If the shawls, yamacas, or crosses were being banned for a non-religious practical reason, such as them catching in machinery in shop for the shawl or cross, that would probably be okay. However, the ban clearly targets religion as if religion and not religious intolerance was the problem.
"we have seen enough killing in the name of religion here." Not too far to the east of France, there was also more than enough killing to enforce a lack of religion.
If violence is sparked by the wearing of shawls, yamacas, or large crosses, this is just a symptom of a larger problem of intolerence and banning them will only treat the symptom not the cause.
If someone is provoked simply by another person wearing a shawl, a yamaca, or a cross, then they have a problem. Instead of trying to remove all the potential provocations, it should be stressed that individual liberty and security against violence are guaranteed by the state, and that being "provoked" will not reduce the punishments for violating someone else's liberty or attacking them.
Many Americans are so vocal about this because they see a milder but similar trend in the US, and they are afraid it will set a precedent. Claims that things are "provocative" or "offensive" are routinely used in US schools to quash reasonable debates, so the argument that religious displays are inherently provocative is disturbing.
35 USC 102(b) establishes a statutory bar to obtaining a patent if the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States.
He's out of luck by more than 10 years. Also, 35 USC 102 (g) [same link as above] establishes that if two people invent the same thing, the later to file must show reasonable diligence from a time just prior to conception by another.
Actually, a new product like this will be released soon. See the picture and specifications.
Key points:
* 4" by 6" by 1"
* runs XP (a real computer)
* 30 GB hard drive
* only 5.6" screen, but 1024 by 600 pixels
* integrated wireless
* USB 2.0 port
* docking station for optical drives, more ports, wired ethernet
* integrated 1.3 MP camera
Price is rumored to be about $1500.
Full disclosure: I don't have any affiliation with the company other than a friend who might work there.
Seems like a great option for a second computer in adition to a normal desktop. What do you other slashdotters think?
This would make a terrible substitute for how some people use laptops. However, I just meant to point out that it has a niche in college. Many of my friends with laptops would keep them at their desks in the dorm the vast majority of the time and then throw them on the bed or in a drawer when they needed desk space for an art project or such.
I was a chemistry major, so I could never take notes on a computer. I tried taking notes with a handheld, keyboard and drawing program, but it failed miserably. Chemistry just has too much drawing or diagramming.
And games during the boring classes is a really bad idea. At least use the time to do homework.:)
I didn't notice the battery life of only 1 hour. That is abysmal. Oh well. Not the point for this one.
This would be great for some college students. A large part of the appeal of a laptop is that you can put it away and reclaim your desk space easily. Also, occassionally moving it to a friend's apartment or a research lab wouldn't be nearly as big a deal as a normal desktop system.
Anyway, I think my physics book weighed about that much...
To summarize: oil can definitely form non-biologically. However, chemical analysis indicates that most oil is formed biologically.
I unfortunately don't have time right now to sift through the UCLA paper linked to in the article, but note that the date of review is in 2002. This is not settled science, so it is very reasonable that schools would still be teaching the more established theory. (Granted, the idea coal or oil comes from animals rather than plants is silly. I hope very few people are actually teaching that.)
Also, if you're going to debunk theories, post links to reputable sites. Otherwise, it's hard to distinguish from the/. noise.
Statistics may be a "pure mathematical construct," but the application of statistics to the real world requires verification that the assumptions hold and the conditions remain unchanged.
While it is technically true that the detection of spam accuracy given 10 messages would on average be very slightly less than 100%, it is very reasonable to assume the accuracy would be higher for people looking through 10 messages/day rather than 100s/day.
The condition of only evaluating 10 e-mails is fundamentally different than sorting through "a total of 5849 messages (1935 spam, 3914 nonspam)" in a month or an average of 190+ a day. Extrapolating the author's result to a much lower message load is unwarranted.
128 kilobits a second. (I just checked file details on winamp to make sure).
So your result is short by a factor of 8. Multiply 9.04 by 8 and you get about the right amount.
The bit-byte confusion is nearly as bad as the chem/physics calorie versus the nutritional Calorie. The chem/physics calorie is amount of energy needed to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius. The nutritional Calorie (note uppercase C) is amount of energy needed to raise one kilogram one degree. Makes for confusing conversations occasionally.
