Tell me does that apply to Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and other countries founded around the same time as well? Or just the jewish state?
Well no it doesn't apply to "Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and other countries founded around the same time as well" because those aren't examples of "giving them enough of someone else's land."
The issue with Israel is Jews had virtually no claim to that land, they had been a small minority for centuries but hadn't been a majority or rulers for a very very long time.
If you want to understand why the Palestinians are so angry then consider the fact Arabs were promised self-rule for revolting against the Ottomans in WWI. Instead the west promised some of their holiest territory (Israel) to as a Jewish homeland, didn't prevent mass Jewish immigration, then imposed a partition that gave the new Jewish population a huge portion of the territory.
I don't blame the Jewish immigrants since any minority would love their own country, but as a westerner with no skin in the game I find myself outraged by how in the 20th century western powers decided they could simply give away a bunch of Arab land to a foreign population. Considering how freaked out Americans get over a few illegal Mexicans it shouldn't be hard to understand why the Palestinian population has gotten so inflamed.
Yeah, when you start throwing around suppositions that reveal a bias against the OSS leadership for being "toxic", I don't see much credibility in your opinion. Why not blame cosmic rays while you're at it? It's one thing to suggest "we can do better", but quite another to just pretend that it's the fault of people you clearly don't like. You and everyone else is relying on their work to a staggering degree, and now you talk like an usurper who wants to blame the software creators instead of the monied interests who don't have an incentive to contribute back, because some alleged asshole is doing it for free already.
I think toxicity does exist but it's not really a fault of the developers as much as the medium.
If you work in an office and are able to talk to your co-workers directly it's pretty easy to have good relationships. There's lot of opportunity to talk about pleasant non-work stuff, the proximity incentivizes you to keep things civil, and when you do disagree you have body language and tone to help get your point across.
If you turn to an email only relationship all of these things are gone. There's not a lot of opportunity to bond over non-work items, the fact you never see the other person physically means it doesn't matter much if you piss them off, and if you need to communicate something you need to be very blunt.
Online communications will invariably have a much stronger bias towards assholery.
It's people like you fucking this country over. Harper was simply amazing. He was leading us out of debt and into growth for 8 bloody years and to thank him you guys oust him??? It's incredibly frustrating how people like you poInt out flaws that don't exist. Focus on how a well a country did, not random shit. The liberals have just as many bad points. Also fuck you.
What "flaws that don't exist"? The comment was about scientist's being muzzled, how did that not exist??
As for the economy part of the reason Canada was doing better is we weren't hit as hard by the '08 meltdown because our banking sector was more restricted. The Conservatives were in the process of eliminating those restrictions before '08 happened and everyone saw what a cataclysmically bad idea it was. Recently the Conservatives bet on oil and failed to diversify the economy, now that prices are down the economy is suffering.
"The decision comes as no surprise to the oil industry, and they've been busily working on other ways to transport the oil."
Like, for instance, the railroad that Obama's 1%'er buddy Warren Buffett owns. I'm sure there's no connection there, though.
I'm also sure there's no connection.
I mean the basis of your conspiracy is the fact that a famous rich donor (who's relatively friendly with the administration) has some of his billions stashed in railways, and those railways will see some mild to moderate increase in business due to the cancellation.
The evidence against your conspiracy, besides the fact that that's a remarkably weak motive for a massive political decision, is the fact that Warren Buffet is on record supporting the pipeline
And is it going to cut carbon emissions? Are we pretending that Canada's just going to leave it in the ground if we don't buy it?
As a lifelong resident of Alberta yes it will.
That stuff is very expensive to get out of the ground and new development is based on the profitability of the investment. The reason they wanted Keystone so bad is because it increases profitability, without Keystone the oil is harder and less profitable to ship, and so there's less development.
Obama denys the permit a few days after transcanada requests to table the permit process (due to falling oil prices) and everyone cheers.
It also helps that Justin Trudeau just became the Canadian PM. While he supported Keystone that support was a lot softer than that of Harper, the previous PM. I don't think Harper would have much political influence in the US but it's always nice to avoid an extra source of criticism.
Moreover the cancellation is a big political gift to Trudeau. The Liberals are centrists so putting them in an ongoing support/deny mode was going to alienate a big chunk of their supporters. Cancelling this early absolves him of the blame for the cancellation. Making friends with neighbouring administrations is never a bad thing.
Reading his statement on the matter, his economic justifications are irrelevant ("the pipeline wouldn't create jobs or lower gas prices for Americans"): since it's not proposed that the US government pay for the pipeline, these issues are only relevant against costs -- and he doesn't discuss any costs! He isn't citing the direct environmental damage of digging the pipeline and creating associated infrastructure (roads, power cables, pumping stations etc). He isn't citing the risk of leaks.
I was wondering if Obama would claim climate risks since that would have required him to quantify his estimate of the accuracy of the models used to predict the climate effects of the pipeline. But naturally he didn't claim risks to the climate -- only risks to US leadership on climate issues. That's a fair reason to make national-level decisions, but is not a win for the environment.
Well the economic justifications are relevant is they fail to justify the costs, as to the costs you just listed a bunch, including the extra CO2 contributing to climate change and damage to US leadership that he focused on. Obama's claim is that the economic benefit is mild and not enough to cover the environmental and political problems.
