excesses and the gross unfairness he saw as a result and predicted that it was inherently unstable and would lead to revolutions again and again. He wasn't wrong either.
Personally, I think a form of communism will eventually replace what we have now - that is, if we manage to reach a sustainable society with global peace; but I don't think it will come as a result of a minority forcing it on a majority - it must be a result of people's free choice. I can't see it happening in my lifetime, but you never know.
Producing it via this method is not at all required to start using it therapeutically. The only reason they are going to such great lengths is so they can patent it and have monopoly "rights".
We already know how to produce it synthetically, so I doubt it is only about patenting the method; it is simply curiosity driven research into how a living organism produces a molecule. This is in itself valuable knowledge - many chemical pathways in biology are similar at least in parts, although they lead to wildly different end products.
Eschericia coli, as it is properly named, is a bacterium: a prokaryote, whereas yeast is a fungus: a eukaryote, which is massively more complicated. Eukaryotes are symbiotic organisms - they seem to have arisen from a symbiosis between archaea and bacteria; the nucleus seems more archaean, whereas mitchondria resemble bacteria. We still only know very little about the details of how it happened - we only know it happened at least twice, since plants have chloroplasts in addition to their mitochondria; those seem to be a kind of cyanobacteria.
It stretches credulity that you could convince a judge that a forum of thirty million people is anything other than a fully public forum, and free speech protections are at their zenith when talking about political matters in a public forum.
Exactly; and on top of this, he is a public person, by his own choice. As the president, he is a civil servant, and anything he says in public will be taken to represent the official line of the nation as a whole, even if it doesn't come through @POTUS or whatever it is called. He is no longer just "this guy, Donald Trump", with his personal opinions that he shares with a group of peers and nobody else. As the president, he is supposed to be the top civil servant (note the word "servant") for ALL citizens of the US, and can't simply exclude some of them because he doesn't like them.
To all of you, who increasingly reject science as false (without knowing what you are talking about): If you want to call yourselves honest, please stop using anything science has given you. Don't look at weather forecasts - they are produced by the same basic models as climate calculations. In fact, get rid of television, computers, mobiles, air conditioning - anything electric, really - don't use clothes, medicine etc etc. All of these are the products of scientific theories that are no more certain than what climate researchers are saying. If you reject the validity of climate research, you may as well denounce quantum mechanics, which is what your computer is built on: without QM, no semi-conductors, thus no integrated circuits, you see. By denouncing science, you cut the brach you're sitting on - and it's a long way down.
China is just a thinly veiled police state so they can search what they like, when they like. That's just the reality of being in China.
Cut down on the obvious propaganda, please, and try to learn a little bit more about the reality in China. As many have argued over and over here on slashdot, you can justify saying the same about the US, where apparently illegal searches and wiretaps go on all the time. In the US, UK and other, similar nations you sometimes hear news that "The department for [whatever] have issued industry guidelines..." - but when the same thing happens in China, it is "The State Cracks Down On...". I am all for criticising when governments do the wrong things, but if we blind ourselves with dishonest reporting, then we are nothing more than idiots.
The purpose of a "townhall meeting" is dialog. Google had already made it clear that they want a monologue. Cancelling it was very sensible.
I think you are being, shall we say, polemic - you are not really trying to see this from Google's point of view, but it is obvious, whether we like it or not, that any company has a right (a duty, even) to protect their reputation and their good relations with their customers. In Google's case, that is advertisers; the product they sell is exposure: ie the users' attention, and they simply cannot survive if they drive those two groups away. Since advertising companies, among others, are generally very wary of what is considered as sensitive issues in their target audience, Google have to make sure they don't appear to condone attitudes that are incompatible with this; that is simple business sense.
I think they have to walk a very fine line here - they also want to cultivate an image of having an open-minded and friendly culture, where you can discuss things openly, and they don't seem to have quite figured out how to encourage that, while at the same time setting a firm standard for what is acceptable. If you don't have some sort of standards for "good behaviour", what will happen is that those with the loudest and most extreme views will dominate, and eventually drive the customers (as well as the more moderate and valuable employees) away; in effect, you will have some level of oppression, whichever way you turn. The sensible thing to do is to work out some guidelines, that are simple and straight forward, which set out which kinds opinions you are allowed to express in a context where you are likely be identified as an employee. People - customers, users and employees alike - will have more respect for and trust in a leadership that is firm, but fair, than in some mealy-mouthed waffle about "why can't we all just get along?"
