From a philosophical point of view, Jefferson's notions were maybe a bit on the simplistic, black-and-white side (not referring to race here). That his views were too simplistic would seem to be verified by the fact that he was unable to live consistently within his own beliefs. But give the guy credit where credit is due. In his shoes, the vast majority of us would have had a very hard time. He realized he was being a hypocrite, and did in fact try to do something about it. From Wikipedia:
Jefferson seems to have suffered pangs and trials of conscience as a result.[57] He wrote about slavery, "We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."[58]
During his long career in public office, Jefferson attempted numerous times to abolish or limit the advance of slavery. According to a biographer, Jefferson "believed that it was the responsibility of the state and society to free all slaves."[59] In 1769, as a member of the House of Burgesses, Jefferson proposed for that body to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but he was unsuccessful.[60] In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson condemned the British crown for sponsoring the importation of slavery to the colonies, charging that the crown "has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere." However, this language was dropped from the Declaration at the request of delegates from South Carolina and Georgia. So he did try to abolish slavery, several times, unsuccessfully. Note that if he had succeeded he would have gone bankrupt. I call that putting your money where your mouth is. How many of us have ever tried that hard? If I were to live with no moral compromises, I'd have to refuse to pay taxes (like Thoreau), and wind up in prison (like Thoreau). I choose instead to find a compromise I can live with, and fight as best I can within the system I have been born into (like Jefferson). Sure, he could have freed his own slaves, and gone into poverty, thereby sacrificing all of his power and credibility, becoming a political cipher. Probably that would have been the more righteous path. But, as humanity does, he arrived at a compromise... retaining his wealth (and thereby credibility and political power), while working to stop slavery.
Modern life, Nazi Germany, and the Milgram experiment show that most peoples moral compasses are disturbingly relative.
So I don't think Jefferson owning slaves invalidates his contributions to modern thought. I would however have been more impressed with his writings if he had been able to address more honestly these difficult moral compromises that people have to make.
Actually, that's not true. Switzerland is a country of minorities. Here's some things you probably don't know:
(see for example) href= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland
Switzerland has 4 legal languages: german, french, italian and romansch.
Resident foreigners and temporary foreign workers make up about 21% or the population. Of the remaining 79%, german speakers 63%, French 20.4, Italian 6.5% and Romanch 0.5%. Each language group has a very distinct culture, and you notice the differences even when you pass through on a train.
Although the Italians, Romansch, and to a lesser extent the French might complain about being treated like minorities in the national elections, or when in the german part, the foreigners get the shaft most, since they can't vote. Of the foreigners, italians make up about 18%, and people from once-was Yugoslavia make up 21% (albanians being the majority of these).
So let me tell you, minority issues are as much or more an issue here than in America (I'm american but have been living in the swiss for about 10 years). I often get involved in these discussions with both American and Swiss. In my analysis, America would greatly profit from emulating the Swiss system. It ain't perfect, but it corrects several major flaws in the American one. This isn't an accident, as the Swiss constitution was modelled after the American one, taking steps to correct these flaws.
Lately minorities have been getting the shaft in the swiss elections, but I see that as being largely a cultural problem. I'm hoping the trend will reverse itself. At the moment it's hard to say whether or not that is the case. There are mixed signs.
Actually, I think there's zero. Since all power sources rely on materials produced by fusion in the sun, all power sources, including nuclear fission are ultimately derived from solar energy... Now if we can ever get nuclear fusion to be a commercially viable power source, we might break ourselves free of our solar dependence.
Man, I just gotta say, I'm impressed with the overall sanity of your legal system compared to ours (U.S.). 2 years is a perfectly reasonable sentence. I can't find the links, but I seem to recall seeing many bills announced on slashdot with completely disproportionate sentences. Hell, Kevin Mitnick comes to mind...
You're absolutely right regarding treason. But it's not incorrect to call the Bush administration Fascist. It's true that the word gets bandied around a lot, and especially on the net, but one of the causes of this is the rampant fascism in these united states.
From the wikipedia page:
Fascism is a political ideology and mass movement that seeks to place the nation, defined in exclusive biological, cultural, and/or historical terms, above all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community.[1] Many different characteristics are attributed to fascism by different scholars, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, corporatism, collectivism[2], anti-liberalism, and anti-communism. There are numerous debates between scholars regarding the nature of fascism, and the kinds of political movements and governments that may be called fascist. For further elaboration, please see definitions of fascism and fascism and ideology.
The term fascism was first used by Benito Mussolini, and it comes from the Italian word fascio, which means "union" or "league", and from the Latin word fasces (fascis, in singular), which means rods bundled around an axe. The fasces was an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of magistrates, and the symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is very difficult to break.
The American decline into fascism has been gradual and done in an uniquely American fashion. Just as Italian and German fascism took different characteristics, so too has American fascism. Henry Wallace (33'd vice president, under FDR) wrote an excellent article on "the dangers of American fascism" discussing this as early as 1944.
Obviously, fascism incorporates many characteristics, and so it can be debated to what extent something is fascist, in that it does not completely satisfy all of the conditions of fascism (which are also subject to some debate). For example, the former soviet union embodied many aspects of fascism, exalting the nation above the individual, patriotism, unity, militarism, authoritism... It did not however embrace corporatism.
So it's true that the word has become weekened over the years, having become little more than a pejorative epithet used by supporters of various political views. Nonetheless, it applies very accurately, and under its original meanings, to the policies being implemented over the last thirty years in the United States.
