As someone put it in another article, once I have flown around the world and seen that it is round it is pointless to give "equal time" to the idea of a flat earth.
The reason to ignore the critism in TFA is that "creativity" is a subjective term, the person using the term has no idea what he wants other than "creativity". My suggestion to him would be to take up art classes.
I'm not trying to defend China's system of government or bash the US system, the function of both is to maintain civil order by limiting my freedom to plunder villages like my ancestors did during the growing season. The point I was trying to make is that your friends from China sound like they already have a fair bit of "self-respect"...;)
"when was the term "terrorist" misused by the *AA (or, indeed, the US-government)?"
You may be technically correct, I really don't know or care. However, when the "last superpower" gets up and says to the rest of the planet "your either with us or against us" the available categories are clear.
There is no excuse for that, the Simpsons are on the third commercial channel at roughly the same time as the current affairs shows. We actually do have some real jurno's over here but you won't find them in the Herald Sun.
"Just recently in Melbourne a newspaper journalist lifted comments posted on a forum and reported them as fact."
My guess is it's Andrew Bolt in the Herald-Sun, that guy has perfected willfull ignorance as a political tool.
In Melbourne there are three commercial TV channels, every night of the week two of them run current affairs style programs that are full of advertorials, miracle cures, and other sensationalist bullshit. They are often the prime targets in "Chaser's war on everything" (also from Melbourne).
"Skateboarding isn't a crime until a gov't bean counter realizes that skateboarders take a larger share of socialized healthcare resources....etc."
Heh, here in Australia skateboarding and Universal health cover both took off in the 70's, they have both been very popular ever since and have resisted all attacks by hostile bean counters.
"One bureaucracy must attach open-source rules to research done on it's dime. This is great news. Public dime, public property. I love it."
I second that motion in favour of socialized IP.;)
In Australia the federal govt. cross-checks specific datatbases looking for inconsistentencies and fraud, it includes tax records (tax fraud), universal health insurance (provider fraud), and social security payments (dole bluggers and double dippers). The prime keys are your Tax File Number (TFN) and medicare id. This has been the situation since the introduction of the TFN legislation that was brought in to compensate for the first failed "Australia card" efforts back in the 80's.
The fact is that the Aussie TFN already has the same functionality (for the govt.) that Hawke's "Australia card" was proposing and it has had it for more than two decades. The reason that it is successfull and tolerated is just as you say, the "thousands of wankers" have been kept out (again).
Large US companies that don't use lobbyists just don't stay large for long. The root cause is that politicians have usurped the traditional role of the civil servant by selling customised legislation directly to the highest bidder.
"This type of research is cool, but neuroscientists generally aren't impressed until results can be reproduced in a living system."
The first sentance from TFA: "In a laboratory in Switzerland, a group of neuroscientists is developing a mammalian brain - in silicon".
Further down it says "...and it [the rat brain part] behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. It's something quite beautiful...
Now tell me how you can possibly "reproduce it in a living system", isn't it the whole point of any simulation to reproduce the system under study?
"Most of the models make lots of assumptions that may or may not hold true in the actual biology."
In the eighties when I hacked away at my own simulations for fun this was true, the reason was only computer science types understood how to implement the concept, however we CS types had only a minimal understanding of neuroscience (if any), not to mention many CS types loath testing and documentation. This particular project is however a well funded marriage of
CS and Neuroscience, personally I think their claims are credible for two reasons, first the people making the claims are neuroscientists, second they are supported by IBM who have a good track record when it comes to goal orientated research.
Besides, CS has a concept called "black box testing", it tells us that if the model "behaves exactly like its biological counterpart" it doesn't matter how the internals of either bring about the behaviour.
"No one in the US goes without treatment. Hell, even illegal aliens get treated. It may bankrupt you, but if you are in need of treatment in the US, you will get treated."
No one in Australia goes without treatment. Hell, even illegal aliens get treated. It WILL NOT bankrupt you, but if you are in need of treatment in Australia, you will get treated.
What's more if you are already bankrupt you get the same tests, treatments, drugs and doctors as everyone else does AND your ailment does not have to be life threatening to get said traetment.
The bullshit free trade agreement attempted to put a halt to our prescription benifit scheme that has been in place since the 50's but thakfully common sense prevailed and no Australian ever need pay more than $1200yr for exotic drugs. 20yrs ago when I was a member of the "working poor" my eldest son was a chronic asthmatic, had I been in the same situation in the US (or 1960's Australia) I would either be bankrupt or my kid would be dead, possibly both.
