I can tell you that my animals really have become a part of the family.
If your sister died, would you have her cloned? What about your son or daughter?
I love my dogs very much. I would think it an insult to them to think that cloning would "bring them back" any more than it would bring back a human family member.
Only seniors and calligraphers use pens that you need to dip into ink. The rest of us use ball points or cartridge driven quills. Quick to use, they are ready at a moment's notice. They are far less messy and less prone to leakage. They have greater "staying power", as there is no need to go back to the well for a refill.
But a ball point pen runs out and ends up in the trash, whereas a calligraphy pen lasts a long, long, long time.
Technically speaking tobacco is a weed too, but they manage to tax that.
It would be somewhat difficult for anyone to grow a significant amount of tobacco on their own, because even casual smokers smoke several cigarettes a day.
It's easy for someone to grow significant amounts of cannabis on their own, because it takes so little to fill a bong, and casual smokers might just smoke one or two "bingers" on Saturday night.
It's not just Republicans using insecure communications?
The issue was never security. Dude, it's unencrypted e-mail, there's no such thing.
The issue was an attempt to dodge records retention laws that allow "we the people" to keep an eye on what our employees - public officials - are doing.
Since 1) the official e-mail accounts are not yet available, 2) it seems to be only for a few hours, and 3) in TFA, an Obama staffer notes that "could be forwarded to White House accounts and subject to the Presidential Records Act," these concerns don't seem to apply. (Though I wonder WTF these folks couldn't either be provided with the new e-mail addresses earlier, or hold the transition accounts a little longer.)
Which major company uses PHP? Google? Youtube? Amazon?
Sayeth the wik, "As of April 2007, over 20 million Internet domains were hosted on servers with PHP installed, and PHP was recorded as the most popular Apache module.[36] Significant websites are written in PHP including the user-facing portion of Facebook,[37] Wikipedia (MediaWiki),[38] Yahoo!,[39] MyYearbook,[40], Digg, Wordpress and Tagged.[41]"
How do they not have the same right to access civil marriage? John and Jane each can marry someone of the opposite sex...
Right there. You've said it. Gender discrimination.
It shows that both of us understand that there are legal limits to the application of the constitution.
If you want to argue that the existence of legal minors is a case of equal protection not being applied, I'm not entirely unsympathetic, but it's irrelevant here.
An 8 year old can form a corporation in most states, they can own property and they can posses a shotgun.
Citation needed. In what states can an 8 year old form a corporation? (Not merely have their parents do it in their name, but on their own?)
And I didn't say "possess" a firearm, I said "buy" - in what states can an 8 year old buy a firearm?
Actually, the Supreme court does effect the meaning of the text.
Actually, no they don't. They affect what the government will do in the name of that text, and how it will justify its actions citing that text for support, but they have fsck-all power to change the meaning of words and sentences. Like the story Lincoln told about the calf, SCOTUS can say "We will call a tail a leg", but they can't make it one.
If the fallout is hot enough to kill a large number of people, it's hot enough to completely degrade within hours to months. The only place you're going to find those sorts of materials is inside a live reactor.
You don't need to kill a large amount of people instantly. You just need to contaminate an area sufficiently to raise the risk of cancer enough that no one wants to live there. A chunk of Cesium or cobalt, as found in medical applications or food irradiation plants, would be sufficient.
The implosion part of the weapon is incredibly difficult.
It's 60+ year old tech.
development tends to require both a computer simulation
The designers of Fat Man (and Little Boy) used "computers" that were rooms full of women with adding machines.
and experimentation
Fat Man and the Trinity "gadget" were an implosion-type plutonium bombs; no experimental nuclear detonations preceded Trinity or took place between it and Fat Man. (Little Boy was a gun-type uranium device.)
Given that the U.S. went two for two in building plutonium implosion devices without nuclear testing 60+ years ago, and that modern bomb-makers not only have their example to follow but have computers, we must conclude that building a plutonium implosion device is a practical undertaking for any group with a reasonable technological capability.