Alberto Gonzales' comments can be appropriately called fascist, but I will grant you that the application is perhaps less precise than when applying to the general trend of the US. He consistently advocates authority and the power of the nation and national government over the rights of the individual. Specific to these comments, he advocates placing the nation, and specifically the executive-branch, as being more vital than the constitution or rule of law. By appealing to an outside threat, he is warmly embracing both the methods and goals of fascism. The same criticism can be applied to the former soviet union, however certain aspects of their dogma/propaganda make it impossible to label them fascist.
In conclusion, fascist has a specific meaning, beyond just "bad", which applies in this case. Communist also has a specific meaning beyond just "bad" but it would not apply in this case at all.
Totally agree with you that censorship is not a good solution, and that censoring scientific debate is always a bad idea. When I read the editorial I immediately thought the same thing as you. But then I read the article,and followed the links. The article is incredibly misleading. Here's the actual quote on which the article bases its statement that "at least one scientist wants to put a permanent stop to any arguments over Global Warming. The Weather Channel's most prominent climatologist...":
Capitalweather.com, a website for hard-core weather junkies in the DC area, recently published an interview with a local meteorologist that highlights the unfortunate divide that exists right now between the climate and weather communities. Yup, that divide is global warming. When asked about the science of global warming, the meteorologist responded:
"The subject of global warming definitely makes headlines in the media and is a topic of much debate. I try to read up on the subject to have a better understanding, but it is complex. Often, it is so politicized and those on both sides don't always appear to have their facts straight. History has taught us that weather patterns are cyclical and although we have noticed a warming pattern in recent time, I don't know what generalizations can be made from this with the lack of long-term scientific data. That's all I will say about this."
In an interesting follow-up blog on the reason for this all too common global warming contrarianism within the broadcast meteorology community, journalist Andrew Freedman suggests local TV meteorologist may want to look to the American Meteorological Society for guidance. Freedman goes on to point out that the AMS has in fact, issued a statement on climate change that reads:
"There is convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other trace constituents in the atmosphere, have become a major agent of climate change."
I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming. (One good resource if you don't have a lot of time is the Pew Center's Climate Change 101.)
Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms. And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy. If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns. It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement.
I agree with every meteorologist who says the topic of global warming has gotten too political. But that's why talking about the science is so important!
Now, compare this text to the way this text is characterised in the article. Dr. Cullen believes that competency in the subject of global warming should be required in order for a meteorologist to certified by the AMS, as they have a large impact on public opinion, and their AMS certification gives them an air of authority to the general public. She doesn't say that everyone has to toe the party line regarding global warming, but that their comments be founded on real science, not the junk science often behind global warming skepticism. Her first quote, the woefully ignorant meteorologist is an example of someone who is using their credentials to lend strength to an uninformed, ignorant and unscientific opinion.
I think open scientific debate is vital, and that no theory (including holocost denial) should
Renewable and portable energy products like Ethanol and BioDiesel now take more fossil fuels to produce the input crops than if the fuel was burned directly.
This has nothing to do with their method, but I think that claim is a bit misleading. From the wikipedia article on ethanol:
For ethanol to contribute significantly to transportation fuel needs, it would need to have a positive net energy balance and the U.S. Department of Energy has concluded that it does, stating in a recent report "the net energy balance of making fuel ethanol from corn grain is 1.34; that is, for every unit of energy that goes into growing corn and turning it into ethanol, we get back about one-third more energy as automotive fuel."[33] The report also indicates that using a crop with a higher sugar content than corn, such as sugar beets, would result in production with a much higher positive net energy balance.
Some scientists[34] argue that the energy balance is negative when all factors are considered. Professors Tad Patzek and David Pimentel are the most well-known academics to make this argument. These arguments have been challenged in a report from the U.S. Department of Energy as being based on decades-old data and not considering recent advances in production or the use of more efficient source crops for ethanol fermentation. [35]
With ethanol being produced in such large quantities, such as in Brazil, I don't understand how this is subject to debate. Couldn't one just measure the fossil fuel use of an ethanol producing farm, and compare it to the amount of ethanol produced? Anyone know of a study that lays this issue to rest?
there is of course another interpretation of what happened with mad cow disease. In all likelyhood without the disproportionate media frenzy around it, governments would have drag assed a lot longer in doing something about the risks, until it did actually reach a crisis proportion. So let's not play blame the media too much here.
change that to "It doesn't matter how crappy Vista is, it will almost certainly become the new "standard", and you're correct. Speaking in absolutes is pretty foolish. As niels bohr said "prediction is difficult, especially of the future".
from the editorial (but it's the same in the article):
49 percent of the test-takers correctly evaluated a set of Web sites for objectivity, authority and timeliness. Only 35 percent could correctly narrow an overly broad Internet search."
Evaluating information for objectivity, authority, and timeliness is a fundamental skill that's lacking, and it has nothing to do with the medium used to obtain the information. Look at how few people are able to read a newspaper or magazine objectively. Look at how many people, for example, think Fox news is real, unbiased, fair journalism. Thats SCARY.
So it turns out people are equally poor at this skill when using the internet, as they are when using the television, newspapers, books, magazines, or word of mouth. Okay, that's not surprising at all. Why should that make a difference.
That said, this is a problem and something should be done about it. But it's a mistake to characterize it as a problem with tech literacy. Tech literacy would be the inability to actually use the technology to sort the information. The article indicates that students have no trouble with this, rather with the more traditional cognitive skills.
What a pointless article. It's entirely emotional and opinionated. It has nothing to say besides "Linux Suxxors". What the hell?