Sure if you want a private room or fake tits you have to get private cover or pay for it in cash but prevention and treatment are Universal. And guess what? - For similar quality care to what one would expect if fully insured in the US the Australian taxpayer contributes less per capita (1.5% of taxable income) toward socialized medicine than the US taxpayer currently does.
This is primarly due to the USA's ideology that capitailisim can cure every ill, what this ideology has delivered to the US is poor AVERAGE health outcomes (when compared to many EU contries or Australia), and a confusing mass of state and federal benifits that do little more than stuff pork into random barrels. It will remain this way until "the people" get up and demand that the health system be managed by doctors and health proffesionals rather than bussiness men and politicians.
But they are your countrymen and it's your money, so ultimately it's none of my bussiness that your child mortailty rate is worse than some of the developing nations.
Ummm, it is illegal to donkey vote in certain states (IIRC Victoria abandoned the law in the 90's), however any donkey vote law has always been mute since we are talking about a secret ballot and therefore the offence can never be proven without breaking other laws.
Furthermore spelling out how to donkey vote as you have done in your post is also illegal and can attract jail time. IIRC an activist in the suburbs of Melbourne was taken to court about a decade ago and given a slap on the wrist in an attempt to stop his "none of the above" style campaign.
The classic problem with a donkey vote in our preferential system is that donkey voters often just number the boxes from top to bottom as 1,2,3... the side effect is that this type of donkey vote benifits candidates that are higher up on the ballot. It is estimated that 2-3% of all votes are donkey votes of this type but this is a small price to pay when we are talking about 95+% of the adult population habitually turning up to vote.
TFA: If parliment does end up pandering to the family-first facists and tries to censor the net via the OLFC (which has been tried and failed before) then I belive most Aussies will ignore it in the same way they ignore the donkey vote laws. Never mind the technical difficulties of censoring the net, it's hard to enforce anything when everybody simply ignores you.
Yes, the electoral commission takes a dim view of people who encourage other people to donkey vote, technically you are not supposed to tell anyone "how to donkey vote" although poeple do so on TV talk shows every now and then and nobody bats an eyelid.
Attempts to censor the net via the OFLC are not new here in Australia, the one thing these attempts have in common is that they didn't work. Not so long ago an MP created a site offering advice on assisted suicide. The site was banned via the OFLC, the MP simply transplanted it to New Zealand and it was up again within a day. The parlimantary kerfuffle went on for weeks but the fact that the site was only down for a few hours made the puritans in parliment look naive and ineffective.
This new law is like the donkey vote law in that 99.9999% of the population will ignore it.
You misunderstood me, I see nothing against the idea that matter/energy is somehow spontaneously created since I don't thing the 2nd law of thermodynamics considers an expanding spacetime. However what I also don't see is anything other than circumstantial evidence for it, and as you say it is unable to explain the "face of god" picture.
As for the supernova it seems more likely a result of being sanwiched between two galaxies.
"observatories don't look at the space between galaxies because the consensus is that nothing happens there."
This is a fallacy and also a red-herring. One of the longest exposures times used on the hubble was to study a small patch of "empty space" - it turned out that this pin-prick of "blank" sky was chock full of very distant/faint galaxies. There are missions dedicated to picking up large explosion that emit x-ray/gamma-ray as they occur. Now I agree that "looked but not found" doesn't mean "non-existant" but it certainly does make it less likely. Perhaps when we can control the streaching of spacetime in the lab we will get a better answer.
"I think it's verrry interesting that there are white and black holes."
The problem is that white holes have never been observed either directly or indirectly. But there is plenty of evidence to support the theory that that the Universe is mainly Hydrogen and ignorance.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone put it in another article, once I have flown around the world and seen that it is round it is pointless to give "equal time" to the idea of a flat earth.
The reason to ignore the critism in TFA is that "creativity" is a subjective term, the person using the term has no idea what he wants other than "creativity". My suggestion to him would be to take up art classes.
"I'm just a fiscal conservative."
No, but I bet you would cut your nose off to spite your face.
Opps, your right about Chaser. And yeah, the Age is a quality rag.
As with the UK the best TV news, current affairs, and political satire comes from our two publicly owned stations, go figure!
