This is what Bush has and the left wishes they had. Bush sees a brighter tomorrow and a way to get there. The left? All they do is complain about Bush.
I see a country held in the grip of one of the worst tyrants one can imagine. The only difference between Hussein and Stalin is one of scale. That regime was decisively smashed in a matter of days.
Then came "winning the peace". In the face of terrorists, daily car-bombings, brutal murderings, millions and millions of Iraqis woke up and openly defied the terrorists and voted for their own future. Do you know the significance of the blue index finger? That's the voters of Iraq challenging the terrorists, "I voted! Come, kill me! You said you would behead me! Where are you, you cowards!"
A people went from being peons to free citizens in a matter of years. Another key point: The immediate security of the polls was handled by Iraqis, not Americans. Americans were in the back, ready to assist if things got out of hand. The only Americans around the polling places were the reporters. Guess what? The Iraqis handled it on their own. The soldiers didn't run this time!
This formula works, it will always work. It will work in Iran, it will work in Syria, it will work in North Korea. This is the only plan that works. All of the great American leaders knew this! Go read up on what MacArthur, Patton, Eisenhower, and other generals thought of this plan. Go see what presidents Kennedy, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and FDR thought! They are in agreement. If there is a fringe wacko element, it is on the left. The American people support Bush because he represents their core values and dreams, since 1776 to today.
Go ahead and keep whining, you leftists. Go ahead and keep wishing for American failure, for our economy to collapse, for Wall Street to burn. It won't happen as long as we have competent, visionary leaders in the White House.
And here's something to set you off: Condi in '08. Romney in '16.
If you started the computer programmer off with a background in hardware, and they understand how you go from RC circuits to transistros, to ICs, then they should learn C. Heck, they already understand assembler, so there won't be any surprises in store for them. Good C programmers are always able to compile the code in their head anyway, and good C teachers show how to compile the code into simple instructions.
However, if they have no idea what an RC circuit is, it's best if you led them into something simpler and designed to be understood. Sadly, that is not C or Java or even perl. I think Python is the current best education language for the layman.
I think heavily is the wrong word, since it really only borrows the indentation. Most of the concepts were borrowed from C and Modula 3. ABC is a weak-dynamically typed language, while Python is strong-dynamically typed.
You'll also note that one of them got that. The other one doesn't mention ABC.
For those of you who don't know, INTERCAL introduced the concept of COME FROM. Since GOTO is considered evil, COME FROM is exactly the opposite. You specify somewhere else in the code that you would like the control to pass from another part of the code.
Aspect-J is cool because you don't even have to label the COME FROM points. It can literally be anywhere in your code!
It was a revolution in that the system changed from top-down to bottom-up. Up until that point, general philosophy said you needed a king who had been raised since birth to lead to run a nation. Otherwise, it couldn't be done. Julius Ceaser was celebrated, along with Alexander the Great, because they were great top-down leaders.
Then along comes the idea that maybe the masses aren't so stupid as Ceaser and Alexander claimed. Maybe, in fact, they knew more about how to run a country, a city, and a village than a king who lived far away and who didn't care. If the masses aren't stupid, then they should be free to do what they wish, because they are more often right than wrong.
That was the revolution part. The revolution didn't start with a gunshot. It started with a pen, long before 1776. It isn't complete either. We're still trying to bring freedom to everyone who wants it.
The war for independence was a different yet connected matter. It was a formality to make it clear to Britain and the rest of the world that the Americans were intent on self-rule. While I think the war was great, the revolution was even greater.
There has never been a revolution of the powerless masses and there probably never will be.
I'd like to find out what you mean by "masses". My understanding is that the masses are the people who aren't in power. I guess by this definition it means that they are powerless. But then again, in a democratic society, what is power? It is the ability to make decisions. Who in a democratic society makes decisions? Why, the people do, by voting. They make decisions about who is allowed to make decisions for them. They make decisions about what kind and what form these decisions are made.
That doesn't sound 'powerless'. That sounds 'powerful'. America has been about empowering the masses and respecting their decision since the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock and the decision was made to vote for the leaders and laws.
Or at least, that's the way the eaters wrote the history books.
You mean, according to the abundance of documentation availabe in private and public collections? Or the vast number of eye-witness accounts recorded in private letters and notes of the era?
This whole concept of "victor writes the history books" is flawed when there is an abundance of evidence that is freely available. We can search through and discover the true stories of all of American history, because every step is documented. If you would like to dispute the work that the historians have presented, please write your own papers and cite your sources.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America; and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
We are pledging our allegienace to THE flag and to the republic that our flag represents. If you haven't noticed, flags are symbols, and this piece of cloth happens to be a symbol for the greatest nation on the face of the earth, in the entire history of the earth, probably forevermore. It also stands for the ideals that our nation stands for, which are what our country was founded over, and what our soldiers and citizens bleed and die for. They are:
* One Nation - We can unite, even though we are different. Let's end all the useless wars of old Europe, all the pointless violence, and unite behind common ideals.
* Under God - Only God can rule man. If a man thinks he can rule man, he is a tyrant and should be killed. That's why we went into Germany, into Japan. That's why we freed Cuba and the Phillippines in the Spanish-American War. That's why we fought against our own blood in the Civil War. That's why we fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, and why we promise to fight in Syria, and North Korea.
* Indivisible - We have united, never let us separate! We hold our elections and have a system of government wherein the minority can voice its opinion, and the majority cannot trample their rights. There is no need to divide, not now, not ever.
