Technology is expanding exponentially, I believe we'll find a solution before it becomes a problem.
Relying on a deus ex machina is not an acceptable engineering practice. "Oh, well, I'm sure someone will solve this problem before it kills someone."
Technology is by no means a relentless upward progression. Civilivations come and go. It's entirely possible that whoever's living on top of our nuclear waste dumps in a thousand years, has tech no better than, or even worse than, ours.
Uranium fission is neither clean (even with reprocessing, there's still large amounts of waste that we don't know how to safely store long term, as well as the damage done in uranium mining), safe (not only are the security and profileration issues are huge, but the widely touted "pebble bed" reactor design hass proven much less safe than its proponents claim), nor plentiful (with heavy use, there's only a century or two's worth) Rather than wasting time on building uranium fission plants as a stopgap, we should do the job right and be investigating fusion (including using that big fusion reactor in the sky) and thorium spallation.
Spallation ("accelerator-driven nuclear energy") using thorium is especially interesting, because it really is safe (no chain reaction - if things start to go wrong, just turn off the particle beam), clean (indeed, you can use it to "burn off" some nuclear waste), and thorium is much more plentiful than uranium.
I'm a simple person with no special knowledge. No one will
remember me. And that's the case with most of the other people in the world
(though most of them don't want to acknowledge that fact). Even if they
have children, most people are meaningless in the long
run.
Must a life have "meaning" in order to be enjoyable and satisfactory?
When I noodle around on my guitar, there's no meaning, but it's fun. When
children spend the day making sand castles, knowing that they'll be gone
when the tide comes in, they still spend hours playing at it. What's the
meaning of a snow angel, or of the tune I whistle while waiting for water
to boil on the stove?
There's an old Calvin
and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin asks, "What if there's no
afterlife? Suppose this is all we get?" Hobbes looks around, thinks for a
minute, and replies, "Oh, what the heck. I'll take it anyway." (And Calvin
continues, "Yeah, but if I'm not going to be eternally rewarded for good
behavior, I'd sure like to know NOW.")
The same idea goes for a "meaningless" life: what the heck. I'll take it
anyway.
Hindus call the idea "lila" - the universe is the
"purposeless play", the "spontaneous game".
If coming at it from that direction doesn't help you, consider the
question of just what it means to have a "meaningful" life. Is it just
passing on your genes? Then Issac Newton had a meaningless life. Is it
being remembered after you die? That makes the whole thing just a
popularity contest, like picking the homecoming queen. I'm not willing to
leave the "meaning" of my life (if any) in the hands of what other people
do.
The question of the meaning of life is not one that is answered by
objective science. There's no organelle in a cell that creates meaning the
way ribosomes create proteins, no "coefficient of meaning" in quantum
electrodynamics.
If "meaning" is anything, is part of our subjective experience. That
means that if you really want a meaning for your life, you get to decide
what it is, then set about making it happen.
Whatever these little consequences are, they can't concern me anymore, since i'm already dead...This thinking can, of course, lead to amoral decisions, and that's why we have invented religion:)
The fact that consequences of your death can't concern you when you're
dead, in no way means that reasonably foreseeable post-mortem consequences
should not concern you now.
That's why even people who don't believe in any sort of "afterlife"
still buy life insurance to take care of their kids.
You don't need any sort of supernatural belief to end up with behavior
that most people would call "moral", just some compassion and a reasonable
ability to foresee the consequences of your actions.
Which takes me off on a bit of a tangent...
Foreseeing the effects of our actions is of obvious use; if you can't do
that to at least some degree, you'll quickly end up dead or
institutionalized.
But compassion? What's in it for me, you wonder.
Cultivating compassion expands the self. We're pretty darn sure that the
human body known as "Lukas Beeler" is eventually going to stop functioning
and in some way dissolve (rot in the ground, be burned up, eaten by
squirrels, whatever). If you completely identify "yourself" as "Lukas
Beeler", well, then, that's it for you. Maybe you can tickle the pleasure
centers of that lump of meat a little bit before it dissolves, but that
seems an unsatisfactory goal.
But is identifying "yourself" as "Lukas Beeler" the only option?
