or I would have been able to add you to my friends list.
And one more thing to add--if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't mind leaving the bathroom door open when you're on the toilet. The ridiculousness of this "terrorist surveillance" really hit home when I found out the government considered the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group devoted to pacifist and humanitarian efforts (and I'm a member, by the way), was on a terrorist watch list.
I prefer to be an activist through actions rather than appearances, so I keep my hair short and dress somewhat conservatively to avoid undue attention--to stay inside the bell curve, as you put it. And although you were being sarcastic, I think I will throw a Bible in my backpack in case of a search. Pretty good idea.
I know it's a stretch for you kids, but just once can the subject of prison come up without you all coming out with the tired old litany of lame rape jokes please? You Yanks have a fucking obsession with prison rape. Seriously, it's not funny, it's creepy, quit it.
You're completely right--it isn't funny. It's very, very scary. It's the reason people here are scared of going to jail. Sadly, a jail sentence almost guarantees cruel and unusual punishment in the form of anal rape. Last week on The Boondocks they covered this topic. One character is a lawyer who has always been straightlaced because of the threat of anal rape.
I remember, from a few years ago, an anti-rape activist (found his name thanks to Google: Tom Cahill) who was protesting the Vietnam war while living in San Antonio, and the police basically caused him to be raped. They threw him in a room with a bunch of career criminals and allowed him to be raped for about 24 hours continuously. That was his punishment for protesting the war.
I personally believe that almost all prisons in the US today violate the
Constitutional Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. But hey, the retards in my government routinely extract suspects for torture in the name of fighting terrorism, so I shouldn't be surprised. Yet another example of why it is shameful to be an American. I just pray they don't reviolate the First Amendment by bringing back prayer in school (ahem--Intelligent Design).
All the tinfoil-hatters need to band together, invest, and start a budget airline where there is NO I.D. required, no searches, no security. See how many people fly such an airline.
There may be some people who want to get rid of searches and security altogether, but it's the ID requirement that is really onerous. If you allow the airlines to search your bags, you walk through a metal detector, you even allow them to search your person, then why the hell do they need to see a photo ID as well? Does a lack of ID suddenly make a person dangerous?
I'm happy to go through even a pastiche of a security check that will weed out the stupidest criminals.
I guess that's where we're different. I don't like to submit to false authority. I suppose you would also be happy to have your house or car searched without a warrant, and would gladly spread your cheeks for a cavity search. I actually appreciate the constitutional prohibition on unlawful search and seizure (what's left of it, after the Reagan regime). Civil liberties don't protect themselves--but I must be old-fashioned for caring about an antiquated document like the Bill of Rights. And no, Big Brother doesn't have mind-reading satellites, but that's on their wish list, now that they have Eschelon, the PATRIOT Act, and the ability to jail citizens indefinitely without trial.
Let's be clear. Without a government-issued ID there is no actual prohibition on TRAVEL. There is, however, the ability for COMMERCIAL, PRIVATE transport companies (be they bus, train, plane, ferry, whatever) to REFUSE SERVICE to people failing to present such an ID.
Let's be clear. You are obviously misinformed, unaware of the fact that the government is requiring airlines to ask for ID, citing a secret law that does not exist on the books. How would you like to be convicted of violating a law that you aren't allowed to read, and just take the police's word it exists? How could a lawyer possibly defend a client against such a law? That sounds pretty close to a definition of "police state," or at least some nightmarish Kafka story.
I hate sloppy language, especially when it's used by chicken-littles to suggest we're moving toward a police state...like the hypocrites at Cryptome.
You hate sloppy language? Here's something that should be straight-forward for you: we're moving toward a police state. That's not a suggestion, but a fact. If you can't see that, you're more oblivious than the "stupidest criminals" you mentioned. Start paying attention.
That's easy, I'm homeless and have no friends. Maybe I'm not, but how are they going to know?
No address, no contacts, no email, no phone. Are you going to deny someone travel because they can't afford these things? Or choose not to have them?
Unless John Gilmore wins his battle against the "show me your papers" police, you'll at least need ID to fly. But hell if I'll give them anything besides the mandatory info--I have no obligation to have a phone (cell or otherwise), email address, or emergency contacts. And right now, the address on my driver's license is over 1000 miles from where I currently live. (Don't tell the DMV--my old license doesn't expire for a few more years.)
I realize I'm in a rare position, being an employee at a company whose biggest business is organic dyes, but do a google image search for "coumarin" and for "lactone." See any similarities? A lactone is far from being an unusual "molecule" (it's a functional group, really--a cyclic ester; contrast with lactams, such as the penicillins, which are cyclic amides).
Coumarin is one of the oldest known fluorescent compounds, and is the base structure for at least 100 dyes, I think it's fair to say. Coumarin comes from the decomposition of lavender, and its relative, coumadin, is a very common blood thinner. When horses eat rotten lavender (mixed with hay, usually) they start bleeding internal as if they'd eaten rat poison.
I don't understand what took this guy so long. One of the oldest ways to monitor surface tension of water (i.e., evaluation of different soaps / surfactants) is to see how much soap it takes to solubilize a greasy, red dye. A dye like that is going to stick to the hydrophobic tail of any surfactant, not fall to the bottom of the bubble in a small, colored dot. On the other hand, the optical properties of a bubble are a lot different from those of a solution, so a red dye might not make a red bubble. Regular soap makes rainbow-colored bubbles, with no help from any dyes.
Greasy aromatic rings are generally required for color absorption, so most chromophores (the basic dye molecule) are already hydrophobic, and attaching a long, hydrophilic tail (PEO, polyethylene oxide, commonly used to solubilize hydrophobic drugs so they'll have a longer circulatory half-life) would be trivial for any chemist. It doesn't take a PhD, or even a pH meter.
anyone got thoughts on likely accuracy? false negs/pos's? speed vs quality? TFA looks too much like an advert to give out this sort of information. (it also uses 'leverage' as a verb.)