* Liberty - The concept that man has a free will that no other man can impose upon it. You believe this, don't you? Man is free; that freedom came from God. It cannot be taken away by man.
* Justice - The concept that men are accountable for their crimes, and that men have a duty to exact those punishments or suffer the wrath of God. In other words, if your neighbor has his jewelry stolen, it is a crime. As a society, we have a responsibility to catch the criminal, exact a punishment for his crimes, and return what we can to the owner.
* For all - No one is beyond the law in our nation. No one is above another. This applies to all - men, women, children, blacks, whites, Canadians, and Americans.
One day, your country will begin to understand these ideals, perhaps to the point that you will adopt them into your government.
If you focus on the broad picture, and keep your nose above the water, you'll find that the programming industry is pretty broad. Pick a subject you like and go for it. You will succeed because frankly, the CS/CE guys don't know a lot of things that you take for granted. (Hint: Math = Knowledge = Real Power)
I'd look for a job in a smaller company where you will work closely with management, rather than a large company where you work with other programmers. This will give you a lot more freedom to choose the tools you work with.
Also, try to get in on a startup. You won't make big bucks, but it should be enough to pay the bills, and it will look a lot more like the research you want to do. The only difference is the research is funded by suits that want money rather than bureaucrats that want credit.
Who know? Maybe after realizing how easy it is to make money with brains, you'll not want to go back to grad school? I sure didn't want to get caught up in academia after I discovered how much real research is being done outside the ivory towers.
Brace yourself for: "No consent" "Not provable" "Global Cooling" "Little Ice Age" "Sun fluctuations" "Earth has been warmer" "Earth has been cooler" Corrolar: "We are in an Ice Age" "We puny humans have no influence in comparison to the might of earth" "We mighty humans will handle any problem earth will throw at us"
Hummm, I'm trying to find how this is derogatory to those conservative-minded people who believe in conservative ideals like the scientific method.
Other than the "No consent" argument, which I don't quite understand the meaning of, all of these arguments are scientifically valid.
I'm still trying to discover what the scientific basis for global warming, or in particular, the human causes of global warming are. No study yet has given proof positive. Instead, we are presented with theories and contradictory results and inconclusive studies. The so-called scientists responsible for proving that humans are causing global cooling rush to TV cameras and the UN before their paper has even been peer-reviewed by someone who disagrees with them. In fact, those who disagree are labelled "conservative", "right-wing ideologues", and "religious wackos". Rather than dispute valid evidence, they attack ad hominem.
This is not science, folks. This is politics. It always has been about reducing your freedom to live your life, and not about saving the planet.
Didn't we already give up CFCs and thus saved the ozone layer? What gives? Why is the ozone layer still opening if we gave up using CFCs?
For those of you who don't know, CFCs are an all-around useful chemical. Not only is it completely harmless to human (save asphyxiation), it retards all kinds of fires instantly. The Navy used to use it on all of their ships to put out fires instantly. Guess what? Since it was deployed. hardly anyone got injured due to fire. Nowadays, fires on our Navy vessels are too common.
CFCs are also extremelty useful as a refrigerant. No other chemical has approached CFCs in this realm. All the newcomers are much more expensive to manufacture, and quite dangerous in their own right.
CFCs are also very heavy. They don't float up to the upper atmosphere as some scientists thought. Instead, they stay down here on the surface of the earth where they cause no harm.
Maybe we should re-examine why we got rid of DDT. Did the condor ever come back after we abolished using it? Insect-borne viruses and diseases sure have. Nothing would've saved so many lives from malaria in the tsunami-stricken region like a good dousing of DDT.
But we *DO* have time. The worst case scenario say that over the next one hundred years, the global temperature will rise about 1 degree Fahrenheit. I'll take a 92 degree summer day over a 91 degree one any day. And I'd much rather have "bitter" cold be -32 than -33.
And in a hundred years, the world economy will be how many thousand times larger? We'll be able to blink and create superstructures that today's engineers and architects can't even dream about. We'll have cities with thousands of times the populations, bustling with millions of times the economy.
This is the reason why really smart people say to young couples, "You're going to have a bit of a hard time making house payments today. But 10 years from now, you won't and you'll be looking at moving into an even bigger house with an even better neighborhood. Buy the house, it is worth the debt." We go into debt because today's dollars are much more valuable than tomorrow's. I'll be making 10 times as much money as I am now, so paying off my debts is that much easier.
As a world economy, it'll be thousands of times easier to take care of any environmental problem than it is now.
Do you doubt the extraordinary spike in greenhouse gasses since the beginning of the industrial revolution?
Yes. Question: How long have we been recording CO2 levels? How accurate are our measurements?
Do you think the spike was caused by something else?
I doubt the spike exists. Once we prove that we are in the middle of a CO2 spike then we can talk about where the CO2 is coming from.
By the way, it has been shown that if we can attribute human causes to the supposed rise in CO2 levels, then North America is a CO2 sink, not a producer, and as such, we have no responsibility for global warming. If anything, everyone else should be doing what we are doing.
Do you doubt the physics of the greenhouse effect?
Yes. For this simple reason: The earth likely balances out the imbalances. For instance, let's suppose CO2 levels rose, and the temperature rose ever so slightly on average. There is a counteraction to lower the CO2 levels and to cool the planet, thus restoring balance. Were it not so, our planet would have been destroyed long ago.
