Yes although I'd bet money that Shelby Conklin is going to discover how unpleasant the Streisand Effect can be. She will probably now be known as the revenge porn woman.
I don't agree with her suing Tor but I disagree that this is necessarily an instance of the Streisand Effect.
Not taking action would be succumbing to a form of the heckler's veto. I suspect in a lot of cases they start out trying to get rid of the info and most stop when it becomes obvious they'll only make it more public. But in a case like this she might be willing to face the publicity because she thinks seeking justice is more important than giving up.
I'm playing a bit of the devil's advocate but I'm assuming that the US has an extradition treaty with Maldives.
The US has a fairly responsible justice system when it comes to this. If a person from Russia/Nigeria/a country with a dubious court system is stealing credit card info in the US/Canada/EU I think it's absolutely appropriate for one of the latter countries to seek that individual's arrest when that person enters a jurisdiction with an extradition treaty.
So for me the US having the Maldives' police arrest and extradite this guy would be fine.
The iffy part is the US using it's own law enforcement. I can understand the US wanting to run the show so nothing goes wrong, but it definitely speaks to a general disrespect to the sovereignty of the country in question.
There's also the possibility it's there to help Russian companies (and the economy).
Facebook wants to operate in Russia? Well then they need to open up a Russian server farm and put all the Russian data in there, or pay massive arbitrary fines, or get blocked. Lots of Russian companies probably use Amazon's EC2, now Amazon either needs to put up a region located in Russia or those Russian companies need to use a Russian cloud company.
It's the same fundamental reason why Putin has been working so hard to keep Ukraine away from the EU. Russian companies suck and can't compete against the west, if cheap high quality EU goods can flow into Russia then the current Russian industry won't be able to compete. Similarly if high quality tech companies can serve Russians then the Russian tech companies can't compete. Solution? Screw with Ukraine to try and keep the EU physical goods out, and pass data laws to keep foreign websites out.
If this was just a guy posting trash on Facebook I'd probably side with you. If you read the details of the case, you will find that this is not just someone ranting. This appears to be someone conspiring to commit rape, murder, and kidnapping.
I did read the details of the case and I have to disagree. He's not ranting, he's fantasizing, but there's no evidence that he ever planned to go further.
Whether the primary web site has a disclaimer or not, does not change the fact that this goes beyond the simple act of writing about a sick fantasy. He offered to kidnap someone for 5,000.00. He went and found a recipe for chloroform, then built a pulley system to string up one of the people he was talking about kidnapping and murdering.
He offered to kidnap someone, he never did kidnap them, nor did he or anyone else complain when these plans didn't happen. He said he built a pulley in the emails but he didn't actually build it, nor did he make any chloroform. Surely if you're making a criminal conspiracy involving chloroform, a human sized oven, and a pulley system then actually obtain chloroform, a human sized oven, and a pulley system.
He used a Police database illegally for the purpose of gathering personal information about the people he appeared to be conspiring against (it was more than 1). This goes well beyond simply discussing "unconventional thoughts".
Lets change the scenario a bit. If I was to claim I want to kill someone on Facebook, I'd be a person of interest but not doing anything illegal. When I go out and search for recipes for poisons, I'm still not illegal but I should be under watch, especially if the poison is generic household items which I may have on hand. Once I start illegally gathering personal information about the targets I claimed I want to kill, would I not be conspiring to commit murder? What if I owned a gun, would that be enough? (Remember that this person was a Cop and had a Gun, as well as a position of authority to abuse, and could have been legally stalking victims without anyone's knowledge on "patrols")
Ok, here's another scenario.
You really hate John and claim you want to kill him on FB. You look around for information on poisons because you're curious, or you're fantasizing about how you could kill him. And because the guy really pisses you off you become mildly obsessed and gather information using a work database (even though doing so for this purpose is unauthorized and illegal).
Yet under no scenario could you actually imagine yourself doing so much as punching John.
If you believe it's reasonable, would you want the guy as a neighbor? Invite them over over for dinner? If so, good for you. I'd prefer to see a person like this under watch and psychological monitoring at a minimum.
I wouldn't, not because he's a criminal, but just because he'd creep the hell out of me.
This is a guy who might commit a serious crime in the future, perhaps even wants to. But he has never done so, nor has he specifically planned to do so. All of his previous plans were merely elaborate fantasies that he never took a concrete step towards implementing.
