Not since i showed up at a party with a 3-foot screwdriver as a weapon. I have friends who will never allow me to handle a screwdriver ever again. Ever.
*sigh* Something about a four-foot-ten me running around after someone waving it in the air yelling "SCROOOOOOODROOOOOVERRRRRR," my pigtails flying behind me. Um, right, did i mention this was only a couple of years ago, when i was 24?? On the bright side, nobody got pictures, so nobody has proof...
I can see it now: Experiment Aborted Due to Robotic Feet Getting Stuck Together...
And you could end up having to apply depilatories to unstick your GeckoBots? Or your Geckos... in which case you'd have one massively angry gecko horde on your hands... but you'd be the only one still able to climb the walls to get away...
Thanks, now i'm stuck with the image of a hologram and a catperson fighting over a rubik's cube made of silver plastic and light-brite pegs.... *grin* on the other hand, that image nicely crowds out the pile of work at hand, so maybe that's not a sarcastic thanks, after all!
when i was maybe five, i solved one in two minutes... with a screwdriver. My mum handed one to each of us and told us to make the colours all the same on every side. So we did. My sister took off all the stickers and put them on again as well as she could. I took a look at the stickers and decided they wouldn't peel well, so i just took it apart and out it back together again. She knew how sis had done hers, she couldn't figure out how i'd done mine till i handed her the screwdriver. She started locking the toolbox after that. *sigh* and it was a looong time before i got my own toolset. Funny, that- if you can't use a tool they worry that you're gonna hurt yourself with it... if you CAN, they worry about what you're going to use it on next...
I stutter. It took years of speech therapy to learn not to, at a remarkably high cost- most of which was absorbed by the SCHOOL department. If they hadn't, I would still be stuttering all the time. I never could have learned to sing (As it was I took 14th place out of thousands of applicants in the statewide concert auditions in junior high. Learning not to stutter was tough, REALLY tough, and i still can't read aloud very well.)
It's not about mere discrimination. It's not about mere disability, although it can be a true disability- My uncle has a stutter so bad that he can barely talk. It takes a long time to get a sentence out. It has severely limited his employability and his lifestyle. It has to do with Money, with wage-earning potential, with the possibility of advancement. This translates into- you guessed it- taxpayer dollars.
In reference to your comment. I agree that LASIK probably shouldn't be covered by health insurance. Eyeglasses ARE covered under an increasing number of plans, though, and should be. (Eyeglasses also don't run into the thousands of dollars, for the most part.) Given the choice between spending $2000 max for this device, and having a person then shoot up an income bracket(or more) of employability, OR leaving the person to spend tens of thousands on speech therapy (have you added up the cost for ten years of learning how to control a stutter?) the US gov. gets off cheap if this can help. A severe stutter changes education, changes willingness to participate in experiences that their peers are involved in, and later in life it can make a college or job interview into hell. And here's the thing- it's now preventable. So when speech therapy isn't working, should health coverage take care of this? Heck, yeah!
This concept applies to a lot of things. It's cheaper for health coverage to buy me a wheelchair, or pay for part of the costs thereof, than to leave to try to buy one on my own- because it keeps me employable, keeps me paying for my own health insurance through work, keeps me paying income taxes. That's a pretty big deal, really. Eyeglasses should be covered for the same reason.
I've found that there are some cases where cosmetic surgery is justified and paid for by health coverage as a quality of life issue. If you view the speech improvement device as a prosthetic- making up for a quality that the person should have but doesn't- it's no different from covering, say, a hearing aid or an artificial voicebox. Or a prosthetic foot. If a person is disfigured or injured in a way which significantly decreases their odds of living a halfway decent life, health coverage will frequently cover the cost of alteration. For example, if a child is born with a severely receding lower jaw, as a friend of mine was, it was not considered cosmetic but reparative surgery. This extends to other forms of therapy- lots of health insurance covers mental therapy and medication for treatable mental illnesses. A stutter isn't a mental illness, it's a brain malfunction. SOmetimes speech therapy works great. Sometimes, as with my uncle, it doesn't help at all. I remember being a child and trying to have conversations with him, wondering whether i was going to end up like that, taking five minutes to finish a sentence. While LASIK could also be considered reparative surgery, it generally isn't because the prosthetics (eyeglasses) are socially accepted to the point of being a norm, contact lenses are available for cosmetic improvement over glasses, and both contacts and glasses are inexpensive enough that many health insurers already cover them. In some cases, free care even covers them. LASIK is also still fairly new. I know that breast implants can be covered in cases of masectomy. I would imagine that as LASIK gets cheaper and more reliable- there are still a lot of errors and i personally know two people who had serious complications (and twelve who had no complications at all)- there may well be insurance that covers it soon.
I'm the person who, when i see copyrighted material on similar websites- as happens a LOT in the research that i do- and it obviously was placed on the one much prior to the other, I send an email to both or all parties. I list all of the sites. I describe what is identical, including the location of the uncommon artwork or the word-for-word page info that one of them painstakingly put together and even copyrighted. And i explain that this is up to them to sort out, but that if it's a legitimate use of someone's artwork, maybe they should be cited, and if it's a legitimate use of someone's work, they should probably inlcude a link. I've gotten a lot of thank you notes from people who put their own artwork up on the web only to find it under someone else's name, and from people who put their theories uup for discussion only to see them posted as someone else's, omitting the author and the class in which it was developed, for example an MIT student who was able to get the rival site to shut down... or the woman whose long work on pharmacological components of chamomile had been posted word for word on two other sites.
I aslo have gotten hate mail back from the people who really did steal other people's work, and have seen cases where they simply forgot to cite the source once they had permission- easily fixed, that last one. The hate mail generally consists of, "who made it your business?" or extremely juvenile insults etc. Someone once threatened to sue me for harassment- that would be the one who stole the MIT paper. It's discouraged me from putting my own work on the web, to be honest, both my artwork AND my own research. I suppose i'll get over that. But in the meantime, i think that the appropriate thing for me to do is to always point out where i feel that there's serious copyright issues, as when what's obviously someone's signed artwork has been cropped to delete the sig and posted as a website element on another site.
Incidentally, i started doing this because an artist friend had exactly that happen to her artwork- the images of oil and acrylic paintings up for SALE on her site were copied and used. Cease and desist letters work, especially if you have evidence of copyright and cc the ISP, etc.