Sorry, that's wrong. Patent law is more complicated than that.
35 USC 102 and 103 give the criteria for obtaining a patent in the US: novelty and non-obviousness to one with ordinary skill in the relevant art.
The applicant for this patent had to invent the invention sometime before applying for the patent (obviously). If this invention was (1) prior to what anyone else can prove (or prior inventors abandoned, supressed, or concealed the invention) and (2) there was "reasonable diligence" [see 35 USC 102(g)] from just before the invention by another until application, then prior art to overcome the patent must be either a patent (anywhere), a printed publication (anywhere), or public use/sale (in the US) more than one year prior to the application date.
Basically, someone either has to show a printed publication prior to invention or public use or sale in the US more than one year prior to the US application.
I hope that made sense. Reading the two short sections of patent law linked to above should help in understanding a lot of patent disputes.
Why only one copy? Once you have the file, you can legally make as many copies as you want in Canada.
However, I don't think you are supposed to sell them or give them away. You could assemble an awesome library of music in Canada and then make a lot of money renting the library and CD burners to Americans just across the border.
(I assume you can rent out CDs just like video stores rent out movies.)
Also, I have no idea where the courts would stand on the copyright status of music legally copied onto CD-Rs in Canada but then brought into the US. Would bringing the CD-Rs into the US be legal? Would the right of first sale apply to the CD-Rs? (I would guess not, since you can't sell or give away a backup copy without giving away the original.)
This is law you are referencing. Every word matters.
Section 1091 (a), sets up a two-part definition. A necessary, but insufficient condition for an act to be genocide is the "specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group."
In addition, the act must be one (or more) of those specified in the 6 subsections of 1091 (a).
Is the war on drugs waged "with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group"? There is at least a prima facie case to the contrary. Most importantly, intent to harm is not the same thing as intent to destroy. Second, it is not even clear that there was an attempt to harm. A reasonable person could believe that harsher sentences were an overall good to the group because they would serve as a more effective deterent and would reduce the pernicious effects of drugs. Political cowardice is a potential (and I think credible) explanation for why drugs of choice for the white majority are not sentenced as harshly.
"The propensity to use drugs can therefore be described as being related to culture and genetics, two of the components which make up ethnicity, and the targeting of an ethnic group is the definition of genocide." First, the targeting of an ethnic group (for purposes other than destruction) is not the definition given in the site you cited. Also, claiming that the group of drug-use-susceptible people is an ethnic or racial group is way too much of a stretch. "Being related to" and being are two very different things.
My second major point: The war on drugs does not fit any of the six subsections of 1091 (a). (1) It does not kill members of that group. (No death penalty for pure drug crimes, except maybe for Texas.;) [No offense to Texas or Texans intended. Just a bit of gallows humor.] ) (2) Causes serious bodily injury to members of that group. Incidents of police brutality are not part of the war on drugs. (3) Extensive jail time might qualify as "caus[ing] the permanent impairment of the mental faculties", but it is not through "drugs, torture, or similar techniques." Therefore, (3) doesn't apply. (4) The war on drugs does not submit the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part. (5) The war on drugs does not impose measures intended to prevent births within the group. I suppose someone might argue jail time might have had this intent, but I don't see this as likely. (6) I don't know of any cases of (6) related to the war on drugs.
I assert that neither condition of "USC Section 1091 - Genocide" is met by the war on drugs.
P.S. I disagree with you about the relative safety of alcohol and Ecstasy. Many studies have shown moderate consumption of alcohol to have either no effect or a mild positive effect on health. The studies are not conclusive on the human effects of Ecstasy, but there are tentative links to long-term brain damage.
weasels. Okay, so it's a bad joke; I still like it.;)
I think your post is rather ironic in view of the content of the article.
Actually, I disagree with a lot of Bush policies, such as the Patriot Act and all the steel and lumber tariffs.