Personally I'd recommend a mandatory psychological evaluation. IF that suggested he could take the step towards moving those crimes into reality then I might consider watch and mandatory counselling. Otherwise he's innocent of everything except the misuse of the database.
Local legends suggest that Rheithrosciurus, which is thought to mostly eat giant acorns, can be savage. Hunters say that the squirrels will perch on low branches, jump onto a deer, gash its jugular vein, and disembowel the carcass. "It sounds pretty fantastical," says a skeptical Roland Kays, a zoologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. "Even more than its fluffy tail."
the idea of "when life starts" which is a philosophical, not a scientific problem
Pro-life scientists point out that an embryo is a distinct organism because it has distinct DNA. The life associated with that DNA thus begins when sperm meets egg.
Then pro-life scientists are abusing scientific terminology to justify their philosophy.
Is that water, the ultimate solvent -- or perhaps bacteria -- are breaking down the plastics back into it's components, and the ocean (much like the oil from the BP spill) is taking care of itself.
Whatever components that plastic is breaking down into it likely contains a lot of molecules that aren't found in nature. When those molecules enter an organism there's no telling what the hell they're going to do.
I don't understand this fantasy that some people cling to that we can dump endless streams of random crap into the environment and mother nature will just magically take care of it with no consequence. People would sure as hell notice if you started dumping garbage into a lake and screwing up a beach where people swim once a week, why do you think the things that actually live in the polluted water won't be affected?
I heard about a guy who went through multiple marriages and divorces, did multiple stints in prison, and eventually got some political offices.
I'm naturally talking about Nelson Mandela.
Even if the facts are true and presented impartially the selection of which facts to present or emphasize can give an inaccurate total picture.
I don't know enough about libel law or the guy in question to know if the case is legit, but you seem to have already formed an opinion of him as a scam artist based on the Wikipedia article which may not be a reliable source.
We we had a similar plant in Ontario, it was shut down because of the air pollution. It is still the biggest, by far, smokestack in the city. Burning garbage does not make it disappear, and people would rather the garbage be put somewhere they do not see it, instead of blown into their faces.
I'm not sure if it will smoke since according to the article the stuff won't actually "burn"'
There, it will be heated in a low-oxygen atmosphere. This will cause its chemical bonds to break (without the material actually burning), releasing their carbon and hydrogen content to form what's known as syngas. This will in turn be cleaned up and converted into chemical products and biofuels – such as methanol and ethanol.
Either way if the emitted chemicals are what you're looking for you're not just going to dump them out a smokestack.
The province is conservative but Edmonton is fairly liberal (as are most cities). I actually took a tour of the waste treatment plant a few years ago and it was pretty impressive (and smelly). Back then they were talking about grinding up the non-recyclable/compostable bits and using them for asphalt filling as a way to get over 90% non-landfilled, I'm not sure if this is any of the same material they're talking about here, I don't think I'd want my highways degrading.
I predict within 24 months this plant will be shut down. Write it down. This is just more bullshit left wing crap that someone somehow got funded. Many people will lose their jobs and some may lose their retirement savings. Why Canada is fucking around with this when they enormous reserves of tar sands and other conventional fuels is beyond me. Huge fuck up.
On the contrary although this plant is new they've been doing stuff like this for years, and it makes economic sense.
The problem with garbage is you have to put it somewhere. Landfills fill up quickly and use up otherwise useful land, and the further you ship it the more expensive and polluting it is to transport. The waste reclamation centre drastically reduces the amount you need to dispose of.
Eco-stations claim a lot of the electronic waste, the company that gets the material actually turns a profit on breaking them down.
Compostables get turned into topsoil, traditional recyclables get pulled out and turned into economically useful items, etc.
If your city thinks shipping wealth away burying it with all the resulting externalities is a better alternative then they can keep with their current setup. I prefer the Edmontonian model.
We also treat our sewage rather than dumping in raw into the ocean like some coastal cities.
Indeed you are very correct, this government is become a dictatorship, abetted by a feckless Congress. It matters not whether you're lib/con or dem/repub, this is dangerous when the next changeover of power occurs, and it will occur. What the President has loosed now will be used against his party in the future.
Too bad my mod points are all gone now, you deserve +3.
So what is the appropriate role for Obama in this? It seems odd that he would be expected to act as a passive administrator when he was elected with a policy based mandate to a much greater degree than congress.
