What I find is my children are taught tricks and workarounds rather than an understanding of the fundamental math problems.
You've got that right. Tricks and workarounds are properly the right of the man who has slogged through the trail so many times that he's tired of the trip and wants to economize. Understanding -- the suffering of knowledge -- must precede the shorter methods.
The first part of your posting is simply incorrect.
There is no such thing as a "service and information based economy" for any significant span of time. A sustainable economy must be based on the manufacture of capital equipment... you know, stuff that can be used to produce other stuff, and also real wealth.
Any fool can see this basis being leached out of America due to the suicidal drive for more profits (over already good profits to begin with). Since large-scale economic movements by definition take time, this can go on for a generation or two... until the masses "wake up slaves on the continent their fathers conquered".
Once they awaken to that, violence will become a way of life. Jefferson knew this, and tried to warn us ages ago. But people didn't want to listen. Sad, really.
Yucca would be a poor choice. 1) Contamination by radiation would surely degrade the storage media for any reasonable length of cultural-change time. 2) Temperatures in the actual storage areas might get as high as 500 degress F from the heat generated by the materials inside the waste casks. That would also threaten your storage media.
I'm sure it struck you immediately that citizens cannot get an exemption for purchases that are essential to their lives.
Sales taxes on stuff should have been enough. Businesses need stuff even to deliver pure services; so they'll buy stuff and be taxed thereby. But the voracity of government continues onward.
Industries making billions just don't roll over when you propose they make 0.
Prediction: For using their books, textbook publishers will soon get universities to sign comprehensive noncompete agreements, whereby their professors can't go and do "Communist" things like publish their own books... especially for free.
Your kind of response continues to MISS THE POINT.
The point is to bring so much conflicting information into the fray that people become paralyzed with uncertainty and indecision. It's the only way to keep a secret actually secret nowadays. Instead of body armor, use fog.
Hence no one will show up at my door looking to kill me. It is important for the entire disinformation picture to have dissenters and exposers. Anything I say helps the fog that hides the truth. Our conversation helps that too.
The only thing that a person can really do to find out the truth is stop trusting and start investigating themselves... by getting a scope and check it out themselves. Assuming they are skilled enough in tracking an astronomical object, their own eyes can't lie to them.
P.S. You're a boob. Read some books for a change of pace.
Congratulations for proving my point. Calling something "tinfoil hat" is another mechanism for disinformation.
In an armageddon strike, all bets are off. As an outstanding modern example, America assaulted Iraq purely for selfish reasons. It only stands to reason from that, that the elite will do anything possible (including murdering amateur astronomers which you hold so dear) if Toutatis were actually coming to hit us. They can do anything right out in the open, as long as they put the proper spin and uncertainty on it. (Sounds like quantum physics, doesn't it?)
For example, suddenly telescopes can be officially declared "missile spotters" for "domestic terrorists planning on downing airliners at airports". Regardless of the absurdity of the declaration (astronomical telescopes are poor aiming devices for shoulder-fired missiles), public distrust will be sown. Since 'scopes are put out in backyards where they are visible, they will encounter suspicion... which will be (note well) reacted to by the 'scope owners themselves before they even place them out in the yard. Confiscation efforts can proceed in tandem for the most egregious amateurs who insist on "finding out the truth".
If you don't think that's possible, stick an Almanac on your dashboard and drive around.
The entire point is to keep the public confused for months to allow the elite to operate without dealing with price hikes, shortages, riots and other such impediments to their attempts to save themselves. This is all a game of delay, not justice-will-be-served... like what SCO is currently doing. Although as much time as possible would be desired, months is all the elite can expect, and with hundreds of billions to invest, they can get a lot done in those months before the truth hits one way or another. Then the bunkers will convert to the "shoot unauthorized visitors" mode and the rest of us -- like ninnies, having trusted our elites -- will have to wait out Toutatis.
The Internet will only ADD to the disinformation campaign. It's not the velocity of information that determines such things; it's the fact that disinformation itself works extremely well with a depraved populace (as America examples so well if you'd check the news lately). Face facts. At least half of America believes Iraq was involved in 911. America is very good at even disinforming itself. It's not hard to steer such a ship of state towards a reef for however long a delay is required.
