These arguments are examples of why the death penalty has been dropped as a topic from many debating competitions because the side opposing has a insurmountable advantage over the side supporting.
Using your reasoning, we should have not fought Hitler in WWII because while we saved millions of Jews...
First WWII wasn't fought to save the Jews. Second, WWII is an example of self-defense, not using the death penalty.
But what is the cost of eliminating the death penalty all thogether? It is likely, as has happened in Europe, that murder will dramatically rise.
First, there's no evidence that the rise in the murder rate is a result of eliminating the death penalty. Second, if murderers are rational enough to be detered by the death penalty you would expect them also to be detered by life in prison. Third, there are jurisdictions that don't have the dealth penalty that have a lower murder rate than places that do.
So in your quest to save a few individuals from wrongfully being executed, you have indirectly caused the death of thousands, even tens of thousands of others.
First, one could argue with equal logic that since due process means many guilty people go free and commit other crimes everyone accused should be jailed without trial. Second, life in prison would just as effectively prevent future crimes with the additional benefit of being able to correct unjust convictions.
Third, if opponents of the death penalty have "indirectly caused the death of thousands" then you are contending that they should be jailed and thousands would be saved. You could reasonably extend this argument to say that supporters of free speech also support the right to oppose the death penalty and are therefore complicit in "the death of thousands". Therefore, supporters of free speech should be jailed.
I'm sure that there are good arguments for the death penalty just as there were once good arguments for slavery and denying women the right to vote. However, as time passes they look more and more absurd.
Wien has always been to the german speaking world what Carthage was to the Greeks - the centre of learning and the export of culture and ideas.
This analogy is odd since Carthage wasn't a Greek city, competed with Greece for dominance in the Mediterranean, and isn't known as a center of culture.
my theory has been proven a dozen of times in restaurants kitchens
But not necessarily by "a detached groups of researchers."
However, with difficulty new PhDs have in finding employment in their fields, restaurant workers may be well be qualified to test theories. They could publish their findings in "The Golden Arches Journal of Kitchen Thermodynamics".
Hypothesis: This is an educated guess based upon observation. It is a rational explanation of a single event or phenomenon based upon what is observed, but which has not been proved. Most hypotheses can be supported or refuted by experimentation or continued observation.
A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. One scientist cannot create a theory; he can only create a hypothesis.
Thus the "Hellwig hypothesis". Nice alliteration as well.
all of the interesting physics problems can be concatanated into a small number of questions.
Given the mathematical basis of physics since Newton, physicists are able to show that disparate phenomenon have a common mathematical formulation. This reductionism results in fewer and fewer unrelated questions.
If biology had achieved the same level of quantification, there might be a smaller number of questions.
For instance, if there were an answer to "What is the origin of homochirality in nature?", then it might be apparent that the following questions were related:
Can we predict how proteins will fold?
What keeps intracellular traffic running smoothly?
What enables cellular components to copy themselves independent of DNA?
How is asymmetry determined in the embryo?
Biology, unlike much of physics, has immediate practical applications in, for instance, medicine. Therefore, much of the research in biology is aimed at solving a specific problem rather than solving a fundamental problem.
For instance, some questions are related to curing cancer, e.g., "Are stem cells at the heart of all cancers?", "Is cancer susceptible to immune control?" and "Can cancers be controlled rather than cured?" Because lives are at stake, most researchers are not willing to put off tackling these questions until a more fundamental understanding of life is achieved.
The result is that the research effort is dilluted rather than concentrated on a search for underlying principles.
These gaps in the understanding of biology leave it a fertile area for pseudoscience like creationism and New Age medicine. Non-material explanations have been driven out of physical phenomena in chemistry, physics and astronomy in large part because the mathematical models are so complete.
Darwin was, in a way, too good a writer. Anyone can read him with reasonable comprehension and bid to criticize him. Had Darwin been a mathematician, medical research might be a branch of mathematics and evolution would have the same level of certainty as the helio-centric solar system.
If you want to preach/recite on my front lawn, my property rights prevail and I can physically throw you off my property if you refuse to leave voluntarily.
