I hope Iran, North Korea (DPRK) and every other country who views the USA as an enemy is trembling in their boots, crapping their pants, and responding frantically to this threat. I hope so, because those nukes are aimed right at their little heads. And frankly, I hope we use them sooner rather than later. I don't like going to sleep at night wondering if Kim Jong Il is going to press the button and nuke my family. I would much rather have Tony Blair or some other democratically elected, accountable leader at that button.
On the other hand, I hope those countries who engage in free trade with the US, have no reason to feel threatened by the US because they operate above the table with us, and who have a history of supporting the US's actions against bastards like Saddam Hussein and Hitler and Hirohito feel no threat at all. That is, unless they are also dealing with DPRK and Iran and are finding themselves increasingly opposed to mankind's last great hope--the USA.
There was a line drawn in the sand, and it is still there. You are either going to help us eliminate all terrorist threats, or you are going to find yourself on the receiving end of our wrath. It's all up to you.
"the USA, that is the people, need a wake up message, perhaps a wake up message in the form of your entire congress including the president chimp being nuked."
You just threatened our country. Expect to be visited by our military soon. I suggest you kneel on the floor, place your weapon in front of you, and put your hands in the air. I also suggest staying as far away from military hardware as possible.
If you don't speak English as you native language, the key phrase is, "I Surrender! Don't shoot!"
Thanks and have a nice day.
And we have already had a wake-up call, thank you very much. The wake up call said, as it said to every world power since the beginning of the world, "If you plan on keeping your position of power, you have to take any and all threats seriously, even if it's coming from backwards barbarians who don't even know how to properly bathe."
It sounds like it's time the rest of the world had a wake-up call. It goes like this: "You are either with us or against us." That is all.
There are three parts to your system: sending mail, receiving mail, and storing mail. Keep them separate.
Your receivers will be a bank of servers running sendmail. They will do appropriate spam processing to reduce the amount of mail actually received. They feed the data into the storage servers.
The storage system has the data partitioned out so that all the data for one user would go to one server while all the data for another will go to a different one. The storage system also has to provide POP and IMAP access. You may want a special setup where the IMAP or POP service known which server to go to. Investigate having one giant virtual filesystem so that the system isn't too complicated.
Your webmail access will use IMAP to access the actual mail. It can be a completly different system.
The sending system will be a chokepoint for all outgoing mail. You are going to scan it as it goes out to look for virus-sent emails or unauthorized messages. For instance, you may want marketing email to be processed differently than inter-office email and such.
All of these systems will be running sendmail. I know sendmail has a bad rap for being insecure, but the insecurities have been found and since fixed. It is by far the most manageable system when it comes to large-scale deployments with heavy customization.
You have a point; I don't like the fact that the feds have much power at all. Frankly, I don't trust them, even when "my guy" sits in the seat.
I expect you are going to work in politics and locally to eliminate the need for local police and FBI powers? I suggest you start by making a few arrests. You have the power to do so. Unlike the federal government, you can get away with a lot of things like wiretapping and surveillance.
But you don't like vigilantism either. Well, what are we left to do? Shall we just leave our borders open and put up a sign, "Please don't hurt us. We are unarmed wussies unwilling to protect our own lives and unwilling to allow our own government to protect us."
If you had a choice between the three: Strong government, vigilantes, or nothing, which would you have? Or do you believe that we can maintain a sane society and permit people to hook people on drugs and conspire to overthrow governments and conspire to terrorize the populace?
She has those rights but only because we, the people, grant them to her. They are not inherent and inviolate rights like the right to bear arms and the right to free speech that citizens enjoy.
Her green card can be revoked at any time for any reason as well. It says so on the document. She doesn't even own it.
I take it you've never read the Patriot Act. You've probably taken all the second- or third-hand information and believed it.
The Patriot Act grants only a few "new" powers, all still within the constitution. These "new" powers aren't new at all. They are the same power the feds and local police have when investigated trusts and the mafia and drug violations. In a nutshell, the law enforcement still has to get a warrant to do search and seizure. Now they can get a warrant against a suspected terrorist and have that warrant hidden from the public so as not to alert the terrorists being investigated. That's common sense, is it not?
Technically, if you are suspected of fighting against the United States, whether on foreign or domestice soil, you have fallen out of the regular judicial system. All of a sudden, you find yourself under the judicial system of the military. Read the constitution and you'll see how the military justice system is allowed to differ from the domestic one.
And furthermore, foreign nationals, here illegally or legally, are not entitled to the same rights citizens have. My wife, although she is loyal to the US, is still a South Korean citizen. She has no right to petition government, she has no right to due process, and she has no right to be here at all. The feds could walk in tomorrow and put her in prison without any justification. But we just don't do that, because we don't think it is very kind.
Now, let's compare Amerikkka under the PatRIOT act to Communist China.
In China, even citizens have no rights. Even when government is at its most benevolent, her own citizens are treated more poorly than foriegn combatants. China is a corrupt country, with powerful men dictating the way things should be. Elections are a sham. Even if you elected representatives that opposed the government, they would be useless and replaced.
There is no court system that even approaches what we have in the US. I hear stories of farmers and homeowners having their property taken away without due process and without compensation. I hear stories of people in their homes being carted away by the police when there was no reason for the police to invade the home and the police certainly didn't have a warrant to do so.
You think Hurrican Katrina is bad, and it is. One of the worst effects it had (aside from the death and mayhem) is that families were torn apart. In Communist China, families are torn apart constantly. People don't know what happens to their loved ones. Are they in prison? Are they executed? No one knows. They just disappear.
In Communist China, one of the worst effects is that if you actually have some money, enough to get by well enough, you have to pretend you are a beggar. You can't walk around with modern clothing and a nice wristwatch. You certainly can't use your wealth to help your fellow people. One person who built a road to his village to connect them with Beijing found himself in prison because the people grew to actually like him and not the government.
I'm sorry, but the two don't even compare. I'm sick of all the wacko Bush bigotry and I wish people would open up their own eyes and see for themselves what is really happening rather than discarding opposing viewpoints because they think the other side is "dumb like W".
In Guantanamo Bay, you get a prayer rug and warm, filling meals compliant with your religion. You get clean, running water and state-of-the-art plumbing. You can spit, pee, and throw feces at the guards and not get punished. You are also allowed to read your choice of religious literature. You are never tortured, and have access to ACLU Lawyers. You get all this even though you fought against American troops and you didn't wear a uniform and you didn't fight in the name of any country that exists today.
In a chinese prison, your body parts get sold for profit by the government when you get executed. In fact, they'll speed up the execution if they have an urgent need for your body parts. You don't have any rights. There is no due process. You don't get a square meal. You don't get your favorite religious book. You don't get a prayer rug. If you backtalk to a guard, you get physically abused, perhaps even killed. You are regularly tortured and even brainwashed. You don't have access to any lawyers, and you don't even get access to your embassy.
Yeah, I can see how people might morally equivocate the two. I certainly have a hard time distinguishing communist China from the US of A!
There is something in the human mind that enjoys patterns. We find a certain satisfaction in seeing order where there should be chaos.
All throughout nature we see patterns upon pattern upon pattern. It wasn't until recently that we could even describe some of the patterns we saw in nature (Fibonacci sequences, fractals, etc...)
Music is one of those things were everything about it screams of patterns. You analyize a single note and the frequencies it contains and you see patterns. A single frequency is a pattern in itself. You analyze individual phrases and you see patterns and repetitions. Chords are patterns. Drums beat to a pattern. In fact, a popular form of music back in the day was a form where a single melody played again and again, transposed, inverted, in harmony, etc.... J.S. Bach kinda killed that form of music because his mind was able to derive and create patterns where none other could even imagine the possibility of a pattern.
You can find patterns even in the songs that a performer chooses to play. You can find patterns in the evolution of music over the history of mankind. Everywhere, from the most abstract to the most concrete sense there are patterns.
There are other things we do everyday that we enjoy because of the patterns. The way we speak, the language itself, the words we use. Why do we stop and think "Why is this word what it is? Did it come from another word? Is it a combination of other words?" Why do we get a certain sense of satisfaction when we understand why we say what we say? Because there are patterns, infinitely complicated patterns, at work there.
Our mind is built (or evolved, if you prefer to think that way) for one purpose: to order the chaos around us. It takes in masses of data and converts it all to a few simple ideas. That's where we derive our pleasure of thinking from: taking the complex and making it simple.
I would laugh and agree with you, but I can't. See, I have taken the time to meet and actually discuss the real issues with these folks.