In closing, your point is invalid, and you've a lot more reading to catch up on. The Internet is only going to make it worse, since the stakes will be the highest imaginable to the people benefiting directly from collective ignorance and impotence.
Yes, exactly, why would they (the idiosyncratic "them")?
Depending on the severity of the strike, the response will always be governed by Elitist Cataclysmic Logic:
SAVE US FIRST AND SCREW EVERYBODY ELSE.
Any strike from an object detected by telescopes will be particulary severe... you can depend upon at least a 10MT explosion in the lower atmosphere. But with objects sized like Toutatis, the strike will be a groundripper in the 100s of MTs.
Such an event means that stock portfolios are likely to tank.
I mean, seriously, stop laughing for a moment and think it through. The globalist elite don't stand by and let their wealth be decimated; if something even 10% of the size of Toutatis were coming, the effect upon the people of Earth would be fierce. People's involvement in the economic and social structure would severely compromise the highly artificial existence of the authority of the wealthy.
Since real-world catastrophes are likely to adversely affect the parasitical existence of the global elite, then with something as large as Toutatis I can only expect attempts at a news blackout (and a disinformation campaign, which is even more effective) for a while until the point is moot (i.e. the thing is so close that even small, un-confiscated telescopes and binoculars can see it, or it hits).
To use a for-example, let's say Toutatis is coming to hit us. The elite would hear about it pretty early, since the larger scopes are run by institutions and academic elites, and those are strongly connected to "them". Since Toutatis would likely strike ocean and cause thousands of billions of dollars in damage from the tidal waves, the elite will immediately put a lock on the knowledge.
To do so, the acacdemics (certainly notorious for eruptions of dissent) would have to be controlled and discredited. The major scopes in the world will be put under lock and key simply by contacting other government entities. In fact, the act of "let's turn our scopes upon Toutatis to track it to confirm the rumor" would be the plain-view method of justifying this takeover. Various government and elite agents will show up and simply use their authority to put a lock on the data.
Concurrent with the start of this control campaign, will be the disinformation one. False data will be generated by several sites through their controlling agents, to confuse the correct data from other sites. It will also serve to counter sites that escape control, like from the actions of some nutbag academic who thinks he's serving the "greater good" by collecting and reporting the correct data.
And with the disinformation campaign, the issue of interal dissenters will also be addressed. More people producing conflicting data is great for that, but the issue gets even more clouded when agents step forward and confess to the fraud. With enough of this kind of thing, the public won't know what to think... which is the entire point, since a confused and uncertain public tends to not act at all.
After that, things get more militant. Smaller scopes will get into the game, and by then their naivete will get the better of them, letting the police, military and intelligence services get into the act (purely on orders, and we all know how much injustice happens on the basis of "I have my orders") by visiting and confiscating their scopes by one means or another. The equipment can be taken or broken; the operators can be arrested; and the operator can be enlisted in "confirmation efforts" which would just be an attempt to keep them quiet by controlling their output data.
Well, this kind of thing can bubble along quite merrily for... months. Perhaps a year. And faced with armageddon, months of notice can make all the difference for the survival of the elite. Underground bunkers can be readied; resources can be swallowed up into them at large rates (paid for with money that
Anti-intellectualism has geography as one of its factors. It could well be that your area is particularly harsh on expressions of mind. Believe me; I grew up in Toledo, Ohio -- a Third World country disguised as an American city... so I know exactly what I'm talking about here.
I'm sure we lose a lot of children to regional backwardness. I'm not sure why I survived the atmosphere of intense persecution of the "nerd"... perhaps it was my stubbornness.
All we can really do about such injustice is to live well as the best revenge, and from that, provide a port in the storm to those who seek shelter. Raise a flag and advertise your opposition, and perhaps you can start turning the tide. All a movement really needs is people who raise their fists.
