In my opinion, the israelis need to invest in far better armor and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
In my opinion, the Israelis (and their British and American enablers) need to invest in paying compensation to those from whom they stole the land to create their nation.
Peace is not going to be possible until those crimes are acknowledged and some reparations made.
According to Milton Friedman they are accountable solely to their shareholders.
The major shareholders of large corporations are often other large corporations - banks, muutual funds, etcetera. 90% of GM, for example, is owned by "institutions" and mutual funds. "State Street Corporation" owns 15%, $2.5 billions dollars worth, of GM stock alone. In turn, 79% of State Street Corporation is owned by other institutions.
In a sane world, no corportion could own any part of another, all shareholders would be actual human beings; and those actual human beings would bear responsibility for malfeasance by the corporation.
Um maybe it isn't what society deems to be the most important, but what has the most money.
And why do certain groups end up with the most money?
Because consciously or unconsciously, directly (by forking over cash) or indirectly (through public policy), people direct the flow of money towards them.
If one group has the most money, that's exactly because society deems them to be the most important.
Science is not about consensus...but about data and the conclusions that can be drawn
Science may not be "about consensus", however science indeed makes use of consensus. That's what peer review is: people reaching consensus on the reliabilty of data on and the chain of reasoning use to build conclusions from that data.
In my physics lab classes many years ago, I managed to disprove pretty much every principle of optics. The scientific consensus on these principles, though, strongly suggests that I was just a piss-poor experimentalist. (As least as far as staring at spots of light in a dark room went; my other lab work was better.)
The stronger the consensus, the stronger the evidence needed to overturn it. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," as the cliche goes; extraordinary claims are those that go against scientific consensus.
The consensus on climate is now strong enough that claiming that releasing billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year has no significant effect, is an extraordinary claim.
A solution that only certain nations are allowed to implement, under threat of military action, is no solution.
And even if the Earth's supply of uranium isn't enough, what about the rest of the solar system?
Stuff we can't get to is pretty useless. If we're going to go to space,
orbital photovoltaic makes much more sense. (Maybe eventually lunar He3 for
fusion, too.)
What about fusion? If we make fusion economically viable then it would seem likely to displace fission.
Um, yes. If you carefully read my post you'll see I noted fusion, and subcritical reactors with thorium, as more promising potential power sources than uranium or plutonium fission. We ought to be devoting resources to developing these, not building uranium fission plants.
What would you purpose as a stop-gap until that happens?
Efficiency improvements (tax credits for ground-source heatpumps!), waste
biomass to energy, inter-tied photovoltaics on every roof, wind, OTECs, tidal and geothermal
where applicable.
The US Navy has operated reactors for five decades without any accidents.
Not correct. This list of military nuclear accidents shows several incidents in which
U.S. vessels had accidents resulting in the release of radioactive material.
Eventually, the technology will be so advanced that we will talk into a phone, and the person on the other end will hear our voice.
I didn't understand the allure of texting until I went to Japan. As soon as my return flight landed at O'Hare and dozens of people started chatting on their phones, I recalled train cars full of people silently texting, and I understood.
The big problem is the liberal attitude that the "self esteem" of a child is more important than their education.
Social promotion is definitlely a problem.
It has fsck-all to do with the label "liberal", however, and dragging left-vs.-right politics into the matter serves only to muddy the water.
By allowing kids with failing grades to move ahead, we take away the lesson that failure is embarassing and painful.
Failure does not need to be embarassing. Indeed, in academic settings, it should not be; it's simply a mark that the material needs to be studied further, before progressing to the next level.
The reason for failure may be poor teaching, poor study habits, a natural lack of talent or capacity in the field at hand, a confluence of unfortunate circumstances, whatever. Learn what needs to be learned about how to learn, and move on; shame accomplishes nothing.
Nonsense. Notcing that a person has certain characteristics - ethnicity, gender, handicap or lack thereof, age, hair or the lack thereof, et cetera - does not imply that one is biased or prejudicial about those characteristics.
in small cities/large towns police officers are some of the best paid
Median pay for a patrol officer is about $46k. I'm suggesting that "patrol cop" be a highly skilled profession, requiring a college degree and post-graduate study, about the level of training of a Master's degree, paying $100k+. Of course there may be less-skilled, lower-paid support positions, and many of the jobs (like running speed traps) now done by police officers should be done by support personel, or perhaps by an entirely different agency.