Plutonium + computers + a few smart people + access to a good machine shop + homicidal intent + ability to deliver a five ton object where you want it = BOOM! I think the plutonium is the only hard part of that.
everything to do with grabbing resources for an empire
On both sides. How did we end up with a naval base on Hawaii again? How'd we have troops in the Philippines? The Pacific conflict was a straight-up struggle between colonial powers, with a lot of wicked behavior on both sides.
The further irony being that if we hadn't sent Perry steaming into Tokyo Bay and pried Japan open to our own poltical ends - including perverting Shinto to turn the Emperor into more living god the hereditary priest - they'd probably still have been minding their own business.
Of course, the notion that short-sighted foreign intervention could come around to bite us in the ass decades later has no relevance today.
If Iran wanted nuclear power they could buy fuel from Russia. That would be cheap and it would work.
So Iran should put itself into the same position with respect to Russia as we're in with respect to the Middle East? I know they've got some loonies in their government, but that doesn't mean they're so completely stupid as to become completely reliant on other nations for their energy needs.
The problem with the NPT is that it doesn't stop countries building their own enrichment plants for a civillian program and then quitting the NPT and nuclearizing.
The problem with the NPT is that the currently nuclear-armed nations have not made the steps towards nuclear disarmament that they commited to.
Bob and Joe have the exact same rights as everyone else.
They don't have the same right to access to civil marriage as John and Jane. Ergo, no, they don't have the exact same rights as everyone else.
Should Bob at age 40 be able to marry a 10 year old Joe?
Irrelevant. Ten year old Joe doesn't have the right to buy a gun, is that a violation of the Second Amendment? He can't form a corporation but his eighteen year old brother can, is that violation of equal protection? The assumption is made that children are not competent to enter into binding legal agreements. There are some debatable points behind that, but they're not relevant here.
What remains is that I can't marry someone of the same sex and neither can they, there is no discrimination going on and they are getting equal protection of the law.
One pair have legal rights that another does not, due to gender.
That's gender discrimination.
Gedner discrimination means there is not equal protection.
I am saddened that homophobia renders you, and many others, incapable of understanding this, and look forward to a day when rationality prevails.
In none of the court cases...
Court cases do not affect the text or the meaning of the Amemdment.
None of the court cases prior to the 1960s held that "separate but equal" or Jim Crow were violations of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees, but they were.
You would think if it is the way you say, some judge would pull from his education and training and make that the case by now.
ROTFLMAO. If we had literate judges who made decisions based on a competent and sane understanding of the Constitution, this would be a much different nation.
The equal protection is that bob and Joe have the same constitutional rights regardless of if they were gay or not. That is true no matter how you attempt to slice it or Joe (Jo).
Yes, they have same constitutional rights. The problem is that one of those rights - equal protection under the law - is not being recognized. That's the point. Bob and Joe do not have the same ability to form a civil marriage that with Bob and Jane do, merely because Jane is a woman. That's gender discrimination, that's people being treated differently by the law, and it's not equal protection.
In 1960, banning interracial marriage was wrong because it was already unconstitutional due to the 15th and 14th amendments that were ratifies in 1870 and 1868 respectively.
And in 2009, banning gay marriage while permitting it among heterosexuals is unconstitutional due to the Fourteenth Amendment. (It would be fine to have the state get out of the marriage business entirely, as some have suggested - there's not a right to civil marriage, there's a right of equal access to equal access to it. No access for anyone is certainly equal.)
Is it taking society a long time to realize that? Yes, just as it took society a long time to realize that the freedom of religion protected by the First Amendment extends to Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and Pagans, not just to various strains of Protestant Christianity. Was making America open to Hinudism, etc. the intent of the authors of the First Amendment? No. Was making marriage open to gays the intent of the authors of the Fourteenth? No. But intent doesn't change the text.
Marriage is not really a privilege or immunity of citizens of the US, at least as referred to in that clause.
I did not refer to privileges or immunities. I referred to equal protection under the law.
The best way to provide equal protection is to provide no legal privileges whatsoever. The government shouldn't be in the business of licensing marriage in the first place.
Fine by me. Zero access for all is certainly equal.
It's that the unopened box is always demonstrably worth more than the opened box.