Throughout history, some people - people who seem to derive a great deal
more contentment from life than the average Joe - have suggested that
transpersonalization provides a more satisfactory experience. This means
identifying "yourself" as more than "Lukas Beeler".
By "more than", I do not mean anything supernatural, I am not speaking
of a "soul" or anything metaphysical like that. But what if, for example,
you were to invest a portion of your own concept of identity into your
family? Unless all your relatives are childless, your family will outlast
your body, so that "you" might have a larger and longer existence than the
body of "Lukas Beeler".
What if you were to invest your identity into your community, your city
or your nation? That's an even larger and longer existence. Perhaps we have
here a sensible argument for patriotism. But why stop there, when by
identifying "yourself" with the whole human race, "you" get even bigger and
longer-lived?
Now, hold on there, you ask. How in world am I supposed to accomplish
this "investment of identity" that you're going on about? Well, it means to
think of yourself as these other people. It's an exercise of imagination,
to see things through their eyes, to feel what they feel. With that
exercise, eventually it can be seen that the ordinary idea of "self" is
just a mental construct, just an idea, not an immutable reality.
In other words, compassion is the tool and the method to get You out of
you, the "big You" of consciousness out of the "small you" of flesh.
Indeed, if you get good at it, you may find that you can see "yourself"
not just in other humans, but in other animals; in the trees; in the whole
biosphere. Expanding "yourself" until not much identity is left connected
with the body known as "Lukas Beeler".
And maybe you can keep going. Eventually you might find yourself
worrying about the heat death of the observable Universe, billions of years
in the future, as your end, instead of the dissolution of "Lukas Beeler" in
a few decades. That's a pretty massive trade-up. And if you get that far,
it's comforting to consider that cosmology seems more and more to be
considering some sort of "multi-verse" scheme in which our observable
Universe is only a part; there's still more to become.
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part
limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and
feelings as something separated from the re
I happened to see an ad for this just today. Portable solar power station with a generator back-up (with SVO diesel an option). (I've no relation to the product other than noticing a print ad and thinking "huh, that's interesting".) At $7995 it's a fair bit pricier than the $5100 you mention, but that does include the generator, and they claim to qualify for a $2000 federal tax credit.
Most would object to an adult bookstore moving in next door to their house so why should the internet be any different.
I'd be upset about an adult bookstore moving in next door because I live in a residential zoned area, and would be upset about any bookstore moving in next store. I'd certainly rather have an adult bookstore then a McDonalds.
In fact, keeping in mind that "adult bookstore" doesn't just mean "porn-o-rama", I'd rather have a good adult bookstore like Atomic Books next door than a generic WaldenBooks or whatever. And, most relevantly, I'd be very concerned about any law that said WaldenBooks could move into my neighborhood but Atomic Books couldn't, on the basis that Atomic Books has "dirty" books with "dirty" ideas in them. I don't need the government to decide for me what's "dirty", thank you.
If people want an optional.xxx TLD, fine and dandy, just like putting a neon sign saying "We Got Porn!" in the window of a brick and mortar store. The concern comes when the government decides to mandate that "pornographic" sites must stay in the.xxx TLD; when.xxx becomes a scarlet triplet of letters.
Asking for IDs for boarding a flight is not the same as asking for identification papers ala Soviet Russia...Airlines are commercial enterprises and they can set whatever policies they want.
No, it's not merely a business policy. It's a secret "Security Directive" from the government.
The legislation, in effect, is "the TSA can set guidelines for security in airports." The TSA, in turn, has security directives, some of which are secret
Delegation by Congress of legislative authority to other bodies is
common, but of dubious Constitutionality.
The idea that the TSA (or the EPA, or the FDA, or any other TLA to whom
Congress has delegated such authority) can act against you under secret
laws (whether they call them "laws" or "rules" or "directives" is irrevelvant), is a violation of due process.
I take it for granted that the average/. reader is well aware that
security through obscurity is a sad and sick joke, whether applied to a
computer network or to controlling a physical environment.