(We should also be sure that citizens are empowered to protect themselves against criminals, by ensuring they have legal access to tools for self-defense.)
And what are 'actual bad guys'? Do drug dealers count? Child molesters? Rapists?
"Actual bad guys" are people who credibly threaten to violate the rights of others. So: no (not so long as they're just selling to people who want to buy, not using force or fraud), yes, yes.
Get the government out of legislating morality, let people choose what to do with their own bodies - take drugs, sleep with hookers, gamble, whatever - and you'll have a lot more resources to go after people who are actually hurting or endangering other people.
Back 15 years ago, we had a class like that at the University of Maryland. It was elective, not mandatory
We had three teams and three stages to the project.
Each team did a requirements analysis. Then team A passed that on to team B to develop into a high-level design (while team A in turn got a requirements analysis from team C). In the third stage the design was passed along to the next team who then had to implement it.
Pretty much a straight waterfall model, which you wouldn't want to do on a larger project, but I think it was a good model of the process.
It's to do with stimulating muscles to heal themselves and rebalance, from what I recall my massage therapist said.
"Massage" means more than the Swedish and "deep-tissue" type of massage. Pretty much any manual manipulation of muscles or other soft tissue (fascia, tendons) falls under the broad heading of "massage" or "bodywork". It certainly sounds like Bowen would fall under the legal definion of "massage" here in Maryland.
Ostepathy is somewhat similar to chiropractic, in that both are primarily concerned with adusting the alignment of the bones - "bonesetting". (Of course, if you move the bones around and don't deal with muscle tension or weakened ligaments, they'll move right back out again; whereas if you deal with the soft tissue that holds bone in place, minor misalignments will tend to self-correct with natural movement. Just my bias shining through here.:-) )
You're not gonna be gentle and polite to someone who could potentially hurt you.
And yet, you expect the suspect to be gentle and polite to a bunch of guys with guns and clubs who are members of an organization known for beating people to get their jollies, and who are punching him in the face?
they are trying to do a very difficult and dangerous job.
Yes, they are - dangerous not just to the police, but to all of us, when we can be the targets of harassment or brutality by incompetent cops. And many people trying to do that job, are not suited to it, cannot do it compently.
We should have fewer cops, pay them very well, and set very high standards for them. (We can only do that, of course, by giving them less to do...get them out of messing with people's private business, and a reduced force will have plenty of time to chase actual bad guys.)
The fact that a job is difficult doesn't mean we should let incompetent people do it.
Scum will lie through their teeth in order to gain an advantage. You can't believe a word they utter.
The problem is, some police are scum. Far too many, in fact, with the increasing militarization of policing following WWII, and the ever present call to "put more police on the streets!" generated by the War on (Some) Drugs.
So plenty of cops will also lie through their teeth in order to gain an advantage - you can't believe a word they utter.
(Which is a double shame, because there are a handful of darned good men and women out there, truly trying to serve.)
I have been telling people for a few years now that when the doctor leaves the room after examining you he is googling for a cure to what ails you.
A few years ago, I went to see my doctor about a skin rash. One of the possibilities was some viral thing. She left the room to go look up the incubation period of that virus.
I imagined her going to some big ol' reference book.
She came back and said no, that couldn't be it, the incubation period was wrong...and that she had checked by looking it up with Google. (I presume, of course, that she was using Google to find page at a reputable site.)
Considering that the majority, if not all of Osteopathy is a pseudoscience and treatments like Bowen technique are unproven it's no surprise your doctor wouldn't recommend it. I'd question any doctor who would.
Intelligent and skilled clinical physicans will use all information, including anecdotal evidence, to find a conservative and effective treatment. They will recommend conservative and safe CAM treatments for which research evidence (may I suggest Asian Bodywork Therapy?) or anecdotal evidence exists before radical and risky treatments like major surgery or toxic drugs.
I'm not familiar with the Bowen technique; from the descriptions I found with Google, it sounds a little bit like some of the gentle release techniques used in tui na (Chinese "medical massage"). It is massage, not osteopathy, as it works with soft tissue. A quick PubMed search turns up some case and pilot studies - that's enough that a physican interested in finding relief for their patient (rather than acting as an enforcer for current medical orthodoxy) should say, "Other people have said this helped them. It's not proven, but you might consider trying it out before we move to the next conventional treament, which is to cut you open, move your parts around, and sew you back up like a ripped overcoat."
