I'm still pissed at the Romans for enslaving my ancestors and feeding them to lions. Get over it buddy, the issue is buried and long dead.
Terrible analogy. The government of Rome (the city-state of history, not the Italian city of today obviously) is gone, but both the United State and (some of the) Native nations still exist.
pThis isn't just about what happened to people's distant ancestors. A former housemate of mine's father is full blooded Mohawk. He was taken from his parents while an infant and given to "decent white Christian" parents to be raised. Only recently was he able to track down and reunite with his biological parents.
A newborn still requires full time support, both biological and other
Uh, no. You can leave a newborn alone for several hours and it will survive. Cut a fetus off from the materal blood supply and it dies rapidly. Also a newborn can be given into the care of others, a fetus cannot. These are massive qualitative differences.
So we can kill a newborn up until the point when they no longer require biological support?
We have a word for the time when a fetus no longer requires the full-time biological support, is no longer fully parasitic, on the mother. We call it "birth".
While a newborn certainly hasn't achieved any significant sort of consciousness, much less personhood, it is on its way, and it can be given a great deal of ethical consideration without grossly interfering with anyone else's rights (at least in our socioeconomic reality).
No, a "conservative" wants to save an innocent baby
A fetus is not a baby. A baby is not fully dependant on the mother for biological support, and has begun to experience and interact with the world and develop a consciousness. A baby has a developed brain, a fetus prior to about the last trimester doesn't.
if you do not respect life, why should others respect your life
Because we're supposed to be better than those who do not respect life, not follow the example they set. And because, even if we accept the premise that there may be some people it would be justified to humanely put down, there is no one who can be trusted to make that decision. (You call youself a Libertarian but want to grant the state the power of life and death over its citizens? Bizarre.)
People use cell phones more and more as there primary phone. If the power goes out you still have a phone. The pots lines are no longer really needed.
If the power goes out at my house, I still have phone service. POTS works on batteries for a good long time. (Though you have to have a wired phone. Remember those? You can pick one up cheap at a thrift store as a backup.)
And Murphy's Law tells us that if I need to dial 911, that's when my cell phone battery will have just died. Ooops!
POTS is still significantly more reliable, and give a higher quality voice signal, than cellular.
I toy I absolutely loved as a kid was the 200-in-1 Electronics Lab.
Yes! I had one of these (I think it was the "150-in-1", a little more old-school).
I recall seeing a program about the state of science education in the U.S., where they went to graduation at some ivy league college and gave new graduates a battery, a lightbulb, and some wire, and asked them to make the bulb light up.
For older kids, you could buy some proto-board and some of Forrest M. Mims III's electorics experiements guide, and a $20 gift certificate to your local Radio Shack (if you have one that has a decent parts department).
IIRC only about 10% could do it. As a veteran of many hours with an X-in-1 electronics lab as a kid, I was (pardon the pun) shocked.
Do you have a link for the Chernobyl affecting farms in the US comment?
This page mentions a Star Tribune article from May 17, 1986: "Since radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear accident began floating over Minnesota last week, low levels of radiation have been discovered in . . . the raw milk from a Minnesota dairy." A search at startribune.com's archive seems to confirm that such a story ran, though I didn't shell out the cash to actually download the article.
Also note this story from earlier this year: "14 farms covering 16,300 hectares of southwest and central Scotland are still subject to restrictions on the movement and slaughter of radioactive sheep".
Yes, it's true that Chernobyl was the result of very stupid behavior and that modern reactor design makes such an accident pretty much impossible (at least, in theory). That doesn't change that the accident affected an area a lot larger than a few square miles.
Not that I don't believe you, I just think you believe everything you hear that fits your world view.
I try to keep the BS filter running strong and run everything - including the claims of both foes and fans of electric generation from nuclear fission - through it. Do I have some bias? Sure. It's part of being human.
Why is it that people are so scared of nuclear plants...I'd rather have a few square miles potentially ruined than a certain change to the global system.
Between mining tailings, waste disposal, and the risk of a meltdown or reactor breach, we're talking about a lot more than a few square miles. (Chernobyl affected dairy farms in the U.S., for example.)