I don't think there's any point to responding to this, but I feel compelled to put my two cents in. People like to complain about something being "user friendly". I'm actually really tired of that phrase. I don't think Microsoft's stuff is very user friendly. I keeps making me do stupid repetive tasks that cause me carpal tunnel syndrome (from repetetive mouse clicks), keeps making me answer the same stupid questions over and over again, keeps reinstating the stupid sample photos and subdirectories into the one part of the OS that should ostensible by mine (the "My Documents" folder), keeps forcing onerous, impossible to read EULA's on me, keeps preventing me from doing legal things I want to do because they don't want me violating their copyrights... the list goes on.
What most people mean when they say "user friendly" would be better called "newbie friendly", or "neophyte friendly", or maybe "diletante friendly". I use Linux on my desktop becuase it's more friendly to the stuff that I want to do, and for the most part lets me do thing the way I want to do them.
Oh, and nice job calling linux on the desktop a "bubble". As george orwell statet, a writer mixing their metaphors is a sure sign that they aren't actually thinking about what they are writing.
Do you know the robert crumb cartoon "big baby"? It's a character that looks like a huge curvy woman with a baby head sucking on a pacifier who just says "goo" and thinks cocks are big pacifiers, and cum is just like mothers milk. When she appeared on the cover of the "complete crumb" reprints he put a little blurb saying "relax folks, she's 18", for what I guess are obvious reasons. In the stories there's no reason to think she's 18.
outlawing child porn to protect children is reasonable. But outlawing thinking about child porn, whether it be in a drawing or CGI is just though policing, and I'm thoroughly against thought police. In the example of R. Crumb, he was originally thought of as a big pornographer, and had a lot of troubles becuase of the things he decided to draw about. But the things he drew, although they were absolutely certainly without a doubte graphically depicting sexual child abuse in a cartoon form, are gradually being thought of as art rather than horrible seedy pornography. His stuff routinely gets shown in art galleries in the US and across Europe now, and consider pretty sides of the human psyche.
I actually tried to bring this debate up at a party, shortly after the netherlands initiated a debate about outlawing virtual child porn (what happened with that anyway?). Everyone at the party (it was an office party, not really friends. I just wanted to bring up something more interesting than the banal shit they were bandying around) was grossly offended at the idea of virtual child porn, and one particularly stupid individual told me that once I had children I would understand that virtual child porn was wrong.
Well, I'm not young, and I've been around the block a few times, and it's my considered opinion that pretending that certain things don't exist, and censoring their depiction or discussion don't eliminate those things. I don't think they even reduce them. I'm not sure of it, but I think open discussions and the ability to confront such things, and other peoples thoughts, ideas, and fantasies, even when grossly disturbing, actually helps reduce these things. It's the same reason I think it's reprehensible that some school libraries choose to censor mark twain, since his work depicts racism. It's anti racism, but they don't care. They don't like the fact that he shows an ugly side of American history.
Put another way, and I guess I'm ripping this off of Noam Chomsky, freedom of speech is measured by how much freedom one has to say things we don't like to hear (or in this case see). Stalin and Hitler were perfectly content to let people communicate ideas and concepts they approved of, but we don't say they supported free speech.
So yeah, kiddie porn is creepy and disturbing. But if no one was hurt in the production of such kiddie porn, it must not be made illegal. Same goes for depicting violent and nasty or disgusting sex acts. Deal with it, reality contains many creepy and difficult to face concepts. If you don't like them, stick you head as deep in the sand as you must. If you want to shelter your kids from these facts, then stick their heads in the sand too. But don't be surprised if they suffocate, and especially don't be surprised when they find themselves unable to deal with real dangers, threats and disturbing concepts that they might one day have to face.
Thanks for the complement. I promise I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but where does the extra dimension come from? Wouldn't f(t) be one dimensional, f(x,y) be two D, and f(x,y,t) three dimensional? One of us is having/had a brain fart here.
As to the ogg discussion, I'd like to quote the reference you cited (wikipedia):
Many users feel that Vorbis reaches transparency (sound quality that is indistinguishable from the original source recording) at a quality setting of -q5, approximately 160 kbit/s.[citation needed] For comparison, it is commonly felt that MP3 reaches transparency at around 192 kbit/s, resulting in larger file sizes for the same sound quality.
In other words, this supports the claim I made in my post, that for files of equal size the sound quality of ogg vorbis tends to be superior. As both approach sufficiently high bit rates, the sound reproduction becomes 'transparent', but ogg converges faster than mp3. Thus for equal quality ogg gives smaller files, and for equal file size ogg gives superior quality. Ergo, ogg is the superior codec, both politically and technically.
I apologize if this post comes across as a "I know better than you" post, or "I must have the last word". I just felt that your post (unintentionally I'm sure) would give a less informed reader the impression that they would benefit little from switching to ogg, which is just not the case.
The additional gripe I have with the ipod is the unnecessary difficulty an ipod owner must go through to share a song stored on their ipod with a colleague. I.e. I resent the unnecessary difficulty one must go through to copy a song from an ipod to another storage device, eg the hard drive on a pc. See for example http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments /copying-music-from-ipod-to-computer/. Note that the latter link is an evangelist site helping ipod owners with this problem. This is a form of DRM placed into the hardware.
There are multiple reasons to prefer ogg over mp3. The first is quality. While LAME gives you perhaps the best mp3 quality possible, mp3 is a technically inferior codec to ogg. The quality vs filesize ratio is simply better for ogg. There was actually a quite excellent double blind test on this, and I suspect I'm over simplifying the results: The test was done over several music categories, ranging from classical to techno. My swiss cheese memory tells me that mp3 or wma may have excelled in one or another categories, but the overall winner was ogg. Also, ogg won by larger margins, so in the cases where mp3 excelled, the difference was less noticeable than in the cases where ogg won over the other codecs.