Only the police can use physical force to remove a trespasser, as any landlord knows. According to Wikipedia:
Most jurisdictions do not allow "self-help" to remove trespassers. The usual procedure is to ask the trespassing person to leave, then to call law enforcement officials if they do not. As long as the trespasser is not posing an immediate threat, they cannot be removed by force. It is usually illegal to arrest a trespasser and hold them on the property until law enforcement arrives as this defeats the purpose of allowing them to cure the trespass by leaving.
Trespassing is a good deal more complicated than someone simply refusing to leave your property. For instance, on rural lands in some jurisdictions, the property has to be enclosed and and posted with a No Trespassing sign before an intruder is guilty of criminal trespass. Or, a renter's right to be on the propery he rents supercedes the right of the owner.
In fact, if your property is a shopping mall, members of the public may have a right to be there for "non-commercial expressive activity." When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects free speech on public property but not private property, it also noted that individual state constitutions may protect freedom of speech on private mall property.
It appears that your property rights are, in fact, weakest when dealing with someone exercising free speech. There is an implicit recognition that in some situations, free speech is a more fundamental right than property rights.
At least part of this article is particularly disreputable. It says:
But surely we can do better than a February study in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review that concluded that it's easier to identify someone close to you than someone more than a football-field-length away. At 450 feet, the scientist concludes, "the human visual system starts to lose small details."
The phrase quoted by the writer ("the human visual system starts to lose small details") never appears anywhere in the journal article. (Why is it easier to identify someone close than far away? by Geoffrey Loftus, University of Washington, and Erin M. Harley, University of California). In fact, the first sentence of the article, not the conclusion, is "It is a matter of common sense that a person is easier to recognize when close than when far away."
The researchers were concerned with assessing the ability of an eyewitness to a crime to identify a suspect seen at a distance. The research shows why at certain distances it is impossible and it is not simply because the face is very small.
Ironically enough, a percentage of German gold was actually stolen from displaced/killed Jews and other countries that Germany had conquered. Tons of that gold made it back to New York where it was re-pressed with the Federal Seal, thereby making it US money.
This story is highly unlikely. There were two international conferences, one in 1997 and one in 1998, on the disposition of Nazi gold. As this CNN report on the first conference shows, the U.S.'s objective was always to return the gold to its rightful owners:
Britain, France and the United States set up the Tripartite Gold Commission after World War II to return looted gold to 10 countries whose treasuries had been sacked when Nazi Germany's troops swept across Europe. The commission has returned all but 5.5 tons of the 337 tons it recovered to central banks, but none to individuals.
Your story is even more unlikely if one knows the difference between monetary and non-monetary gold. Monetary gold is gold bars of 99.9% pure gold that are used by central banks. Non-monetary gold is jewelry and ornamental gold. For non-monetary gold, the type that would be stolen from individuals, to be "re-pressed with the Federal Seal", as you put it, it would not only have to be melted down but also refined to the level of purity required by monetary gold. There's no evidence in the report of the international commission that the U.S. ever employed this process.
The Nazis certainly did convert non-monetary gold into gold bars but once they did, there would be no way to distinguish it from gold that was looted from national treasuries.
In addition, while gold may increase in value it does not accumulate interest. If the U.S. did return gold to anyone it would return the exact number of ounces they were owned. It would not "pay them back, with interest" because the gold did not earn any interest.
Reading the final report of the international commission shows that no advocacy group forced the U.S. to return the gold in its possession. The complaint of the World Jewish Congress was that the gold belonging to Holocaust victims was returned to European countries after the war, not that it was held by the U.S. treasury.
In addition, the report of this commission also notes:
Following Allied victory over Germany, the U.S. and the Allies conducted negotiations with the neutrals over the return of looted gold, the liquidation of German external assets, and the use of such assets for European recovery and for resettlement of stateless Nazi victims. Another key objective of these negotiations included denying Germany its external assets, and hence the capacity to wage a future war.
The objective of impeding German's "capacity to wage a future war" may also bear on you allegation that the U.S. seized German patents.
This blog cites a story from The Wall Street Journal from April, 1997 that appears to be genuine.
LONDON -- Sir Roger Penrose has seen his work on quantum physics and relativity theory celebrated in countless papers. But it was toilet paper that really got the renowned mathematician's attention.