Yes, they come off to casual observers as being glib and superficially charming. But that is because when they are campaigning they are meeting literally hundreds and thousands of people a day. Try doing that and not acting glib. I saw an example of this last night. One of the people in our group complained about a recent decision by the city council. How many times have they heard this? I am guessing at least 10, maybe 20 times a day. Anyway, the one gal gives the canned, practiced response. How many times had she given this? At least as many times as she heard the complaint. It was a reasonable response, but you had to think about it for a while to understand the real issues. But to the casual observer, it was glib, superficially charming, and meaningless.
Politicians aren't generally liars or grandiose. Those are the ones you see on TV and read about in the paper. The vast majority of politicians only show up when it's election time, and they have to attempt to manipulate you to vote for them. All of them must make this rite of passage. The only ones that don't are those who are in appointed positions.
As far as callous and shallow, this is again a trait that the minority has. The vast majority, on both sides of the aisle, really care about what they doing and are pouring their heart and soul into their work. They can't care about everything, though. They can't even know about everything. So while you may see one at a funeral who isn't touched, remember that this is probably the third funeral of the week, and that they probably don't know the guy personally or at least to the point where they have become emotionally attached. After all, it's only politics, and if you become emotionally attached to people prepare for serious heartbreak when they endorse your opponent or turn on you after a bad decision.
Lack of remorse or guilt, and a failure to accept responsibility... I think you have to really get to know them and see the problems from their perspective. Sometimes, they knew there would be fallout, and they are prepared to accept the bad parts because they want the good part. So when those who are affected by the fallout come to complain, they are going to seem callous. Or would you rather have them say, "I knew this was going to happen, and you would be affected this way, and I made the decision regardless. It was a tough decision, but it was the best damn decision I could've made. And basically you weren't here to show us a better decision and it's water under the bridge now. I know you won't care about what I have to say because you can't see past your own problems, so I won't bother explaining. Just get it out of your system and let us move on to more important things."
But another thing you will see is that politicians, at the end of the day, are used and abused by their constituents. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people support a candidate only to turn on them moments later, only to support them moments later. It's a roller coaster ride, and the only way politicians can cope is to stay emotionally detached in their work. If there's crying to be done, it's done very privately on the shoulder of their spouse or very. very close and trusted friends. Otherwise, emotion can't enter into it. If it does, they will quickly become psychopathic.
I want to emphasize that there are a few psychopaths in politics, on both sides of the aisle. They probably aren't who you think they are and a few of the ones who you think aren't probably are. You will find them somewhat equally distributed throughout all levels of politics. Use the criteria, but apply it individually. And you must take the time to get to know the candidate personally. I tell you from experience that the local newspaper is abou as trustworthy as the pious gossip at your local church. If you base any of your opinions on what you see or read second- or third-hand, prepare to be misinformed.
I'll assume you're male, but for all the females out there, young men tend to have this uncontrollable urge to break things and hurt people. It is probably related to the fact that they are overdosed on certain hormones. When the urge comes, the vision clouds, the mind flies away, and the young man turns into a monster that doesn't pay attention to reason and only relies on raw emotion and instinct. We are part animal, and we can behave like sharks that smell blood if we allow it.
Young men must learn to control this! It is absolutely critical to do so otherwise the young man grows up to become an animal. If they learn to control it, then the young man becomes a useful and productive member of society.
The best way to control this is to put them in an environment where they can safely and constructively beat the heck out of each other. A large part of football isn't violence. The most time is spent on careful practice and exercise, and teaching young men how to control their rage and direct it. There's a right time and a place for rage in football - after the ball is hiked and before the whistle blows. And there's a wrong time - any other time, even scrimmage. The coaches know what they are doing, they are teaching basic anger management skills to these boys. There's a reason why only men seem to succeed in coaching men. Women don't get this part of male nature, and I don't think they ever really can.
The military (at least, the US and civilized militaries) teach control as well. When you are in a fight, you go in with both guns blazing and your testosterone and adrenaline in high gear. When you get the order (or when the rules of engagement dicate) to violence, you do it with such efficiency and prejudice that even the devil cowers in fear. When you are under stress, when failure is not an option, you kick up your rage and emotion and adrenaline and achieve superhuman abilities. But outside of that, anger, rage, emotion, etc, are not allowed. It's not allowed in the barracks. It's not allowed in the classroom. It's not allowed when the sarge says its not allowed and when the rules of engagement say its not allowed.
You also learn to train that animal to behave properly. We can teach dogs to jump, fetch, lie down, and roll over. We can teach our inner animal basic tasks and allow our animal nature to handle that when it is right. Have you ever heard of army guys saying, "then the training kicked in." When you get that burst of rage, emotion, or adrenaline, your "animal training" kicks in. You become like a dog, unable to reason or think, only able to do basic tasks that have been drilled and drilled and drilled.
If we try and raise our boys to be perfect all the time, never having a proper, condoned outlet for rage, we are damming up a river without allowing a controlled amount of water to pass through. Eventually, the dam will break, and that young boy won't know when it's time to stop. Then people get hurt or killed uselessly. The ancient Greeks knew this. The Romans knew this. Every successful society has an outlet where boys can go be boys and break things and move their body and be vicious to one another. We call it "sports" today.
We have to teach boys: There IS a place for violence. It's not in the classroom. It's not in civilized society. It is for self-defense, national defense, and to defend your neighbors. It is for the football field and the basketball court and the baseball field. It is for high-stress situations where people's lives are at stake. You learn to take your rage and emotion and hormones and control it so that you do something useful and productive with it, and when you grow up to be a real man, you'll learn how to use that to do day-to-day tasks with superhuman abilities when the need arises.
3. Education starts in the home. Are you sending your child to school properly socialized so he can function effectively? Do you read to your chyldren? Does junior know his colors and shapes, or is he educated by the television?? This is probably the biggest source of the achievement gap in schools, tho' it ain't PC to talk about it.
My son, who is now four, can read "Green Eggs and Ham" and is working on the words in "Red Fish, Blue Fish". I read to him every night religiously, and I am asking him comprehension questions. Although he was slow in learning to speak, he is definitely ready now. Plus, he is learning Korean from his mother.
5. It's OK in america to neglect gifted kids. "They will take care of themselves anyway" Uh, wrong. Tragically wrong. This is a topic for a lengthy disquisition. I have been a specialist in the field of gifted education for many years. The misconceptions held by the public on this issue are legion.
Except that gifted kids aren't much different from regular kids! All the studies I've seen show that if you challenge a kid, they will rise to the challenge. That means that we shouldn't classify them into "smart" and "dumb". We should be teaching them all as if they were all smart! As far as I can tell, the only factor in whether a kid is ready to learn is whether they are motivated. Kick all the non-motivated kids out, tell their parents to motivate them, and we can challenge the kids we have and give them the best education in the world.
Kids should come into high school ready for college. They should leave high school with what now passes for a four-year degree. There's no reason why we have to wait until they are 19 before we can really start teaching them. You'd be surprised what thse 14- and 15-year-olds are able to comprehend. I've had some seriously deep rational conversations with boys from this age, and these boys are by no means bright. Why aren't we taking 14-year-old kids and showing them Calculus and Physics and how transistors really work? I know they're ready for it because I can teach it to them and I'm not even a professional!
In order to get there, middle school should be what high school is today. The kids should learn to devour technical books. They should wrap up their ability to compose English and to reason with mathematics. They should get a taste of what is coming in high school.
Which means in elementary school it is absolutely critical that they master the basics. If you can't read, you can't get into 3rd grade, plain and simple. If you can't read a thick book and understand it, you can't get out of 6th grade. If you can't add, subtract, divide, multiply, and solve basic algebra problems, you won't see middle school.
Kick out the non-motivated kids, let them know that they had better change their attitude or else life is going to hit them like a semi-truck at 2AM on the interstate. Kids MUST get educated, and fast, or else the U. S. of A. will become a third world company as all the tech companies are forced to leave for India and China.
If the Chinese could own elephant herds, this wouldn't be a problem. The owners would make sure that the elephants would grow appropriately and profitably. They would make sure that the beneficial attributes of the elephants would never disappear.
Instead, today no one can own the Chinese elephants. And even if you do own them, you can't harvest the ivory in the tusks and sell them in a legitimate market. And because China is a communist society, sustainable profits are actively discouraged. Since no one owns the elephants, the tragedy of the commons is inevitable.
Take, for instance, the massive herds of cattle owned across the world. Cattle have developed a neat trait to ensure their continued survival: They have the most valuable meat of all animals that are domesticated, and they do most of the work themselves. This makes cattle valuable to their owners, and ensures that each cow is going to see a long, healthy life, followed by a quick "harvesting". Cattle will never go extinct as long as they produce the tasty meat we so love and crave, and as long as people are allowed to own cattle and exploit them.