If you don't believe me, just do some simple tests yourself. On windows take EAC (exact audio copy) and encode a few sample songs using mp3 and ogg, going for approximately the same file sizes. My experiments have always indicated ogg to be the superior choice (I have even gone so far as to have a friend do file selection for me so I would not know which codec was being played, thus reducing the effect of my own bias). A quick "ogg mp3 comparison" search indicate my results match an overal consensus. It's been discussed quite a bit on slashot as well, see http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/29/115420 4&mode=thread for example.
The other reason to prefer ogg is political. mp3's are patented technology. As such they contain inherent dangers. Once upon a time, you could play mp3's on your comptuter without paying the patent holder anything. That recently changed (see http://slashdot.org/yro/02/08/27/1626241.shtml?tid =155. This is a pretty common technique: wait till a format is almost universally accepted, and then start charging for it. It is in fact good business. When online pundits brought this scenario up as an argument for using ogg, it was largely dismissed, but it has come to pass, as should have been expected. Now here's another likely scenario: The frauenhoffer institute accepts a bajillion buck payment from the RIAA (Recording Industry Assholes of America) to add another term to their patent licensing agreement, which enforces all MP3's to include onerous DRM management. How bad could this be? Worst (plausible) case: it could require all future MP3 playing software to refuse to play any MP3's without the DRM, force addition of the DRM tech to your existing mp3's, and break the ability of your non DRM equipped software of MP3 player to play the MP3. If everyone is using MP3's and no good alternative exists, there's a format monopoly and they absolutely can get away with this.
Ogg on the other hand is free as in freedom, and technically superior. You get better sound quality, and the only price you have to pay is to reduce the dangers of having your rights removed. Given this, it would seem that avoiding ogg is the more phobia-like (i.e. irrational) response.
Okay I lied. The real disadvantage to ogg is finding hardware with native ogg support. For example you can't use an Ipod (as far as I know). So that's a bit of a drag. But there are quite good ogg enabled players out there (I have a nice model from samsung), and as more and more market share starts using ogg, you'll see that improve.
Well, for my part I am something of an anti-ipod evangelist. My main motivation is the DRM stuff. With most of my friends, as soon as I explain that you can't just plug your ipod into a buddies computer to share a few songs with him/her, that usually sells them on a more fair use friendly system. I also encourage people to buy OGG compatible stuff, although that's really only a selling point for a minority of people.
A more relevant experiment would be to fill a tall glass with ice cubes, then fill the glass half way with water, and mark the water level. Let the ice melt and observe the rise in water level. What happened: You have ice stacked up above the water level, so it isn't displacing any water, which is the situation we have here on earth where a lot of ice is stacked up on land.
Doctors usually know what they are doing. They have to have a certain space in which to practice their profession, a safe zone where they shouldn't be afraid of getting sued all the time. I hear that it's hard to find good emergency room doctors in the US because they fear they will get sued when they make the wrong decision in a case. This should not be.
When a doctor makes an error that leads to the patient being in a worse state than before, that's bad. Doctors are willing to make an effort to do things right, though, even without the looming lawsuits. I could see that the additional stress would not be beneficial.
Yup, I agree it's a difficult problem, which makes it all the more important for us to compare notes across society to see what works. It's not always transparent. My biggest gripe as an American is we're often so damned concerned with saying/thinking "we're the best", that we fail to look outside our borders to learn from others, their mistakes or their successes.
One thing they do here (switzerland): if you want to sue a doctor you have to find another doctor who will testify that the doctor you want to sue really made an easily avoidable mistake, as opposed to a reasonable mistake anyone could make. This has the benefit of eliminating frivolous lawsuits. I'm told it has the downside of creating a kind of "doctor mafia" where the doctors all look out for each other (this is strictly an anecdotal observation). So I'm unsure if it's a good policy or not.
Of course with all difficult problems the important thing is to maintain an open and rational mind, and consider as much evidence as possible.
I'm so tired of finding the word "novel" in research publications, etc. It's an overused word which contains absolutely no new information. Most style guides for scientific writing grip about it, and many research publications ask authors not to use such words in titles or abstracts, but I get the feeling the use is still increasing. It's basically scientific marketing, and it's not even clever or original. Most things which are described as novel are anyway anything but, and the word has just become weak and watered down. The sentence "used a novel combination of materials..." could have been replaced with one containing some useful information, or just done away with alltogether to improve reading efficiency.
Yeah, it's probably completely off topic, but I just had to say it.
Also worth noting: Both cost and quality of medical care are comparable between the U.S. and Switzerland.
If I had to compare the two medical systems, which is getting pretty off-topic, I'd say the Swiss is slightly better. In fact the two systems are nearly identical, at least on the surface. Both are based on a quasi free market model with a private health insurance system. The swiss more tightly regulate the insurance industry, which protects the citizenry from the worst abuses by insurers. This is one area where the U.S. could improve a great deal. This is actually true across the board with the insurance system in the U.S. versus that in Switzerland. Insurance isn't much more expensive here (perhaps slightly, I'm not sure), but you can have a lot more confidence in your insurance company. Generally you know apriori what you are covered for and what not. The insurers are forced to keep up their end of the bargain, and there strict time limits on how long they can delay making payments.
