As a fellow old-fart I agree with your recollections. When in primary school I (and the other kids at school) thought Mao's "little red book" must have been banned because it was about sex..."you know....like that Indian sex book".
In the early 70's there was also a huge fuss about minature replicas of the statue of David, so even though....teenagers were bonking themselves silly with whoever would let them, young adults were choosing to 'live in sin', "collage girls" were setting fire to their undergarments,...it was still politically benificial to try and stop teenagers having sex by putting a fig leaf on David.
Last year I watched "American beauty" on TV, an excellent film that I had seen before on DVD. If it had been made a few decades earlier I don't think you would have seen it on 1970's TV. No matter what the time slot, it would have been despised by extremists on all sides for failing to adequately point out the line between "good and evil".
What experience I have had with genuinely abused people has taught me that on most occasions those who shout the loudest about punishing "sexual deviates" are often the ones who have the most to hide. Wether this behaviuor is driven by their subconsious after suffering abuse themselves or not, I don't know. However what these 'predators' are doing is diluting the seriousness of their own actions by associating them with draconian punishment for trivial or even normal behaviour. The guy who is responsible for the FUBAR'd sex-offenders list is one (very significant) example of the machiavellian rock spider.
Now excuse me, I feel a need to quaff an amber potion.:)
So your the guy who follows me around waving the air....
I'm an Aussie and I think the very few people who complain about ciggarette smoke at a bus stop are full of shit. Exactly what do you think that stench is that is coming out of the back of the bus?
So if I'm outside smoking and you don't like it then move upwind, otherwise it's you who is being obnoxious.
You would definitely need a plane since it's infinitely improbable a whale should just spontaneously appear several miles above the suface of the planet.
"Einstein, though a brilliant physicist, was not trained in the philosophy of religion."
And yet 50+ yrs after his death, religious philosophers, fellow scientists, and popular writers are all trying to understand what he meant by the phrase "The mind of God". So I hardly think "http://www.einstein-website.de/z_biography/credo.html">the personal philosophy of one of the great thinkers of the 20th century can be dismissed as inappropriate.
However I do agree with the rest of your post it's more entertaining to watch all sides trying to prove "Einstien is on their side".;)
"I apologize for posting anonymously, but I do have to go to company picnics, parties and other events where being too direct about these topics would cause "political" problems."
The quote above really doesn't put you in a position to pass judgement, if your so quick to hide your thoughts without any coercion then how do you know what your Chinese collegues "really" think?
The rest of your post is a stereotype at best and like a newspaper horoscope it can be applied to just about any powerfull nation.
BTW: The "Center of the world" thing refers to the ancient seat of the Emporer, it has as much meaning as "God's own country", "Viva la France" or "Rule Brittania".
"I keep seeing this come up, and I keep asking is not the government made of people?"
Indeed, but there are 6 billion different opinions on how the world should work. I posted the monkeyshpere link above, but it's worth posting again (note there are two pages).
Come to Australia, we have bettles, toads, horses, donkeys, water buffalo, pigs, rabbits, foxes, mice, rats, sparrows, starlings, starfish and more wild camels than Saudi Arabia. Every single one of them plus the many species I have ommited are pests.
The upward trend is indeed a predicted "positive feedback" from global warming, water vapor is dependent on temprature and pressure not vica-versa, and yes the signal is noisy. Other examples of positive feedbacks are methane from melting permafrost, loss of reflectivity from loss of ice cover. A example of a negative feedback would be more bush fires (the areosols reflect sunlight).
Talk to a proffesional fisherman or indead any seaman about the usefullness of GPS beacons and what the hell that has to do with underfunded levy banks.
I'm an Aussie and just qualify as a baby boomer (1959), the moon-landing grabbed peoples attention the world over in the opposite way to 911 (except the Eastern bloc), every kid wanted to be an astronaught. Problem now is "it's been done" and ICBM's that can hit a gnat between the eyes from 12,000 miles away are "ho-hum".
