A little Supreme Court Analysis re: Federalism
on
Indecision 2002
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· Score: 2
I wish I were as optimistic as you are about the future of federalism....
I'm cautiously optimistic. It depends on three factors 1) Who retires on the court (effected by how long the Reps control the process) and 2) How willing Republicans are to put forward conservative/strict-constructionists.
As to who will retire - I think Rehnquist will definitely get out while the getting is good. Even if Republicans go all out in pushing a conservative on the court I doubt you will get much better from a federalist point-of-view. BUT, O'Conner may also get out while the going is good. Considering that she is usually the one who decides which way the usual 5-4 split goes this is a big gain for federalism IF the Republicans stick by their guns in sending them to the court. All of this is really offset if Stevens retires - even in the most ideologically committed Republicans will probably cave (to a degree) to the idea of preserving some sort of balance on the court so I would expect that they would put of a more "moderate" justice - probably someone like an O'Conner, still a big win for federalism.
Of course Stevens & other liberals will probably try to wait out Bush, hoping they can retire with a Democratic Prez and hopefully Senate. This could happen but it is important to remember that we are in (or just coming out of) a recession NOW and what comes after a recession? Just in time for W's re-election campaign we will probably be enjoying the inevitable up-turn after a recession just like Reagan's landslide in '84. Republicans in the Senate will finally catch a break with only 15 seats to defend v. the Dems 19, A decent number of Dems are in strong Republican states - Daschle in ND, Edwards in NC, Hollings in SC, Miller in GA, Reid in NV, and Dorgan in ND. Daschle, Miller and maybe Edwards win easy if they run BUT Daschle & Edwards might try for Prez and Miller could retire or even switch parties.
Finally it comes down to how far are Reps willing to exploit their oppurtunity to shift the ideology of the court. I think they are MUCH more willing than they had been in the past. The Dems have politicized the court far more than was common in the past (when Republican appointees were as likely to end up liberal as conservative) and have managed to alienate even the more moderate Republicans that they could have persuaded previously. There is a strong feeling among Reps that "turnabout is fair play" and if Democrats are willing to blatantly apply a "litmus test" (previously a taboo) on an issue that is ultimately a federalist issue (almost any federalist will be anti-Roe for federalist if not pro-life reasons). Republicans will return the favor (albeit more subtly) - I think they are FAR more willing to fight for conservative nominees than they have ever been before.
A little worse than you think.
on
Indecision 2002
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· Score: 2
I guess the Democrats have some pretty hard numbers that show a vast majority of people who intend to vote after the polls close are democrats (go figure)
It's not that late voters trend Democratic but that they are only keeping Democratic strongholds open. So Democratic party officials complain about Democratic officials running the election to a Democratic judge to keep a Democratic stronghold open longer so that more Democrats can vote. At no point in the process are Republicans involved in this little drama.
For all those saying "well there really are problems, people are waiting in line" that is often true, they have to have *some* excuse after all (a cynic would wonder if the "problems" aren't done purposefully just for that prupose). In any event, the standard ruling of the Democratic judge is to keep the polls open for another 1-1/2 to 2 hours NOT to let the people in already in line vote. As it is the party usually use these "problems" as an occasion for an aggresive last minute get-out-the-vote drive with the added urgency that "they" (the Democratic!!! officals responsible for the SNAFU?) are trying to "steal the election - don't let them!" In Arkansas this year they almost immediately rushed out a (pre?)recorded message alerting Democratic voters of this attempt by "them" (Democrats!) to suppress the minority vote.
You'd think the republicans would have enough brain cells to get the democrats to agree (or at least give them certified, return receipt notice) as to the time the polls are going to close.
Well of course they DID it's just that the Democrats will always look for that little advantage. The Republicans do as well of course, there are all sorts of dirty tricks the parties pull on each other. But screwing with the actual mechanisms of the election is beyond the pale IMHO. The polls should close on time - if there is a line at the time of the closing the law should let those *already* in line vote but not allow anyone new to get in line (I don't know but I'm willing to bet that is exactly what the law DOES say) These cheap little lawsuit tricks before partisan judges cheapens and undermines the whole process. The rank-and-file Dems believe their disengenious leaders that the Republicans attempted to rig the election and the Republicans feel the same of the Dems - all for the sake of a few hundred votes.
Wrong on one important point
on
Indecision 2002
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· Score: 3, Interesting
For example, why is it a federal crime to use a hand gun near a school,
because it's NOT! This law was overturned on exactly the 10th Amendment argument you are making. Sadly there are still lots of laws that completely ignore the concept of federalism but at least the Supremes are *starting* apply it here and there.
From that point of view last night's election is good news. With control of the senate GWB will likely get to appoint much more conservative judges than he would otherwise - judges who are strict constructionists and much more likely to uphold the 10th ammendment in all it's chaotic decentralized glory. States will be much more free to follow their own course - more libertarian in AZ, more theocratic in GA, maybe even more progressive in VT.
Remember this is military spending here, normal sensible economics no longer apply. Remember the special air-conditioned hangers for Stealth aircraft?
Even if another nation goes through this much trouble & expense it is still a "win" for the US to have made them do so. Now they can only afford a fraction of the missles they could have made absent this technology. You probably knock most of the nations currently developing ICBM's completely out of the game (N. Korea, Iran, Pakistan) and severely limit the number of effective weapons more advanced nations can build & maintain(Russia, China & all our allies for that matter) - instead of China building 100 ICBM's they have to spend more money on just 10 and have to spend even more in maintaining their perfect reflective state.
I don't remeber this all that well but I seem to recall that back in the Reagan SDI days a congressman asked Weinberger(?) about spinning a missle as a defense against x-ray lasers -. Weinberger said that would be about as effective a defense as a spinning ballerina against a machine gun.
This isn't about chat, sex (despite the jokes), your social life or mental problems - it's about conveying a certain type of information to the appropriate senses. There is a lot of information which can't easily be conveyed via text or even video but could be very well conveyed using touch.
This type of technology opens up a lot of possibilities. I'm sure you could also scale up or down the sensations you are feeling. Feeling and picking up that softball sized object may translate over the wires to moving a tiny obstruction in the patients aorta or moving ten-ton boulder in the road. In either case you can *feel* if it slips, if you picked it up off center, or if it is stuck on something.
Why did Apple choose to go out and start a new kernel project when they could have just based OS X on the Linux kernel instead?
MacOS X is really an upgrade of OpenStep/NextStep (essentially Darwin, Cocoa & display Postscript instead of Quartz). I'm pretty sure it is actually older than Linux - I'm certain the Mach microkernel is older than the Linux kernel.
To some extent though it is fair to say that MacOS X is "new" since they added/changed a lot to make OpenStep into something Mac users would accept as a "MacOS" (though not so much to the lower-level stuff Moshe was testing). They would have had to do even more work to get it all running on top of Linux, and to gain what?
As was mine. Listen inner-city public schools are completely failing their students. We have known this for many years, attempts have been made all along to fix them but they are still failing. I think it is (figuratively) criminal that we won't give the kids that could *for less money* escape from this system the option to do so. It is (sarcasm)"Nice"(/sarcasm) that we are willing to wait for generations for reform after reform to (maybe) work rather than give these kids the chance to get into schools that are already succeeding in the same environment.
but it geographically unworkable for you. Many cities, especially Detroit, don't have decent mass transportation, thus it would impossible for kids to use their vouchers. The geography creates a barrier that can't be easily overcome.
A) While many cities may not have decent mass transportation most cities have mass transportation sufficient to solve many of the problems we are talking about. (I see private school kids using the "T" in Boston or the crappy RIPTA busses in Providence all the time - *particularly* in poor neighborhoods). B) Many troubled neighborhoods already have private schools - no geography problem!. C) Some private schools do offer transportation and/or are willing to help coordinate efforts to solve this problem.
This geography issue is a red herring. Wherever private charity has stepped into a failing school system with private vouchers or in the few pilot government voucher programs (Clevland and Milwaukee) they have been SWAMPED with far more people than they had vouchers (usually a third or better of those that qualified for the program). All those parents seemed to think they could overcome the "problem" of transportation. The parents that DID get the vouchers managed to find solutions.
How would you like to trade your current salary for a teachers salary?