Where the Swiss (and I think this applies to additional countries in Europe) can improve is doctor culpability, which was the subject of my post. A doctor has to be a pretty big screw up to face repercussions here. Worse, they just don't communicate with their patients as much as they should. One solution would be to change the legal landscape slightly in the direction of that in America. Should they take this approach, the American system should certainly be studied in order to avoid problems found there.
Basically, and this is pretty much always my point when engaging in country comparison, we should learn from each others systems. From the knowledge and understanding we gain, we can improve these systems. Cross country pissing matches "look how stupid your system is..." help not at all, but comparisons of specifics and analysis of how we can apply the lessons learned can help quite a bit.
Is as the word gains common acceptance it will be used in a positive (i.e. non pejorative) sense. When Steve coined truthiness he was of course taking the piss out of the cavalier attitude most in government (esp Republicans) have towards truth.
Just watch, in twenty years people will critisize truths as not being truthy enough. Steven C. will kill himself on live TV in shame...
I'm an American living in Switzerland, and I often have this discussion with people. The usual european consensus is American's are lawsuit crazy.
After seeing both sides of the fence, it's my opinion that America does have too many lawsuits, and could use some kind of mechanism or fine tuning to reduce the misjudgements, over-awarding, and frivolous lawsuits. On the other hand, Switzerland at least could stand to move a little more in America's direction in this regard. My impression is this is true of most other European countries.
As an example, a friend of mine (call him T) ripped his achilles tendon from his heel playing tennis, which is apparently an incredibly common injury while playing such sports in his age bracket, and really the doctor should have known better and investigated a little more carefully. But anyone can make a mistake, and the doctor told T he just sprained it and gave him some cream. But T went back one week and three weeks later and told him his leg seemed to be getting worse, not better. The doctor belittled T, told him he was too sensitive to pain, and sent him on his way.
So finally we told T he needed to go to a different doctor. He was properly diagnosed, and had to get some pretty serious surgery. Had he been properly diagnosed the surgery would have been minor. He'd have been off his feet for a few days, maybe missed a couple days of work, and had crutches a few weeks. Because of the time delay he had to get much more involved surgery, spend weeks in bed and away from work, and a couple months on crutches, all because of the incredible arrogance an incompetence of the doctor.
I felt that he should sue the doctor on principle, if only to teach him a lesson. Certainly I think the doctor or the docs malpractice insurance should have paid the incresed medical fees, rather than T's insurance, and perhaps some small punitive fee. But I called around and I was informed that not only was it incredibly difficult to sue doctors (they have a kind of mafia here), but even if we won we would still have to pay our own legal fees, and we would lose money on the deal. So to punish a crap doctor here you have to have deep pockets. I think an ideal system would have rewarded T for taking the time and effort to pursue this. Not millions of dollars in "pain and suffering", but pay the medical bills and pay for time missed from work perhaps.
I completely agree things go too far in the States. BUT I have a lot more faith visiting doctors in America. They listen more carefully, and especially they explain things much more carefully. They know that if they are arrogant sloppy pricks they'll get sued. The suits drive up their malpractice insurance and serve as a warning to other patients. So it can and does have a positive effect.
Basically both systems need some fine tuning, and can probably learn from one another.
Slashdot Mirror
Modern life, Nazi Germany, and the Milgram experiment show that most peoples moral compasses are disturbingly relative.
So I don't think Jefferson owning slaves invalidates his contributions to modern thought. I would however have been more impressed with his writings if he had been able to address more honestly these difficult moral compromises that people have to make.
Actually, that's not true. Switzerland is a country of minorities. Here's some things you probably don't know: (see for example) href= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland Switzerland has 4 legal languages: german, french, italian and romansch. Resident foreigners and temporary foreign workers make up about 21% or the population. Of the remaining 79%, german speakers 63%, French 20.4, Italian 6.5% and Romanch 0.5%. Each language group has a very distinct culture, and you notice the differences even when you pass through on a train. Although the Italians, Romansch, and to a lesser extent the French might complain about being treated like minorities in the national elections, or when in the german part, the foreigners get the shaft most, since they can't vote. Of the foreigners, italians make up about 18%, and people from once-was Yugoslavia make up 21% (albanians being the majority of these). So let me tell you, minority issues are as much or more an issue here than in America (I'm american but have been living in the swiss for about 10 years). I often get involved in these discussions with both American and Swiss. In my analysis, America would greatly profit from emulating the Swiss system. It ain't perfect, but it corrects several major flaws in the American one. This isn't an accident, as the Swiss constitution was modelled after the American one, taking steps to correct these flaws. Lately minorities have been getting the shaft in the swiss elections, but I see that as being largely a cultural problem. I'm hoping the trend will reverse itself. At the moment it's hard to say whether or not that is the case. There are mixed signs.
Actually, I think there's zero. Since all power sources rely on materials produced by fusion in the sun, all power sources, including nuclear fission are ultimately derived from solar energy... Now if we can ever get nuclear fusion to be a commercially viable power source, we might break ourselves free of our solar dependence.
Man, I just gotta say, I'm impressed with the overall sanity of your legal system compared to ours (U.S.). 2 years is a perfectly reasonable sentence. I can't find the links, but I seem to recall seeing many bills announced on slashdot with completely disproportionate sentences. Hell, Kevin Mitnick comes to mind...
You're absolutely right regarding treason. But it's not incorrect to call the Bush administration Fascist. It's true that the word gets bandied around a lot, and especially on the net, but one of the causes of this is the rampant fascism in these united states.