The link to the Easter Island story is extremely relevant. The Easter Island people didn't have a sense of ownership of the trees. I don't know what they were thinking, and I don't think their descendents have a good clue either, but I can tell you that if they viewed the forest as an investment, and the things the forest produced as a valuable commodity that could be owned and bartered for, then the forest would still be there. I guess that somehow their society lost these basic rules and devolved into a free-for-all as people tried to provide for themselves in an increasingly barbaric society.
You are entering an area of database technology where angels fear to tread. This is something that if it were easy, we wouldn't be paying top DBA's hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it and keep it working with acceptable uptime. There is a reason why companies that run the scale of Amazon have IT expenses in the millions and millions, and why they do their darnedest to hire and keep the best talent in the country. You're entering the big leagues now. You're going to need a professional team to handle the gameplay, because your minor-league team can't cut it.
Your first step is to look your boss square in the eye and say, "I think I am smart. But I know there are a lot of smarter guys than me out there, and they have a hard time implementing this right, and they have a budget in the millions. Sure, we can hack together a solution that may solve your short-term needs, but I know what is coming down the road and that solution will not be it." You can elaborate what you know as far as your manager is willing to try and understand it. But you need to wake your manager up and explain to him that this is a different game now, run with different rules.
Your next step is to convince the boss to give you time and resources to learn the black arts of this field. The resources will include a *team* of DBAs who have experience with this kind of thing (and they aren't cheap!), software developers who have seen this before (again, not cheap!), machines to run on of the proper caliber (and you may decide you will need a mainframe - don't write it off too soon.) The time will be whatever it takes to (a) understand/in depth/ the field as it exists today, and (b) understand the problem you are being asked to solve/in depth/, and anticipate future needs, and (c) mapping a solution that addresses the facts of life in (a) and (b). This means paperwork, specifications, and a lot of meetings and sales calls and demonstrations and typing.
If your manager can't agree to this, then you need to tell him this next part: "I cannot implement what you need unless you give me the tools and resources to do it. You are asking me to build a skyscraper with spare parts I find in the kitchen. You may be able to find someone who is willing to tell you that they can do it, and do it cheaper and faster. But I submit to you that they are selling you snake oil. When you see his solution, when it comes under load, and when you start to learn about things you've never heard of, which they'll call "minor technical details that can be easily fixed", but deep in your gut you'll get the sense that they aren't minor and that they are certainly not "details", you will remember what I told you about skyscrapers and kitchen tools. You will begin to grasp the enormity of the problem you have asked me to solve. You will begin to see that throwing the money after the snake oil salesman was a worse investment than throwing a lot of money at the real solution."
If I were you, I'd start filling out the resume and start looking for a new job at a smaller company that doesn't have these problems. That is, unless you absolutely believe you are going to be up to the task and management is going to take it as seriously as you will. I've seen too many people try to deliver to management what they could not because they wouldn't pay attention to those annoying "facts" and this thing called "logic". Don't fall into this group. Be up-front, bold, and clear as heck with your manager, and don't try to hide anything from them.
I've been working closely with the schools and school board in my area because I want to see them succeed. I have to say that you are working from the wrong assumptions:
(1) It is perfectly libertarian to have a community establish a school for the good of the community. In fact, the entire purpose of public schools is to educate the uneducated. Those who have parents who have an education don't need public schools and will succeed anyway. We are targetting the poor, ignorant masses, and there our focus must remain. All education institutions are charities, and we must remember this. If we fail in educating the lower class of students, we have failed altogether, and should close the schools.
(2) The ability of even the weaker minds to get educated is astonishing. I used to think I am pretty smart. I still do. But compared to those around me who I see in the grocery store, at my church, in my community, I am not much smarter and to a large extent not as smart as them. Humans in general are very, very intelligent and are quite capable of obtaining a very advanced education when they commit themselves to it. I understand there are those with physical disabilities that have the side-effect of limiting the education level that individual can obtain. The percentage of people with these limitations is much, much lower than you think, and society is already well-prepared to handle them appropriately. (Hint: public schools are not the place for them. They need a special education and attention completely different from what public schools can provide.)
So, with those two observations, let's begin analyzing what schools should be doing.
(1) We should EXPECT A LOT from our students. Humans, the vast majority of them, meet the extraordinary demands placed upon them. (Look at history for examples.) Yes, it is hard work. Yes it is stressful. However, this is a good kind of stress that everyone should feel - the stress of trying to be the best you can be. And it's the kind of stress you need to learn how to handle at a young age. Those children who are faced with this stress at an early age go on to a wonderful life filled with challenges and extraordinary success. Those without this stress never amount to much.
(2) Schools should INVOLVE PARENTS at every level. Elementary and middle schools that succeed have a parent assistant or two in the classroom every hour of instruction. These parents are there to observe and set examples for the children. If you consider there are roughly 30 children in a classroom, and 6 hours of instruction a day, that works out to each student needing their parents to put in about 1 hour of attendance in class a week. If each parent only put in a full 6 hours one day out of every 6 weeks, there would be a parent there all the time. Consider that you only really go to school for about 30 weeks of the year (discounting holidays and breaks), each parent would have to commit to only 5 6-hour days for each school year.
Parents must be seen as the primary educator, and teachers should be seen as a supporting member of the cast. If parents don't provide the proper motivation and enthusiasm for education, there is nothing the teacher can do. (If a teacher doesn't show the proper enthusiasm, the parent can get a new teacher.) Involving them in the classroom will help put them in the proper role.
(3) Parents need to understand the importance of an education and demand that the school provide it. Teachers often feel alone and even discouraged from challenging the children to succeed. When parents put the challenge to the teachers to teach, they will be much more willing to do the best they can. You should see your child's teacher often and ask, "How are you challenging my child and the other children? Are they stretching their abilities or are they getting a free ride? I don't care if my student isn't able to achieve 100% in the classroom. In fact, if he were I would demand more." When teachers see that you demand excellence, when they see your commitment to excel
For America to succeed, we have to drive down the cost of living by encouraging companies to provide the same things for a much lower price. With the same salary, we should be able to buy more and get more done. That's what will make our country prosperous.
That's why outsourcing is good. We get a cheaper service, thus driving down the cost of doing business. Do some people lose their job? Yes, but at a lower wage, they will have MORE purchasing power with the cheaper goods.
Better yet, if the cost of stuff goes down enough, the price at which people are willing to work will drop accordingly. Thus, many of the jobs that are borderline for export will end up staying home.
In the future, I expect to make less money, but be able to buy far more things.
Yes, the military censored the executions and brutal treatment the Japanese gave President's Bush's friends after they crashed and were captured. They did this for a number of reasons. One of the reasons was simple. The things the Japanese did were unimaginable to the American public; should the public have discovered at the time, the sentiment towards the Japanese may have turned from conquering them to annihilating them.
You think the Vietnam war was tough? Go back and find out what really happened in the Japanese conflict. Vietnam vets have no right to complain. When the Pacific Theater vets came back, they didn't complain. My own grandfather has never talked about what happened in Guadalcanal as a Marine foot soldier. All we know is that he was one of the handful of surviving troops. Most of his buddies never set foot on the sand.
One story I heard from a Pacific War vet told how he felt so bad for shooting a Japanese in the back as he was preparing to throw a grenade on his friends. He thought shooting someone in the back was unconscionable! He thought maybe he should've whistled or yelled to get him to turn around. All the while, he knew that his friends would go to get water and the Japanese snipers would wait until their backs are turned to shoot them. He knew the torture that his captured friends would endure. He knew that the Japanese would wrap themselves with bamboo so they could stay alive for a few moments longer after getting shot. I mean, the Japanese were far, far, worse than anything you or I could imagine.
And as you know, none of this was let out to the public. No one knew what was really happening there except the military. All these parents would get messages saying their children died honorably in battle defending their troops, when in truth, they were brutally beaten, tortured, and executed, usually by beheading. That's what was censored.
You are sorely, sorely, stupid. Have you missed the entire past 250 years of history?
"We hold these truths to be SELF EVIDENT..." You should complete the rest. If you haven't memorized it already, go search for "Declaration of Independence" on Google.
Man is sovereign. God gave man their rights. Man gives some of their power to form a government. Their rights do not come from the government, and the created beast called government has no rights to turn on their master. Instead, it is the government who may have their powers revoked at any time by a displeased population.