I also doubt the greenhouse effect because it is unproven. Do we have a CO2 spike? I say no, you say yes. Do we have an increase in temperature? Depends on what time scale you are looking at. To what cause can we attribute this increase in temperature? Since I say there is no CO2 spike, then we can rule that out until you can convince me otherwise. I can show you that the sun is more active than it has been during that period of warming. I believe the sun is the reason for global warming, not anything we do here.
Scientists underestimate the effects of external causes (the sun, natural cycles in the climate) and overestimate human causes, in my opinion.
Is there some other problem with the theory?
Yes. First of all, we don't understand how gasses behave at very low pressures such as exist in the ozone layer. Yet we believe that we understand why we have ozone holes and such.
We don't have any proof of the greenhouse gasses causing an increase in temperature, except several computer models and theories that have been unproven and untested. Show me that greenhouse gasses raise the global temperatiure by showing a correlation that cannot be explained any other way. Show me that it is indeed the gasses causing the rise in temperature and not the rise in temperature increasing the gasses.
We can theorize and philosophize about the causes of global warming, but no one has conducted any experiments or done enough analysis to conclusively prove one way or the other.
Finally, we can't say that global warming will be a bad thing. All we know is that the last time we had serious global warming, the Egyptian, Persian, and Babylonian empires were founded, and humans began to record history. Was that a bad time? Of course not!
The last time we had global cooling, we went through the dark ages. Is that a good thing? Definitely not!
I say we need to raise global temperatures. Let's thaw out the polar caps, increase the rainfall, and let's make snow a thing of the past. I would rather have the earth be a moist, warm planet, than a cold, dry one.
For the blind, voice recognition and synthesis is becoming more and more advanced. I imagine a (near) future day when more and more non-blind people will interact with their voice and ears.
I'd also look into all the research that has been done in various disorders and disabilities that have to do with viewing, hearing, typing, and moving a mouse. Some of these things have made it into mainstream use. For instance, the research done to make colors more visible to the colorblind has affected how (professional) people design websites nowadays.
Take for instance what has been done for those people mostly paralyzed or incapable of controlling their extremities. We have technology to track ones eyes. One day, we won't have to use mice to control a cursor or select things. Just look and blink.
Combine this with voice recognition, we'll be able to look at a text form widget, and say the words to fill in, then blink to hit "submit".
One other system that is important is handwriting and OCR. Being able to write in boxes in a paper form and then scan that image in, having the computer read the form, is a breakthrough. It isn't being used much yet, but I think it is going to be used more and more.
I strongly believe that in the future, we'll have to understand computers less and less because they will understand us more and more. The pinnacle of computing is when we will relate to computers the same way people relate to each other. When they understand every nuance, every motion, every word, and even the intonation, then we will have made a computer that no one has to understand to use.
Yeah, because, you know George W. Bush is Senator Palpatine. Let's look at the similarities.
* Bush invaded Afghanistan to bring the war to our enemies, establish a democracy in a backwards country, and to overthrow the Taliban, which oppressed women.
* Palpatine helped the Trade Confederacy invade a world to overthrow a free, peaceful democracy, and depose their duly elected leader.
* Bush invaded Iraq to overthrow a tyrannical dictator and establish a free democracy.
* Palpatine overthrew a free republic to establish a tyrannical empire.
* Bush is working domestically to turn our renting society into an ownership society by extablishing Social Security as a long-term investment.
* Palpatine chases down Jedi knights who are supposed to protect the common man and ruthlessly kills them.
* Bush appointed the first black woman to be Secretary of State in our nation's history, opening up a good possibility of having a black woman president in the next decade, given historical precedence.
* Palpatine turns an honest yet naive boy against his own friends and brings him into his dark circle of evil friends.
I mean, the similarities are undeniable! George Lucas obviously made these movies at this time to parody George W. Bush!
I also suggest you setup a subversion server and begin using that.
Also don't think you're special. You'll have to design, implement, and test like the rest of us.
I suggest you think of a design *quickly*, and keep it as simple and straightforward as possible. I doubt the teacher is going to grade you on your innovation. If you actually finish this in time, I am pretty sure you will get high marks. Implement this into something that works. Once you get a working core, then add small features one at a time, carefully testing to make sure you haven't broken anything in the process.
Don't forget to document and comment your code as well. Otherwise, you will get lost and won't be able to find your way back.
And remember, have fun throughout the process, and keep yourself interested. Once you lose interest and stop having fun nothing is going to get done.
It sounds like Fujimori APPRECIATED people's freedom, and fought viciously to protect it.
The reason why they want Fujimori seems to be because those people he actively pursued and challenged are upset and want revenge.
There's a difference between ordering your military to restore order and ordering your military to oppress. If there is a riot in downtown Seattle, I expect the military to come through and clear the streets and remove the rioters, using WHATEVER FORCE IS NECESSARY. No one has the right to obstruct my right to travel freely in the US.
Because we have never "stuffed freedom down people's throats." People naturally desire to be free. It's part of being human. The only thing standing in their way is tyrants and oppression.
What did we do to make Japan free? We removed the tyrants (the military culture) and removed the oppression of women.
The same thing needs to happen in China, one way or another. Those people who wield power abusively need to be removed from their positions. Those cultural elements that oppress need to be discarded. From there, freedom will flourish, just as it has everyway else.
If you are convicted beyond a shadow of a doubt of committing a crime with the intention of murder, or of murder, then you get the death penalty. You sickos are not accepted in our society anymore.