Yeah, being able to identify stolen cars even after they have had a paint job is repression, of course it is. Everybody knows it is basic human right, stealing other people's cars and selling them on.
It seems to be a common misunderstanding, that laws are there to stop people from doing things; they aren't. The laws are meant to be:
- a toolset for for the police and the courts: under the rule of law, the police and judges can only act as the law prescribes. This means they cannot arrest people on a whim, at least in principle, and a judge cannot pronounce a sentence that is contrary to the law.
- a ruleset to guide everybody, when they are in doubt. Most of the time, people know what is right and don't need the law to tell them, but sometimes one person's idea of right clashes with another's, at which point they can consult the rules to see who is right.
And sometimes a law is little more than a statement of intent or an invitation to debate, that says "we have identified this as a problem, now let us find a solution". This is the way a society - especially a democratic one - evolves, by trying to organise itself, agreeing on common rules, identifying and solving problems. If you know a better way, please tell.
And these big companies use the government to prevent new entrants in the market who would like to provide affordable internet.
Well, isn't that the way America has been set up - not "by the people, for the people", but "by the rich, for the rich"? Large corporations have made sure that you are mostly governed by corrupt incompetents, and have taught you that this is the only way it can be, by sowing discord, mistrust and lies about anything that might inspire ordinary citizens to get together to change this state of affairs. You've learned that things like science, or even worse, communism, socialism, social justice, equal rights, government etc are evil, evil things, and that you have to believe unquestioningly in empty superstitions like religion and that the right of the individual (especially the RICH individual) comes before the rights of the many. But somewhere within, I think most Americans know that it doesn't have to be like that. What will it take for you guys to break out of your mental and spiritual prison, I wonder?
Who ever writes a text without going back over it repeatedly to change things, correct spelling mistakes, improve the language etc, when they are writing something they hope is worth reading? Text written like actual speech may be useful in a narrative setting, sometimes, but it would be unsufferable in most other contexts, so after having used a speech-to-text interface, you will still have to go over the text and edit it heavily, using a keyboard. This kind of technology is not meant to replace existing, well-established methods, they are meant to complement them. It may make a lot of sense to have speech-to-text for when you want to take notes, but have to use your hands for mroe important things - like if you are driving, but want to note down ideas or observations along the way.
The suspension in some pickups probably wouldn't be damaged by going the speed limit over reasonably-sized speed bumps.
Well, isn't the purpose of speed bumps to make people not exceed the speed limit? The combination of speed limit and speed bumps should be so that you can drive to the speed limit without damaging your car. The speed limit implies a contract between the local authority and the road users: by allowing you to drive up tio that limit, they promise that it is safe to do so, which it wouldn't be if there are obstructions that are likely to damage the car.
Thanks for the link. I note with some amusement, that there are translations into several other languages - including American, it seems:-) Nice to see their language finally gets some recognition.
That seems to be the step he left out, it would appear - or maybe he just didn't understand how to use a map and prepare a journey. It seems almost too simple to be worth detailing, but I like to hear myself talk, so:
1) Plan your route using good quality maps - for that, you could even use google maps. 2) Make a list of roads and junctions. I usually take a post-it note, and write things like "M40 -> J9 -> A41 ->...", meaning "Motorway M40, exit at junction 9 onto A41... "; stick the list on the lower edge of windscreen mirror.
Make up your own abbreviations; mine work in UK where we have motorways called M+number (and all junctions are numbered J+number), larger main roads called A+number, and smaller ones called B+number - all of these are clearly signposted in most places and should be visible on any good road map. It is very hard to loose your way, I find, certainly when you are traveling long distance, when you mostly use big roads.
I don't slow down in my pickup truck for speed bumps. I think the effectiveness of fake speed bumps depends greatly on what kind of suspension your car has and how little you give a fuck.