How is the government refusing to enforce a restriction on free speech rights (which is what a trademark is) an infringement on free speech rights? 'splain, please.
I propose a new bill.
Doesn't Infringe the First Amendment Copyright Act: Whereby the government will only grant copyright to works of art that endorse the ruling party.
I really hate this kind of crap. If it's alright for one group of people to use a term, but not another it's racist. Either the term is offensive, or it isn't. There's no modifier because of the color of your skin, your ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. And what ever happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me"? We've turned into a society of whiny little bitches. Oh damn, someone is going to accuse me of being discriminatory toward female canines and claim that I kill puppies.(/sarcasm)
Until I hit this paragraph I actually thought you were actually going in a completely different direction.
The thing you're missing is words have context.
If I call a good friend moron it's a term of endearment, we both understand I'm not actually calling him dumb, if I call a stranger moron I'm potentially starting a fight.
Alec Baldwin calling someone a cocksucking fag as an insult is homophobic. Buddy Cole using fag is not homophobic. We call fag homophobic because it's most commonly used in a homophobic context, but that's not always true.
The context of the Redskins is the term was denigrating when it was chosen as the name, the team was notably against black integration, Native American discrimination is still rampant, and the name and logo conjure a stereotype of a native warrior. Not everyone will find it racist but some obviously will. Would the Washington Poles be racist? Probably not. Would the Washington Jews? Maybe. Would the Washington Bankers with a Jewish mascot? Definitely.
The recycling of the hardware isn't a question in my mind. Of course they recycle hardware... No email archiving? really? Of an IRS director? All of her emails were really stored in a local PST file, with no backup what-so-ever? And after that hard drive failed, with no backup, you then destroyed the drive?
Now that is a series of coincidental incompetence that I just cannot accept. It's fathomable yes, but the Republicans certainly have the right to turn this into a full on circus.
It's deserving of an investigation but it's too early to jump to conclusions.
How widespread were these poor data retention practices? Is this something that affected only Lerner and the other investigated officials, or is it part of a wider problem in the IRS of managing email records.
Nothing Bush ever did was this obviously corrupt and he was up to all sorts of evil. I always thought of Obama as similar to Jimmy Carter. I disagree with his policies, he's failing miserably, but his hearts in the right place. Now I see him as more of a Nixon.
There's no evidence that Obama has actually done anything. Even assuming Lois Lerner is guilty she was in that position since '06 and there's no evidence it went above her.
Surely you can see the difference between a president caught on tape in a criminal conspiracy and an IRS manager whom may not be guilty of anything more than incompetence.
Frankly if most of your driving is highway I don't see the point, my $17,000 non-hybrid Honda Civic is competitive with the Prius when it comes to highway driving.... I can milk 43-44mpg out of my Civic without trying that hard, and that's despite living in a hilly region.
I think that's an important point. The hybrids aren't peaking because people aren't interested in fuel efficient vehicles. They're peaking because there's so many fuel efficient vehicles available.
Just keep hitting "Check for New Comments" bro..... watch our libtards offer all manner of cockamamy scenarios and rationalizations.
Fine.
Develop an ideology that demonizes every government employee and agency except for the military.
Now motivated by said ideology and a desire to fight corruption introduce a massive number of regulations that make it impossible to do things efficiently.
Finally head said agencies with political appointees instead of the best available candidates with applicable experience.
Now reap your reward. A bloated ineffective inefficient government, and a government that regularly fails to properly implement basic things like proper record keeping because there's so many regs it's hard to fail at only the unimportant ones.
No government organization is flawless, heck, no organization period is flawless. But there's a reason that the US more than others manages to be really bad at it.
Anyone holding a Turing Test isn't really holding a true Turing Test. Turing didn't define a duration but it's pretty obvious that five minutes isn't long enough to hold a conversation, it's only long enough to ask a series of questions.
To hold an actual conversation you'd need an hour, maybe more. To last that long the bot would need to learn things about the interrogator just like we learn things when we talk to eachother. A bot that could do that could obviously do a lot more as well.
That's not to say the current Turing Test isn't useful. A successful bot could be applied to customer support systems and give insights into language. But it's misleading to indicate that the current incarnation of the Turing Test is testing what Turing intended.
+~5 kg in 2 years of depression speaks of either a lot of luck with your genetics or a hell of a lot of self control. Congratulations.