All very apt criticisms, but let's not forget the hidden-but-still-missing item: practical clubs. Where are the gun clubs at school, where students can learn to become responsible weapon users? Where are the electronics clubs, where students can learn to repair their own appliances and and build their own gadgets? I could go on, but you should have the point by now. If anything, schools push the mealy-mouthed clubs like "French" and "Literature"... in short, all the prissy stuff that prepares a student for... more schooling, not actually DOING STUFF.
People who learn and work hand-in-hand are more intelligent and capable.
The only "stupidity" in the analogy is your involvement. Read some books for a change.
For the purposes of this article, I'm limiting my points to intrasolar space, probably out into the inner Oort.
The ocean is a desert, which anyone with a basic oceanographic education could tell you. It took considerable skill and resources to cross it alive, and even more such in health. And the loss of your ship meant the loss of your life almost as surely as if you were in space.
You can survive space transits by being as skilled in the enterprise. In space , you have direct access to sunlight, which provides power (even propulsion if you choose the solar-sail option... but that 1/r^2 sure is a bitch). Just like ocean crossing, finding an island every so often was a god-send... similarly so with space travel, provided you have the skills and equipment to make use of the materials on the asteroids or comets you happen across. And the wise man doesn't leave such encounters to chance... he AIMS for the next convenient port-of-call.
Crossing the oceans proved to be an exercise in ENGINEERING. So it is with space travel. It's just that the Western civilization is resoundingly spoiled with a very mature transportation infrastructure, and no longer commonly understands that before you can go anywhere, you must build some sort of road. This includes fuel and repair depots. Just because these are not in space right now, doesn't mean that they cannot be there.
The ocean-crossing analogy has salient points that apply. Just because you can open your sailboat hatch and not decompress, doesn't make for a bad analogy.
Oh, gee, I'm sorry, I'll elaborate past your wall of willful ignorance.
The essence of globalism is to move capital faster or smoother than can be caught by the outmoded philosophies of taxation and social contracts. Corporations moving into global entities take on this economic culture.
In about 10 years, while you are loaded down with property, income and sales taxes, while every corporation doing business in your town pays 0 of these taxes, perhaps your mind will once again be aligned with the truth since your wallet will be.
Sheesh, you talk like a company is some sort of non-coporeal life form making decisions and then ordering its human slaves to comply.
That's entirely right. It is. Corporations are gathering great "personal" power while having essentially no corporeal form to control. Thet's the essence of globalism.
You thought you were making a point, but your ridiculous example was in fact right on the money.
If anything CASPIAN is pro-retail, trying to preserve the ability of non-registered human beings to buy staple goods at a fair price. What's anti-retail about that?
It's "anti-retail" if you try to limit the use of RFID tags to just in-store use. The retailers can always find some use of out-of-store tags in such a way to "enhance" their hold on the customer. At the most basic level, the live tags can be used by anyone who wants to pay a fee to Wal-Mart to gain access to the (Wal-Mart customer) information they get off of pinging the tags when they come by their own properties.
In America, placing any restrictions upon commerce is now viewed as being "anti-business", much like criticizing the political leadership or military is viewed as "anti-American". These views are very apt; they just demonstrate as clearly as possible that the corporations are in total control of the economic environment (rather, they think they have to right to be in control) and those that disagree must be condemned and eventually forced to accept their hegemony.
A space shuttle represents money already stolen. A voting machine represents how money will be stolen. Since future theft of money is always a highly contentious topic, hence these electronic/computerized voting machines are configured to let the debate happen between the two parties of thieves. Thus, they are not secure machines; security will just squelch the debate and allow voting, and giving the voter the franchise was never popular among the thieves.
The pervasive policy of cops not ticketing the relatives of other cops has a more basic formation. It is based upon the issue of vengeful reciprocity. It's happened in the past that cops whose relatives receive tickets, start a process of identifying the ticketing officer's relatives and then ticket them. This kind of thing happens slowly but escalates until it is out of control. Hence, the policy.
"Professional courtesy" is just a polite envelope that covers the real reasoning. The families of cops are generally off-limits for traffic enforcement.
Although your response was amusing, I hold the opinion that the one-eyed man in a land of the blind will not be king. He will be a pariah instead. A land of the blind will necessarily be organized around blindness, and his critical difference will lead people to shun him.