The risk of leaks and environment damage from construction are relevant, but they're not the justification for the cancellation. (possibly because they're cancelled out by increases in other shipping methods)
This is what happens when you allow sociopaths to run corporations. Sociopaths should, upon discovery, be forceably removed from society at gunpoint and sent to an island together where they can fuck each other, eat each other, or whatever it is these vile neurologically inhuman monsters do to each other. No sociopath should ever have control of even a single normal, empathic human being in even the tiniest way.,
That's a very sociopathic approach to the problem.
Sociopaths are human beings who have what could be considered in a mental illness, in some settings they can be quite dangerous and harmful, in others their illness can even be an asset.
> And on what grounds do you consider it "a strict, conservative, authoritarian, religious society"?
Strict: law is applied rigidly with no leniency or consideration of circumstances
We know the law is strictly applied (and in some cases as with plants is ridiculous) but otherwise people were very relaxed and the society didn't seem strict at all.
Conservative: Conformity is expected, independent thinking and change are not tolerated
I disagree, except for the law, the central plot point, they were remarkably open and invited a group of aliens who were complete strangers to come down and mingle. That is extremely unconservative.
Authoritarian: The laws are decreed by a dominant ruling entity and must be obeyed on pain of death Religious: The people take it on faith that the dominant ruling entity is Right and not to be questioned
The fact that they can mate freely doesn't change any of this.
Well the authority is the alien playing god, otherwise I don't recall any authority figures such as a ruler or head priest, just the mediators who don't have much autonomy. An actual authoritarian society (ie Romulans) has a lot of layers of rulers, each with a great deal of control over their subordinates.
I admit I forgot about the god when I wrote my comment but I don't think strong religious belief is incompatible with leftist society. I think the best description of that society is a powerful entity trying to use the broken-window model to impose a left-wing paradise on a planet.
Note that conservatism is strongest in rural communities where law enforcement is distant and people use strong social mores to keep potential troublemakers in line. In the society from the planet you don't need to worry about enforcing social conformity because you're less worried about some weird dude doing something illegal and harming you.
Must have features GPS, bluetooth and music storage for roughly 5 hours of use during a marathon.
Music/podcasts are great for training but generally frowned upon in actual races, I think a lot of big marathons actually ban them since people not hearing could be a safety issue.
I've personally never had an issue getting bored during races and for training I just bring my phone and a pair of bluetooth headphones for podcasts.
Garmin Forerunner 15 only lasts about 3 hours with GPS on (despite Manufacturer claims to the contrary)
That sounds like a warranty issue. I don't know about the 15 but my old 301 lasted through the entirety of a 10.5 hour ultra.
That being said if I were to get a new watch I might be tempted to peak at the smart watches.
Ah, because they have different sexual mores than you're used to, they must be politically left? Or did you mean it's the kind of society a "lefty" on Earth would want to live in, because they're all about hippie free love, baby?
It must be bizarre to view the rest of the world through conservative derp-colored glasses...
And on what grounds do you consider it "a strict, conservative, authoritarian, religious society"?
Sure they have a very harsh and unsympathetic justice system, but claiming they're conservative on that basis is committing the same projection you're accusing me of.
The entire point of the episode's early twist is that this outrageously open and liberal planet had an absolutely draconian justice system that no one on the Enterprise anticipated.
HuffPo actually explains how the rules changed: The DNC's rules for candidate participation in their debates were pretty straightforward--or so we thought. In August, before the Lessig campaign began, DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, announced the standards for being included in the debates. As she described the rule, a candidate had to have 1 percent in three DNC sanctioned national polls, "in the six weeks prior to the debate." [...] And indeed, that is precisely the rule that was applied in the first debate. As CNN specified in a late September memo, to qualify a candidate had to poll at 1 percent in the "polls released between August 1, 2015 and October 10, 2015." The first debate was October 12. [...] During that call, I was told that the DNC participation standard for the debates was for a candidate to be at one percent in three polls conducted, "six weeks prior to the debate"--not the clarified rule cited earlier by Wasserman-Shultz and the DNC political director that a candidate had to be at one percent in three polls conducted "in the six weeks prior to the debate."
So the DNC had said 1% in the six weeks before the debate and used that standard in the first debate, but in the second debate where Lessig qualified by that standard they switched to 6 weeks before the debate.
It seems odd even if you don't take the wording at face value and wonder about the missing upper bound in the range given by "six weeks before the debate".
I can see why the DNC doesn't want a candidate who is there almost explicitly as a one issue protest candidate but that's a fairly dirty way to go about it.
They did something similar, it was Season 1 where the show was fairly awful but they had a lefty paradise with a very easily triggered death penalty
How the fuck is that society "lefty" ?? If anything, it parallels a strict, conservative, authoritarian, religious society.
The justice system sure, but if I recall the society itself was downright libertine, it was strongly implied that the adult crew members basically spent their leave in orgies.
>Star Trek has always embraced tough social questions. If a new series has any claim to the >Star Trek tradition is should absolutely be exploring questions such as gender equality, >non-traditional relationships, and debates over what kind of language is proper.
I very much want an episode where they find a planet that has gone so far down the PC speech tunnel that saying the slightest wrong thing, or even having a micro-aggressive intonation, is grounds for execution. Because Star Trek should be exploring both the good and bad ideas in society.
I want that, but it will really be about cool space explosions and techno-babble.
Part of the reason that episode (and S1 in general) was so awful is that the premise was absurd, heavy handed, and generally dull. Similarly "a planet that has gone so far down the PC speech tunnel that saying the slightest wrong thing, or even having a micro-aggressive intonation, is grounds for execution" would also be very heavy handed and dull. Where's the conflict? Of course micro-aggression death penalty planet is wrong!