It's just a device that does PCR faster than regular thermal cyclers. The DNA has to be "melted" (strands uncoiled and separated) for the heat-resistant DNA polymerase enzyme to be able to replicate the strands. This is just a tiny instrument with a lower heat capacity and microfluidics capabilities, so they can go from hot to cold and back in less time. Oh, and it seems they're using semiconductor tech to fabricate the suckers.
But it's by no means revolutionary like PCR itself.
I take it you object to, and try to avoid, adverts in newspapers and magazines? The same argument applies: you've paid for the publication, so why should you look at adverts?
I realize the ads subsidize my subscription, but I do try to avoid them. Adbusters magazine has no real ads (just spoof ads), and consequently costs much more than BLENDER magazine, which is roughly 25-50% ads. What really ticks me off is the movie ads, because you're a captive audience, can't press a mute button, and can't easily turn away from the screen. And as I mentioned earlier, you've already paid a premium to see the movie.
Well, he certainly doesn't take care of himself, does he?
I was specifically thinking of the episode where Lisa is complaining that as a kid, she gets paid no attention. And Grampa complained of the same problem, but as a result of being elderly. Then Homer walks in the kitchen, proclaims "I'm a white male, aged 18-35 years old--everyone listens to me, no matter how stupid my ideas are." Then he proceeds to eat from a can marked "Nuts and Gum: Together at Last."
If Homer knocked-up Marge around senior year of high-school, and Bart is nine, then Homer should actually be closer to 30 (!) If so, I really hope I age more gracefully than Homer.
> A good portion of the voting Americans are crazy anti-science religious zealots, who are well-organized, and write lots of letters to Congressmen.
babelfish "i r teh stoopid" to "English" Translation -> Um, well, a bunch of dumb illiterate evolutionists just got their ass whooped by some Intelligently designed voters who can at least write...
...oops. Who's stupid again?! I. r. teh . evolutionuts. Must..'member. to.think. before..I. types.......whew!!
I said the religious zealots are organized and write letters, but you've pretty succinctly proven that the ability to write is no indication of intelligence.
I'm confused. Are most Americans crazy anti-science religious zealots or not?
A good portion of the voting Americans are crazy anti-science religious zealots, who are well-organized, and write lots of letters to Congressmen. How do you think Bush got elected? Well, a good portion of the Bush electorate are simply rich people who want to keep their tax breaks and ability to pollute without repercussion (specifically his homies in Texas--I'm looking at you, ALCOA).
If they do start including commercials in downloadable TV, what's to stop people editing them out?
I think you're missing the point. These are commercials in a file that you pay for, that you download with your own bandwidth. Why should you have to tediously edit-out commercials from a program you already paid for? By a similar rationale, why should you have to sit through commercials in a movie theatre, after paying $8 for admission and who knows how much for concessions?
People really need to realize that their attention, and their personal information, are very valuable to marketers. It's not really a bargain to get a free T-shirt in exchange for signing up for a credit card. Your name, address, income, etc. are worth a lot of money to advertising folks. The T-shirt, if you wear it, is free advertising for them. Every second you watch a commercial, it's equivalent to giving money to the "sponsor." But people don't generally calculate the value of intangibles such as their time and attention. Any marketing students or professionals out there know the exact figure, the amount each TV viewer's time is worth to the people buying ads? In pennies per second? For Homer Simpson, for example? (White male, 35 years old, nuclear technician, wife and three kids.) If you have to download and (theoretically) watch the ads, they should be free, like broadcast TV. Otherwise you're paying for them twice.
Since when has it become acceptable to grant patents on recepies? Even the Coca Cola Company does NOT have (and should not have) a patent on cola.
I would tend to agree with you, but certain food processing techniques (NOT recipes) are pretty, well, inventive. I don't know about you, but I don't have the equipment for cryogenic separation of coffee oil in my kitchen. Of course, their patent is useless if the product tastes like shit.
But let's say for the sake of argument that you are right in this case, that the coffee fermentation is just a recipe, and fairly obvious to someone "skilled in the trade," as patents always say. Does that mean all food processing techniques are obvious and non-patentable? Assuming, of course, you believe there is at least some benefit to having patents at all. The first innovative food idea that came to my mind was
banana juice. I think making banana juice had been a challenge for years until these folks in India managed to have success, and I think their work certainly deserves a patent.
The american 'IP'-quest is getting more and more rediculous by the day.
[sic]
I agree with that sentiment whole-heartedly. Lately I've been more and more sympathetic to the idea of abolishing intellectual property altogether--copyrights, patents, whatever. This is supposed to be a free market, right? Let the market sort it out: whoever has the best implementation, wins. How often does an inventor even get a dime from his or her invention? My grandfather's inventions made millions of dollars--for his employer. On the flip-side, the protection offered by patents allows companies to invest more in R&D, and without that capital expenditure, inventors wouldn't have access to labs and expensive equipment.
In spite of the inroads that Spanish is making into the US,it doesn't have have much economic power.
Unfortunately true. But economics is only one reason to learn a language. It's hard to befriend someone without speaking their language. I find it very nice to have the option of speaking to someone in Spanish. I think we should be able to talk to our southern neighbors, but you're right that most people aren't going to learn Spanish unless there's a financial payoff.
Are you trying to say it takes more guts to write something with an anonymous slashdot account name "bodrell" than the generic anonymous slashdot account name "anonymous coward"?
That's exactly what I'm saying.
Your post, in which you try to dispell the view that you are bigot, just clarifies that in your mind there is fundamental difference between people. Good people, like you, who are not to be mistaken for people who might be Jewish, Christian, or whater, and bad people, those who might be Jewish, Christian, or whatever.