Then again, perhaps I've too much time on my hands.
That's what somebody probably said about asbestos. Which is why it's sensible to ask about the long term effects of laser light upon the eye humors, "rod" cells and "cone" cells.
We cannot replace an eye's vision. Sustained exposure to even low-power laser light may prove damaging to the components of the eye as I outlined above. And the long term may mean that millions of people could become blinded or visually degraded in the coming decades.
It's a question worth asking. Heck, it's a question that MUST be answered before we create legions of blind men.
Sure, that's insightful, but it has to be balanced with other factors, those being:
1. Companies feel no loyalty towards their lower echelons. They are trimming benefits, wages and opportunities for advancement for them. Hence, these workers MUST seek the highest wage possible since that's the only thing they have coming to them.
2. Companies like to hire work "just in time". This allows them to "load balance" their costs. And this just leads to people with resumes that look like they are job hoppers, but aren't. (My current boss told me in my interview that he had not understood that when he moved into the area where the biggest employers (automotive companies) had created just such a population of tech workers.)
This guy is no archaeologist. He is a christian on a quest for the 21st century holy grail.
Beyond questions of the man's biases, what's so terrible about that?
I've found it amusing that here we are in 2004, and we can't even answer the easy question of:
Is there a big pile of wood on one of the world's mountains, that represents an important icon of one of the world's major religions?
My point is that Humanity is more than able to answer that question, but is reluctant to do so. I have always wondered why a comprehensive survey of Mt Ararat was not being performed. You'd think that all Judeo-Christianity would like to know.
Slashdot Mirror
What I find is my children are taught tricks and workarounds rather than an understanding of the fundamental math problems.
You've got that right. Tricks and workarounds are properly the right of the man who has slogged through the trail so many times that he's tired of the trip and wants to economize. Understanding -- the suffering of knowledge -- must precede the shorter methods.
The first part of your posting is simply incorrect.
... you know, stuff that can be used to produce other stuff, and also real wealth.
... until the masses "wake up slaves on the continent their fathers conquered".
There is no such thing as a "service and information based economy" for any significant span of time. A sustainable economy must be based on the manufacture of capital equipment
Any fool can see this basis being leached out of America due to the suicidal drive for more profits (over already good profits to begin with). Since large-scale economic movements by definition take time, this can go on for a generation or two
Once they awaken to that, violence will become a way of life. Jefferson knew this, and tried to warn us ages ago. But people didn't want to listen. Sad, really.
Yucca would be a poor choice. 1) Contamination by radiation would surely degrade the storage media for any reasonable length of cultural-change time. 2) Temperatures in the actual storage areas might get as high as 500 degress F from the heat generated by the materials inside the waste casks. That would also threaten your storage media.
I'm sure it struck you immediately that citizens cannot get an exemption for purchases that are essential to their lives.
Sales taxes on stuff should have been enough. Businesses need stuff even to deliver pure services; so they'll buy stuff and be taxed thereby. But the voracity of government continues onward.
Industries making billions just don't roll over when you propose they make 0.
... especially for free.
Prediction: For using their books, textbook publishers will soon get universities to sign comprehensive noncompete agreements, whereby their professors can't go and do "Communist" things like publish their own books
Your kind of response continues to MISS THE POINT.
... by getting a scope and check it out themselves. Assuming they are skilled enough in tracking an astronomical object, their own eyes can't lie to them.
The point is to bring so much conflicting information into the fray that people become paralyzed with uncertainty and indecision. It's the only way to keep a secret actually secret nowadays. Instead of body armor, use fog.
Hence no one will show up at my door looking to kill me. It is important for the entire disinformation picture to have dissenters and exposers. Anything I say helps the fog that hides the truth. Our conversation helps that too.
The only thing that a person can really do to find out the truth is stop trusting and start investigating themselves
P.S. You're a boob. Read some books for a change of pace.
Congratulations for proving my point. Calling something "tinfoil hat" is another mechanism for disinformation.
... which will be (note well) reacted to by the 'scope owners themselves before they even place them out in the yard. Confiscation efforts can proceed in tandem for the most egregious amateurs who insist on "finding out the truth".