I'm glad I was paying attention as a 10yro at that point in history but now I'm older I appreciate NASA for the "Great Observatories" project, of which Hubble was part. I also appreciate their landsat type missions and the interplanetary probes they send out every now and then, and to give the military side of things credit where it's due - let's not forget GPS.
/tinfoil-hat
From what I read, the current occupants of the Whitehouse have gutted these budgets in favour of the man on Mars "pipe dream". I get the idea that the "dream" was to hinder the flow of acurate environmental data concerning our own planet, or perhaps it's just a personal vendetta against a man who stubbornly speaks truth to power. Whatever it is, it's not motivated by a GWB Duck Dogers fantasy, nor does it appeal to this particular baby-boomer/flower-child.
/tinfoil-hat
They could declare the cold war over and let the space station die a natural death. The only role left for humans is the space shuttle missions, either they could design robots to replace them in these tasks (and spur a bit of tech), or maybe save all that shuttle infrastructure money and simply claim dud missions on insurance and send up a replacement observatory/probe instead of a repair crew.
I sympathise with the "put-up or privatise" argument but I fear the put-up option is a white elephant, and the privatise option would just create an orbiting Disneyland that will be created by the private market sooner or later anyway. From my POV I think politicians should provide stable policy and budget, scientific merit should provide the projects.
Anyway, thanks for over 40yrs of free food for my sense of awe at the universe. From my POV NASA's non-military arm really is one of modern man's greatest scientific institutions, akin to the great library of Alexandria in it's time. It would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater but at the end of the day, it's your baby.
Yeah we have similar laws in Oz but if your read the fine print of most anti-tampering/impeadment laws you will generally find they are aimed at keeping common carriers in line and protecting common carriers from unauthorised attacks. ISP (especially those owned by phone companies) have the ISP company structured so that they do not have common-carrier status. Under these types of laws an email provider is not considered a communications carrier and can do whatever they like with THIER servers (ie: is it actually your email in the eyes of the law once it has traversed the common carrier and is on their server?).
Someone running an email service does not normally have a legal obligation to do anything to protect the contents of the email regardless of what the user expects. Posting comments to slashdot is also 'electronic communications', sure slashdot allow you to post almost anything but they are under no obligation to do so.
Now like everyone else here, I would like my email to be left alone but I am not willing to pay a dime to send youtube links to my friends. In other words beggars can't be chosers and this is why beggers with a bit of sense who want to ensure privacy use encryption.
I had no intention of hitting anyone except in self defense (arms folded, standing just out of reach). All I did was play the "alpha male" to a bunch of early teens by taking ownership of the phone box and giving them an escape route, up until that point they had no reason to think anyone owned or cared about it. Oh yeah, paperwork is a bummer and if your bleeding profusely nobody will touch you with out putting on rubber gloves first.
I'm not recommending it, if they are older and drunker call over your sholder for someone to ring the cops....that still works here anyway. I done something like maybe 4-5 times over 30yrs. I have a twisted nose and minor scar tissue on my right eyeball so yes I know it doesn't always work out well. However now I don't have anyone depending me I can afford to quote midnight oil and say "I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees".
Fellow Aussies will note the irony of P.Garrett being nueterd by the labor party......meh.:)
"I hope more incidents like this happen, maybe it will piss off the rest of the UK population enough so that they might just take notice."
Yes, lets hope the people rise up and smite them. Then we can all walk the footpaths of this great nation free from the fear of canine landmines.
As an aside I drove around the UK a couple of years ago and got to play crocidile dundee with some local vandals. Near Cambridge I was waiting in the car for the missus to come out of a shop when I noticed half a dozen 13-15yro kids around a telephone box. One of them started trying to rip the door off with all his might and was putting in quite a bit of time and effort. It was in broard daylight, there were people nearby pretending it wasn't happening.