Yes, some people are unreasonably scared of nuclear power. Other are unreasonably enamored of it, some Gersbackian techno-fetish of Big Science to Save The World
And when they meet a 194 lbs black belt, they probably get thrown in turn. "All else being equal, the stronger man wins."
First, "black belt" represents a large range of skills. A new shodan (first degree black belt) might only have been training for five years, while another person with the same color belt may have been training for forty years. Despite the mystique we've associated with it, a black belt just means competence in the basics.
I have a photograph of me with Kaicho Tadashi Nakamura, founder of Seido Karate, taken when I was a shodan with about eleven years training. (It took me a long time to get there.) In the photo we're both wearing black belts. He would have been 53 at the time, while I was 26, and he's about a half-head shorter than me. Then or now (he's now 61 and I'm 34 and sandan), he could tear me up into little pieces without working up a sweat.
Second, while being bigger gives certain advantages, it also gives weaknesses. Everything else being equal, bigger people have a higher center of gravity and are eaiser to unbalance. They run into the mathematics of the cube vesus the square: their knees are proportionally weaker, having to support more weight per unit cross-sectional area, and they have a harder time breathing under extertion as their lungs have less surface area per unit of body mass. (That's actually a fractal, not a square, but the point holds.)
They're slower to react, having more momentum to overcome and also a farther path for nerve impulses to travel to activate muscle contration. Their vital target areas are larger, and their longer limbs provide more of a level for joint lock techiques. (As a 5'7", ~150 lbs karate student who often gets matched with larger sparring partners, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this.)
Third, strategy, guile, and "fighting spirit" play a much larger role in a real confrontation then either size or physical fighting technique. "It's not the size of the man in the fight, but the size of the fight in the man," as the cliche goes.
I am not positive but believe that our ballots were optical scan, but of the connect the arrow next to the name type.
Yes, we used to use those here in Baltimore County. (Now Maryland has non-accountable fully electronic machines.)
The "connect the line" ballot were great because not only did you have a built-in paper trail, but your ballot was scanned when you handed it in to check for overvotes.
Voting equipment today is just about as good as it has ever been in the country's history.
The biggest issue is the inequality in who gets what equipment.
To take Ohio as the most topical example: there were over 90,000 "spoiled" punch-card ballots. (Yes, "hanging chad" hasn't gone away.) Certainly some of these represent people who didn't vote for either candidate, but most are people who had trouble communicating their desired vote to the machine - a problem not encountered by those who got to use the newer machines. And who gets to use the newer machines, and who gets stuck with the old machines?
It's not "one person, one vote" when one voter's ballot is 99.9% likely to be correctly tallied, and another's is only 97%.
AFAIK, a concession has no legal weight. If (a huge if) significant fraud were proven and a corrected Ohio count favored Kerry, he'd get their electoral vote.
I'm a big fan of buying generic computer parts or software, and they "just work".
Except for the many times when they don't. Especially the software.
I guess I can see the bizarre appeal of wanting to find esoteric OS's that all work differently (20,000 distributions of Linux that all work differently and require re-compiles of each software install).
Or Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, CE, ME, XP...
And if you find it necessary to recompile all your software on a Linux platform, may I introdcue you to package management? Google RPM and APT.
This is a classic list. It's also wrong. A biometric device does not check "something you are". It checks "something you have". You have something that triggers the fingerprint reader - this can be your finger or a fake one.
Every biometric form of authentication is really a token-based system. The original token happens to be made out of meat and securely attached to the user, but still suffers the weaknesses of other token-based systems - it can be lost or stolen (much more traumatically than other tokens) or counterfeited.
If someone breaks into my house, I have no way of knowing whether he's merely threatening my property or is a threat to harm or kill me and my family as well.
I am a gun owner, a martial arts instructor, and fully behind the right to self-defense and the RKBA. But your attitude is not only not supported by law, it's a danger to your own safety.
If someone breaks into your house, you don't go after him. You retreat to your safe area. Only if the intruder tries to penetrate that do you shoot.