However, I agreed with the decision to go to war in Iraq, regardless of whether Saddam had WMD or not. Here are the reasons I supported the war: 1) Saddam had a history of obtaining and using weapons of mass destruction. 2) He violated the terms of the April 6, 1991 cease-fire (terms were to abide by all the UN resolutions). Technically, this gives us the right to wage war under international law. (The Persian Gulf War was legal, and technically we didn't make peace, we arrived at a cease-fire. He broke terms, so we resumed the same war. I don't actually care whether people view the war as legal under international law or not; I just thought it an interesting sidenote.) Also, this sets a precedent of the US and UN tolerating gross violations of cease-fire terms. That's a precedent I don't want set. 3) He persistently thwarted attempts to determine presence/extent of WMD programs and capabilities. Given his track record, the burden of proof to show disarmament rightfully rested upon him. 4) Thwarting attempts to determine presence/extent of WMD despite sanctions is highly suspicious. 5) Given the extent of the atrocities under his regime, his removal will most likely end up in an overall good for Iraqis.
Of course, I can see why a reasonable person might have opposed the war: 1) Evidence pointing to WMD was vague, as intel reports tend to be. 2) Waiting was better. If the problem didn't progress far enough to force action, we avoided conflict. If the situation worsened significantly, we could probably have gotten more countries to share the burden of fixing the problem. (I don't like this approach, though. What could we do if he finally managed to get nukes? The problem becomes much more costly to fix. The US or international coalition could still invade, but the cost would be much higher. Most likely, it would include a large portion of Israel's population; if Saddam also got longer range missiles, he might also take out a European or American city.)
You make the following point: "Saddam had less terrorists in his country during his regime than bush does in the USA right now."
With regard to absolute numbers, I imagine you are right. However, per capita I would guess less. Neither statistic is available. However, it doesn't actually matter. In the US, the terrorists are not welcome. In Iraq, many were intentionally tolerated or supported. That is a very important distinction.
I didn't blink when I saw "saddam bin-laden," but that is just because I thought it was some rhetorical device I didn't quite catch. The people who didn't blink may have just decided to tune out, smile, nod, and back up slowly.;) Or, they may read rant-formatted (loose comma and apostrophe usage, inconsistent use of capital letters, etc.) with sub-conscious error correction in the background. For instance, I only noticed on re-reading that you said "osama hussien." I just unconsciously dropped the incorrect surname, because in context you had to mean the one of the pair that had not yet been captured.
Reasonable people may disagree about most political issues. Holding opinions at odds with yours does not mean that person is "inept at paying attention", stupid, uninformed, war mongers, or worthy of hate.
Peace through strength is a strategy that has had some success in the past and is a reasonable strategy to discuss. Likewise, peace through diplomacy, likeability, and working through international organizations is worthy of debate.
The likely costs, benefits, and risks of each approach should be rationally discussed. Name-calling degrades the discussion. Also, it lessens the likelihood of your arguments influencing swing voters.
Well, that's my long post on my position on the Iraq war.
If it is much more efficient to run at a consistent output, just use the excess load for energetically expensive, but not time-sensitive processes, like generating hydrogen (from water or otherwise) for fuel cell use.
There isn't a current market for this due to low power consumption, but as electricity prices rise and hydrogen fuel cells become more expensive, the market will expand significantly.
I thought it was vice versa ....
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
No, no, no, you have it backwards: bananas are Earth-shaped.;)
To be fair, though, this satire was picked up by many newspapers, including the Guardian, which to their credit published a retraction.
IQ results for Bush are not available, but his SAT score was 1206 or mid 80-percentile compared to current SAT test-takers. The SAT is not an IQ test, but it has a positive correlation with IQ tests of about 0.7 to 0.8. Also, note that the percentile refers to test-takers, not the general public, and test-takers are going to on average have higher IQs than non-test-takers.
That makes it very unlikely he has below-average intelligence.
You might want to examine your news sources a little more carefully.
Your math is way off. The chance of a PARTICULAR voter noticing a change if only 1 in a hundred voters checks their ballot and 1 in 10 ballots are modified is 1:1,000. However, there are 1,000s of voters. Also, the odds of detection are better if the proportion of ballots modified is larger and if more than 1 in a hundred voters checks the ballot.