When i lived up in vermont, Lake Champlain was having a huge, serious issue with zebra mussels, such that they were crowding out local aquatic life and even stopping up natural drainage, etc. It was a frightening example of how one species could take over an area. They were trying everything from electric shocks to radio waves to specific toxins to get rid of them, and we all sat around watching the news and thinking, who the heck gave them the green light to try so many things at once? Obviously, it was the combination of EPA and local agricultural oversight groups, but it was still a toss-up which was scarier- the sudden overwhelming new population, or the multitudinous methods being simultaneously used to try to get rid of them.
On another note, though, one of the most interesting species battles that i have ever seen was the fight between blackberry brambles and mint which took place outside a house that i lived in once. Mint is an incredibly hardy plant once you get a good crop of it. The thorns eventually won- the only thing that i've ever seen resist that mint horde. The mint even choked out the poison ivy, the grass, the dandelions, and everything else that crossed its path... but the blackberries won.
Somehow, the rat story makes me feel sorry that the dodo is entirely extinct, and makes me aware of the dwindling wildlife habitats... time to take me to the ecology fund and donate somebody else's money to save rainforests. It's not offtopic, just an addendum.
Where they went through the sea of holes? And collected one? At the end i think ringo had it, he held it up, and said, 'I've got a hole in me pocket... well, half a hole, anyway..."
"what did you do with the other half?"
I gave it to Jeremy."
"Good, he can keep his mind in it..."
I'm probably not recollecting word for word, but i do very much remember the cartoon with the holes that he developed like ink and used it to dispose of things... and i remember the monty python cartoon where they used it to catch a criminal, rolling it into position so he'd fall in, and then moving it so he'd fall out into jail...
Thank you again, slashdot, for proving me to have no childhood that was not in some way based in early tv...
looking at my water bottle, which reads, .5 LITER ) (1 PT,.9 FL OZ)
If that's not a change, i don't know what is, folks. This was bottled and labelled in the US. It's one of many small changes- the Liters are being labelled above the pints and ounces.
the best one i ever got was, "your song reminds the moon to shine and your eyes remind the nightingale to sing," which was very bizarre but nice, by itself- but when we added, "with a monkey," the whole group broke down and there was no conversation, only laughter, for ten minutes. Thought about renaming the band 'Nightingale and Monkey," but we didn't, so it's still up for grabs.
you will find a new friend... with a monkey.
you will encounter unusual treasures ...with a monkey.
because i've gotten an email from them every few days for SIX MONTHS, and i'm grateful for the phone number... and i'm REALLY looking forward to a little creative...umm... 'exchange of ideas.' They've already send me their opinions, i'm going to send them MINE.
What you didn't include is how did this get them to take you off their list?
I'm in it for the music, i'm in it because i love to sing. I sing at home while washing the dishes, i sing at every occasion i get given the mic, and i would be making music no matter what else happened in my life- as evidenced by the fact that i'm still writing music from my wheelchair, though i've had to give up so much else.
i was in voice training for more than half my life, by choice. Not every musician needs it, but to be a musician implies some level of music, and some level of practice. I do not need music to get lovers, I'm already in the relationship that i want. I do not need music to get famous- it's unlikely that music will make me famous, and if it did, i wouldn't know what to do with it. I still have a day job. So it obviously isn't the money. I still want to study and have even more of a day job, i like to work.
I don't know why this debate always comes down to the same statements over and over again. "Music downloading is/isn't theft," "The RIAA is good/evil," "Copyright infringement and intellectual property can/can't/should/shouldn't be controlled."
We've all heard each other's arguments ad nauseum. What i don't hear is more than a few coherent plans, from either side, thinking about what to do next. I'd love to be proved wrong, i'd love to hear all this discussion rise above simple negation and into a more friendly debate. (I came here for an argument! 'NO, you didn't!")
I'd like to believe that we do more than repeat the same stuff every time the DMCA and RIAA come up; at least with the microsoft debate we manage to find relevant, new ways to look at it on a regular basis...
I was fortunate enough to be at a B. B. King concert where he talked about the sample made by- i forget by whom, but it sold a million records. And he said, (and i am paraphrasing)"How do i feel about this? They sold a million records!!! How do you think i feel? You want another sample? You go right ahead, please! Ain't NONE of my records sold that many that fast!! Sample ALL of 'em!"
But for me, I feel that the atmosphere in which we work as musicians is very different from the atmosphere that Bach or Mozart or even Frederick Hand wrote. We have not simply a more litigious nature, but a tendency in the industry to take larger chunks of a work and make them the basis for works of art that then may make large profits. And if it's a derivative work, then the original artist deserves both credit on the liner notes, AND the chance to give permission. Remember, that's why we have copyright in the first place, to give the original artist a chance to make a living off it. And if they choose to make that living by encouraging others to buy their album by lending a sample, that's great. If they choose not to, nobody should go using their music except as a quote... and that's very different from a sample.
Yes, artists write music all the time based on different styles. Yes the masters borrowed from each other all the time. YEs, architects still build in the style of Wright. But on the other hand, If you copy a painting that's now in the public domain, that's very different from going to a new artist's exhibet, copying something modern, and then changing the upper third of the work and passing it off as your own idea. Putting a small mona lisa in the upper right corner is a derivative work, and fortunately it's well-known enough that it's recognisably so and usually more acceptable... music just isn't all that recognisable to many- you have to have heard it many times before. If my 'midnight miles' track were turned into something else, nobody would know but me and my former bandmates, who would be shocked and alarmed, since i've got the copyright for the melody and Mike's got the copyright for his almost-impossible-for-amatuer-play-because-of-the- finger-strength-involved guitar part. The drums were pretty standard and the bass was negligible. And i'd be distressed. The fact that many of the early blues players died penniless really bothers me, and i feel that this was partly due to the lack of credit that they got.