Your assumption that you know more about the gods worshipped by others than they do displays arrogance. You seem to have the idea that you can pick out what's important about Jewish/Christian/Islamic teaching about god and what is just "Doctrinal and dogmatic differences" but the billions of Jews/Christians/Muslims can't.
First, I was raised Catholic (but I'm feeling much better now) and know a fair bit about the god worshipped by Christians, thank you.
Second, the question of what's considered important about Jewish/Christian/Islamic teachings about god to those faiths, is irrelevant to the question of whether those faiths historically emerge from worship of the "same" god.
So a teaching regarded as central to their religion and concept of God to the christians is "montrous" according to the Koran.
Again, irrelevant. There are teachings held by some Christians as central to their religion that are considered heresy, lies, or blasphemy by other sets of Christians. (Papal infallibility. Nestorianism. Predestination. The existence or nonexistence of Hell.) That doesn't change the fact that all forms of Christianity historically emerge from worship of the "same" god and the "same" incarnation of the god as Jesus of Nazareth.
The point though is this: I don't want you to reinterpret my religion for me, and the Muslims I know aren't looking for someone to reinterpret theirs for them either.
I'm not trying to interpret your religion for you. I'm talking about its history.
If you're going to agree that all Christians worship the "same" god (which almost everyone would agree to), and that Christians and Jews worship the "same" god (which, again, almost everyone would agree to), you have to admit Muslims into that club also. To do otherwise is simple bigotry.
But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.
Nah. It takes fundamentalism, dogmatism, an unquestioning belief in one's own rightness. Which can certainly often be religious, but can be secular as well. See Stalinism, for example.
Have you never heard of the field of philosophy of religion? In it theists outnumber atheists considerably
And in the study of Marxist philosophy, Marxists probably outnumber non-Marxists considerably. So what?
Most non-Marxists and most non-theists simply don't see anything worth significant study or debate in those respective fields.
General theism is extremely defensible by reason
Please, summarize such a reasoned argument for theism.
and Richard Swinburne has of late proposed a number of arguments for specifically Christian concepts that are presenting quite a challenge to his atheist colleagues.
A quick look at the the papers on his home page show nothing but the same warmed-over arguments with no explanatory power. Nonsense like this: "These arguments seem to me to have a common pattern. Some phenomenon E, which we can all observe, is considered. It is claimed that E is puzzling, strange, not to be expected in the ordinary course of things; but that E is to be expected if there is a God; for God has the power to bring about E and he might well choose to do so. Hence the occurrence of E is reason for supposing that there is a God."
In other words, "there's stuff we don't understand, therefore God exists". A common argument, but a weak and disappointing one.
"Allah" ("al", the + "ilah", god) is "Yahweh" (YHVH, Jehovah) is the Christian "one God, the Father Almighty". Christianity, Islam, and modern Judaism are all descended from the original Yahweh cult, the Abrahamic monotheistic tradition, with Islam being descended from Ishmael rather then Issac. The Koran is seen by Islam as a continuation of the Old and New Testaments - Moses and Jesus are characters found in it.
Obviously Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all have rather differing conceptions about Yahweh, but that doesn't change their historical relationship and the fact that the worship the "same" god. Do the differing notions of Jesus between Catholics, Quakers, Calvinists, and Nestorians mean that they don't believe in the "same" Jesus? (Do the differences between Shiites, Sunnis, and Sufis mean that they don't believe in the "same" Allah?)
Doctrinal and dogmatic differences don't mean you all don't worship the same god. The rest of us wish you'd iron out your differences about him/her/it a little more peacefully and quietly.
Drunk driving fatalities total 17,000 a year, 39% of all fatal crashes.
Actually, according to linked site mentions, that 17,000 a year is "alcohol-related", and "the term `alcohol-related' does not indicate that a crash or fatality was caused by the presence of alcohol."
Again according to your source, 8,256 people, only about half of those 17,000 were killed in crashes where the driver had a BAC of.08 g/dL (the legal limit in all states) or higher. Of course 8,256 is 8,256 people too many to die in avoidable accidents.
Your linked article on cell phone related crashes says that the data is not accurate; that the three-tenths percent figure is in relation to all crashes in Texas, not fatal crashes nationwide.