It's interesting that many people who demand scientific proof of the effectiveness of CAM treatments, will unquestioningly accept conventional medical treatments which are unproven (and often will simply refuse to accept studies that do show CAM treaments to be effective). The same guy who demands to see double-blind controlled studies of acupuncture, for example, will gladly submit himself to surgical techniques for which no double-blind controlled studies exist. (And yes, while it's very tricky to design, there are a few double-blind controlled studies of acupuncture, which show positive results; meanwhile, the only placebo-controlled trials of surgical techniques I'm aware of have found the technique under investigation no better than placebo.)
expect to see the RIAA lobbying for similarly harsh enforcement of copyright law around here
In the US, performance rights are the domain of ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, not the RIAA.
Logically a band covering another song in a large venue for a paying crowd should pay some type of usage fees
Bands don't pay the fees, the venues do. The venues (and other groups who use music, including radio stations) pay the performing rights organizations, who do some sampling of what songs are being played and then (supposedly) pay the songwriters.
(BTW, I've been suggesting this sort of "royalty-right" as a copyright-replacement for years: just as you can play any song you want at a party with friends, but have to pay a cut to the songwriter if you play for pay, you should be able to make copies of any work you want, but have to pay a royalty on selling them or any for-profit use.)
"That's an occipital bun." When I looked puzzled, she explained what it meant. Then her eyes widened. "And you... you have a supra-orbital ridge!"
Hello, brother Neanderthal!
Yep, I share those features of brow ridge and bumpy occiput. I've always thought my profile looked rather Neanderthalish, with a slightly elongated skull and an undershot chin.
Wikipedia also mentions "large round finger tips" - the tips of my fingers flare out in an unusual fashion.
Biodiesel has a double hit, you have to burn fossil fuels to make it, at about 1.4:1 joule loss ratio, then you burn it again and get even more pollution.
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In my opinion, the Israelis (and their British and American enablers) need to invest in paying compensation to those from whom they stole the land to create their nation.
Peace is not going to be possible until those crimes are acknowledged and some reparations made.
...at market prices. It is no longer the case that a dollar is a proxy for a certain amount of gold.
The only thing that makes U.S. currency worthwhile, is that it is popularly accepted.
Of course, the same is true of gold.
Maybe we will; but public policy should not be based on asumptions that a technological deus ex machina will come forth.
The correct usage is "Democratic party", or perhaps "the Democrats' talking points".
Using "Democrat party" reveals one as a slavish follower of Republican partisans who practice Gingrichian language control.
Corporations are the state. They exist because the state created an immortal artifical legal person.
When we cry for limits on corporate power, we are crying for limits on state power; the state should not be empowered to create such monsters.
The major shareholders of large corporations are often other large corporations - banks, muutual funds, etcetera. 90% of GM, for example, is owned by "institutions" and mutual funds. "State Street Corporation" owns 15%, $2.5 billions dollars worth, of GM stock alone. In turn, 79% of State Street Corporation is owned by other institutions.
In a sane world, no corportion could own any part of another, all shareholders would be actual human beings; and those actual human beings would bear responsibility for malfeasance by the corporation.
And why do certain groups end up with the most money?
Because consciously or unconsciously, directly (by forking over cash) or indirectly (through public policy), people direct the flow of money towards them.
If one group has the most money, that's exactly because society deems them to be the most important.
Science may not be "about consensus", however science indeed makes use of consensus. That's what peer review is: people reaching consensus on the reliabilty of data on and the chain of reasoning use to build conclusions from that data.
In my physics lab classes many years ago, I managed to disprove pretty much every principle of optics. The scientific consensus on these principles, though, strongly suggests that I was just a piss-poor experimentalist. (As least as far as staring at spots of light in a dark room went; my other lab work was better.)
The stronger the consensus, the stronger the evidence needed to overturn it. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," as the cliche goes; extraordinary claims are those that go against scientific consensus.
The consensus on climate is now strong enough that claiming that releasing billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year has no significant effect, is an extraordinary claim.
Says Israel, for one; says the U.S., for another.
A solution that only certain nations are allowed to implement, under threat of military action, is no solution.