Now I'm a rather large, middle-aged Aussie so I dragged my arse out of the car and walked up to within a meter or so of the kid bashing the door, folded my arms across my chest and waited till he turned around and caught my eye.
He and his mates froze, the converstaion went something like...
Me: "Is that yours?"
Kid:"No".
Me: "Then I suggest you fuck off now because I might want to use it."
I stayed in position waiting in silence for a few seconds. Some of them moved away faster than the others who were trying there best to stay composed. I can understand a woman or even a man on his own not wanting to takle half a dozen teenage kids but the shopping strip was packed and nobody was batting an eyelid!!!
Although I agree with your logic in your post and I don't think people should be spoon-fed as adults, I get a diffrent conclusion because I don't belive the market is "free" at all, nor do I think it should be. Simple observation says if it was free, bongheads could get papers, tabbaco and dope at the same store.
In other words, the market is always directed towards "social benifit" by regulation. The different labels of socialisim and capitailisim when applied to the market refer to how one defines "social benifit". Personally I would define it as something like, providing the best possible access to basic human requirements (water, food, shelter, security, in that order) for those who are able bodied, best possible medical care for the weak, and preserving the viability of the bio-sphere. Those that have defined it and continuosly "reform" it obviously think differently.
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As a fellow old-fart I agree with your recollections. When in primary school I (and the other kids at school) thought Mao's "little red book" must have been banned because it was about sex..."you know....like that Indian sex book".
:)
In the early 70's there was also a huge fuss about minature replicas of the statue of David, so even though....teenagers were bonking themselves silly with whoever would let them, young adults were choosing to 'live in sin', "collage girls" were setting fire to their undergarments,...it was still politically benificial to try and stop teenagers having sex by putting a fig leaf on David.
Last year I watched "American beauty" on TV, an excellent film that I had seen before on DVD. If it had been made a few decades earlier I don't think you would have seen it on 1970's TV. No matter what the time slot, it would have been despised by extremists on all sides for failing to adequately point out the line between "good and evil".
What experience I have had with genuinely abused people has taught me that on most occasions those who shout the loudest about punishing "sexual deviates" are often the ones who have the most to hide. Wether this behaviuor is driven by their subconsious after suffering abuse themselves or not, I don't know. However what these 'predators' are doing is diluting the seriousness of their own actions by associating them with draconian punishment for trivial or even normal behaviour. The guy who is responsible for the FUBAR'd sex-offenders list is one (very significant) example of the machiavellian rock spider.
Now excuse me, I feel a need to quaff an amber potion.
So your the guy who follows me around waving the air....
I'm an Aussie and I think the very few people who complain about ciggarette smoke at a bus stop are full of shit. Exactly what do you think that stench is that is coming out of the back of the bus?
So if I'm outside smoking and you don't like it then move upwind, otherwise it's you who is being obnoxious.
"In a perfect society, sure, they'd help find criminals and missing persons."
In a perfect society there would be no criminals or missing persons.
You would definitely need a plane since it's infinitely improbable a whale should just spontaneously appear several miles above the suface of the planet.
Sorry for the national insensitivity, I don't want to sporin your weekend.
:)
BTW: You do realise the Irish introduced the bagpipes into Scotland a few centuries ago...AS A JOKE!!!
"Einstein, though a brilliant physicist, was not trained in the philosophy of religion."
;)
And yet 50+ yrs after his death, religious philosophers, fellow scientists, and popular writers are all trying to understand what he meant by the phrase "The mind of God". So I hardly think "http://www.einstein-website.de/z_biography/credo.html">the personal philosophy of one of the great thinkers of the 20th century can be dismissed as inappropriate.
However I do agree with the rest of your post it's more entertaining to watch all sides trying to prove "Einstien is on their side".
"I'm actually Scottish ... I was going to go with the Spice Girls."
Yes, stick with the Spice Girls. The Bay City Rollers would probably be considered a war crime nowadays.