More interesting would be a Federation military campaign where there had been an atrocity at some point. An alien delegation is visiting and one of the delegation members was present for the atrocity and is still severely traumatized. An group of Enterprize crew members talking about the campaign, start recounting that incident in very insensitive pro-Federation way, the traumatized alien loses his temper and attacks, and now everyone has to figure out how to deal with it.
So there you go. You have PC speech (biased retelling of history), microagressions (telling that history in the alien's presence), trigger warnings (alien didn't know that topic would come up), and victimization (should the trauma and provocations give the alien an excuse?).
Best yet you can adjust the scenario so there isn't a clear outcome, maybe the atrocity wasn't the Federation's fault, maybe the alien kills the crew member, etc. You end up with a story you can actually think about, the kind of story Star Trek should be telling.
Why do I have this nagging feeling that will be less of going boldly?
Fine I'll take the bait.
Star Trek has always been highly progressive. In the 60's they had black women and Russians at the height of the Cold War. They had the first on-screen inter-race kiss.
In the late 80's and early 90's they continued with their cashless society, they were an explicitly diplomatic vessel that was actively trying to find peaceful solutions to violent confrontations.
DS9 was based around something that looked very similar to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Star Trek has always embraced tough social questions. If a new series has any claim to the Star Trek tradition is should absolutely be exploring questions such as gender equality, non-traditional relationships, and debates over what kind of language is proper.
Of course if they're up to the standard of previous Star Treks they'll do it with a lot skill so people won't be ranting against them as SJW. Then again if they're up to the standards of the JJ Abrams movies they won't be able to recognize a social controversy if it hit them with a photon torpedo.
On the one hand, I'm not fond of black hats. On the other, that's really, really funny.
The summary said it was a botnet, which suggests a lot of hijacked computers (and illegal unethical activity), but unless there's evidence that wasn't mentioned it could just have easily been a bunch of bots running on the person's own laptop.
Correlation not equal to causation comes to mind here. I wonder if the study accounted for the fact that the best lawyers are probably the ones most likely to make the most money and thus have more money to contribute to campaigns. (And by being the best, they also win more cases.)
I think the better non-conspiracy interpretation is that lawyers are going to support judges who share their judicial philosophy, and judges will tend to rule in favour of arguments that reflect their judicial philosophy.
However, even if that is the case and there's no attempt on either side to introduce a bias it should still be stopped.
For one thing eliminating bias is really tough, it's a very difficult task for a judge to treat the lawyer who gave him a pile of money as fairly as the lawyer who backed the person trying to put them out of a job.
And even if the judge succeeds that's only part of the problem, a critical job of the justice system is to give people faith in the integrity of the justice system. People won't have faith in a system that seems to be rigged.
Linux is controlled by money because its authors have been hired by commercial companies who control their employees. Red Hat management forbids to create competitive solutions, I speculate because Red Hat is partially owned by proprietary IT companties in a risk of FOSS competition. systemd was created for containers. Containers are a quick&dirty way of packaging. Containers again come from the evil business side of Linux, no sane person would make that debugging nightmare happen.
RedHat was backing Upstart, a Canonical project. Systemd was started by RedHat developers working without the direction of management, it was forces external to RedHat who actually got RedHat on board with Systemd.
I did an Internship with RedHat years ago, I don't know how they compare to other open source companies but in my experience they give their developers a remarkable amount of autonomy.
they are truly good guys. Most of their competitors, F-Secure being the exception I guess, would have charged money for this service, or not even bother in the first place.
The thing is that no one is able to match the US's combination of previous testing data and simulation abilities so in a no-test world (or a world with only 1 or 2 symbolic tests) the US has a huge advantage over other nations claiming Nuclear capabilities.
This is why the US no longer performs Nuclear tests, so they can raise the diplomatic costs of performing tests for other nations. And since the US isn't going to start testing anyway ratifying the treaty only makes the diplomatic cost for other nations higher.
A 'non-treaty' that has so many holes that people are already debating if Iran has already broken it. The only thing the deal does is makes sure to delay Iran getting a nuke until after Obama (and, therefore, Kerry) leaves office.
Who is debating if Iran has already broken it? The same people who are still spinning BS about the Iranians getting 24 days to delay inspections to undeclared sites (more like 17 days), claiming that Iranians will be inspecting their own facilities or that the US has to defend Iran in a war?
The Iran deal is a good idea, the only reasons to oppose it have nothing to do with keeping Nukes away from Iran.
Similarly ratifying the CTBT is a good idea that makes the world safer, improves the US's reputation, and improves the US's relative military advantage. The only reason to oppose it is politics.
6: No judge would use this for a sentence in a case. Since mentally ill people tend to not exactly be rich in general, no judge would take advantage of that fact and pass longer sentences to keep the private prison campaign funds rolling in.
If someone is mentally ill to the point where they could not, at some time, tell right from wrong, they are not held criminally responsible, and are committed to a hospital until they are deemed to be a lower risk.
Which brings us to:
5: No DA would ever use this data for arrests so he or she can meet their quota to keep their campaign contributions coming in from the private prison lobby. Remember: 48 states signed an agreement stating they would keep their private jails at 90% or more capacity or else pay fines by the hour. With marijuana being legalized, those bed spaces have to be filled up somehow.
DAs wouldn't want any data that a person is mentally ill to be submitted to the court - it will screw up their conviction rate, which means those cells stay empty.
