As you say, not all science can be done this way; some can only show correlation between phenomena. I would argue that that is the difference between "hard" and... not-"hard" science.
Some would say that the sciences like physics, and chemistry shouldn't be called "hard" because of this very fact - that you can do experiments and actually do reproducible tests of your hypotheses. That leaves things like economics, sociology, and system science as "hard science" because it's very difficult to devise such tests and experiments.
But then maybe "hard" means "firm or solid", which does better apply to things like chemistry and physics. But again, that makes them easier in a sense.
So unless the rich are in the habit of either not breathing or live in the middle of nowhere with very few gasoline burning engines, their exposure should be similar.
It may be just that. Let's make an assumption that the concentration of lead in a local area depends on how many cars drive by. And that if you live close to a 4-lane road that you'll get more lead exposure than someone who lives twice as far away from that 4-lane road. This is probably reasonable as just by considering the smell of BBQ grills, I know that the concentration of "stuff" in the air is not immediately uniform.
So, if we can accept the above, then the rich(er) can get preferentially better air.
I'm looking to buy a house. I found a nice 2 bedroom bungalow that is one block from a very busy 2-lane road. It's listed at $210K. I found another bungalow that is about the same, but actually in worse condition. However it's about 3/4 mile from that very busy road and it's several blocks from any busy road and it's listed for $250K.
In this simple case, the richer person gets to live farther away from a the noise and pollution of the busy 4-lane road.
In an even more secluded area, a similar 2 bd bungalow is also $250 - but it lacks the unfinished garage, basement, and cellar space that both the other bungalows have.
Location is the the key difference in value here - and a big part of that difference in location is the distance from busy roads.
On top of that, a lot of low-income housing is situated intentionally on busy roads and high-traffic parts of towns. So, it's probably true that rich people are in the habit of breathing less polluted air. There are many benefits in our capitalist society when you are richer than another. And your chances of being rich are pretty well correlated with how rich your parents were.
What happens when the air carriers decide to charge for not holding your baggage for an extra 15 minutes (without reason other than to charge you)?
I suspect Amazon does this to me. For a long time while using Amazon, even when I picked "free shipping" my stuff would show up in the mail within a 3 or 4 days. But, in my last 5 orders or so, the orders spend several days in "getting ready to ship" mode.
My guess is that they are now holding the orders to make sure the "free shipping" doesn't get to me as fast as one of the for-pay shipping options. And given that, I'm more likely to shop for books elsewhere.
The other job of a jury is to decide if a law is just...
Jury Nullification is something that's often overlooked...
It's also often something the defense counsel is not allowed to bring up. I think this can lead to a mistrial or even contempt charges against the attorney - at the whim of the judge.
I imagine most people drawn for juries are not aware of finer points of the law like jury nullification. I wonder if the DA can ask questions about jury nullification during voir-dire in order to exclude people who know about it from even being on the jury.
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles"
on
Stalling Cars Via OnStar
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I know there is this whole list of logical fallacies and I even agree with a lot of them. But I don't put as much stock in dismissing an argument simply because it's a "slippery slope" argument.
I say this because I, myself, have implemented plans where this was exactly the method of getting something done. First get a little feature or control, then use that as wedge to get the full feature or full control I really want. It's not so unusual as you can often hear other people making the same strategic plans for their agenda.
Hell, it's even a common tactic for getting sex. One usually doesn't just rip off his clothes and try to copulate with the nearby female. Success rates are often higher if you're more strategic in your approach. Set the mood; nice dinner and wine; soft lights. Touching and so on... and now I'm sounding like either a Barry White album or that skit from Meaning of Life ("You don't have to go leaping straight for the clitoris like a bull at a gate."). In any case, you often need to guide her down that slippery slope...
Couple that with the very strong tendency of governments (or any organization with power) to stay in power and magnify that power, it's very easy to see that once there is the capability to do something desirable that those in power would make it mandatory to have that capability.
There are many many examples of this and frankly it pretty much invalidates the claim in arguments that a "slippery slope is a logical fallacy". It might not stand up in the theory of pure logic but it certainly is valid in the practice of real life.
So, they're taking an inherently flawed product (an OS that can be compromised in minutes) and "fixing" it by puttint a bloated piece of trial-ware that will screw up your machine when the trial ends? If they did that in cars, heads would roll. "The wheels tend to fall of, so we glued this piece of plastic on that holds them. But it will only last 30 days. So you need to get a subscription to have a new plastic thing put on every month."