... like what SCO is currently doing. Although as much time as possible would be desired, months is all the elite can expect, and with hundreds of billions to invest, they can get a lot done in those months before the truth hits one way or another. Then the bunkers will convert to the "shoot unauthorized visitors" mode and the rest of us -- like ninnies, having trusted our elites -- will have to wait out Toutatis.
In an armageddon strike, all bets are off. As an outstanding modern example, America assaulted Iraq purely for selfish reasons. It only stands to reason from that, that the elite will do anything possible (including murdering amateur astronomers which you hold so dear) if Toutatis were actually coming to hit us. They can do anything right out in the open, as long as they put the proper spin and uncertainty on it. (Sounds like quantum physics, doesn't it?)
For example, suddenly telescopes can be officially declared "missile spotters" for "domestic terrorists planning on downing airliners at airports". Regardless of the absurdity of the declaration (astronomical telescopes are poor aiming devices for shoulder-fired missiles), public distrust will be sown. Since 'scopes are put out in backyards where they are visible, they will encounter suspicion
If you don't think that's possible, stick an Almanac on your dashboard and drive around.
The entire point is to keep the public confused for months to allow the elite to operate without dealing with price hikes, shortages, riots and other such impediments to their attempts to save themselves. This is all a game of delay, not justice-will-be-served
The Internet will only ADD to the disinformation campaign. It's not the velocity of information that determines such things; it's the fact that disinformation itself works extremely well with a depraved populace (as America examples so well if you'd check the news lately). Face facts. At least half of America believes Iraq was involved in 911. America is very good at even disinforming itself. It's not hard to steer such a ship of state towards a reef for however long a delay is required.
In closing, your point is invalid, and you've a lot more reading to catch up on. The Internet is only going to make it worse, since the stakes will be the highest imaginable to the people benefiting directly from collective ignorance and impotence.
Yes, exactly, why would they (the idiosyncratic "them")?
... you can depend upon at least a 10MT explosion in the lower atmosphere. But with objects sized like Toutatis, the strike will be a groundripper in the 100s of MTs.
... which is the entire point, since a confused and uncertain public tends to not act at all.
... months. Perhaps a year. And faced with armageddon, months of notice can make all the difference for the survival of the elite. Underground bunkers can be readied; resources can be swallowed up into them at large rates (paid for with money that
Depending on the severity of the strike, the response will always be governed by Elitist Cataclysmic Logic:
SAVE US FIRST AND SCREW EVERYBODY ELSE.
Any strike from an object detected by telescopes will be particulary severe
Such an event means that stock portfolios are likely to tank.
I mean, seriously, stop laughing for a moment and think it through. The globalist elite don't stand by and let their wealth be decimated; if something even 10% of the size of Toutatis were coming, the effect upon the people of Earth would be fierce. People's involvement in the economic and social structure would severely compromise the highly artificial existence of the authority of the wealthy.
Since real-world catastrophes are likely to adversely affect the parasitical existence of the global elite, then with something as large as Toutatis I can only expect attempts at a news blackout (and a disinformation campaign, which is even more effective) for a while until the point is moot (i.e. the thing is so close that even small, un-confiscated telescopes and binoculars can see it, or it hits).
To use a for-example, let's say Toutatis is coming to hit us. The elite would hear about it pretty early, since the larger scopes are run by institutions and academic elites, and those are strongly connected to "them". Since Toutatis would likely strike ocean and cause thousands of billions of dollars in damage from the tidal waves, the elite will immediately put a lock on the knowledge.
To do so, the acacdemics (certainly notorious for eruptions of dissent) would have to be controlled and discredited. The major scopes in the world will be put under lock and key simply by contacting other government entities. In fact, the act of "let's turn our scopes upon Toutatis to track it to confirm the rumor" would be the plain-view method of justifying this takeover. Various government and elite agents will show up and simply use their authority to put a lock on the data.
