As a form of torture, waterboarding became illegal under the law of war with the adoption of the third Geneva Convention of 1929, which required that prisoners of war be treated humanely, and the third and fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, which explicitly prohibited the torture and cruel treatment of prisoners of war and civilians, respectively. On the basis of the 1929 convention the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE; 1946–48) convicted 25 Japanese leaders of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, specifically including torture by waterboarding (referred to by the IMTFE as the “water treatment”).
Apparently, providing a way for ordinary people to discover information about reality is displaying a liberal bias.
For example, if you do a Google search on Ron Paul, the first thing you find is Ron Paul's campaign website telling you that "Ron Paul is America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, honest money, and a pro-America foreign policy." Those evil biased bastards!
The fact that somebody is registered to vote and/or casts a vote is a matter of public record. What's secret is who's name you checked off on that ballot.
The reason it could influence the election: One of the standard voter suppression tactics is to send out false and misleading information to voters about the time and place they can go vote.
That we should of course oppose all attempts at voter suppression falls on deaf ears for the groups that pull this kind of thing: They think that they should win whether or not they have the support of the population.
You're assuming, incorrectly, that the power of elected officials to avoid being treated like everyone else disappears once they leave office. For proof to the contrary, I give you war criminal Dick Cheney.
Specifically, Cheney proudly said on national television that he ordered waterboarding of prisoners, which the US declared to be a crime against humanity in 1945.
You're laboring under the mistaken assumption that the two major parties have any significant disagreement about civil liberties protections. The proof that they don't is that neither of their presidential candidates has said a word about it.
If you want to protect civil liberties, you're going to have to vote for a minor party candidate. And that means you're going to lose, but at least you won't be voting against constitutional protections.
An illustrative case: Seattle Policeman Ian Birk approaches a 50-year-old man named John T Williams in broad daylight on a public street. Williams' crime? Carrying a woodcarving knife, shuffling along and minding his own business. No witness other than Birk thought Williams presented any kind of threat. Birk spends approximately 3-4 seconds yelling at Williams to drop the knife (never identifying himself as police), then shoots Williams 4 times in the back from about 15 feet away as the mostly deaf Williams had stopped to try to figure out what was going on.
In the aftermath, Birk was cleared of all charges. However, after lots of public outcry and the police department saying that he violated regulations, Birk decided to quit.
In case you were curious, the actual line of succession includes: 1. VP (Joe Biden) 2. Speaker of the House (John Boehner) 3. President Pro-Tempore of the Senate (Daniel Inouye) 4. Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton) 5. Secretary of the Treasury (Tim Geitner) 6. Secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta) Other cabinet secretaries, but if you've gone this far down we're already in heaps of trouble.
Because the cabinet secretaries go in order of the creation of their departments, Homeland Security (Janet Napolitano) is currently last on the list.
That was caused by those crazy "green energy" nutjobs demanding that hurricanes be generated using entirely renewable energy (don't ignore wind as well as solar and hydro). They should have stuck with good old coal, oil, natural gas, or maybe nuclear power to create hurricanes.
You think that's unfair? How about those of us in Ohio who have never been hit with a hurricane? I mean, Gloria came and wrecked most of New England in 1985, and Ohio got nothin'.
It depends where you are. In, say, New England, you're absolutely right. In the Bible Belt, though, a very large percentage of Christians believe they believe in the inerrant word of God as described in the King James Bible (because 17th century English is clearly closer to the source than modern English, or something like that).
For a lot of Christians, they kind of gloss over some important details like "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image". The best example of breaking this that I can think of is "touchdown Jesus" (so called because his gesture is similar to an NFL referee symbol): It was burned to the ground by a bolt of lightning, and the church promptly started raising the money to rebuild it. I'm almost waiting for a booming voice from the heavens to say "Did you not get the point the first time?"
You can learn from a video, but only if: 1. It's an interesting video. And no, a guy standing at a blackboard lecturing is not typically interesting to 2. It's jam-packed with useful information. For example, if you're studying the Battle of Gettysburg, watching the film Gettysburg is probably not a waste of time, because it fairly accurately shows the movements, tactics, and army cultures at the battle. 3. You discuss what you just watched after you're done. That's the part that you need an actual human being in the room to handle.
There needs to be more focus on creativity, and research and less on raw fact remembering.
Which raw facts would you like students to not have to learn? In other words, what subject would you cut?
I'll put it this way: I've made use of all the skills I learned in my early education at least once a week. Thanks to those "humdrum skills", I can write grammatical sentences and spell words correctly. I can calculate quickly the correct price of a cheese pizza and a large soda. I can have some idea of why American Indians and African-Americans generally think that they have been mistreated for centuries. I know (unlike certain presidential candidates) that Iran is not landlocked. I know what the duties of various political offices are in the US government as well as the government of my state and locality. I could go on, but I think you get the point.
And imagine what the Nazis of Germany could have done during WWII - a virus designed to kill off everyone that wasn't pure Aryan.