Governments are instituted by men for one purpose - to PROTECT (not intrude) on the rights of men. When governments go beyond this and begin intruding on their rights, man has a right and a duty to overthrow the government.
In the US, we have a system of constant revolution. Every 4 years we choose a new "king "and every 2 and 6 years we have a brand new "parliament". Should the majority of the people become dissatisfied with their government, they rise up and rebel at the ballot box, and a completely new government is formed with completely new people and possibly new rules. Our bloodless revolutions have been occuring for quite some time now (with only minor hiccups that were quickly resolved), and is the model for the rest of the world.
The Taliban was a tyrannical regime. Thank God every day that they are fallen and scattered and busy trying to find a new place to sleep each night rather than a someone new to persecute and torture. The USSR was a tyrannical regime. Thank God that they are gone as well. China, North Korea, and every member of the "Axis of Evil" has their days numbered. One day, their people will rise up (perhaps with some assistance) and overthrow their governments and remake it in their own image.
You represent an ancient artifact of outmoded thinking. Your kind and your beliefs are so outmoded and so useless that we forget that there are people who still think like you. What do you think has happened to the world for the past 250 years? Why do you think there isn't a nation in Europe run by a dictator or king anymore? Why have the great dynasties of Asia fallen into a distant memory? Where are the conquerors and emperors and dictators of yester-year? Where is their glory and their armies and navies and power? They are in the trash-bin of history, along with the backward notion that they somehow have a divine right to oppress people. One by one, tyrannical regimes are replaced with peaceful democracies. The march has been constant since 1776, and it won't stop until every nation is free. It won't even stop then, as each nation has periodic peaceful revolutions to remind their governments that the people are not slaves but masters.
This revolution of the world hasn't been stopped or slowed at any time in its histories. Great Brittain, the super-power, couldn't stop it when it was contained by 13 small colonies, barely able to raise a navy. Hitler, in control of over half of Europe, couldn't stop it when it was in the hands of a small island-nation and an agricultural nationa in economical ruin and for all purposes disarmed. Imperial death troops from Japan couldn't stop it despite the fact that the nation guarding it was busy in two wars spread across the world. The great USSR couldn't even slow it down when it claimed minor victories in pockets of the world. Do you think it will be any different in China or Iraq or Syria or Iran or North Korea?
I think you're right as well. If you take one of the most heavily marketed agricultural products - milk and cheese - you can also see how nature probably didn't intend for those to be consumed in large amounts by humans.
In my personal diet, I consider the staff of life being the basic grains: wheat, rice, barley, etc... Eat them whole or freshly ground, and in as large a portion as your body desires. On top of these, add lots of vegetables and some fruits. The fresher the better. And bring in a little meat in small portions from time to time, including a good portion of animal fat, to round it off. Sprinkle in some salt and other herbs to flavor it well.
As you can see, this diet is probably the ideal. But it is a lot of work and it means I can't stop by for a quick snack except in my own kitchen.
I love the feeling of having a bit of meat soaked in grease with a large slice of whole wheat bread (made completely from whole wheat), buttered well with natural butter, and a side of steamed carrots and a fresh salad.
In standard parliamentary procedure (in other words, how group of people agree to thigns), if you don't have a majority behind a candidate you vote again until you do. Robert's Rules sets the standard pretty high by default - not a plurality, but a majority. It isn't fair to have the group ruled by a candidate that actually represents a minority of the group.
What this means is that in order to win, one of the candidates will have to do something to gain the support of people who wouldn't normally support him. If they can't do this, then they obviously can't lead the entire group.
A "Dark Horse" candidate is a third party candidate that represents the smallest minority of three. However, sometimes the group may compromise by elected the Dark Horse rather than one of the two leading candidates in the event none of them can get the support they need. In the Washington election, that would be the equivalent of a large group of republicans and democrats backing Ruth Bennet, the libertarian candidate, because it is a good compromise and will probably represent all three groups better than any of the other candidates could.
If they can't decide on a candidate, and a majority can't be united behind one, then the position remains empty. In this case, that would be the equivalent of having the Lt. Governor step up and become governor until one can be chosen. This isn't a bad alternative because the Lt. Governor actually won a majority and is supported by both Democrats and Republicans. (He's a Lieberman-type democrat.)
If you think carefully, this is actually a good way to handle it. Rather than have a controversial and divisive leader, have one that is less controversial and more uniting.
I think a reasonable margin of victory could be at about 0.1%. For ten millions votes, you would need to win by 10,000. For 100,000 votes, that's only 100 votes.
Currently, Washington State does have a method whereby close elections are handled without long, drawn-out challenges. The legislature can refuse to accept any result with a majority vote. If there was any candidate for the legislature to exercise this power, the governor's race of 2004 was it. It was too close and there were too many weird things happening. It was a Democrat controlled legislature and they refused to accept responsibility, instead telling the courts to fix it. The courts made the right decision and explained that the remedy that should be applied can't be applied because they are bound by the law as it is written. The voters are going to have to have the final say on whether the legislators made the right decision or not.
Understanding that this is anecdotal evidence, I would like to add my 2 bits of anecdotal evidence.
I believe that it isn't so much whether or not the food has pesticides or dyes, but whether or not you are eating real food or processed food. If you are buying your food from the vegetable and meat section of the store, you tend to be doing a lot better than those who shop the breakfast aisle and the soda pop aisle.
But this isn't rocket science. The foods on the shelves are designed to be addictive and to taste good, all the while skimping on the "real food" part that is good for you. Farmers and butchers can't do a whole heckuva lot to make their food tastier or more addictive, and they can't hide the "real food" from you.
I would believe the bulk of the benefit your friend had came from bidding farewell to the Pop Tarts and the afternoon Pepsi and from welcoming whole foods onto his plate in its stead. Granted, avoiding pesticides and various other chemicals is probably a good thing, but I don't think it gives much better benefit than my suggestion.
I think in general, the key to being healthy is to learn how to turn the food in the vegetable and meat section into edible foods on the table without adding too many things found on the shelves.
Again, this is all speculation and totally non-scientific. But so was the article this comment is attached to.
I have been thinking lately about crime and punishment. We have two reasons for sending people to prison in the first place:
(1) To punish them.
(2) To reform them.
Both of these purposes have been lost completely.
We punish the prisoners by secluding them from society, cutting them away for a period of time in proportion to the seriousness of their crime.
We reform them by teaching them new habits and skills that will help them survive beyond the prison walls without returning to crime.
What does this have to do with either? Absolutely nothing. I'd rather we spent our prison budget on working to enhance the education and reformation of the prisoners rather than keeping track of where they are at all times, something that we don't have a problem with right now.
Imagine if you bought a book that had a lock on it. You received the key with the book as you purchased it, and were able to unlock the book to read it. Now imagine that you lose that key. What can you do? You could force your way into the book or try to get a locksmith to make a new key for you. But it's your copy of the book and you have a right to read it anytime you like, right? In fact, if you got sick of unlocking the book evertime you wanted to use it, couldn't you just bypass the lock altogether?
With propietary software, you have no such rights. In fact, the rights you do have are surprisingly few. Let's pretend you were using the software and the company that made the software fell off the face of the earth. Now you have no recourse whatsoever. Let's consider that you are using the software and you discover an error. Are you allowed to fix it? At least with the book, you can mark in your copy and even add or remove pages. But you can't do that with the copy of the software you purchased.
Let's say you like the book a lot, and you want to share it with your friends. That's totally legal with a book, but not with software. Some licenses are so restricted that you can't allow more than one person to use the computer if it is installed on that computer.
Stop paying people for limited rights to use software. Start contributing to the solution: sensibly copyrighted software in the free and open source communities.
You can buy all the software you want but it will all boil down to practice, practice, and practice. I would just get a good, cheap book on typing from your local library, memorize the skills, and then practice it often.
It's sad but today's education de-emphasizes practice and memorization and over-emphasizes deduction and reasoning. There is a place for both. Once you deduce some information, it's time to memorize or practice it until it is second nature.
First, it's not a perception only that objects contract in length in the direction of motion (remember, the frame of reference you are observing is always at rest! It's the universe that is moving, not you.) It's an actual contraction. Time dilation is likewise. The reason this must occur is because of the simple fact that the speed of light is the same in ALL frames of reference. This means the particle of light you see is travelling the exact same speed relative to you as the particle of light someone in one of the buildings sees as you zip past them.
There has to be some "give" in the universe to allow this to hold true. That "give" is the actual contraction of size and expansion of time.
The relativity effects are not simple perception distortions; the actual distance shrinks and time dilates. Objects get distorted in reality.