If you shoot an intruder who is coming into your bedroom, you've done what you have to do. If you get your gun and go down two flights of stairs to seek out and shoot in the back some junkie while he's snagging some power tools from your basement workshop to pay for his next fix, you're a murderer and a fool.
Due to loose gun laws in the USA there is a reasonble chance your intruder will be armed.
Actually there are areas of the US with extremely strict gun laws. They happen to be the most violent areas of the nation. Gun control laws keep guns away from bad guys about as well as drug laws keep heroin away from junkies.
Our violence is much more a cultural and economic problem than one of weapons contol legislation.
Removing speculative emergency situations from consideration in setting up a system to control access to a tool most desperately needed in an emergency situation does not sound like a sound choice.
What on earth is the point? Do they honestly think that there is something unscrupulous going on?
There are two issues: were there e-voting shenanigans this time, and if not, was it because we were lucky and everyone played fair or was it because the systems are actually secure.
I'm thinking that there probably wasn't significant e-voting cheating, that the vote went slightly for Bush because far too many Americans are fearful and ignorant on both international and on domestic social issues and because the right has played better politics for the past decade or so.
But that the reason there weren't cheating wasn't because it was hard to cheat, and it's worth spending a lot of time and money to find the security problems before
I voted for who I felt would work best against terror
Which pretty much shows that Orwell was right. Keep the populace scared with an endless war, and even otherwise intelligent people will not question you.
Ah, well. I'm not leaving yet, partly since despite the sane and intelligent candidate losing, I'm slightly optimistic about the long-term future if the left preserves and expands the infrastructure they built for this election (the right has played much better politics for the past decade, the left played good catch-up during the past year or two but it was too much of a late start), partly since I've got all my friends and family here. Anyway moving to Canada wouldn't be good for someone with a tendancy to seasonal depression. (But then, there is New Zealand...maybe I could get a job at one of my karate style's many schools there...hmmm...)
But after the far-right judicial appointments we're about to see, for the next decade or two America as a nation-state will be something to be endured rather than loved.
First of all, I think the right to exist is pretty much standard for a sovereign country. Are you saying it's not a guaranteed right?
AFAIK, because of the way that the UK handed the problem of Palestine over to the UN (after completely fscking things up with the Balfour doctrine), and the UN created two nations there by fiat, only Israel and Palestine have an explicit "right to exist" under UN decree.
The Geneva convention clearly says that soldiers may not wear civilian clothes. Would you contend that a suicide bomber is not a soldier?
Again, if there were a Palestinian nation, they might become a signatory to the Geneva convention. But to stateless refugees, agreements among nations mean fsck-all.
Slashdot Mirror
Terrible analogy. The government of Rome (the city-state of history, not the Italian city of today obviously) is gone, but both the United State and (some of the) Native nations still exist. pThis isn't just about what happened to people's distant ancestors. A former housemate of mine's father is full blooded Mohawk. He was taken from his parents while an infant and given to "decent white Christian" parents to be raised. Only recently was he able to track down and reunite with his biological parents.
Uh, no. You can leave a newborn alone for several hours and it will survive. Cut a fetus off from the materal blood supply and it dies rapidly. Also a newborn can be given into the care of others, a fetus cannot. These are massive qualitative differences.
We have a word for the time when a fetus no longer requires the full-time biological support, is no longer fully parasitic, on the mother. We call it "birth".
While a newborn certainly hasn't achieved any significant sort of consciousness, much less personhood, it is on its way, and it can be given a great deal of ethical consideration without grossly interfering with anyone else's rights (at least in our socioeconomic reality).
A fetus is not a baby. A baby is not fully dependant on the mother for biological support, and has begun to experience and interact with the world and develop a consciousness. A baby has a developed brain, a fetus prior to about the last trimester doesn't.
Because we're supposed to be better than those who do not respect life, not follow the example they set. And because, even if we accept the premise that there may be some people it would be justified to humanely put down, there is no one who can be trusted to make that decision. (You call youself a Libertarian but want to grant the state the power of life and death over its citizens? Bizarre.)