There are differences between people, no question. A person can be good or bad regardless of their religion, but religion is adherence to certain dogma. Each religion has its own dogma, and I don't subscribe to any of them. In that way, yes, I am fundamentally different from "religious" people, who accept a certain set of rules that depend on their religion. But I know plenty of people who consider themselves "spiritual" without being religious, going to church, etc. Dogma of any sort is incompatible with independent thought, by definition: dogma you accept without thought. It is certainly possible to accept certain religious tenets while excluding others, but any person who "cherry-picks" the ideas they like could not be considered religious.
This black-and-white, good and evil, categorization, made before you even know a person, shows you are an extremist yourself. Judge by category. Hate by category.
See, this statement just shows me you don't have any brains, because I never made any "black/white" or "good/evil" distinctions. I also never said I hate anyone. Do you have reading comprehension problems, AC? Or do you just want to put words in my mouth because your own argument is so weak?
The nice thing about religion is that people segregate themselves based on their ideology. If someone tells me they are a certain religion, then I don't have to meet them to know a lot about them: they have already told me their basic philosophy. If someone tells me he is a Nazi, do I have to get to know him intimately to realize I don't like his ideology?
Tell me, would your post have been less reliable if you had not said you are not Jewish? You must think so. This shows even more how fundamentalist you are. You think that the credibility of a post is called into question even though the topic (language) has nothing to do with religion. Why is that? Because all Jews, Christians, etc. have a plan to decieve and lie about unrelated things?
I said I am not Jewish because if I were, I would probably know much more about Ben-Yehuda and the Hebrew language. But it is also true that I might be inclined to make biased statements (not the same as lying / intentionally deceiving) if I were Jewish. It's all about perspective. For example, what is the oldest monotheistic religion? Jews will say Judaism, while others might say Zoroastrianism. Who's right? I don't know, but I would be most likely to trust a scholar without any conflicts of interest. It's perfectly natural for someone to want to champion his own cause, and selectively believe the pieces of information that jibe with his point of view.
That you think language (and particularly Hebrew) has nothing to do with religion really shows your ignorance. Jews believe every letter of the Torah has significance, and that God's Hebrew name has tremendous power. Muslims similarly believe that God spoke to Mohammed in Arabic, and the Koran is not really valid if translated into another language. Some fundamentalist Christians, for who knows what reason, adhere to the English-language Bible literally, discounting the translations, retranslations, omissions, and additions of 2000 years worth of monks.
Go on, protect yourself. But don't forget to mention that you are not a scientist (since some of them have created terrible things)
Thanks for clarifying you are not Jewish. Otherwise, someone might have confused you as being one, which is obviously something you do NOT want.
How pathetic of you.
I don't want to be confused with something I'm not, whether that be religious affiliation, national origin, profession, whatever. I personally think adherents to any organized religion are, by definition, at least a bit closed-minded. So no, I don't want to be confused with a group that thinks they are superior to everyone else. I have a reasonable knowledge of the Bible and I certainly don't want people thinking I'm a Christian. I have much admiration for the Jewish people (as a population) and philosophy, but that doesn't mean I don't have any criticisms. I think anyone who believes in a "chosen people" or "promised land" is an arrogant supremacist who thinks God (G*d, if you're Jewish) favors them over all other people in this world. There are wacko fundamentalists in every religion, such as the Orthodox Jew who shot Rabin. Most, but not all, major world religions suffer from such superiority complexes. That doesn't imply that adherents to those religions must necessarily be closed-minded, although some of them certainly will be.
But aside from my distaste for certain Jewish doctrines, there's a better reason for me to disclose I'm not Jewish: I was writing about Hebrew, which is inextricably tied to Judaism. As a Gentile, I have little first-hand knowledge about the Hebrew language itself, other than its history. Jewish kids get a free trip to Israel, if they want, paid for by Taglit-birthright israel, among other groups. They're bound to know a lot more about Hebrew than I do. If I had written IANAJ (I am not a Jew), as a disclaimer, would you have found it so offensive?
Takes a lot of guts to accuse someone of being a bigot when posting as AC. How pathetic of you.
t would be interesting if Portuguese ever became popular in the US. If I ever learn Spanish (I'm working on it, but it's going slowly), Portuguese should be easy, and if I knew those 3 languages, I could get by anywhere on 2 continents (except for Quebec).
That's my rationale for learning Portuguese. Viva las Americas! (Besides Quebec, there are also Suriname [Dutch], French Guyana [French], and Paraguay [Guaraní] where people might not speak Spanish, English, or Portuguese, but that's nothing.) Oh, and Brazilian music is amazing (more than just bossa nova and samba), if you need another incentive to learn Portuguese;)
When I was growing up, Spanish wasn't that important. There was no compelling reason to learn it. 20 years later, most of the businesses have signs that say "Hablamos Espanol", and there is a bilingual neighborhood newspaper. Maybe in another 20 years we'll be a trilingual society with Mandarin or Arabic rivaling Spanish for the #2 language.
Where did you grow up? In California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, there have been significant Hispanic populations since before any English speakers were there. New Mexico is officially a bilingual state (bet you didn't know that). But I agree that the Hispanic population in the US has grown tremendously, recently, and even in the mid-west there are more and more signs in Spanish, more cable and radio stations in Spanish, etc. But as they said in West Side Story, Puerto Rico's in America, and it's been that way for a long, long time. I think the mere existence of our Mexican border provides a "compelling reason" to learn Spanish.
I don't think Mandarin or Arabic will have such strongholds in the Americas any time soon. For one thing, "Arabic" is not really a single language. There's the
Arabic on TV, which is some strange derivative of liturgical Arabic, but is no one's native tongue. Like an Esperanto of Arabic. Iranians speak Farsi, which is not a Semitic language, and neither is Turkish, which is the source of so many immigrants in Europe (especially Germany and Holland, although France has a ton of North Africans). Most of the Muslim immigrants I've met have been Indian or Pakistani; Pakistanis speak Urdu, which is Hindi with a bunch of Arabic words mixed in. Written Arabic (Koran) is pretty universal, like a Bible in Latin, but is spoken by no one.
