You are taking my reply way too seriously. The video is of a song by the Folksmen, played by the same actors who created Spinal Tap (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer), that just happens to use that exact phrase.
Autonomous vehicles certainly could reduce accidents, but it would give the Blue Screen of Death a whole new meaning. That's why most proposals are for semi-autonomous driving which make it relatively easy for a human to take over.
The amount of preventive punishment: seat belts, speed limits, etc is mind boggling. All in the name of safety.
That's because I and a lot of other people are kinda keen on not dying while driving to work. If it's just your own safety at stake, I don't mind. I'm fine with, say, New Hampshire's stance on seat belts (not required if over 18) and motorcycle helmets (not required, period). What I'm not OK with is you putting me at risk because you can't be bothered to pull over to handle a call or make appropriate use of voice mail.
If it's so damned dangerous, why do the cops get a permanent exception?
1. Cops have extra training in how to drive, so they can handle chases and other dangerous situations. They are trained in when they can safely talk on the radio and when they can't. 2. Cops who are talking to the radio while driving are focused on the situation in progress, not just chatting about the weather or doughnuts. They are monitored by their supervisors, and have to use it properly.
Speaking out against enviromentalism in the 10's is, literally, like speaking out against nazism in the 30s. Maybe this time we'll be civilized enough to avoid another holocaust?
However, the optimistic part of the process thus far, has been that the climate change deniers are now pretty much looked up as quacks, when the initial reaction was total denial and skepticism. We've moved beyond that, to the point where people and governments, individually and collectively, are working on the "how" part.
It depends which "we" you're talking about.
In the US, the Republican line is that climate change is a liberal conspiracy to destroy the capitalism and America, and any candidate that thinks differently (John Huntsman) is basically booed off stage. Europe has done something, but it's primarily to export most of the work that causes CO2 emissions to China, causing even more CO2 emissions when the Chinese use less efficient manufacturing processes and then have to ship the products halfway around the world. China seems to be doing its best to avoid doing anything because that would hurt their economic growth, and it's unclear whether they care about the consequences to anyone else (e.g. disasters like flooding in Thailand help China by reducing their competition, so they probably don't mind).
Basically, those in power collectively have decided to not do anything. Whether those not in power want to do anything is a different question, but governments pretty much shrug their shoulders at the thought of massive floods and storms so long as the top brass isn't in them.
Even during an election year, when the bill before Congress gives rights to wealthy corporations and takes them away from citizens, that's a sure way to win overwhelming bipartisan support. It's one of the effects of government by bribery that we currently have.
Of course he wrote it in Latin - Latin was the standard language for academic discourse in his time, and as an educated man he was expected to know it and use it in his published works. The big advantage of this was that it made it relatively easy for him to communicate with his counterparts in other countries - for instance, Gottfried Leibniz also wrote mostly Latin.
Actually, there are penalties for people who make frivolous legal claims: If the claim is really really frivolous, the judge can award attorney's fees. So, if, for instance, Viacom sued FedFlix (or Google, for that matter) over stuff that was plainly public domain, after FedFlix won, Viacom might be responsible for paying FedFlix's legal bills.
jack booted thugs throwing flash bang grenades terrorizing your family and killing your pets in the night from bad intel,
You can add to that list people who've been killed in their own homes by jack-booted police, because the police failed to announce themselves as police and the homeowner thought they were dealing with an armed robbery.
...that they could detect the activity required to build a tunnel.
Which 'they' are we talking about here? If you're talking about the Mexican authorities, bear in mind that right now just about any officer that attempts to do something about the cartels is killed off fairly quickly.
It's more complicated than that. I'm going to use smartphones as the example product but this goes for a lot of items:
A) There are some people who have a smartphone, and their life is truly better for it. They've made their decision, and it's the right one. That's not being sheeple, that's being smart.
B) There are some people who don't have a smartphone, their life would be better with one, but for whatever reason they haven't bought one. Maybe they're unfamiliar with it, or they can't afford one, or whatever.
C) There are some people who have a smartphone but would be better off without one. These people may be sheeple who've been duped by marketers, or they may be people who's situation changed from when they were in group A, but what would make their life better is to find a way out of having a smartphone.
D) There are some people without a smartphone who are better off without one (count me among them, I think).
The thing is, marketing isn't entirely evil, because it moves people from group B to group A and makes their lives better. The trouble is, it also tries to move people from group D to group C. If you spend time around business people, they tend not to acknowledge groups C and D (because how could anyone not want their wonderful products), so they think that the goal is to move people from B to A as fast as possible.