"You'll find that the lefty can generally write far more legibly with their right hand than said righty with their left."
Perhaps because the lefties have already tried it many times when learning to write, I have never heard anyone say "No Timmy, use your left hand".
I'm not trying to defend China's system of government or bash the US system, the function of both is to maintain civil order by limiting my freedom to plunder villages like my ancestors did during the growing season. The point I was trying to make is that your friends from China sound like they already have a fair bit of "self-respect"... ;)
"when was the term "terrorist" misused by the *AA (or, indeed, the US-government)?"
You may be technically correct, I really don't know or care. However, when the "last superpower" gets up and says to the rest of the planet "your either with us or against us" the available categories are clear.
No, and apparently this means I have no self respect.
There is no excuse for that, the Simpsons are on the third commercial channel at roughly the same time as the current affairs shows. We actually do have some real jurno's over here but you won't find them in the Herald Sun.
I guessed the right newspaper, just the wrong page. :)
"Once the people get a taste of self-respect..."
Let me guess, your american and have never been anywhere near China.
"Just recently in Melbourne a newspaper journalist lifted comments posted on a forum and reported them as fact."
My guess is it's Andrew Bolt in the Herald-Sun, that guy has perfected willfull ignorance as a political tool.
In Melbourne there are three commercial TV channels, every night of the week two of them run current affairs style programs that are full of advertorials, miracle cures, and other sensationalist bullshit. They are often the prime targets in "Chaser's war on everything" (also from Melbourne).
"The artists are essentially forced to enter a one sided contract"
We all make at least one dumb bussiness decision, nobody was holding a gun to their head.
"Skateboarding isn't a crime until a gov't bean counter realizes that skateboarders take a larger share of socialized healthcare resources....etc."
;)
Heh, here in Australia skateboarding and Universal health cover both took off in the 70's, they have both been very popular ever since and have resisted all attacks by hostile bean counters.
"One bureaucracy must attach open-source rules to research done on it's dime. This is great news. Public dime, public property. I love it."
I second that motion in favour of socialized IP.
In Australia the federal govt. cross-checks specific datatbases looking for inconsistentencies and fraud, it includes tax records (tax fraud), universal health insurance (provider fraud), and social security payments (dole bluggers and double dippers). The prime keys are your Tax File Number (TFN) and medicare id. This has been the situation since the introduction of the TFN legislation that was brought in to compensate for the first failed "Australia card" efforts back in the 80's.
The fact is that the Aussie TFN already has the same functionality (for the govt.) that Hawke's "Australia card" was proposing and it has had it for more than two decades. The reason that it is successfull and tolerated is just as you say, the "thousands of wankers" have been kept out (again).
Large US companies that don't use lobbyists just don't stay large for long. The root cause is that politicians have usurped the traditional role of the civil servant by selling customised legislation directly to the highest bidder.
Yes, TFA is comparing an apple to a truckload of oranges.
"This type of research is cool, but neuroscientists generally aren't impressed until results can be reproduced in a living system."
The first sentance from TFA: "In a laboratory in Switzerland, a group of neuroscientists is developing a mammalian brain - in silicon".
Further down it says "...and it [the rat brain part] behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. It's something quite beautiful...
Now tell me how you can possibly "reproduce it in a living system", isn't it the whole point of any simulation to reproduce the system under study?
"Most of the models make lots of assumptions that may or may not hold true in the actual biology."
In the eighties when I hacked away at my own simulations for fun this was true, the reason was only computer science types understood how to implement the concept, however we CS types had only a minimal understanding of neuroscience (if any), not to mention many CS types loath testing and documentation. This particular project is however a well funded marriage of CS and Neuroscience, personally I think their claims are credible for two reasons, first the people making the claims are neuroscientists, second they are supported by IBM who have a good track record when it comes to goal orientated research.
Besides, CS has a concept called "black box testing", it tells us that if the model "behaves exactly like its biological counterpart" it doesn't matter how the internals of either bring about the behaviour.
"No one in the US goes without treatment. Hell, even illegal aliens get treated. It may bankrupt you, but if you are in need of treatment in the US, you will get treated."
No one in Australia goes without treatment. Hell, even illegal aliens get treated. It WILL NOT bankrupt you, but if you are in need of treatment in Australia, you will get treated.
What's more if you are already bankrupt you get the same tests, treatments, drugs and doctors as everyone else does AND your ailment does not have to be life threatening to get said traetment.