I would love to see a trilingual society throughout the Americas, with English, Spanish, and Portuguese spoken everywhere. There are almost as many speakers of Portuguese as there are of all the Arabic dialects combined, but almost all speakers of Portuguese are in Brazil or the African colonies (Angola, Mozambique) and speak a language that is more or less mutually comprehensible, thick accents withstanding. I must admit that I do have trouble understanding Portuguese of Portugal, but there are only about 10 million people compared to 186 million Portuguese speakers in Brazil. Portuguese is ranked about 5th or 6th in the world's most commonly spoken languages, neck and neck with Arabic (all dialects) and Bengali. Now that would be something interesting--if all the Indian and Bangladeshi immigrants made the Bengali language popular in the US. But Portuguese, being a Romance language with strong similarities to Spanish AND English, has a better shot, I think.
Of course, maybe we should all just switch to Latin. You can't say we're playing favorites with a language if you choose a dead one.
Actually, that's exactly what Israel did when the Hebrew language was brought back from the dead. For awhile, German was considered for the official language of Israel, since there were so many German Jews relocated to Israel. A guy named
Ben-Yehuda was almost single-handedly responsible for reviving spoken Hebrew, making up Semitic-sounding words to fill in gaps, etc. Before that point, Hebrew was as dead as Latin (religious use only), although Yiddish has a fair number of Hebrew words (and German, and Slavic).
Besides German, I believe Russian and Yiddish were other popular choices for a national language, but each had its own political issues.
OK, so you learn the language at a young age. Let's say Russia is a big concern at the time (Cold War is in full swing), and then you come to today where Russian is not quite as important. Instead, you need to know Arabic. So, kids today start learning Arabic. The problem is, by the time they grow up, Arabic isn't that usefull anymore. Instead, it's Mandarin. So, their children get to learning Mandarin, but by the time they grow up China is no longer the issue. Instead, they really need speakers of Tagalog or something. On and on and on, always being stuck with the language capabilities needed twenty years ago instead of what is needed now.
That's a very silly thing to say, "Arabic isn't that useful anymore," or Mandarin, for that matter. But you do have a point that certain languages have waves of popularity. But those waves generally last more than a generation or two. French was the, er, lingua franca for quite some time, but now it's English. For someone living in the United States, it's probably a good idea to learn Spanish, and that won't change any time soon. You're writing as if everyone could be a diplomat or soldier, and fly to jobs anywhere in the world. For most people, it probably makes sense to learn the local languages above all.
I would have a lot better time hearing pro choice arguments if they also said it would be ok to kill a newborn if unwanted. I'm serious, there really isn't any difference, and I would like a consistent argument.
The line is certainly arbitrary, but it has to be drawn somewhere. Quickening has been a traditional time point, birth is another, conception yet another. But some societies found it acceptable to kill newborn children, as a method of birth control. In Iceland, before the missionaries converted everyone, infanticide was an acceptable practice--the infants were left to die of exposure, i.e., freezing to death. The Spartans did the same thing, and with a disturbing frequency.
I personally think abortion is a necessary evil--no one would argue abortions are a good thing, except perhaps Cartman on South Park. Birth control ought to be readily available to everyone, including Plan B ("morning after" pill) and abortions, because unwanted children are most often the ones who turn out to be criminals or screwups. If a child is unwanted, best to get rid of it as fast as possible, while the damage is minimal. Think about all the cases where an unwanted child grows up to be a murderer. Wouldn't it have been better if he'd been aborted? Of course it's best to prevent an unwanted pregnancy from occuring in the first place, if at all possible; but from a practical standpoint, I think the current legal standard is reasonable.
Now you have a consistent argument: any termination of pregnancy is undesirable, and is more distasteful the older the fetus gets, and an arbitrary place where we (the US) draw the legal line is after two trimesters. Happy?
More honored in the breach than in the observance these days, but theres a (not unreasonable) belief that in addition to not actively suppressing our rights, the government has a duty to actively support our expression of those rights. Of course, it's a delicate balancing act for where one persons rights begin and anothers end, but blanket statements like "You don't have any rights on anyone elses property" are simply wrong-headed - it's tantamount to claiming that you don't have any rights at all.
Did you reply to the right comment? Did someone say "You don't have any rights on anyone elses property?" I agree with you about wrong-headed blanket statements; about the only blanket statement about rights that I can stand by is that people should have the right to do whatever they want to their own body--including abuse drugs, amputate limbs, or kill themselves.
For example, a minor cannot be locked up for criticizing a government official, but that doesn't mean they can sue their parents for not allowing them to go to an anti-war rally.
The government can't lock up a minor for criticizing an official, but their parents certainly can, in the same way they can prevent children from attending rallies.
It is very sad how few rights minors really have. At least their parents have legal standing to fight for minors' rights, such as the recent cases regarding creationism in Dover, and the "under God" clause in Sacramento. I would like to see a kids' Bill of Rights; there are rights violations all the time, but people aren't aware.
The constitution applies to Federal laws, and perhaps state and local ones in some cases. It has no applicability to schools, employers, or anything else.
There is no "school" right to free speech. There is no right to free speech on the job. There is no right to free speech in a shopping mall, if the shopping mall has a rule that says otherwise. And, the First Amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with this because it is not a federal law. So, the government hasn't made a law abridging free speech.
I don't buy your logic. How can you lump schools together with employers? At this point in time, attendence is mandatory for people under the age of 16. And there are nasty regulations in many states to keep people in school between 16-18, such as not allowing dropouts to get drivers' licenses. Since the government requires school attendence, that's a federal law, and students should have a right to free speech. Sadly, their minor status is what allows schools to infringe on their constitutional rights. The recent debates about teaching creationism in public schools is 100% about the First Amendment, the "respecting an establishment of religion"; how can you say it doesn't apply to schools?