Always demonstrably? Please then, demonstrate that 1984 Atari Touch Tablets NRFB have a higher value than open-box units in the current market. Cite me some sale figures.
Gays already have the same rights everyone else has, they can marry a person of the opposite sex.
That's discrimination on the basis of gender, which means that equal protection under the law is not present.
Bob and Joe want to get married. The state doesn't allow them to. Then Joe has an operation, trades a penis for a vagina, and becomes Jo. Now they can get married? Sorry, that's not equal protection.
Your argument as is bogus as someone in 1960 saying of interracial marriage, "Blacks already have the same rights everyone else has, they can marry a person of the same race."
Same with gay marriage. Same with giving blacks and women the right to vote. The constitution only provides us a process to follow, not the solution.
Excuse me, but Amendment XIV does indeed give the solution to those issues: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Whether you're a man or woman, black or white, gay or straight, you're entitled under the Constitution to equal protection. If white men get to vote, so do black women. If straight couples get to enter into the legal arrangement of civil marriage, so do gay ones. (Whether any given church considers them married in the eyes of their god(ess)(s|es), I don't give a flying fsck.)
Funny this should come up, considering what I just read last night in the RISKS Digest:
Software glitch causes incorrect medication dosages
Jeremy Epstein jeremy.j.epstein@gmail.nospamnospamnospam.com
Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:51:46 -0500
``Patients at VA health centers were given incorrect doses of drugs, had
needed treatments delayed and may have been exposed to other medical errors
due to the glitches that showed faulty displays of their electronic health
records, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press
under the Freedom of Information Act. The VA's recent glitches involved
medical data -- vital signs, lab results, active meds -- that sometimes
popped up under another patient's name on the computer screen. Records also
failed to clearly display a doctor's stop order for a treatment, leading to
reported cases of unnecessary doses of intravenous drugs such as
blood-thinning heparin. According to interviews and the VA's internal
memos, the glitches began after the VA distributed its annual software
upgrade last August [2008].''
The proposition that EHR are a good idea remains as unproven as the idea that touchscreen voting machines with no paper trail are a good idea. Sometimes electronic documents and records introduce brave new failure methods that outweigh any benefit.
And yes, you really ARE prohibited from saying "[Vote | Don't vote] for Senator Smith" unless you're a member of Sen. Smith's staff or you're a journalist.
Citation needed. Please give a case of a person being charged under a campaign finance law for endorsing or opposing a candidate or ballot issue.
Yes, corporations are restricted. Fine. They're children of the government and have no rights.
You are confusing domestic law enforcement with alien combatants captured on foreign battlefields while engaged in combat with US forces.
No, you are dealing with people who are alleged - often by paid informants - to be alien combatants. These aren't POWs of definite affiliation who will be sent home at the conclusion of hostilities between our nation and theirs; they are either violent criminals, who need to be imprisoned for the protection of the innocent, or they are innocents, picked up by mistake or out of racism or xenophobia or for profit, who ought to be freed.
Given the fact that none of them even followed the laws of war to begin with...
We don't know whether they followed the laws of war or not. That's why we're supposed to have trials, to find out.
Open a history book and find out what happened to the Germans that were captured during the Battle of the Bugle while fighting in Allied uniforms.
Slashdot Mirror
If your sister died, would you have her cloned? What about your son or daughter?
I love my dogs very much. I would think it an insult to them to think that cloning would "bring them back" any more than it would bring back a human family member.
But a ball point pen runs out and ends up in the trash, whereas a calligraphy pen lasts a long, long, long time.
It would be somewhat difficult for anyone to grow a significant amount of tobacco on their own, because even casual smokers smoke several cigarettes a day.
It's easy for someone to grow significant amounts of cannabis on their own, because it takes so little to fill a bong, and casual smokers might just smoke one or two "bingers" on Saturday night.
Seeds are, however, readily available.
If 64Mb Rio MP3 players were around when you went to college, then ipso facto you didn't go to college before MP3s.
Now, some of us went to college when a personal music player meant a Walkman-type cassette player...that's the era before MP3. Now, get off my lawn.
