Specifically, we aren't going to do what's necessary until it's already too late, because humans do a really bad job of responding to threats that aren't immediate. I won't be surprised if some people manage to adapt and survive, but it's going to be very messy, expensive, and violent (desperate people do not just lay down and die quietly), and there's no way those who survive will have the same standard of living as a typical modern American.
Why would he offer to plead guilty if he, as I suggest, didn't even do the crime?
Several other reasons I can think of: 1. His attorneys advised him that even if he hadn't done the crime, there was enough evidence (and possibly prejudice among the military jury who would hear his case) that he would be likely convicted. So a plea bargain might be the best he could do. 2. He knows who actually did it, but has chosen to plead guilty to protect someone else. 3. He doesn't know who did it, but has chosen to plead guilty because he believes that it was the right action and doesn't want someone else to suffer as he did.
You're right, it's also possible that it was tortured out of him.
His pretri detention was done in accordance with military law which differs from civilian in a number of ways, so even though his trial was not started as quickly as normal or that things were rough in Iraq may well have no impact on the outcome.
The UCMJ is very clear: military personnel do not relinquish their constitutional rights. Yes, military law is different, but they're still required to have a speedy and public trial, and are still prohibited from engaging in cruel and unusual punishment. Manning has a strong argument that both of those were violated.
From History of the World, Part I: "Even in most primitive man, the need to create was part of his nature. This need, this talent clearly separated early man from animals, who would never know this gift. And here, in a cave about 2 million years ago, the first artist was born. [a drawing of a buffalo is shown, and a proud artist] And, of course, with the birth of the artist, came the inevitable afterbirth... the critic. [the critic urinates on the drawing]"
Lawyers deciding scientific matters doesn't make much sense, but neither does doctors deciding matters of war and peace or scientists deciding matters of budgeting. That's one of the major problems in politics: Anyone actually trying to serve their country well (I know, pipe dream, but bear with me) has to make decisions about subjects they know absolutely nothing about.
Here's what you actually need: People who are smart enough to listen to expert advice about what they don't know, and discerning enough to tell the difference between a real expert and a fake expert. Having a general background in a wide variety of subjects also helps in determining which expert is lying.
Also, there are currently 16 doctors, 8 other health care professionals, 9 farmers, 5 engineers, 6 scientists, and 5 accountants, who haven't done things all that differently from everyone else in Congress. Also worth noting is that there are 201 business executives and 94 educators as well as 225 lawyers.
The point is that New York City is very vulnerable to a relatively small increase in sea level, and we got a demonstration of how much damage it could do in a very short amount of time.
It's not like we need to move New York or Miami overnight.
Yeah, it's not like New York City recently experienced severe flooding or something causing at least $60 billion worth of damage, killing a few people, and basically shutting the whole place down for days.
What makes you think that they will discover something significantly different from CFCs as an inert propellant?
The simplest reason: They have significantly different materials to work with, affected by a different degree of planetary gravity (if that's relevant to what they're building), because they're on a different planet.
If they so happen to get beat down by the police someday maybe that's when they will realize what the fuck is going on.
That won't happen to most of them: To think that cops don't beat defenseless people regularly, you have to be (a) white, and (b) not once involved in a protest that might potentially threaten the status quo.
Police can legally use force: - To subdue a civilian who is physically resisting arrest. If that civilian is using or threatening to use deadly force, such as shooting at cops, then the cops can shoot back. - To protect another civilian. If a bad guy is attempting to kill somebody, the cops can shoot him. If the bad guy is trying to beat someone up, the cop can use non-lethal force to stop him and arrest him.
Police cannot legally use force: - Towards a civilian that is not physically resisting them. - Towards a civilian that is unable to resist them (e.g. handcuffed and pinned on the ground).
Police cannot legally use deadly force towards a civilian that does not present a lethal threat to the officer or another civilian. For example, a cop encountering a fistfight is supposed to use non-lethal force only.
The Rodney King beating was a crime (in my view) because the cops continued to use force after Rodney King was unable to resist.