Most likely, we'd all be dead, because not even the Germans, and certainly not Hitler, would have qualified as pure Aryans. This problem is actually the plot of an early Babylon 5 episode, in which an alien race had created a living weapon that only took orders from "pure" members of their own race, and the weapon killed everyone living on the planet because nobody actually qualified as "pure".
It's not a binary between "rich" and "not rich": You're richer than many, not as rich as some.
My personal definition of rich: You are rich if you have enough wealth that you could choose to not work and still live quite comfortably indefinitely. So, for instance, if you had $5 million in assets earning a 5% return, you would be what I'd consider "rich", because an income of $250K a year is quite a comfortable existence: you could on that afford 2 homes, multiple cars per person, hiring somebody else to do the cleaning, eating pretty much whatever you like, traveling pretty much wherever you like. If, on the other hand, you work 40 hours a week and make $250K a year, you're clearly doing very very well, but are not yet rich (if you save a lot of that, you will likely retire rich, though).
The reasons you think that way: 1. Wealth distribution is a curve, not a line. That means the difference between the 50th percentile and the 10th percentile isn't as large as the difference between the 10th percentile and the 5th percentile which isn't close to as large as the difference between the 5% and the 1%. For example, the richest person in the world, Bill Gates, has something like $60 billion. There are approximately 400 billionaires in the US. There are about 5 million millionaire households. If you're something like the 60 millionth wealthiest American, you probably are holding something like $250K. And if you have a net worth above $50K, then you're richer than half of America.
2. Most people with significant cash don't really see the lives of people much poorer than them. For example, a college roommate of mine thought he was from a typical American family with both parents making 6-figure incomes, or an income that was roughly 6 times that of an average American. The key thing to realize is that a life you would recognize as similar to your own, with a fairly spacious and comfortable house, good car, a 4-year degree or higher, working about 8-10 hours Mon-Fri at a desk in an office (or at home), and money socked away for the kids' college education and/or your retirement, is about as far away a dream to a working-class person as getting above $100 million is to you: It's not entirely out of reach, but it's highly unlikely.
Slashdot Mirror
From the Encyclopedia Brittanica:
As a form of torture, waterboarding became illegal under the law of war with the adoption of the third Geneva Convention of 1929, which required that prisoners of war be treated humanely, and the third and fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, which explicitly prohibited the torture and cruel treatment of prisoners of war and civilians, respectively. On the basis of the 1929 convention the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE; 1946–48) convicted 25 Japanese leaders of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, specifically including torture by waterboarding (referred to by the IMTFE as the “water treatment”).
Apparently, providing a way for ordinary people to discover information about reality is displaying a liberal bias.
For example, if you do a Google search on Ron Paul, the first thing you find is Ron Paul's campaign website telling you that "Ron Paul is America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, honest money, and a pro-America foreign policy." Those evil biased bastards!
The fact that somebody is registered to vote and/or casts a vote is a matter of public record. What's secret is who's name you checked off on that ballot.
The reason it could influence the election: One of the standard voter suppression tactics is to send out false and misleading information to voters about the time and place they can go vote.
That we should of course oppose all attempts at voter suppression falls on deaf ears for the groups that pull this kind of thing: They think that they should win whether or not they have the support of the population.
You're assuming, incorrectly, that the power of elected officials to avoid being treated like everyone else disappears once they leave office. For proof to the contrary, I give you war criminal Dick Cheney.
Specifically, Cheney proudly said on national television that he ordered waterboarding of prisoners, which the US declared to be a crime against humanity in 1945.
You're laboring under the mistaken assumption that the two major parties have any significant disagreement about civil liberties protections. The proof that they don't is that neither of their presidential candidates has said a word about it.
If you want to protect civil liberties, you're going to have to vote for a minor party candidate. And that means you're going to lose, but at least you won't be voting against constitutional protections.
In the USA, the rights of the individual are protected
... if that individual is white and speaks better English than Spanish.
An illustrative case: Seattle Policeman Ian Birk approaches a 50-year-old man named John T Williams in broad daylight on a public street. Williams' crime? Carrying a woodcarving knife, shuffling along and minding his own business. No witness other than Birk thought Williams presented any kind of threat. Birk spends approximately 3-4 seconds yelling at Williams to drop the knife (never identifying himself as police), then shoots Williams 4 times in the back from about 15 feet away as the mostly deaf Williams had stopped to try to figure out what was going on.
In the aftermath, Birk was cleared of all charges. However, after lots of public outcry and the police department saying that he violated regulations, Birk decided to quit.
Not necessarily: We've completely killed smallpox.
In case you were curious, the actual line of succession includes:
1. VP (Joe Biden)
2. Speaker of the House (John Boehner)
3. President Pro-Tempore of the Senate (Daniel Inouye)
4. Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton)
5. Secretary of the Treasury (Tim Geitner)
6. Secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta)
Other cabinet secretaries, but if you've gone this far down we're already in heaps of trouble.
Because the cabinet secretaries go in order of the creation of their departments, Homeland Security (Janet Napolitano) is currently last on the list.