Yes, "buy, destroy and throw away" seems very much to be a part of American consumer culture. It is as if you guys think it is somehow "manly", whereas in many other countries it is seen a simply stupid. When you invest a significant amount of money in something, it is clever to take good care of it, so you can benefit from your investment for a reasonable length of time.
I have lived in UK for >20 years, and I have only heard about pickup trucks from a handful of people who want to sound a bit American. Here they seem to be referred to as "four by fours" (written 4x4) since they tend to have four wheel drive, but that also includes vehicles that don't look much like the American pickup truck, such as the various Landrovers. They aren't as popular in UK, where you'd probably drive a closed van instead - another part of the lower popularity is lack of parking space: British suburbs and towns are mostly terraced houses on narrow streets, in my experience, and trying to find a place to keep it overnight simply isn't realistic in many cases.
Slashdot Mirror
... I can't imagine vegetarians or vegans objecting to eating it.
I think it is merely a popular misconception, that vegetarians et al avoid meat simply because they object to the slaughter of animals and feel they have eat vegetables as a sort of penance. Maybe there are some of that kind - otherwise there wouldn't be a market for all those horrible meat-imitations. Personally, though, I tend to eat vegetables because I like them more than meat - the taste, the texture, the fact that I don't feel as if I had eaten a bowl of cement after eating etc. - and I think I have more energy for longer after eating. It's all about how you cook things - I find meat tastes about the same no matter how it is prepared (and I have tried some very well made meat dishes, believe me), but vegetables are so varied - if you know how to cook them and especially when to stop cooking. I still recall with loathing the brussel sprouts that had had all nutrition boiled out of them - as the saying went: "If you can count them, they haven't had enough".
In answer to the original question: do we need polymaths? Of course we do, but possibly not attention seekers like the two mentioned; from what I could find in a quick search, their main achievement has been to amass enough knowledge about stuff to score high on University Challenge, a TV quiz show. The real polymaths are people who are highly skilled in several advanced disciplines, who can therefore bring skills from one to the other; like when physicists start working in biology or mathematicians bring their unique insight to the world of physics. These people are extremely important, because they are able to coordinate several areas of science and often think outside the box, simply because they have not been brought up in the tradition of whichever area they are "interfering" in.
Polymaths are not "Jacks-of-all-trades". They are masters of many trades. They have incredible breadth and depth on several subjects, and are therefore incredibly rare. Due to the expanding volume of our collective knowledge, they are becoming even more rare.
They are possibly less rare than what we imagine, I suspect. Sure, if you mean people who have achieved fame or a high position in several branches of science, you don't see many of them, but on the other hand, most highly intelligent people rarely limit their interests to just their main area of professional interest. It is simply a myth that being brilliant in one sucject makes you more or less a moron in everything else; it is the kind of thing that looks good in a movie - the flawed genius, the idiot savant etc., but they are the rare ones. In the real world, if you are good at one thing, you are probably good at a wide range of things.
It's always weird when you furriners start complaining about the use of American English and US references on this American web site.
It's fine if you want to eavesdrop on a conversation among Americans, but it doesn't make any sense to complain that we're speaking American to each other.
Oh, it's only for Americans? Could you keep it inside your own borders, then? Alternatively, get your head around the fact that the internet is international, and that there are a lot fewer Americans than un-Americans in the world, so stop trying to pull rank or whatever it is you imagine you are doing - we aren't impressed.
A cookie is a uk biscuit but not a us biscuit. A us biscuit would be most like a savory scone
I've wondered about this terminology. So, savoury biscuits are the salty ones, right? But then, surely the sweet ones are unsavoury? I mean, it stands to reason, doesn't it?
Yes, and a mildly unpleasant one at that. Unless you do as I do: eat the creme filling and throw away the rest.
Or even better: throw away the whole thing; I tasted it once. Only once, never again.
... both Ubuntu and Android have been going in alphabetical order (though Ubuntu has to wrap, or something, in October), ...