Now look at this:
IANAL but mental illness generally isn't a defense, the only way it helps is if you were so ill that you couldn't control your actions and/or determine right from wrong. Evidence of a mental illness such as depression (or something more serious) is probably going to help the prosecution by stigmatizing the jury against the defendant and making an irrational action (ie a criminal act) seem more likely.
Successful NGRI defenses are rare. While rates vary from state to state, on average less than one defendant in 100—0.85 percent— actually raises the insanity defense nationwide. Interestingly, states with higher rates of NGRI defenses tend to have lower success rates for NGRI defenses; the percentage of all defendants found NGRI is fairly constant, at around 0.26 percent.
4: This data would never be used by an ex-spouse as a way to say that the kids are in mortal danger and kill all rights completely in a divorce.
So what happens to all those people who are fighting to keep their kids, plan to drop this bomb, do their research and then find out that the only person in the relationship who is mentally ill is them? Or that they're both mentally ill? The most common form of mental illness is depression, and if it's controlled no judge will use it to decide a custody case.
I could go on, but why bother? Seems to me that there are to many from the tin-foil hat crowd who need to see a shrink. And give up their guns, before they hurt someone.
Exactly how do you propose to "control" depression? Anti-depressants and therapy can help, but that's a long way from calling them a cure.
I'm not one of the tinfoil hat crowd but I think these are legitimate concerns. Mental illness is heavily stigmatized and tech companies snooping on your behaviour to determine if you are mentally ill can have serious consequences. I don't think it will happen at this stage but we'll get there eventually.
That being said mental illness is a serious issue, if Google is somehow able to help people dealing with depression or other issues then that could be a very good thing.
This assumes that the $180 book is better than the $75 book. If it is superior, then requiring that book over the cheaper version makes sense. However, that is clearly not the criteria here; the criteria is "does this book make the chair and vice-chair money", with no regard for the quality of the text.
Regardless of other motives the fact they wrote the book suggests they are fairly passionate about the subject, how it should be taught, and what the textbook should contain.
That being said it doesn't mean the book is the right choice for the department. Even if they aren't making extra money the chair and vice-chair are going to be biased towards their own book. I don't know how the book was chosen but it's really hard to avoid a conflict of interest.
Why should Amazon care? Nobody is going to stop shopping there. People just want their cheap shit, and don't care who they do business with. If most people could save $0.50 buying their toilet paper from known child rapists, they would.
Uber, Lyft, Amazon Prime, etc. There's bound to be a lot more of these flexible jobs in the future that fall somewhere between contract work and shift work, this suit is likely to result in some important precedents.
A couple franchises of a fast food burger place in the city I live in did something similar, and actually pays a starting salary of $15/hr. They were doing this even before the rallying for that rate in fast food. The places end up packed, doing better than other near by chains. Yet the service is fast, and people there work hard to keep it clean, efficient and do anything else within reason to help customers. And that was before the newspaper wrote a blurb about their pay policy, although I don't think the newspaper changed much for their business, as most people in the area preferred them already.
That seems like a solid strategy actually. I think a lot of adults in entry level labour are very border-line workers (ie very high rates of absenteeism, low professional standards, etc), but there's also a subset of really responsible hardworking people who due to some combination of things like education and criminal records aren't able to move past entry level positions.
If you offer a solid wage premium you can get a workforce comprising of entirely of those top employees and have a very nicely operating business.
The militia part is not modifying the right to bear arms. The quote reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
For those with reading comprehension, there are two statements in this sentence. 1) that a militia that is well regulated is necessary to keep a free state secure and 2) that the people have a right to keep and bear arms that the government cannot infringe upon.
There's one more thing that's important to note -- (3) these two things are combined in the same sentence because (1) is **a** justification for (2). Some interpret the sentence to mean that (1) is the only justification for (2), but the history of these types of clauses in, say, state constitutions from the same time does not really support such a reading.
Anyhow, the more useful aid I find in interpreting these things is to transfer the statement to something less controversial:
"A well educated electorate, being necessary to the democratic function of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed."
If the Constitution said that, would we infer that only registered voters (part of the "electorate") should get to keep and read books? If you're a kid or you don't vote, you don't get to read?
OR... do we interpret it to mean that the first part of the sentence is ONE important reason why "the people" in general should get to read books -- but it only applies to a subset of "the people," namely the "electorate." There may be other good reasons why other people may benefit from books, and hence the right is granted to "the people" later in the sentence (rather than a repetition of "the electorate" only) but the Constitution (which is a fairly terse document in general) doesn't list all of them.
Personally, I find the latter interpretation (i.e., a general right for "the people") to be much more compelling when we transfer the logic to a sentence on a less controversial topic.
(By the way, I'm actually in favor of much greater regulations on guns, perhaps even beyond what the 2nd amendment implies. But I refuse to twist the meaning of this sentence to accord with my personal belief.)
Though what happens in that interpretation the government system changed and people stopped voting? It's been a very long time since the US has had well-regulated militias in the way they envisioned it in that clause, nor are militias even able to fulfil the purpose that was envisioned if they were recreated.
Slashdot Mirror
Tell me does that apply to Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and other countries founded around the same time as well? Or just the jewish state?
Well no it doesn't apply to "Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and other countries founded around the same time as well" because those aren't examples of "giving them enough of someone else's land."
The issue with Israel is Jews had virtually no claim to that land, they had been a small minority for centuries but hadn't been a majority or rulers for a very very long time.