Finally, to you, those particles of light weren't "bending" to get to your eye. They travelled straight from the lamppost (or wherever the lamppost was when the light was bounced off of or emitted from it) to you. You can't see the back of the lamppost.
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I hope Iran, North Korea (DPRK) and every other country who views the USA as an enemy is trembling in their boots, crapping their pants, and responding frantically to this threat. I hope so, because those nukes are aimed right at their little heads. And frankly, I hope we use them sooner rather than later. I don't like going to sleep at night wondering if Kim Jong Il is going to press the button and nuke my family. I would much rather have Tony Blair or some other democratically elected, accountable leader at that button.
On the other hand, I hope those countries who engage in free trade with the US, have no reason to feel threatened by the US because they operate above the table with us, and who have a history of supporting the US's actions against bastards like Saddam Hussein and Hitler and Hirohito feel no threat at all. That is, unless they are also dealing with DPRK and Iran and are finding themselves increasingly opposed to mankind's last great hope--the USA.
There was a line drawn in the sand, and it is still there. You are either going to help us eliminate all terrorist threats, or you are going to find yourself on the receiving end of our wrath. It's all up to you.
"the USA, that is the people, need a wake up message, perhaps a wake up message in the form of your entire congress including the president chimp being nuked."
You just threatened our country. Expect to be visited by our military soon. I suggest you kneel on the floor, place your weapon in front of you, and put your hands in the air. I also suggest staying as far away from military hardware as possible.
If you don't speak English as you native language, the key phrase is, "I Surrender! Don't shoot!"
Thanks and have a nice day.
And we have already had a wake-up call, thank you very much. The wake up call said, as it said to every world power since the beginning of the world, "If you plan on keeping your position of power, you have to take any and all threats seriously, even if it's coming from backwards barbarians who don't even know how to properly bathe."
It sounds like it's time the rest of the world had a wake-up call. It goes like this: "You are either with us or against us." That is all.
There are three parts to your system: sending mail, receiving mail, and storing mail. Keep them separate.
Your receivers will be a bank of servers running sendmail. They will do appropriate spam processing to reduce the amount of mail actually received. They feed the data into the storage servers.
The storage system has the data partitioned out so that all the data for one user would go to one server while all the data for another will go to a different one. The storage system also has to provide POP and IMAP access. You may want a special setup where the IMAP or POP service known which server to go to. Investigate having one giant virtual filesystem so that the system isn't too complicated.
Your webmail access will use IMAP to access the actual mail. It can be a completly different system.
The sending system will be a chokepoint for all outgoing mail. You are going to scan it as it goes out to look for virus-sent emails or unauthorized messages. For instance, you may want marketing email to be processed differently than inter-office email and such.
All of these systems will be running sendmail. I know sendmail has a bad rap for being insecure, but the insecurities have been found and since fixed. It is by far the most manageable system when it comes to large-scale deployments with heavy customization.
You have a point; I don't like the fact that the feds have much power at all. Frankly, I don't trust them, even when "my guy" sits in the seat.
I expect you are going to work in politics and locally to eliminate the need for local police and FBI powers? I suggest you start by making a few arrests. You have the power to do so. Unlike the federal government, you can get away with a lot of things like wiretapping and surveillance.
But you don't like vigilantism either. Well, what are we left to do? Shall we just leave our borders open and put up a sign, "Please don't hurt us. We are unarmed wussies unwilling to protect our own lives and unwilling to allow our own government to protect us."
If you had a choice between the three: Strong government, vigilantes, or nothing, which would you have? Or do you believe that we can maintain a sane society and permit people to hook people on drugs and conspire to overthrow governments and conspire to terrorize the populace?
She has those rights but only because we, the people, grant them to her. They are not inherent and inviolate rights like the right to bear arms and the right to free speech that citizens enjoy.
Her green card can be revoked at any time for any reason as well. It says so on the document. She doesn't even own it.
I take it you've never read the Patriot Act. You've probably taken all the second- or third-hand information and believed it.
The Patriot Act grants only a few "new" powers, all still within the constitution. These "new" powers aren't new at all. They are the same power the feds and local police have when investigated trusts and the mafia and drug violations. In a nutshell, the law enforcement still has to get a warrant to do search and seizure. Now they can get a warrant against a suspected terrorist and have that warrant hidden from the public so as not to alert the terrorists being investigated. That's common sense, is it not?
Technically, if you are suspected of fighting against the United States, whether on foreign or domestice soil, you have fallen out of the regular judicial system. All of a sudden, you find yourself under the judicial system of the military. Read the constitution and you'll see how the military justice system is allowed to differ from the domestic one.
And furthermore, foreign nationals, here illegally or legally, are not entitled to the same rights citizens have. My wife, although she is loyal to the US, is still a South Korean citizen. She has no right to petition government, she has no right to due process, and she has no right to be here at all. The feds could walk in tomorrow and put her in prison without any justification. But we just don't do that, because we don't think it is very kind.
Now, let's compare Amerikkka under the PatRIOT act to Communist China.
In China, even citizens have no rights. Even when government is at its most benevolent, her own citizens are treated more poorly than foriegn combatants. China is a corrupt country, with powerful men dictating the way things should be. Elections are a sham. Even if you elected representatives that opposed the government, they would be useless and replaced.
There is no court system that even approaches what we have in the US. I hear stories of farmers and homeowners having their property taken away without due process and without compensation. I hear stories of people in their homes being carted away by the police when there was no reason for the police to invade the home and the police certainly didn't have a warrant to do so.
You think Hurrican Katrina is bad, and it is. One of the worst effects it had (aside from the death and mayhem) is that families were torn apart. In Communist China, families are torn apart constantly. People don't know what happens to their loved ones. Are they in prison? Are they executed? No one knows. They just disappear.
In Communist China, one of the worst effects is that if you actually have some money, enough to get by well enough, you have to pretend you are a beggar. You can't walk around with modern clothing and a nice wristwatch. You certainly can't use your wealth to help your fellow people. One person who built a road to his village to connect them with Beijing found himself in prison because the people grew to actually like him and not the government.
I'm sorry, but the two don't even compare. I'm sick of all the wacko Bush bigotry and I wish people would open up their own eyes and see for themselves what is really happening rather than discarding opposing viewpoints because they think the other side is "dumb like W".
In Guantanamo Bay, you get a prayer rug and warm, filling meals compliant with your religion. You get clean, running water and state-of-the-art plumbing. You can spit, pee, and throw feces at the guards and not get punished. You are also allowed to read your choice of religious literature. You are never tortured, and have access to ACLU Lawyers. You get all this even though you fought against American troops and you didn't wear a uniform and you didn't fight in the name of any country that exists today.
In a chinese prison, your body parts get sold for profit by the government when you get executed. In fact, they'll speed up the execution if they have an urgent need for your body parts. You don't have any rights. There is no due process. You don't get a square meal. You don't get your favorite religious book. You don't get a prayer rug. If you backtalk to a guard, you get physically abused, perhaps even killed. You are regularly tortured and even brainwashed. You don't have access to any lawyers, and you don't even get access to your embassy.
Yeah, I can see how people might morally equivocate the two. I certainly have a hard time distinguishing communist China from the US of A!
There is something in the human mind that enjoys patterns. We find a certain satisfaction in seeing order where there should be chaos.
All throughout nature we see patterns upon pattern upon pattern. It wasn't until recently that we could even describe some of the patterns we saw in nature (Fibonacci sequences, fractals, etc...)
Music is one of those things were everything about it screams of patterns. You analyize a single note and the frequencies it contains and you see patterns. A single frequency is a pattern in itself. You analyze individual phrases and you see patterns and repetitions. Chords are patterns. Drums beat to a pattern. In fact, a popular form of music back in the day was a form where a single melody played again and again, transposed, inverted, in harmony, etc.... J.S. Bach kinda killed that form of music because his mind was able to derive and create patterns where none other could even imagine the possibility of a pattern.
You can find patterns even in the songs that a performer chooses to play. You can find patterns in the evolution of music over the history of mankind. Everywhere, from the most abstract to the most concrete sense there are patterns.
There are other things we do everyday that we enjoy because of the patterns. The way we speak, the language itself, the words we use. Why do we stop and think "Why is this word what it is? Did it come from another word? Is it a combination of other words?" Why do we get a certain sense of satisfaction when we understand why we say what we say? Because there are patterns, infinitely complicated patterns, at work there.
Our mind is built (or evolved, if you prefer to think that way) for one purpose: to order the chaos around us. It takes in masses of data and converts it all to a few simple ideas. That's where we derive our pleasure of thinking from: taking the complex and making it simple.