Well I had a long established routine of using running as my method of commuting. I definitely lost my recreational runs when the depression really hit but I maintained a level of ~6km of daily running just going to school and back.
I think that's brings up an educational/environmental aspect of weight loss that gets underrated. If I had ice cream in my freezer it would be partially eaten. If there were doughnuts in easy reach right now I would be eating one. We choose the path of least resistance so it's prudent to make that path a healthy one.
On my worst days I could barely get out of bed, but once I was out of bed I'd run into campus without thinking because it was just an effort free part of my commute. It would actually have taken more effort to take a bus because I'd be breaking the routine. Similarly with food I kept fairly healthy food around, so despite the fact I'd overeat, I'd only overeat rice or pasta instead of ice cream and cookies.
Obesity is a mental disability, most often an addiction to a wrong diet containing many addictive ingredients.
The way most people feed themselves is by stuffing enormous amounts of carbs, often a lot of them sugars in their face. Combine those with a little fat and all your body does is store fat and try and balance the glucose content of your blood. The carbs make your gut bacteria generate "happy hormones" that get in your blood, making you hungry and cranky if you don't get your fix, whether your body actually needs food or not.
The symptoms of this addiction are obesity and diabetes type 2. Please treat it as an addiction, not as a phyisical disability. If you do that, for example being taller than 6ft5 should be treated as a disability too and be given all benefits that should come with such a status. If being a size that's outside of what society will cater for is a reason to call people disabled.
Tall people can't help being tall, fat people in over 95% of the cases can help it if they kick the habit. If you treat obesity as a physical disability, you are insulting everyone with a physical disability for which there is no cure.
If it's a mental condition it's one with a strong genetic component.
Mental health can be an issue, I know I put on ~5 kg over two years when dealing with depression, but fat-shaming has always struck me as a failure of theory of mind.
If you're thin it's convenient to assume that it's just a matter of your willpower, you eat healthy because you're disciplined, you eat less because you're responsible. But it's also possible that fatty sugary food is just that much more appealing to other people, that hunger is a much stronger force, that their metabolism is slower so they gain fat much more easily.
I don't dispute for a moment that any of them could lose weight if they tried hard enough. But some people have to try a heck of a lot harder than others.
For as much contrivocery as there is in the biblical history, only recently some of the evidence supporting it is starting to show up in science. First the discovery of the "Big Bang" and the Genisis creation story. In the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded or something like that.
The entire earth was covered in a flood, poor Noah. Hmm, now we find the flood drained somewhere. Is the Great Flood of Noah fiction? I have my doubts. Some of the stories are beginning to be supported by recent discoveries. How did they possibly get it right so many years ago?
Maybe there is another explination we will find.
What was in those caverns beforehand? Did God kill the Morlocks after he killed the humans?
I continue to believe the madness of the Tea Party is due to the lack of party discipline. Can you imagine the Republican Party running on a unified Tea Party platform?
What's the solution to health care? Vote against Obamacare hundreds of times and then shutdown the government.
What's the solution to illegal immigration? Build a fence then maybe deport everyone?
What to do about global warming? All the scientists are wrong so dig more coal.
The problem with the system is they don't have to deal with reality. Their Obamacare shenanigans are a perfect example. An obvious question to their current approach is "ok, you somehow accomplish a repeal, then what?". But because the party couldn't lock into an alternative plan even if they wanted to, there's no alternative approach to evaluate. As a result they never have to answer the question and can just claim the alternative will fix everything. The AGW denialism is a side effect of this. They're so used to bad populist arguments that an elite opinion from scientists is hard to swallow.
Without party discipline only hyper-partisans bother with the individual arguments and they're the ones who choose the candidates. If you want the parties to reflect voters then you need to enforce strong discipline. When that happens the Democrats and Republicans will need to choose one cohesive platform to market to the country as a whole. Do that and you'll have a platform that's reasonable and well thought out. Keep the current system and they still vote as a block, the block just ends up being run by nuts like the Tea Party and Fox News.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes although I'd bet money that Shelby Conklin is going to discover how unpleasant the Streisand Effect can be. She will probably now be known as the revenge porn woman.
I don't agree with her suing Tor but I disagree that this is necessarily an instance of the Streisand Effect.
Not taking action would be succumbing to a form of the heckler's veto. I suspect in a lot of cases they start out trying to get rid of the info and most stop when it becomes obvious they'll only make it more public. But in a case like this she might be willing to face the publicity because she thinks seeking justice is more important than giving up.