Stuff we can't get to is pretty useless. If we're going to go to space, orbital photovoltaic makes much more sense. (Maybe eventually lunar He3 for fusion, too.)
Um, yes. If you carefully read my post you'll see I noted fusion, and subcritical reactors with thorium, as more promising potential power sources than uranium or plutonium fission. We ought to be devoting resources to developing these, not building uranium fission plants.
Efficiency improvements (tax credits for ground-source heatpumps!), waste biomass to energy, inter-tied photovoltaics on every roof, wind, OTECs, tidal and geothermal where applicable.
Not correct. This list of military nuclear accidents shows several incidents in which U.S. vessels had accidents resulting in the release of radioactive material.
The security implications of plutonium breeding make it unsuitable as a solution. And if you imagine fission scaling up to be the primary energy source, even with breeder reactors you still run out of uranium within decades, perhaps a century. Reactor safety is a huge issue (no, pebble bed reators are not as safe as fission fans tell you). And the waste problem remain unsolved.
Thorium spallation in an sub-critical accelerator driven system is a possibility, with much greater safety and availabilty, but doesn't yet exist in practical form. Same for fusion.
Photovoltatics, renewables, and efficiency improvements exist in practical form now.
I didn't understand the allure of texting until I went to Japan. As soon as my return flight landed at O'Hare and dozens of people started chatting on their phones, I recalled train cars full of people silently texting, and I understood.
Social promotion is definitlely a problem.
It has fsck-all to do with the label "liberal", however, and dragging left-vs.-right politics into the matter serves only to muddy the water.
Failure does not need to be embarassing. Indeed, in academic settings, it should not be; it's simply a mark that the material needs to be studied further, before progressing to the next level.
The reason for failure may be poor teaching, poor study habits, a natural lack of talent or capacity in the field at hand, a confluence of unfortunate circumstances, whatever. Learn what needs to be learned about how to learn, and move on; shame accomplishes nothing.
Nonsense. Notcing that a person has certain characteristics - ethnicity, gender, handicap or lack thereof, age, hair or the lack thereof, et cetera - does not imply that one is biased or prejudicial about those characteristics.
Median pay for a patrol officer is about $46k. I'm suggesting that "patrol cop" be a highly skilled profession, requiring a college degree and post-graduate study, about the level of training of a Master's degree, paying $100k+. Of course there may be less-skilled, lower-paid support positions, and many of the jobs (like running speed traps) now done by police officers should be done by support personel, or perhaps by an entirely different agency.
(We should also be sure that citizens are empowered to protect themselves against criminals, by ensuring they have legal access to tools for self-defense.)
"Actual bad guys" are people who credibly threaten to violate the rights of others. So: no (not so long as they're just selling to people who want to buy, not using force or fraud), yes, yes.
Get the government out of legislating morality, let people choose what to do with their own bodies - take drugs, sleep with hookers, gamble, whatever - and you'll have a lot more resources to go after people who are actually hurting or endangering other people.
Back 15 years ago, we had a class like that at the University of Maryland. It was elective, not mandatory
We had three teams and three stages to the project.
Each team did a requirements analysis. Then team A passed that on to team B to develop into a high-level design (while team A in turn got a requirements analysis from team C). In the third stage the design was passed along to the next team who then had to implement it.
Pretty much a straight waterfall model, which you wouldn't want to do on a larger project, but I think it was a good model of the process.
"Massage" means more than the Swedish and "deep-tissue" type of massage. Pretty much any manual manipulation of muscles or other soft tissue (fascia, tendons) falls under the broad heading of "massage" or "bodywork". It certainly sounds like Bowen would fall under the legal definion of "massage" here in Maryland.
Ostepathy is somewhat similar to chiropractic, in that both are primarily concerned with adusting the alignment of the bones - "bonesetting". (Of course, if you move the bones around and don't deal with muscle tension or weakened ligaments, they'll move right back out again; whereas if you deal with the soft tissue that holds bone in place, minor misalignments will tend to self-correct with natural movement. Just my bias shining through here. :-) )
And yet, you expect the suspect to be gentle and polite to a bunch of guys with guns and clubs who are members of an organization known for beating people to get their jollies, and who are punching him in the face?
Yes, they are - dangerous not just to the police, but to all of us, when we can be the targets of harassment or brutality by incompetent cops. And many people trying to do that job, are not suited to it, cannot do it compently.
