But it seems to me that humans in general are capable of ample brutality with or without the pastiche excuse of religious doctrine, so I'm hard put to BLAME such conduct on Faith.
I tend to agree with most of your post.
On the quoted statement though, yeah, plenty of batshit crazy people out there without an imaginary being telling them to go batshit crazy, but religion does have a way to make that number of people a tad larger than the other group out of an implied divine justification for their actions.
Eerily familiar actually, when I became a civilian in Germany after my US Army stint there, while asking for my German version of the social security card, I was innocently asked for my religion. Naively I said Catholic (have become a fundamentalist Atheist since) l didn't think much of it until I received my first paycheck.
Bam! Church Tax.
Getting that removed, to my dismay, required me to sign a fairly Papal-looking document stating I was never to ask for the church to marry me, bury me, baptize my children and/or receive any and all services from the church.
I did, and have not burned in a shower of fire and brimstone yet.
... to Vulcan High Command:
Do not send any further scout crafts to this location. Our attempt to setup a surveillance station has been foiled by an unexpected, yet primitive, weapon system.
Cannot ascertain whether the weapon is of Earth origin as the markings on it are not in the expected Earth-based language.
We have seen the markings on archival footage belonging to the alien race responsible for the enormous reptilian-like monster sent to destroy Earth cities.
Live long and prosper.
*End of transmission*
I do agree that in the "real world" we absolutely need good PM's and good BA's, especially when you have to deal with larger scales, industrial or financial amongst others. Where I work I happen to manage (yes, I am one of those in "management") both PM's and BA's, and also manage a good chunk of developers, dba's, network folks, systems management and other tech-folk. My PM's and BA's are handpicked for their effectiveness and their ability to "get it" and translate the tech-speak to business-speak and vice versa, and not get railroaded by the business side wanting my techs to "do it quicker and cheaper at all costs" or my techs wanting to pull wool over the business side eyes; I view them as my cops yet they have the respect of both sides.
The issue becomes when you as a company start feeling that in order to be more competitive, you can solve the issue just by increasing the number of PM's and BA's which in turn will invariably generate more work, yet your tech base is left either with the same numbers or is reduced to make room for those new inbound PM's and BA's.
That’s where comments like our esteemed colleague “kiwimate” come from IMO, and while I don’t condone the arrogance in that statement, I do understand how frustrating it is to see these “ill-defined” positions overwhelm the rest.
If you manage these positions actively and effectively, you CAN live in harmony. When you get complacent and start thinking that power points and spreadsheets alone will solve your problems, then you’ll have a room full of “kiwimates” holding pitch forks and torches and your ability to be an effective manager is toast.
My $.02
From TFA "Now, here’s where things get interesting. Beckstead decided to sue PCOAB not over the deficiencies found, but rather the oversight board’s very right to existence."
As a disclaimer I have to say I have worked for Financials IT for quite a while and SOX was quite literally the bane of our existence for over 3 years. Whether SOX is a true measure of compliance is still an open question on my mind...
The implication here is that if the Justices do rule in favor of Beckstead, what does that say about other government organizations that "audit" citizen's affairs?
In other words, you are told that all your servers must be 1U, you know this for a long time and make an effort to make sure every server is 1U, you go as far as dedicating an entire year in ensuring that servers must be 1U, then you get audited and they happen to find that 4U box your support guys used to launch all that crap that no other box was capable of handling, simultaneously, so you fail that portion of the audit.
You just SUE the people who enforce these efforts in the hopes that the very laws you knew about and made a concise effort to abide to get disregarded or amended in the course of a hearing? that's it?
In addition to the many helpful comments posted here about places in London (or there'bouts), don't forget you can travel to France quite easily by train.
For about £130 round-trip you can get from London to Paris on the Eurostar http://www.eurostar.com/ , it's about a 2 1/2 to 3hr train ride depending on what station you board.
So, my suggestion would be take a train at 6 AM and you'll be in Paris by 9 AM, enjoy this wonderful city (lots of walking) and ride back in the evening.
You have Notre Damme, Eifel Tower, Champs-Elysées and the Arche du Triomphe all within a reasoneable walk along the Sienne river.
And yes, if you are so inclined, you may bring your laptop also, although with all the walking I would not recommend it.
Enjoy your "use it or lose it" vacation
Hey, I can certify that my Warrior, while wearing plate armor gets usually cut down by Huntards and their arrows, *and* I have 450 Blacksmithing.
Will roll a DK to test the effectiveness of that class wearing armor.
"Calling the accusation of fictional rape of a young girl parody is ridiculous. Stooping to that level means you are simply trying to assassinate a person's character. But when it's done against a conservative, it's called parody"
You, my dear sir or madam, missed the point entirely, of course he didn't rape and kill anyone, it would certainly hit his ratings so he wouldn't do that, what the domain "parodied" was the style favored by Mr. Glenn "I do more research..." Beck: make a statement about a target, imply its validity and ask why the target does not defend that accusation, because if he doesn't defend that accusation, then it must be true.
That *is* character assassination and he was called on it, quite publicly.
Remember, “if it weights more than a duck, it must be a witch"
Would love to see the Latvian version of a cynical dock worker with an equally cynical teenage son and a screaming little brat by his side driving to Riga.
In Latvia, the tripods get you!
It's a pretty safe bet that the impact of the Centaur module will awaken some ancient lunarian race which will immediately begin waging a campaign to subjugate Earth once and for all, so it would behoove you to watch one of these feeds in order to be prepared for the inevitable.
Slashdot Mirror
Not your typical Syria-related locale but yes, busted. Hmmm, goat-cheese falafel factory.
Dude, curse you! you made me spit out my banana cream pie at my waitress.
But it seems to me that humans in general are capable of ample brutality with or without the pastiche excuse of religious doctrine, so I'm hard put to BLAME such conduct on Faith.