About the unconstitutionality of invalidating the votes for a machine with an error: this situation is analogous to having a ballot box stuffed. You temporarily set aside these votes. If the number of set aside votes is not large enough to affect the election, there isn't a constitutionality problem. If the winning margin is smaller than the number of suspect votes, you have to have a special election, just like when voting fraud on paper goes on. The important thing is that you can catch fraud, which discourages it, and you know when appreciable fraud/error takes place.
The key is that fraud/error only matters if it affects enough votes to influence the election.
Hmm, being in the middle of the battle of Midway versus on couch listening to speakers reproducing sounds. I, for one, have to go for the couch. Bullets scare me.
You could, however, compare the two versions and see why and how the bug fixes are carried out. The implementation of the bug fix may be copyrighted, but the identification of a bug's location and cause is an idea, which is not covered by copyright.
"Their private e-mail is not a public forum." From a constitutionality standpoint, this doesn't matter for a publicly-funded institution. If an agent of the state, e.g. a public university, intentionally limits speech based upon political content, this constitutes a first amendment violation (abridgement freedom of speech).
Note that I said the argument could be reasonably made, not that I agree with it. I actually do NOT advocate censorship of even them. The point I meant to make was that blacklisting addresses based upon it being an origin of obscene content MIGHT be LEGAL considering precedent. I assumed that NAMBLA e-mails would probably contain obscene content (legally obscene: definition depends upon local social mores). If none of them did and they were merely political arguments, then the legality of a public university blacklisting them is highly questionable.
"... University has a right to limit what traffic they carry on their mail server..." If they are a public university, I would argue that because they are an agent of the state, they are limited in their exercise of discretion by constitutional guarantees. A public university that is censoring e-mail from the Sierra Club due to political content is unconstitutionally abridging their freedom of speech. Any lawyers want to cite relevant case law for me?
First of all, it could be reasonably argued that it is still censorship, but that it is within the university's rights.
However, the more important question is whether the university is public or private. If the university is public, blacklisting based on political content violates 1st amendment speech protections (assuming he is in the US), and sets a dangerous precedent of government interference in political communication.
I don't like NAMBLA either and an argument to censor based upon obscenity could reasonably be made, but what about censoring the NRA or Greenpeace or the Earth Liberation Front?
Of course, if it's a private university, yeah, they can blacklist away.
A slight correction: SOME current earth models. The current science for climate prediction models is pretty shaky.
First of all, there are probably unidentified factors that need to be taken into account for any decent model. Second, weights for these variables are hard to assign, and there may be some unidentified feedback mechanisms, both positive and negative.
The models are getting better, but it is an intrinsically very difficult problem, and there is insufficient data to thoroughly evaluate the model.
Also, the rate of recent temperature rise is a subject of debate. "The problem essentially is that observed average global surface temperatures over the period 1979-1997 show an increase of approximately 0.2oC whereas downward micro-wave soundings from satellites reveal zero temperature change through the lower atmosphere or perhaps a slight decrease." http://www.apec.org.au/docs/tucker.pdf
"real, detailed, complete examination . . . is out of the question."
May I add, "on any complex or technical issue"? Come on, my local paper can't even publish a mostly accurate introduction to digital cameras.
You expect them to give a "real, detailed, complete examination" of the possible causes and results of some changes to a file for which the vast majority of the audience doesn't know the purpose of and didn't even know existed. Hah! You're the one being naive. It's not about politics; The Nation is (most likely) not going to pick this up either.
The most pernicious media bias is neither liberal nor conservative. It is the tendency to misrepresent reality so as to boost ratings and make their jobs easier. Thus, news coverage is disproportionately about bad news because good news is more complex and less dramatic. Also, in the US, there is more television news coverage of kittens and puppies than the majority of countries. (I didn't look up the kitten/puppy coverage versus coverage of other countries, but that's my impression.)
Media by the shallow, pandering to the shallow.
By the way, I think a large part of why Chomsky hasn't been on CNN is his work is not very suited to sound-bites.
Or maybe that's just what the vast right-wing conspiracy wants you to think...
Slashdot Mirror
If the shawls, yamacas, or crosses were being banned for a non-religious practical reason, such as them catching in machinery in shop for the shawl or cross, that would probably be okay. However, the ban clearly targets religion as if religion and not religious intolerance was the problem.