Thank you for your reply but we cannot engage in sex with our customers, perhaps I could interest you in some FREE PORN. ;)
"I apologize for posting anonymously, but I do have to go to company picnics, parties and other events where being too direct about these topics would cause "political" problems."
The quote above really doesn't put you in a position to pass judgement, if your so quick to hide your thoughts without any coercion then how do you know what your Chinese collegues "really" think?
The rest of your post is a stereotype at best and like a newspaper horoscope it can be applied to just about any powerfull nation.
BTW: The "Center of the world" thing refers to the ancient seat of the Emporer, it has as much meaning as "God's own country", "Viva la France" or "Rule Brittania".
"I keep seeing this come up, and I keep asking is not the government made of people?"
Indeed, but there are 6 billion different opinions on how the world should work. I posted the monkeyshpere link above, but it's worth posting again (note there are two pages).
"Yeah, but when they agree with the governments actions..."
You seem to be missing the pointy bit at the end of your sentence?
Best post I have triggered with a one liner for many years. The monkeysphere sort of sums it all up in a humorous way.
"Have you considered removing them from your flat?"
Flats are for cute & cuddly native animals called possums, often refered to as "roof rabbits" or "dim sims".
"That might make a difference on how you look at wildlife."
Please don't presume you know how I "look at wildlife".
Apart from outright cruelty you can do whatever you like with them. I suspect there is more profit in dog food than Indian plow camels.
"did chinese have a heart when beating down tibet protesters just 2-3 weeks ago, and locking them in to prisons for life ?"
Stop judging a nation's people by it's government's actions and the world will make a lot more sense.
Come to Australia, we have bettles, toads, horses, donkeys, water buffalo, pigs, rabbits, foxes, mice, rats, sparrows, starlings, starfish and more wild camels than Saudi Arabia. Every single one of them plus the many species I have ommited are pests.
The upward trend is indeed a predicted "positive feedback" from global warming, water vapor is dependent on temprature and pressure not vica-versa, and yes the signal is noisy. Other examples of positive feedbacks are methane from melting permafrost, loss of reflectivity from loss of ice cover. A example of a negative feedback would be more bush fires (the areosols reflect sunlight).
Talk to a proffesional fisherman or indead any seaman about the usefullness of GPS beacons and what the hell that has to do with underfunded levy banks.
I'm an Aussie and just qualify as a baby boomer (1959), the moon-landing grabbed peoples attention the world over in the opposite way to 911 (except the Eastern bloc), every kid wanted to be an astronaught. Problem now is "it's been done" and ICBM's that can hit a gnat between the eyes from 12,000 miles away are "ho-hum".
/tinfoil-hat
/tinfoil-hat
I'm glad I was paying attention as a 10yro at that point in history but now I'm older I appreciate NASA for the "Great Observatories" project, of which Hubble was part. I also appreciate their landsat type missions and the interplanetary probes they send out every now and then, and to give the military side of things credit where it's due - let's not forget GPS.
From what I read, the current occupants of the Whitehouse have gutted these budgets in favour of the man on Mars "pipe dream". I get the idea that the "dream" was to hinder the flow of acurate environmental data concerning our own planet, or perhaps it's just a personal vendetta against a man who stubbornly speaks truth to power. Whatever it is, it's not motivated by a GWB Duck Dogers fantasy, nor does it appeal to this particular baby-boomer/flower-child.
They could declare the cold war over and let the space station die a natural death. The only role left for humans is the space shuttle missions, either they could design robots to replace them in these tasks (and spur a bit of tech), or maybe save all that shuttle infrastructure money and simply claim dud missions on insurance and send up a replacement observatory/probe instead of a repair crew.
I sympathise with the "put-up or privatise" argument but I fear the put-up option is a white elephant, and the privatise option would just create an orbiting Disneyland that will be created by the private market sooner or later anyway. From my POV I think politicians should provide stable policy and budget, scientific merit should provide the projects.