From the wikipedia page:
The American decline into fascism has been gradual and done in an uniquely American fashion. Just as Italian and German fascism took different characteristics, so too has American fascism. Henry Wallace (33'd vice president, under FDR) wrote an excellent article on "the dangers of American fascism" discussing this as early as 1944.Obviously, fascism incorporates many characteristics, and so it can be debated to what extent something is fascist, in that it does not completely satisfy all of the conditions of fascism (which are also subject to some debate). For example, the former soviet union embodied many aspects of fascism, exalting the nation above the individual, patriotism, unity, militarism, authoritism... It did not however embrace corporatism.
So it's true that the word has become weekened over the years, having become little more than a pejorative epithet used by supporters of various political views. Nonetheless, it applies very accurately, and under its original meanings, to the policies being implemented over the last thirty years in the United States.
Alberto Gonzales' comments can be appropriately called fascist, but I will grant you that the application is perhaps less precise than when applying to the general trend of the US. He consistently advocates authority and the power of the nation and national government over the rights of the individual. Specific to these comments, he advocates placing the nation, and specifically the executive-branch, as being more vital than the constitution or rule of law. By appealing to an outside threat, he is warmly embracing both the methods and goals of fascism. The same criticism can be applied to the former soviet union, however certain aspects of their dogma/propaganda make it impossible to label them fascist.
In conclusion, fascist has a specific meaning, beyond just "bad", which applies in this case. Communist also has a specific meaning beyond just "bad" but it would not apply in this case at all.
Now, compare this text to the way this text is characterised in the article. Dr. Cullen believes that competency in the subject of global warming should be required in order for a meteorologist to certified by the AMS, as they have a large impact on public opinion, and their AMS certification gives them an air of authority to the general public. She doesn't say that everyone has to toe the party line regarding global warming, but that their comments be founded on real science, not the junk science often behind global warming skepticism. Her first quote, the woefully ignorant meteorologist is an example of someone who is using their credentials to lend strength to an uninformed, ignorant and unscientific opinion.
I think open scientific debate is vital, and that no theory (including holocost denial) should
dude, aren't you embarrassed to show you don't know the difference between losing and loosing every single time you post a message
there is of course another interpretation of what happened with mad cow disease. In all likelyhood without the disproportionate media frenzy around it, governments would have drag assed a lot longer in doing something about the risks, until it did actually reach a crisis proportion. So let's not play blame the media too much here.
How is identifying a problem, and claiming there is a need to correct a problem harmful?
change that to "It doesn't matter how crappy Vista is, it will almost certainly become the new "standard", and you're correct. Speaking in absolutes is pretty foolish. As niels bohr said "prediction is difficult, especially of the future".
Evaluating information for objectivity, authority, and timeliness is a fundamental skill that's lacking, and it has nothing to do with the medium used to obtain the information. Look at how few people are able to read a newspaper or magazine objectively. Look at how many people, for example, think Fox news is real, unbiased, fair journalism. Thats SCARY.
So it turns out people are equally poor at this skill when using the internet, as they are when using the television, newspapers, books, magazines, or word of mouth. Okay, that's not surprising at all. Why should that make a difference.
That said, this is a problem and something should be done about it. But it's a mistake to characterize it as a problem with tech literacy. Tech literacy would be the inability to actually use the technology to sort the information. The article indicates that students have no trouble with this, rather with the more traditional cognitive skills.
Yeah, you're right. I clearly wasn't thinking about what I was writing about...
What a pointless article. It's entirely emotional and opinionated. It has nothing to say besides "Linux Suxxors". What the hell?
I don't think there's any point to responding to this, but I feel compelled to put my two cents in. People like to complain about something being "user friendly". I'm actually really tired of that phrase. I don't think Microsoft's stuff is very user friendly. I keeps making me do stupid repetive tasks that cause me carpal tunnel syndrome (from repetetive mouse clicks), keeps making me answer the same stupid questions over and over again, keeps reinstating the stupid sample photos and subdirectories into the one part of the OS that should ostensible by mine (the "My Documents" folder), keeps forcing onerous, impossible to read EULA's on me, keeps preventing me from doing legal things I want to do because they don't want me violating their copyrights... the list goes on.
What most people mean when they say "user friendly" would be better called "newbie friendly", or "neophyte friendly", or maybe "diletante friendly". I use Linux on my desktop becuase it's more friendly to the stuff that I want to do, and for the most part lets me do thing the way I want to do them.
Oh, and nice job calling linux on the desktop a "bubble". As george orwell statet, a writer mixing their metaphors is a sure sign that they aren't actually thinking about what they are writing.
outlawing child porn to protect children is reasonable. But outlawing thinking about child porn, whether it be in a drawing or CGI is just though policing, and I'm thoroughly against thought police. In the example of R. Crumb, he was originally thought of as a big pornographer, and had a lot of troubles becuase of the things he decided to draw about. But the things he drew, although they were absolutely certainly without a doubte graphically depicting sexual child abuse in a cartoon form, are gradually being thought of as art rather than horrible seedy pornography. His stuff routinely gets shown in art galleries in the US and across Europe now, and consider pretty sides of the human psyche.
I actually tried to bring this debate up at a party, shortly after the netherlands initiated a debate about outlawing virtual child porn (what happened with that anyway?). Everyone at the party (it was an office party, not really friends. I just wanted to bring up something more interesting than the banal shit they were bandying around) was grossly offended at the idea of virtual child porn, and one particularly stupid individual told me that once I had children I would understand that virtual child porn was wrong.
Well, I'm not young, and I've been around the block a few times, and it's my considered opinion that pretending that certain things don't exist, and censoring their depiction or discussion don't eliminate those things. I don't think they even reduce them. I'm not sure of it, but I think open discussions and the ability to confront such things, and other peoples thoughts, ideas, and fantasies, even when grossly disturbing, actually helps reduce these things. It's the same reason I think it's reprehensible that some school libraries choose to censor mark twain, since his work depicts racism. It's anti racism, but they don't care. They don't like the fact that he shows an ugly side of American history.