In a heartbeat. (you must have missed the spot where I lamented my current poverty). I did teach (briefly) in a private school, as did my wife - believe me most private school teachers would LOVE to have a public school salary. You seem to be under the illusion that all private schools are Andover Acadamy - that simply is not the case, most private schools are rather modest affairs with shoe-string budgets & facilities that are often on par (albeit cleaner & better maintained) with the worst public schools.
And as for the picking teachers, give me a break.
I didn't mean to pick on teachers as such, But it is true that most teachers in failing schools *choose* private schools (despite their relatively meager income) or commute from suburbs with decent schools. In Detroit public school teachers are twice as likely to send their kids to private schools than the population as a whole. THIS IS THE RIGHT THING FOR THEM TO DO!! They shold NEVER sacrifice their own childrens well being at the altar of ideology. BUT in as much as their union is willing to sacrifice OTHER peoples children on that altar they are fair game to be picked on. As it turns out even while their union strenously opposes vouchers many public school teachers (one suspects the most altruistic, and caring ones) SUPPORT school vouchers - the Association of American Educators surveyed its members (90 percent of whom are government school teachers) and discovered that 62 percent were in favor of school choice (including vouchers) while only 32 percent opposed. This pretty much agrees with my own observations of public school teachers I know. The public school teacher I know who is most vociferously opposed is my father-in-law. He opposes vouchers because he fears government involvement that might come with the money would screw up the *private* schools - and then where would he send his kids? After teaching for years in the inner-city, observing chronic failure, apathy, social promotion, and intense violence including the murder of a teacher by a kid he knew and a quite credible death threat against himself - well, lets just say he's grown a bit cynical.
As for the rest of your comments about the crushing burden of administration, babby sitting etc. I totally agree. Unfortunately the system is currently impossible to reform. I believe the only hope of reform is if there is effective competition.
Perhaps start with a 1st grade elementary classroom in the innercity and show us how to get all those kids reading at 1st grade level by the time they leave.
Umm... try taking a walk to the closest parochial school in the most run-down section of the city. Serving the EXACT SAME socio-economic group with all the same problems and pathologies. They have been built from the start with the reforms you claim you want (but seem impossible to attain) in the public schools: effective discipline, smaller class sizes, focus on education rather than on tertiary concerns. They are already succeeding but the cost, even though it's only a little more than a third of what we spend per pupil in public schools, is too high for most inner-city parents.
I totally agree with you - no matter how weak the security is on a web site if it exists then hacking it is analagous to "breaking in" and it's a crime. But that is not the case here - there was no security at all. They way the technology works is in Reuters legal favor - they *asked* Initia for the page (in a straightforward way) and Intentia *gave* it to them - end of story.
I can't bring myself to agree with the rather simplistic analysis of the original poster you are respondoing to BUT this statement is simply absurd. It's so apparently ignorant I'm tempted to believe it's a troll, but I'll bite anyway.
If Bill Clinton was the president 9/11 would never have happened.
The 9/11 hijackers plotted their attack for years, years during which Bill Clinton WAS president. While Bill Clinton was President Bin Laden issued his Fatwa against America, and certain arabs were attending flight schools.
When he told the arabs to go fuck themselves they decided to try and fight back.
I must have missed that particular address to the nation.
Clinton did not believe in telling the world to go fuck itself and he certainly never imagined himself to be some sort of king/god.
I don't know about that - didn't you see his entrance to the Democratic national convention? And having palace concubines certainly seems a bit more king/god behaviour. (Sorry I just couldn't resist)
Seriously though, you might have noticed that during Clinton's presidency and during the campaign the Republicans were constantly criticising him for being interventionsist and turning us into the worlds police. The Republicans by contrast were being accused of isolationism. The actual distinctions between their policies was more nuanced than this - Clinton (and Gore) believed in a fairly aggresive interventionist foreign policy to pacify the hot spots of the world with the minimum of force required. Send in the marines to all sorts of places to but tell them to be as nice as possible. The military goals in many of these cases were pretty vague. This policy appeared to work in Bosnia, we forced a regime change with an air war that made such delicate "nice" decisions as choosing not to bomb particular military targets because there was priceless fine art hanging in the lobby or bombing Iraqi military headquarters at night so nobody would get hurt. In Somalia it failed - we escalated our mission but denied our troops tanks they said they needed (the guys there were told to arrest were VERY heavily armed) because tanks would be "provacative" (as though seeking to arrest the most heavily armed warlord in the region wouldn't provoke him anyway). After that famous "BlackHawk Down" battle we simply left with our tail between our legs. No less an authority on Al Quaida's motivation than Bin Laden himself took this as proof that America was a paper tiger, that it would run at the first sight of blood. And so he resolved to produce a lot of blood. It seems that shortly after this episode Al Quada (who trained the troops that felled those Black Hawks) escalated their attacks.
Replican foreign policy at the time was based on the Weinberger doctrine (sometimes called the Powell doctrine):
1) Military force should only be used when a *vital* interest of the United States is at issue.
2) That as much as possible military conflict is a binary state - either we are at war or we are not. Once the decision has been made the commitment is total - our fighter pilots in Bosnia bomb that building and to hell with the fine art in the lobby, you bomb Iraqi HQ in the day and kill as many of the enemy generals as possible and those guys in Mogadishu get tanks. If you are unwilling to do any of the above you shouldn't have combat troops there in the first place.
3) The military goals must be very clearly defined so you know when you have won. "Sending a message" is insufficient - what was the goal of any particular bombing in Iraq? Just to "send a message" without any real thought that we would actually change anything concrete. Clintons' official policy goal in Iraq was *identical* to Bush's - regime change. The main difference is that Clinton had no particular intention to do anything to effect that goal aside from occasional meaningless bombings, killing people to no real purpose. It's hard to argue that such a policy is less arrogant than one that while certainly willing to kill people is at least attempting to achieve some goal by doing so.
You see, laying off 25% of the teachers wouldn't be difficult, but it wouldn't save you 25% in salaries. The union contracts protect the teachers with longer careers and enforce mandatory yearly rases.
Good point. All the more reason for the teacher's union to oppose any potential solution that threatens jobs, regardless of it's merits. The fact is they would have still have to cut the budget by 25% - they may have to cut a full 50% of the staff to get that 25% budget cut - and if they really screw up such a transition, inflexible unions, incompetant managment, poltically motivated decisions they could screw it up to the point where they simply dissolve away. It must be said that this would be profoundly unfair to the many dedicated and caring teachers that would lose their jobs. But the current system is even more spectacularly unfair to many thousands of kids. The teachers are adults, they will find another job (the nearby private schools will probably be hiring;) It is much harder for an illiterate graduate to rebound from the misfortune the system is visiting upon him.
I have to call bullsh*t on this particular myth. In the 22 years since Reagan was elected in 1980 the only time the budget was balanced was when a Dem was president.
Fine, and what does it have to do with what I wrote? Whether the Republicans balance the budget or not they are still (at least somewhat) more likely to cut and much less likely to raise Ms. Fonda's taxes than the Democrats she is supporting. I'm not making a statement about the wisdom of either policy - simply pointing out that Ms Fonda is NOT spending her money to further the interests of herself or her employer. I would assume that at least SOME of the employees of Microsoft (or any other company) are similarly supporting candidates for partisan, ideological reasons rather than as a lobbying effort on behalf of their employer.
Anyway as for the content of your rant. Aside from abortion there is almost no area where the Republicans want a more intrusive government than Democrats. The Democrats certainly want to know & control a lot more of my financial and business decisions. Whether I smoke, own a gun, say bad things about people or build on my back lot (it's a bit soggy) & generally want a lot more of my paycheck which will go to Washington & some of it will come back in the form of various benefits (I don't make that much). As for the war-on-drugs you are about as likely to find Republicans opposed to the drug war as Democrats - Neither party seems likely to end that policy any time soon, But I'm willing to bet that the fact that National Review is pro-legalization will do more for that cause than all the glassy eyed hippies selling hemp products in the world.
As for defense, you are certainly right. Of course most conservatives (if not Republicans) think that foreign policy and defense are just about the only valid purposes of the federal government - the rest of the functions of goverment are functions of *state* government. They take Article 1,Section 8 as an exhaustive list. By their account most of that 60% that isn't explictly spelled out by Section 8 is actually unconstitutional, a violation of the 10th ammendment.