I tend to agree with most of your post. On the quoted statement though, yeah, plenty of batshit crazy people out there without an imaginary being telling them to go batshit crazy, but religion does have a way to make that number of people a tad larger than the other group out of an implied divine justification for their actions.
Eerily familiar actually, when I became a civilian in Germany after my US Army stint there, while asking for my German version of the social security card, I was innocently asked for my religion. Naively I said Catholic (have become a fundamentalist Atheist since) l didn't think much of it until I received my first paycheck.
Bam! Church Tax.
Getting that removed, to my dismay, required me to sign a fairly Papal-looking document stating I was never to ask for the church to marry me, bury me, baptize my children and/or receive any and all services from the church.
I did, and have not burned in a shower of fire and brimstone yet.
... to Vulcan High Command: Do not send any further scout crafts to this location. Our attempt to setup a surveillance station has been foiled by an unexpected, yet primitive, weapon system. Cannot ascertain whether the weapon is of Earth origin as the markings on it are not in the expected Earth-based language. We have seen the markings on archival footage belonging to the alien race responsible for the enormous reptilian-like monster sent to destroy Earth cities. Live long and prosper. *End of transmission*
Io, per esempio, il benvenuto ai nostri signori fusion italiana
I do agree that in the "real world" we absolutely need good PM's and good BA's, especially when you have to deal with larger scales, industrial or financial amongst others. Where I work I happen to manage (yes, I am one of those in "management") both PM's and BA's, and also manage a good chunk of developers, dba's, network folks, systems management and other tech-folk. My PM's and BA's are handpicked for their effectiveness and their ability to "get it" and translate the tech-speak to business-speak and vice versa, and not get railroaded by the business side wanting my techs to "do it quicker and cheaper at all costs" or my techs wanting to pull wool over the business side eyes; I view them as my cops yet they have the respect of both sides.
The issue becomes when you as a company start feeling that in order to be more competitive, you can solve the issue just by increasing the number of PM's and BA's which in turn will invariably generate more work, yet your tech base is left either with the same numbers or is reduced to make room for those new inbound PM's and BA's.
That’s where comments like our esteemed colleague “kiwimate” come from IMO, and while I don’t condone the arrogance in that statement, I do understand how frustrating it is to see these “ill-defined” positions overwhelm the rest.
If you manage these positions actively and effectively, you CAN live in harmony. When you get complacent and start thinking that power points and spreadsheets alone will solve your problems, then you’ll have a room full of “kiwimates” holding pitch forks and torches and your ability to be an effective manager is toast. My $.02
"...alerting a remote operator when it encounters something that shouldn't be there."
People
Large Animals
Vehicles
John Connor
Other Robots
In a heavy Scottish accent: "Hello Computer?"
Fry, it's been years since medical school, so remind me. Disemboweling in your species, fatal or non-fatal?
Oh my! no, example only
From TFA "Now, here’s where things get interesting. Beckstead decided to sue PCOAB not over the deficiencies found, but rather the oversight board’s very right to existence." ...
As a disclaimer I have to say I have worked for Financials IT for quite a while and SOX was quite literally the bane of our existence for over 3 years. Whether SOX is a true measure of compliance is still an open question on my mind
The implication here is that if the Justices do rule in favor of Beckstead, what does that say about other government organizations that "audit" citizen's affairs?
In other words, you are told that all your servers must be 1U, you know this for a long time and make an effort to make sure every server is 1U, you go as far as dedicating an entire year in ensuring that servers must be 1U, then you get audited and they happen to find that 4U box your support guys used to launch all that crap that no other box was capable of handling, simultaneously, so you fail that portion of the audit.
You just SUE the people who enforce these efforts in the hopes that the very laws you knew about and made a concise effort to abide to get disregarded or amended in the course of a hearing? that's it?
In addition to the many helpful comments posted here about places in London (or there'bouts), don't forget you can travel to France quite easily by train.
For about £130 round-trip you can get from London to Paris on the Eurostar http://www.eurostar.com/ , it's about a 2 1/2 to 3hr train ride depending on what station you board.
So, my suggestion would be take a train at 6 AM and you'll be in Paris by 9 AM, enjoy this wonderful city (lots of walking) and ride back in the evening.
You have Notre Damme, Eifel Tower, Champs-Elysées and the Arche du Triomphe all within a reasoneable walk along the Sienne river.
And yes, if you are so inclined, you may bring your laptop also, although with all the walking I would not recommend it.
Enjoy your "use it or lose it" vacation
Hey, I can certify that my Warrior, while wearing plate armor gets usually cut down by Huntards and their arrows, *and* I have 450 Blacksmithing. Will roll a DK to test the effectiveness of that class wearing armor.
You, my dear sir or madam, missed the point entirely, of course he didn't rape and kill anyone, it would certainly hit his ratings so he wouldn't do that, what the domain "parodied" was the style favored by Mr. Glenn "I do more research ..." Beck: make a statement about a target, imply its validity and ask why the target does not defend that accusation, because if he doesn't defend that accusation, then it must be true.
That *is* character assassination and he was called on it, quite publicly.
Remember, “if it weights more than a duck, it must be a witch"
I can already see this one shaping up ...
Mel Gibson's Apocalypto II starring Nicholas Cage and Lou Diamond Phillips
Would love to see the Latvian version of a cynical dock worker with an equally cynical teenage son and a screaming little brat by his side driving to Riga.
In Latvia, the tripods get you!
It's a pretty safe bet that the impact of the Centaur module will awaken some ancient lunarian race which will immediately begin waging a campaign to subjugate Earth once and for all, so it would behoove you to watch one of these feeds in order to be prepared for the inevitable.
... GORDON .....
Flash!!!