If you are convicted beyond a shadow of a doubt of committing a crime involving sex, like rape, molestation, etc, then you get the death penalty. You sickos don't belong in our society anymore.
(3) For everything else, you repay your debts and when you've done so, you can go free, under the careful eye of Uncle Sam. You are required to work in prison to repay your debts. You can't get out until the debts are repaid. Good behavior means you get a better paying job in prison. Poor behavior means you don't get a chance to work in prison. Oh, and you have to pay for your stay there as well. Private charities will help you get a better start in your life, should you be willing to participate.
I think this will help reduce the level of violent crime (crime with the intention to murder) and sex crimes to virtually nil, once we catch and terminate those who are guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Everyone else who commits serious crimes will pay the price for their crimes.
I think this is most fair.
You take a life, you pay with your life. You ruin a life, you pay with your life. You take a $20,000 car and wreck it, you have to make $20,000 and repay the owner. You steal $5,000,000 from your shareholders, you have to make $5,000,000 and repay them.
See, this is the moral ground that the pro-abortionists are standing on. After all, the human tissue is no better than cows.
You have to understand that fundamentalist Christians find this idea absolutely terrible. There is no equivalent to animals and plants (built to serve man by God) and man (built as sons and daughters and future equal heirs of God). Trying to compare animals to humans wins no converts from the fundamentalist camp.
I might as well preach to you that animals deserve to die and are filthy creatures whose sole purpose in life is to get in my belly. You wouldn't appreciate that argument any more than I appreciate yours.
The people that were most vehemently opposed to slavery at the time were the right-wing conservative fundamentalist Christians. You know, the type that go around preaching "Repent or go to hell!" The type that label things "right" or "wrong" with nothing in between? The less religious and atheists in the nation couldn't care less about slavery, either way. It's interesting that nowadays everybody considers slavery abominable, even those who abhor fundamentalist Christians.
The Southerners had to indoctrinate themselves that owning slaves was a moral obligation. They believed that they white race was superior to the black, and that without the guidance of the white man, that the black man would be savage. As offensive as this idea is today, it was common, and was still common, up until a few decades ago.
Today, fundamentalist, right-wing, repent-or-go-to-hell types are again preaching that abortion is wrong. The atheists and less religious are ambivalent towards it. It's only a few who actually believe that abortion is a right that absolutely must be defended by the constitution. They convince themselves that the "tissue" is not human, and that the mother has the ultimate freedom to determine whether the tissue should be removed or remain a parasite.
All I'm saying is in a few years time, when abortion rights are no longer found in our founding documents, and when the fundamentalists are able to convince a large majority, that we will look back on abortion like we look back on slavery today.
I think a better term is "murdered children". After all, abortions are happening when the baby is viable. I think too many people out there are willing to face the reality that abortion is really all about whether or not a mother can murder her own child. For some reason, once the baby clears the birth canal, murdering it is wrong. But while the baby is in the womb or in the birth canal, it is not even taking a life, according to some.
When we finally outlaw the murdering of innocent children, then we will be able to look back and wonder how crazy we were to even consider it. It will be comparable to the holocaust or the age of slavery in hindsight. I mean, the Germans during the holocaust had no idea what they were doing was terrible. The slaveowners actually thought they were doing a service by beating their slaves and forcing them to labor.
Yes. In fact, recent studies are showing the stem cells extracted from fat cells or even from hair cells (you know, the white thing at the end of the hair follicle you pull out) are a great source of stem cells. These stem cells are also more tame and easier to control than embryonic stem cells.
I really hate it when somebody says President Bush is against stem cell research. He's not. He's against harvesting embryonic stem cells. He's even funding already harvested embryonic stem cell research, as the parent posters pointed out.
I also hate it when people say stem cells can cure disease X. It isn't true, yet. Stem cells have yet to cure anything. If stem cells could cure diabetes or paralysis or brain damage or nerve damage, don't you think you'd hear a lot more about it in the press? Don't you think there would be advertisements on the radio asking for people with disease X to participate in a research project using stem cells? But you don't. That's because stem cells have yet to produce anything. Some researchers are beginning to fear that stem cells are just too hard to control and useful remedies won't be out for decades or even centuries.
There are other more promising routes of research. For instance, the Atkin's diet has been proven to lower blood cholesterol and to reduce the severity of diabetes. Why aren't we spending as much money on that as we are on stem cell research?
This whole stem cell fiasco has been a hammer to pound President Bush on the head, and I think every sane human out there has seen it for what it is. "Christopher Reeves died because of President Bush" just doesn't ring of truth at all. Let's stop politicizing science and just approach it with objectivity and skepticism for once, folks. And please, when science starts stretching the bounds of morality, let's make the right decision to limit science and not limit morality. That's what makes us different from the research that German and Japanese scientists did in WWII.
There is no evidence of tachyons, I agree. But, Special Relativity says that you can have them! This says nothing about whether or not the actually exist.
This is real live physics speak, folks. "Does X exist?" "Not that I know of. It can exist, but we haven't discovered any yet."
I remember the one article about how the new supercollider could create tiny blackholes that could potentially destroy our planet. One of the lead scientists responded to the worried reporter: "Yes, it can happen. It is possible."
He should've said, "As far as you care, no, it won't happen. As far as my peers care, yes, the possibility is non-zero. Very small, but non-zero."
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This is what Bush has and the left wishes they had. Bush sees a brighter tomorrow and a way to get there. The left? All they do is complain about Bush.