That's a new one on me. Can you give a brand name or a link? Thanks.
If the power goes out at my house, I still have phone service. POTS works on batteries for a good long time. (Though you have to have a wired phone. Remember those? You can pick one up cheap at a thrift store as a backup.)
And Murphy's Law tells us that if I need to dial 911, that's when my cell phone battery will have just died. Ooops!
POTS is still significantly more reliable, and give a higher quality voice signal, than cellular.
Yes! I had one of these (I think it was the "150-in-1", a little more old-school).
I recall seeing a program about the state of science education in the U.S., where they went to graduation at some ivy league college and gave new graduates a battery, a lightbulb, and some wire, and asked them to make the bulb light up.
For older kids, you could buy some proto-board and some of Forrest M. Mims III's electorics experiements guide, and a $20 gift certificate to your local Radio Shack (if you have one that has a decent parts department).
IIRC only about 10% could do it. As a veteran of many hours with an X-in-1 electronics lab as a kid, I was (pardon the pun) shocked.
This page mentions a Star Tribune article from May 17, 1986: "Since radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear accident began floating over Minnesota last week, low levels of radiation have been discovered in . . . the raw milk from a Minnesota dairy." A search at startribune.com's archive seems to confirm that such a story ran, though I didn't shell out the cash to actually download the article.
Also note this story from earlier this year: "14 farms covering 16,300 hectares of southwest and central Scotland are still subject to restrictions on the movement and slaughter of radioactive sheep".
Yes, it's true that Chernobyl was the result of very stupid behavior and that modern reactor design makes such an accident pretty much impossible (at least, in theory). That doesn't change that the accident affected an area a lot larger than a few square miles.
I try to keep the BS filter running strong and run everything - including the claims of both foes and fans of electric generation from nuclear fission - through it. Do I have some bias? Sure. It's part of being human.
Between mining tailings, waste disposal, and the risk of a meltdown or reactor breach, we're talking about a lot more than a few square miles. (Chernobyl affected dairy farms in the U.S., for example.)
Yes, some people are unreasonably scared of nuclear power. Other are unreasonably enamored of it, some Gersbackian techno-fetish of Big Science to Save The World
Not invisible to the places polluted by uranium tailings, or that have to store radioactive waste.
First, "black belt" represents a large range of skills. A new shodan (first degree black belt) might only have been training for five years, while another person with the same color belt may have been training for forty years. Despite the mystique we've associated with it, a black belt just means competence in the basics.
I have a photograph of me with Kaicho Tadashi Nakamura, founder of Seido Karate, taken when I was a shodan with about eleven years training. (It took me a long time to get there.) In the photo we're both wearing black belts. He would have been 53 at the time, while I was 26, and he's about a half-head shorter than me. Then or now (he's now 61 and I'm 34 and sandan), he could tear me up into little pieces without working up a sweat.
Second, while being bigger gives certain advantages, it also gives weaknesses. Everything else being equal, bigger people have a higher center of gravity and are eaiser to unbalance. They run into the mathematics of the cube vesus the square: their knees are proportionally weaker, having to support more weight per unit cross-sectional area, and they have a harder time breathing under extertion as their lungs have less surface area per unit of body mass. (That's actually a fractal, not a square, but the point holds.)
They're slower to react, having more momentum to overcome and also a farther path for nerve impulses to travel to activate muscle contration. Their vital target areas are larger, and their longer limbs provide more of a level for joint lock techiques. (As a 5'7", ~150 lbs karate student who often gets matched with larger sparring partners, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this.)
Third, strategy, guile, and "fighting spirit" play a much larger role in a real confrontation then either size or physical fighting technique. "It's not the size of the man in the fight, but the size of the fight in the man," as the cliche goes.
For one, not wanting to have your business rely on a single supplier, especially a criminal monopolist. Also better security and lower TCO.
Yes, we used to use those here in Baltimore County. (Now Maryland has non-accountable fully electronic machines.)
The "connect the line" ballot were great because not only did you have a built-in paper trail, but your ballot was scanned when you handed it in to check for overvotes.