No, I am no longer a helpless student with no rights, but I remember well what it was like. And every day I read about some jackass principal in Utah or Georgia decides to call Homeland Security and expel a kid for wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt (not to pick on those states, but I remember specific instances). Unless kids are given the option to not attend school, it is unethical to restrict their protected speech on school grounds, let alone when they are at home.
Fortunately for any of the kids attending Pope John XXIII (I believe the article was missing an "X"), they can leave at any time. But then they'll have to attend a crappy public school, so they're screwed either way.
Not unless you think the Federal government gets to review and approve all school rules, employee handbooks and shopping mall rules.
Perhaps not in such detail, but ever hear of a law called No Child Left Behind? That pretty thoroughly regulates public schools, although they conveniently left out any protections of students' rights. The government doesn't need to explicitly approve every rule and regulation in order to prohibit certain, illegal rules.
Besides the fact that school attendence is federally mandated, there's another glaring flaw in your argument: the courts have ruled we have constitutionally protected civil rights, that have to be honored by private establishments. In other words, the constitution has "applicability" to every aspect of our lives, including at the mall and on the job.
**wax on** It's not an F. What you see is the "long s". It's how they used to draw an S character since the days of Carolingian Minuscule, from which hand our "Times Roman" eventually derived. You'll note there was no crossbar on the letter in that form - the crossbar distinguished the "f" from the "long s". The form we take as "s" appeared only at the end of the word. Thus, "Congrefs" would have been pronounced "Congress". **wax off**
Other than describing the character, as you've done, the closest I can get with this keyboard is "f," even if character in question represents an "s." Likewise, the lowercase Greek character eta looks more like an "n" than an "h" to me. And this strange sucker looks like a Greek beta to me, but is better represented by "ss" than "b:"
"ß" should not be confused with the lowercase Greek letter beta, which it closely resembles, particularly to the eyes of non-German readers, but to which it is unrelated. Indeed the resemblance is not close enough to enable substitution of the one with the other in typeset material without the result looking extremely unprofessional, comparable to substituting lowercase Greek letter omega for "w" in English text. Any typeset material should use the ß; where that letter is unavailable, the substitution "ss" for "ß" is correct.
**sand on**
Of course, being unprofessional doesn't stop people from using even less appropriate letter substitutions when using 1337-speak, and my point was simply that Spaniards have probably just updated the way they spell Quixote to keep with modern conventions. Since neither "J" nor "X" sounds like "H" in English, there's no reason for us to update the spelling of his name. Neither version corresponds with English spelling conventions. Native English speakers are used to shifting their phonetic conventions based on the etymology of the word, rather than changing the native spelling, which is why most people automatically know the "ci" in "cigar" is pronounced differently from the "ci" in "ciabatta," or that "ph" is pronounced like "f." But an awful lot of people do mispronounce "bruschetta."
**sand off**
Surely they should have chosen a name that implied success rather than invoke the name of a hopeless romantic who is known for fighting the inevitable.
And they could have spelled it correctly: Don Quixote.
I'm sure it's just spelled with a J for the less educated folks who want a modern version they can understand. Shakespeare usually avoids being severely butchered in classroom textbooks, but you can bet they changed a whole lot of V's to U's and a whole lot of F's to S's, so children could at least pronounce the words. Haven't you ever done a double-take when you've seen the word "Congrefs" written on a piece of parchment?
BTW, I was thinking something along the same lines regarding fighting windmills. I guess they think deflecting an asteroid is a pretty insurmountable task.
Slashdot Mirror
And one more thing to add--if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't mind leaving the bathroom door open when you're on the toilet. The ridiculousness of this "terrorist surveillance" really hit home when I found out the government considered the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group devoted to pacifist and humanitarian efforts (and I'm a member, by the way), was on a terrorist watch list.
I prefer to be an activist through actions rather than appearances, so I keep my hair short and dress somewhat conservatively to avoid undue attention--to stay inside the bell curve, as you put it. And although you were being sarcastic, I think I will throw a Bible in my backpack in case of a search. Pretty good idea.
You're completely right--it isn't funny. It's very, very scary. It's the reason people here are scared of going to jail. Sadly, a jail sentence almost guarantees cruel and unusual punishment in the form of anal rape. Last week on The Boondocks they covered this topic. One character is a lawyer who has always been straightlaced because of the threat of anal rape.
I remember, from a few years ago, an anti-rape activist (found his name thanks to Google: Tom Cahill) who was protesting the Vietnam war while living in San Antonio, and the police basically caused him to be raped. They threw him in a room with a bunch of career criminals and allowed him to be raped for about 24 hours continuously. That was his punishment for protesting the war.
By the way, I found his current website.
I personally believe that almost all prisons in the US today violate the Constitutional Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. But hey, the retards in my government routinely extract suspects for torture in the name of fighting terrorism, so I shouldn't be surprised. Yet another example of why it is shameful to be an American. I just pray they don't reviolate the First Amendment by bringing back prayer in school (ahem--Intelligent Design).
There may be some people who want to get rid of searches and security altogether, but it's the ID requirement that is really onerous. If you allow the airlines to search your bags, you walk through a metal detector, you even allow them to search your person, then why the hell do they need to see a photo ID as well? Does a lack of ID suddenly make a person dangerous?
I'm happy to go through even a pastiche of a security check that will weed out the stupidest criminals.
I guess that's where we're different. I don't like to submit to false authority. I suppose you would also be happy to have your house or car searched without a warrant, and would gladly spread your cheeks for a cavity search. I actually appreciate the constitutional prohibition on unlawful search and seizure (what's left of it, after the Reagan regime). Civil liberties don't protect themselves--but I must be old-fashioned for caring about an antiquated document like the Bill of Rights. And no, Big Brother doesn't have mind-reading satellites, but that's on their wish list, now that they have Eschelon, the PATRIOT Act, and the ability to jail citizens indefinitely without trial.