The issue was never security. Dude, it's unencrypted e-mail, there's no such thing.
The issue was an attempt to dodge records retention laws that allow "we the people" to keep an eye on what our employees - public officials - are doing.
Since 1) the official e-mail accounts are not yet available, 2) it seems to be only for a few hours, and 3) in TFA, an Obama staffer notes that "could be forwarded to White House accounts and subject to the Presidential Records Act," these concerns don't seem to apply. (Though I wonder WTF these folks couldn't either be provided with the new e-mail addresses earlier, or hold the transition accounts a little longer.)
Sayeth the wik, "As of April 2007, over 20 million Internet domains were hosted on servers with PHP installed, and PHP was recorded as the most popular Apache module.[36] Significant websites are written in PHP including the user-facing portion of Facebook,[37] Wikipedia (MediaWiki),[38] Yahoo!,[39] MyYearbook,[40], Digg, Wordpress and Tagged.[41]"
PHP is a fine tool for web projects.
Right there. You've said it. Gender discrimination.
If you want to argue that the existence of legal minors is a case of equal protection not being applied, I'm not entirely unsympathetic, but it's irrelevant here.
Citation needed. In what states can an 8 year old form a corporation? (Not merely have their parents do it in their name, but on their own?)
And I didn't say "possess" a firearm, I said "buy" - in what states can an 8 year old buy a firearm?
Actually, no they don't. They affect what the government will do in the name of that text, and how it will justify its actions citing that text for support, but they have fsck-all power to change the meaning of words and sentences. Like the story Lincoln told about the calf, SCOTUS can say "We will call a tail a leg", but they can't make it one.
Er, increasing the incidence of cancer does kill people, you know.
Does it kill a lot? Probably not. But Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold only killed 13 people at Columbine, and it sure caused an uproar.
You don't need to kill a large amount of people instantly. You just need to contaminate an area sufficiently to raise the risk of cancer enough that no one wants to live there. A chunk of Cesium or cobalt, as found in medical applications or food irradiation plants, would be sufficient.
There was exactly one nuclear test before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And they got the Trinity test right the first time.
I'm sure terrorists would be happy to make their first test a "live" one; so, yeah, we'd detect it by the mushroom cloud over a populated area.
It's 60+ year old tech.
The designers of Fat Man (and Little Boy) used "computers" that were rooms full of women with adding machines.
Fat Man and the Trinity "gadget" were an implosion-type plutonium bombs; no experimental nuclear detonations preceded Trinity or took place between it and Fat Man. (Little Boy was a gun-type uranium device.)
Given that the U.S. went two for two in building plutonium implosion devices without nuclear testing 60+ years ago, and that modern bomb-makers not only have their example to follow but have computers, we must conclude that building a plutonium implosion device is a practical undertaking for any group with a reasonable technological capability.
Plutonium + computers + a few smart people + access to a good machine shop + homicidal intent + ability to deliver a five ton object where you want it = BOOM! I think the plutonium is the only hard part of that.
On both sides. How did we end up with a naval base on Hawaii again? How'd we have troops in the Philippines? The Pacific conflict was a straight-up struggle between colonial powers, with a lot of wicked behavior on both sides.
The further irony being that if we hadn't sent Perry steaming into Tokyo Bay and pried Japan open to our own poltical ends - including perverting Shinto to turn the Emperor into more living god the hereditary priest - they'd probably still have been minding their own business.
Of course, the notion that short-sighted foreign intervention could come around to bite us in the ass decades later has no relevance today.
So Iran should put itself into the same position with respect to Russia as we're in with respect to the Middle East? I know they've got some loonies in their government, but that doesn't mean they're so completely stupid as to become completely reliant on other nations for their energy needs.
The problem with the NPT is that the currently nuclear-armed nations have not made the steps towards nuclear disarmament that they commited to.
"We can have them but you can't" doesn't fly.
They don't have the same right to access to civil marriage as John and Jane. Ergo, no, they don't have the exact same rights as everyone else.