"we have seen enough killing in the name of religion here."
Not too far to the east of France, there was also more than enough killing to enforce a lack of religion.
If violence is sparked by the wearing of shawls, yamacas, or large crosses, this is just a symptom of a larger problem of intolerence and banning them will only treat the symptom not the cause.
If someone is provoked simply by another person wearing a shawl, a yamaca, or a cross, then they have a problem. Instead of trying to remove all the potential provocations, it should be stressed that individual liberty and security against violence are guaranteed by the state, and that being "provoked" will not reduce the punishments for violating someone else's liberty or attacking them.
Many Americans are so vocal about this because they see a milder but similar trend in the US, and they are afraid it will set a precedent. Claims that things are "provocative" or "offensive" are routinely used in US schools to quash reasonable debates, so the argument that religious displays are inherently provocative is disturbing.
35 USC 102(b) establishes a statutory bar to obtaining a patent if the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States.
He's out of luck by more than 10 years. Also, 35 USC 102 (g) [same link as above] establishes that if two people invent the same thing, the later to file must show reasonable diligence from a time just prior to conception by another.
Someone else might have mentioned this, but I would like a AA or AAA NiMH charger.
Many MP3 players use just one AA or AAA.
You'd probably want to just charge one or two at a time so the charging would go faster.
Actually, a new product like this will be released soon.
See the picture and specifications.
Key points:
* 4" by 6" by 1"
* runs XP (a real computer)
* 30 GB hard drive
* only 5.6" screen, but 1024 by 600 pixels
* integrated wireless
* USB 2.0 port
* docking station for optical drives, more ports, wired ethernet
* integrated 1.3 MP camera
Price is rumored to be about $1500.
Full disclosure: I don't have any affiliation with the company other than a friend who might work there.
Seems like a great option for a second computer in adition to a normal desktop. What do you other slashdotters think?
This would make a terrible substitute for how some people use laptops. However, I just meant to point out that it has a niche in college. Many of my friends with laptops would keep them at their desks in the dorm the vast majority of the time and then throw them on the bed or in a drawer when they needed desk space for an art project or such.
:)
I was a chemistry major, so I could never take notes on a computer. I tried taking notes with a handheld, keyboard and drawing program, but it failed miserably. Chemistry just has too much drawing or diagramming.
And games during the boring classes is a really bad idea. At least use the time to do homework.
I didn't notice the battery life of only 1 hour. That is abysmal. Oh well. Not the point for this one.
This would be great for some college students. A large part of the appeal of a laptop is that you can put it away and reclaim your desk space easily. Also, occassionally moving it to a friend's apartment or a research lab wouldn't be nearly as big a deal as a normal desktop system.
...
Anyway, I think my physics book weighed about that much
Here is a nice Nature article on point.
/. noise.
To summarize: oil can definitely form non-biologically. However, chemical analysis indicates that most oil is formed biologically.
I unfortunately don't have time right now to sift through the UCLA paper linked to in the article, but note that the date of review is in 2002. This is not settled science, so it is very reasonable that schools would still be teaching the more established theory. (Granted, the idea coal or oil comes from animals rather than plants is silly. I hope very few people are actually teaching that.)
Also, if you're going to debunk theories, post links to reputable sites. Otherwise, it's hard to distinguish from the
Statistics may be a "pure mathematical construct," but the application of statistics to the real world requires verification that the assumptions hold and the conditions remain unchanged.
While it is technically true that the detection of spam accuracy given 10 messages would on average be very slightly less than 100%, it is very reasonable to assume the accuracy would be higher for people looking through 10 messages/day rather than 100s/day.
The condition of only evaluating 10 e-mails is fundamentally different than sorting through "a total of 5849 messages (1935 spam, 3914 nonspam)" in a month or an average of 190+ a day. Extrapolating the author's result to a much lower message load is unwarranted.
128 kilobits a second. (I just checked file details on winamp to make sure).
So your result is short by a factor of 8. Multiply 9.04 by 8 and you get about the right amount.
The bit-byte confusion is nearly as bad as the chem/physics calorie versus the nutritional Calorie. The chem/physics calorie is amount of energy needed to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius. The nutritional Calorie (note uppercase C) is amount of energy needed to raise one kilogram one degree. Makes for confusing conversations occasionally.