The bullshit free trade agreement attempted to put a halt to our prescription benifit scheme that has been in place since the 50's but thakfully common sense prevailed and no Australian ever need pay more than $1200yr for exotic drugs. 20yrs ago when I was a member of the "working poor" my eldest son was a chronic asthmatic, had I been in the same situation in the US (or 1960's Australia) I would either be bankrupt or my kid would be dead, possibly both.
Sure if you want a private room or fake tits you have to get private cover or pay for it in cash but prevention and treatment are Universal. And guess what? - For similar quality care to what one would expect if fully insured in the US the Australian taxpayer contributes less per capita (1.5% of taxable income) toward socialized medicine than the US taxpayer currently does.
This is primarly due to the USA's ideology that capitailisim can cure every ill, what this ideology has delivered to the US is poor AVERAGE health outcomes (when compared to many EU contries or Australia), and a confusing mass of state and federal benifits that do little more than stuff pork into random barrels. It will remain this way until "the people" get up and demand that the health system be managed by doctors and health proffesionals rather than bussiness men and politicians.
But they are your countrymen and it's your money, so ultimately it's none of my bussiness that your child mortailty rate is worse than some of the developing nations.
Ummm, it is illegal to donkey vote in certain states (IIRC Victoria abandoned the law in the 90's), however any donkey vote law has always been mute since we are talking about a secret ballot and therefore the offence can never be proven without breaking other laws.
Furthermore spelling out how to donkey vote as you have done in your post is also illegal and can attract jail time. IIRC an activist in the suburbs of Melbourne was taken to court about a decade ago and given a slap on the wrist in an attempt to stop his "none of the above" style campaign.
The classic problem with a donkey vote in our preferential system is that donkey voters often just number the boxes from top to bottom as 1,2,3... the side effect is that this type of donkey vote benifits candidates that are higher up on the ballot. It is estimated that 2-3% of all votes are donkey votes of this type but this is a small price to pay when we are talking about 95+% of the adult population habitually turning up to vote.
TFA: If parliment does end up pandering to the family-first facists and tries to censor the net via the OLFC (which has been tried and failed before) then I belive most Aussies will ignore it in the same way they ignore the donkey vote laws. Never mind the technical difficulties of censoring the net, it's hard to enforce anything when everybody simply ignores you.
Yes, the electoral commission takes a dim view of people who encourage other people to donkey vote, technically you are not supposed to tell anyone "how to donkey vote" although poeple do so on TV talk shows every now and then and nobody bats an eyelid.
Attempts to censor the net via the OFLC are not new here in Australia, the one thing these attempts have in common is that they didn't work. Not so long ago an MP created a site offering advice on assisted suicide. The site was banned via the OFLC, the MP simply transplanted it to New Zealand and it was up again within a day. The parlimantary kerfuffle went on for weeks but the fact that the site was only down for a few hours made the puritans in parliment look naive and ineffective.
This new law is like the donkey vote law in that 99.9999% of the population will ignore it.
Who's kids are we talking about? Mine are adults 27 & 22 and were not traumatized because Donald Duck was naked from the waist down.
Yet to anyone outside the US, TFA is about one candidate pandering to fear and ignorance on a trivial matter.
You misunderstood me, I see nothing against the idea that matter/energy is somehow spontaneously created since I don't thing the 2nd law of thermodynamics considers an expanding spacetime. However what I also don't see is anything other than circumstantial evidence for it, and as you say it is unable to explain the "face of god" picture.
As for the supernova it seems more likely a result of being sanwiched between two galaxies.
"observatories don't look at the space between galaxies because the consensus is that nothing happens there."
This is a fallacy and also a red-herring. One of the longest exposures times used on the hubble was to study a small patch of "empty space" - it turned out that this pin-prick of "blank" sky was chock full of very distant/faint galaxies. There are missions dedicated to picking up large explosion that emit x-ray/gamma-ray as they occur. Now I agree that "looked but not found" doesn't mean "non-existant" but it certainly does make it less likely. Perhaps when we can control the streaching of spacetime in the lab we will get a better answer.
"I think it's verrry interesting that there are white and black holes."
The problem is that white holes have never been observed either directly or indirectly. But there is plenty of evidence to support the theory that that the Universe is mainly Hydrogen and ignorance.
Big Bunny's moonbase was defeated by the Goodies in the transitorized carrot episode.