My Latin teacher spent his entire career also moonlighting for the local paper. Even more common that the your/you're problem was sentences like: "Police were lead to believe that Smith shot Jones at 2:15 AM." (Quick: Spot the error in the above sentence)
The reasons this gets through copy editing: - That sentence has no words in it that aren't valid English. - The sentence is in fact grammatically correct, because "lead" is ambiguously either a verb ("Lead them on, Aragorn") or a noun ("lead poisoning"), so if you interpret it as a noun the sentence works. If that was unclear, replace "lead" with "idiots" and see how it fits together. - Somebody reading it to themselves in their head pronounces "lead" as the noun, so they think it reads correctly.
Mrs. Cox wrote stuff in her blog that would be clearly libel if untrue, and clearly something someone wouldn't want people to hear if it was true. So she is in court for libel, and the defence against libel would be that she wrote the truth.
In addition, in at least some jurisdictions the truth is not an absolute defense against libel. For instance, publishing a truthful newspaper headline of "John Smith has HIV" may be libelous if John Smith is just some random private citizen (this was especially true back when doing this would also be declaring that John Smith was gay).
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." -HHGTG
They probably thought that the wall that the cannonball just busted right through would at least slow it down enough that the hill would help stop the cannon shots a la Duke of Wellington's reverse-slope defense.
science is about formally testing and verifying any kind of knowledge, and sometimes, even when we think the answer is obvious, it turns out differently than we expect and we learn something from it.
For instance, one of my classic physics experiments in high school: We dropped two differently weighted object, using a ticker-tape mechanism to time the fall. Contrary to all expectations, the heavier object fell faster. Consistently. After basking in our moment of triumph for demolishing all understanding of gravity since Galileo, we were told to explain the difference as related to the friction of the ticker-tape.
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You are taking my reply way too seriously. The video is of a song by the Folksmen, played by the same actors who created Spinal Tap (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer), that just happens to use that exact phrase.
Autonomous vehicles certainly could reduce accidents, but it would give the Blue Screen of Death a whole new meaning. That's why most proposals are for semi-autonomous driving which make it relatively easy for a human to take over.
The amount of preventive punishment: seat belts, speed limits, etc is mind boggling. All in the name of safety.
That's because I and a lot of other people are kinda keen on not dying while driving to work. If it's just your own safety at stake, I don't mind. I'm fine with, say, New Hampshire's stance on seat belts (not required if over 18) and motorcycle helmets (not required, period). What I'm not OK with is you putting me at risk because you can't be bothered to pull over to handle a call or make appropriate use of voice mail.
If it's so damned dangerous, why do the cops get a permanent exception?
1. Cops have extra training in how to drive, so they can handle chases and other dangerous situations. They are trained in when they can safely talk on the radio and when they can't.
2. Cops who are talking to the radio while driving are focused on the situation in progress, not just chatting about the weather or doughnuts. They are monitored by their supervisors, and have to use it properly.
In unrelated news, there is an unexpected increase in purchases of polonium 209, an obscure radioactive isotope.
And certainly not from an iPhone app spamming them with "Eat at Joe's".
That's better than a busted neon sign that flashes Ea a oe's.
It hardly seemed like /. without semi-regular dupe stories. I'm glad that they're continuing in the glorious tradition even after CmdrTaco left.
Speaking out against enviromentalism in the 10's is, literally, like speaking out against nazism in the 30s. Maybe this time we'll be civilized enough to avoid another holocaust?
Godwin's Law definitely applies to this post.
However, the optimistic part of the process thus far, has been that the climate change deniers are now pretty much looked up as quacks, when the initial reaction was total denial and skepticism. We've moved beyond that, to the point where people and governments, individually and collectively, are working on the "how" part.
It depends which "we" you're talking about.
In the US, the Republican line is that climate change is a liberal conspiracy to destroy the capitalism and America, and any candidate that thinks differently (John Huntsman) is basically booed off stage. Europe has done something, but it's primarily to export most of the work that causes CO2 emissions to China, causing even more CO2 emissions when the Chinese use less efficient manufacturing processes and then have to ship the products halfway around the world. China seems to be doing its best to avoid doing anything because that would hurt their economic growth, and it's unclear whether they care about the consequences to anyone else (e.g. disasters like flooding in Thailand help China by reducing their competition, so they probably don't mind).