Electromagnetic pulses don't destroy data on CD-Rs because it is physical storage and not magnetic.
Finding something to play the files might be a problem, though. I don't know all that much about how much damage small electronic devices would take.
I think vegans are a subset of vegetarians. All vegans are (strict) vegetarians, but not vice versa.
Sorry, that's wrong. Patent law is more complicated than that.
35 USC 102 and 103 give the criteria for obtaining a patent in the US: novelty and non-obviousness to one with ordinary skill in the relevant art.
The applicant for this patent had to invent the invention sometime before applying for the patent (obviously). If this invention was (1) prior to what anyone else can prove (or prior inventors abandoned, supressed, or concealed the invention) and (2) there was "reasonable diligence" [see 35 USC 102(g)] from just before the invention by another until application, then prior art to overcome the patent must be either a patent (anywhere), a printed publication (anywhere), or public use/sale (in the US) more than one year prior to the application date.
Basically, someone either has to show a printed publication prior to invention or public use or sale in the US more than one year prior to the US application.
I hope that made sense. Reading the two short sections of patent law linked to above should help in understanding a lot of patent disputes.
Why only one copy? Once you have the file, you can legally make as many copies as you want in Canada.
However, I don't think you are supposed to sell them or give them away. You could assemble an awesome library of music in Canada and then make a lot of money renting the library and CD burners to Americans just across the border.
(I assume you can rent out CDs just like video stores rent out movies.)
Also, I have no idea where the courts would stand on the copyright status of music legally copied onto CD-Rs in Canada but then brought into the US. Would bringing the CD-Rs into the US be legal? Would the right of first sale apply to the CD-Rs? (I would guess not, since you can't sell or give away a backup copy without giving away the original.)
Section 1091 (a), sets up a two-part definition.
A necessary, but insufficient condition for an act to be genocide is the "specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group."
In addition, the act must be one (or more) of those specified in the 6 subsections of 1091 (a).
Is the war on drugs waged "with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group"?
There is at least a prima facie case to the contrary. Most importantly, intent to harm is not the same thing as intent to destroy. Second, it is not even clear that there was an attempt to harm. A reasonable person could believe that harsher sentences were an overall good to the group because they would serve as a more effective deterent and would reduce the pernicious effects of drugs. Political cowardice is a potential (and I think credible) explanation for why drugs of choice for the white majority are not sentenced as harshly.
"The propensity to use drugs can therefore be described as being related to culture and genetics, two of the components which make up ethnicity, and the targeting of an ethnic group is the definition of genocide." First, the targeting of an ethnic group (for purposes other than destruction) is not the definition given in the site you cited. Also, claiming that the group of drug-use-susceptible people is an ethnic or racial group is way too much of a stretch. "Being related to" and being are two very different things.
My second major point: The war on drugs does not fit any of the six subsections of 1091 (a).
(1) It does not kill members of that group. (No death penalty for pure drug crimes, except maybe for Texas.
(2) Causes serious bodily injury to members of that group. Incidents of police brutality are not part of the war on drugs.
(3) Extensive jail time might qualify as "caus[ing] the permanent impairment of the mental faculties", but it is not through "drugs, torture, or similar techniques." Therefore, (3) doesn't apply.
(4) The war on drugs does not submit the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part.
(5) The war on drugs does not impose measures intended to prevent births within the group. I suppose someone might argue jail time might have had this intent, but I don't see this as likely.
(6) I don't know of any cases of (6) related to the war on drugs.
I assert that neither condition of "USC Section 1091 - Genocide" is met by the war on drugs.
P.S. I disagree with you about the relative safety of alcohol and Ecstasy. Many studies have shown moderate consumption of alcohol to have either no effect or a mild positive effect on health. The studies are not conclusive on the human effects of Ecstasy, but there are tentative links to long-term brain damage.
I think your post is rather ironic in view of the content of the article.
Actually, I disagree with a lot of Bush policies, such as the Patriot Act and all the steel and lumber tariffs.
However, I agreed with the decision to go to war in Iraq, regardless of whether Saddam had WMD or not.