Are parents going to drive their kids to the good schools in the subburbs every morning?
Umm... I suppose they could of course in an inner-city they could simply use public transportation to get to the (usually quite nearby) private schools. I would assume that any parent using a voucher to pay for private school would have figure this out. Some private schools, especially those that cater to the disadvantaged have transportation available.
What about "schools of choice"? This is a fancy way of saying, we want to take our tax dollars and fund exclusive private schools that our kids go to.
That is bull. Most (if not all) school choice plans that have been proposed are either means tested or are limited to children currently attending a school that is deemed to be a failure. In either case "you" don't benefit.
Also, the exclusive private schools don't have to take problem kids or handicapped kids
And yet many do, indeed many private shools ONLY take handicapped kids while others ONLY take problem kids.
So we get the money and the best kids, and you can turn your public school into a home for all the people we reject. Nice!
Even if this were the case (which it is not) the current system is to reject ALL the kids. Bright kid from a lousy neighborhood with poor parents and a lousy school - "well sorry kid you have to fail with the school because if we let you go to a decent school it wouldn't be fair to that kid that beats you up every day. You want to go to that nice private school across town? - that's only for rich kids, poor kids have to go here. Oh where do MY kids go, well I commuted in to give you this message, my kids are going to a nice school in the suburbs". As you said - Nice!
The republicans need to stop trying to rape all the money out of public education so they can go fund "star wars" or "bombing Iraq".
Bzzt. wrong on this one. Education is not primarily funded by the Federal government but by local and state governments - Perhaps a Republican state senator or governor is "raping" these funds (this generally means his proposed *increase* is not as big as his opponents proposal) but not to fund "star wars" or to "bomb Iraq". Also, Republicans generally can't "rape" these funds if they wanted too. Big cities are almost always dominated by Democrats as are many of the states at issue here are as well.
Lastly, packing in bodies has nothing to do with Federal FUNDS. The reason bodies are packed in is because THERE AREN'T ENOUGH TEACHERS IN THE INNER-CITY, so class sizes grow HUGE!
One proposed solution, one I'm sure the teacher's union is in favor of is to pay teachers more and to hire more teachers. There is a lot of validity to this but part of the issue is missmanagment of *existing* funds. Inner city schools have a lousy teacher to administrator ratio. They are top heavy with bureaucracy and the existing funds are wasted to fund that bureaucracy. Unfortunately there are tremendous political barriers to fixing the structural aspects of this problem and throwing more money at it suffers from diminishing returns and perverse results - a larger and larger percentage of the extra money is missmanaged as an ever larger percentage of the increased funds pay for an even more bloated system.
Another solution would be to reduce class size by allowing kids to go to schools that aren't failing. Take just half of what the average public school is spending per child ($5,987 in 1999 according to the Digest of Education Statistics - of course remembering that most inner city schools are spending ABOVE average.) and give it as a voucher to interested parents and you have almost comletely covered the average tuition for that "exclusive" private school ($3,116 - same source) or more than cover the average tuition of a parochial school ($2,178). KEEP the other half (or better) and spend it on the kids that don't chose private schools.The problem with this plan isn't that there isn't enough money to spend on the kids, it's that there isn't enough money to spend on union jobs. If (for example) half the kids choose vouchers you will have 50% of the kids left at the school but have still have 75% of the money. You can spend all of that money on retaining 75% of the teachers and have much smaller class sizes. BUT you are going to have to lay-off 25% of the teachers. It doesn't really matter to a layed-off employee that his former employer is now producing a better product. That employee's union is (appropriately) more concerned about his job than the quality of the product he produces. To bring it back on topic that union is spending more than all but any other group in the country to keep that from happening.
How can the interests of individuals even come close to being recognized in an arena like that?
If that individual is Jane Fonda by outspending them by a massive amount. To quote Counterpunch.org
Jane Fonda
continued to be the largest soft money donor in federal
politics. During the first quarter of 2002, Fonda gave
$400,000 to Pro-Choice Vote, bringing her total donations to
the abortion rights group to $12.7 million since July 1,
2000
Anyways a couple of points: First off much of what OpenSecrets.org is tracking here IS contributions by individuals. The methodology of OpenSecrets.org is somewhat flawed, or at least debatable. They are not just taking the contributions of Corporate PACs but also take the contributions of individuals and count them as the contributions of their employers. SO Peter Amstein giving 100% of his money to Democrats and George Spix giving all of his money to Republicans is assumed not to be because they are committed (and wealthy) partisans but because Microsoft Corp is directing their giving for the corporations purposes. This probably has *some* merit when you are talking about the very top tier of management giving hundred of thousands. But Open Secrets also includes every $200 or more contribution by every cubicle dweller at Microsoft. If you gave $200 to a candidate because you agreed with their position on Abortion, Open Secrets doesn 't see it as a healthy participation in democracy but as a nefarious plot by Micro$oft to influence Washington. Even for the big donors I think at least *some* of that money is probably donated not by corporate dictates for corporate purposes but because the individual is a partisan for one or the other party or for some cause. Jane Fonda's $12 million dollar expenditure probably has more to do with her stance on abortion than with trying to get special breaks for Universal Studios. She probably even giving money to candidates that support abortion at the *expense* of her personal financial interests - The Pro-choice Democrats she supports are likely to raise her taxes quite a bit more than the pro-life Republicans she is seeking to defeat.
Also the huge organizations designed to aggregate money (corporations) don't hold a candle next to the huge organizations whose purpose is to aggregate political power - out of the top ten groups donating money to politics only one is a corporations (Phillip Morris) three are proffessional Associations (Realtors, Trial Lawyers & Doctors) the rest are unions.
unlike seti, cgi rendering typically has an artist/tech at the other end waiting for the answer. They don't have time to sit and wait days/weeks b
I'm not talking about the fairly low-res rendering as the artists & modellers are working on the project, I'm talking about the final high-res render which already takes not weeks but months. The original Toy Story took nearly a year on a render farm with 100 computers. Each frame took 6-8 hours for the farm to render, each second of film had 24-frames. The data obviously is already being divied up in a way that each computer is NOT working on an entire frame. I'm not sure exactly how the data and computation is divied up but I wouldn't doubt that it is already being divided in a way that the actual tasks each computer is working on is pretty well abstracted from the models, textures etc. which are the "crown jewels" of Pixar's intellectual property. The fact that we are already talking about very long-term jobs (no artist is sitting at his desk waiting for the render so he can work on the next thing) and that the job is already handled in a distributed manner makes it seem like an ideal candidate for a really wide distributed computing solution. Instead of using 100 Sun or SGI machines for many months use the spare cycles of 100,000 PC's for a few weeks.
Even chopping each frame into little pieces would make things extremely complicated on already too complicated renders. Just because you render only a portion of the frame doesn't mean you don't need most of the full models, materials, etc... in memory (radiosity?).
I don't know how RenderMan handles this on the existing render farm but I do know that some distributed renders work in exactly this way. A master handles the big picture and sends each slave on the farm just the data and tasks it needs to do it's bit. I would imagine this would only work over the net if, as I said before, you are dividing up the computational work at a lower level that is both abstracted from the models, textures etc. and is capable of being divided up with finer granularity, sending out smaller chunks of work down smaller pipes to smaller computers but a whole lot more of them to get the work done much faster.
This really bugs me, when I see people say "life can't exist there, that planet is twice Earth's distance from its star..." and rubbish like that. Aarrgghh !
If you are ranting about the "rare earth hypothesis" you should remember that the authors believe that life is MUCH more common than was previously believed. However they believe that advanced life and advanced civilizations are MUCH rarer than previously believed and do require conditions substantially similar to earths. Even you own post basically makes some of the same assumptions - you see the heat from this moon as promising because that heat is one of the prerequisites for life, the rare earth hypothesis adds additional prerequisites which must be present for *advanced* life. There are those that simply assume without thinking that life must evolve on a planet substantially similar to earth. The rare earth hypothesis arrived at pretty much the same conclusion through serious thought on the subject. They may be wrong (we simply don't have enough data) but their reasoning is sound and not based on simple prejudice or ignorance.