You can even calculate the odds of success: There are approximately 1 million professional software developers in the US. Of those, fewer than 10 have become big and famous. And the key decisions you have to make to become one of those 10 guys have more to do with sheer luck than they do with your technical skills.
For instance, one of the graduates of my alma mater went on to graduate school at Stanford, focused heavily on AI research. While there, he had the opportunity to partner with a couple of his classmates working on a tiny search engine that would help users find information on the Stanford computer network. While he thought that project was potentially interesting, he wanted to focus instead on his own research on lighting algorithms for 3D graphics. And while he's had a very successful career at Pixar, he was very nearly Google employee #4. He's a smart guy, he's innovative, but a decision that had nothing to do with software is the difference for him between a $150K / year job for the next 20 years or an early retirement 5 years ago.
our only really friendly country in the middle east
That's an oft-repeated but false claim. Some counterexamples: Turkey - NATO ally since 1952. Saudi Arabia - US ally since at least the 1980's. Kuwait - allied since we went to war on their behalf in 1991. Yemen - effectively allied with the US government versus terrorists operating in their country. Oman - fairly friendly diplomatic and trade relations with the US going back to the 19th century. United Arab Emirates - friendly relations for decades.
The only way you get to the conclusion that no other Middle Eastern countries are friendly with the United States is by assuming that all majority-Muslim countries are always enemies of the US and are only being nice to us so they can stab us in the back later on.
Ironic? No, entirely expected: Corrupt governments, no matter what their form, always protect their rich and powerful regardless of the costs to the population as a whole, and the US government is without question extremely corrupt.
Your problem is that the Democrats have been telling you that the Bush tax cuts were a "rich thing" for so long that you now believe it. The Bush tax cuts were pretty much across the board, rich, poor, middle class.. everyone got a cut.
Technically true, and misleading: If you look at the numbers, Bush tax cuts were about 2.5% for poor and middle-class people, and over 6% for upper-class people. Those in the richest 1% got approximately 85% of the value of the tax cut. So yes, it is mostly a "rich thing", because their $60K annual savings were much bigger, even as a percentage, than the average family's $1K cut (or the poor family's $100 cut).
Congress does; yet - gee - the same electorate returned who returned Obama also returned a Republican majority in the all important House of Representatives.
Fun fact about that: More people voted for a Democratic congressman than a Republican congressman. The entire House Republican majority is due to gerrymandering, because key state legislatures were controlled by Republicans from 2010-2012 (Democratic legislatures given the same opportunity would probably do the same thing).
What if the surplus SS had all those years had been saved/invested, instead of being spent by other parts of the government?
It is saved / invested, in US Treasury bonds. Some people would like to pretend that those bonds don't exist and not pay them back.
If we'd saved / invested in the private sector instead of US government debt, then Social Security would be in far worse shape, for two major reasons: 1. The government would effectively control the entire stock market, by being able to put trillions of dollars into anything it wanted to. The opportunities for corruption are giant and obvious. 2. Social Security wouldn't be insulated from all of the bumps in the markets, and would experience massive losses exactly at the time that their recipients need the help the most.
Are you talking about the Social Security and Medicare "trust fund" gimmick? If so, that supports Solandri's point: Because people were willing to pretend that FICA are not ordinary taxes, and that payroll taxes went into some special pool of money, it was easier to use FICA surpluses to subsidize deficits in the rest of the budget.
The reason the "trust fund" matters: If the general fund refuses to pay back to the SSA the funds that it borrowed from Social Security, then the US government has defaulted on its debt for the first time in its history. Those T-Bills owned by the SSA are regularly traded on the open market, and are in no way different from the T-Bills owned by China, Goldman Sachs, or anyone else, and you could reasonably expect those creditors to respond by selling off their T-Bills, driving interest rates the US government has to pay through the roof, and otherwise making our lives miserable.
In other words, it's less painful to cut back the number of toys the military has than it is to balance the general budget by cutting Social Security.