2. Oke. The above was a quote, paraphrased from B.B. King at a concert.
It was spoken aloud in public, which isn't copyrighted as far as i know- you have to have recorded it in some way first for that to be the case, i think- (i could be wrong) But it's still a quote. Quotes, especially from written or other recorded medium, fall under Fair Use, and that's what i feel is at issue here. If you're using a substantial quote from a work, it's not right if you don't give credit. Even if you're using a small quote which expresses an original thought or observation. If someone were to 'borrow' three paragraphs of one of my stories, or the title, if it were particularly unusual and directly related to the plot, or the plot itself... I'd be distressed. Hell, I'd be furious. However, if someone read one of my poems, said, oh- i see this differently- and wrote a poem expressing a different idea on the topic, in a different way, that's acceptable (of course), because when THEY wrote it, it would be an entirely different work. If it happened to also be about sunflowers, well, that's oke, there's lots of sunflowers, and if it happened to be about artistic madness and sunflowers, well, that's oke too, because it's their take on the concept, in their own words, and Making People Think is Part of What Art is All About. That's why students get credit for stringing together lots of little quotes- all cited- and it's fair use, but if they fail to cite, or they try to paraphrase and offer it as their own work, they can fail the class on g
Congressional representatives assume the same thing- that written letters represent voting percentages. And as much as they love to have money on their side, and money wins elections- the money follows the people, as well. People who write letters to congress are likely to vote with their wallets as well as their words.
And it's a mistake to think that a few hundred letters won't help turn a tide. I live in MA. And my representatives send me form letters when i write in. But sometimes those form letters reflect that i'm definitely among a large number writing in... when i wrote to protest ANWR drilling... i got back letters explaining that the reps i wrote to "Won't let down the many concerned citizens," in the vote on the issue. (and they didn't.) Politicians know that they can get voted out of office- and that for every letter written, a chunk of money has just been allocated for or against their campaign, and in many cases they can look at the donation balance sheet, see which companies support or don't support the decision, and go for money from the companies supporting the decision LEAST likely to infuriate their constituents. Granted, it doesn't always work, it's not an ideal system. But a few tips for writing to congress:
always list the bill that you're concerned about, if you know the official title number.
stick to one issue per letter.
don't use form letters. If there's a service that will write them for you- and there are many online- see that you edit out catchphrases and change the wording enough to make it an original letter, not a 'boilerplate.'
Send it by mail if you can- physical mail means a lot.
USE YOUR ADDRESS. they need to know that you're a registered voter in their constituency.
be polite and to the point, and tell them that you are discussing the matter- and their response- with your friends, family, coworkers, anyone who will listen. That's gotten me much more personalised responses.
don't be afraid to call, fax, write to thank them after the vote, or express your disapproval with their vote, after the issue is voted upon.
I know that special interest groups have lots of power, and that's why we should support the ones who support the issues that we care about (like the EFF or the DEN) but we also have a strong voice, wehn we choose to use it, as individuals. If we don't speak up, we can't argue when our reps cave in to special interests with no dissenting voice from the public. And if there's one thing slashdotters are great at, it's dissent!!! (yay!!!!)
Airport Scans, cognitive liberty, LOTS more info
on
Brain Privacy
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This is not new information. They've been talking about implementing this at airports. The problem is... the first time they hit an armed forces vet with a steel plate in their head... they're screwed. Privacy issues under the name of 'terrorism protection' are going to get a real shot of reality wehn they realise that these privacy invasions aren't going to work for everyone. And the problem is that hitting a metal plate with magnetism DOES DAMAGE, it doesn't just block out the, um, well, i guess in this case, they ARE government rays....
last year's philadelphia Inquirer story talks about fMRI research as replacing the polygraph, and Cognitive Liberty has the best set of links if you want more info. Frankly, i advise you to check it out, because this is not new, and This will be checking you out soon.
THat did run through my mind at the time. Specifically, i thought of it more as TRAINING for the gom jabbar... especially during that EMG experience!!!
Zkull was a QL Sinclair game. THe monocle reference was monkey island, the part where he'd cry that he was going to be left there cooold hungrryyyyy and alooooone...
the Viking filofax and the humbug/octopus reference are both from a more recent basic text adventure called Humbug.
The chiggers are from an atari (128, i think) cartridge game where you had to kill a vampire. Everytime you entered the swamp, you got bitten by chiggers.
The kill goblin but comes from the Palm OS game, oh, what's it called now? i can't even remember. Something '...Castle... ' Real simple, but a start for adventure games on the handheld, so ifigured folks might recognise it.
The 'over my dead body' reference is from LOOM, of course, and Monkey Island later included the phrase "Hello, I'm bobbin threadbare. Are you my mother?" which was said when the main character gets shot from a cannon, and falls on his head... the joke being that bobbin threadbare was the main character in LOOM, and spent all his time looking for his mother, who had been turned into i think a swan... made by the folks who later made Monkey Island... you know, adventure games might not be dead, but i'm starting to understand why my social life was so tough in grade school...
The best way to explain it, i think, to someone who doesn't get it is to explain how when someone says 'pair' you can call up the definition 'pear' and know that it isn't accurate- but that it's there. The sound associates with two simultaneous meanings. However, unlike words, the unnecessary definition doesn't go away again once it's been dismissed- it hangs around, making things a little surreal.
I don't know. I'm just surprised to find another description- you're right, it can foreground but mostly it's just there in the back. It just calls up more sensations than are usually called up. I think the best time it's ever come in handy is when i'm designing jewelry, because the aesthetics that work out together for me tend to strike other people as pleasing, too, even though i know we're perceiving in totally different languages. (pale green fluorite is chalky and salty, silver is more like water, and feldspars tend to be in A minor and squishy.)
But as a musician, i can't reverse those to hear an A minor and think feldspar. And most of the time i don't notice, it's normal, it's a sort of cloudy way to think of/ perceive things. Nebulous. A lot like my brain chemistry, i guess...
OKe. Let me start by saying that i have physical sensation synesthesia more than any other kind, in which one physical sensation can evoke other physical sensations- even in other limbs. It's quite peculiar, really, and very real. In my case, it's because i have a neurotransmitter disorder which makes certain physical sensations- especially pain- transcend the normal 'map' of the body in the brain. Overflow of chemicals, for the most part, coupled with a hyped up sensation system to start with (I've got extra pain centers and have a lot of Restless Limb Syndrome as well.)
For those really interested in how this stuff happens, i would suggest starting out with ramachandran's phantoms in the Brain which is about phantom limb syndrome, and brain mapping in general- it's really very good, and explains a great number of things, from how to cure phantom limb syndrome (trick the brain into trying to use the signal paths that it still has mapped out) to sympathy pain (how your brain can identify with other things- even a wooden table- to the point where it perceives things happening to someone whom you love as also happening to you. It doesn't talk much about synesthesia, but can help give the basics as to how the brain's architecture works for this to happen.