When Sir Roger examined the "Kleenex quilted toilet tissue," made by the British unit of Kimberly-Clark Corp., what he saw was no ordinary piece of toilet paper. Embossed on the surface he discovered a series of interlocking diamonds. They bore an uncanny resemblance to "the Penrose Pattern," a highly complex geometric formula he devised in the 1970s to prove that a nonrepeating pattern could exist, solving one of the great conundrums of the natural world.
"He wasn't pleased," says Sir Roger's lawyer, Richard Kempner a partner at Addleshaw Booth & Co in Leeds, England. So, Sir Roger and Pentaplex Ltd., the Yorkshire, England, company that owns the licensing rights to his work, are going after the toilet paper with court papers, having sued Kimberly-Clark Ltd. for breach of copyright in the High Court in London.
This story says the dispute was resolved amicably shortly afterwards.
Sir Roger Penrose and Pentaplex Limited have resolved their differences with SCA Hygiene Products UK, current holders of the Kleenex toilet tissue and kitchen roll brands.
Pentaplex Ltd and SCA Hygiene Products UK have now developed a working relationship, described by both sides as "cordial and constructive." Pentaplex Limited is undertaking technical consultancy work for SCA Hygiene Products UK.
John Michell, wrote a paper in 1783 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London...
Michell's reasoning was interesting, as explained here:
The fact that the speed of light is finite was known in 1696 and a close approximation of the speed was determined in 1728. Newton had devised a formula for the escape velocity for an object from a planet based on the mass of the object and the planet.
Michell then imagined a sun so large that its escape velocity would be greater than the speed of light.
However, Michell's speculation depended on light being a particle. When the wave theory of light become popular, it was assumed that light would not be affected by gravity.
The idea proposed by Einstein in 1915 that matter curves space and thus affects the path of light confirmed Michell's speculation in a way Michell could not have imagined.
Two memorials by Richards Dawkins from 2001 are here ("a keening lament, written too soon to be balanced, too soon to be carefully thought through") and a eulogy here.
The latter piece includes this quote from Adams:
There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.
It's a reminder that the best way to remember Adams is to re-read what he wrote.
This quote from the majority decision sounds like a similar stirring defense of free speech even though it upheld the constitutionality of the law that convicted Roth:
The fundamental freedoms of speech and press have contributed greatly to the development and wellbeing of our free society and are indispensable to its continued growth. Ceaseless vigilance is the watchword to prevent their erosion by Congress or by the States. The door barring federal and state intrusion into this area cannot be left ajar; it must be kept tightly closed, and opened only the slightest crack necessary to prevent encroachment upon more important interests.
The "slightest crack" in question was whether obscenity, as defined by contemporary community standards, was protected as free speech. Douglas said it was but the Court majority said it wasn't.
It's worth noting Douglas' dire warning, to wit: "the test that suppresses a cheap tract today can suppress a literary gem tomorrow. All it need do is to incite a lascivious thought or arouse a lustful desire. The list of books that judges or juries can place in that category is endless."
His concern has turned out to be unfounded. The community standard test has drastically expanded the scope of permissable obscenity until today only child porn fails the test. Under Douglas' logic, it too would be protected.
Your argument was that the articles you listed were comprehensive, I've shown they are not. That's the point of those examples.
What you haven't shown is any evidence of a "first-tier newspaper" charging for its content around same time as the WSJ started. The stories I listed would have probably mentioned at least one of them if they had existed. So far, you've only pointed out they missed The Roll Call, which isn't even a daily.
Your argument that they are better is because the Columbia school of Journalism liked them a lot and gave them an award.
Only 3 of the 19 members of the Pulitzer committee are members of the CSJ and two of those are former professional journalists. Furthermore, it is not just those 19 distinguished individuals. From the history of the Prizes: "The awards are the culmination of a year-long process that begins early in the year with the appointment of 102 distinguished judges who serve on 20 separate juries and are asked to make three nominations in each of the 21 categories" from over 2,000 submissions.
The Pulitzer Prize represents a consensus of the very people (including the Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal) who write and edit the news.
The WSJ has tons of controversial business content. They've uncovered very important instances of corporate fraud, misrepresentation....
The New York Times 2005 Pulitzer was on that very topic: "corporate cover-up of responsibility for fatal accidents at railway crossings."
You don't win prizes for the sort of journalism that actually challenges the society.