Some American evangelicals think that Deitrich Bonhoeffer "was unsound not only doctrinally, but also in practice."
Half of American evangelicals think that of the other half when you get down to the fine points of theology - the more generic evangelicals think the charismatics are nuts and the fundamentalists are legalists, The fundamentalists think the charismatics are nuts and the evangelicals are libertines. The charismatics think the evangelicals are missing out on the spirit and the fundamentalists are legalist kill-joys. That is not the point. Part of this guys complaint is that conservative evangelicals of all stripes (except perhaps actual fundamentalists) revere Dietrich Boenhoffer which was MY point. If Deitrich Boenhoffer is too liberal for your tastes how about Karl Barth - he was more the intellectual center of movement anyway.
Ironically Boenhoffer would have been sympathetic to this guys complaint about his practice - That Boenhoffer should have restrained himself to civil disobedience, rescuing jews and the like rather than attempting to assasinate Hitler. Boenhoffer was a pacifist (as were most American fundamentalists of the time) and did NOT at first believe that his biblical principles allowed him to actively throw off the legitimate governmental authority even if that authority was being abused to commit atrocities. Boenhoffer's theology in this regard obviously changed - as did the theology of American fundamentalists who at the time of WWII were mostly pacifists and militantly apolitical. (one recalls the story of Jim Eliott of "Through Gates of Splendour" fame who almost failed his public speaking class because it was against his religious beliefs to talk about politics). The evolution of both Boenhoffer's and Fundamentist theology from pietist pacifism to political activism is an interesting parallel development.
The KPD was the only significant German opposition
to Hitler; the number of Christians who
opposed the Nazis was tiny in comparison.
Good point, perhaps I should clarify. The Confessing Church was the ONLY German opposition to Hitler that wasn't being victimized by Hitler. Jewish and Gay Germans as well as Communists opposed Hitler but for the obvious reason that they were his victims. The Confessing Church CHOSE to oppose Hitler when they were NOT his victims. Martin Niemollers famous poem wasn't really true about him (though he did regret that he didn't speak up sooner). He spoke up long before they "came for him" and the reason the "came for him" was because he (and Boenhoffer, and Barth & the tiny hardcore of uncompromising evangelicals) DID speak up.
It is somewhat ironic that you are defending the french and german position to ban anti-semetic sites
I did no such thing.
But you did, or at least implied that you did. You said: "Maybe they only host that kind of content.. ?
Which to me implies that it's OK then to censor "that kind of content" even when the site itself was for the hosting service and did not have "that type of content" itself. Much like electronicintifada.com does not have "that type of content" but likely has at least some links to sites that do.
You also said: I have quite a lot of faith when it comes to Google, they've done the right thing lots of times.
When the action in question, the one you have a lot of faith is the right thing is the censoring of opinions offensive to the French and German law.
To be honest I am not actually suggesting that the French and German position, and the decision of Google to comply with those laws without protest is actually wrong. There is a case to be made that some speech really is beyond the pale. "Fire in a crowded theater" and "The constitution is not a suicide pact" and all that. I was simply pointing out that your cause and the site in your.sig are not unlikely to be the victims of such censorship if it steps even a little over the line - I thought that ironic.
Not so insightful when you realize that you might need to download a gigabyte of proprietary content and software before even starting the render on one frame.
The fact that it is proprietary is irrelevant if the person giving it to you is the proprietor. I doubt they would care if you saw one frame prior to the release of the movie - if anything seeing just one frame would be a great "teaser". They could also just offload rather unimportant scenes in this way, the set up to the visual joke rather than the punchline. If one frame is too big, even better for the security of Woody & Buzz's big scene. Just have your particular computer rendering a portion of a frame. Rendering is already done with this kind of distributed computing. I'm sure it's possible to create a subset of RenderMan as part of the distributed client that would allow Pixar to offload some of their heavy-lifting without compromising their proprietary software, models or scenes.
Why'd it take an attack on the US by Japan, if the US was really just in the war to free the people... being persecuted by the Nazis?
I would say that with the lend/lease program & flying tigers and our embargo on oil to Japan we were pretty well involved well before Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor happend for a *reason* you know.
I'd be willing to bet you could incite Pat Robertson or Billy Graham into saying the US should have stayed out of the European Theatre until all those social subversive types were eradicated....
What would make you think this? It is fine to oppose the political agenda of the religious right but don't be so blinded by your hatred of them that you become utterly ignorant of history and what they actually believe. Most American evangelicals look to people like Corrie Ten Boom, Deitrich Boenhoffer and Martin Neimoler as their hero's. "The Hiding Place", "The Cost of Discipleship" and "Letters and Papers from Prison" are bestsellers and classics among the religious right. It is not insignificant that the "religious right" in Germany, the biblical literalists - the groups & individuals most closely identified with their American evangelical co-religionists were the ONLY significant *German* opposition to Hitler.
"At this liberal seminary the students sneer at the fundamentalists in America, when all the while the fundamentalists know far more of the truth and grace, mercy and judgement of God."
-Deitrich Boenhoffer
It is somewhat ironic that you are defending the french and german position to ban anti-semetic sites but have a link to electronicintifada.com in your.sig.
I'm not saying that being against isreali policy or even anti-isreali is the same as being anti-semetic (otherwise *I* would be anti-semetic). BUT some argue (wrongly) that it IS. Electronicintifada.com appears to be a good faith and fair-minded site. But many of the other pro-palestinian sites and even reputable, government sanctioned Arab newspapers have started to do more than just dabble in sentiments that ar unarguably anti-semetism & banned by German law - denying the holocaust (& then expressing regret that it "never happened"), perpetrating the blood-libel (that jews sacrifice gentiles & drink their blood during religious festivals), publishing "the protocols of the elders of zion" and "Mein Kampf" (the arab version with Hitlers opinion of Arabs deleted)).
Electronicintifada.com appears to have no link to any of these sentiments and I it doubt would be banned but it is possible. Similar good-faith sites have been caught up in censorship of their disreputable allies. I'm sure the nuremburg-files.com is the kind of anti-abortion site intended to be banned, but I wouldn't doubt at all that an organization like operation rescue could also be banned. It is painted by it's opponents as a violent terrorist group - Yet they disclaim violence & murder while advocating protest and civil disobedience. If Electronicintifada.com had powerful political opposition in France or Germany it would not be surprising at all to find them caught up (perhaps inadverantly) in this effort to censor anti-semetic sentiments that are being expressed in even reputable Arab news sources.
"The truth is that such persecution was a malicious fabrication by the Jews. It is a myth which they named 'The Holocaust' in order to rouse empathy.
-Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (The largest daily in the PA)
For this holiday, the Jewish people must obtain human blood so that their clerics can prepare the holiday pastries. In other words, the practice cannot be carried out as required if human blood is not spilled!
-Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faysal University in Al-Dammam in the Saudi government daily Al-Riyadh
(the Holocaust) is nothing more than a huge Israeli plot aimed at extorting the German government... But I, personally and in light of this imaginary tale, complain to Hitler, even saying to him from the bottom of my heart, 'If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that the world could sigh in relief [without] their evil and sin.'"
Fatma Abdallah Mahmoud in he Egyptian government daily Al-Akhbar
All of these papers & sites & many others would be banned under the German law. Even Al-Jazeera has had cross-fire style argue shows where three out of four panelists (and arguably the moderator) denied the holocaust. It is not hard at all to invision a wide array of pro-palestinian sites being banned - even those that don't publish such ideas themselves.
I'm really suprised that none of the special-effects CG companies are using this. This kind of grid computing is great for rendering. I could see Pixar doing a really slick screen-saver & maybe letting you see the frames you rendered as a "reward" (maybe not all of them - don't want to give away too much of the movie to a geek with a super powerful computer). It would get their rendering done for free and would be a great promo for the movie. Who wouldn't go to see a movie they helped produce? More than once - " Here comes the frame I rendered... There! Did you see it? Just when Nemo swims up to that shark?... I did that!"
Aren't the Dems supposed to (historically) work for the little guy?