And as for being immediately compromised, doesn't anyone use a router with their broadband that has a firewall in it? Not perfect, but at least a first line of defense.
As for AV, I've been using ClamAV. It seems to work well and doesn't hog up a lot of resources. I like that it's open source too.
The average woman's haircut does take longer, but it costs a LOT more. Women with short hair, no colour, just a 10 minute haircut same as mine, usually pay more.
Right, but I get a haircut every 3 or 4 weeks. Most women I know don't get a haircut but every 3 or months. So take my $15 haircut * 4 and you get the $60 hairdo they get.
It also depends on where they go. Girls tend to go to more expensive places to get their hair done. If I went to the same place, I'd be paying a lot more too.
If they go the same place as you and get the same service as you, at least here in Oregon, they'd better be charged the same - or there could easily be a lawsuit.
1) Medical professionals never like patients to have full access to their records, as if a patient misunderstands something on their file, their life could be at stake based on the decisions they make.
To paraphrase Asimov, "if knowledge is dangerous, I can't believe the solution is ignorance". What useful knowledge is NOT dangerous in some way? Fire? Automobiles? Speech?
Those records are about me and I should have the ability to see/read/have copies of them. I should be able take them to another provider and them interpret them.
What you cite, while said in a well-meaning way, is basically a continuation of the elitism in the medical profession where the doctor is god and the patient is an ignorant plebe. It's my health, and ultimately, I'm the only one who has a keen interest in maintaining it. _I_ therefore should have access to all the relevant information about my health; whether I'm able to understand it or not.
This isn't an attack against you, just the mindset that we "normal people" are too dumb to know about our health.
Getting fired for something that's on record that you not only asked permission to do, but got that granted permission documented.
The key here is that as the chairman of the committee he's supposed to work from a neutral point of view. Sure he has his own personal opinion but he's not supposed to let that influence his job as chairman. By taking the role of chairman you are pretty much agreeing to be bound by that.
When he then openly expressed his opinions about the matter his further judgment will be called into question, especially if his decisions as chairman align with this publicly stated opinions. He gave up his objectivity and by keeping him as chairman, anything that comes out of that committee would be called into question.
Depending on the rules of order in place, the committee probably did not even have the authority to let him "step down" from the chairmanship and back up again.
It's not like his installing linux on old computers is keeping the other guy from saving gorillas; or that every computer installed leads to a gorilla not being saved. Rather it's merely that the video of the guy installing linux is slightly more popular than the video of the guy saving gorillas.
And it's not like he's hurting the knowledge about the gorilla program because I hadn't hear of either until today. If it weren't a guy installing linux (but instead a woman making sandwiches for hungry orphans) then it would have never made it on slashdot.
I JUST had a conversation yesterday with a feisty physics professor I used to work with, and about this subject. The kids he gets for his freshman physics classes are so woefully unprepared and are unable to think very creatively.
As an example, he throws out questions like "what is the square root of 3 times the square root of 3 divided by two", and they start pulling out their calculators - and they're amazed that it can be solved so easily without one.
He wrote a simple problem on the board and told the students he wanted them to work on it for the next class. The question he got right away was, "Is this graded". It wasn't. The next class came and nobody had done it - because it wasn't graded. So he gave them 10 minutes to write a solution and told them it was "for a grade". Several of the students were outraged and told him, "you can't do that!"
He said you basically have to walk them through everything you want them to do with very explicit instructions otherwise they simply won't do anything. "They're not dumb.", he said, "They just have no motivation or creative spark to do anything they're told explicitly to do."
So, I agree with you (as would this prof) that the American education system is failing our kids.
Microsoft can't be sunk by people choosing XP over Vista. Those people are still paying for a Microsoft OS. Congratulations, you've decided to give Microsoft money instead of giving Microsoft money.
Or you could be like me. I just bought a new laptop that came with Vista. Which is a pile of crap. Resizing the partition it was on sent it into a continuous reboot-cycle (same process never hurt 2K or XP). Having more than 2 partitions on the drive also kept the install disk from functioning - none of this with any warning messages. Just reboots.
I didn't want Vista, so I bought XP to put on it. So, since the cost of Vista was rolled into the machine, I ended up having to pay MS twice. It makes me wonder if they feel it's okay to release a pile of crap because some people will pay once and others who can't get rid of it fast enough will actually end up paying twice.