One need only point to the Times' Pulitzer Prize for the Pentagon Papers (1972) and Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize for Watergate coverage (1973) to show how baseless that statement is.
Well the LA Times charges today for their calandar section. Rollcall charges. So the article isn't listing everything.
In fact, the third article I linked to was about how the L.A. Times had started charging for the calendar section. That article makes it clear that the Times only began charging for that one section in late 2003, well after the history of online publishing covered in the other two links.
Roll Call is not what you called a "first-tier newspaper". It's published Monday through Thursday while Congress is in session, Mondays only during recess.
And finally I don't agree that writing mainstream articles about issues which are non controversial is saying anything important.
Your point was that the N.Y. Times has nothing important to say so it can't expect to make money from its online content. You should then find it strange that 99% of the content on the WSJ site is non-controversial yet it successfully charges for its online content.
And it is similarly strange that the L.A. Times only charges for its calendar section, which by your standards is hardly a bastion of important, controversial articles.
I'm not sure where I could find a history but that's a pretty good list.
This article from March, 2001 on the history of paid online newspaper content mentions only the San Jose Mercury News and Slate as charging a fee. I would have expected them to point to a failed effort of a major paper if one had existed.
Similarly, this article on paid online subscriptions from Nov., 2002 only mention the SJMN as having charged.
This story on the L.A. Times' plans for online subscriptions only mentions it ever charged for online content through Prodigy, which pre-dated the Web.
not sure what you mean by "company information"...
From the WSJ site: "Get stock quotes, charts, news, detailed financials and more for 8,500 publicly traded U.S. corporations and international companies listed as American depositary receipts. Plus, find quotes, news and overview information on nearly 20,000 companies that trade on non-U.S. markets." Users can generate graphs of the stats over time periods of their choosing.
The articles you mentioned are relative safe journalism.
Safe or risky wasn't the issue you raised. The question was whether the Times had "anything all that important to say". The Pulitzers clearly show it does.
Almost all the "first-tier" papers tried charging for content. The WSJ was the only one that was succesful.
First of all, none of the major newspapers tried charging for content. The WSJ was unique.
Second, the WSJ offers considerably more than the content of the print edition. It offers its complete online database of company information, the content of Barrons, the content of the Asian and European WSJ, and a personal portfolio management application. To an investor, access to the company information database alone is worth many times the cost of the subscription.
Third, it is not clear whether the Web site's profit takes into account the full cost of the content it gets from print edition and other sources.
NYTimes of the 1950s which has a large international staff (and thus plenty of original international content) probably could have had a pay website.
The New York Times still has more than 20 foreign bureaus. The problem is that only 15% of Americans say they regularly follow international news. It is therefore unlikely foreign news is the missing ingredient that would make a Web site profitable.
The NYTimes today doesn't have anything all that important to say.
The Times won a Pulitzer in 2005 for exposing the "corporate cover-up of responsibility for fatal accidents at railway crossings." The Pulitzer in 2004 was for a series of stories than examined "death and injury among American workers and exposed employers who break basic safety rules." The Pulitzer for 2003 was for a series that "exposed the abuse of mentally ill adults in state-regulated homes." The list goes on.
Re:Summary of the abovementioned web site:
on
Mapping the Mind
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· Score: 1
"...Part of this is because of the stupid way scientific articles are published currently." Direct quote from the site.
His complaint with the way scientific articles are published is titled "Electronic and free access to scientific publications". He thinks they should all be available electronically for free or at a nominal cost.
Unlike a typical angry crackpot, he's all in favour of the peer review system. He says: "Electronic journals can have a review process like paper journals, provided they are not financed by the authors. In fact, once articles are generally available electronically, it will make the review process much more effective..."
for my part (mainly reading a lot of Richard Dawkins lately) I have come to the conclusion that we don't have a purpose other than to survive long enough to procreate.
For what it's worth, Dawkins himself does not agree with that conclusion:
But what I want to guard against is people therefore getting nihilistic in their personal lives. I don't see any reason for that at all. You can have a very happy and fulfilled personal life even if you think that the universe at large is a tale told by an idiot. You can still set up goals and have a very worthwhile life and not be nihilistic about it at a personal level...