That's why I like music.
I would laugh and agree with you, but I can't. See, I have taken the time to meet and actually discuss the real issues with these folks.
Yes, they come off to casual observers as being glib and superficially charming. But that is because when they are campaigning they are meeting literally hundreds and thousands of people a day. Try doing that and not acting glib. I saw an example of this last night. One of the people in our group complained about a recent decision by the city council. How many times have they heard this? I am guessing at least 10, maybe 20 times a day. Anyway, the one gal gives the canned, practiced response. How many times had she given this? At least as many times as she heard the complaint. It was a reasonable response, but you had to think about it for a while to understand the real issues. But to the casual observer, it was glib, superficially charming, and meaningless.
Politicians aren't generally liars or grandiose. Those are the ones you see on TV and read about in the paper. The vast majority of politicians only show up when it's election time, and they have to attempt to manipulate you to vote for them. All of them must make this rite of passage. The only ones that don't are those who are in appointed positions.
As far as callous and shallow, this is again a trait that the minority has. The vast majority, on both sides of the aisle, really care about what they doing and are pouring their heart and soul into their work. They can't care about everything, though. They can't even know about everything. So while you may see one at a funeral who isn't touched, remember that this is probably the third funeral of the week, and that they probably don't know the guy personally or at least to the point where they have become emotionally attached. After all, it's only politics, and if you become emotionally attached to people prepare for serious heartbreak when they endorse your opponent or turn on you after a bad decision.
Lack of remorse or guilt, and a failure to accept responsibility... I think you have to really get to know them and see the problems from their perspective. Sometimes, they knew there would be fallout, and they are prepared to accept the bad parts because they want the good part. So when those who are affected by the fallout come to complain, they are going to seem callous. Or would you rather have them say, "I knew this was going to happen, and you would be affected this way, and I made the decision regardless. It was a tough decision, but it was the best damn decision I could've made. And basically you weren't here to show us a better decision and it's water under the bridge now. I know you won't care about what I have to say because you can't see past your own problems, so I won't bother explaining. Just get it out of your system and let us move on to more important things."
But another thing you will see is that politicians, at the end of the day, are used and abused by their constituents. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people support a candidate only to turn on them moments later, only to support them moments later. It's a roller coaster ride, and the only way politicians can cope is to stay emotionally detached in their work. If there's crying to be done, it's done very privately on the shoulder of their spouse or very. very close and trusted friends. Otherwise, emotion can't enter into it. If it does, they will quickly become psychopathic.
I want to emphasize that there are a few psychopaths in politics, on both sides of the aisle. They probably aren't who you think they are and a few of the ones who you think aren't probably are. You will find them somewhat equally distributed throughout all levels of politics. Use the criteria, but apply it individually. And you must take the time to get to know the candidate personally. I tell you from experience that the local newspaper is abou as trustworthy as the pious gossip at your local church. If you base any of your opinions on what you see or read second- or third-hand, prepare to be misinformed.
I'll assume you're male, but for all the females out there, young men tend to have this uncontrollable urge to break things and hurt people. It is probably related to the fact that they are overdosed on certain hormones. When the urge comes, the vision clouds, the mind flies away, and the young man turns into a monster that doesn't pay attention to reason and only relies on raw emotion and instinct. We are part animal, and we can behave like sharks that smell blood if we allow it.
Young men must learn to control this! It is absolutely critical to do so otherwise the young man grows up to become an animal. If they learn to control it, then the young man becomes a useful and productive member of society.
The best way to control this is to put them in an environment where they can safely and constructively beat the heck out of each other. A large part of football isn't violence. The most time is spent on careful practice and exercise, and teaching young men how to control their rage and direct it. There's a right time and a place for rage in football - after the ball is hiked and before the whistle blows. And there's a wrong time - any other time, even scrimmage. The coaches know what they are doing, they are teaching basic anger management skills to these boys. There's a reason why only men seem to succeed in coaching men. Women don't get this part of male nature, and I don't think they ever really can.
The military (at least, the US and civilized militaries) teach control as well. When you are in a fight, you go in with both guns blazing and your testosterone and adrenaline in high gear. When you get the order (or when the rules of engagement dicate) to violence, you do it with such efficiency and prejudice that even the devil cowers in fear. When you are under stress, when failure is not an option, you kick up your rage and emotion and adrenaline and achieve superhuman abilities. But outside of that, anger, rage, emotion, etc, are not allowed. It's not allowed in the barracks. It's not allowed in the classroom. It's not allowed when the sarge says its not allowed and when the rules of engagement say its not allowed.
You also learn to train that animal to behave properly. We can teach dogs to jump, fetch, lie down, and roll over. We can teach our inner animal basic tasks and allow our animal nature to handle that when it is right. Have you ever heard of army guys saying, "then the training kicked in." When you get that burst of rage, emotion, or adrenaline, your "animal training" kicks in. You become like a dog, unable to reason or think, only able to do basic tasks that have been drilled and drilled and drilled.
If we try and raise our boys to be perfect all the time, never having a proper, condoned outlet for rage, we are damming up a river without allowing a controlled amount of water to pass through. Eventually, the dam will break, and that young boy won't know when it's time to stop. Then people get hurt or killed uselessly. The ancient Greeks knew this. The Romans knew this. Every successful society has an outlet where boys can go be boys and break things and move their body and be vicious to one another. We call it "sports" today.
We have to teach boys: There IS a place for violence. It's not in the classroom. It's not in civilized society. It is for self-defense, national defense, and to defend your neighbors. It is for the football field and the basketball court and the baseball field. It is for high-stress situations where people's lives are at stake. You learn to take your rage and emotion and hormones and control it so that you do something useful and productive with it, and when you grow up to be a real man, you'll learn how to use that to do day-to-day tasks with superhuman abilities when the need arises.
My son, who is now four, can read "Green Eggs and Ham" and is working on the words in "Red Fish, Blue Fish". I read to him every night religiously, and I am asking him comprehension questions. Although he was slow in learning to speak, he is definitely ready now. Plus, he is learning Korean from his mother.
Except that gifted kids aren't much different from regular kids! All the studies I've seen show that if you challenge a kid, they will rise to the challenge. That means that we shouldn't classify them into "smart" and "dumb". We should be teaching them all as if they were all smart! As far as I can tell, the only factor in whether a kid is ready to learn is whether they are motivated. Kick all the non-motivated kids out, tell their parents to motivate them, and we can challenge the kids we have and give them the best education in the world.
Kids should come into high school ready for college. They should leave high school with what now passes for a four-year degree. There's no reason why we have to wait until they are 19 before we can really start teaching them. You'd be surprised what thse 14- and 15-year-olds are able to comprehend. I've had some seriously deep rational conversations with boys from this age, and these boys are by no means bright. Why aren't we taking 14-year-old kids and showing them Calculus and Physics and how transistors really work? I know they're ready for it because I can teach it to them and I'm not even a professional!
In order to get there, middle school should be what high school is today. The kids should learn to devour technical books. They should wrap up their ability to compose English and to reason with mathematics. They should get a taste of what is coming in high school.
Which means in elementary school it is absolutely critical that they master the basics. If you can't read, you can't get into 3rd grade, plain and simple. If you can't read a thick book and understand it, you can't get out of 6th grade. If you can't add, subtract, divide, multiply, and solve basic algebra problems, you won't see middle school.
Kick out the non-motivated kids, let them know that they had better change their attitude or else life is going to hit them like a semi-truck at 2AM on the interstate. Kids MUST get educated, and fast, or else the U. S. of A. will become a third world company as all the tech companies are forced to leave for India and China.
If the Chinese could own elephant herds, this wouldn't be a problem. The owners would make sure that the elephants would grow appropriately and profitably. They would make sure that the beneficial attributes of the elephants would never disappear.
Instead, today no one can own the Chinese elephants. And even if you do own them, you can't harvest the ivory in the tusks and sell them in a legitimate market. And because China is a communist society, sustainable profits are actively discouraged. Since no one owns the elephants, the tragedy of the commons is inevitable.
Take, for instance, the massive herds of cattle owned across the world. Cattle have developed a neat trait to ensure their continued survival: They have the most valuable meat of all animals that are domesticated, and they do most of the work themselves. This makes cattle valuable to their owners, and ensures that each cow is going to see a long, healthy life, followed by a quick "harvesting". Cattle will never go extinct as long as they produce the tasty meat we so love and crave, and as long as people are allowed to own cattle and exploit them.