Florida did not validly select electors in 2000. How many times does this have to be explained?
Uh, I problems with it back when I learned about it, in the 1980s. (But then, I'm not a stupid fuck, so I guess this wasn't addressed at me.)
The biggest issue is the inequality in who gets what equipment.
To take Ohio as the most topical example: there were over 90,000 "spoiled" punch-card ballots. (Yes, "hanging chad" hasn't gone away.) Certainly some of these represent people who didn't vote for either candidate, but most are people who had trouble communicating their desired vote to the machine - a problem not encountered by those who got to use the newer machines. And who gets to use the newer machines, and who gets stuck with the old machines?
It's not "one person, one vote" when one voter's ballot is 99.9% likely to be correctly tallied, and another's is only 97%.
AFAIK, a concession has no legal weight. If (a huge if) significant fraud were proven and a corrected Ohio count favored Kerry, he'd get their electoral vote.
Except for the many times when they don't. Especially the software.
Or Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, CE, ME, XP...
And if you find it necessary to recompile all your software on a Linux platform, may I introdcue you to package management? Google RPM and APT.
This is a classic list. It's also wrong. A biometric device does not check "something you are". It checks "something you have". You have something that triggers the fingerprint reader - this can be your finger or a fake one.
Every biometric form of authentication is really a token-based system. The original token happens to be made out of meat and securely attached to the user, but still suffers the weaknesses of other token-based systems - it can be lost or stolen (much more traumatically than other tokens) or counterfeited.
Biometrics ain't worth the hype.
I am a gun owner, a martial arts instructor, and fully behind the right to self-defense and the RKBA. But your attitude is not only not supported by law, it's a danger to your own safety.
If someone breaks into your house, you don't go after him. You retreat to your safe area. Only if the intruder tries to penetrate that do you shoot.
If you shoot an intruder who is coming into your bedroom, you've done what you have to do. If you get your gun and go down two flights of stairs to seek out and shoot in the back some junkie while he's snagging some power tools from your basement workshop to pay for his next fix, you're a murderer and a fool.
Actually there are areas of the US with extremely strict gun laws. They happen to be the most violent areas of the nation. Gun control laws keep guns away from bad guys about as well as drug laws keep heroin away from junkies.
Our violence is much more a cultural and economic problem than one of weapons contol legislation.
Removing speculative emergency situations from consideration in setting up a system to control access to a tool most desperately needed in an emergency situation does not sound like a sound choice.
There are two issues: were there e-voting shenanigans this time, and if not, was it because we were lucky and everyone played fair or was it because the systems are actually secure.
I'm thinking that there probably wasn't significant e-voting cheating, that the vote went slightly for Bush because far too many Americans are fearful and ignorant on both international and on domestic social issues and because the right has played better politics for the past decade or so.
But that the reason there weren't cheating wasn't because it was hard to cheat, and it's worth spending a lot of time and money to find the security problems before
Which pretty much shows that Orwell was right. Keep the populace scared with an endless war, and even otherwise intelligent people will not question you.
Ah, well. I'm not leaving yet, partly since despite the sane and intelligent candidate losing, I'm slightly optimistic about the long-term future if the left preserves and expands the infrastructure they built for this election (the right has played much better politics for the past decade, the left played good catch-up during the past year or two but it was too much of a late start), partly since I've got all my friends and family here. Anyway moving to Canada wouldn't be good for someone with a tendancy to seasonal depression. (But then, there is New Zealand...maybe I could get a job at one of my karate style's many schools there...hmmm...)
But after the far-right judicial appointments we're about to see, for the next decade or two America as a nation-state will be something to be endured rather than loved.
AFAIK, because of the way that the UK handed the problem of Palestine over to the UN (after completely fscking things up with the Balfour doctrine), and the UN created two nations there by fiat, only Israel and Palestine have an explicit "right to exist" under UN decree.
Again, if there were a Palestinian nation, they might become a signatory to the Geneva convention. But to stateless refugees, agreements among nations mean fsck-all.