Let's be clear. Without a government-issued ID there is no actual prohibition on TRAVEL. There is, however, the ability for COMMERCIAL, PRIVATE transport companies (be they bus, train, plane, ferry, whatever) to REFUSE SERVICE to people failing to present such an ID.
Let's be clear. You are obviously misinformed, unaware of the fact that the government is requiring airlines to ask for ID, citing a secret law that does not exist on the books. How would you like to be convicted of violating a law that you aren't allowed to read, and just take the police's word it exists? How could a lawyer possibly defend a client against such a law? That sounds pretty close to a definition of "police state," or at least some nightmarish Kafka story.
I hate sloppy language, especially when it's used by chicken-littles to suggest we're moving toward a police state...like the hypocrites at Cryptome.
You hate sloppy language? Here's something that should be straight-forward for you: we're moving toward a police state. That's not a suggestion, but a fact. If you can't see that, you're more oblivious than the "stupidest criminals" you mentioned. Start paying attention.
Unless John Gilmore wins his battle against the "show me your papers" police, you'll at least need ID to fly. But hell if I'll give them anything besides the mandatory info--I have no obligation to have a phone (cell or otherwise), email address, or emergency contacts. And right now, the address on my driver's license is over 1000 miles from where I currently live. (Don't tell the DMV--my old license doesn't expire for a few more years.)
Coumarin is one of the oldest known fluorescent compounds, and is the base structure for at least 100 dyes, I think it's fair to say. Coumarin comes from the decomposition of lavender, and its relative, coumadin, is a very common blood thinner. When horses eat rotten lavender (mixed with hay, usually) they start bleeding internal as if they'd eaten rat poison.
I don't understand what took this guy so long. One of the oldest ways to monitor surface tension of water (i.e., evaluation of different soaps / surfactants) is to see how much soap it takes to solubilize a greasy, red dye. A dye like that is going to stick to the hydrophobic tail of any surfactant, not fall to the bottom of the bubble in a small, colored dot. On the other hand, the optical properties of a bubble are a lot different from those of a solution, so a red dye might not make a red bubble. Regular soap makes rainbow-colored bubbles, with no help from any dyes.
Greasy aromatic rings are generally required for color absorption, so most chromophores (the basic dye molecule) are already hydrophobic, and attaching a long, hydrophilic tail (PEO, polyethylene oxide, commonly used to solubilize hydrophobic drugs so they'll have a longer circulatory half-life) would be trivial for any chemist. It doesn't take a PhD, or even a pH meter.
It's just a device that does PCR faster than regular thermal cyclers. The DNA has to be "melted" (strands uncoiled and separated) for the heat-resistant DNA polymerase enzyme to be able to replicate the strands. This is just a tiny instrument with a lower heat capacity and microfluidics capabilities, so they can go from hot to cold and back in less time. Oh, and it seems they're using semiconductor tech to fabricate the suckers.
But it's by no means revolutionary like PCR itself.
I realize the ads subsidize my subscription, but I do try to avoid them. Adbusters magazine has no real ads (just spoof ads), and consequently costs much more than BLENDER magazine, which is roughly 25-50% ads. What really ticks me off is the movie ads, because you're a captive audience, can't press a mute button, and can't easily turn away from the screen. And as I mentioned earlier, you've already paid a premium to see the movie.
Well, he certainly doesn't take care of himself, does he?
I was specifically thinking of the episode where Lisa is complaining that as a kid, she gets paid no attention. And Grampa complained of the same problem, but as a result of being elderly. Then Homer walks in the kitchen, proclaims "I'm a white male, aged 18-35 years old--everyone listens to me, no matter how stupid my ideas are." Then he proceeds to eat from a can marked "Nuts and Gum: Together at Last."
If Homer knocked-up Marge around senior year of high-school, and Bart is nine, then Homer should actually be closer to 30 (!) If so, I really hope I age more gracefully than Homer.
A good portion of the voting Americans are crazy anti-science religious zealots, who are well-organized, and write lots of letters to Congressmen. How do you think Bush got elected? Well, a good portion of the Bush electorate are simply rich people who want to keep their tax breaks and ability to pollute without repercussion (specifically his homies in Texas--I'm looking at you, ALCOA).
I think you're missing the point. These are commercials in a file that you pay for, that you download with your own bandwidth. Why should you have to tediously edit-out commercials from a program you already paid for? By a similar rationale, why should you have to sit through commercials in a movie theatre, after paying $8 for admission and who knows how much for concessions?
People really need to realize that their attention, and their personal information, are very valuable to marketers. It's not really a bargain to get a free T-shirt in exchange for signing up for a credit card. Your name, address, income, etc. are worth a lot of money to advertising folks. The T-shirt, if you wear it, is free advertising for them. Every second you watch a commercial, it's equivalent to giving money to the "sponsor." But people don't generally calculate the value of intangibles such as their time and attention. Any marketing students or professionals out there know the exact figure, the amount each TV viewer's time is worth to the people buying ads? In pennies per second? For Homer Simpson, for example? (White male, 35 years old, nuclear technician, wife and three kids.) If you have to download and (theoretically) watch the ads, they should be free, like broadcast TV. Otherwise you're paying for them twice.
Since when has it become acceptable to grant patents on recepies? Even the Coca Cola Company does NOT have (and should not have) a patent on cola.
I would tend to agree with you, but certain food processing techniques (NOT recipes) are pretty, well, inventive. I don't know about you, but I don't have the equipment for cryogenic separation of coffee oil in my kitchen. Of course, their patent is useless if the product tastes like shit.