I'm playing a bit of the devil's advocate but I'm assuming that the US has an extradition treaty with Maldives.
The US has a fairly responsible justice system when it comes to this. If a person from Russia/Nigeria/a country with a dubious court system is stealing credit card info in the US/Canada/EU I think it's absolutely appropriate for one of the latter countries to seek that individual's arrest when that person enters a jurisdiction with an extradition treaty.
So for me the US having the Maldives' police arrest and extradite this guy would be fine.
The iffy part is the US using it's own law enforcement. I can understand the US wanting to run the show so nothing goes wrong, but it definitely speaks to a general disrespect to the sovereignty of the country in question.
There's also the possibility it's there to help Russian companies (and the economy).
Facebook wants to operate in Russia? Well then they need to open up a Russian server farm and put all the Russian data in there, or pay massive arbitrary fines, or get blocked. Lots of Russian companies probably use Amazon's EC2, now Amazon either needs to put up a region located in Russia or those Russian companies need to use a Russian cloud company.
It's the same fundamental reason why Putin has been working so hard to keep Ukraine away from the EU. Russian companies suck and can't compete against the west, if cheap high quality EU goods can flow into Russia then the current Russian industry won't be able to compete. Similarly if high quality tech companies can serve Russians then the Russian tech companies can't compete. Solution? Screw with Ukraine to try and keep the EU physical goods out, and pass data laws to keep foreign websites out.
If this was just a guy posting trash on Facebook I'd probably side with you. If you read the details of the case, you will find that this is not just someone ranting. This appears to be someone conspiring to commit rape, murder, and kidnapping.
I did read the details of the case and I have to disagree. He's not ranting, he's fantasizing, but there's no evidence that he ever planned to go further.
Whether the primary web site has a disclaimer or not, does not change the fact that this goes beyond the simple act of writing about a sick fantasy. He offered to kidnap someone for 5,000.00. He went and found a recipe for chloroform, then built a pulley system to string up one of the people he was talking about kidnapping and murdering.
He offered to kidnap someone, he never did kidnap them, nor did he or anyone else complain when these plans didn't happen. He said he built a pulley in the emails but he didn't actually build it, nor did he make any chloroform. Surely if you're making a criminal conspiracy involving chloroform, a human sized oven, and a pulley system then actually obtain chloroform, a human sized oven, and a pulley system.
He used a Police database illegally for the purpose of gathering personal information about the people he appeared to be conspiring against (it was more than 1). This goes well beyond simply discussing "unconventional thoughts".
Lets change the scenario a bit. If I was to claim I want to kill someone on Facebook, I'd be a person of interest but not doing anything illegal. When I go out and search for recipes for poisons, I'm still not illegal but I should be under watch, especially if the poison is generic household items which I may have on hand. Once I start illegally gathering personal information about the targets I claimed I want to kill, would I not be conspiring to commit murder? What if I owned a gun, would that be enough? (Remember that this person was a Cop and had a Gun, as well as a position of authority to abuse, and could have been legally stalking victims without anyone's knowledge on "patrols")
Ok, here's another scenario.
You really hate John and claim you want to kill him on FB. You look around for information on poisons because you're curious, or you're fantasizing about how you could kill him. And because the guy really pisses you off you become mildly obsessed and gather information using a work database (even though doing so for this purpose is unauthorized and illegal).
Yet under no scenario could you actually imagine yourself doing so much as punching John.
If you believe it's reasonable, would you want the guy as a neighbor? Invite them over over for dinner? If so, good for you. I'd prefer to see a person like this under watch and psychological monitoring at a minimum.
I wouldn't, not because he's a criminal, but just because he'd creep the hell out of me.
This is a guy who might commit a serious crime in the future, perhaps even wants to. But he has never done so, nor has he specifically planned to do so. All of his previous plans were merely elaborate fantasies that he never took a concrete step towards implementing.
Personally I'd recommend a mandatory psychological evaluation. IF that suggested he could take the step towards moving those crimes into reality then I might consider watch and mandatory counselling. Otherwise he's innocent of everything except the misuse of the database.
Local legends suggest that Rheithrosciurus, which is thought to mostly eat giant acorns, can be savage. Hunters say that the squirrels will perch on low branches, jump onto a deer, gash its jugular vein, and disembowel the carcass. "It sounds pretty fantastical," says a skeptical Roland Kays, a zoologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. "Even more than its fluffy tail."