That's the thing, though - it is so US centric (and I know, there will now be a stream of comment along the lines 'But America invented reality and everything'). Don't get me wrong, I don't hate America - there are things about you guys I love, like your absence (sorry, only joking, couldn't resist) - but when it comes to finding cool names, you are just so juvenile.
And Ubuntu's naming strategy is toe-curling, IMO; what will it be when it rolls over? "Anal Abcess"?
The free market may create a self-rectifying problem. The more expensive it becomes to fish (because there are less fish) the quicker people will develop sustainable fish repositories to raise fish.
This does work to a certain extent.
One of the reasons why market self-regulation doesn't work in real life, at least when it comes to fisheries, is that as each species is fished out, they just move to a new one with little regard for the consequences. They are now heavily exploiting krill: the main prey of baleen whales like the blue whale, who are too specialised to exploit something else - the consequence may well be that they go extinct despite all the regulations and efforts the world community has put in to save them. Or take another consequence that most people are likely to feel the consequences of, if ever they venture to the beach or out to sea: we have depleted the stocks of species that prey on the larvae of jelly fish, which is why we now get reports of fishermen catching enormous loads of them. Fancy taking a dip in that?
As far as I can see, the market won't regulate itself - as long as at least some of the players are too stupid or selfish to actually hold back from making a short term profit, self-regulation isn't going to happen. We need global regulations strictly enforced by all major nations in cooperation. We do in fact have sufficient technology - such as supervising fishing vessels from satelites: they follow easily recognisable patterns when they are fishing, so it is relatively simple to follow them around until they reach harbour.
Being a communist is every bit as bad as being a neo-nazi.
Worse, actually, given how many people Marxism has killed and how much suffering they have caused.
By the same token, we should consider Christian, Jewish etc symbolism as offensive as Nazism, don't you agree? In fact, the Christian church has, over history, killed, tortured and maimed with an abandon that has rarely been matched by any other religious or ideological movement, and they were never bashful about either. But now-a-days we seem willing to forget about that and accept that the Christians have changed for the better - they are in general more tolerant of non-Christians, gays and other minorities now; so why do people like you keep referring back to the worst examples of what has called itself 'Communism'? I know why, of course - it was a rhetorical question: You have decided the conclusion a priory, and now you are constructing the arguments by filtering out any fact that doesn't support your conclusion - probably the most fundamental of all logical errors.
You also identify Marxism with Communism, Leninism, Stalinism, etc, which is in itself incorrect. Communism as such is less an ideology than simply the way smaller groups tend to function naturally - like a family, where everybody owns most things as a community, where the stronger members provide for the weaker, as needed etc. Marx used this as an inspiration for some of his thinking, but IMO Marxism is primarily an economic theory (which is in fact gaining more traction in recent years, since the financial crisis). Karl Marx famously once said, after meeting with a group of Socialists: "If that is Marxism, then I'm no Marxist" (or something to that effect) - so he certainly was aware, and disapproved, of the ways in which his name and work was being used politically; I doubt that he would have approved much of what they did in Russia and later in other places. He wasn't so much against capitalism, but he was severely critical of the excesses and the gross unfairness he saw as a result and predicted that it was inherently unstable and would lead to revolutions again and again. He wasn't wrong either.
Personally, I think a form of communism will eventually replace what we have now - that is, if we manage to reach a sustainable society with global peace; but I don't think it will come as a result of a minority forcing it on a majority - it must be a result of people's free choice. I can't see it happening in my lifetime, but you never know.
Producing it via this method is not at all required to start using it therapeutically. The only reason they are going to such great lengths is so they can patent it and have monopoly "rights".
We already know how to produce it synthetically, so I doubt it is only about patenting the method; it is simply curiosity driven research into how a living organism produces a molecule. This is in itself valuable knowledge - many chemical pathways in biology are similar at least in parts, although they lead to wildly different end products.
Eschericia coli, as it is properly named, is a bacterium: a prokaryote, whereas yeast is a fungus: a eukaryote, which is massively more complicated. Eukaryotes are symbiotic organisms - they seem to have arisen from a symbiosis between archaea and bacteria; the nucleus seems more archaean, whereas mitchondria resemble bacteria. We still only know very little about the details of how it happened - we only know it happened at least twice, since plants have chloroplasts in addition to their mitochondria; those seem to be a kind of cyanobacteria.