But further, there's no logical reason why we should try to derive our normative standards from evolution. It's perfectly consistent to say this is the way it is--natural selection is out there and it is a very unpleasant process. Nature is red in tooth and claw. But I don't want to live in that kind of a world. I want to change the world in which I live in such a way that natural selection no longer applies.
"wonderfully surprised" is not idiomatic English. His original "a wonderful surprise" is better.
However, "surprise" is an unlikely reaction. Both sentences are straining for effect and should have been dropped. His review could have just as well begun with the 2nd paragraph: "A Web browser is a much more complex piece of software than you may realize..." It gets immediately to the point and tell you why the book is useful.
The idea that the Constitution is a "living document" is not uncontroversial. It's an idea born of the progressive era in American history.
Actually, the "living document" approach goes back to the tenure of John Marshall as chief justice and his decision in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). Marshall dealt with the creation of the Bank of the United States noting that "Although, among the enumerated powers of government, we do not find the word 'bank or 'incorporation'...". However, he found the bank constitutional and observed:
Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional. . . .
The U.S. constitution is a set of principles that by their nature require interpretation both by the Congress when it makes laws and the Supreme Court when it reviews those laws. As Marshall said, the Constitution was "intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."
During the "progressive era" you refer to you, the Supreme Court has almost always used its powers to expand the freedom of citizens by striking down restrictive laws. The result is that the current generation of Americans have fewer restrictions on free speech, freedom of religion, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, etc., than at any point in American history. Whatever the weakness of the "living document" theory, it has not proved to be a threat to freedom but an agency for extending it.
Slashdot Mirror
These arguments are examples of why the death penalty has been dropped as a topic from many debating competitions because the side opposing has a insurmountable advantage over the side supporting.
Using your reasoning, we should have not fought Hitler in WWII because while we saved millions of Jews...
First WWII wasn't fought to save the Jews. Second, WWII is an example of self-defense, not using the death penalty.
But what is the cost of eliminating the death penalty all thogether? It is likely, as has happened in Europe, that murder will dramatically rise.
First, there's no evidence that the rise in the murder rate is a result of eliminating the death penalty. Second, if murderers are rational enough to be detered by the death penalty you would expect them also to be detered by life in prison. Third, there are jurisdictions that don't have the dealth penalty that have a lower murder rate than places that do.
So in your quest to save a few individuals from wrongfully being executed, you have indirectly caused the death of thousands, even tens of thousands of others.
First, one could argue with equal logic that since due process means many guilty people go free and commit other crimes everyone accused should be jailed without trial. Second, life in prison would just as effectively prevent future crimes with the additional benefit of being able to correct unjust convictions.
Third, if opponents of the death penalty have "indirectly caused the death of thousands" then you are contending that they should be jailed and thousands would be saved. You could reasonably extend this argument to say that supporters of free speech also support the right to oppose the death penalty and are therefore complicit in "the death of thousands". Therefore, supporters of free speech should be jailed.
I'm sure that there are good arguments for the death penalty just as there were once good arguments for slavery and denying women the right to vote. However, as time passes they look more and more absurd.
Wien has always been to the german speaking world what Carthage was to the Greeks - the centre of learning and the export of culture and ideas.
This analogy is odd since Carthage wasn't a Greek city, competed with Greece for dominance in the Mediterranean, and isn't known as a center of culture.
Perhaps you meant to compare Vienna and Athens.
Ploticus is a versatile, free program, although more for presentation and business graphics than scientific plots.
ChartDirector is commercial software but it's cheap and the free version is a complete implimentation with an inobtrusive watermark.
Powerpoint was previously explored on Slashdot.
Of particular interest was this link to a Powerpoint presentation of the Gettyburg address.
my theory has been proven a dozen of times in restaurants kitchens
But not necessarily by "a detached groups of researchers."
However, with difficulty new PhDs have in finding employment in their fields, restaurant workers may be well be qualified to test theories. They could publish their findings in "The Golden Arches Journal of Kitchen Thermodynamics".
Thus my theory
Your theory is more properly a hypothesis:
Thus the "Hellwig hypothesis". Nice alliteration as well.
all of the interesting physics problems can be concatanated into a small number of questions.
Given the mathematical basis of physics since Newton, physicists are able to show that disparate phenomenon have a common mathematical formulation. This reductionism results in fewer and fewer unrelated questions.