This sounds far too awesome to be fact checked.
the idea of "when life starts" which is a philosophical, not a scientific problem
Pro-life scientists point out that an embryo is a distinct organism because it has distinct DNA. The life associated with that DNA thus begins when sperm meets egg.
Then pro-life scientists are abusing scientific terminology to justify their philosophy.
Is that water, the ultimate solvent -- or perhaps bacteria -- are breaking down the plastics back into it's components, and the ocean (much like the oil from the BP spill) is taking care of itself.
Naw, couldn't be. Go ahead and panic, hippies!
Yeah, and everyone know that broken down oil was completely harmless.
Whatever components that plastic is breaking down into it likely contains a lot of molecules that aren't found in nature. When those molecules enter an organism there's no telling what the hell they're going to do.
I don't understand this fantasy that some people cling to that we can dump endless streams of random crap into the environment and mother nature will just magically take care of it with no consequence. People would sure as hell notice if you started dumping garbage into a lake and screwing up a beach where people swim once a week, why do you think the things that actually live in the polluted water won't be affected?
Don't be too hard on Hume.
I heard about a guy who went through multiple marriages and divorces, did multiple stints in prison, and eventually got some political offices.
I'm naturally talking about Nelson Mandela.
Even if the facts are true and presented impartially the selection of which facts to present or emphasize can give an inaccurate total picture.
I don't know enough about libel law or the guy in question to know if the case is legit, but you seem to have already formed an opinion of him as a scam artist based on the Wikipedia article which may not be a reliable source.
I'm really curious if this guy is a legitimate businessman with a valid suit or some shady character trying to whitewash his reputation.
*goes to check his bio on Wikipedia*
Whoa! That guy looks pretty shady! The lawsuit must be a scam!!
We we had a similar plant in Ontario, it was shut down because of the air pollution. It is still the biggest, by far, smokestack in the city. Burning garbage does not make it disappear, and people would rather the garbage be put somewhere they do not see it, instead of blown into their faces.
I'm not sure if it will smoke since according to the article the stuff won't actually "burn"'
There, it will be heated in a low-oxygen atmosphere. This will cause its chemical bonds to break (without the material actually burning), releasing their carbon and hydrogen content to form what's known as syngas. This will in turn be cleaned up and converted into chemical products and biofuels – such as methanol and ethanol.
Either way if the emitted chemicals are what you're looking for you're not just going to dump them out a smokestack.
The province is conservative but Edmonton is fairly liberal (as are most cities). I actually took a tour of the waste treatment plant a few years ago and it was pretty impressive (and smelly). Back then they were talking about grinding up the non-recyclable/compostable bits and using them for asphalt filling as a way to get over 90% non-landfilled, I'm not sure if this is any of the same material they're talking about here, I don't think I'd want my highways degrading.
I predict within 24 months this plant will be shut down. Write it down. This is just more bullshit left wing crap that someone somehow got funded. Many people will lose their jobs and some may lose their retirement savings. Why Canada is fucking around with this when they enormous reserves of tar sands and other conventional fuels is beyond me. Huge fuck up.
On the contrary although this plant is new they've been doing stuff like this for years, and it makes economic sense.
The problem with garbage is you have to put it somewhere. Landfills fill up quickly and use up otherwise useful land, and the further you ship it the more expensive and polluting it is to transport. The waste reclamation centre drastically reduces the amount you need to dispose of.
Eco-stations claim a lot of the electronic waste, the company that gets the material actually turns a profit on breaking them down.
Compostables get turned into topsoil, traditional recyclables get pulled out and turned into economically useful items, etc.
If your city thinks shipping wealth away burying it with all the resulting externalities is a better alternative then they can keep with their current setup. I prefer the Edmontonian model.
We also treat our sewage rather than dumping in raw into the ocean like some coastal cities.
Great news if you want to live in the holocene.
Not so good of news if you think a significant environmental change in the middle of a mass extinction is a bad idea.
Indeed you are very correct, this government is become a dictatorship, abetted by a feckless Congress. It matters not whether you're lib/con or dem/repub, this is dangerous when the next changeover of power occurs, and it will occur. What the President has loosed now will be used against his party in the future.
Too bad my mod points are all gone now, you deserve +3.