Anyway, thanks for over 40yrs of free food for my sense of awe at the universe. From my POV NASA's non-military arm really is one of modern man's greatest scientific institutions, akin to the great library of Alexandria in it's time. It would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater but at the end of the day, it's your baby.
Yeah we have similar laws in Oz but if your read the fine print of most anti-tampering/impeadment laws you will generally find they are aimed at keeping common carriers in line and protecting common carriers from unauthorised attacks. ISP (especially those owned by phone companies) have the ISP company structured so that they do not have common-carrier status. Under these types of laws an email provider is not considered a communications carrier and can do whatever they like with THIER servers (ie: is it actually your email in the eyes of the law once it has traversed the common carrier and is on their server?).
Someone running an email service does not normally have a legal obligation to do anything to protect the contents of the email regardless of what the user expects. Posting comments to slashdot is also 'electronic communications', sure slashdot allow you to post almost anything but they are under no obligation to do so.
Now like everyone else here, I would like my email to be left alone but I am not willing to pay a dime to send youtube links to my friends. In other words beggars can't be chosers and this is why beggers with a bit of sense who want to ensure privacy use encryption.
Heh, I checked out his previous comments - turns out YOU are the propogandist.
I had no intention of hitting anyone except in self defense (arms folded, standing just out of reach). All I did was play the "alpha male" to a bunch of early teens by taking ownership of the phone box and giving them an escape route, up until that point they had no reason to think anyone owned or cared about it. Oh yeah, paperwork is a bummer and if your bleeding profusely nobody will touch you with out putting on rubber gloves first.
I'm not recommending it, if they are older and drunker call over your sholder for someone to ring the cops....that still works here anyway. I done something like maybe 4-5 times over 30yrs. I have a twisted nose and minor scar tissue on my right eyeball so yes I know it doesn't always work out well. However now I don't have anyone depending me I can afford to quote midnight oil and say "I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees".
:)
Fellow Aussies will note the irony of P.Garrett being nueterd by the labor party......meh.
"I hope more incidents like this happen, maybe it will piss off the rest of the UK population enough so that they might just take notice."
Yes, lets hope the people rise up and smite them. Then we can all walk the footpaths of this great nation free from the fear of canine landmines.
As an aside I drove around the UK a couple of years ago and got to play crocidile dundee with some local vandals. Near Cambridge I was waiting in the car for the missus to come out of a shop when I noticed half a dozen 13-15yro kids around a telephone box. One of them started trying to rip the door off with all his might and was putting in quite a bit of time and effort. It was in broard daylight, there were people nearby pretending it wasn't happening.
Now I'm a rather large, middle-aged Aussie so I dragged my arse out of the car and walked up to within a meter or so of the kid bashing the door, folded my arms across my chest and waited till he turned around and caught my eye.
He and his mates froze, the converstaion went something like...
Me: "Is that yours?"
Kid:"No".
Me: "Then I suggest you fuck off now because I might want to use it."
I stayed in position waiting in silence for a few seconds. Some of them moved away faster than the others who were trying there best to stay composed. I can understand a woman or even a man on his own not wanting to takle half a dozen teenage kids but the shopping strip was packed and nobody was batting an eyelid!!!
Although I agree with your logic in your post and I don't think people should be spoon-fed as adults, I get a diffrent conclusion because I don't belive the market is "free" at all, nor do I think it should be. Simple observation says if it was free, bongheads could get papers, tabbaco and dope at the same store.
In other words, the market is always directed towards "social benifit" by regulation. The different labels of socialisim and capitailisim when applied to the market refer to how one defines "social benifit". Personally I would define it as something like, providing the best possible access to basic human requirements (water, food, shelter, security, in that order) for those who are able bodied, best possible medical care for the weak, and preserving the viability of the bio-sphere. Those that have defined it and continuosly "reform" it obviously think differently.