But thanks for the link; alcoholalert.com could be an interesting business opportunity, to make a few bucks by doing good. I will have to check it out.
No one takes their vitamins then suddenly beats their wife and kids, pees all over the floor, then gets in the car and kills a family just driving down the road and minding their own business, and can't remember any of it in the morning.
No one has a single glass of wine with dinner and then does all those things, either.
If you believe that you would have a problem with keeping it to just a single glass, hey, great, you've made the right choice for yourself and I applaud you for it.
As far as this gizmo goes, I think breathalyzers should be standard equipment in all cars, and should also be required in all bars. (In all my years of visiting taverns I've only seen two bars that had coin-op breathalyzers.) And I wouldn't have too much of a problem with a system that refuses to start the car if it thinks you're drunk. But systems that take control away from the driver raise very serious safety issues.
I was a geek in high school, and picked on a lot. Some nights I would cry myself to sleep over it (yes, I'm man enough to admit that).
High school wasn't as bad for me, largely because I managed to transfer to a different school, outside my neighborhood. But I also was a target for bullies as a kid, and spend a lot of time depressed and tearful. I got into a lot of fights and had a lot of anger; I was never in the place where Harris and Klebold ended up, but I could see it from where I was.
But life gets better. Please, anyone out there going through this now, hear me and believe me. You are not alone, and things will get better.
And just like free speech grants these guys the right to make the game, free speech grants the festival organizers the right to reject the game from their festival.
Except that's not quite what happened. They accepted the game, in fact encouraged the creators to enter it. It made it to the finals. It's only under pressure from sponsors and protestors that it was disqualifed.
Do sponsors have the right to pick and choose where they send their money? Yes. Does this raise important questions about how art is funded, recognized, and marketed in our society? Yes.
Besides which, as other posters have already pointed out, this is an academic group, not "Big Business"; they're not out to scalp people.
In terms of research, academia and "Big Business" have become interlocked to the point of being indistinguishable. It's become common for academic researchers to obtain patents, then turn around and use them to start private companies. An interesting and highly relevant example is the (since overturned) patent on broccoli sprouts obtained by Hopkins researchers.
p.s. Speaking of consistancy, do you also believe that the second ammendment should be interpreted absolutely? That all people should have the right to own tanks, howitzers and nukes?
The term "arms" had a distinct meaning at the time the Bill of Rights was written; it refered to the sort of weapon that an soldier would carry, as opposed to "cannon, larger non-man-portable weapons.
You can perhaps "keep" a tank or a howitzer, but you can't "bear" it on to the battlefield. So it's not the sort of weapon being discussed in Amendment II.
Exigent circumstances is one of them. For example, a cop notices bloodstains on your hands after he stops you for a routine traffic check.
That's not exigent circumstances. Exigent circumstances is when he hears muffled screams coming from the trunk; when there's reason to believe that a delay to get a warrant may cost a life.
Slashdot Mirror
Relying on a deus ex machina is not an acceptable engineering practice. "Oh, well, I'm sure someone will solve this problem before it kills someone."
Technology is by no means a relentless upward progression. Civilivations come and go. It's entirely possible that whoever's living on top of our nuclear waste dumps in a thousand years, has tech no better than, or even worse than, ours.
Uranium fission is neither clean (even with reprocessing, there's still large amounts of waste that we don't know how to safely store long term, as well as the damage done in uranium mining), safe (not only are the security and profileration issues are huge, but the widely touted "pebble bed" reactor design hass proven much less safe than its proponents claim), nor plentiful (with heavy use, there's only a century or two's worth) Rather than wasting time on building uranium fission plants as a stopgap, we should do the job right and be investigating fusion (including using that big fusion reactor in the sky) and thorium spallation.
Spallation ("accelerator-driven nuclear energy") using thorium is especially interesting, because it really is safe (no chain reaction - if things start to go wrong, just turn off the particle beam), clean (indeed, you can use it to "burn off" some nuclear waste), and thorium is much more plentiful than uranium.