If biology had achieved the same level of quantification, there might be a smaller number of questions.
For instance, if there were an answer to "What is the origin of homochirality in nature?", then it might be apparent that the following questions were related:
Biology, unlike much of physics, has immediate practical applications in, for instance, medicine. Therefore, much of the research in biology is aimed at solving a specific problem rather than solving a fundamental problem.
For instance, some questions are related to curing cancer, e.g., "Are stem cells at the heart of all cancers?", "Is cancer susceptible to immune control?" and "Can cancers be controlled rather than cured?" Because lives are at stake, most researchers are not willing to put off tackling these questions until a more fundamental understanding of life is achieved.
The result is that the research effort is dilluted rather than concentrated on a search for underlying principles.
These gaps in the understanding of biology leave it a fertile area for pseudoscience like creationism and New Age medicine. Non-material explanations have been driven out of physical phenomena in chemistry, physics and astronomy in large part because the mathematical models are so complete.
Darwin was, in a way, too good a writer. Anyone can read him with reasonable comprehension and bid to criticize him. Had Darwin been a mathematician, medical research might be a branch of mathematics and evolution would have the same level of certainty as the helio-centric solar system.
If you want to preach/recite on my front lawn, my property rights prevail and I can physically throw you off my property if you refuse to leave voluntarily.
Only the police can use physical force to remove a trespasser, as any landlord knows. According to Wikipedia:
Trespassing is a good deal more complicated than someone simply refusing to leave your property. For instance, on rural lands in some jurisdictions, the property has to be enclosed and and posted with a No Trespassing sign before an intruder is guilty of criminal trespass. Or, a renter's right to be on the propery he rents supercedes the right of the owner.
In fact, if your property is a shopping mall, members of the public may have a right to be there for "non-commercial expressive activity." When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects free speech on public property but not private property, it also noted that individual state constitutions may protect freedom of speech on private mall property.
It appears that your property rights are, in fact, weakest when dealing with someone exercising free speech. There is an implicit recognition that in some situations, free speech is a more fundamental right than property rights.
At least part of this article is particularly disreputable. It says:
The phrase quoted by the writer ("the human visual system starts to lose small details") never appears anywhere in the journal article. (Why is it easier to identify someone close than far away? by Geoffrey Loftus, University of Washington, and Erin M. Harley, University of California). In fact, the first sentence of the article, not the conclusion, is "It is a matter of common sense that a person is easier to recognize when close than when far away."
The researchers were concerned with assessing the ability of an eyewitness to a crime to identify a suspect seen at a distance. The research shows why at certain distances it is impossible and it is not simply because the face is very small.
Ironically enough, a percentage of German gold was actually stolen from displaced/killed Jews and other countries that Germany had conquered. Tons of that gold made it back to New York where it was re-pressed with the Federal Seal, thereby making it US money.
This story is highly unlikely. There were two international conferences, one in 1997 and one in 1998, on the disposition of Nazi gold. As this CNN report on the first conference shows, the U.S.'s objective was always to return the gold to its rightful owners:
Your story is even more unlikely if one knows the difference between monetary and non-monetary gold. Monetary gold is gold bars of 99.9% pure gold that are used by central banks. Non-monetary gold is jewelry and ornamental gold. For non-monetary gold, the type that would be stolen from individuals, to be "re-pressed with the Federal Seal", as you put it, it would not only have to be melted down but also refined to the level of purity required by monetary gold. There's no evidence in the report of the international commission that the U.S. ever employed this process.
The Nazis certainly did convert non-monetary gold into gold bars but once they did, there would be no way to distinguish it from gold that was looted from national treasuries.
In addition, while gold may increase in value it does not accumulate interest. If the U.S. did return gold to anyone it would return the exact number of ounces they were owned. It would not "pay them back, with interest" because the gold did not earn any interest.
Reading the final report of the international commission shows that no advocacy group forced the U.S. to return the gold in its possession. The complaint of the World Jewish Congress was that the gold belonging to Holocaust victims was returned to European countries after the war, not that it was held by the U.S. treasury.
In addition, the report of this commission also notes:
The objective of impeding German's "capacity to wage a future war" may also bear on you allegation that the U.S. seized German patents.