In my case, i can say this: it makes things bizarre. The sensation of pulling a hair out of, say, my arm, can cause sensations of it happening in other places, and it can also induce completely other sensations. I went through a job interview once- one of the interviews for my current job, in fact- with the distinct sensation that my right arm was burning. It left temporary redness as my body attempted to respond to what it thought was happening- but the arm was fine. And tastes can sometimes cause very bizarre reactions, too. sound very seldom does, but colours and tastes tend to get connected. When i see colours they have flavours attached sometimes. And i know they aren't things that i'm tasting, but the brain goes, mmm- turkey, and it's irrevocably linked to a sort of light cyan colour. Every time i see it there's the sense of roast turkey.
Most people experience some form of synesthesia at some point in their lives. a lot of people, for example, report that when a cat licks their hand, it will make a tingling or prickling somewhere else, like along their hip? That's not just parasthesia, which is usually related to nerve damage- it's a sensation actively invoking another sensation in another area.
From my point of view, it's just the world. Many things- types of rock or surface texture, for example, come up with food textures or physical body experiences in my brain. It's like having one word call up two simultaneous definitions, and one of them is real and the other one is just happening along with it. (Amethysts are crisp, like cucumbers. Marble is sleepy.) It doesn't make me sleepy, i don't go chewing up jewelry. These are just... simultaneous experiences. And they are common, but not nearly as common as when i bump my knee and my arm hurts, or as when my ears get cold and it makes my tongue tingle. And yes, i've tried to find ways to have fun with it, and no, there aren't many, it's just too weird (i have only had the neurotransmitter problems for a couple of years, so it's been extremely weird to get used to.)
Just thought i'd share some perspective from a synesthete's (admittedly bizarre and multi-layered) point of view. Bubbles in soda on my tongue make my back tickle. Dark blue- really dark blue, the kind you get when mixing cobalt with coal black- is kinda like hot fudge, rich and with texture. I think it tends to be tastes with colours just because that's where the overlaps happen. I'm not sure. i know the physical stuff tends to be more predictable, for me. Hell was when i went in to have EMG tests run- you don't need to feel electric current in more than one limb at a time, thankyouverymuch!!! (In soviet russia, the current swims through YOU!)
Lie detectors don't work. THat is to say, they work, some of the time, when the person doing the lie detecting knows that there's a lie to detect. The problem with lie detectors... *cough* Fine. Let me rephrase that. There are a number of problems with lie detection equipment, and here are some of them.
the polygraph is not a lie detector. A polygraph actually records a number of different signals. Respiration, persperation... A polygraph only detects your output, not your internal processes. That may eventually change with walk-through brain scanners at the airports...
The polygraph operator may be thoroughly trained to interpret this data, or they might simply have bought a polygraph and hired themselves out immediately. Training and certification varies greatly from state to state. It's claimed that they measure 'deceptive reactions' pretty well, (bear in mind that they also run on Windows..No, i'm not kidding.) If you really believe what you're saying, a polygraph won't pick that up. But on the other hand, it might. I would say that the jury's out on their effectiveness, but they don't let polygraph results anywhere near a jury. (we'll get to that.) Dweceptive behaviour is not the same as lying. If you give a patently false answer to every question, it messes with the baseline. If you give honest answers that mislead, it may or may not pick them up. If you tell the truth but think about something bad you've done lately, you might get a false positive. It's that messy.
Voice analysers promise similar results- the ability to pick up changes in a person's voice, microtremors, when deceptive intent creeps in... but have also been shown to be faulty. And then shown to be fine. And then faulty again. And so on.
The supreme court has ruled that polygraph tests can be administered- but that the data may not be used as evidence in court. Although it is illegal to make a polygraph test part of the private industry hiring practice, the feds can do this all they want, and are expanding their activities in this regard as more sophisticated, digital equipment becomes available.
It's more likely that brain imaging will evolve to replace the polygraph- and even then, it probably won't be 100%. There will always be those who can believe what they are saying to be true. It's all about confidence. So to answer the question- yes, they could try, but they might not be able to get anything useful from it, and if you know enough about how they work, you could give them enough false positives that they'd never work it out. Then they'd simply get a court order to bug your keyboard instead, out of sheer frustration. Unless you were deemed a REAL threat to national security- in which case they import you to egypt for 'questioning...'
sorry if i sound pessimistic. But the answer is that if it's that important, they'll use something more proven than a polygraph....
The Judeo-Christian version was taken from a source farther back, in fact one of the earliest written legal codes ever discovered. The main source was a stone slab discovered in (i think) 1901, translation here.
"1. If any one ensnare another, putting a ban upon him, but he can not prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death.
2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.
3. If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.
4. If he satisfy the elders to impose a fine of grain or money, he shall receive the fine that the action produces.
5. If a judge try a case, reach a decision, and present his judgment in writing; if later error shall appear in his decision, and it be through his own fault, then he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case, and he shall be publicly removed from the judge's bench, and never again shall he sit there to render judgement.
6. If any one steal the property of a temple or of the court, he shall be put to death, and also the one who receives the stolen thing from him shall be put to death.
7. If any one buy from the son or the slave of another man, without witnesses or a contract, silver or gold, a male or female slave, an ox or a sheep, an ass or anything, or if he take it in charge, he is considered a thief and shall be put to death.
8. If any one steal cattle or sheep, or an ass, or a pig or a goat, if it belong to a god or to the court, the thief shall pay thirtyfold therefor; if they belonged to a freed man of the king he shall pay tenfold; if the thief has nothing with which to pay he shall be put to death.
9. If any one lose an article, and find it in the possession of another: if the person in whose possession the thing is found say "A merchant sold it to me, I paid for it before witnesses," and if the owner of the thing say, "I will bring witnesses who know my property," then shall the purchaser bring the merchant who sold it to him, and the witnesses before whom he bought it, and the owner shall bring witnesses who can identify his property. The judge shall examine their testimony -- both of the witnesses before whom the price was paid, and of the witnesses who identify the lost article on oath. The merchant is then proved to be a thief and shall be put to death. The owner of the lost article receives his property, and he who bought it receives the money he paid from the estate of the merchant.