We should have fewer cops, pay them very well, and set very high standards for them. (We can only do that, of course, by giving them less to do...get them out of messing with people's private business, and a reduced force will have plenty of time to chase actual bad guys.)
The fact that a job is difficult doesn't mean we should let incompetent people do it.
The problem is, some police are scum. Far too many, in fact, with the increasing militarization of policing following WWII, and the ever present call to "put more police on the streets!" generated by the War on (Some) Drugs.
So plenty of cops will also lie through their teeth in order to gain an advantage - you can't believe a word they utter.
(Which is a double shame, because there are a handful of darned good men and women out there, truly trying to serve.)
Unfortunately, this is also often the case in the U.S.
It's not as direct, since the doctors generally aren't selling you the drugs directly, but Big Pharma waves a lot of temptation in front of physicians to prescribe their products - so much so that a few years back, the New England Journal of Medicine gave up on finding independent expert reviewer who haven't been paid off in some way by the industry. (NEJM's "solution" was to allow reviewers to have received up to $10,000 from companies whose work they judge.)
A few years ago, I went to see my doctor about a skin rash. One of the possibilities was some viral thing. She left the room to go look up the incubation period of that virus.
I imagined her going to some big ol' reference book.
She came back and said no, that couldn't be it, the incubation period was wrong...and that she had checked by looking it up with Google. (I presume, of course, that she was using Google to find page at a reputable site.)
Intelligent and skilled clinical physicans will use all information, including anecdotal evidence, to find a conservative and effective treatment. They will recommend conservative and safe CAM treatments for which research evidence (may I suggest Asian Bodywork Therapy?) or anecdotal evidence exists before radical and risky treatments like major surgery or toxic drugs.
I'm not familiar with the Bowen technique; from the descriptions I found with Google, it sounds a little bit like some of the gentle release techniques used in tui na (Chinese "medical massage"). It is massage, not osteopathy, as it works with soft tissue. A quick PubMed search turns up some case and pilot studies - that's enough that a physican interested in finding relief for their patient (rather than acting as an enforcer for current medical orthodoxy) should say, "Other people have said this helped them. It's not proven, but you might consider trying it out before we move to the next conventional treament, which is to cut you open, move your parts around, and sew you back up like a ripped overcoat."
It's interesting that many people who demand scientific proof of the effectiveness of CAM treatments, will unquestioningly accept conventional medical treatments which are unproven (and often will simply refuse to accept studies that do show CAM treaments to be effective). The same guy who demands to see double-blind controlled studies of acupuncture, for example, will gladly submit himself to surgical techniques for which no double-blind controlled studies exist. (And yes, while it's very tricky to design, there are a few double-blind controlled studies of acupuncture, which show positive results; meanwhile, the only placebo-controlled trials of surgical techniques I'm aware of have found the technique under investigation no better than placebo.)
In the US, performance rights are the domain of ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, not the RIAA.
Bands don't pay the fees, the venues do. The venues (and other groups who use music, including radio stations) pay the performing rights organizations, who do some sampling of what songs are being played and then (supposedly) pay the songwriters.
I think the idea is sound, but there are various horror stories about the implementation - not surprising when there's big money involved.
(BTW, I've been suggesting this sort of "royalty-right" as a copyright-replacement for years: just as you can play any song you want at a party with friends, but have to pay a cut to the songwriter if you play for pay, you should be able to make copies of any work you want, but have to pay a royalty on selling them or any for-profit use.)
Hello, brother Neanderthal!
Yep, I share those features of brow ridge and bumpy occiput. I've always thought my profile looked rather Neanderthalish, with a slightly elongated skull and an undershot chin.
Wikipedia also mentions "large round finger tips" - the tips of my fingers flare out in an unusual fashion.
...or it means that the mtDNA study made an error in either observation or conclusion.
BTW, the article to which you link is about nuclear DNA, not mtDNA, and says "little interbreeding occurred", not "no interbreeding occurred".
Anyway, DNA dating is based on assumptions about mutations occuring at a constant rate - an assumption that is widely debated. Also, others have drawn different conclusions from the mtDNA data.
No. For every joule of energy used to make biodiesel, 3.2 joules worth of fuel energy are produced. That's using soybeans; obviously using waste food oil would give even better numbers. High-oil algaes are another promising possibility.