It stretches credulity that you could convince a judge that a forum of thirty million people is anything other than a fully public forum, and free speech protections are at their zenith when talking about political matters in a public forum.
Exactly; and on top of this, he is a public person, by his own choice. As the president, he is a civil servant, and anything he says in public will be taken to represent the official line of the nation as a whole, even if it doesn't come through @POTUS or whatever it is called. He is no longer just "this guy, Donald Trump", with his personal opinions that he shares with a group of peers and nobody else. As the president, he is supposed to be the top civil servant (note the word "servant") for ALL citizens of the US, and can't simply exclude some of them because he doesn't like them.
To all of you, who increasingly reject science as false (without knowing what you are talking about): If you want to call yourselves honest, please stop using anything science has given you. Don't look at weather forecasts - they are produced by the same basic models as climate calculations. In fact, get rid of television, computers, mobiles, air conditioning - anything electric, really - don't use clothes, medicine etc etc. All of these are the products of scientific theories that are no more certain than what climate researchers are saying. If you reject the validity of climate research, you may as well denounce quantum mechanics, which is what your computer is built on: without QM, no semi-conductors, thus no integrated circuits, you see. By denouncing science, you cut the brach you're sitting on - and it's a long way down.
China is just a thinly veiled police state so they can search what they like, when they like. That's just the reality of being in China.
Cut down on the obvious propaganda, please, and try to learn a little bit more about the reality in China. As many have argued over and over here on slashdot, you can justify saying the same about the US, where apparently illegal searches and wiretaps go on all the time. In the US, UK and other, similar nations you sometimes hear news that "The department for [whatever] have issued industry guidelines ..." - but when the same thing happens in China, it is "The State Cracks Down On ...". I am all for criticising when governments do the wrong things, but if we blind ourselves with dishonest reporting, then we are nothing more than idiots.
The purpose of a "townhall meeting" is dialog. Google had already made it clear that they want a monologue. Cancelling it was very sensible.
I think you are being, shall we say, polemic - you are not really trying to see this from Google's point of view, but it is obvious, whether we like it or not, that any company has a right (a duty, even) to protect their reputation and their good relations with their customers. In Google's case, that is advertisers; the product they sell is exposure: ie the users' attention, and they simply cannot survive if they drive those two groups away. Since advertising companies, among others, are generally very wary of what is considered as sensitive issues in their target audience, Google have to make sure they don't appear to condone attitudes that are incompatible with this; that is simple business sense.
I think they have to walk a very fine line here - they also want to cultivate an image of having an open-minded and friendly culture, where you can discuss things openly, and they don't seem to have quite figured out how to encourage that, while at the same time setting a firm standard for what is acceptable. If you don't have some sort of standards for "good behaviour", what will happen is that those with the loudest and most extreme views will dominate, and eventually drive the customers (as well as the more moderate and valuable employees) away; in effect, you will have some level of oppression, whichever way you turn. The sensible thing to do is to work out some guidelines, that are simple and straight forward, which set out which kinds opinions you are allowed to express in a context where you are likely be identified as an employee. People - customers, users and employees alike - will have more respect for and trust in a leadership that is firm, but fair, than in some mealy-mouthed waffle about "why can't we all just get along?"
Yeah, being able to identify stolen cars even after they have had a paint job is repression, of course it is. Everybody knows it is basic human right, stealing other people's cars and selling them on.
It seems to be a common misunderstanding, that laws are there to stop people from doing things; they aren't. The laws are meant to be:
- a toolset for for the police and the courts: under the rule of law, the police and judges can only act as the law prescribes. This means they cannot arrest people on a whim, at least in principle, and a judge cannot pronounce a sentence that is contrary to the law.
- a ruleset to guide everybody, when they are in doubt. Most of the time, people know what is right and don't need the law to tell them, but sometimes one person's idea of right clashes with another's, at which point they can consult the rules to see who is right.