But let's say for the sake of argument that you are right in this case, that the coffee fermentation is just a recipe, and fairly obvious to someone "skilled in the trade," as patents always say. Does that mean all food processing techniques are obvious and non-patentable? Assuming, of course, you believe there is at least some benefit to having patents at all. The first innovative food idea that came to my mind was banana juice. I think making banana juice had been a challenge for years until these folks in India managed to have success, and I think their work certainly deserves a patent.
The american 'IP'-quest is getting more and more rediculous by the day. [sic]
I agree with that sentiment whole-heartedly. Lately I've been more and more sympathetic to the idea of abolishing intellectual property altogether--copyrights, patents, whatever. This is supposed to be a free market, right? Let the market sort it out: whoever has the best implementation, wins. How often does an inventor even get a dime from his or her invention? My grandfather's inventions made millions of dollars--for his employer. On the flip-side, the protection offered by patents allows companies to invest more in R&D, and without that capital expenditure, inventors wouldn't have access to labs and expensive equipment.
Unfortunately true. But economics is only one reason to learn a language. It's hard to befriend someone without speaking their language. I find it very nice to have the option of speaking to someone in Spanish. I think we should be able to talk to our southern neighbors, but you're right that most people aren't going to learn Spanish unless there's a financial payoff.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
Your post, in which you try to dispell the view that you are bigot, just clarifies that in your mind there is fundamental difference between people. Good people, like you, who are not to be mistaken for people who might be Jewish, Christian, or whater, and bad people, those who might be Jewish, Christian, or whatever.
There are differences between people, no question. A person can be good or bad regardless of their religion, but religion is adherence to certain dogma. Each religion has its own dogma, and I don't subscribe to any of them. In that way, yes, I am fundamentally different from "religious" people, who accept a certain set of rules that depend on their religion. But I know plenty of people who consider themselves "spiritual" without being religious, going to church, etc. Dogma of any sort is incompatible with independent thought, by definition: dogma you accept without thought. It is certainly possible to accept certain religious tenets while excluding others, but any person who "cherry-picks" the ideas they like could not be considered religious.
This black-and-white, good and evil, categorization, made before you even know a person, shows you are an extremist yourself. Judge by category. Hate by category.
See, this statement just shows me you don't have any brains, because I never made any "black/white" or "good/evil" distinctions. I also never said I hate anyone. Do you have reading comprehension problems, AC? Or do you just want to put words in my mouth because your own argument is so weak? The nice thing about religion is that people segregate themselves based on their ideology. If someone tells me they are a certain religion, then I don't have to meet them to know a lot about them: they have already told me their basic philosophy. If someone tells me he is a Nazi, do I have to get to know him intimately to realize I don't like his ideology?
Tell me, would your post have been less reliable if you had not said you are not Jewish? You must think so. This shows even more how fundamentalist you are. You think that the credibility of a post is called into question even though the topic (language) has nothing to do with religion. Why is that? Because all Jews, Christians, etc. have a plan to decieve and lie about unrelated things?
I said I am not Jewish because if I were, I would probably know much more about Ben-Yehuda and the Hebrew language. But it is also true that I might be inclined to make biased statements (not the same as lying / intentionally deceiving) if I were Jewish. It's all about perspective. For example, what is the oldest monotheistic religion? Jews will say Judaism, while others might say Zoroastrianism. Who's right? I don't know, but I would be most likely to trust a scholar without any conflicts of interest. It's perfectly natural for someone to want to champion his own cause, and selectively believe the pieces of information that jibe with his point of view.
That you think language (and particularly Hebrew) has nothing to do with religion really shows your ignorance. Jews believe every letter of the Torah has significance, and that God's Hebrew name has tremendous power. Muslims similarly believe that God spoke to Mohammed in Arabic, and the Koran is not really valid if translated into another language. Some fundamentalist Christians, for who knows what reason, adhere to the English-language Bible literally, discounting the translations, retranslations, omissions, and additions of 2000 years worth of monks.
Go on, protect yourself. But don't forget to mention that you are not a scientist (since some of them have created terrible things)
Actually,
But aside from my distaste for certain Jewish doctrines, there's a better reason for me to disclose I'm not Jewish: I was writing about Hebrew, which is inextricably tied to Judaism. As a Gentile, I have little first-hand knowledge about the Hebrew language itself, other than its history. Jewish kids get a free trip to Israel, if they want, paid for by Taglit-birthright israel, among other groups. They're bound to know a lot more about Hebrew than I do. If I had written IANAJ (I am not a Jew), as a disclaimer, would you have found it so offensive?
Takes a lot of guts to accuse someone of being a bigot when posting as AC. How pathetic of you.
That's my rationale for learning Portuguese. Viva las Americas! (Besides Quebec, there are also Suriname [Dutch], French Guyana [French], and Paraguay [Guaraní] where people might not speak Spanish, English, or Portuguese, but that's nothing.) Oh, and Brazilian music is amazing (more than just bossa nova and samba), if you need another incentive to learn Portuguese ;)
Where did you grow up? In California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, there have been significant Hispanic populations since before any English speakers were there. New Mexico is officially a bilingual state (bet you didn't know that). But I agree that the Hispanic population in the US has grown tremendously, recently, and even in the mid-west there are more and more signs in Spanish, more cable and radio stations in Spanish, etc. But as they said in West Side Story, Puerto Rico's in America, and it's been that way for a long, long time. I think the mere existence of our Mexican border provides a "compelling reason" to learn Spanish.
I don't think Mandarin or Arabic will have such strongholds in the Americas any time soon. For one thing, "Arabic" is not really a single language. There's the Arabic on TV, which is some strange derivative of liturgical Arabic, but is no one's native tongue. Like an Esperanto of Arabic. Iranians speak Farsi, which is not a Semitic language, and neither is Turkish, which is the source of so many immigrants in Europe (especially Germany and Holland, although France has a ton of North Africans). Most of the Muslim immigrants I've met have been Indian or Pakistani; Pakistanis speak Urdu, which is Hindi with a bunch of Arabic words mixed in. Written Arabic (Koran) is pretty universal, like a Bible in Latin, but is spoken by no one.