Real life is full of these (apparent) ironies. The only member of the AFL-CIO to become president was Ronald Reagan. The 1964 Civil Rights Bill was largely passed by the Republicans and opposed by the Democrats (like Al Gore Sr. - It's too bad Prescott Bush retired in '63 and GHWB didn't win his '64 election;-). The only senator that we know was a member of the Klu Klux Klan is a Democrat (Robert Byrd). The Democratic Party by-and-large gets it's funds as from a small number of large donors (the "big guy"?) the Republican party to a significant degree gets it's funds from a larger number of smaller donors (The "little guy"?) . As a result the Democrats depend more on "soft money" and the Republicans on "hard money" so the Democrats who voted for campaign finance would be hurt by it much more than the Republicans who voted against it. All of these examples seem counterintuitive to the conventional wisdom about the parties - perhaps reality is more complex than conventional wisdom will admit.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I were as optimistic as you are about the future of federalism....
I'm cautiously optimistic. It depends on three factors 1) Who retires on the court (effected by how long the Reps control the process) and 2) How willing Republicans are to put forward conservative/strict-constructionists.
As to who will retire - I think Rehnquist will definitely get out while the getting is good. Even if Republicans go all out in pushing a conservative on the court I doubt you will get much better from a federalist point-of-view. BUT, O'Conner may also get out while the going is good. Considering that she is usually the one who decides which way the usual 5-4 split goes this is a big gain for federalism IF the Republicans stick by their guns in sending them to the court. All of this is really offset if Stevens retires - even in the most ideologically committed Republicans will probably cave (to a degree) to the idea of preserving some sort of balance on the court so I would expect that they would put of a more "moderate" justice - probably someone like an O'Conner, still a big win for federalism.
Of course Stevens & other liberals will probably try to wait out Bush, hoping they can retire with a Democratic Prez and hopefully Senate. This could happen but it is important to remember that we are in (or just coming out of) a recession NOW and what comes after a recession? Just in time for W's re-election campaign we will probably be enjoying the inevitable up-turn after a recession just like Reagan's landslide in '84. Republicans in the Senate will finally catch a break with only 15 seats to defend v. the Dems 19, A decent number of Dems are in strong Republican states - Daschle in ND, Edwards in NC, Hollings in SC, Miller in GA, Reid in NV, and Dorgan in ND. Daschle, Miller and maybe Edwards win easy if they run BUT Daschle & Edwards might try for Prez and Miller could retire or even switch parties.
Finally it comes down to how far are Reps willing to exploit their oppurtunity to shift the ideology of the court. I think they are MUCH more willing than they had been in the past. The Dems have politicized the court far more than was common in the past (when Republican appointees were as likely to end up liberal as conservative) and have managed to alienate even the more moderate Republicans that they could have persuaded previously. There is a strong feeling among Reps that "turnabout is fair play" and if Democrats are willing to blatantly apply a "litmus test" (previously a taboo) on an issue that is ultimately a federalist issue (almost any federalist will be anti-Roe for federalist if not pro-life reasons). Republicans will return the favor (albeit more subtly) - I think they are FAR more willing to fight for conservative nominees than they have ever been before.
I guess the Democrats have some pretty hard numbers that show a vast majority of people who intend to vote after the polls close are democrats (go figure)
It's not that late voters trend Democratic but that they are only keeping Democratic strongholds open. So Democratic party officials complain about Democratic officials running the election to a Democratic judge to keep a Democratic stronghold open longer so that more Democrats can vote. At no point in the process are Republicans involved in this little drama.
For all those saying "well there really are problems, people are waiting in line" that is often true, they have to have *some* excuse after all (a cynic would wonder if the "problems" aren't done purposefully just for that prupose). In any event, the standard ruling of the Democratic judge is to keep the polls open for another 1-1/2 to 2 hours NOT to let the people in already in line vote. As it is the party usually use these "problems" as an occasion for an aggresive last minute get-out-the-vote drive with the added urgency that "they" (the Democratic!!! officals responsible for the SNAFU?) are trying to "steal the election - don't let them!" In Arkansas this year they almost immediately rushed out a (pre?)recorded message alerting Democratic voters of this attempt by "them" (Democrats!) to suppress the minority vote.
You'd think the republicans would have enough brain cells to get the democrats to agree (or at least give them certified, return receipt notice) as to the time the polls are going to close.
Well of course they DID it's just that the Democrats will always look for that little advantage. The Republicans do as well of course, there are all sorts of dirty tricks the parties pull on each other. But screwing with the actual mechanisms of the election is beyond the pale IMHO. The polls should close on time - if there is a line at the time of the closing the law should let those *already* in line vote but not allow anyone new to get in line (I don't know but I'm willing to bet that is exactly what the law DOES say) These cheap little lawsuit tricks before partisan judges cheapens and undermines the whole process. The rank-and-file Dems believe their disengenious leaders that the Republicans attempted to rig the election and the Republicans feel the same of the Dems - all for the sake of a few hundred votes.
For example, why is it a federal crime to use a hand gun near a school,
because it's NOT! This law was overturned on exactly the 10th Amendment argument you are making. Sadly there are still lots of laws that completely ignore the concept of federalism but at least the Supremes are *starting* apply it here and there.
From that point of view last night's election is good news. With control of the senate GWB will likely get to appoint much more conservative judges than he would otherwise - judges who are strict constructionists and much more likely to uphold the 10th ammendment in all it's chaotic decentralized glory. States will be much more free to follow their own course - more libertarian in AZ, more theocratic in GA, maybe even more progressive in VT.
Remember this is military spending here, normal sensible economics no longer apply. Remember the special air-conditioned hangers for Stealth aircraft?
Even if another nation goes through this much trouble & expense it is still a "win" for the US to have made them do so. Now they can only afford a fraction of the missles they could have made absent this technology. You probably knock most of the nations currently developing ICBM's completely out of the game (N. Korea, Iran, Pakistan) and severely limit the number of effective weapons more advanced nations can build & maintain(Russia, China & all our allies for that matter) - instead of China building 100 ICBM's they have to spend more money on just 10 and have to spend even more in maintaining their perfect reflective state.
You could spin the missile to reduce spot heating
I don't remeber this all that well but I seem to recall that back in the Reagan SDI days a congressman asked Weinberger(?) about spinning a missle as a defense against x-ray lasers -. Weinberger said that would be about as effective a defense as a spinning ballerina against a machine gun.
This isn't about chat, sex (despite the jokes), your social life or mental problems - it's about conveying a certain type of information to the appropriate senses. There is a lot of information which can't easily be conveyed via text or even video but could be very well conveyed using touch.
This type of technology opens up a lot of possibilities. I'm sure you could also scale up or down the sensations you are feeling. Feeling and picking up that softball sized object may translate over the wires to moving a tiny obstruction in the patients aorta or moving ten-ton boulder in the road. In either case you can *feel* if it slips, if you picked it up off center, or if it is stuck on something.
Why did Apple choose to go out and start a new kernel project when they could have just based OS X on the Linux kernel instead?
MacOS X is really an upgrade of OpenStep/NextStep (essentially Darwin, Cocoa & display Postscript instead of Quartz). I'm pretty sure it is actually older than Linux - I'm certain the Mach microkernel is older than the Linux kernel.
To some extent though it is fair to say that MacOS X is "new" since they added/changed a lot to make OpenStep into something Mac users would accept as a "MacOS" (though not so much to the lower-level stuff Moshe was testing). They would have had to do even more work to get it all running on top of Linux, and to gain what?
The "nice" was meant to be sarcastic
As was mine. Listen inner-city public schools are completely failing their students. We have known this for many years, attempts have been made all along to fix them but they are still failing. I think it is (figuratively) criminal that we won't give the kids that could *for less money* escape from this system the option to do so. It is (sarcasm)"Nice"(/sarcasm) that we are willing to wait for generations for reform after reform to (maybe) work rather than give these kids the chance to get into schools that are already succeeding in the same environment.
but it geographically unworkable for you. Many cities, especially Detroit, don't have decent mass transportation, thus it would impossible for kids to use their vouchers. The geography creates a barrier that can't be easily overcome.
A) While many cities may not have decent mass transportation most cities have mass transportation sufficient to solve many of the problems we are talking about. (I see private school kids using the "T" in Boston or the crappy RIPTA busses in Providence all the time - *particularly* in poor neighborhoods). B) Many troubled neighborhoods already have private schools - no geography problem!. C) Some private schools do offer transportation and/or are willing to help coordinate efforts to solve this problem.