Irrelevant. Ten year old Joe doesn't have the right to buy a gun, is that a violation of the Second Amendment? He can't form a corporation but his eighteen year old brother can, is that violation of equal protection? The assumption is made that children are not competent to enter into binding legal agreements. There are some debatable points behind that, but they're not relevant here.
One pair have legal rights that another does not, due to gender.
That's gender discrimination.
Gedner discrimination means there is not equal protection.
I am saddened that homophobia renders you, and many others, incapable of understanding this, and look forward to a day when rationality prevails.
Court cases do not affect the text or the meaning of the Amemdment.
None of the court cases prior to the 1960s held that "separate but equal" or Jim Crow were violations of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees, but they were.
ROTFLMAO. If we had literate judges who made decisions based on a competent and sane understanding of the Constitution, this would be a much different nation.
Yes, they have same constitutional rights. The problem is that one of those rights - equal protection under the law - is not being recognized. That's the point. Bob and Joe do not have the same ability to form a civil marriage that with Bob and Jane do, merely because Jane is a woman. That's gender discrimination, that's people being treated differently by the law, and it's not equal protection.
And in 2009, banning gay marriage while permitting it among heterosexuals is unconstitutional due to the Fourteenth Amendment. (It would be fine to have the state get out of the marriage business entirely, as some have suggested - there's not a right to civil marriage, there's a right of equal access to equal access to it. No access for anyone is certainly equal.)
Is it taking society a long time to realize that? Yes, just as it took society a long time to realize that the freedom of religion protected by the First Amendment extends to Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and Pagans, not just to various strains of Protestant Christianity. Was making America open to Hinudism, etc. the intent of the authors of the First Amendment? No. Was making marriage open to gays the intent of the authors of the Fourteenth? No. But intent doesn't change the text.
I did not refer to privileges or immunities. I referred to equal protection under the law.
Fine by me. Zero access for all is certainly equal.
I think the folks at beyondmarriage.org have a good idea.
Always demonstrably? Please then, demonstrate that 1984 Atari Touch Tablets NRFB have a higher value than open-box units in the current market. Cite me some sale figures.
They do indeed, but their provisions are actually implied by XIV. From a strict textual perspective, the Fifteenth and the Nineteenth Amendments are redundant.
That's discrimination on the basis of gender, which means that equal protection under the law is not present.
Bob and Joe want to get married. The state doesn't allow them to. Then Joe has an operation, trades a penis for a vagina, and becomes Jo. Now they can get married? Sorry, that's not equal protection.
Your argument as is bogus as someone in 1960 saying of interracial marriage, "Blacks already have the same rights everyone else has, they can marry a person of the same race."
Excuse me, but Amendment XIV does indeed give the solution to those issues: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Whether you're a man or woman, black or white, gay or straight, you're entitled under the Constitution to equal protection. If white men get to vote, so do black women. If straight couples get to enter into the legal arrangement of civil marriage, so do gay ones. (Whether any given church considers them married in the eyes of their god(ess)(s|es), I don't give a flying fsck.)
The depends on how one defines "objectively better". Betamax had a shorter recording time, which was a large factor in its failure.
Funny this should come up, considering what I just read last night in the RISKS Digest:
The proposition that EHR are a good idea remains as unproven as the idea that touchscreen voting machines with no paper trail are a good idea. Sometimes electronic documents and records introduce brave new failure methods that outweigh any benefit.
Citation needed. Please give a case of a person being charged under a campaign finance law for endorsing or opposing a candidate or ballot issue.
Yes, corporations are restricted. Fine. They're children of the government and have no rights.
No, you are dealing with people who are alleged - often by paid informants - to be alien combatants. These aren't POWs of definite affiliation who will be sent home at the conclusion of hostilities between our nation and theirs; they are either violent criminals, who need to be imprisoned for the protection of the innocent, or they are innocents, picked up by mistake or out of racism or xenophobia or for profit, who ought to be freed.
We don't know whether they followed the laws of war or not. That's why we're supposed to have trials, to find out.
And that example would be relevant to a Tajik fellow working in a library arrested by Pakistani secret service agents...how, exactly?
An "agreement" made under duress is no agreement at all.