I see a country held in the grip of one of the worst tyrants one can imagine. The only difference between Hussein and Stalin is one of scale. That regime was decisively smashed in a matter of days.
Then came "winning the peace". In the face of terrorists, daily car-bombings, brutal murderings, millions and millions of Iraqis woke up and openly defied the terrorists and voted for their own future. Do you know the significance of the blue index finger? That's the voters of Iraq challenging the terrorists, "I voted! Come, kill me! You said you would behead me! Where are you, you cowards!"
A people went from being peons to free citizens in a matter of years. Another key point: The immediate security of the polls was handled by Iraqis, not Americans. Americans were in the back, ready to assist if things got out of hand. The only Americans around the polling places were the reporters. Guess what? The Iraqis handled it on their own. The soldiers didn't run this time!
This formula works, it will always work. It will work in Iran, it will work in Syria, it will work in North Korea. This is the only plan that works. All of the great American leaders knew this! Go read up on what MacArthur, Patton, Eisenhower, and other generals thought of this plan. Go see what presidents Kennedy, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and FDR thought! They are in agreement. If there is a fringe wacko element, it is on the left. The American people support Bush because he represents their core values and dreams, since 1776 to today.
Go ahead and keep whining, you leftists. Go ahead and keep wishing for American failure, for our economy to collapse, for Wall Street to burn. It won't happen as long as we have competent, visionary leaders in the White House.
And here's something to set you off: Condi in '08. Romney in '16.
If you started the computer programmer off with a background in hardware, and they understand how you go from RC circuits to transistros, to ICs, then they should learn C. Heck, they already understand assembler, so there won't be any surprises in store for them. Good C programmers are always able to compile the code in their head anyway, and good C teachers show how to compile the code into simple instructions.
However, if they have no idea what an RC circuit is, it's best if you led them into something simpler and designed to be understood. Sadly, that is not C or Java or even perl. I think Python is the current best education language for the layman.
Python is heavily based on ABC.
I think heavily is the wrong word, since it really only borrows the indentation. Most of the concepts were borrowed from C and Modula 3. ABC is a weak-dynamically typed language, while Python is strong-dynamically typed.
You'll also note that one of them got that. The other one doesn't mention ABC.
INTERCAL is the parent of Aspect-J.
For those of you who don't know, INTERCAL introduced the concept of COME FROM. Since GOTO is considered evil, COME FROM is exactly the opposite. You specify somewhere else in the code that you would like the control to pass from another part of the code.
Aspect-J is cool because you don't even have to label the COME FROM points. It can literally be anywhere in your code!
It was a revolution in that the system changed from top-down to bottom-up. Up until that point, general philosophy said you needed a king who had been raised since birth to lead to run a nation. Otherwise, it couldn't be done. Julius Ceaser was celebrated, along with Alexander the Great, because they were great top-down leaders.
Then along comes the idea that maybe the masses aren't so stupid as Ceaser and Alexander claimed. Maybe, in fact, they knew more about how to run a country, a city, and a village than a king who lived far away and who didn't care. If the masses aren't stupid, then they should be free to do what they wish, because they are more often right than wrong.
That was the revolution part. The revolution didn't start with a gunshot. It started with a pen, long before 1776. It isn't complete either. We're still trying to bring freedom to everyone who wants it.
The war for independence was a different yet connected matter. It was a formality to make it clear to Britain and the rest of the world that the Americans were intent on self-rule. While I think the war was great, the revolution was even greater.
There has never been a revolution of the powerless masses and there probably never will be.
I'd like to find out what you mean by "masses". My understanding is that the masses are the people who aren't in power. I guess by this definition it means that they are powerless. But then again, in a democratic society, what is power? It is the ability to make decisions. Who in a democratic society makes decisions? Why, the people do, by voting. They make decisions about who is allowed to make decisions for them. They make decisions about what kind and what form these decisions are made.
That doesn't sound 'powerless'. That sounds 'powerful'. America has been about empowering the masses and respecting their decision since the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock and the decision was made to vote for the leaders and laws.
Or at least, that's the way the eaters wrote the history books.
You mean, according to the abundance of documentation availabe in private and public collections? Or the vast number of eye-witness accounts recorded in private letters and notes of the era?
This whole concept of "victor writes the history books" is flawed when there is an abundance of evidence that is freely available. We can search through and discover the true stories of all of American history, because every step is documented. If you would like to dispute the work that the historians have presented, please write your own papers and cite your sources.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America; and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
We are pledging our allegienace to THE flag and to the republic that our flag represents. If you haven't noticed, flags are symbols, and this piece of cloth happens to be a symbol for the greatest nation on the face of the earth, in the entire history of the earth, probably forevermore. It also stands for the ideals that our nation stands for, which are what our country was founded over, and what our soldiers and citizens bleed and die for. They are:
* One Nation - We can unite, even though we are different. Let's end all the useless wars of old Europe, all the pointless violence, and unite behind common ideals.
* Under God - Only God can rule man. If a man thinks he can rule man, he is a tyrant and should be killed. That's why we went into Germany, into Japan. That's why we freed Cuba and the Phillippines in the Spanish-American War. That's why we fought against our own blood in the Civil War. That's why we fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, and why we promise to fight in Syria, and North Korea.
* Indivisible - We have united, never let us separate! We hold our elections and have a system of government wherein the minority can voice its opinion, and the majority cannot trample their rights. There is no need to divide, not now, not ever.