The link to the Easter Island story is extremely relevant. The Easter Island people didn't have a sense of ownership of the trees. I don't know what they were thinking, and I don't think their descendents have a good clue either, but I can tell you that if they viewed the forest as an investment, and the things the forest produced as a valuable commodity that could be owned and bartered for, then the forest would still be there. I guess that somehow their society lost these basic rules and devolved into a free-for-all as people tried to provide for themselves in an increasingly barbaric society.
You are entering an area of database technology where angels fear to tread. This is something that if it were easy, we wouldn't be paying top DBA's hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it and keep it working with acceptable uptime. There is a reason why companies that run the scale of Amazon have IT expenses in the millions and millions, and why they do their darnedest to hire and keep the best talent in the country. You're entering the big leagues now. You're going to need a professional team to handle the gameplay, because your minor-league team can't cut it.
/in depth/ the field as it exists today, and (b) understand the problem you are being asked to solve /in depth/, and anticipate future needs, and (c) mapping a solution that addresses the facts of life in (a) and (b). This means paperwork, specifications, and a lot of meetings and sales calls and demonstrations and typing.
Your first step is to look your boss square in the eye and say, "I think I am smart. But I know there are a lot of smarter guys than me out there, and they have a hard time implementing this right, and they have a budget in the millions. Sure, we can hack together a solution that may solve your short-term needs, but I know what is coming down the road and that solution will not be it." You can elaborate what you know as far as your manager is willing to try and understand it. But you need to wake your manager up and explain to him that this is a different game now, run with different rules.
Your next step is to convince the boss to give you time and resources to learn the black arts of this field. The resources will include a *team* of DBAs who have experience with this kind of thing (and they aren't cheap!), software developers who have seen this before (again, not cheap!), machines to run on of the proper caliber (and you may decide you will need a mainframe - don't write it off too soon.) The time will be whatever it takes to (a) understand
If your manager can't agree to this, then you need to tell him this next part: "I cannot implement what you need unless you give me the tools and resources to do it. You are asking me to build a skyscraper with spare parts I find in the kitchen. You may be able to find someone who is willing to tell you that they can do it, and do it cheaper and faster. But I submit to you that they are selling you snake oil. When you see his solution, when it comes under load, and when you start to learn about things you've never heard of, which they'll call "minor technical details that can be easily fixed", but deep in your gut you'll get the sense that they aren't minor and that they are certainly not "details", you will remember what I told you about skyscrapers and kitchen tools. You will begin to grasp the enormity of the problem you have asked me to solve. You will begin to see that throwing the money after the snake oil salesman was a worse investment than throwing a lot of money at the real solution."
If I were you, I'd start filling out the resume and start looking for a new job at a smaller company that doesn't have these problems. That is, unless you absolutely believe you are going to be up to the task and management is going to take it as seriously as you will. I've seen too many people try to deliver to management what they could not because they wouldn't pay attention to those annoying "facts" and this thing called "logic". Don't fall into this group. Be up-front, bold, and clear as heck with your manager, and don't try to hide anything from them.
I've been working closely with the schools and school board in my area because I want to see them succeed. I have to say that you are working from the wrong assumptions:
(1) It is perfectly libertarian to have a community establish a school for the good of the community. In fact, the entire purpose of public schools is to educate the uneducated. Those who have parents who have an education don't need public schools and will succeed anyway. We are targetting the poor, ignorant masses, and there our focus must remain. All education institutions are charities, and we must remember this. If we fail in educating the lower class of students, we have failed altogether, and should close the schools.
(2) The ability of even the weaker minds to get educated is astonishing. I used to think I am pretty smart. I still do. But compared to those around me who I see in the grocery store, at my church, in my community, I am not much smarter and to a large extent not as smart as them. Humans in general are very, very intelligent and are quite capable of obtaining a very advanced education when they commit themselves to it. I understand there are those with physical disabilities that have the side-effect of limiting the education level that individual can obtain. The percentage of people with these limitations is much, much lower than you think, and society is already well-prepared to handle them appropriately. (Hint: public schools are not the place for them. They need a special education and attention completely different from what public schools can provide.)
So, with those two observations, let's begin analyzing what schools should be doing.
(1) We should EXPECT A LOT from our students. Humans, the vast majority of them, meet the extraordinary demands placed upon them. (Look at history for examples.) Yes, it is hard work. Yes it is stressful. However, this is a good kind of stress that everyone should feel - the stress of trying to be the best you can be. And it's the kind of stress you need to learn how to handle at a young age. Those children who are faced with this stress at an early age go on to a wonderful life filled with challenges and extraordinary success. Those without this stress never amount to much.
(2) Schools should INVOLVE PARENTS at every level. Elementary and middle schools that succeed have a parent assistant or two in the classroom every hour of instruction. These parents are there to observe and set examples for the children. If you consider there are roughly 30 children in a classroom, and 6 hours of instruction a day, that works out to each student needing their parents to put in about 1 hour of attendance in class a week. If each parent only put in a full 6 hours one day out of every 6 weeks, there would be a parent there all the time. Consider that you only really go to school for about 30 weeks of the year (discounting holidays and breaks), each parent would have to commit to only 5 6-hour days for each school year.
Parents must be seen as the primary educator, and teachers should be seen as a supporting member of the cast. If parents don't provide the proper motivation and enthusiasm for education, there is nothing the teacher can do. (If a teacher doesn't show the proper enthusiasm, the parent can get a new teacher.) Involving them in the classroom will help put them in the proper role.
(3) Parents need to understand the importance of an education and demand that the school provide it. Teachers often feel alone and even discouraged from challenging the children to succeed. When parents put the challenge to the teachers to teach, they will be much more willing to do the best they can. You should see your child's teacher often and ask, "How are you challenging my child and the other children? Are they stretching their abilities or are they getting a free ride? I don't care if my student isn't able to achieve 100% in the classroom. In fact, if he were I would demand more." When teachers see that you demand excellence, when they see your commitment to excel
For America to succeed, we have to drive down the cost of living by encouraging companies to provide the same things for a much lower price. With the same salary, we should be able to buy more and get more done. That's what will make our country prosperous.
That's why outsourcing is good. We get a cheaper service, thus driving down the cost of doing business. Do some people lose their job? Yes, but at a lower wage, they will have MORE purchasing power with the cheaper goods.
Better yet, if the cost of stuff goes down enough, the price at which people are willing to work will drop accordingly. Thus, many of the jobs that are borderline for export will end up staying home.
In the future, I expect to make less money, but be able to buy far more things.
Yes, the military censored the executions and brutal treatment the Japanese gave President's Bush's friends after they crashed and were captured. They did this for a number of reasons. One of the reasons was simple. The things the Japanese did were unimaginable to the American public; should the public have discovered at the time, the sentiment towards the Japanese may have turned from conquering them to annihilating them.
You think the Vietnam war was tough? Go back and find out what really happened in the Japanese conflict. Vietnam vets have no right to complain. When the Pacific Theater vets came back, they didn't complain. My own grandfather has never talked about what happened in Guadalcanal as a Marine foot soldier. All we know is that he was one of the handful of surviving troops. Most of his buddies never set foot on the sand.
One story I heard from a Pacific War vet told how he felt so bad for shooting a Japanese in the back as he was preparing to throw a grenade on his friends. He thought shooting someone in the back was unconscionable! He thought maybe he should've whistled or yelled to get him to turn around. All the while, he knew that his friends would go to get water and the Japanese snipers would wait until their backs are turned to shoot them. He knew the torture that his captured friends would endure. He knew that the Japanese would wrap themselves with bamboo so they could stay alive for a few moments longer after getting shot. I mean, the Japanese were far, far, worse than anything you or I could imagine.
And as you know, none of this was let out to the public. No one knew what was really happening there except the military. All these parents would get messages saying their children died honorably in battle defending their troops, when in truth, they were brutally beaten, tortured, and executed, usually by beheading. That's what was censored.
You are sorely, sorely, stupid. Have you missed the entire past 250 years of history?
"We hold these truths to be SELF EVIDENT..." You should complete the rest. If you haven't memorized it already, go search for "Declaration of Independence" on Google.
Man is sovereign. God gave man their rights. Man gives some of their power to form a government. Their rights do not come from the government, and the created beast called government has no rights to turn on their master. Instead, it is the government who may have their powers revoked at any time by a displeased population.
Governments are instituted by men for one purpose - to PROTECT (not intrude) on the rights of men. When governments go beyond this and begin intruding on their rights, man has a right and a duty to overthrow the government.