I now have XP and Ubuntu (never used that distro before, but it seems nice enough) and couldn't be happier with it. There's nothing like running an older OS on new fast hardware - it's so snappy!
The biggest pain was that the XP install disk won't recognize the SATA drive on the laptop so I had to use NLite to slipstream the driver onto a new install disk.
This article is almost timely for me. This weekend I just got a notebook (sub $1k) that came with Vista. I couldn't get rid of it fast enough, but I couldn't. I bought an XP CD and it wouldn't detect the SATA hard disk.
I managed to get it all worked out. I had to download the SATA driver and then I used a program called Nlite to make a new Install disk that had the drivers built in. I think another option would be to have a USB Floppy, but who wants to buy one of those.* I made a few coasters in the process but I finally got a set of drivers that would get windows up and running. Now I have XP on here and I actually happen to be using Ubuntu as I type this. I know it's newer than XP, but it had no problems at all with the hardware.
* The ironic thing was the only driver set I could find was from HP and was one of those where the download would only create a floppy. It took me quite a while to find a floppy and I had to reconnect my floppy drive, which has been unplugged for years.
So, I think given the right drivers being slipstreamed on a new install cd, XP will probably still install on many new computers.
In general, "public" libraries are open to anyone. University libraries can often be more restrictive, and the more prestigious schools don't allow people in without a valid card. I discovered that while making a visit to Georgetown. They didn't take me on a tour of the library because I didn't have a card - or at least that's what they said.
Has RIAA Abandoned the 'Making Available' Defense?
IANAL, but I can't imagine the RIAA is offering to many defenses in these court cases. Maybe they're abandoning the complaint of "making available"? That's what the article seems to indicate...
I'm hearing your sarcasm but it's not so much a matter of "perfect temperature" but that we have built our societies and economic systems on the idea of a static climate. Clearly, and regardless of the impact of human activity, the climate appears to be changing a lot.
The problem with rapid climate changes is that it can lead to huge changes in the "static" system that we normally do our business in. It didn't take much of a drought in the 30's to lead to the problems of the dust-bowl. Sudden changes in climate can mean that corn that normally grows well in Iowa might suddenly not grow so well there and better conditions would be in Michigan. In the long term that might not be so bad, but in the short term, suddenly we don't have enough corn to eat and there will be a large economic displacement.
I don't think there is much valid debate that the climate is changing around us. And I don't even think the question is, "how can we stop it", but rather, "what are we doing to do in response to it, and how are we going to survive it without mass suffering?"
Mass human suffering is often the result of economic upheavals, and one of the most potent sources of economic upheavals is rapidly changing climate.
It's usually not the magnitude of a thing that is the problem but the rapid change from one magnitude to another. As when jumping out of a plane, it's not the gradual increase to terminal velocity that's the problem - it's the rapid change in velocity as you hit the ground.
Well, let's think about what's in oil. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia most of the oils in plants are made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, all of which is available from the atmosphere.
So, it's possible the plant doesn't take anything from the soil to make the oils and when you return the other parts of the plant to the soil, you're keeping it replenished.
Of course, the atmosphere itself is a limited resource but if we're taking the CO2 and H2O (and maybe O2) to make the oil and then burn it to make H20 and CO2, it's pretty much a nice cycle - as sustainable as it probably gets.
As I understand it, the most useful (from the police's point of view) way to use of lie detectors is psychological: pretend that they're 100% accurate, get the suspect to say "I didn't do it", bluff and claim that "The Machine Knows You're Lying", and get them to give a confession that way.
According to some of the websites that discuss it, even a non-negligible percentage of people who are trained in using the technique will eventually admit to a crime they did not commit.
The scenario you present would fit into the psychological stress used in the technique.
It's all about getting a written confession - because once they have that, they can use it against you and it's hard to discredit in the courtroom: were you lying then or are you lying now.
So always demand to have get your lawyer and tell the cops nothing. Exercise your right to remain silent vigorously. In the Reid technique they strive to keep you from being able to say you want your lawyer... you just have to yell over them. And it's "I want my lawyer now" - not "I think I should have a lawyer" or "Can I have a lawyer" or "Maybe I need a lawyer"... You have to state the demand for your lawyer in clear and certain terms.