Here are the reasons I supported the war:
1) Saddam had a history of obtaining and using weapons of mass destruction.
2) He violated the terms of the April 6, 1991 cease-fire (terms were to abide by all the UN resolutions). Technically, this gives us the right to wage war under international law. (The Persian Gulf War was legal, and technically we didn't make peace, we arrived at a cease-fire. He broke terms, so we resumed the same war. I don't actually care whether people view the war as legal under international law or not; I just thought it an interesting sidenote.) Also, this sets a precedent of the US and UN tolerating gross violations of cease-fire terms. That's a precedent I don't want set.
3) He persistently thwarted attempts to determine presence/extent of WMD programs and capabilities. Given his track record, the burden of proof to show disarmament rightfully rested upon him.
4) Thwarting attempts to determine presence/extent of WMD despite sanctions is highly suspicious.
5) Given the extent of the atrocities under his regime, his removal will most likely end up in an overall good for Iraqis.
Of course, I can see why a reasonable person might have opposed the war:
1) Evidence pointing to WMD was vague, as intel reports tend to be.
2) Waiting was better. If the problem didn't progress far enough to force action, we avoided conflict. If the situation worsened significantly, we could probably have gotten more countries to share the burden of fixing the problem. (I don't like this approach, though. What could we do if he finally managed to get nukes? The problem becomes much more costly to fix. The US or international coalition could still invade, but the cost would be much higher. Most likely, it would include a large portion of Israel's population; if Saddam also got longer range missiles, he might also take out a European or American city.)
You make the following point: "Saddam had less terrorists in his country during his regime than bush does in the USA right now."
With regard to absolute numbers, I imagine you are right. However, per capita I would guess less. Neither statistic is available. However, it doesn't actually matter. In the US, the terrorists are not welcome. In Iraq, many were intentionally tolerated or supported. That is a very important distinction.
I didn't blink when I saw "saddam bin-laden," but that is just because I thought it was some rhetorical device I didn't quite catch. The people who didn't blink may have just decided to tune out, smile, nod, and back up slowly.
Or, they may read rant-formatted (loose comma and apostrophe usage, inconsistent use of capital letters, etc.) with sub-conscious error correction in the background. For instance, I only noticed on re-reading that you said "osama hussien." I just unconsciously dropped the incorrect surname, because in context you had to mean the one of the pair that had not yet been captured.
Reasonable people may disagree about most political issues. Holding opinions at odds with yours does not mean that person is "inept at paying attention", stupid, uninformed, war mongers, or worthy of hate.
Peace through strength is a strategy that has had some success in the past and is a reasonable strategy to discuss. Likewise, peace through diplomacy, likeability, and working through international organizations is worthy of debate.
The likely costs, benefits, and risks of each approach should be rationally discussed. Name-calling degrades the discussion. Also, it lessens the likelihood of your arguments influencing swing voters.
Well, that's my long post on my position on the Iraq war.
If it is much more efficient to run at a consistent output, just use the excess load for energetically expensive, but not time-sensitive processes, like generating hydrogen (from water or otherwise) for fuel cell use.
There isn't a current market for this due to low power consumption, but as electricity prices rise and hydrogen fuel cells become more expensive, the market will expand significantly.
No, no, no, you have it backwards: bananas are Earth-shaped. ;)
Maybe you saw it here? Or maybe here?
To be fair, though, this satire was picked up by many newspapers, including the Guardian, which to their credit published a retraction.
IQ results for Bush are not available, but his SAT score was 1206 or mid 80-percentile compared to current SAT test-takers. The SAT is not an IQ test, but it has a positive correlation with IQ tests of about 0.7 to 0.8. Also, note that the percentile refers to test-takers, not the general public, and test-takers are going to on average have higher IQs than non-test-takers.
That makes it very unlikely he has below-average intelligence. You might want to examine your news sources a little more carefully.
Your math is way off. The chance of a PARTICULAR voter noticing a change if only 1 in a hundred voters checks their ballot and 1 in 10 ballots are modified is 1:1,000. However, there are 1,000s of voters. Also, the odds of detection are better if the proportion of ballots modified is larger and if more than 1 in a hundred voters checks the ballot.