Concurrent with the start of this control campaign, will be the disinformation one. False data will be generated by several sites through their controlling agents, to confuse the correct data from other sites. It will also serve to counter sites that escape control, like from the actions of some nutbag academic who thinks he's serving the "greater good" by collecting and reporting the correct data.
And with the disinformation campaign, the issue of interal dissenters will also be addressed. More people producing conflicting data is great for that, but the issue gets even more clouded when agents step forward and confess to the fraud. With enough of this kind of thing, the public won't know what to think
After that, things get more militant. Smaller scopes will get into the game, and by then their naivete will get the better of them, letting the police, military and intelligence services get into the act (purely on orders, and we all know how much injustice happens on the basis of "I have my orders") by visiting and confiscating their scopes by one means or another. The equipment can be taken or broken; the operators can be arrested; and the operator can be enlisted in "confirmation efforts" which would just be an attempt to keep them quiet by controlling their output data.
Well, this kind of thing can bubble along quite merrily for
Mod up this guy some more. It's an important question of perspective.
Q1: How do we intend to punish the man who worms a system that has expressed denial of liability in the first place?
Q2: How do we intend to keep running such systems having realized the poignancy of the first question?
Anti-intellectualism has geography as one of its factors. It could well be that your area is particularly harsh on expressions of mind. Believe me; I grew up in Toledo, Ohio -- a Third World country disguised as an American city ... so I know exactly what I'm talking about here.
... perhaps it was my stubbornness.
I'm sure we lose a lot of children to regional backwardness. I'm not sure why I survived the atmosphere of intense persecution of the "nerd"
All we can really do about such injustice is to live well as the best revenge, and from that, provide a port in the storm to those who seek shelter. Raise a flag and advertise your opposition, and perhaps you can start turning the tide. All a movement really needs is people who raise their fists.
All very apt criticisms, but let's not forget the hidden-but-still-missing item: practical clubs. Where are the gun clubs at school, where students can learn to become responsible weapon users? Where are the electronics clubs, where students can learn to repair their own appliances and and build their own gadgets? I could go on, but you should have the point by now. If anything, schools push the mealy-mouthed clubs like "French" and "Literature" ... in short, all the prissy stuff that prepares a student for ... more schooling, not actually DOING STUFF.
People who learn and work hand-in-hand are more intelligent and capable.
What does it mean for a ghost to "eat" Pac-Man?
If the game was Ms. Pac-Man, boy oh boy, you'd know what that meant. Yum!
Although I don't like the outcome, I can't deny the implied tactics used by NASA for the last 5 years, those being tactics of small missions.
Small missions can get done within the small attention (hence: funding) span of the US Congress.
So there's your goal, Sir. Small missions: one satellite or spacecraft, going out to 1 or 2 places to get a couple of things done. That's it.
The only "stupidity" in the analogy is your involvement. Read some books for a change.
... but that 1/r^2 sure is a bitch). Just like ocean crossing, finding an island every so often was a god-send ... similarly so with space travel, provided you have the skills and equipment to make use of the materials on the asteroids or comets you happen across. And the wise man doesn't leave such encounters to chance ... he AIMS for the next convenient port-of-call.
For the purposes of this article, I'm limiting my points to intrasolar space, probably out into the inner Oort.
The ocean is a desert, which anyone with a basic oceanographic education could tell you. It took considerable skill and resources to cross it alive, and even more such in health. And the loss of your ship meant the loss of your life almost as surely as if you were in space.
You can survive space transits by being as skilled in the enterprise. In space , you have direct access to sunlight, which provides power (even propulsion if you choose the solar-sail option
Crossing the oceans proved to be an exercise in ENGINEERING. So it is with space travel. It's just that the Western civilization is resoundingly spoiled with a very mature transportation infrastructure, and no longer commonly understands that before you can go anywhere, you must build some sort of road. This includes fuel and repair depots. Just because these are not in space right now, doesn't mean that they cannot be there.
The ocean-crossing analogy has salient points that apply. Just because you can open your sailboat hatch and not decompress, doesn't make for a bad analogy.
Oh, gee, I'm sorry, I'll elaborate past your wall of willful ignorance.