Must a life have "meaning" in order to be enjoyable and satisfactory? When I noodle around on my guitar, there's no meaning, but it's fun. When children spend the day making sand castles, knowing that they'll be gone when the tide comes in, they still spend hours playing at it. What's the meaning of a snow angel, or of the tune I whistle while waiting for water to boil on the stove?
There's an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin asks, "What if there's no afterlife? Suppose this is all we get?" Hobbes looks around, thinks for a minute, and replies, "Oh, what the heck. I'll take it anyway." (And Calvin continues, "Yeah, but if I'm not going to be eternally rewarded for good behavior, I'd sure like to know NOW.")
The same idea goes for a "meaningless" life: what the heck. I'll take it anyway.
Hindus call the idea "lila" - the universe is the "purposeless play", the "spontaneous game".
If coming at it from that direction doesn't help you, consider the question of just what it means to have a "meaningful" life. Is it just passing on your genes? Then Issac Newton had a meaningless life. Is it being remembered after you die? That makes the whole thing just a popularity contest, like picking the homecoming queen. I'm not willing to leave the "meaning" of my life (if any) in the hands of what other people do.
The question of the meaning of life is not one that is answered by objective science. There's no organelle in a cell that creates meaning the way ribosomes create proteins, no "coefficient of meaning" in quantum electrodynamics.
If "meaning" is anything, is part of our subjective experience. That means that if you really want a meaning for your life, you get to decide what it is, then set about making it happen.
The fact that consequences of your death can't concern you when you're dead, in no way means that reasonably foreseeable post-mortem consequences should not concern you now.
That's why even people who don't believe in any sort of "afterlife" still buy life insurance to take care of their kids.
You don't need any sort of supernatural belief to end up with behavior that most people would call "moral", just some compassion and a reasonable ability to foresee the consequences of your actions.
Which takes me off on a bit of a tangent...
Foreseeing the effects of our actions is of obvious use; if you can't do that to at least some degree, you'll quickly end up dead or institutionalized.
But compassion? What's in it for me, you wonder.
Cultivating compassion expands the self. We're pretty darn sure that the human body known as "Lukas Beeler" is eventually going to stop functioning and in some way dissolve (rot in the ground, be burned up, eaten by squirrels, whatever). If you completely identify "yourself" as "Lukas Beeler", well, then, that's it for you. Maybe you can tickle the pleasure centers of that lump of meat a little bit before it dissolves, but that seems an unsatisfactory goal.
But is identifying "yourself" as "Lukas Beeler" the only option? Throughout history, some people - people who seem to derive a great deal more contentment from life than the average Joe - have suggested that transpersonalization provides a more satisfactory experience. This means identifying "yourself" as more than "Lukas Beeler".
By "more than", I do not mean anything supernatural, I am not speaking of a "soul" or anything metaphysical like that. But what if, for example, you were to invest a portion of your own concept of identity into your family? Unless all your relatives are childless, your family will outlast your body, so that "you" might have a larger and longer existence than the body of "Lukas Beeler".
What if you were to invest your identity into your community, your city or your nation? That's an even larger and longer existence. Perhaps we have here a sensible argument for patriotism. But why stop there, when by identifying "yourself" with the whole human race, "you" get even bigger and longer-lived?
Now, hold on there, you ask. How in world am I supposed to accomplish this "investment of identity" that you're going on about? Well, it means to think of yourself as these other people. It's an exercise of imagination, to see things through their eyes, to feel what they feel. With that exercise, eventually it can be seen that the ordinary idea of "self" is just a mental construct, just an idea, not an immutable reality.
In other words, compassion is the tool and the method to get You out of you, the "big You" of consciousness out of the "small you" of flesh.
Indeed, if you get good at it, you may find that you can see "yourself" not just in other humans, but in other animals; in the trees; in the whole biosphere. Expanding "yourself" until not much identity is left connected with the body known as "Lukas Beeler".
And maybe you can keep going. Eventually you might find yourself worrying about the heat death of the observable Universe, billions of years in the future, as your end, instead of the dissolution of "Lukas Beeler" in a few decades. That's a pretty massive trade-up. And if you get that far, it's comforting to consider that cosmology seems more and more to be considering some sort of "multi-verse" scheme in which our observable Universe is only a part; there's still more to become.