10. If the purchaser does not bring the merchant and the witnesses before whom he bought the article, but its owner bring witnesses who identify it, then the buyer is the thief and shall be put to death, and the owner receives the lost article.
11. If the owner do not bring witnesses to identify the lost article, he is an evil-doer, he has traduced, and shall be put to death.
12. If the witnesses be not at hand, then shall the judge set a limit, at the expiration of six months. If his witnesses have not appeared within the six months, he is an evil-doer, and shall bear the fine of the pending case.
"
and so on....
there's a lot of 'shall be put to death," and so on, but the eye for an eye bit is what survives as a concept today.
Here is one article addressing autoimmune diseases and mice. It's relevant because it's utilising gene technologies and mentions diabetes. Diabetes- according to what i know of it, and i'll admit that my knowledge comes by way of celiac sprue and sjogren's, which sit on the same gene bench- is one of the diseases that they're actively looking for a shutoff for. There are cases where some trigger just runs up the line and hits all the genetic trigger 'switches', resulting in a number of things, including adult onset diabetes. Yes, it takes a lot of environmental factors to make this happen, but it happens more than you think, so pay attention.
Here is an excellent read on type one diabetes and stem cell research, and a comment on why study sjogren's in conjunction with diabetes (namely, the organ being damaged is much easier to get at and assess.)
Here is a great site for info- the CDC genomics site, which includes info on common and rare genetic diseases, and can give a greater array of background info. NCBI offers another set of info- an explanation of human mouse homology (thus answering the question... why mice?
I hope this helps put some extra info out there for those of you who are interested. And frankly, as one who has had to deal with the sudden "switching on" of not just one but a whole array of diseases- since my DNA happened to include the lucky strands- I'm now having my stance on animal testing completely revised...
Preliminary plans suggest that if it comes to fruition, it would be part museum, part amusement park and part little boy's fantasy.
Is there really this much gender bias in SciFi? I mean, c'mon, we were brought up on the same stuff. There are girl trekkies, there are girl star wars fans, there are girl just about everything these days, and don't even get me started on the chick whom I used to live with, the one who actually made a peacekeepers (i think) coat, and wore it every day. Something with the Farscape stuff, that's not my scifi theme so I'm not familiar. Me, I'm more of a Stanislaw Lem and early Asimov girl. We're out here. We will go to the 'part museum, part theme park' but it won't be because it's a little boy's wonderland. (although, with all of us showing up, it might be more of a grownup scifiboy's dream house)
Seriously, it's 2003. Can we get a little gender bias LEFT OUT of the major media for a change? Especially on the Scifi thing? Now i gotta go find my chrome miniskirt and my disintregration pistol and hunt him down, with my cohorts in their coverall-type armour from some other show (Later star trek, i think) and my neighbour in her Jedi gear, and that's just so not what i needed to be doing this morning...
Slashdot Mirror
*sigh* Something about a four-foot-ten me running around after someone waving it in the air yelling "SCROOOOOOODROOOOOVERRRRRR," my pigtails flying behind me. Um, right, did i mention this was only a couple of years ago, when i was 24?? On the bright side, nobody got pictures, so nobody has proof...
And you could end up having to apply depilatories to unstick your GeckoBots? Or your Geckos... in which case you'd have one massively angry gecko horde on your hands... but you'd be the only one still able to climb the walls to get away...
Thanks, now i'm stuck with the image of a hologram and a catperson fighting over a rubik's cube made of silver plastic and light-brite pegs.... *grin* on the other hand, that image nicely crowds out the pile of work at hand, so maybe that's not a sarcastic thanks, after all!
when i was maybe five, i solved one in two minutes... with a screwdriver. My mum handed one to each of us and told us to make the colours all the same on every side. So we did. My sister took off all the stickers and put them on again as well as she could. I took a look at the stickers and decided they wouldn't peel well, so i just took it apart and out it back together again. She knew how sis had done hers, she couldn't figure out how i'd done mine till i handed her the screwdriver. She started locking the toolbox after that. *sigh* and it was a looong time before i got my own toolset. Funny, that- if you can't use a tool they worry that you're gonna hurt yourself with it... if you CAN, they worry about what you're going to use it on next...
It's not about mere discrimination. It's not about mere disability, although it can be a true disability- My uncle has a stutter so bad that he can barely talk. It takes a long time to get a sentence out. It has severely limited his employability and his lifestyle. It has to do with Money, with wage-earning potential, with the possibility of advancement. This translates into- you guessed it- taxpayer dollars.
In reference to your comment. I agree that LASIK probably shouldn't be covered by health insurance. Eyeglasses ARE covered under an increasing number of plans, though, and should be. (Eyeglasses also don't run into the thousands of dollars, for the most part.) Given the choice between spending $2000 max for this device, and having a person then shoot up an income bracket(or more) of employability, OR leaving the person to spend tens of thousands on speech therapy (have you added up the cost for ten years of learning how to control a stutter?) the US gov. gets off cheap if this can help. A severe stutter changes education, changes willingness to participate in experiences that their peers are involved in, and later in life it can make a college or job interview into hell. And here's the thing- it's now preventable. So when speech therapy isn't working, should health coverage take care of this? Heck, yeah!
This concept applies to a lot of things. It's cheaper for health coverage to buy me a wheelchair, or pay for part of the costs thereof, than to leave to try to buy one on my own- because it keeps me employable, keeps me paying for my own health insurance through work, keeps me paying income taxes. That's a pretty big deal, really. Eyeglasses should be covered for the same reason.
I've found that there are some cases where cosmetic surgery is justified and paid for by health coverage as a quality of life issue. If you view the speech improvement device as a prosthetic- making up for a quality that the person should have but doesn't- it's no different from covering, say, a hearing aid or an artificial voicebox. Or a prosthetic foot. If a person is disfigured or injured in a way which significantly decreases their odds of living a halfway decent life, health coverage will frequently cover the cost of alteration. For example, if a child is born with a severely receding lower jaw, as a friend of mine was, it was not considered cosmetic but reparative surgery. This extends to other forms of therapy- lots of health insurance covers mental therapy and medication for treatable mental illnesses. A stutter isn't a mental illness, it's a brain malfunction. SOmetimes speech therapy works great. Sometimes, as with my uncle, it doesn't help at all. I remember being a child and trying to have conversations with him, wondering whether i was going to end up like that, taking five minutes to finish a sentence. While LASIK could also be considered reparative surgery, it generally isn't because the prosthetics (eyeglasses) are socially accepted to the point of being a norm, contact lenses are available for cosmetic improvement over glasses, and both contacts and glasses are inexpensive enough that many health insurers already cover them. In some cases, free care even covers them. LASIK is also still fairly new. I know that breast implants can be covered in cases of masectomy. I would imagine that as LASIK gets cheaper and more reliable- there are still a lot of errors and i personally know two people who had serious complications (and twelve who had no complications at all)- there may well be insurance that covers it soon.