Basically, those in power collectively have decided to not do anything. Whether those not in power want to do anything is a different question, but governments pretty much shrug their shoulders at the thought of massive floods and storms so long as the top brass isn't in them.
Better than their proposed tax on thingy (not quite SFW)
Even during an election year, when the bill before Congress gives rights to wealthy corporations and takes them away from citizens, that's a sure way to win overwhelming bipartisan support. It's one of the effects of government by bribery that we currently have.
Of course he wrote it in Latin - Latin was the standard language for academic discourse in his time, and as an educated man he was expected to know it and use it in his published works. The big advantage of this was that it made it relatively easy for him to communicate with his counterparts in other countries - for instance, Gottfried Leibniz also wrote mostly Latin.
Actually, there are penalties for people who make frivolous legal claims: If the claim is really really frivolous, the judge can award attorney's fees. So, if, for instance, Viacom sued FedFlix (or Google, for that matter) over stuff that was plainly public domain, after FedFlix won, Viacom might be responsible for paying FedFlix's legal bills.
jack booted thugs throwing flash bang grenades terrorizing your family and killing your pets in the night from bad intel,
You can add to that list people who've been killed in their own homes by jack-booted police, because the police failed to announce themselves as police and the homeowner thought they were dealing with an armed robbery.
...that they could detect the activity required to build a tunnel.
Which 'they' are we talking about here? If you're talking about the Mexican authorities, bear in mind that right now just about any officer that attempts to do something about the cartels is killed off fairly quickly.
It's more complicated than that. I'm going to use smartphones as the example product but this goes for a lot of items:
A) There are some people who have a smartphone, and their life is truly better for it. They've made their decision, and it's the right one. That's not being sheeple, that's being smart.
B) There are some people who don't have a smartphone, their life would be better with one, but for whatever reason they haven't bought one. Maybe they're unfamiliar with it, or they can't afford one, or whatever.
C) There are some people who have a smartphone but would be better off without one. These people may be sheeple who've been duped by marketers, or they may be people who's situation changed from when they were in group A, but what would make their life better is to find a way out of having a smartphone.
D) There are some people without a smartphone who are better off without one (count me among them, I think).
The thing is, marketing isn't entirely evil, because it moves people from group B to group A and makes their lives better. The trouble is, it also tries to move people from group D to group C. If you spend time around business people, they tend not to acknowledge groups C and D (because how could anyone not want their wonderful products), so they think that the goal is to move people from B to A as fast as possible.
Of course it doesn't make sense to us humans, but the point is that any kind of automatic grammar checker would miss it.
My Latin teacher spent his entire career also moonlighting for the local paper. Even more common that the your/you're problem was sentences like:
"Police were lead to believe that Smith shot Jones at 2:15 AM."
(Quick: Spot the error in the above sentence)
The reasons this gets through copy editing:
- That sentence has no words in it that aren't valid English.
- The sentence is in fact grammatically correct, because "lead" is ambiguously either a verb ("Lead them on, Aragorn") or a noun ("lead poisoning"), so if you interpret it as a noun the sentence works. If that was unclear, replace "lead" with "idiots" and see how it fits together.
- Somebody reading it to themselves in their head pronounces "lead" as the noun, so they think it reads correctly.
Mrs. Cox wrote stuff in her blog that would be clearly libel if untrue, and clearly something someone wouldn't want people to hear if it was true. So she is in court for libel, and the defence against libel would be that she wrote the truth.
In addition, in at least some jurisdictions the truth is not an absolute defense against libel. For instance, publishing a truthful newspaper headline of "John Smith has HIV" may be libelous if John Smith is just some random private citizen (this was especially true back when doing this would also be declaring that John Smith was gay).
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." -HHGTG
The good news is that the strategy utterly failed to work out for Hosni Mubarak.
They probably thought that the wall that the cannonball just busted right through would at least slow it down enough that the hill would help stop the cannon shots a la Duke of Wellington's reverse-slope defense.
science is about formally testing and verifying any kind of knowledge, and sometimes, even when we think the answer is obvious, it turns out differently than we expect and we learn something from it.
For instance, one of my classic physics experiments in high school: We dropped two differently weighted object, using a ticker-tape mechanism to time the fall. Contrary to all expectations, the heavier object fell faster. Consistently. After basking in our moment of triumph for demolishing all understanding of gravity since Galileo, we were told to explain the difference as related to the friction of the ticker-tape.
A massed army ... of nerds.
Also, President Michelle Bachmann has closed it.