Holy sh*t! Geroge Maschke? I did some extra Arabic language training with him at BYU when we were both in the Army. All of us from my unit had clearances who were there, and I expect he did too. He was an incredible Arabic linguist and I imagine his Farsi was pretty good too.
I only knew him personally for the 2 weeks of the training but we corresponded for some time after that. He seemed like a pretty sharp guy and very dedicated to his work and languages.
I enjoyed studying with him as he really pushed the limits of the class.
The sad thing is that these polygraphs really don't work. All the really big spies, the ones caught after a career of being double-agents breezed right through all these things. Then you, as an honest person, get some prick of Poly administrator and your career is ruined.
Got any more tips for drunk drivers? What if I run over some kid on a bicycle? How long should I run from the law before my BAC will be down under.07? What are the implications with respect to felony hit-and-run vs misdemeanor involuntary vehicular manslaughter?
Are there any other crimes you can help me weasel out of? Know anything about securities fraud? I heard it's lucrative, but I don't want to get caught.
You just don't get it. This article is all about how the devices used as primary evidence against you in a DUI case may be seriously flawed. This means even if you did not drink at all you could still end up blowing a positive test. NOW what are you going to do?
Clearly, you're guilty and should just give and go to jail.
The rest of us Americans have the right to have a lawyer and not incriminate ourselves. We also have the right to fight back against any criminal charges brought against us - it's one of the foundations upon which the country was built.
Finally, the criminal justice system is heavily stacked against defendants. Only a fool would go into that situation without the advice and representation of a lawyer.
On top of that, it is your right to stand up for your rights. You are not obligated to aid in your own prosecution. That's why they have to tell you "you have the right to remain silent".
Let me know how you're going to handle it when you've been wrongly accused of a crime. Are you just going to turn yourself in and confess? Clearly, they wouldn't have accused you if you weren't already guilty.
Slashdot Mirror
As you say, not all science can be done this way; some can only show correlation between phenomena. I would argue that that is the difference between "hard" and ... not-"hard" science.
Some would say that the sciences like physics, and chemistry shouldn't be called "hard" because of this very fact - that you can do experiments and actually do reproducible tests of your hypotheses. That leaves things like economics, sociology, and system science as "hard science" because it's very difficult to devise such tests and experiments.
But then maybe "hard" means "firm or solid", which does better apply to things like chemistry and physics. But again, that makes them easier in a sense.
So unless the rich are in the habit of either not breathing or live in the middle of nowhere with very few gasoline burning engines, their exposure should be similar.
It may be just that. Let's make an assumption that the concentration of lead in a local area depends on how many cars drive by. And that if you live close to a 4-lane road that you'll get more lead exposure than someone who lives twice as far away from that 4-lane road. This is probably reasonable as just by considering the smell of BBQ grills, I know that the concentration of "stuff" in the air is not immediately uniform.
So, if we can accept the above, then the rich(er) can get preferentially better air.
I'm looking to buy a house. I found a nice 2 bedroom bungalow that is one block from a very busy 2-lane road. It's listed at $210K. I found another bungalow that is about the same, but actually in worse condition. However it's about 3/4 mile from that very busy road and it's several blocks from any busy road and it's listed for $250K.
In this simple case, the richer person gets to live farther away from a the noise and pollution of the busy 4-lane road.
In an even more secluded area, a similar 2 bd bungalow is also $250 - but it lacks the unfinished garage, basement, and cellar space that both the other bungalows have.
Location is the the key difference in value here - and a big part of that difference in location is the distance from busy roads.
On top of that, a lot of low-income housing is situated intentionally on busy roads and high-traffic parts of towns. So, it's probably true that rich people are in the habit of breathing less polluted air. There are many benefits in our capitalist society when you are richer than another. And your chances of being rich are pretty well correlated with how rich your parents were.
What happens when the air carriers decide to charge for not holding your baggage for an extra 15 minutes (without reason other than to charge you)?
I suspect Amazon does this to me. For a long time while using Amazon, even when I picked "free shipping" my stuff would show up in the mail within a 3 or 4 days. But, in my last 5 orders or so, the orders spend several days in "getting ready to ship" mode.
My guess is that they are now holding the orders to make sure the "free shipping" doesn't get to me as fast as one of the for-pay shipping options. And given that, I'm more likely to shop for books elsewhere.
Well, it's natural considering its predecessor was the Complex Response Analysis Project, but after huge overruns, that project had to be flushed.
The other job of a jury is to decide if a law is just...