This geography issue is a red herring. Wherever private charity has stepped into a failing school system with private vouchers or in the few pilot government voucher programs (Clevland and Milwaukee) they have been SWAMPED with far more people than they had vouchers (usually a third or better of those that qualified for the program). All those parents seemed to think they could overcome the "problem" of transportation. The parents that DID get the vouchers managed to find solutions.
How would you like to trade your current salary for a teachers salary?
In a heartbeat. (you must have missed the spot where I lamented my current poverty). I did teach (briefly) in a private school, as did my wife - believe me most private school teachers would LOVE to have a public school salary. You seem to be under the illusion that all private schools are Andover Acadamy - that simply is not the case, most private schools are rather modest affairs with shoe-string budgets & facilities that are often on par (albeit cleaner & better maintained) with the worst public schools.
And as for the picking teachers, give me a break.
I didn't mean to pick on teachers as such, But it is true that most teachers in failing schools *choose* private schools (despite their relatively meager income) or commute from suburbs with decent schools. In Detroit public school teachers are twice as likely to send their kids to private schools than the population as a whole. THIS IS THE RIGHT THING FOR THEM TO DO!! They shold NEVER sacrifice their own childrens well being at the altar of ideology. BUT in as much as their union is willing to sacrifice OTHER peoples children on that altar they are fair game to be picked on. As it turns out even while their union strenously opposes vouchers many public school teachers (one suspects the most altruistic, and caring ones) SUPPORT school vouchers - the Association of American Educators surveyed its members (90 percent of whom are government school teachers) and discovered that 62 percent were in favor of school choice (including vouchers) while only 32 percent opposed. This pretty much agrees with my own observations of public school teachers I know. The public school teacher I know who is most vociferously opposed is my father-in-law. He opposes vouchers because he fears government involvement that might come with the money would screw up the *private* schools - and then where would he send his kids? After teaching for years in the inner-city, observing chronic failure, apathy, social promotion, and intense violence including the murder of a teacher by a kid he knew and a quite credible death threat against himself - well, lets just say he's grown a bit cynical.
As for the rest of your comments about the crushing burden of administration, babby sitting etc. I totally agree. Unfortunately the system is currently impossible to reform. I believe the only hope of reform is if there is effective competition.
Perhaps start with a 1st grade elementary classroom in the innercity and show us how to get all those kids reading at 1st grade level by the time they leave.
Umm... try taking a walk to the closest parochial school in the most run-down section of the city. Serving the EXACT SAME socio-economic group with all the same problems and pathologies. They have been built from the start with the reforms you claim you want (but seem impossible to attain) in the public schools: effective discipline, smaller class sizes, focus on education rather than on tertiary concerns. They are already succeeding but the cost, even though it's only a little more than a third of what we spend per pupil in public schools, is too high for most inner-city parents.
I totally agree with you - no matter how weak the security is on a web site if it exists then hacking it is analagous to "breaking in" and it's a crime. But that is not the case here - there was no security at all. They way the technology works is in Reuters legal favor - they *asked* Initia for the page (in a straightforward way) and Intentia *gave* it to them - end of story.
I can't bring myself to agree with the rather simplistic analysis of the original poster you are respondoing to BUT this statement is simply absurd. It's so apparently ignorant I'm tempted to believe it's a troll, but I'll bite anyway.
:
If Bill Clinton was the president 9/11 would never have happened.
The 9/11 hijackers plotted their attack for years, years during which Bill Clinton WAS president. While Bill Clinton was President Bin Laden issued his Fatwa against America, and certain arabs were attending flight schools.
When he told the arabs to go fuck themselves they decided to try and fight back.
I must have missed that particular address to the nation.
Clinton did not believe in telling the world to go fuck itself and he certainly never imagined himself to be some sort of king/god.
I don't know about that - didn't you see his entrance to the Democratic national convention? And having palace concubines certainly seems a bit more king/god behaviour. (Sorry I just couldn't resist)
Seriously though, you might have noticed that during Clinton's presidency and during the campaign the Republicans were constantly criticising him for being interventionsist and turning us into the worlds police. The Republicans by contrast were being accused of isolationism. The actual distinctions between their policies was more nuanced than this - Clinton (and Gore) believed in a fairly aggresive interventionist foreign policy to pacify the hot spots of the world with the minimum of force required. Send in the marines to all sorts of places to but tell them to be as nice as possible. The military goals in many of these cases were pretty vague. This policy appeared to work in Bosnia, we forced a regime change with an air war that made such delicate "nice" decisions as choosing not to bomb particular military targets because there was priceless fine art hanging in the lobby or bombing Iraqi military headquarters at night so nobody would get hurt. In Somalia it failed - we escalated our mission but denied our troops tanks they said they needed (the guys there were told to arrest were VERY heavily armed) because tanks would be "provacative" (as though seeking to arrest the most heavily armed warlord in the region wouldn't provoke him anyway). After that famous "BlackHawk Down" battle we simply left with our tail between our legs. No less an authority on Al Quaida's motivation than Bin Laden himself took this as proof that America was a paper tiger, that it would run at the first sight of blood. And so he resolved to produce a lot of blood. It seems that shortly after this episode Al Quada (who trained the troops that felled those Black Hawks) escalated their attacks.
Replican foreign policy at the time was based on the Weinberger doctrine (sometimes called the Powell doctrine)
1) Military force should only be used when a *vital* interest of the United States is at issue.
2) That as much as possible military conflict is a binary state - either we are at war or we are not. Once the decision has been made the commitment is total - our fighter pilots in Bosnia bomb that building and to hell with the fine art in the lobby, you bomb Iraqi HQ in the day and kill as many of the enemy generals as possible and those guys in Mogadishu get tanks. If you are unwilling to do any of the above you shouldn't have combat troops there in the first place.
3) The military goals must be very clearly defined so you know when you have won. "Sending a message" is insufficient - what was the goal of any particular bombing in Iraq? Just to "send a message" without any real thought that we would actually change anything concrete. Clintons' official policy goal in Iraq was *identical* to Bush's - regime change. The main difference is that Clinton had no particular intention to do anything to effect that goal aside from occasional meaningless bombings, killing people to no real purpose. It's hard to argue that such a policy is less arrogant than one that while certainly willing to kill people is at least attempting to achieve some goal by doing so.
You see, laying off 25% of the teachers wouldn't be difficult, but it wouldn't save you 25% in salaries. The union contracts protect the teachers with longer careers and enforce mandatory yearly rases.
;) It is much harder for an illiterate graduate to rebound from the misfortune the system is visiting upon him.
Good point. All the more reason for the teacher's union to oppose any potential solution that threatens jobs, regardless of it's merits. The fact is they would have still have to cut the budget by 25% - they may have to cut a full 50% of the staff to get that 25% budget cut - and if they really screw up such a transition, inflexible unions, incompetant managment, poltically motivated decisions they could screw it up to the point where they simply dissolve away. It must be said that this would be profoundly unfair to the many dedicated and caring teachers that would lose their jobs. But the current system is even more spectacularly unfair to many thousands of kids. The teachers are adults, they will find another job (the nearby private schools will probably be hiring
I have to call bullsh*t on this particular myth. In the 22 years since Reagan was elected in 1980 the only time the budget was balanced was when a Dem was president.
Fine, and what does it have to do with what I wrote? Whether the Republicans balance the budget or not they are still (at least somewhat) more likely to cut and much less likely to raise Ms. Fonda's taxes than the Democrats she is supporting. I'm not making a statement about the wisdom of either policy - simply pointing out that Ms Fonda is NOT spending her money to further the interests of herself or her employer. I would assume that at least SOME of the employees of Microsoft (or any other company) are similarly supporting candidates for partisan, ideological reasons rather than as a lobbying effort on behalf of their employer.
Anyway as for the content of your rant. Aside from abortion there is almost no area where the Republicans want a more intrusive government than Democrats. The Democrats certainly want to know & control a lot more of my financial and business decisions. Whether I smoke, own a gun, say bad things about people or build on my back lot (it's a bit soggy) & generally want a lot more of my paycheck which will go to Washington & some of it will come back in the form of various benefits (I don't make that much). As for the war-on-drugs you are about as likely to find Republicans opposed to the drug war as Democrats - Neither party seems likely to end that policy any time soon, But I'm willing to bet that the fact that National Review is pro-legalization will do more for that cause than all the glassy eyed hippies selling hemp products in the world.