My main point here is that w
I aslo have gotten hate mail back from the people who really did steal other people's work, and have seen cases where they simply forgot to cite the source once they had permission- easily fixed, that last one. The hate mail generally consists of, "who made it your business?" or extremely juvenile insults etc. Someone once threatened to sue me for harassment- that would be the one who stole the MIT paper. It's discouraged me from putting my own work on the web, to be honest, both my artwork AND my own research. I suppose i'll get over that. But in the meantime, i think that the appropriate thing for me to do is to always point out where i feel that there's serious copyright issues, as when what's obviously someone's signed artwork has been cropped to delete the sig and posted as a website element on another site.
Incidentally, i started doing this because an artist friend had exactly that happen to her artwork- the images of oil and acrylic paintings up for SALE on her site were copied and used. Cease and desist letters work, especially if you have evidence of copyright and cc the ISP, etc.
On another note, though, one of the most interesting species battles that i have ever seen was the fight between blackberry brambles and mint which took place outside a house that i lived in once. Mint is an incredibly hardy plant once you get a good crop of it. The thorns eventually won- the only thing that i've ever seen resist that mint horde. The mint even choked out the poison ivy, the grass, the dandelions, and everything else that crossed its path... but the blackberries won.
Somehow, the rat story makes me feel sorry that the dodo is entirely extinct, and makes me aware of the dwindling wildlife habitats... time to take me to the ecology fund and donate somebody else's money to save rainforests. It's not offtopic, just an addendum.
"what did you do with the other half?"
I gave it to Jeremy."
"Good, he can keep his mind in it..."
I'm probably not recollecting word for word, but i do very much remember the cartoon with the holes that he developed like ink and used it to dispose of things... and i remember the monty python cartoon where they used it to catch a criminal, rolling it into position so he'd fall in, and then moving it so he'd fall out into jail...
Thank you again, slashdot, for proving me to have no childhood that was not in some way based in early tv...
If that's not a change, i don't know what is, folks. This was bottled and labelled in the US. It's one of many small changes- the Liters are being labelled above the pints and ounces.
At least in some cases.
the best one i ever got was, "your song reminds the moon to shine and your eyes remind the nightingale to sing," which was very bizarre but nice, by itself- but when we added, "with a monkey," the whole group broke down and there was no conversation, only laughter, for ten minutes. Thought about renaming the band 'Nightingale and Monkey," but we didn't, so it's still up for grabs.
you will find a new friend... with a monkey.
you will encounter unusual treasures ...with a monkey.
i hope you die ...with a monkey...
What you didn't include is how did this get them to take you off their list?
sol
i was in voice training for more than half my life, by choice. Not every musician needs it, but to be a musician implies some level of music, and some level of practice. I do not need music to get lovers, I'm already in the relationship that i want. I do not need music to get famous- it's unlikely that music will make me famous, and if it did, i wouldn't know what to do with it. I still have a day job. So it obviously isn't the money. I still want to study and have even more of a day job, i like to work.
I don't know why this debate always comes down to the same statements over and over again. "Music downloading is/isn't theft," "The RIAA is good/evil," "Copyright infringement and intellectual property can/can't/should/shouldn't be controlled."
We've all heard each other's arguments ad nauseum. What i don't hear is more than a few coherent plans, from either side, thinking about what to do next. I'd love to be proved wrong, i'd love to hear all this discussion rise above simple negation and into a more friendly debate. (I came here for an argument! 'NO, you didn't!")
I'd like to believe that we do more than repeat the same stuff every time the DMCA and RIAA come up; at least with the microsoft debate we manage to find relevant, new ways to look at it on a regular basis...
sol
I was fortunate enough to be at a B. B. King concert where he talked about the sample made by- i forget by whom, but it sold a million records. And he said, (and i am paraphrasing)"How do i feel about this? They sold a million records!!! How do you think i feel? You want another sample? You go right ahead, please! Ain't NONE of my records sold that many that fast!! Sample ALL of 'em!"
But for me, I feel that the atmosphere in which we work as musicians is very different from the atmosphere that Bach or Mozart or even Frederick Hand wrote. We have not simply a more litigious nature, but a tendency in the industry to take larger chunks of a work and make them the basis for works of art that then may make large profits. And if it's a derivative work, then the original artist deserves both credit on the liner notes, AND the chance to give permission. Remember, that's why we have copyright in the first place, to give the original artist a chance to make a living off it. And if they choose to make that living by encouraging others to buy their album by lending a sample, that's great. If they choose not to, nobody should go using their music except as a quote... and that's very different from a sample.
Yes, artists write music all the time based on different styles. Yes the masters borrowed from each other all the time. YEs, architects still build in the style of Wright. But on the other hand, If you copy a painting that's now in the public domain, that's very different from going to a new artist's exhibet, copying something modern, and then changing the upper third of the work and passing it off as your own idea. Putting a small mona lisa in the upper right corner is a derivative work, and fortunately it's well-known enough that it's recognisably so and usually more acceptable... music just isn't all that recognisable to many- you have to have heard it many times before. If my 'midnight miles' track were turned into something else, nobody would know but me and my former bandmates, who would be shocked and alarmed, since i've got the copyright for the melody and Mike's got the copyright for his almost-impossible-for-amatuer-play-because-of-the- finger-strength-involved guitar part. The drums were pretty standard and the bass was negligible. And i'd be distressed. The fact that many of the early blues players died penniless really bothers me, and i feel that this was partly due to the lack of credit that they got.