Regular universities can and do sell you a great deal more than that, including: - research opportunities - highly skilled mentors and teachers - a real-world community of people studying both the same sort of things as you, and wildly different sorts of things - regular social contact with relatively capable and intelligent people of the appropriate sex (for straight guys, be aware that a significant majority of college students are women, so the odds are very much in your favor)
If your goal in life is to code 8-10 hours a day and use the rest of your time to watch TV, movies, or play video games, then you're right that university is basically useless. If you have any ambitions beyond that, then take the regular university degree if you can at all manage to do that.
Even if by some bizarre coincidence, we actually detected evidence of intelligent life outside of the solar system, the likelihood that society would benefit by that is basically nil.
1. Find intelligent life outside of the solar system. 2. Continue monitoring any signals we can get from that direction, and figure out how to decipher them. 3. Once we've completed that, take advantage of all the scientific and technological ideas that the aliens have come up with that we haven't.
Obviously, steps 1 and 2 are ridiculously hard and time-consuming, but we in theory at least have some ideas on how to do them, and the payoff is step 3. And of course if we ever develop fast travel, we have a possible destination that we have every reason to think will be potentially useful.
According to NORML, what basically happens when someone is driving while on marijuana is that while they're somewhat impaired, they also drive more cautiously and leave more space around them. The net effect is that while they're annoying, they aren't all that dangerous.
By contrast, when someone is driving drunk, they tend to be both impaired and reckless. The net effect is that thousands of people each year are killed by drunk drivers.
Worth mentioning: Approximately 50% of civil suit plaintiffs win. This is consistent regardless of whether the case is decided by a judge or a jury. Which means that there's a good chance that about half of those who sue have a legitimate claim. Obviously the other half are a problem, but they're punished by spending the money and time on a lawyer and court costs and sometimes the defendant's lawyer (if the claim is very frivolous).
Slashdot Mirror
Here's my non-predicted reaction: We're boned.
Specifically, we aren't going to do what's necessary until it's already too late, because humans do a really bad job of responding to threats that aren't immediate. I won't be surprised if some people manage to adapt and survive, but it's going to be very messy, expensive, and violent (desperate people do not just lay down and die quietly), and there's no way those who survive will have the same standard of living as a typical modern American.
Why would he offer to plead guilty if he, as I suggest, didn't even do the crime?
Several other reasons I can think of:
1. His attorneys advised him that even if he hadn't done the crime, there was enough evidence (and possibly prejudice among the military jury who would hear his case) that he would be likely convicted. So a plea bargain might be the best he could do.
2. He knows who actually did it, but has chosen to plead guilty to protect someone else.
3. He doesn't know who did it, but has chosen to plead guilty because he believes that it was the right action and doesn't want someone else to suffer as he did.
You're right, it's also possible that it was tortured out of him.
His pretri detention was done in accordance with military law which differs from civilian in a number of ways, so even though his trial was not started as quickly as normal or that things were rough in Iraq may well have no impact on the outcome.
The UCMJ is very clear: military personnel do not relinquish their constitutional rights. Yes, military law is different, but they're still required to have a speedy and public trial, and are still prohibited from engaging in cruel and unusual punishment. Manning has a strong argument that both of those were violated.
'the idea that developers are the kings of IT and set the agenda for web companies, who in turn, set the agenda for the whole industry,'
So what they meant to say was: Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!
Gee, it's a collaboration between Ford and Microsoft ... what did you expect? ;-)
I'd expect it to run slowly, crash, catch fire, and then reboot itself for no obvious reason.
From History of the World, Part I:
"Even in most primitive man, the need to create was part of his nature. This need, this talent clearly separated early man from animals, who would never know this gift. And here, in a cave about 2 million years ago, the first artist was born. [a drawing of a buffalo is shown, and a proud artist] And, of course, with the birth of the artist, came the inevitable afterbirth... the critic. [the critic urinates on the drawing]"
Lawyers deciding scientific matters doesn't make much sense, but neither does doctors deciding matters of war and peace or scientists deciding matters of budgeting. That's one of the major problems in politics: Anyone actually trying to serve their country well (I know, pipe dream, but bear with me) has to make decisions about subjects they know absolutely nothing about.