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the re
I happened to see an ad for this just today. Portable solar power station with a generator back-up (with SVO diesel an option). (I've no relation to the product other than noticing a print ad and thinking "huh, that's interesting".) At $7995 it's a fair bit pricier than the $5100 you mention, but that does include the generator, and they claim to qualify for a $2000 federal tax credit.
Obtaining a U.S. passport does not require fingerprinting.
I'd be upset about an adult bookstore moving in next door because I live in a residential zoned area, and would be upset about any bookstore moving in next store. I'd certainly rather have an adult bookstore then a McDonalds.
In fact, keeping in mind that "adult bookstore" doesn't just mean "porn-o-rama", I'd rather have a good adult bookstore like Atomic Books next door than a generic WaldenBooks or whatever. And, most relevantly, I'd be very concerned about any law that said WaldenBooks could move into my neighborhood but Atomic Books couldn't, on the basis that Atomic Books has "dirty" books with "dirty" ideas in them. I don't need the government to decide for me what's "dirty", thank you.
If people want an optional .xxx TLD, fine and dandy, just like putting a neon sign saying "We Got Porn!" in the window of a brick and mortar store. The concern comes when the government decides to mandate that "pornographic" sites must stay in the .xxx TLD; when .xxx becomes a scarlet triplet of letters.
No, it's not merely a business policy. It's a secret "Security Directive" from the government.
Delegation by Congress of legislative authority to other bodies is common, but of dubious Constitutionality.
The idea that the TSA (or the EPA, or the FDA, or any other TLA to whom Congress has delegated such authority) can act against you under secret laws (whether they call them "laws" or "rules" or "directives" is irrevelvant), is a violation of due process.
I take it for granted that the average /. reader is well aware that
security through obscurity is a sad and sick joke, whether applied to a
computer network or to controlling a physical environment.
I take Amtrak to NYC from Baltimore a couple times a year. I've asked for ID on only a handful of occasions, none recent.
First, I was raised Catholic (but I'm feeling much better now) and know a fair bit about the god worshipped by Christians, thank you.
Second, the question of what's considered important about Jewish/Christian/Islamic teachings about god to those faiths, is irrelevant to the question of whether those faiths historically emerge from worship of the "same" god.
Again, irrelevant. There are teachings held by some Christians as central to their religion that are considered heresy, lies, or blasphemy by other sets of Christians. (Papal infallibility. Nestorianism. Predestination. The existence or nonexistence of Hell.) That doesn't change the fact that all forms of Christianity historically emerge from worship of the "same" god and the "same" incarnation of the god as Jesus of Nazareth.
I'm not trying to interpret your religion for you. I'm talking about its history.
If you're going to agree that all Christians worship the "same" god (which almost everyone would agree to), and that Christians and Jews worship the "same" god (which, again, almost everyone would agree to), you have to admit Muslims into that club also. To do otherwise is simple bigotry.
Nah. It takes fundamentalism, dogmatism, an unquestioning belief in one's own rightness. Which can certainly often be religious, but can be secular as well. See Stalinism, for example.
And in the study of Marxist philosophy, Marxists probably outnumber non-Marxists considerably. So what?
Most non-Marxists and most non-theists simply don't see anything worth significant study or debate in those respective fields.
Please, summarize such a reasoned argument for theism.
A quick look at the the papers on his home page show nothing but the same warmed-over arguments with no explanatory power. Nonsense like this: "These arguments seem to me to have a common pattern. Some phenomenon E, which we can all observe, is considered. It is claimed that E is puzzling, strange, not to be expected in the ordinary course of things; but that E is to be expected if there is a God; for God has the power to bring about E and he might well choose to do so. Hence the occurrence of E is reason for supposing that there is a God."
In other words, "there's stuff we don't understand, therefore God exists". A common argument, but a weak and disappointing one.
"Allah" ("al", the + "ilah", god) is "Yahweh" (YHVH, Jehovah) is the Christian "one God, the Father Almighty". Christianity, Islam, and modern Judaism are all descended from the original Yahweh cult, the Abrahamic monotheistic tradition, with Islam being descended from Ishmael rather then Issac. The Koran is seen by Islam as a continuation of the Old and New Testaments - Moses and Jesus are characters found in it.