And sometimes a law is little more than a statement of intent or an invitation to debate, that says "we have identified this as a problem, now let us find a solution". This is the way a society - especially a democratic one - evolves, by trying to organise itself, agreeing on common rules, identifying and solving problems. If you know a better way, please tell.
This is why Trump won, by the way.
Because he was voted in by people who are too dumb to see through deceptive ads, you mean?
And these big companies use the government to prevent new entrants in the market who would like to provide affordable internet.
Well, isn't that the way America has been set up - not "by the people, for the people", but "by the rich, for the rich"? Large corporations have made sure that you are mostly governed by corrupt incompetents, and have taught you that this is the only way it can be, by sowing discord, mistrust and lies about anything that might inspire ordinary citizens to get together to change this state of affairs. You've learned that things like science, or even worse, communism, socialism, social justice, equal rights, government etc are evil, evil things, and that you have to believe unquestioningly in empty superstitions like religion and that the right of the individual (especially the RICH individual) comes before the rights of the many. But somewhere within, I think most Americans know that it doesn't have to be like that. What will it take for you guys to break out of your mental and spiritual prison, I wonder?
Who ever writes a text without going back over it repeatedly to change things, correct spelling mistakes, improve the language etc, when they are writing something they hope is worth reading? Text written like actual speech may be useful in a narrative setting, sometimes, but it would be unsufferable in most other contexts, so after having used a speech-to-text interface, you will still have to go over the text and edit it heavily, using a keyboard. This kind of technology is not meant to replace existing, well-established methods, they are meant to complement them. It may make a lot of sense to have speech-to-text for when you want to take notes, but have to use your hands for mroe important things - like if you are driving, but want to note down ideas or observations along the way.
The suspension in some pickups probably wouldn't be damaged by going the speed limit over reasonably-sized speed bumps.
Well, isn't the purpose of speed bumps to make people not exceed the speed limit? The combination of speed limit and speed bumps should be so that you can drive to the speed limit without damaging your car. The speed limit implies a contract between the local authority and the road users: by allowing you to drive up tio that limit, they promise that it is safe to do so, which it wouldn't be if there are obstructions that are likely to damage the car.
Thanks for the link. I note with some amusement, that there are translations into several other languages - including American, it seems :-) Nice to see their language finally gets some recognition.
Get out the paper maps!
That seems to be the step he left out, it would appear - or maybe he just didn't understand how to use a map and prepare a journey. It seems almost too simple to be worth detailing, but I like to hear myself talk, so:
1) Plan your route using good quality maps - for that, you could even use google maps. ...", meaning "Motorway M40, exit at junction 9 onto A41 ... "; stick the list on the lower edge of windscreen mirror.
2) Make a list of roads and junctions. I usually take a post-it note, and write things like "M40 -> J9 -> A41 ->
Make up your own abbreviations; mine work in UK where we have motorways called M+number (and all junctions are numbered J+number), larger main roads called A+number, and smaller ones called B+number - all of these are clearly signposted in most places and should be visible on any good road map. It is very hard to loose your way, I find, certainly when you are traveling long distance, when you mostly use big roads.
I don't slow down in my pickup truck for speed bumps. I think the effectiveness of fake speed bumps depends greatly on what kind of suspension your car has and how little you give a fuck.
Yes, "buy, destroy and throw away" seems very much to be a part of American consumer culture. It is as if you guys think it is somehow "manly", whereas in many other countries it is seen a simply stupid. When you invest a significant amount of money in something, it is clever to take good care of it, so you can benefit from your investment for a reasonable length of time.
They're called pick-up trucks.
I have lived in UK for >20 years, and I have only heard about pickup trucks from a handful of people who want to sound a bit American. Here they seem to be referred to as "four by fours" (written 4x4) since they tend to have four wheel drive, but that also includes vehicles that don't look much like the American pickup truck, such as the various Landrovers. They aren't as popular in UK, where you'd probably drive a closed van instead - another part of the lower popularity is lack of parking space: British suburbs and towns are mostly terraced houses on narrow streets, in my experience, and trying to find a place to keep it overnight simply isn't realistic in many cases.