* Liberty - The concept that man has a free will that no other man can impose upon it. You believe this, don't you? Man is free; that freedom came from God. It cannot be taken away by man.
* Justice - The concept that men are accountable for their crimes, and that men have a duty to exact those punishments or suffer the wrath of God. In other words, if your neighbor has his jewelry stolen, it is a crime. As a society, we have a responsibility to catch the criminal, exact a punishment for his crimes, and return what we can to the owner.
* For all - No one is beyond the law in our nation. No one is above another. This applies to all - men, women, children, blacks, whites, Canadians, and Americans.
One day, your country will begin to understand these ideals, perhaps to the point that you will adopt them into your government.
If you focus on the broad picture, and keep your nose above the water, you'll find that the programming industry is pretty broad. Pick a subject you like and go for it. You will succeed because frankly, the CS/CE guys don't know a lot of things that you take for granted. (Hint: Math = Knowledge = Real Power)
I'd look for a job in a smaller company where you will work closely with management, rather than a large company where you work with other programmers. This will give you a lot more freedom to choose the tools you work with.
Also, try to get in on a startup. You won't make big bucks, but it should be enough to pay the bills, and it will look a lot more like the research you want to do. The only difference is the research is funded by suits that want money rather than bureaucrats that want credit.
Who know? Maybe after realizing how easy it is to make money with brains, you'll not want to go back to grad school? I sure didn't want to get caught up in academia after I discovered how much real research is being done outside the ivory towers.
Brace yourself for:
"No consent"
"Not provable"
"Global Cooling"
"Little Ice Age"
"Sun fluctuations"
"Earth has been warmer"
"Earth has been cooler"
Corrolar: "We are in an Ice Age"
"We puny humans have no influence in comparison to the might of earth"
"We mighty humans will handle any problem earth will throw at us"
Hummm, I'm trying to find how this is derogatory to those conservative-minded people who believe in conservative ideals like the scientific method.
Other than the "No consent" argument, which I don't quite understand the meaning of, all of these arguments are scientifically valid.
I'm still trying to discover what the scientific basis for global warming, or in particular, the human causes of global warming are. No study yet has given proof positive. Instead, we are presented with theories and contradictory results and inconclusive studies. The so-called scientists responsible for proving that humans are causing global cooling rush to TV cameras and the UN before their paper has even been peer-reviewed by someone who disagrees with them. In fact, those who disagree are labelled "conservative", "right-wing ideologues", and "religious wackos". Rather than dispute valid evidence, they attack ad hominem.
This is not science, folks. This is politics. It always has been about reducing your freedom to live your life, and not about saving the planet.
Didn't we already give up CFCs and thus saved the ozone layer? What gives? Why is the ozone layer still opening if we gave up using CFCs?
For those of you who don't know, CFCs are an all-around useful chemical. Not only is it completely harmless to human (save asphyxiation), it retards all kinds of fires instantly. The Navy used to use it on all of their ships to put out fires instantly. Guess what? Since it was deployed. hardly anyone got injured due to fire. Nowadays, fires on our Navy vessels are too common.
CFCs are also extremelty useful as a refrigerant. No other chemical has approached CFCs in this realm. All the newcomers are much more expensive to manufacture, and quite dangerous in their own right.
CFCs are also very heavy. They don't float up to the upper atmosphere as some scientists thought. Instead, they stay down here on the surface of the earth where they cause no harm.
Maybe we should re-examine why we got rid of DDT. Did the condor ever come back after we abolished using it? Insect-borne viruses and diseases sure have. Nothing would've saved so many lives from malaria in the tsunami-stricken region like a good dousing of DDT.
But we *DO* have time. The worst case scenario say that over the next one hundred years, the global temperature will rise about 1 degree Fahrenheit. I'll take a 92 degree summer day over a 91 degree one any day. And I'd much rather have "bitter" cold be -32 than -33.
And in a hundred years, the world economy will be how many thousand times larger? We'll be able to blink and create superstructures that today's engineers and architects can't even dream about. We'll have cities with thousands of times the populations, bustling with millions of times the economy.
This is the reason why really smart people say to young couples, "You're going to have a bit of a hard time making house payments today. But 10 years from now, you won't and you'll be looking at moving into an even bigger house with an even better neighborhood. Buy the house, it is worth the debt." We go into debt because today's dollars are much more valuable than tomorrow's. I'll be making 10 times as much money as I am now, so paying off my debts is that much easier.
As a world economy, it'll be thousands of times easier to take care of any environmental problem than it is now.
Do you doubt the extraordinary spike in greenhouse gasses since the beginning of the industrial revolution?
Yes. Question: How long have we been recording CO2 levels? How accurate are our measurements?
Do you think the spike was caused by something else?
I doubt the spike exists. Once we prove that we are in the middle of a CO2 spike then we can talk about where the CO2 is coming from.
By the way, it has been shown that if we can attribute human causes to the supposed rise in CO2 levels, then North America is a CO2 sink, not a producer, and as such, we have no responsibility for global warming. If anything, everyone else should be doing what we are doing.
Do you doubt the physics of the greenhouse effect?
Yes. For this simple reason: The earth likely balances out the imbalances. For instance, let's suppose CO2 levels rose, and the temperature rose ever so slightly on average. There is a counteraction to lower the CO2 levels and to cool the planet, thus restoring balance. Were it not so, our planet would have been destroyed long ago.