Put another way, and I guess I'm ripping this off of Noam Chomsky, freedom of speech is measured by how much freedom one has to say things we don't like to hear (or in this case see). Stalin and Hitler were perfectly content to let people communicate ideas and concepts they approved of, but we don't say they supported free speech.
So yeah, kiddie porn is creepy and disturbing. But if no one was hurt in the production of such kiddie porn, it must not be made illegal. Same goes for depicting violent and nasty or disgusting sex acts. Deal with it, reality contains many creepy and difficult to face concepts. If you don't like them, stick you head as deep in the sand as you must. If you want to shelter your kids from these facts, then stick their heads in the sand too. But don't be surprised if they suffocate, and especially don't be surprised when they find themselves unable to deal with real dangers, threats and disturbing concepts that they might one day have to face.
Thanks for the complement. I promise I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but where does the extra dimension come from? Wouldn't f(t) be one dimensional, f(x,y) be two D, and f(x,y,t) three dimensional? One of us is having/had a brain fart here.
As to the ogg discussion, I'd like to quote the reference you cited (wikipedia):
In other words, this supports the claim I made in my post, that for files of equal size the sound quality of ogg vorbis tends to be superior. As both approach sufficiently high bit rates, the sound reproduction becomes 'transparent', but ogg converges faster than mp3. Thus for equal quality ogg gives smaller files, and for equal file size ogg gives superior quality. Ergo, ogg is the superior codec, both politically and technically.
I apologize if this post comes across as a "I know better than you" post, or "I must have the last word". I just felt that your post (unintentionally I'm sure) would give a less informed reader the impression that they would benefit little from switching to ogg, which is just not the case.
The overall discussion is about iTunes purchased music, which is DRM emcumbered. See for example http://playlistmag.com/news/2005/11/21/ipoddrm/ind ex.php or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay.
The additional gripe I have with the ipod is the unnecessary difficulty an ipod owner must go through to share a song stored on their ipod with a colleague. I.e. I resent the unnecessary difficulty one must go through to copy a song from an ipod to another storage device, eg the hard drive on a pc. See for example http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments /copying-music-from-ipod-to-computer/. Note that the latter link is an evangelist site helping ipod owners with this problem. This is a form of DRM placed into the hardware.
So you see my gripe is with DRM, not with itms
Well, lemme see if I can explain the love affair.
There are multiple reasons to prefer ogg over mp3. The first is quality. While LAME gives you perhaps the best mp3 quality possible, mp3 is a technically inferior codec to ogg. The quality vs filesize ratio is simply better for ogg. There was actually a quite excellent double blind test on this, and I suspect I'm over simplifying the results: The test was done over several music categories, ranging from classical to techno. My swiss cheese memory tells me that mp3 or wma may have excelled in one or another categories, but the overall winner was ogg. Also, ogg won by larger margins, so in the cases where mp3 excelled, the difference was less noticeable than in the cases where ogg won over the other codecs.
If you don't believe me, just do some simple tests yourself. On windows take EAC (exact audio copy) and encode a few sample songs using mp3 and ogg, going for approximately the same file sizes. My experiments have always indicated ogg to be the superior choice (I have even gone so far as to have a friend do file selection for me so I would not know which codec was being played, thus reducing the effect of my own bias). A quick "ogg mp3 comparison" search indicate my results match an overal consensus. It's been discussed quite a bit on slashot as well, see http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/29/115420 4&mode=thread for example.
The other reason to prefer ogg is political. mp3's are patented technology. As such they contain inherent dangers. Once upon a time, you could play mp3's on your comptuter without paying the patent holder anything. That recently changed (see http://slashdot.org/yro/02/08/27/1626241.shtml?tid =155. This is a pretty common technique: wait till a format is almost universally accepted, and then start charging for it. It is in fact good business. When online pundits brought this scenario up as an argument for using ogg, it was largely dismissed, but it has come to pass, as should have been expected. Now here's another likely scenario: The frauenhoffer institute accepts a bajillion buck payment from the RIAA (Recording Industry Assholes of America) to add another term to their patent licensing agreement, which enforces all MP3's to include onerous DRM management. How bad could this be? Worst (plausible) case: it could require all future MP3 playing software to refuse to play any MP3's without the DRM, force addition of the DRM tech to your existing mp3's, and break the ability of your non DRM equipped software of MP3 player to play the MP3. If everyone is using MP3's and no good alternative exists, there's a format monopoly and they absolutely can get away with this.
Ogg on the other hand is free as in freedom, and technically superior. You get better sound quality, and the only price you have to pay is to reduce the dangers of having your rights removed. Given this, it would seem that avoiding ogg is the more phobia-like (i.e. irrational) response.
Okay I lied. The real disadvantage to ogg is finding hardware with native ogg support. For example you can't use an Ipod (as far as I know). So that's a bit of a drag. But there are quite good ogg enabled players out there (I have a nice model from samsung), and as more and more market share starts using ogg, you'll see that improve.
Well, for my part I am something of an anti-ipod evangelist. My main motivation is the DRM stuff. With most of my friends, as soon as I explain that you can't just plug your ipod into a buddies computer to share a few songs with him/her, that usually sells them on a more fair use friendly system. I also encourage people to buy OGG compatible stuff, although that's really only a selling point for a minority of people.