That was caused by those crazy "green energy" nutjobs demanding that hurricanes be generated using entirely renewable energy (don't ignore wind as well as solar and hydro). They should have stuck with good old coal, oil, natural gas, or maybe nuclear power to create hurricanes.
The latest news I find says 14 of 16 crew rescued, one drowned, and the Captain still missing.
The captain is missing ... perhaps somebody mutinied?
I thought we were limiting this to natural disasters. That river was wholly unnatural when it caught fire.
You think that's unfair? How about those of us in Ohio who have never been hit with a hurricane? I mean, Gloria came and wrecked most of New England in 1985, and Ohio got nothin'.
It depends where you are. In, say, New England, you're absolutely right. In the Bible Belt, though, a very large percentage of Christians believe they believe in the inerrant word of God as described in the King James Bible (because 17th century English is clearly closer to the source than modern English, or something like that).
For a lot of Christians, they kind of gloss over some important details like "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image". The best example of breaking this that I can think of is "touchdown Jesus" (so called because his gesture is similar to an NFL referee symbol): It was burned to the ground by a bolt of lightning, and the church promptly started raising the money to rebuild it. I'm almost waiting for a booming voice from the heavens to say "Did you not get the point the first time?"
But how would you define the Socratic method?
(Sorry, I've been reading a lot of Socratic dialogues recently, and the question of definitions seems to crop up constantly)
You can learn from a video, but only if:
1. It's an interesting video. And no, a guy standing at a blackboard lecturing is not typically interesting to
2. It's jam-packed with useful information. For example, if you're studying the Battle of Gettysburg, watching the film Gettysburg is probably not a waste of time, because it fairly accurately shows the movements, tactics, and army cultures at the battle.
3. You discuss what you just watched after you're done. That's the part that you need an actual human being in the room to handle.
There needs to be more focus on creativity, and research and less on raw fact remembering.
Which raw facts would you like students to not have to learn? In other words, what subject would you cut?
I'll put it this way: I've made use of all the skills I learned in my early education at least once a week. Thanks to those "humdrum skills", I can write grammatical sentences and spell words correctly. I can calculate quickly the correct price of a cheese pizza and a large soda. I can have some idea of why American Indians and African-Americans generally think that they have been mistreated for centuries. I know (unlike certain presidential candidates) that Iran is not landlocked. I know what the duties of various political offices are in the US government as well as the government of my state and locality. I could go on, but I think you get the point.
Talking Heads are headed for obsolesence
Leave David Byrne out of this.
And imagine what the Nazis of Germany could have done during WWII - a virus designed to kill off everyone that wasn't pure Aryan.
Most likely, we'd all be dead, because not even the Germans, and certainly not Hitler, would have qualified as pure Aryans. This problem is actually the plot of an early Babylon 5 episode, in which an alien race had created a living weapon that only took orders from "pure" members of their own race, and the weapon killed everyone living on the planet because nobody actually qualified as "pure".
It's not a binary between "rich" and "not rich": You're richer than many, not as rich as some.
My personal definition of rich: You are rich if you have enough wealth that you could choose to not work and still live quite comfortably indefinitely. So, for instance, if you had $5 million in assets earning a 5% return, you would be what I'd consider "rich", because an income of $250K a year is quite a comfortable existence: you could on that afford 2 homes, multiple cars per person, hiring somebody else to do the cleaning, eating pretty much whatever you like, traveling pretty much wherever you like. If, on the other hand, you work 40 hours a week and make $250K a year, you're clearly doing very very well, but are not yet rich (if you save a lot of that, you will likely retire rich, though).
In unrelated news, the crime rate in New York is down dramatically today, as the number of frauds committed dropped dramatically.
It's raining sideways!
You know the way that the last star wars movies made were so mature and superior to the first star wars films made.
Wait, I'm confused: How can there be multiple "last" and "first" Star Wars movies, when everyone knows that there were only 3 of them?
The reasons you think that way:
1. Wealth distribution is a curve, not a line. That means the difference between the 50th percentile and the 10th percentile isn't as large as the difference between the 10th percentile and the 5th percentile which isn't close to as large as the difference between the 5% and the 1%. For example, the richest person in the world, Bill Gates, has something like $60 billion. There are approximately 400 billionaires in the US. There are about 5 million millionaire households. If you're something like the 60 millionth wealthiest American, you probably are holding something like $250K. And if you have a net worth above $50K, then you're richer than half of America.
2. Most people with significant cash don't really see the lives of people much poorer than them. For example, a college roommate of mine thought he was from a typical American family with both parents making 6-figure incomes, or an income that was roughly 6 times that of an average American. The key thing to realize is that a life you would recognize as similar to your own, with a fairly spacious and comfortable house, good car, a 4-year degree or higher, working about 8-10 hours Mon-Fri at a desk in an office (or at home), and money socked away for the kids' college education and/or your retirement, is about as far away a dream to a working-class person as getting above $100 million is to you: It's not entirely out of reach, but it's highly unlikely.