As for defense, you are certainly right. Of course most conservatives (if not Republicans) think that foreign policy and defense are just about the only valid purposes of the federal government - the rest of the functions of goverment are functions of *state* government. They take Article 1,Section 8 as an exhaustive list. By their account most of that 60% that isn't explictly spelled out by Section 8 is actually unconstitutional, a violation of the 10th ammendment.
Are parents going to drive their kids to the good schools in the subburbs every morning?
Umm... I suppose they could of course in an inner-city they could simply use public transportation to get to the (usually quite nearby) private schools. I would assume that any parent using a voucher to pay for private school would have figure this out. Some private schools, especially those that cater to the disadvantaged have transportation available.
What about "schools of choice"? This is a fancy way of saying, we want to take our tax dollars and fund exclusive private schools that our kids go to.
That is bull. Most (if not all) school choice plans that have been proposed are either means tested or are limited to children currently attending a school that is deemed to be a failure. In either case "you" don't benefit.
Also, the exclusive private schools don't have to take problem kids or handicapped kids
And yet many do, indeed many private shools ONLY take handicapped kids while others ONLY take problem kids.
So we get the money and the best kids, and you can turn your public school into a home for all the people we reject. Nice!
Even if this were the case (which it is not) the current system is to reject ALL the kids. Bright kid from a lousy neighborhood with poor parents and a lousy school - "well sorry kid you have to fail with the school because if we let you go to a decent school it wouldn't be fair to that kid that beats you up every day. You want to go to that nice private school across town? - that's only for rich kids, poor kids have to go here. Oh where do MY kids go, well I commuted in to give you this message, my kids are going to a nice school in the suburbs". As you said - Nice!
The republicans need to stop trying to rape all the money out of public education so they can go fund "star wars" or "bombing Iraq".
Bzzt. wrong on this one. Education is not primarily funded by the Federal government but by local and state governments - Perhaps a Republican state senator or governor is "raping" these funds (this generally means his proposed *increase* is not as big as his opponents proposal) but not to fund "star wars" or to "bomb Iraq". Also, Republicans generally can't "rape" these funds if they wanted too. Big cities are almost always dominated by Democrats as are many of the states at issue here are as well.
Lastly, packing in bodies has nothing to do with Federal FUNDS. The reason bodies are packed in is because THERE AREN'T ENOUGH TEACHERS IN THE INNER-CITY, so class sizes grow HUGE!
One proposed solution, one I'm sure the teacher's union is in favor of is to pay teachers more and to hire more teachers. There is a lot of validity to this but part of the issue is missmanagment of *existing* funds. Inner city schools have a lousy teacher to administrator ratio. They are top heavy with bureaucracy and the existing funds are wasted to fund that bureaucracy. Unfortunately there are tremendous political barriers to fixing the structural aspects of this problem and throwing more money at it suffers from diminishing returns and perverse results - a larger and larger percentage of the extra money is missmanaged as an ever larger percentage of the increased funds pay for an even more bloated system.
Another solution would be to reduce class size by allowing kids to go to schools that aren't failing. Take just half of what the average public school is spending per child ($5,987 in 1999 according to the Digest of Education Statistics - of course remembering that most inner city schools are spending ABOVE average.) and give it as a voucher to interested parents and you have almost comletely covered the average tuition for that "exclusive" private school ($3,116 - same source) or more than cover the average tuition of a parochial school ($2,178). KEEP the other half (or better) and spend it on the kids that don't chose private schools.The problem with this plan isn't that there isn't enough money to spend on the kids, it's that there isn't enough money to spend on union jobs. If (for example) half the kids choose vouchers you will have 50% of the kids left at the school but have still have 75% of the money. You can spend all of that money on retaining 75% of the teachers and have much smaller class sizes. BUT you are going to have to lay-off 25% of the teachers. It doesn't really matter to a layed-off employee that his former employer is now producing a better product. That employee's union is (appropriately) more concerned about his job than the quality of the product he produces. To bring it back on topic that union is spending more than all but any other group in the country to keep that from happening.
If that individual is Jane Fonda by outspending them by a massive amount. To quote Counterpunch.org
Anyways a couple of points: First off much of what OpenSecrets.org is tracking here IS contributions by individuals. The methodology of OpenSecrets.org is somewhat flawed, or at least debatable. They are not just taking the contributions of Corporate PACs but also take the contributions of individuals and count them as the contributions of their employers. SO Peter Amstein giving 100% of his money to Democrats and George Spix giving all of his money to Republicans is assumed not to be because they are committed (and wealthy) partisans but because Microsoft Corp is directing their giving for the corporations purposes. This probably has *some* merit when you are talking about the very top tier of management giving hundred of thousands. But Open Secrets also includes every $200 or more contribution by every cubicle dweller at Microsoft. If you gave $200 to a candidate because you agreed with their position on Abortion, Open Secrets doesn 't see it as a healthy participation in democracy but as a nefarious plot by Micro$oft to influence Washington. Even for the big donors I think at least *some* of that money is probably donated not by corporate dictates for corporate purposes but because the individual is a partisan for one or the other party or for some cause. Jane Fonda's $12 million dollar expenditure probably has more to do with her stance on abortion than with trying to get special breaks for Universal Studios. She probably even giving money to candidates that support abortion at the *expense* of her personal financial interests - The Pro-choice Democrats she supports are likely to raise her taxes quite a bit more than the pro-life Republicans she is seeking to defeat.
Also the huge organizations designed to aggregate money (corporations) don't hold a candle next to the huge organizations whose purpose is to aggregate political power - out of the top ten groups donating money to politics only one is a corporations (Phillip Morris) three are proffessional Associations (Realtors, Trial Lawyers & Doctors) the rest are unions.
unlike seti, cgi rendering typically has an artist/tech at the other end waiting for the answer. They don't have time to sit and wait days/weeks b
I'm not talking about the fairly low-res rendering as the artists & modellers are working on the project, I'm talking about the final high-res render which already takes not weeks but months. The original Toy Story took nearly a year on a render farm with 100 computers. Each frame took 6-8 hours for the farm to render, each second of film had 24-frames. The data obviously is already being divied up in a way that each computer is NOT working on an entire frame. I'm not sure exactly how the data and computation is divied up but I wouldn't doubt that it is already being divided in a way that the actual tasks each computer is working on is pretty well abstracted from the models, textures etc. which are the "crown jewels" of Pixar's intellectual property. The fact that we are already talking about very long-term jobs (no artist is sitting at his desk waiting for the render so he can work on the next thing) and that the job is already handled in a distributed manner makes it seem like an ideal candidate for a really wide distributed computing solution. Instead of using 100 Sun or SGI machines for many months use the spare cycles of 100,000 PC's for a few weeks.
Even chopping each frame into little pieces would make things extremely complicated on already too complicated renders. Just because you render only a portion of the frame doesn't mean you don't need most of the full models, materials, etc... in memory (radiosity?).
I don't know how RenderMan handles this on the existing render farm but I do know that some distributed renders work in exactly this way. A master handles the big picture and sends each slave on the farm just the data and tasks it needs to do it's bit. I would imagine this would only work over the net if, as I said before, you are dividing up the computational work at a lower level that is both abstracted from the models, textures etc. and is capable of being divided up with finer granularity, sending out smaller chunks of work down smaller pipes to smaller computers but a whole lot more of them to get the work done much faster.
Maybe you should stop assuming in the future, and admit you don't know.
Huh?
This really bugs me, when I see people say "life can't exist there, that planet is twice Earth's distance from its star..." and rubbish like that. Aarrgghh !
If you are ranting about the "rare earth hypothesis" you should remember that the authors believe that life is MUCH more common than was previously believed. However they believe that advanced life and advanced civilizations are MUCH rarer than previously believed and do require conditions substantially similar to earths. Even you own post basically makes some of the same assumptions - you see the heat from this moon as promising because that heat is one of the prerequisites for life, the rare earth hypothesis adds additional prerequisites which must be present for *advanced* life. There are those that simply assume without thinking that life must evolve on a planet substantially similar to earth. The rare earth hypothesis arrived at pretty much the same conclusion through serious thought on the subject. They may be wrong (we simply don't have enough data) but their reasoning is sound and not based on simple prejudice or ignorance.