So what is the appropriate role for Obama in this? It seems odd that he would be expected to act as a passive administrator when he was elected with a policy based mandate to a much greater degree than congress.
How is the government refusing to enforce a restriction on free speech rights (which is what a trademark is) an infringement on free speech rights? 'splain, please.
I propose a new bill.
Doesn't Infringe the First Amendment Copyright Act: Whereby the government will only grant copyright to works of art that endorse the ruling party.
Still think it's not a free speech issue?
I really hate this kind of crap. If it's alright for one group of people to use a term, but not another it's racist. Either the term is offensive, or it isn't. There's no modifier because of the color of your skin, your ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. And what ever happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me"? We've turned into a society of whiny little bitches. Oh damn, someone is going to accuse me of being discriminatory toward female canines and claim that I kill puppies.(/sarcasm)
Until I hit this paragraph I actually thought you were actually going in a completely different direction.
The thing you're missing is words have context.
If I call a good friend moron it's a term of endearment, we both understand I'm not actually calling him dumb, if I call a stranger moron I'm potentially starting a fight.
Alec Baldwin calling someone a cocksucking fag as an insult is homophobic. Buddy Cole using fag is not homophobic. We call fag homophobic because it's most commonly used in a homophobic context, but that's not always true.
The context of the Redskins is the term was denigrating when it was chosen as the name, the team was notably against black integration, Native American discrimination is still rampant, and the name and logo conjure a stereotype of a native warrior. Not everyone will find it racist but some obviously will. Would the Washington Poles be racist? Probably not. Would the Washington Jews? Maybe. Would the Washington Bankers with a Jewish mascot? Definitely.
The recycling of the hardware isn't a question in my mind. Of course they recycle hardware...
No email archiving? really? Of an IRS director?
All of her emails were really stored in a local PST file, with no backup what-so-ever?
And after that hard drive failed, with no backup, you then destroyed the drive?
Now that is a series of coincidental incompetence that I just cannot accept.
It's fathomable yes, but the Republicans certainly have the right to turn this into a full on circus.
It's deserving of an investigation but it's too early to jump to conclusions.
How widespread were these poor data retention practices? Is this something that affected only Lerner and the other investigated officials, or is it part of a wider problem in the IRS of managing email records.
Nothing Bush ever did was this obviously corrupt and he was up to all sorts of evil.
I always thought of Obama as similar to Jimmy Carter. I disagree with his policies, he's failing miserably, but his hearts in the right place.
Now I see him as more of a Nixon.
There's no evidence that Obama has actually done anything. Even assuming Lois Lerner is guilty she was in that position since '06 and there's no evidence it went above her.
Surely you can see the difference between a president caught on tape in a criminal conspiracy and an IRS manager whom may not be guilty of anything more than incompetence.
Frankly if most of your driving is highway I don't see the point, my $17,000 non-hybrid Honda Civic is competitive with the Prius when it comes to highway driving.... I can milk 43-44mpg out of my Civic without trying that hard, and that's despite living in a hilly region.
I think that's an important point. The hybrids aren't peaking because people aren't interested in fuel efficient vehicles. They're peaking because there's so many fuel efficient vehicles available.
anyone buy that?
Just keep hitting "Check for New Comments" bro..... watch our libtards offer all manner of cockamamy scenarios and rationalizations.
Fine.
Develop an ideology that demonizes every government employee and agency except for the military.
Now motivated by said ideology and a desire to fight corruption introduce a massive number of regulations that make it impossible to do things efficiently.
Finally head said agencies with political appointees instead of the best available candidates with applicable experience.
Now reap your reward. A bloated ineffective inefficient government, and a government that regularly fails to properly implement basic things like proper record keeping because there's so many regs it's hard to fail at only the unimportant ones.
No government organization is flawless, heck, no organization period is flawless. But there's a reason that the US more than others manages to be really bad at it.
Anyone holding a Turing Test isn't really holding a true Turing Test. Turing didn't define a duration but it's pretty obvious that five minutes isn't long enough to hold a conversation, it's only long enough to ask a series of questions.
To hold an actual conversation you'd need an hour, maybe more. To last that long the bot would need to learn things about the interrogator just like we learn things when we talk to eachother. A bot that could do that could obviously do a lot more as well.
That's not to say the current Turing Test isn't useful. A successful bot could be applied to customer support systems and give insights into language. But it's misleading to indicate that the current incarnation of the Turing Test is testing what Turing intended.