The creation is Israel was colonialism, not much different from the bizarre concept of settling them in Uganda except for the fact that Israel had added religious significance.
If you want to understand why the Palestinians are so angry then consider the fact Arabs were promised self-rule for revolting against the Ottomans in WWI. Instead the west promised some of their holiest territory (Israel) to as a Jewish homeland, didn't prevent mass Jewish immigration, then imposed a partition that gave the new Jewish population a huge portion of the territory.
I don't blame the Jewish immigrants since any minority would love their own country, but as a westerner with no skin in the game I find myself outraged by how in the 20th century western powers decided they could simply give away a bunch of Arab land to a foreign population. Considering how freaked out Americans get over a few illegal Mexicans it shouldn't be hard to understand why the Palestinian population has gotten so inflamed.
Yeah, when you start throwing around suppositions that reveal a bias against the OSS leadership for being "toxic", I don't see much credibility in your opinion. Why not blame cosmic rays while you're at it? It's one thing to suggest "we can do better", but quite another to just pretend that it's the fault of people you clearly don't like. You and everyone else is relying on their work to a staggering degree, and now you talk like an usurper who wants to blame the software creators instead of the monied interests who don't have an incentive to contribute back, because some alleged asshole is doing it for free already.
I think toxicity does exist but it's not really a fault of the developers as much as the medium.
If you work in an office and are able to talk to your co-workers directly it's pretty easy to have good relationships. There's lot of opportunity to talk about pleasant non-work stuff, the proximity incentivizes you to keep things civil, and when you do disagree you have body language and tone to help get your point across.
If you turn to an email only relationship all of these things are gone. There's not a lot of opportunity to bond over non-work items, the fact you never see the other person physically means it doesn't matter much if you piss them off, and if you need to communicate something you need to be very blunt.
Online communications will invariably have a much stronger bias towards assholery.
It's people like you fucking this country over. Harper was simply amazing. He was leading us out of debt and into growth for 8 bloody years and to thank him you guys oust him??? It's incredibly frustrating how people like you poInt out flaws that don't exist. Focus on how a well a country did, not random shit. The liberals have just as many bad points. Also fuck you.
What "flaws that don't exist"? The comment was about scientist's being muzzled, how did that not exist??
As for the economy part of the reason Canada was doing better is we weren't hit as hard by the '08 meltdown because our banking sector was more restricted. The Conservatives were in the process of eliminating those restrictions before '08 happened and everyone saw what a cataclysmically bad idea it was. Recently the Conservatives bet on oil and failed to diversify the economy, now that prices are down the economy is suffering.
Moreover the "balanced budget" was a bit of subterfuge based on things like selling off the GM shares from '09 for a huge loss:
"The share sale by Ottawa will help federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver balance the federal budget."
"The decision comes as no surprise to the oil industry, and they've been busily working on other ways to transport the oil."
Like, for instance, the railroad that Obama's 1%'er buddy Warren Buffett owns. I'm sure there's no connection there, though.
I'm also sure there's no connection.
I mean the basis of your conspiracy is the fact that a famous rich donor (who's relatively friendly with the administration) has some of his billions stashed in railways, and those railways will see some mild to moderate increase in business due to the cancellation.
The evidence against your conspiracy, besides the fact that that's a remarkably weak motive for a massive political decision, is the fact that Warren Buffet is on record supporting the pipeline
Buffett said that if he were president he would have passed the Keystone pipeline. Buffett said he thought the pipeline would be good for both Canada and America. Buffett said it was also a mistake to jeopardize the trading relationship with Canada.
And is it going to cut carbon emissions? Are we pretending that Canada's just going to leave it in the ground if we don't buy it?
As a lifelong resident of Alberta yes it will.
That stuff is very expensive to get out of the ground and new development is based on the profitability of the investment. The reason they wanted Keystone so bad is because it increases profitability, without Keystone the oil is harder and less profitable to ship, and so there's less development.
Obama denys the permit a few days after transcanada requests to table the permit process (due to falling oil prices) and everyone cheers.
It also helps that Justin Trudeau just became the Canadian PM. While he supported Keystone that support was a lot softer than that of Harper, the previous PM. I don't think Harper would have much political influence in the US but it's always nice to avoid an extra source of criticism.
Moreover the cancellation is a big political gift to Trudeau. The Liberals are centrists so putting them in an ongoing support/deny mode was going to alienate a big chunk of their supporters. Cancelling this early absolves him of the blame for the cancellation. Making friends with neighbouring administrations is never a bad thing.
Reading his statement on the matter, his economic justifications are irrelevant ("the pipeline wouldn't create jobs or lower gas prices for Americans"): since it's not proposed that the US government pay for the pipeline, these issues are only relevant against costs -- and he doesn't discuss any costs! He isn't citing the direct environmental damage of digging the pipeline and creating associated infrastructure (roads, power cables, pumping stations etc). He isn't citing the risk of leaks.
I was wondering if Obama would claim climate risks since that would have required him to quantify his estimate of the accuracy of the models used to predict the climate effects of the pipeline. But naturally he didn't claim risks to the climate -- only risks to US leadership on climate issues. That's a fair reason to make national-level decisions, but is not a win for the environment.
Well the economic justifications are relevant is they fail to justify the costs, as to the costs you just listed a bunch, including the extra CO2 contributing to climate change and damage to US leadership that he focused on. Obama's claim is that the economic benefit is mild and not enough to cover the environmental and political problems.