Obviously Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all have rather differing conceptions about Yahweh, but that doesn't change their historical relationship and the fact that the worship the "same" god. Do the differing notions of Jesus between Catholics, Quakers, Calvinists, and Nestorians mean that they don't believe in the "same" Jesus? (Do the differences between Shiites, Sunnis, and Sufis mean that they don't believe in the "same" Allah?)
Doctrinal and dogmatic differences don't mean you all don't worship the same god. The rest of us wish you'd iron out your differences about him/her/it a little more peacefully and quietly.
No, I think he meant Links, which is a more advanced text based browser.
I'll bet Dick Cheney was mortified when someone told him to to fuck himself during a CNN interview. That doesn't mean that Cheney has any right to squelch the footage.
Actually, according to linked site mentions, that 17,000 a year is "alcohol-related", and "the term `alcohol-related' does not indicate that a crash or fatality was caused by the presence of alcohol."
Again according to your source, 8,256 people, only about half of those 17,000 were killed in crashes where the driver had a BAC of .08 g/dL (the legal limit in all states) or higher. Of course 8,256 is 8,256 people too many to die in avoidable accidents.
Your linked article on cell phone related crashes says that the data is not accurate; that the three-tenths percent figure is in relation to all crashes in Texas, not fatal crashes nationwide.
But thanks for the link; alcoholalert.com could be an interesting business opportunity, to make a few bucks by doing good. I will have to check it out.
No one has a single glass of wine with dinner and then does all those things, either.
If you believe that you would have a problem with keeping it to just a single glass, hey, great, you've made the right choice for yourself and I applaud you for it.
As far as this gizmo goes, I think breathalyzers should be standard equipment in all cars, and should also be required in all bars. (In all my years of visiting taverns I've only seen two bars that had coin-op breathalyzers.) And I wouldn't have too much of a problem with a system that refuses to start the car if it thinks you're drunk. But systems that take control away from the driver raise very serious safety issues.
Maybe not, since the most popular therapy these days is "drug them until they shut up". Eric Harris was taking the SSRI anti-depressant drug Luvox, and it's argued by some that this was a contributing factor in the killings.
High school wasn't as bad for me, largely because I managed to transfer to a different school, outside my neighborhood. But I also was a target for bullies as a kid, and spend a lot of time depressed and tearful. I got into a lot of fights and had a lot of anger; I was never in the place where Harris and Klebold ended up, but I could see it from where I was.
But life gets better. Please, anyone out there going through this now, hear me and believe me. You are not alone, and things will get better.
Except that's not quite what happened. They accepted the game, in fact encouraged the creators to enter it. It made it to the finals. It's only under pressure from sponsors and protestors that it was disqualifed.
Do sponsors have the right to pick and choose where they send their money? Yes. Does this raise important questions about how art is funded, recognized, and marketed in our society? Yes.
In terms of research, academia and "Big Business" have become interlocked to the point of being indistinguishable. It's become common for academic researchers to obtain patents, then turn around and use them to start private companies. An interesting and highly relevant example is the (since overturned) patent on broccoli sprouts obtained by Hopkins researchers.
University research long ago became an arm of "Big Business".
Here's a factoid of interest: Hopkins has previously attempted to patent broccoli sprouts. They're patent-abusing bastards.
The term "arms" had a distinct meaning at the time the Bill of Rights was written; it refered to the sort of weapon that an soldier would carry, as opposed to "cannon, larger non-man-portable weapons.
You can perhaps "keep" a tank or a howitzer, but you can't "bear" it on to the battlefield. So it's not the sort of weapon being discussed in Amendment II.
That's not exigent circumstances. Exigent circumstances is when he hears muffled screams coming from the trunk; when there's reason to believe that a delay to get a warrant may cost a life.
I call bullshit. That's exactly what the FISA special courts are for.
This idea that "we can't tell the courts because that would compromise our operations" is no more than "we don't want anyone to be supervising us".