Some American evangelicals think that Deitrich Bonhoeffer "was unsound not only doctrinally, but also in practice."
Half of American evangelicals think that of the other half when you get down to the fine points of theology - the more generic evangelicals think the charismatics are nuts and the fundamentalists are legalists, The fundamentalists think the charismatics are nuts and the evangelicals are libertines. The charismatics think the evangelicals are missing out on the spirit and the fundamentalists are legalist kill-joys. That is not the point. Part of this guys complaint is that conservative evangelicals of all stripes (except perhaps actual fundamentalists) revere Dietrich Boenhoffer which was MY point. If Deitrich Boenhoffer is too liberal for your tastes how about Karl Barth - he was more the intellectual center of movement anyway.
Ironically Boenhoffer would have been sympathetic to this guys complaint about his practice - That Boenhoffer should have restrained himself to civil disobedience, rescuing jews and the like rather than attempting to assasinate Hitler. Boenhoffer was a pacifist (as were most American fundamentalists of the time) and did NOT at first believe that his biblical principles allowed him to actively throw off the legitimate governmental authority even if that authority was being abused to commit atrocities. Boenhoffer's theology in this regard obviously changed - as did the theology of American fundamentalists who at the time of WWII were mostly pacifists and militantly apolitical. (one recalls the story of Jim Eliott of "Through Gates of Splendour" fame who almost failed his public speaking class because it was against his religious beliefs to talk about politics). The evolution of both Boenhoffer's and Fundamentist theology from pietist pacifism to political activism is an interesting parallel development.
The KPD was the only significant German opposition to Hitler; the number of Christians who opposed the Nazis was tiny in comparison.
Good point, perhaps I should clarify. The Confessing Church was the ONLY German opposition to Hitler that wasn't being victimized by Hitler. Jewish and Gay Germans as well as Communists opposed Hitler but for the obvious reason that they were his victims. The Confessing Church CHOSE to oppose Hitler when they were NOT his victims. Martin Niemollers famous poem wasn't really true about him (though he did regret that he didn't speak up sooner). He spoke up long before they "came for him" and the reason the "came for him" was because he (and Boenhoffer, and Barth & the tiny hardcore of uncompromising evangelicals) DID speak up.
It is somewhat ironic that you are defending the french and german position to ban anti-semetic sites
.. ?
.sig are not unlikely to be the victims of such censorship if it steps even a little over the line - I thought that ironic.
I did no such thing.
But you did, or at least implied that you did. You said:
"Maybe they only host that kind of content
Which to me implies that it's OK then to censor "that kind of content" even when the site itself was for the hosting service and did not have "that type of content" itself. Much like electronicintifada.com does not have "that type of content" but likely has at least some links to sites that do.
You also said:
I have quite a lot of faith when it comes to Google, they've done the right thing lots of times.
When the action in question, the one you have a lot of faith is the right thing is the censoring of opinions offensive to the French and German law.
To be honest I am not actually suggesting that the French and German position, and the decision of Google to comply with those laws without protest is actually wrong. There is a case to be made that some speech really is beyond the pale. "Fire in a crowded theater" and "The constitution is not a suicide pact" and all that. I was simply pointing out that your cause and the site in your
Not so insightful when you realize that you might need to download a gigabyte of proprietary content and software before even starting the render on one frame.
The fact that it is proprietary is irrelevant if the person giving it to you is the proprietor. I doubt they would care if you saw one frame prior to the release of the movie - if anything seeing just one frame would be a great "teaser". They could also just offload rather unimportant scenes in this way, the set up to the visual joke rather than the punchline. If one frame is too big, even better for the security of Woody & Buzz's big scene. Just have your particular computer rendering a portion of a frame. Rendering is already done with this kind of distributed computing. I'm sure it's possible to create a subset of RenderMan as part of the distributed client that would allow Pixar to offload some of their heavy-lifting without compromising their proprietary software, models or scenes.
Granted we didn't go to war to protect the jews.
Why'd it take an attack on the US by Japan, if the US was really just in the war to free the people... being persecuted by the Nazis?
I would say that with the lend/lease program & flying tigers and our embargo on oil to Japan we were pretty well involved well before Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor happend for a *reason* you know.
I'd be willing to bet you could incite Pat Robertson or Billy Graham into saying the US should have stayed out of the European Theatre until all those social subversive types were eradicated....
What would make you think this? It is fine to oppose the political agenda of the religious right but don't be so blinded by your hatred of them that you become utterly ignorant of history and what they actually believe. Most American evangelicals look to people like Corrie Ten Boom, Deitrich Boenhoffer and Martin Neimoler as their hero's. "The Hiding Place", "The Cost of Discipleship" and "Letters and Papers from Prison" are bestsellers and classics among the religious right. It is not insignificant that the "religious right" in Germany, the biblical literalists - the groups & individuals most closely identified with their American evangelical co-religionists were the ONLY significant *German* opposition to Hitler.
I'm not saying that being against isreali policy or even anti-isreali is the same as being anti-semetic (otherwise *I* would be anti-semetic). BUT some argue (wrongly) that it IS. Electronicintifada.com appears to be a good faith and fair-minded site. But many of the other pro-palestinian sites and even reputable, government sanctioned Arab newspapers have started to do more than just dabble in sentiments that ar unarguably anti-semetism & banned by German law - denying the holocaust (& then expressing regret that it "never happened"), perpetrating the blood-libel (that jews sacrifice gentiles & drink their blood during religious festivals), publishing "the protocols of the elders of zion" and "Mein Kampf" (the arab version with Hitlers opinion of Arabs deleted)).
Electronicintifada.com appears to have no link to any of these sentiments and I it doubt would be banned but it is possible. Similar good-faith sites have been caught up in censorship of their disreputable allies. I'm sure the nuremburg-files.com is the kind of anti-abortion site intended to be banned, but I wouldn't doubt at all that an organization like operation rescue could also be banned. It is painted by it's opponents as a violent terrorist group - Yet they disclaim violence & murder while advocating protest and civil disobedience. If Electronicintifada.com had powerful political opposition in France or Germany it would not be surprising at all to find them caught up (perhaps inadverantly) in this effort to censor anti-semetic sentiments that are being expressed in even reputable Arab news sources. All of these papers & sites & many others would be banned under the German law. Even Al-Jazeera has had cross-fire style argue shows where three out of four panelists (and arguably the moderator) denied the holocaust. It is not hard at all to invision a wide array of pro-palestinian sites being banned - even those that don't publish such ideas themselves.
... and even art
I'm really suprised that none of the special-effects CG companies are using this. This kind of grid computing is great for rendering. I could see Pixar doing a really slick screen-saver & maybe letting you see the frames you rendered as a "reward" (maybe not all of them - don't want to give away too much of the movie to a geek with a super powerful computer). It would get their rendering done for free and would be a great promo for the movie. Who wouldn't go to see a movie they helped produce? More than once - " Here comes the frame I rendered... There! Did you see it? Just when Nemo swims up to that shark?... I did that!"
Aren't the Dems supposed to (historically) work for the little guy?
;-). The only senator that we know was a member of the Klu Klux Klan is a Democrat (Robert Byrd). The Democratic Party by-and-large gets it's funds as from a small number of large donors (the "big guy"?) the Republican party to a significant degree gets it's funds from a larger number of smaller donors (The "little guy"?) . As a result the Democrats depend more on "soft money" and the Republicans on "hard money" so the Democrats who voted for campaign finance would be hurt by it much more than the Republicans who voted against it. All of these examples seem counterintuitive to the conventional wisdom about the parties - perhaps reality is more complex than conventional wisdom will admit.
Real life is full of these (apparent) ironies. The only member of the AFL-CIO to become president was Ronald Reagan. The 1964 Civil Rights Bill was largely passed by the Republicans and opposed by the Democrats (like Al Gore Sr. - It's too bad Prescott Bush retired in '63 and GHWB didn't win his '64 election