Penrose never sued anybody
This blog cites a story from The Wall Street Journal from April, 1997 that appears to be genuine.
This story says the dispute was resolved amicably shortly afterwards.
John Michell, wrote a paper in 1783 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London...
Michell's reasoning was interesting, as explained here:
The fact that the speed of light is finite was known in 1696 and a close approximation of the speed was determined in 1728. Newton had devised a formula for the escape velocity for an object from a planet based on the mass of the object and the planet.
Michell then imagined a sun so large that its escape velocity would be greater than the speed of light.
However, Michell's speculation depended on light being a particle. When the wave theory of light become popular, it was assumed that light would not be affected by gravity.
The idea proposed by Einstein in 1915 that matter curves space and thus affects the path of light confirmed Michell's speculation in a way Michell could not have imagined.
Two memorials by Richards Dawkins from 2001 are here ("a keening lament, written too soon to be balanced, too soon to be carefully thought through") and a eulogy here.
The latter piece includes this quote from Adams:
It's a reminder that the best way to remember Adams is to re-read what he wrote.
Justice Douglas said the first quote in the dissenting opinion on a 1950's case about mailing lewd images or something
The case was Roth vs. United States (1957). Douglas' dissent is here.
This quote from the majority decision sounds like a similar stirring defense of free speech even though it upheld the constitutionality of the law that convicted Roth:
The "slightest crack" in question was whether obscenity, as defined by contemporary community standards, was protected as free speech. Douglas said it was but the Court majority said it wasn't.
It's worth noting Douglas' dire warning, to wit: "the test that suppresses a cheap tract today can suppress a literary gem tomorrow. All it need do is to incite a lascivious thought or arouse a lustful desire. The list of books that judges or juries can place in that category is endless."
His concern has turned out to be unfounded. The community standard test has drastically expanded the scope of permissable obscenity until today only child porn fails the test. Under Douglas' logic, it too would be protected.
Your argument was that the articles you listed were comprehensive, I've shown they are not. That's the point of those examples.
What you haven't shown is any evidence of a "first-tier newspaper" charging for its content around same time as the WSJ started. The stories I listed would have probably mentioned at least one of them if they had existed. So far, you've only pointed out they missed The Roll Call, which isn't even a daily.
Your argument that they are better is because the Columbia school of Journalism liked them a lot and gave them an award.
Only 3 of the 19 members of the Pulitzer committee are members of the CSJ and two of those are former professional journalists. Furthermore, it is not just those 19 distinguished individuals. From the history of the Prizes: "The awards are the culmination of a year-long process that begins early in the year with the appointment of 102 distinguished judges who serve on 20 separate juries and are asked to make three nominations in each of the 21 categories" from over 2,000 submissions.
The Pulitzer Prize represents a consensus of the very people (including the Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal) who write and edit the news.
The WSJ has tons of controversial business content. They've uncovered very important instances of corporate fraud, misrepresentation....
The New York Times 2005 Pulitzer was on that very topic: "corporate cover-up of responsibility for fatal accidents at railway crossings."
You don't win prizes for the sort of journalism that actually challenges the society.
One need only point to the Times' Pulitzer Prize for the Pentagon Papers (1972) and Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize for Watergate coverage (1973) to show how baseless that statement is.
Well the LA Times charges today for their calandar section. Rollcall charges. So the article isn't listing everything.
In fact, the third article I linked to was about how the L.A. Times had started charging for the calendar section. That article makes it clear that the Times only began charging for that one section in late 2003, well after the history of online publishing covered in the other two links.
Roll Call is not what you called a "first-tier newspaper". It's published Monday through Thursday while Congress is in session, Mondays only during recess.
And finally I don't agree that writing mainstream articles about issues which are non controversial is saying anything important.
Your point was that the N.Y. Times has nothing important to say so it can't expect to make money from its online content. You should then find it strange that 99% of the content on the WSJ site is non-controversial yet it successfully charges for its online content.
And it is similarly strange that the L.A. Times only charges for its calendar section, which by your standards is hardly a bastion of important, controversial articles.
I'm not sure where I could find a history but that's a pretty good list.
This article from March, 2001 on the history of paid online newspaper content mentions only the San Jose Mercury News and Slate as charging a fee. I would have expected them to point to a failed effort of a major paper if one had existed.