The essence of globalism is to move capital faster or smoother than can be caught by the outmoded philosophies of taxation and social contracts. Corporations moving into global entities take on this economic culture.
In about 10 years, while you are loaded down with property, income and sales taxes, while every corporation doing business in your town pays 0 of these taxes, perhaps your mind will once again be aligned with the truth since your wallet will be.
Sheesh, you talk like a company is some sort of non-coporeal life form making decisions and then ordering its human slaves to comply.
That's entirely right. It is. Corporations are gathering great "personal" power while having essentially no corporeal form to control. Thet's the essence of globalism.
You thought you were making a point, but your ridiculous example was in fact right on the money.
If anything CASPIAN is pro-retail, trying to preserve the ability of non-registered human beings to buy staple goods at a fair price. What's anti-retail about that?
It's "anti-retail" if you try to limit the use of RFID tags to just in-store use. The retailers can always find some use of out-of-store tags in such a way to "enhance" their hold on the customer. At the most basic level, the live tags can be used by anyone who wants to pay a fee to Wal-Mart to gain access to the (Wal-Mart customer) information they get off of pinging the tags when they come by their own properties.
In America, placing any restrictions upon commerce is now viewed as being "anti-business", much like criticizing the political leadership or military is viewed as "anti-American". These views are very apt; they just demonstrate as clearly as possible that the corporations are in total control of the economic environment (rather, they think they have to right to be in control) and those that disagree must be condemned and eventually forced to accept their hegemony.
A space shuttle represents money already stolen. A voting machine represents how money will be stolen. Since future theft of money is always a highly contentious topic, hence these electronic/computerized voting machines are configured to let the debate happen between the two parties of thieves. Thus, they are not secure machines; security will just squelch the debate and allow voting, and giving the voter the franchise was never popular among the thieves.
The pervasive policy of cops not ticketing the relatives of other cops has a more basic formation. It is based upon the issue of vengeful reciprocity. It's happened in the past that cops whose relatives receive tickets, start a process of identifying the ticketing officer's relatives and then ticket them. This kind of thing happens slowly but escalates until it is out of control. Hence, the policy.
"Professional courtesy" is just a polite envelope that covers the real reasoning. The families of cops are generally off-limits for traffic enforcement.
I looked at lgordon's post again, and for the life of me, I don't see where he said anything about Jews.
Probably the first time he blurts out "Hey, look over there at that bird!".
Although your response was amusing, I hold the opinion that the one-eyed man in a land of the blind will not be king. He will be a pariah instead. A land of the blind will necessarily be organized around blindness, and his critical difference will lead people to shun him.
Then again, perhaps I've too much time on my hands.
it's hard to imagine how it could be a problem
That's what somebody probably said about asbestos. Which is why it's sensible to ask about the long term effects of laser light upon the eye humors, "rod" cells and "cone" cells.
We cannot replace an eye's vision. Sustained exposure to even low-power laser light may prove damaging to the components of the eye as I outlined above. And the long term may mean that millions of people could become blinded or visually degraded in the coming decades.
It's a question worth asking. Heck, it's a question that MUST be answered before we create legions of blind men.
Sure, that's insightful, but it has to be balanced with other factors, those being:
1. Companies feel no loyalty towards their lower echelons. They are trimming benefits, wages and opportunities for advancement for them. Hence, these workers MUST seek the highest wage possible since that's the only thing they have coming to them.
2. Companies like to hire work "just in time". This allows them to "load balance" their costs. And this just leads to people with resumes that look like they are job hoppers, but aren't. (My current boss told me in my interview that he had not understood that when he moved into the area where the biggest employers (automotive companies) had created just such a population of tech workers.)
This guy is no archaeologist. He is a christian on a quest for the 21st century holy grail.
Beyond questions of the man's biases, what's so terrible about that?
I've found it amusing that here we are in 2004, and we can't even answer the easy question of:
Is there a big pile of wood on one of the world's mountains, that represents an important icon of one of the world's major religions?
My point is that Humanity is more than able to answer that question, but is reluctant to do so. I have always wondered why a comprehensive survey of Mt Ararat was not being performed. You'd think that all Judeo-Christianity would like to know.