Jury Nullification is something that's often overlooked...
It's also often something the defense counsel is not allowed to bring up. I think this can lead to a mistrial or even contempt charges against the attorney - at the whim of the judge.
I imagine most people drawn for juries are not aware of finer points of the law like jury nullification. I wonder if the DA can ask questions about jury nullification during voir-dire in order to exclude people who know about it from even being on the jury.
I know there is this whole list of logical fallacies and I even agree with a lot of them. But I don't put as much stock in dismissing an argument simply because it's a "slippery slope" argument.
I say this because I, myself, have implemented plans where this was exactly the method of getting something done. First get a little feature or control, then use that as wedge to get the full feature or full control I really want. It's not so unusual as you can often hear other people making the same strategic plans for their agenda.
Hell, it's even a common tactic for getting sex. One usually doesn't just rip off his clothes and try to copulate with the nearby female. Success rates are often higher if you're more strategic in your approach. Set the mood; nice dinner and wine; soft lights. Touching and so on... and now I'm sounding like either a Barry White album or that skit from Meaning of Life ("You don't have to go leaping straight for the clitoris like a bull at a gate."). In any case, you often need to guide her down that slippery slope...
Couple that with the very strong tendency of governments (or any organization with power) to stay in power and magnify that power, it's very easy to see that once there is the capability to do something desirable that those in power would make it mandatory to have that capability.
There are many many examples of this and frankly it pretty much invalidates the claim in arguments that a "slippery slope is a logical fallacy". It might not stand up in the theory of pure logic but it certainly is valid in the practice of real life.
It's more like one of those balls of flour and sugar coated in powdered sugar - but only with a dash of cocoa on it.
Hmmm... giant space pastries!
So, they're taking an inherently flawed product (an OS that can be compromised in minutes) and "fixing" it by puttint a bloated piece of trial-ware that will screw up your machine when the trial ends? If they did that in cars, heads would roll. "The wheels tend to fall of, so we glued this piece of plastic on that holds them. But it will only last 30 days. So you need to get a subscription to have a new plastic thing put on every month."
And as for being immediately compromised, doesn't anyone use a router with their broadband that has a firewall in it? Not perfect, but at least a first line of defense.
As for AV, I've been using ClamAV. It seems to work well and doesn't hog up a lot of resources. I like that it's open source too.
The average woman's haircut does take longer, but it costs a LOT more. Women with short hair, no colour, just a 10 minute haircut same as mine, usually pay more.
Right, but I get a haircut every 3 or 4 weeks. Most women I know don't get a haircut but every 3 or months. So take my $15 haircut * 4 and you get the $60 hairdo they get.
It also depends on where they go. Girls tend to go to more expensive places to get their hair done. If I went to the same place, I'd be paying a lot more too.
If they go the same place as you and get the same service as you, at least here in Oregon, they'd better be charged the same - or there could easily be a lawsuit.
You're right about the clothes - and the sheets!
1) Medical professionals never like patients to have full access to their records, as if a patient misunderstands something on their file, their life could be at stake based on the decisions they make.
To paraphrase Asimov, "if knowledge is dangerous, I can't believe the solution is ignorance". What useful knowledge is NOT dangerous in some way? Fire? Automobiles? Speech?
Those records are about me and I should have the ability to see/read/have copies of them. I should be able take them to another provider and them interpret them.
What you cite, while said in a well-meaning way, is basically a continuation of the elitism in the medical profession where the doctor is god and the patient is an ignorant plebe. It's my health, and ultimately, I'm the only one who has a keen interest in maintaining it. _I_ therefore should have access to all the relevant information about my health; whether I'm able to understand it or not.
This isn't an attack against you, just the mindset that we "normal people" are too dumb to know about our health.
Getting fired for something that's on record that you not only asked permission to do, but got that granted permission documented.
The key here is that as the chairman of the committee he's supposed to work from a neutral point of view. Sure he has his own personal opinion but he's not supposed to let that influence his job as chairman. By taking the role of chairman you are pretty much agreeing to be bound by that.
When he then openly expressed his opinions about the matter his further judgment will be called into question, especially if his decisions as chairman align with this publicly stated opinions. He gave up his objectivity and by keeping him as chairman, anything that comes out of that committee would be called into question.
Depending on the rules of order in place, the committee probably did not even have the authority to let him "step down" from the chairmanship and back up again.