The risk of leaks and environment damage from construction are relevant, but they're not the justification for the cancellation. (possibly because they're cancelled out by increases in other shipping methods)
This is what happens when you allow sociopaths to run corporations. Sociopaths should, upon discovery, be forceably removed from society at gunpoint and sent to an island together where they can fuck each other, eat each other, or whatever it is these vile neurologically inhuman monsters do to each other. No sociopath should ever have control of even a single normal, empathic human being in even the tiniest way.,
That's a very sociopathic approach to the problem.
Sociopaths are human beings who have what could be considered in a mental illness, in some settings they can be quite dangerous and harmful, in others their illness can even be an asset.
> And on what grounds do you consider it "a strict, conservative, authoritarian, religious society"?
Strict: law is applied rigidly with no leniency or consideration of circumstances
We know the law is strictly applied (and in some cases as with plants is ridiculous) but otherwise people were very relaxed and the society didn't seem strict at all.
Conservative: Conformity is expected, independent thinking and change are not tolerated
I disagree, except for the law, the central plot point, they were remarkably open and invited a group of aliens who were complete strangers to come down and mingle. That is extremely unconservative.
Authoritarian: The laws are decreed by a dominant ruling entity and must be obeyed on pain of death
Religious: The people take it on faith that the dominant ruling entity is Right and not to be questioned
The fact that they can mate freely doesn't change any of this.
Well the authority is the alien playing god, otherwise I don't recall any authority figures such as a ruler or head priest, just the mediators who don't have much autonomy. An actual authoritarian society (ie Romulans) has a lot of layers of rulers, each with a great deal of control over their subordinates.
I admit I forgot about the god when I wrote my comment but I don't think strong religious belief is incompatible with leftist society. I think the best description of that society is a powerful entity trying to use the broken-window model to impose a left-wing paradise on a planet.
Note that conservatism is strongest in rural communities where law enforcement is distant and people use strong social mores to keep potential troublemakers in line. In the society from the planet you don't need to worry about enforcing social conformity because you're less worried about some weird dude doing something illegal and harming you.
Must have features GPS, bluetooth and music storage for roughly 5 hours of use during a marathon.
Music/podcasts are great for training but generally frowned upon in actual races, I think a lot of big marathons actually ban them since people not hearing could be a safety issue.
I've personally never had an issue getting bored during races and for training I just bring my phone and a pair of bluetooth headphones for podcasts.
Garmin Forerunner 15 only lasts about 3 hours with GPS on (despite Manufacturer claims to the contrary)
That sounds like a warranty issue. I don't know about the 15 but my old 301 lasted through the entirety of a 10.5 hour ultra.
That being said if I were to get a new watch I might be tempted to peak at the smart watches.
Ah, because they have different sexual mores than you're used to, they must be politically left? Or did you mean it's the kind of society a "lefty" on Earth would want to live in, because they're all about hippie free love, baby?
It must be bizarre to view the rest of the world through conservative derp-colored glasses...
And on what grounds do you consider it "a strict, conservative, authoritarian, religious society"?
Sure they have a very harsh and unsympathetic justice system, but claiming they're conservative on that basis is committing the same projection you're accusing me of.
The entire point of the episode's early twist is that this outrageously open and liberal planet had an absolutely draconian justice system that no one on the Enterprise anticipated.
HuffPo actually explains how the rules changed:
The DNC's rules for candidate participation in their debates were pretty straightforward--or so we thought. In August, before the Lessig campaign began, DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, announced the standards for being included in the debates. As she described the rule, a candidate had to have 1 percent in three DNC sanctioned national polls, "in the six weeks prior to the debate."
[...]
And indeed, that is precisely the rule that was applied in the first debate. As CNN specified in a late September memo, to qualify a candidate had to poll at 1 percent in the "polls released between August 1, 2015 and October 10, 2015." The first debate was October 12.
[...]
During that call, I was told that the DNC participation standard for the debates was for a candidate to be at one percent in three polls conducted, "six weeks prior to the debate"--not the clarified rule cited earlier by Wasserman-Shultz and the DNC political director that a candidate had to be at one percent in three polls conducted "in the six weeks prior to the debate."
So the DNC had said 1% in the six weeks before the debate and used that standard in the first debate, but in the second debate where Lessig qualified by that standard they switched to 6 weeks before the debate.
It seems odd even if you don't take the wording at face value and wonder about the missing upper bound in the range given by "six weeks before the debate".
I can see why the DNC doesn't want a candidate who is there almost explicitly as a one issue protest candidate but that's a fairly dirty way to go about it.
How the fuck is that society "lefty" ?? If anything, it parallels a strict, conservative, authoritarian, religious society.
The justice system sure, but if I recall the society itself was downright libertine, it was strongly implied that the adult crew members basically spent their leave in orgies.
>Star Trek has always embraced tough social questions. If a new series has any claim to the
>Star Trek tradition is should absolutely be exploring questions such as gender equality,
>non-traditional relationships, and debates over what kind of language is proper.
I very much want an episode where they find a planet that has gone so far down the PC speech tunnel that saying the slightest wrong thing, or even having a micro-aggressive intonation, is grounds for execution. Because Star Trek should be exploring both the good and bad ideas in society.
I want that, but it will really be about cool space explosions and techno-babble.
And holodeck things coming alive.
They did something similar, it was Season 1 where the show was fairly awful but they had a lefty paradise with a very easily triggered death penalty.