A more relevant experiment would be to fill a tall glass with ice cubes, then fill the glass half way with water, and mark the water level. Let the ice melt and observe the rise in water level. What happened: You have ice stacked up above the water level, so it isn't displacing any water, which is the situation we have here on earth where a lot of ice is stacked up on land.
Yup, I agree it's a difficult problem, which makes it all the more important for us to compare notes across society to see what works. It's not always transparent. My biggest gripe as an American is we're often so damned concerned with saying/thinking "we're the best", that we fail to look outside our borders to learn from others, their mistakes or their successes.
One thing they do here (switzerland): if you want to sue a doctor you have to find another doctor who will testify that the doctor you want to sue really made an easily avoidable mistake, as opposed to a reasonable mistake anyone could make. This has the benefit of eliminating frivolous lawsuits. I'm told it has the downside of creating a kind of "doctor mafia" where the doctors all look out for each other (this is strictly an anecdotal observation). So I'm unsure if it's a good policy or not.
Of course with all difficult problems the important thing is to maintain an open and rational mind, and consider as much evidence as possible.
I'm so tired of finding the word "novel" in research publications, etc. It's an overused word which contains absolutely no new information. Most style guides for scientific writing grip about it, and many research publications ask authors not to use such words in titles or abstracts, but I get the feeling the use is still increasing. It's basically scientific marketing, and it's not even clever or original. Most things which are described as novel are anyway anything but, and the word has just become weak and watered down. The sentence "used a novel combination of materials..." could have been replaced with one containing some useful information, or just done away with alltogether to improve reading efficiency.
Yeah, it's probably completely off topic, but I just had to say it.
Also worth noting: Both cost and quality of medical care are comparable between the U.S. and Switzerland.
If I had to compare the two medical systems, which is getting pretty off-topic, I'd say the Swiss is slightly better. In fact the two systems are nearly identical, at least on the surface. Both are based on a quasi free market model with a private health insurance system. The swiss more tightly regulate the insurance industry, which protects the citizenry from the worst abuses by insurers. This is one area where the U.S. could improve a great deal. This is actually true across the board with the insurance system in the U.S. versus that in Switzerland. Insurance isn't much more expensive here (perhaps slightly, I'm not sure), but you can have a lot more confidence in your insurance company. Generally you know apriori what you are covered for and what not. The insurers are forced to keep up their end of the bargain, and there strict time limits on how long they can delay making payments.
Where the Swiss (and I think this applies to additional countries in Europe) can improve is doctor culpability, which was the subject of my post. A doctor has to be a pretty big screw up to face repercussions here. Worse, they just don't communicate with their patients as much as they should. One solution would be to change the legal landscape slightly in the direction of that in America. Should they take this approach, the American system should certainly be studied in order to avoid problems found there.
Basically, and this is pretty much always my point when engaging in country comparison, we should learn from each others systems. From the knowledge and understanding we gain, we can improve these systems. Cross country pissing matches "look how stupid your system is..." help not at all, but comparisons of specifics and analysis of how we can apply the lessons learned can help quite a bit.
Is as the word gains common acceptance it will be used in a positive (i.e. non pejorative) sense. When Steve coined truthiness he was of course taking the piss out of the cavalier attitude most in government (esp Republicans) have towards truth.
Just watch, in twenty years people will critisize truths as not being truthy enough. Steven C. will kill himself on live TV in shame...
I'm an American living in Switzerland, and I often have this discussion with people. The usual european consensus is American's are lawsuit crazy.
After seeing both sides of the fence, it's my opinion that America does have too many lawsuits, and could use some kind of mechanism or fine tuning to reduce the misjudgements, over-awarding, and frivolous lawsuits. On the other hand, Switzerland at least could stand to move a little more in America's direction in this regard. My impression is this is true of most other European countries.
As an example, a friend of mine (call him T) ripped his achilles tendon from his heel playing tennis, which is apparently an incredibly common injury while playing such sports in his age bracket, and really the doctor should have known better and investigated a little more carefully. But anyone can make a mistake, and the doctor told T he just sprained it and gave him some cream. But T went back one week and three weeks later and told him his leg seemed to be getting worse, not better. The doctor belittled T, told him he was too sensitive to pain, and sent him on his way.
So finally we told T he needed to go to a different doctor. He was properly diagnosed, and had to get some pretty serious surgery. Had he been properly diagnosed the surgery would have been minor. He'd have been off his feet for a few days, maybe missed a couple days of work, and had crutches a few weeks. Because of the time delay he had to get much more involved surgery, spend weeks in bed and away from work, and a couple months on crutches, all because of the incredible arrogance an incompetence of the doctor.
I felt that he should sue the doctor on principle, if only to teach him a lesson. Certainly I think the doctor or the docs malpractice insurance should have paid the incresed medical fees, rather than T's insurance, and perhaps some small punitive fee. But I called around and I was informed that not only was it incredibly difficult to sue doctors (they have a kind of mafia here), but even if we won we would still have to pay our own legal fees, and we would lose money on the deal. So to punish a crap doctor here you have to have deep pockets. I think an ideal system would have rewarded T for taking the time and effort to pursue this. Not millions of dollars in "pain and suffering", but pay the medical bills and pay for time missed from work perhaps.
I completely agree things go too far in the States. BUT I have a lot more faith visiting doctors in America. They listen more carefully, and especially they explain things much more carefully. They know that if they are arrogant sloppy pricks they'll get sued. The suits drive up their malpractice insurance and serve as a warning to other patients. So it can and does have a positive effect.
Basically both systems need some fine tuning, and can probably learn from one another.