Here's what you actually need: People who are smart enough to listen to expert advice about what they don't know, and discerning enough to tell the difference between a real expert and a fake expert. Having a general background in a wide variety of subjects also helps in determining which expert is lying.
Also, there are currently 16 doctors, 8 other health care professionals, 9 farmers, 5 engineers, 6 scientists, and 5 accountants, who haven't done things all that differently from everyone else in Congress. Also worth noting is that there are 201 business executives and 94 educators as well as 225 lawyers.
The point is that New York City is very vulnerable to a relatively small increase in sea level, and we got a demonstration of how much damage it could do in a very short amount of time.
It's not like we need to move New York or Miami overnight.
Yeah, it's not like New York City recently experienced severe flooding or something causing at least $60 billion worth of damage, killing a few people, and basically shutting the whole place down for days.
As far as how much of a sea level rise is really really bad, see for yourself:
http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/
(Although I guessing some would be happy to see New Jersey or Washington DC underwater)
Can we have his liver then?
This isn't a new argument: Enrico Fermi came up with it in 1950. It basically boils down to "If aliens exist, where are they?"
Read all about it:
Fermi Paradox
What makes you think that they will discover something significantly different from CFCs as an inert propellant?
The simplest reason: They have significantly different materials to work with, affected by a different degree of planetary gravity (if that's relevant to what they're building), because they're on a different planet.
If they so happen to get beat down by the police someday maybe that's when they will realize what the fuck is going on.
That won't happen to most of them: To think that cops don't beat defenseless people regularly, you have to be (a) white, and (b) not once involved in a protest that might potentially threaten the status quo.
The rules are actually not all that complicated.
Police can legally use force:
- To subdue a civilian who is physically resisting arrest. If that civilian is using or threatening to use deadly force, such as shooting at cops, then the cops can shoot back.
- To protect another civilian. If a bad guy is attempting to kill somebody, the cops can shoot him. If the bad guy is trying to beat someone up, the cop can use non-lethal force to stop him and arrest him.
Police cannot legally use force:
- Towards a civilian that is not physically resisting them.
- Towards a civilian that is unable to resist them (e.g. handcuffed and pinned on the ground).
Police cannot legally use deadly force towards a civilian that does not present a lethal threat to the officer or another civilian. For example, a cop encountering a fistfight is supposed to use non-lethal force only.
The Rodney King beating was a crime (in my view) because the cops continued to use force after Rodney King was unable to resist.
You can even calculate the odds of success: There are approximately 1 million professional software developers in the US. Of those, fewer than 10 have become big and famous. And the key decisions you have to make to become one of those 10 guys have more to do with sheer luck than they do with your technical skills.
For instance, one of the graduates of my alma mater went on to graduate school at Stanford, focused heavily on AI research. While there, he had the opportunity to partner with a couple of his classmates working on a tiny search engine that would help users find information on the Stanford computer network. While he thought that project was potentially interesting, he wanted to focus instead on his own research on lighting algorithms for 3D graphics. And while he's had a very successful career at Pixar, he was very nearly Google employee #4. He's a smart guy, he's innovative, but a decision that had nothing to do with software is the difference for him between a $150K / year job for the next 20 years or an early retirement 5 years ago.
our only really friendly country in the middle east
That's an oft-repeated but false claim. Some counterexamples:
Turkey - NATO ally since 1952.
Saudi Arabia - US ally since at least the 1980's.
Kuwait - allied since we went to war on their behalf in 1991.
Yemen - effectively allied with the US government versus terrorists operating in their country.
Oman - fairly friendly diplomatic and trade relations with the US going back to the 19th century.
United Arab Emirates - friendly relations for decades.
The only way you get to the conclusion that no other Middle Eastern countries are friendly with the United States is by assuming that all majority-Muslim countries are always enemies of the US and are only being nice to us so they can stab us in the back later on.
Ironic? No, entirely expected: Corrupt governments, no matter what their form, always protect their rich and powerful regardless of the costs to the population as a whole, and the US government is without question extremely corrupt.
Your problem is that the Democrats have been telling you that the Bush tax cuts were a "rich thing" for so long that you now believe it. The Bush tax cuts were pretty much across the board, rich, poor, middle class.. everyone got a cut.