Part of the reason that episode (and S1 in general) was so awful is that the premise was absurd, heavy handed, and generally dull. Similarly "a planet that has gone so far down the PC speech tunnel that saying the slightest wrong thing, or even having a micro-aggressive intonation, is grounds for execution" would also be very heavy handed and dull. Where's the conflict? Of course micro-aggression death penalty planet is wrong!
More interesting would be a Federation military campaign where there had been an atrocity at some point. An alien delegation is visiting and one of the delegation members was present for the atrocity and is still severely traumatized. An group of Enterprize crew members talking about the campaign, start recounting that incident in very insensitive pro-Federation way, the traumatized alien loses his temper and attacks, and now everyone has to figure out how to deal with it.
So there you go. You have PC speech (biased retelling of history), microagressions (telling that history in the alien's presence), trigger warnings (alien didn't know that topic would come up), and victimization (should the trauma and provocations give the alien an excuse?).
Best yet you can adjust the scenario so there isn't a clear outcome, maybe the atrocity wasn't the Federation's fault, maybe the alien kills the crew member, etc. You end up with a story you can actually think about, the kind of story Star Trek should be telling.
Why do I have this nagging feeling that will be less of going boldly?
Fine I'll take the bait.
Star Trek has always been highly progressive. In the 60's they had black women and Russians at the height of the Cold War. They had the first on-screen inter-race kiss.
In the late 80's and early 90's they continued with their cashless society, they were an explicitly diplomatic vessel that was actively trying to find peaceful solutions to violent confrontations.
DS9 was based around something that looked very similar to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Star Trek has always embraced tough social questions. If a new series has any claim to the Star Trek tradition is should absolutely be exploring questions such as gender equality, non-traditional relationships, and debates over what kind of language is proper.
Of course if they're up to the standard of previous Star Treks they'll do it with a lot skill so people won't be ranting against them as SJW. Then again if they're up to the standards of the JJ Abrams movies they won't be able to recognize a social controversy if it hit them with a photon torpedo.
On the one hand, I'm not fond of black hats. On the other, that's really, really funny.
The summary said it was a botnet, which suggests a lot of hijacked computers (and illegal unethical activity), but unless there's evidence that wasn't mentioned it could just have easily been a bunch of bots running on the person's own laptop.
Correlation not equal to causation comes to mind here. I wonder if the study accounted for the fact that the best lawyers are probably the ones most likely to make the most money and thus have more money to contribute to campaigns. (And by being the best, they also win more cases.)
I think the better non-conspiracy interpretation is that lawyers are going to support judges who share their judicial philosophy, and judges will tend to rule in favour of arguments that reflect their judicial philosophy.
However, even if that is the case and there's no attempt on either side to introduce a bias it should still be stopped.
For one thing eliminating bias is really tough, it's a very difficult task for a judge to treat the lawyer who gave him a pile of money as fairly as the lawyer who backed the person trying to put them out of a job.
And even if the judge succeeds that's only part of the problem, a critical job of the justice system is to give people faith in the integrity of the justice system. People won't have faith in a system that seems to be rigged.
Linux is controlled by money because its authors have been hired by commercial companies who control their employees. Red Hat management forbids to create competitive solutions, I speculate because Red Hat is partially owned by proprietary IT companties in a risk of FOSS competition.
systemd was created for containers. Containers are a quick&dirty way of packaging. Containers again come from the evil business side of Linux, no sane person would make that debugging nightmare happen.
RedHat was backing Upstart, a Canonical project. Systemd was started by RedHat developers working without the direction of management, it was forces external to RedHat who actually got RedHat on board with Systemd.
I did an Internship with RedHat years ago, I don't know how they compare to other open source companies but in my experience they give their developers a remarkable amount of autonomy.
they are truly good guys. Most of their competitors, F-Secure being the exception I guess, would have charged money for this service, or not even bother in the first place.
Full marks to them them for doing this though they're not exactly perfect. It's only been two months since it came out that they were tricking competitors' products into identifying legitimate software as malware, just like most big companies sometimes they're awesome, sometimes they're terrible.
The thing is that no one is able to match the US's combination of previous testing data and simulation abilities so in a no-test world (or a world with only 1 or 2 symbolic tests) the US has a huge advantage over other nations claiming Nuclear capabilities.
This is why the US no longer performs Nuclear tests, so they can raise the diplomatic costs of performing tests for other nations. And since the US isn't going to start testing anyway ratifying the treaty only makes the diplomatic cost for other nations higher.
A 'non-treaty' that has so many holes that people are already debating if Iran has already broken it. The only thing the deal does is makes sure to delay Iran getting a nuke until after Obama (and, therefore, Kerry) leaves office.
Who is debating if Iran has already broken it? The same people who are still spinning BS about the Iranians getting 24 days to delay inspections to undeclared sites (more like 17 days), claiming that Iranians will be inspecting their own facilities or that the US has to defend Iran in a war?
The Iran deal is a good idea, the only reasons to oppose it have nothing to do with keeping Nukes away from Iran.
Similarly ratifying the CTBT is a good idea that makes the world safer, improves the US's reputation, and improves the US's relative military advantage. The only reason to oppose it is politics.
6: No judge would use this for a sentence in a case. Since mentally ill people tend to not exactly be rich in general, no judge would take advantage of that fact and pass longer sentences to keep the private prison campaign funds rolling in.
If someone is mentally ill to the point where they could not, at some time, tell right from wrong, they are not held criminally responsible, and are committed to a hospital until they are deemed to be a lower risk.