It's not like his installing linux on old computers is keeping the other guy from saving gorillas; or that every computer installed leads to a gorilla not being saved. Rather it's merely that the video of the guy installing linux is slightly more popular than the video of the guy saving gorillas.
And it's not like he's hurting the knowledge about the gorilla program because I hadn't hear of either until today. If it weren't a guy installing linux (but instead a woman making sandwiches for hungry orphans) then it would have never made it on slashdot.
So, we can call it a win for both.
American Public Education SUCKS.
I JUST had a conversation yesterday with a feisty physics professor I used to work with, and about this subject. The kids he gets for his freshman physics classes are so woefully unprepared and are unable to think very creatively.
As an example, he throws out questions like "what is the square root of 3 times the square root of 3 divided by two", and they start pulling out their calculators - and they're amazed that it can be solved so easily without one.
He wrote a simple problem on the board and told the students he wanted them to work on it for the next class. The question he got right away was, "Is this graded". It wasn't. The next class came and nobody had done it - because it wasn't graded. So he gave them 10 minutes to write a solution and told them it was "for a grade". Several of the students were outraged and told him, "you can't do that!"
He said you basically have to walk them through everything you want them to do with very explicit instructions otherwise they simply won't do anything. "They're not dumb.", he said, "They just have no motivation or creative spark to do anything they're told explicitly to do."
So, I agree with you (as would this prof) that the American education system is failing our kids.
Microsoft can't be sunk by people choosing XP over Vista. Those people are still paying for a Microsoft OS. Congratulations, you've decided to give Microsoft money instead of giving Microsoft money.
Or you could be like me. I just bought a new laptop that came with Vista. Which is a pile of crap. Resizing the partition it was on sent it into a continuous reboot-cycle (same process never hurt 2K or XP). Having more than 2 partitions on the drive also kept the install disk from functioning - none of this with any warning messages. Just reboots.
I didn't want Vista, so I bought XP to put on it. So, since the cost of Vista was rolled into the machine, I ended up having to pay MS twice. It makes me wonder if they feel it's okay to release a pile of crap because some people will pay once and others who can't get rid of it fast enough will actually end up paying twice.
I now have XP and Ubuntu (never used that distro before, but it seems nice enough) and couldn't be happier with it. There's nothing like running an older OS on new fast hardware - it's so snappy!
The biggest pain was that the XP install disk won't recognize the SATA drive on the laptop so I had to use NLite to slipstream the driver onto a new install disk.
This article is almost timely for me. This weekend I just got a notebook (sub $1k) that came with Vista. I couldn't get rid of it fast enough, but I couldn't. I bought an XP CD and it wouldn't detect the SATA hard disk.
I managed to get it all worked out. I had to download the SATA driver and then I used a program called Nlite to make a new Install disk that had the drivers built in. I think another option would be to have a USB Floppy, but who wants to buy one of those.* I made a few coasters in the process but I finally got a set of drivers that would get windows up and running. Now I have XP on here and I actually happen to be using Ubuntu as I type this. I know it's newer than XP, but it had no problems at all with the hardware.
* The ironic thing was the only driver set I could find was from HP and was one of those where the download would only create a floppy. It took me quite a while to find a floppy and I had to reconnect my floppy drive, which has been unplugged for years.
So, I think given the right drivers being slipstreamed on a new install cd, XP will probably still install on many new computers.
Try a Barry White ringtone... it works so well you'll be begging for telemarketers to call just to get her in the mood.
In general, "public" libraries are open to anyone. University libraries can often be more restrictive, and the more prestigious schools don't allow people in without a valid card. I discovered that while making a visit to Georgetown. They didn't take me on a tour of the library because I didn't have a card - or at least that's what they said.
"too" many, that is. That's what I get for trying to be cheeky.
Has RIAA Abandoned the 'Making Available' Defense?
IANAL, but I can't imagine the RIAA is offering to many defenses in these court cases. Maybe they're abandoning the complaint of "making available"? That's what the article seems to indicate...
I'm hearing your sarcasm but it's not so much a matter of "perfect temperature" but that we have built our societies and economic systems on the idea of a static climate. Clearly, and regardless of the impact of human activity, the climate appears to be changing a lot.