I would love to see a trilingual society throughout the Americas, with English, Spanish, and Portuguese spoken everywhere. There are almost as many speakers of Portuguese as there are of all the Arabic dialects combined, but almost all speakers of Portuguese are in Brazil or the African colonies (Angola, Mozambique) and speak a language that is more or less mutually comprehensible, thick accents withstanding. I must admit that I do have trouble understanding Portuguese of Portugal, but there are only about 10 million people compared to 186 million Portuguese speakers in Brazil. Portuguese is ranked about 5th or 6th in the world's most commonly spoken languages, neck and neck with Arabic (all dialects) and Bengali. Now that would be something interesting--if all the Indian and Bangladeshi immigrants made the Bengali language popular in the US. But Portuguese, being a Romance language with strong similarities to Spanish AND English, has a better shot, I think.
Actually, that's exactly what Israel did when the Hebrew language was brought back from the dead. For awhile, German was considered for the official language of Israel, since there were so many German Jews relocated to Israel. A guy named Ben-Yehuda was almost single-handedly responsible for reviving spoken Hebrew, making up Semitic-sounding words to fill in gaps, etc. Before that point, Hebrew was as dead as Latin (religious use only), although Yiddish has a fair number of Hebrew words (and German, and Slavic).
Besides German, I believe Russian and Yiddish were other popular choices for a national language, but each had its own political issues.
No, I'm not Jewish. I just like languages.
That's a very silly thing to say, "Arabic isn't that useful anymore," or Mandarin, for that matter. But you do have a point that certain languages have waves of popularity. But those waves generally last more than a generation or two. French was the, er, lingua franca for quite some time, but now it's English. For someone living in the United States, it's probably a good idea to learn Spanish, and that won't change any time soon. You're writing as if everyone could be a diplomat or soldier, and fly to jobs anywhere in the world. For most people, it probably makes sense to learn the local languages above all.
The line is certainly arbitrary, but it has to be drawn somewhere. Quickening has been a traditional time point, birth is another, conception yet another. But some societies found it acceptable to kill newborn children, as a method of birth control. In Iceland, before the missionaries converted everyone, infanticide was an acceptable practice--the infants were left to die of exposure, i.e., freezing to death. The Spartans did the same thing, and with a disturbing frequency.
I personally think abortion is a necessary evil--no one would argue abortions are a good thing, except perhaps Cartman on South Park. Birth control ought to be readily available to everyone, including Plan B ("morning after" pill) and abortions, because unwanted children are most often the ones who turn out to be criminals or screwups. If a child is unwanted, best to get rid of it as fast as possible, while the damage is minimal. Think about all the cases where an unwanted child grows up to be a murderer. Wouldn't it have been better if he'd been aborted? Of course it's best to prevent an unwanted pregnancy from occuring in the first place, if at all possible; but from a practical standpoint, I think the current legal standard is reasonable.
Now you have a consistent argument: any termination of pregnancy is undesirable, and is more distasteful the older the fetus gets, and an arbitrary place where we (the US) draw the legal line is after two trimesters. Happy?
Did you reply to the right comment? Did someone say "You don't have any rights on anyone elses property?" I agree with you about wrong-headed blanket statements; about the only blanket statement about rights that I can stand by is that people should have the right to do whatever they want to their own body--including abuse drugs, amputate limbs, or kill themselves.
It is very sad how few rights minors really have. At least their parents have legal standing to fight for minors' rights, such as the recent cases regarding creationism in Dover, and the "under God" clause in Sacramento. I would like to see a kids' Bill of Rights; there are rights violations all the time, but people aren't aware.
No, I am no longer a helpless student with no rights, but I remember well what it was like. And every day I read about some jackass principal in Utah or Georgia decides to call Homeland Security and expel a kid for wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt (not to pick on those states, but I remember specific instances). Unless kids are given the option to not attend school, it is unethical to restrict their protected speech on school grounds, let alone when they are at home.
Fortunately for any of the kids attending Pope John XXIII (I believe the article was missing an "X"), they can leave at any time. But then they'll have to attend a crappy public school, so they're screwed either way.
Perhaps not in such detail, but ever hear of a law called No Child Left Behind? That pretty thoroughly regulates public schools, although they conveniently left out any protections of students' rights. The government doesn't need to explicitly approve every rule and regulation in order to prohibit certain, illegal rules.Besides the fact that school attendence is federally mandated, there's another glaring flaw in your argument: the courts have ruled we have constitutionally protected civil rights, that have to be honored by private establishments. In other words, the constitution has "applicability" to every aspect of our lives, including at the mall and on the job.
"ß" should not be confused with the lowercase Greek letter beta, which it closely resembles, particularly to the eyes of non-German readers, but to which it is unrelated. Indeed the resemblance is not close enough to enable substitution of the one with the other in typeset material without the result looking extremely unprofessional, comparable to substituting lowercase Greek letter omega for "w" in English text. Any typeset material should use the ß; where that letter is unavailable, the substitution "ss" for "ß" is correct.
**sand on** Of course, being unprofessional doesn't stop people from using even less appropriate letter substitutions when using 1337-speak, and my point was simply that Spaniards have probably just updated the way they spell Quixote to keep with modern conventions. Since neither "J" nor "X" sounds like "H" in English, there's no reason for us to update the spelling of his name. Neither version corresponds with English spelling conventions. Native English speakers are used to shifting their phonetic conventions based on the etymology of the word, rather than changing the native spelling, which is why most people automatically know the "ci" in "cigar" is pronounced differently from the "ci" in "ciabatta," or that "ph" is pronounced like "f." But an awful lot of people do mispronounce "bruschetta." **sand off**
BTW, I was thinking something along the same lines regarding fighting windmills. I guess they think deflecting an asteroid is a pretty insurmountable task.