Which brings us to:
5: No DA would ever use this data for arrests so he or she can meet their quota to keep their campaign contributions coming in from the private prison lobby. Remember: 48 states signed an agreement stating they would keep their private jails at 90% or more capacity or else pay fines by the hour. With marijuana being legalized, those bed spaces have to be filled up somehow.
DAs wouldn't want any data that a person is mentally ill to be submitted to the court - it will screw up their conviction rate, which means those cells stay empty.
Now look at this:
IANAL but mental illness generally isn't a defense, the only way it helps is if you were so ill that you couldn't control your actions and/or determine right from wrong. Evidence of a mental illness such as depression (or something more serious) is probably going to help the prosecution by stigmatizing the jury against the defendant and making an irrational action (ie a criminal act) seem more likely.
Either way it's pretty rare:
Successful NGRI defenses are rare. While rates vary from state to state, on average less than one defendant in 100—0.85 percent— actually raises the insanity defense nationwide. Interestingly, states with higher rates of NGRI defenses tend to have lower success rates for NGRI defenses; the percentage of all defendants found NGRI is fairly constant, at around 0.26 percent.
4: This data would never be used by an ex-spouse as a way to say that the kids are in mortal danger and kill all rights completely in a divorce.
So what happens to all those people who are fighting to keep their kids, plan to drop this bomb, do their research and then find out that the only person in the relationship who is mentally ill is them? Or that they're both mentally ill? The most common form of mental illness is depression, and if it's controlled no judge will use it to decide a custody case.
I could go on, but why bother? Seems to me that there are to many from the tin-foil hat crowd who need to see a shrink. And give up their guns, before they hurt someone.
Exactly how do you propose to "control" depression? Anti-depressants and therapy can help, but that's a long way from calling them a cure.
I'm not one of the tinfoil hat crowd but I think these are legitimate concerns. Mental illness is heavily stigmatized and tech companies snooping on your behaviour to determine if you are mentally ill can have serious consequences. I don't think it will happen at this stage but we'll get there eventually.
That being said mental illness is a serious issue, if Google is somehow able to help people dealing with depression or other issues then that could be a very good thing.
This assumes that the $180 book is better than the $75 book. If it is superior, then requiring that book over the cheaper version makes sense. However, that is clearly not the criteria here; the criteria is "does this book make the chair and vice-chair money", with no regard for the quality of the text.
Regardless of other motives the fact they wrote the book suggests they are fairly passionate about the subject, how it should be taught, and what the textbook should contain.
That being said it doesn't mean the book is the right choice for the department. Even if they aren't making extra money the chair and vice-chair are going to be biased towards their own book. I don't know how the book was chosen but it's really hard to avoid a conflict of interest.
Why should Amazon care? Nobody is going to stop shopping there. People just want their cheap shit, and don't care who they do business with. If most people could save $0.50 buying their toilet paper from known child rapists, they would.
Uber, Lyft, Amazon Prime, etc. There's bound to be a lot more of these flexible jobs in the future that fall somewhere between contract work and shift work, this suit is likely to result in some important precedents.
A couple franchises of a fast food burger place in the city I live in did something similar, and actually pays a starting salary of $15/hr. They were doing this even before the rallying for that rate in fast food. The places end up packed, doing better than other near by chains. Yet the service is fast, and people there work hard to keep it clean, efficient and do anything else within reason to help customers. And that was before the newspaper wrote a blurb about their pay policy, although I don't think the newspaper changed much for their business, as most people in the area preferred them already.
That seems like a solid strategy actually. I think a lot of adults in entry level labour are very border-line workers (ie very high rates of absenteeism, low professional standards, etc), but there's also a subset of really responsible hardworking people who due to some combination of things like education and criminal records aren't able to move past entry level positions.
If you offer a solid wage premium you can get a workforce comprising of entirely of those top employees and have a very nicely operating business.
The militia part is not modifying the right to bear arms. The quote reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
For those with reading comprehension, there are two statements in this sentence. 1) that a militia that is well regulated is necessary to keep a free state secure and 2) that the people have a right to keep and bear arms that the government cannot infringe upon.
There's one more thing that's important to note -- (3) these two things are combined in the same sentence because (1) is **a** justification for (2). Some interpret the sentence to mean that (1) is the only justification for (2), but the history of these types of clauses in, say, state constitutions from the same time does not really support such a reading.
Anyhow, the more useful aid I find in interpreting these things is to transfer the statement to something less controversial:
"A well educated electorate, being necessary to the democratic function of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed."
If the Constitution said that, would we infer that only registered voters (part of the "electorate") should get to keep and read books? If you're a kid or you don't vote, you don't get to read?
OR... do we interpret it to mean that the first part of the sentence is ONE important reason why "the people" in general should get to read books -- but it only applies to a subset of "the people," namely the "electorate." There may be other good reasons why other people may benefit from books, and hence the right is granted to "the people" later in the sentence (rather than a repetition of "the electorate" only) but the Constitution (which is a fairly terse document in general) doesn't list all of them.
Personally, I find the latter interpretation (i.e., a general right for "the people") to be much more compelling when we transfer the logic to a sentence on a less controversial topic.
(By the way, I'm actually in favor of much greater regulations on guns, perhaps even beyond what the 2nd amendment implies. But I refuse to twist the meaning of this sentence to accord with my personal belief.)
Though what happens in that interpretation the government system changed and people stopped voting? It's been a very long time since the US has had well-regulated militias in the way they envisioned it in that clause, nor are militias even able to fulfil the purpose that was envisioned if they were recreated.