I also doubt the greenhouse effect because it is unproven. Do we have a CO2 spike? I say no, you say yes. Do we have an increase in temperature? Depends on what time scale you are looking at. To what cause can we attribute this increase in temperature? Since I say there is no CO2 spike, then we can rule that out until you can convince me otherwise. I can show you that the sun is more active than it has been during that period of warming. I believe the sun is the reason for global warming, not anything we do here.
Scientists underestimate the effects of external causes (the sun, natural cycles in the climate) and overestimate human causes, in my opinion.
Is there some other problem with the theory?
Yes. First of all, we don't understand how gasses behave at very low pressures such as exist in the ozone layer. Yet we believe that we understand why we have ozone holes and such.
We don't have any proof of the greenhouse gasses causing an increase in temperature, except several computer models and theories that have been unproven and untested. Show me that greenhouse gasses raise the global temperatiure by showing a correlation that cannot be explained any other way. Show me that it is indeed the gasses causing the rise in temperature and not the rise in temperature increasing the gasses.
We can theorize and philosophize about the causes of global warming, but no one has conducted any experiments or done enough analysis to conclusively prove one way or the other.
Finally, we can't say that global warming will be a bad thing. All we know is that the last time we had serious global warming, the Egyptian, Persian, and Babylonian empires were founded, and humans began to record history. Was that a bad time? Of course not!
The last time we had global cooling, we went through the dark ages. Is that a good thing? Definitely not!
I say we need to raise global temperatures. Let's thaw out the polar caps, increase the rainfall, and let's make snow a thing of the past. I would rather have the earth be a moist, warm planet, than a cold, dry one.
For the blind, voice recognition and synthesis is becoming more and more advanced. I imagine a (near) future day when more and more non-blind people will interact with their voice and ears.
I'd also look into all the research that has been done in various disorders and disabilities that have to do with viewing, hearing, typing, and moving a mouse. Some of these things have made it into mainstream use. For instance, the research done to make colors more visible to the colorblind has affected how (professional) people design websites nowadays.
Take for instance what has been done for those people mostly paralyzed or incapable of controlling their extremities. We have technology to track ones eyes. One day, we won't have to use mice to control a cursor or select things. Just look and blink.
Combine this with voice recognition, we'll be able to look at a text form widget, and say the words to fill in, then blink to hit "submit".
One other system that is important is handwriting and OCR. Being able to write in boxes in a paper form and then scan that image in, having the computer read the form, is a breakthrough. It isn't being used much yet, but I think it is going to be used more and more.
I strongly believe that in the future, we'll have to understand computers less and less because they will understand us more and more. The pinnacle of computing is when we will relate to computers the same way people relate to each other. When they understand every nuance, every motion, every word, and even the intonation, then we will have made a computer that no one has to understand to use.
Yeah, because, you know George W. Bush is Senator Palpatine. Let's look at the similarities.
* Bush invaded Afghanistan to bring the war to our enemies, establish a democracy in a backwards country, and to overthrow the Taliban, which oppressed women.
* Palpatine helped the Trade Confederacy invade a world to overthrow a free, peaceful democracy, and depose their duly elected leader.
* Bush invaded Iraq to overthrow a tyrannical dictator and establish a free democracy.
* Palpatine overthrew a free republic to establish a tyrannical empire.
* Bush is working domestically to turn our renting society into an ownership society by extablishing Social Security as a long-term investment.
* Palpatine chases down Jedi knights who are supposed to protect the common man and ruthlessly kills them.
* Bush appointed the first black woman to be Secretary of State in our nation's history, opening up a good possibility of having a black woman president in the next decade, given historical precedence.
* Palpatine turns an honest yet naive boy against his own friends and brings him into his dark circle of evil friends.
I mean, the similarities are undeniable! George Lucas obviously made these movies at this time to parody George W. Bush!
I also suggest you setup a subversion server and begin using that.
Also don't think you're special. You'll have to design, implement, and test like the rest of us.
I suggest you think of a design *quickly*, and keep it as simple and straightforward as possible. I doubt the teacher is going to grade you on your innovation. If you actually finish this in time, I am pretty sure you will get high marks. Implement this into something that works. Once you get a working core, then add small features one at a time, carefully testing to make sure you haven't broken anything in the process.
Don't forget to document and comment your code as well. Otherwise, you will get lost and won't be able to find your way back.
And remember, have fun throughout the process, and keep yourself interested. Once you lose interest and stop having fun nothing is going to get done.
It sounds like Fujimori APPRECIATED people's freedom, and fought viciously to protect it.
The reason why they want Fujimori seems to be because those people he actively pursued and challenged are upset and want revenge.
There's a difference between ordering your military to restore order and ordering your military to oppress. If there is a riot in downtown Seattle, I expect the military to come through and clear the streets and remove the rioters, using WHATEVER FORCE IS NECESSARY. No one has the right to obstruct my right to travel freely in the US.
Because we have never "stuffed freedom down people's throats." People naturally desire to be free. It's part of being human. The only thing standing in their way is tyrants and oppression.
What did we do to make Japan free? We removed the tyrants (the military culture) and removed the oppression of women.
The same thing needs to happen in China, one way or another. Those people who wield power abusively need to be removed from their positions. Those cultural elements that oppress need to be discarded. From there, freedom will flourish, just as it has everyway else.
How about this?
If you are convicted beyond a shadow of a doubt of committing a crime with the intention of murder, or of murder, then you get the death penalty. You sickos are not accepted in our society anymore.