+~5 kg in 2 years of depression speaks of either a lot of luck with your genetics or a hell of a lot of self control. Congratulations.
Well I had a long established routine of using running as my method of commuting. I definitely lost my recreational runs when the depression really hit but I maintained a level of ~6km of daily running just going to school and back.
I think that's brings up an educational/environmental aspect of weight loss that gets underrated. If I had ice cream in my freezer it would be partially eaten. If there were doughnuts in easy reach right now I would be eating one. We choose the path of least resistance so it's prudent to make that path a healthy one.
On my worst days I could barely get out of bed, but once I was out of bed I'd run into campus without thinking because it was just an effort free part of my commute. It would actually have taken more effort to take a bus because I'd be breaking the routine. Similarly with food I kept fairly healthy food around, so despite the fact I'd overeat, I'd only overeat rice or pasta instead of ice cream and cookies.
Obesity is a mental disability, most often an addiction to a wrong diet containing many addictive ingredients.
The way most people feed themselves is by stuffing enormous amounts of carbs, often a lot of them sugars in their face. Combine those with a little fat and all your body does is store fat and try and balance the glucose content of your blood. The carbs make your gut bacteria generate "happy hormones" that get in your blood, making you hungry and cranky if you don't get your fix, whether your body actually needs food or not.
The symptoms of this addiction are obesity and diabetes type 2. Please treat it as an addiction, not as a phyisical disability. If you do that, for example being taller than 6ft5 should be treated as a disability too and be given all benefits that should come with such a status. If being a size that's outside of what society will cater for is a reason to call people disabled.
Tall people can't help being tall, fat people in over 95% of the cases can help it if they kick the habit. If you treat obesity as a physical disability, you are insulting everyone with a physical disability for which there is no cure.
If it's a mental condition it's one with a strong genetic component.
“Obesity is one of the strongest genetically influenced traits that we have,” says O'Rahilly. Classic twin studies in the 1980s and 1990s, which relied on pairs of identical and fraternal twins, suggest that 40–70% of variation in body size is due to genetic factors.
Mental health can be an issue, I know I put on ~5 kg over two years when dealing with depression, but fat-shaming has always struck me as a failure of theory of mind.
If you're thin it's convenient to assume that it's just a matter of your willpower, you eat healthy because you're disciplined, you eat less because you're responsible. But it's also possible that fatty sugary food is just that much more appealing to other people, that hunger is a much stronger force, that their metabolism is slower so they gain fat much more easily.
I don't dispute for a moment that any of them could lose weight if they tried hard enough. But some people have to try a heck of a lot harder than others.
For as much contrivocery as there is in the biblical history, only recently some of the evidence supporting it is starting to show up in science. First the discovery of the "Big Bang" and the Genisis creation story. In the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded or something like that.
The entire earth was covered in a flood, poor Noah. Hmm, now we find the flood drained somewhere. Is the Great Flood of Noah fiction? I have my doubts. Some of the stories are beginning to be supported by recent discoveries. How did they possibly get it right so many years ago?
Maybe there is another explination we will find.
What was in those caverns beforehand? Did God kill the Morlocks after he killed the humans?
I continue to believe the madness of the Tea Party is due to the lack of party discipline. Can you imagine the Republican Party running on a unified Tea Party platform?
What's the solution to health care? Vote against Obamacare hundreds of times and then shutdown the government.
What's the solution to illegal immigration? Build a fence then maybe deport everyone?
What to do about global warming? All the scientists are wrong so dig more coal.
The problem with the system is they don't have to deal with reality. Their Obamacare shenanigans are a perfect example. An obvious question to their current approach is "ok, you somehow accomplish a repeal, then what?". But because the party couldn't lock into an alternative plan even if they wanted to, there's no alternative approach to evaluate. As a result they never have to answer the question and can just claim the alternative will fix everything. The AGW denialism is a side effect of this. They're so used to bad populist arguments that an elite opinion from scientists is hard to swallow.
Without party discipline only hyper-partisans bother with the individual arguments and they're the ones who choose the candidates. If you want the parties to reflect voters then you need to enforce strong discipline. When that happens the Democrats and Republicans will need to choose one cohesive platform to market to the country as a whole. Do that and you'll have a platform that's reasonable and well thought out. Keep the current system and they still vote as a block, the block just ends up being run by nuts like the Tea Party and Fox News.