The problem with rapid climate changes is that it can lead to huge changes in the "static" system that we normally do our business in. It didn't take much of a drought in the 30's to lead to the problems of the dust-bowl. Sudden changes in climate can mean that corn that normally grows well in Iowa might suddenly not grow so well there and better conditions would be in Michigan. In the long term that might not be so bad, but in the short term, suddenly we don't have enough corn to eat and there will be a large economic displacement.
I don't think there is much valid debate that the climate is changing around us. And I don't even think the question is, "how can we stop it", but rather, "what are we doing to do in response to it, and how are we going to survive it without mass suffering?"
Mass human suffering is often the result of economic upheavals, and one of the most potent sources of economic upheavals is rapidly changing climate.
It's usually not the magnitude of a thing that is the problem but the rapid change from one magnitude to another. As when jumping out of a plane, it's not the gradual increase to terminal velocity that's the problem - it's the rapid change in velocity as you hit the ground.
God and I were having bacon cheese burgers at Hooters the other day, and He told me He doesn't have a Slashdot account. Why would He lie to me?
So maybe Satan has embedded comments into the strata of Slashdot comments that appear to come from God in order to deceive his believers?
Or are you saying God is not omnipotent and can't leave a posting in Slashdot without an account?
Well, let's think about what's in oil. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia most of the oils in plants are made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, all of which is available from the atmosphere.
So, it's possible the plant doesn't take anything from the soil to make the oils and when you return the other parts of the plant to the soil, you're keeping it replenished.
Of course, the atmosphere itself is a limited resource but if we're taking the CO2 and H2O (and maybe O2) to make the oil and then burn it to make H20 and CO2, it's pretty much a nice cycle - as sustainable as it probably gets.
As I understand it, the most useful (from the police's point of view) way to use of lie detectors is psychological: pretend that they're 100% accurate, get the suspect to say "I didn't do it", bluff and claim that "The Machine Knows You're Lying", and get them to give a confession that way.
Read up on the high-pressure interrogation method konwn as the Reid Technique. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique
According to some of the websites that discuss it, even a non-negligible percentage of people who are trained in using the technique will eventually admit to a crime they did not commit.
The scenario you present would fit into the psychological stress used in the technique.
It's all about getting a written confession - because once they have that, they can use it against you and it's hard to discredit in the courtroom: were you lying then or are you lying now.
So always demand to have get your lawyer and tell the cops nothing. Exercise your right to remain silent vigorously. In the Reid technique they strive to keep you from being able to say you want your lawyer... you just have to yell over them. And it's "I want my lawyer now" - not "I think I should have a lawyer" or "Can I have a lawyer" or "Maybe I need a lawyer"... You have to state the demand for your lawyer in clear and certain terms.
Holy sh*t! Geroge Maschke? I did some extra Arabic language training with him at BYU when we were both in the Army. All of us from my unit had clearances who were there, and I expect he did too. He was an incredible Arabic linguist and I imagine his Farsi was pretty good too.
I only knew him personally for the 2 weeks of the training but we corresponded for some time after that. He seemed like a pretty sharp guy and very dedicated to his work and languages.
I enjoyed studying with him as he really pushed the limits of the class.
The sad thing is that these polygraphs really don't work. All the really big spies, the ones caught after a career of being double-agents breezed right through all these things. Then you, as an honest person, get some prick of Poly administrator and your career is ruined.
Got any more tips for drunk drivers? What if I run over some kid on a bicycle? How long should I run from the law before my BAC will be down under .07? What are the implications with respect to felony hit-and-run vs misdemeanor involuntary vehicular manslaughter?
Are there any other crimes you can help me weasel out of? Know anything about securities fraud? I heard it's lucrative, but I don't want to get caught.
You just don't get it. This article is all about how the devices used as primary evidence against you in a DUI case may be seriously flawed. This means even if you did not drink at all you could still end up blowing a positive test. NOW what are you going to do?
Clearly, you're guilty and should just give and go to jail.
The rest of us Americans have the right to have a lawyer and not incriminate ourselves. We also have the right to fight back against any criminal charges brought against us - it's one of the foundations upon which the country was built.
Finally, the criminal justice system is heavily stacked against defendants. Only a fool would go into that situation without the advice and representation of a lawyer.
On top of that, it is your right to stand up for your rights. You are not obligated to aid in your own prosecution. That's why they have to tell you "you have the right to remain silent".
Let me know how you're going to handle it when you've been wrongly accused of a crime. Are you just going to turn yourself in and confess? Clearly, they wouldn't have accused you if you weren't already guilty.