2. Oke. The above was a quote, paraphrased from B.B. King at a concert.
It was spoken aloud in public, which isn't copyrighted as far as i know- you have to have recorded it in some way first for that to be the case, i think- (i could be wrong) But it's still a quote. Quotes, especially from written or other recorded medium, fall under Fair Use, and that's what i feel is at issue here. If you're using a substantial quote from a work, it's not right if you don't give credit. Even if you're using a small quote which expresses an original thought or observation. If someone were to 'borrow' three paragraphs of one of my stories, or the title, if it were particularly unusual and directly related to the plot, or the plot itself... I'd be distressed. Hell, I'd be furious. However, if someone read one of my poems, said, oh- i see this differently- and wrote a poem expressing a different idea on the topic, in a different way, that's acceptable (of course), because when THEY wrote it, it would be an entirely different work. If it happened to also be about sunflowers, well, that's oke, there's lots of sunflowers, and if it happened to be about artistic madness and sunflowers, well, that's oke too, because it's their take on the concept, in their own words, and Making People Think is Part of What Art is All About. That's why students get credit for stringing together lots of little quotes- all cited- and it's fair use, but if they fail to cite, or they try to paraphrase and offer it as their own work, they can fail the class on g
And it's a mistake to think that a few hundred letters won't help turn a tide. I live in MA. And my representatives send me form letters when i write in. But sometimes those form letters reflect that i'm definitely among a large number writing in... when i wrote to protest ANWR drilling... i got back letters explaining that the reps i wrote to "Won't let down the many concerned citizens," in the vote on the issue. (and they didn't.) Politicians know that they can get voted out of office- and that for every letter written, a chunk of money has just been allocated for or against their campaign, and in many cases they can look at the donation balance sheet, see which companies support or don't support the decision, and go for money from the companies supporting the decision LEAST likely to infuriate their constituents. Granted, it doesn't always work, it's not an ideal system. But a few tips for writing to congress:
always list the bill that you're concerned about, if you know the official title number.
stick to one issue per letter.
don't use form letters. If there's a service that will write them for you- and there are many online- see that you edit out catchphrases and change the wording enough to make it an original letter, not a 'boilerplate.'
Send it by mail if you can- physical mail means a lot.
USE YOUR ADDRESS. they need to know that you're a registered voter in their constituency.
be polite and to the point, and tell them that you are discussing the matter- and their response- with your friends, family, coworkers, anyone who will listen. That's gotten me much more personalised responses.
don't be afraid to call, fax, write to thank them after the vote, or express your disapproval with their vote, after the issue is voted upon.
I know that special interest groups have lots of power, and that's why we should support the ones who support the issues that we care about (like the EFF or the DEN) but we also have a strong voice, wehn we choose to use it, as individuals. If we don't speak up, we can't argue when our reps cave in to special interests with no dissenting voice from the public. And if there's one thing slashdotters are great at, it's dissent!!! (yay!!!!)
last year's philadelphia Inquirer story talks about fMRI research as replacing the polygraph, and Cognitive Liberty has the best set of links if you want more info. Frankly, i advise you to check it out, because this is not new, and This will be checking you out soon.
THat did run through my mind at the time. Specifically, i thought of it more as TRAINING for the gom jabbar... especially during that EMG experience!!!
the Viking filofax and the humbug/octopus reference are both from a more recent basic text adventure called Humbug.
The chiggers are from an atari (128, i think) cartridge game where you had to kill a vampire. Everytime you entered the swamp, you got bitten by chiggers.
The kill goblin but comes from the Palm OS game, oh, what's it called now? i can't even remember. Something '...Castle... ' Real simple, but a start for adventure games on the handheld, so ifigured folks might recognise it.
The 'over my dead body' reference is from LOOM, of course, and Monkey Island later included the phrase "Hello, I'm bobbin threadbare. Are you my mother?" which was said when the main character gets shot from a cannon, and falls on his head... the joke being that bobbin threadbare was the main character in LOOM, and spent all his time looking for his mother, who had been turned into i think a swan... made by the folks who later made Monkey Island... you know, adventure games might not be dead, but i'm starting to understand why my social life was so tough in grade school...
The best way to explain it, i think, to someone who doesn't get it is to explain how when someone says 'pair' you can call up the definition 'pear' and know that it isn't accurate- but that it's there. The sound associates with two simultaneous meanings. However, unlike words, the unnecessary definition doesn't go away again once it's been dismissed- it hangs around, making things a little surreal.
I don't know. I'm just surprised to find another description- you're right, it can foreground but mostly it's just there in the back. It just calls up more sensations than are usually called up. I think the best time it's ever come in handy is when i'm designing jewelry, because the aesthetics that work out together for me tend to strike other people as pleasing, too, even though i know we're perceiving in totally different languages. (pale green fluorite is chalky and salty, silver is more like water, and feldspars tend to be in A minor and squishy.)
But as a musician, i can't reverse those to hear an A minor and think feldspar. And most of the time i don't notice, it's normal, it's a sort of cloudy way to think of/ perceive things. Nebulous. A lot like my brain chemistry, i guess...
sol
OKe. Let me start by saying that i have physical sensation synesthesia more than any other kind, in which one physical sensation can evoke other physical sensations- even in other limbs. It's quite peculiar, really, and very real. In my case, it's because i have a neurotransmitter disorder which makes certain physical sensations- especially pain- transcend the normal 'map' of the body in the brain. Overflow of chemicals, for the most part, coupled with a hyped up sensation system to start with (I've got extra pain centers and have a lot of Restless Limb Syndrome as well.)
For those really interested in how this stuff happens, i would suggest starting out with ramachandran's phantoms in the Brain which is about phantom limb syndrome, and brain mapping in general- it's really very good, and explains a great number of things, from how to cure phantom limb syndrome (trick the brain into trying to use the signal paths that it still has mapped out) to sympathy pain (how your brain can identify with other things- even a wooden table- to the point where it perceives things happening to someone whom you love as also happening to you. It doesn't talk much about synesthesia, but can help give the basics as to how the brain's architecture works for this to happen.
In my case, i can say this: it makes things bizarre. The sensation of pulling a hair out of, say, my arm, can cause sensations of it happening in other places, and it can also induce completely other sensations. I went through a job interview once- one of the interviews for my current job, in fact- with the distinct sensation that my right arm was burning. It left temporary redness as my body attempted to respond to what it thought was happening- but the arm was fine. And tastes can sometimes cause very bizarre reactions, too. sound very seldom does, but colours and tastes tend to get connected. When i see colours they have flavours attached sometimes. And i know they aren't things that i'm tasting, but the brain goes, mmm- turkey, and it's irrevocably linked to a sort of light cyan colour. Every time i see it there's the sense of roast turkey.