In the US, we have a system of constant revolution. Every 4 years we choose a new "king "and every 2 and 6 years we have a brand new "parliament". Should the majority of the people become dissatisfied with their government, they rise up and rebel at the ballot box, and a completely new government is formed with completely new people and possibly new rules. Our bloodless revolutions have been occuring for quite some time now (with only minor hiccups that were quickly resolved), and is the model for the rest of the world.
The Taliban was a tyrannical regime. Thank God every day that they are fallen and scattered and busy trying to find a new place to sleep each night rather than a someone new to persecute and torture. The USSR was a tyrannical regime. Thank God that they are gone as well. China, North Korea, and every member of the "Axis of Evil" has their days numbered. One day, their people will rise up (perhaps with some assistance) and overthrow their governments and remake it in their own image.
You represent an ancient artifact of outmoded thinking. Your kind and your beliefs are so outmoded and so useless that we forget that there are people who still think like you. What do you think has happened to the world for the past 250 years? Why do you think there isn't a nation in Europe run by a dictator or king anymore? Why have the great dynasties of Asia fallen into a distant memory? Where are the conquerors and emperors and dictators of yester-year? Where is their glory and their armies and navies and power? They are in the trash-bin of history, along with the backward notion that they somehow have a divine right to oppress people. One by one, tyrannical regimes are replaced with peaceful democracies. The march has been constant since 1776, and it won't stop until every nation is free. It won't even stop then, as each nation has periodic peaceful revolutions to remind their governments that the people are not slaves but masters.
This revolution of the world hasn't been stopped or slowed at any time in its histories. Great Brittain, the super-power, couldn't stop it when it was contained by 13 small colonies, barely able to raise a navy. Hitler, in control of over half of Europe, couldn't stop it when it was in the hands of a small island-nation and an agricultural nationa in economical ruin and for all purposes disarmed. Imperial death troops from Japan couldn't stop it despite the fact that the nation guarding it was busy in two wars spread across the world. The great USSR couldn't even slow it down when it claimed minor victories in pockets of the world. Do you think it will be any different in China or Iraq or Syria or Iran or North Korea?
I think you're right as well. If you take one of the most heavily marketed agricultural products - milk and cheese - you can also see how nature probably didn't intend for those to be consumed in large amounts by humans.
In my personal diet, I consider the staff of life being the basic grains: wheat, rice, barley, etc... Eat them whole or freshly ground, and in as large a portion as your body desires. On top of these, add lots of vegetables and some fruits. The fresher the better. And bring in a little meat in small portions from time to time, including a good portion of animal fat, to round it off. Sprinkle in some salt and other herbs to flavor it well.
As you can see, this diet is probably the ideal. But it is a lot of work and it means I can't stop by for a quick snack except in my own kitchen.
I love the feeling of having a bit of meat soaked in grease with a large slice of whole wheat bread (made completely from whole wheat), buttered well with natural butter, and a side of steamed carrots and a fresh salad.
In standard parliamentary procedure (in other words, how group of people agree to thigns), if you don't have a majority behind a candidate you vote again until you do. Robert's Rules sets the standard pretty high by default - not a plurality, but a majority. It isn't fair to have the group ruled by a candidate that actually represents a minority of the group.
What this means is that in order to win, one of the candidates will have to do something to gain the support of people who wouldn't normally support him. If they can't do this, then they obviously can't lead the entire group.
A "Dark Horse" candidate is a third party candidate that represents the smallest minority of three. However, sometimes the group may compromise by elected the Dark Horse rather than one of the two leading candidates in the event none of them can get the support they need. In the Washington election, that would be the equivalent of a large group of republicans and democrats backing Ruth Bennet, the libertarian candidate, because it is a good compromise and will probably represent all three groups better than any of the other candidates could.
If they can't decide on a candidate, and a majority can't be united behind one, then the position remains empty. In this case, that would be the equivalent of having the Lt. Governor step up and become governor until one can be chosen. This isn't a bad alternative because the Lt. Governor actually won a majority and is supported by both Democrats and Republicans. (He's a Lieberman-type democrat.)
If you think carefully, this is actually a good way to handle it. Rather than have a controversial and divisive leader, have one that is less controversial and more uniting.
I think a reasonable margin of victory could be at about 0.1%. For ten millions votes, you would need to win by 10,000. For 100,000 votes, that's only 100 votes.
Currently, Washington State does have a method whereby close elections are handled without long, drawn-out challenges. The legislature can refuse to accept any result with a majority vote. If there was any candidate for the legislature to exercise this power, the governor's race of 2004 was it. It was too close and there were too many weird things happening. It was a Democrat controlled legislature and they refused to accept responsibility, instead telling the courts to fix it. The courts made the right decision and explained that the remedy that should be applied can't be applied because they are bound by the law as it is written. The voters are going to have to have the final say on whether the legislators made the right decision or not.
Understanding that this is anecdotal evidence, I would like to add my 2 bits of anecdotal evidence.
I believe that it isn't so much whether or not the food has pesticides or dyes, but whether or not you are eating real food or processed food. If you are buying your food from the vegetable and meat section of the store, you tend to be doing a lot better than those who shop the breakfast aisle and the soda pop aisle.
But this isn't rocket science. The foods on the shelves are designed to be addictive and to taste good, all the while skimping on the "real food" part that is good for you. Farmers and butchers can't do a whole heckuva lot to make their food tastier or more addictive, and they can't hide the "real food" from you.
I would believe the bulk of the benefit your friend had came from bidding farewell to the Pop Tarts and the afternoon Pepsi and from welcoming whole foods onto his plate in its stead. Granted, avoiding pesticides and various other chemicals is probably a good thing, but I don't think it gives much better benefit than my suggestion.
I think in general, the key to being healthy is to learn how to turn the food in the vegetable and meat section into edible foods on the table without adding too many things found on the shelves.
Again, this is all speculation and totally non-scientific. But so was the article this comment is attached to.
I have been thinking lately about crime and punishment. We have two reasons for sending people to prison in the first place:
(1) To punish them.
(2) To reform them.
Both of these purposes have been lost completely.
We punish the prisoners by secluding them from society, cutting them away for a period of time in proportion to the seriousness of their crime.
We reform them by teaching them new habits and skills that will help them survive beyond the prison walls without returning to crime.
What does this have to do with either? Absolutely nothing. I'd rather we spent our prison budget on working to enhance the education and reformation of the prisoners rather than keeping track of where they are at all times, something that we don't have a problem with right now.
Imagine if you bought a book that had a lock on it. You received the key with the book as you purchased it, and were able to unlock the book to read it. Now imagine that you lose that key. What can you do? You could force your way into the book or try to get a locksmith to make a new key for you. But it's your copy of the book and you have a right to read it anytime you like, right? In fact, if you got sick of unlocking the book evertime you wanted to use it, couldn't you just bypass the lock altogether?
With propietary software, you have no such rights. In fact, the rights you do have are surprisingly few. Let's pretend you were using the software and the company that made the software fell off the face of the earth. Now you have no recourse whatsoever. Let's consider that you are using the software and you discover an error. Are you allowed to fix it? At least with the book, you can mark in your copy and even add or remove pages. But you can't do that with the copy of the software you purchased.
Let's say you like the book a lot, and you want to share it with your friends. That's totally legal with a book, but not with software. Some licenses are so restricted that you can't allow more than one person to use the computer if it is installed on that computer.
Stop paying people for limited rights to use software. Start contributing to the solution: sensibly copyrighted software in the free and open source communities.
You can buy all the software you want but it will all boil down to practice, practice, and practice. I would just get a good, cheap book on typing from your local library, memorize the skills, and then practice it often.
It's sad but today's education de-emphasizes practice and memorization and over-emphasizes deduction and reasoning. There is a place for both. Once you deduce some information, it's time to memorize or practice it until it is second nature.
Your basic assumptions are wrong.
First, it's not a perception only that objects contract in length in the direction of motion (remember, the frame of reference you are observing is always at rest! It's the universe that is moving, not you.) It's an actual contraction. Time dilation is likewise. The reason this must occur is because of the simple fact that the speed of light is the same in ALL frames of reference. This means the particle of light you see is travelling the exact same speed relative to you as the particle of light someone in one of the buildings sees as you zip past them.
There has to be some "give" in the universe to allow this to hold true. That "give" is the actual contraction of size and expansion of time.
The relativity effects are not simple perception distortions; the actual distance shrinks and time dilates. Objects get distorted in reality.
Finally, to you, those particles of light weren't "bending" to get to your eye. They travelled straight from the lamppost (or wherever the lamppost was when the light was bounced off of or emitted from it) to you. You can't see the back of the lamppost.