About the unconstitutionality of invalidating the votes for a machine with an error: this situation is analogous to having a ballot box stuffed. You temporarily set aside these votes. If the number of set aside votes is not large enough to affect the election, there isn't a constitutionality problem. If the winning margin is smaller than the number of suspect votes, you have to have a special election, just like when voting fraud on paper goes on. The important thing is that you can catch fraud, which discourages it, and you know when appreciable fraud/error takes place.
The key is that fraud/error only matters if it affects enough votes to influence the election.
Hmm, being in the middle of the battle of Midway versus on couch listening to speakers reproducing sounds. I, for one, have to go for the couch. Bullets scare me.
I agree with the sentiment, though
You could, however, compare the two versions and see why and how the bug fixes are carried out. The implementation of the bug fix may be copyrighted, but the identification of a bug's location and cause is an idea, which is not covered by copyright.
"Their private e-mail is not a public forum."
..."
From a constitutionality standpoint, this doesn't matter for a publicly-funded institution. If an agent of the state, e.g. a public university, intentionally limits speech based upon political content, this constitutes a first amendment violation (abridgement freedom of speech).
Note that I said the argument could be reasonably made, not that I agree with it. I actually do NOT advocate censorship of even them. The point I meant to make was that blacklisting addresses based upon it being an origin of obscene content MIGHT be LEGAL considering precedent. I assumed that NAMBLA e-mails would probably contain obscene content (legally obscene: definition depends upon local social mores). If none of them did and they were merely political arguments, then the legality of a public university blacklisting them is highly questionable.
"... University has a right to limit what traffic they carry on their mail server
If they are a public university, I would argue that because they are an agent of the state, they are limited in their exercise of discretion by constitutional guarantees. A public university that is censoring e-mail from the Sierra Club due to political content is unconstitutionally abridging their freedom of speech. Any lawyers want to cite relevant case law for me?
First of all, it could be reasonably argued that it is still censorship, but that it is within the university's rights.
However, the more important question is whether the university is public or private. If the university is public, blacklisting based on political content violates 1st amendment speech protections (assuming he is in the US), and sets a dangerous precedent of government interference in political communication.
I don't like NAMBLA either and an argument to censor based upon obscenity could reasonably be made, but what about censoring the NRA or Greenpeace or the Earth Liberation Front?
Of course, if it's a private university, yeah, they can blacklist away.
A slight correction: SOME current earth models. The current science for climate prediction models is pretty shaky.
First of all, there are probably unidentified factors that need to be taken into account for any decent model. Second, weights for these variables are hard to assign, and there may be some unidentified feedback mechanisms, both positive and negative.
The models are getting better, but it is an intrinsically very difficult problem, and there is insufficient data to thoroughly evaluate the model.
Also, the rate of recent temperature rise is a subject of debate. "The problem essentially is that observed average global surface
temperatures over the period 1979-1997 show an increase of approximately 0.2oC
whereas downward micro-wave soundings from satellites reveal zero temperature
change through the lower atmosphere or perhaps a slight decrease." http://www.apec.org.au/docs/tucker.pdf
"real, detailed, complete examination . . . is out of the question."
...
May I add, "on any complex or technical issue"? Come on, my local paper can't even publish a mostly accurate introduction to digital cameras.
You expect them to give a "real, detailed, complete examination" of the possible causes and results of some changes to a file for which the vast majority of the audience doesn't know the purpose of and didn't even know existed. Hah! You're the one being naive. It's not about politics; The Nation is (most likely) not going to pick this up either.
The most pernicious media bias is neither liberal nor conservative. It is the tendency to misrepresent reality so as to boost ratings and make their jobs easier. Thus, news coverage is disproportionately about bad news because good news is more complex and less dramatic. Also, in the US, there is more television news coverage of kittens and puppies than the majority of countries. (I didn't look up the kitten/puppy coverage versus coverage of other countries, but that's my impression.)
Media by the shallow, pandering to the shallow.
By the way, I think a large part of why Chomsky hasn't been on CNN is his work is not very suited to sound-bites.
Or maybe that's just what the vast right-wing conspiracy wants you to think