Most people experience some form of synesthesia at some point in their lives. a lot of people, for example, report that when a cat licks their hand, it will make a tingling or prickling somewhere else, like along their hip? That's not just parasthesia, which is usually related to nerve damage- it's a sensation actively invoking another sensation in another area.
From my point of view, it's just the world. Many things- types of rock or surface texture, for example, come up with food textures or physical body experiences in my brain. It's like having one word call up two simultaneous definitions, and one of them is real and the other one is just happening along with it. (Amethysts are crisp, like cucumbers. Marble is sleepy.) It doesn't make me sleepy, i don't go chewing up jewelry. These are just... simultaneous experiences. And they are common, but not nearly as common as when i bump my knee and my arm hurts, or as when my ears get cold and it makes my tongue tingle. And yes, i've tried to find ways to have fun with it, and no, there aren't many, it's just too weird (i have only had the neurotransmitter problems for a couple of years, so it's been extremely weird to get used to.)
Just thought i'd share some perspective from a synesthete's (admittedly bizarre and multi-layered) point of view. Bubbles in soda on my tongue make my back tickle. Dark blue- really dark blue, the kind you get when mixing cobalt with coal black- is kinda like hot fudge, rich and with texture. I think it tends to be tastes with colours just because that's where the overlaps happen. I'm not sure. i know the physical stuff tends to be more predictable, for me. Hell was when i went in to have EMG tests run- you don't need to feel electric current in more than one limb at a time, thankyouverymuch!!! (In soviet russia, the current swims through YOU!)
It's a pecu
You are in a maze of twisty little corridors, all of which look alike.
My monocle! I've lost my monocle! If I don't find it soon, I'll lose all the monocle-grabbing muscles in my eye!!!!
Would you like to buy a shuba?
"Over my dead body!" "Preference noted..."
Use the rubber chicken with the pulley in the middle...
Zkull.
Play humbug with octopus.
Take filofax from Viking.
Lie down in front of bulldozer.
The code phrase is, "say alexis."
You have been bitten by chiggers. If you don't stop the itching soon, you will die. (Get Mud) Whew! What a relief!
Vichysoisse Avec Rat Hair.
Give comfit to Dodo. Take stick.
Kill Goblin with sword. Take amulet.
If you recognised 3 or more of the previous references, adventure games are not dead.
the polygraph is not a lie detector. A polygraph actually records a number of different signals. Respiration, persperation... A polygraph only detects your output, not your internal processes. That may eventually change with walk-through brain scanners at the airports...
The polygraph operator may be thoroughly trained to interpret this data, or they might simply have bought a polygraph and hired themselves out immediately. Training and certification varies greatly from state to state. It's claimed that they measure 'deceptive reactions' pretty well, (bear in mind that they also run on Windows..No, i'm not kidding.) If you really believe what you're saying, a polygraph won't pick that up. But on the other hand, it might. I would say that the jury's out on their effectiveness, but they don't let polygraph results anywhere near a jury. (we'll get to that.) Dweceptive behaviour is not the same as lying. If you give a patently false answer to every question, it messes with the baseline. If you give honest answers that mislead, it may or may not pick them up. If you tell the truth but think about something bad you've done lately, you might get a false positive. It's that messy.
Voice analysers promise similar results- the ability to pick up changes in a person's voice, microtremors, when deceptive intent creeps in... but have also been shown to be faulty. And then shown to be fine. And then faulty again. And so on.
The supreme court has ruled that polygraph tests can be administered- but that the data may not be used as evidence in court. Although it is illegal to make a polygraph test part of the private industry hiring practice, the feds can do this all they want, and are expanding their activities in this regard as more sophisticated, digital equipment becomes available.
It's more likely that brain imaging will evolve to replace the polygraph- and even then, it probably won't be 100%. There will always be those who can believe what they are saying to be true. It's all about confidence. So to answer the question- yes, they could try, but they might not be able to get anything useful from it, and if you know enough about how they work, you could give them enough false positives that they'd never work it out. Then they'd simply get a court order to bug your keyboard instead, out of sheer frustration. Unless you were deemed a REAL threat to national security- in which case they import you to egypt for 'questioning...'
sorry if i sound pessimistic. But the answer is that if it's that important, they'll use something more proven than a polygraph....
1. They can't have it. (Not mine, anyway, picture Monty Python's Live Organ Donor program...)
and
2. No matter how much they kick and scream, we won't be giving back the vote, either.
Here is an excellent read on type one diabetes and stem cell research, and a comment on why study sjogren's in conjunction with diabetes (namely, the organ being damaged is much easier to get at and assess.)
Here is a great site for info- the CDC genomics site, which includes info on common and rare genetic diseases, and can give a greater array of background info. NCBI offers another set of info- an explanation of human mouse homology (thus answering the question... why mice?
I hope this helps put some extra info out there for those of you who are interested. And frankly, as one who has had to deal with the sudden "switching on" of not just one but a whole array of diseases- since my DNA happened to include the lucky strands- I'm now having my stance on animal testing completely revised...
Is there really this much gender bias in SciFi? I mean, c'mon, we were brought up on the same stuff. There are girl trekkies, there are girl star wars fans, there are girl just about everything these days, and don't even get me started on the chick whom I used to live with, the one who actually made a peacekeepers (i think) coat, and wore it every day. Something with the Farscape stuff, that's not my scifi theme so I'm not familiar. Me, I'm more of a Stanislaw Lem and early Asimov girl. We're out here. We will go to the 'part museum, part theme park' but it won't be because it's a little boy's wonderland. (although, with all of us showing up, it might be more of a grownup scifiboy's dream house)
Seriously, it's 2003. Can we get a little gender bias LEFT OUT of the major media for a change? Especially on the Scifi thing? Now i gotta go find my chrome miniskirt and my disintregration pistol and hunt him down, with my cohorts in their coverall-type armour from some other show (Later star trek, i think) and my neighbour in her Jedi gear, and that's just so not what i needed to be doing this morning...