If you are convicted beyond a shadow of a doubt of committing a crime involving sex, like rape, molestation, etc, then you get the death penalty. You sickos don't belong in our society anymore.
(3) For everything else, you repay your debts and when you've done so, you can go free, under the careful eye of Uncle Sam. You are required to work in prison to repay your debts. You can't get out until the debts are repaid. Good behavior means you get a better paying job in prison. Poor behavior means you don't get a chance to work in prison. Oh, and you have to pay for your stay there as well. Private charities will help you get a better start in your life, should you be willing to participate.
I think this will help reduce the level of violent crime (crime with the intention to murder) and sex crimes to virtually nil, once we catch and terminate those who are guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Everyone else who commits serious crimes will pay the price for their crimes.
I think this is most fair.
You take a life, you pay with your life.
You ruin a life, you pay with your life.
You take a $20,000 car and wreck it, you have to make $20,000 and repay the owner.
You steal $5,000,000 from your shareholders, you have to make $5,000,000 and repay them.
What makes you qualified? You can't even spell "doesn't" correctly. And you are confused between the appropriate uses of single and double quotes.
See, this is the moral ground that the pro-abortionists are standing on. After all, the human tissue is no better than cows.
You have to understand that fundamentalist Christians find this idea absolutely terrible. There is no equivalent to animals and plants (built to serve man by God) and man (built as sons and daughters and future equal heirs of God). Trying to compare animals to humans wins no converts from the fundamentalist camp.
I might as well preach to you that animals deserve to die and are filthy creatures whose sole purpose in life is to get in my belly. You wouldn't appreciate that argument any more than I appreciate yours.
The people that were most vehemently opposed to slavery at the time were the right-wing conservative fundamentalist Christians. You know, the type that go around preaching "Repent or go to hell!" The type that label things "right" or "wrong" with nothing in between? The less religious and atheists in the nation couldn't care less about slavery, either way. It's interesting that nowadays everybody considers slavery abominable, even those who abhor fundamentalist Christians.
The Southerners had to indoctrinate themselves that owning slaves was a moral obligation. They believed that they white race was superior to the black, and that without the guidance of the white man, that the black man would be savage. As offensive as this idea is today, it was common, and was still common, up until a few decades ago.
Today, fundamentalist, right-wing, repent-or-go-to-hell types are again preaching that abortion is wrong. The atheists and less religious are ambivalent towards it. It's only a few who actually believe that abortion is a right that absolutely must be defended by the constitution. They convince themselves that the "tissue" is not human, and that the mother has the ultimate freedom to determine whether the tissue should be removed or remain a parasite.
All I'm saying is in a few years time, when abortion rights are no longer found in our founding documents, and when the fundamentalists are able to convince a large majority, that we will look back on abortion like we look back on slavery today.
I think a better term is "murdered children". After all, abortions are happening when the baby is viable. I think too many people out there are willing to face the reality that abortion is really all about whether or not a mother can murder her own child. For some reason, once the baby clears the birth canal, murdering it is wrong. But while the baby is in the womb or in the birth canal, it is not even taking a life, according to some.
When we finally outlaw the murdering of innocent children, then we will be able to look back and wonder how crazy we were to even consider it. It will be comparable to the holocaust or the age of slavery in hindsight. I mean, the Germans during the holocaust had no idea what they were doing was terrible. The slaveowners actually thought they were doing a service by beating their slaves and forcing them to labor.
Yes. In fact, recent studies are showing the stem cells extracted from fat cells or even from hair cells (you know, the white thing at the end of the hair follicle you pull out) are a great source of stem cells. These stem cells are also more tame and easier to control than embryonic stem cells.
I really hate it when somebody says President Bush is against stem cell research. He's not. He's against harvesting embryonic stem cells. He's even funding already harvested embryonic stem cell research, as the parent posters pointed out.
I also hate it when people say stem cells can cure disease X. It isn't true, yet. Stem cells have yet to cure anything. If stem cells could cure diabetes or paralysis or brain damage or nerve damage, don't you think you'd hear a lot more about it in the press? Don't you think there would be advertisements on the radio asking for people with disease X to participate in a research project using stem cells? But you don't. That's because stem cells have yet to produce anything. Some researchers are beginning to fear that stem cells are just too hard to control and useful remedies won't be out for decades or even centuries.
There are other more promising routes of research. For instance, the Atkin's diet has been proven to lower blood cholesterol and to reduce the severity of diabetes. Why aren't we spending as much money on that as we are on stem cell research?
This whole stem cell fiasco has been a hammer to pound President Bush on the head, and I think every sane human out there has seen it for what it is. "Christopher Reeves died because of President Bush" just doesn't ring of truth at all. Let's stop politicizing science and just approach it with objectivity and skepticism for once, folks. And please, when science starts stretching the bounds of morality, let's make the right decision to limit science and not limit morality. That's what makes us different from the research that German and Japanese scientists did in WWII.
There is no evidence of tachyons, I agree. But, Special Relativity says that you can have them! This says nothing about whether or not the actually exist.
This is real live physics speak, folks. "Does X exist?" "Not that I know of. It can exist, but we haven't discovered any yet."
I remember the one article about how the new supercollider could create tiny blackholes that could potentially destroy our planet. One of the lead scientists responded to the worried reporter: "Yes, it can happen. It is possible."
He should've said, "As far as you care, no, it won't happen. As far as my peers care, yes, the possibility is non-zero. Very small, but non-zero."