Technically true, and misleading: If you look at the numbers, Bush tax cuts were about 2.5% for poor and middle-class people, and over 6% for upper-class people. Those in the richest 1% got approximately 85% of the value of the tax cut. So yes, it is mostly a "rich thing", because their $60K annual savings were much bigger, even as a percentage, than the average family's $1K cut (or the poor family's $100 cut).
Congress does; yet - gee - the same electorate returned who returned Obama also returned a Republican majority in the all important House of Representatives.
Fun fact about that: More people voted for a Democratic congressman than a Republican congressman. The entire House Republican majority is due to gerrymandering, because key state legislatures were controlled by Republicans from 2010-2012 (Democratic legislatures given the same opportunity would probably do the same thing).
What if the surplus SS had all those years had been saved/invested, instead of being spent by other parts of the government?
It is saved / invested, in US Treasury bonds. Some people would like to pretend that those bonds don't exist and not pay them back.
If we'd saved / invested in the private sector instead of US government debt, then Social Security would be in far worse shape, for two major reasons:
1. The government would effectively control the entire stock market, by being able to put trillions of dollars into anything it wanted to. The opportunities for corruption are giant and obvious.
2. Social Security wouldn't be insulated from all of the bumps in the markets, and would experience massive losses exactly at the time that their recipients need the help the most.
Are you talking about the Social Security and Medicare "trust fund" gimmick? If so, that supports Solandri's point: Because people were willing to pretend that FICA are not ordinary taxes, and that payroll taxes went into some special pool of money, it was easier to use FICA surpluses to subsidize deficits in the rest of the budget.
The reason the "trust fund" matters: If the general fund refuses to pay back to the SSA the funds that it borrowed from Social Security, then the US government has defaulted on its debt for the first time in its history. Those T-Bills owned by the SSA are regularly traded on the open market, and are in no way different from the T-Bills owned by China, Goldman Sachs, or anyone else, and you could reasonably expect those creditors to respond by selling off their T-Bills, driving interest rates the US government has to pay through the roof, and otherwise making our lives miserable.
In other words, it's less painful to cut back the number of toys the military has than it is to balance the general budget by cutting Social Security.
Regular universities can and do sell you a great deal more than that, including:
- research opportunities
- highly skilled mentors and teachers
- a real-world community of people studying both the same sort of things as you, and wildly different sorts of things
- regular social contact with relatively capable and intelligent people of the appropriate sex (for straight guys, be aware that a significant majority of college students are women, so the odds are very much in your favor)
If your goal in life is to code 8-10 hours a day and use the rest of your time to watch TV, movies, or play video games, then you're right that university is basically useless. If you have any ambitions beyond that, then take the regular university degree if you can at all manage to do that.
Even if by some bizarre coincidence, we actually detected evidence of intelligent life outside of the solar system, the likelihood that society would benefit by that is basically nil.
1. Find intelligent life outside of the solar system.
2. Continue monitoring any signals we can get from that direction, and figure out how to decipher them.
3. Once we've completed that, take advantage of all the scientific and technological ideas that the aliens have come up with that we haven't.
Obviously, steps 1 and 2 are ridiculously hard and time-consuming, but we in theory at least have some ideas on how to do them, and the payoff is step 3. And of course if we ever develop fast travel, we have a possible destination that we have every reason to think will be potentially useful.
According to NORML, what basically happens when someone is driving while on marijuana is that while they're somewhat impaired, they also drive more cautiously and leave more space around them. The net effect is that while they're annoying, they aren't all that dangerous.
By contrast, when someone is driving drunk, they tend to be both impaired and reckless. The net effect is that thousands of people each year are killed by drunk drivers.
Worth mentioning: Approximately 50% of civil suit plaintiffs win. This is consistent regardless of whether the case is decided by a judge or a jury. Which means that there's a good chance that about half of those who sue have a legitimate claim. Obviously the other half are a problem, but they're punished by spending the money and time on a lawyer and court costs and sometimes the defendant's lawyer (if the claim is very frivolous).