Similarly, this article on paid online subscriptions from Nov., 2002 only mention the SJMN as having charged.
This story on the L.A. Times' plans for online subscriptions only mentions it ever charged for online content through Prodigy, which pre-dated the Web.
not sure what you mean by "company information"...
From the WSJ site: "Get stock quotes, charts, news, detailed financials and more for 8,500 publicly traded U.S. corporations and international companies listed as American depositary receipts. Plus, find quotes, news and overview information on nearly 20,000 companies that trade on non-U.S. markets." Users can generate graphs of the stats over time periods of their choosing.
The articles you mentioned are relative safe journalism.
Safe or risky wasn't the issue you raised. The question was whether the Times had "anything all that important to say". The Pulitzers clearly show it does.
Almost all the "first-tier" papers tried charging for content. The WSJ was the only one that was succesful.
First of all, none of the major newspapers tried charging for content. The WSJ was unique.
Second, the WSJ offers considerably more than the content of the print edition. It offers its complete online database of company information, the content of Barrons, the content of the Asian and European WSJ, and a personal portfolio management application. To an investor, access to the company information database alone is worth many times the cost of the subscription.
Third, it is not clear whether the Web site's profit takes into account the full cost of the content it gets from print edition and other sources.
NYTimes of the 1950s which has a large international staff (and thus plenty of original international content) probably could have had a pay website.
The New York Times still has more than 20 foreign bureaus. The problem is that only 15% of Americans say they regularly follow international news. It is therefore unlikely foreign news is the missing ingredient that would make a Web site profitable.
The NYTimes today doesn't have anything all that important to say.
The Times won a Pulitzer in 2005 for exposing the "corporate cover-up of responsibility for fatal accidents at railway crossings." The Pulitzer in 2004 was for a series of stories than examined "death and injury among American workers and exposed employers who break basic safety rules." The Pulitzer for 2003 was for a series that "exposed the abuse of mentally ill adults in state-regulated homes." The list goes on.
"...Part of this is because of the stupid way scientific articles are published currently." Direct quote from the site.
His complaint with the way scientific articles are published is titled "Electronic and free access to scientific publications". He thinks they should all be available electronically for free or at a nominal cost.
Unlike a typical angry crackpot, he's all in favour of the peer review system. He says: "Electronic journals can have a review process like paper journals, provided they are not financed by the authors. In fact, once articles are generally available electronically, it will make the review process much more effective..."
for my part (mainly reading a lot of Richard Dawkins lately) I have come to the conclusion that we don't have a purpose other than to survive long enough to procreate.
For what it's worth, Dawkins himself does not agree with that conclusion:
"wonderfully surprised" is not idiomatic English. His original "a wonderful surprise" is better.
However, "surprise" is an unlikely reaction. Both sentences are straining for effect and should have been dropped. His review could have just as well begun with the 2nd paragraph: "A Web browser is a much more complex piece of software than you may realize..." It gets immediately to the point and tell you why the book is useful.
There could be more than a few keystrokes at stake. Note that in the linked article it says:
and gives an example.If you encounter one of those problems, knowing this particular switch could repay the effort to organize your thoughts differently.
grep us$ /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l
is simpler.See Useless Use of wc -l
The idea that the Constitution is a "living document" is not uncontroversial. It's an idea born of the progressive era in American history.
Actually, the "living document" approach goes back to the tenure of John Marshall as chief justice and his decision in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). Marshall dealt with the creation of the Bank of the United States noting that "Although, among the enumerated powers of government, we do not find the word 'bank or 'incorporation'...". However, he found the bank constitutional and observed:
The U.S. constitution is a set of principles that by their nature require interpretation both by the Congress when it makes laws and the Supreme Court when it reviews those laws. As Marshall said, the Constitution was "intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."
During the "progressive era" you refer to you, the Supreme Court has almost always used its powers to expand the freedom of citizens by striking down restrictive laws. The result is that the current generation of Americans have fewer restrictions on free speech, freedom of religion, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, etc., than at any point in American history. Whatever the weakness of the "living document" theory, it has not proved to be a threat to freedom but an agency for extending it.
See xmlgrep. Also xgrep and xml command line utilities.
you, like all GNU fools, can't live without verbosity
A strange comment considering Plan 9's Unix origins.