I have never even seen Antarctica, and I don't recall anyone talking about it twenty years ago. If 97% of geographers say Antarctica exists, I'd just like to point out that I've driven 50 miles in every direction but up and haven't seen no sign at all. And I'm pretty sure that my brother's boss once heard that geographers are telling us about this mythical Antarctica to take money from people like me and give it to themselves.
No continent I've ever seen is going to make me worry about sea-level rise, so keep yer commeenistic plots off of Slashdot.
Look, the NSA has already done more damage to the United States technology industry than any other enemy. RSA and the rest are just private branches of the state. Fuck them.
Please let this be a simulation. That way, the programmer can reboot us once he's convinced we've destroyed the planet. Maybe she'll leave out the staff of Fox News next time.
Hey, Color Run, shouldn't you be suing Slashdot for pointing out that you are complete assholes? After all, you have big pockets for attorneys, so you're allowed to steal.
One of the funniest moments in the Star Trek series came when they brought aboard a frozen 20th century businessman. The tragedy of the commons became all too real when the businessman discovered he could just touch the wall and demand to see the Captain.
Federation society was based on an ethic of getting along, not demanding everyone's attention for yourself. If that ethic exists in humanity, it is certainly not nurtured by the corporate capitalism that now controls the world's resources. Sadly, this may explain why we never hear from technologically advanced society's -- either they destroy themselves or they learn to hide.
Next week's report: Snowden used flexible plastic card to break into secure server room. These commie cheats will stop at nothing, I tell you. Better double NSA's funding.
They tried to use an automated tool in developing healthcare.gov but were told it was classified. Someone argued, I think, but top management fired him. Automated tools are no way to get more direct reports, you know. And we need unemployment to go down, not up.
Did you know you can double your "lines of code" output with just a few keystrokes? Write for more info!
Any organization involved in this blatant piracy should have, at the least, a one year ban on internet access. The only issue is who can enforce the punishment.
It will be a complete waste of time. Mr. Ham isn't there to change his opinion of anything.
It's not about convincing Ham. It's about exposing Ham's congregation to actual arguments. If fundie parents sit down and watch this with their kids, the kids might come away with a few new ideas. That's a good thing.
In America, at least, it has long seemed that watching a debate is more about choosing one's side and cheerleading on its behalf than about analyzing facts.
Facts can backfire and increase certainty in falsehoods -- http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/
“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”
In related news, I am pleased to announce my new "virtual slave" hardware, which intercepts communication from the "Virtual Boss" device to PHBServer and provides an excellent replacement stream of communication indicating you always participate in meetings, visit precisely three fellow employees for ten minutes each day, and never go to the bathroom. ("Virtual Slave eXtreme" will be available soon, with many customization options.)
I agree with xtal that one or the other of the "nuclear options" is not unlikely. But I doubt that nuclear in its existing implementation is a solution, in that the more existing-style plants there are, the more accidents there will be, the more public resistance there will be, and the more likely the plants will be permanently shut down.
What is needed, and I'm not saying it's about to happen, is to rearrange economies so that energy is priced at or higher than its real cost to the environment. I don't know how that happens in a democracy, so maybe China really will lead the way. For any jurisdiction to impose the extraordinarily high fuel taxes that this would require, it will have to become the common understanding in that jurisdiction that all of economics has been fatally wrong for at least fifty years, and that material growth is not a good thing for an economy if the economy happens to exist on a finite planet.
Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Too many of us put too much faith in the media and in democracy, and Ibsen's masterwork is an accurate corrective. Newspapers engage in crusades as long as it doesn't hurt their bottom line. People will ignore facts that are inconvenient. Politicians will do what majorities ask for, even if it means trashing the truth. We live in the tobacco company era and are still ignoring the global science community's warnings about climate change -- unless enough of us learn to think for ourselves, our prospects are not good.
"Wouldn't it be undemocratic if all the big states could, at the country level, impose laws on the smaller states without the consent of the inhabitants of said smaller states?"
No, democracy *means* majority rule. Minority rights are also important, which is why it's important to have a Constitution and a court system to protect the minorities. While the early federation of states might have considered states as equal entities, the reality of our system is that the states are mostly vestiges, the entities which should be represented in DC are called citizens, and the entities actually represented in DC are called corporations (the Senator from ADM, the Senator from Monsanto, the Senator from Boeing, etc...)
No, I think it's useful to have a branch of government that has longer terms and fewer members. I just think citizens should have relatively equal representation in it, so that each Senator represents a geographical area with a population of about 3 million people.
Slashdot Mirror
Coming up next -- investment bankers on why investment bankers deserve billions of dollars.
A spymaster asserts spying is important! Details at 11.
I have never even seen Antarctica, and I don't recall anyone talking about it twenty years ago. If 97% of geographers say Antarctica exists, I'd just like to point out that I've driven 50 miles in every direction but up and haven't seen no sign at all. And I'm pretty sure that my brother's boss once heard that geographers are telling us about this mythical Antarctica to take money from people like me and give it to themselves.
No continent I've ever seen is going to make me worry about sea-level rise, so keep yer commeenistic plots off of Slashdot.
German pranksters? They've mastered the Orwellian English of advertising to people who think they're smart. Bravo and brava!
You will never lack validation, BrendaEM. Ignorance is infinite.
I've stopped searching on the word Constitutional.
Yeah, I can even imagine an enterprise that harvests animal flesh and sells it to humans.
It's a trick to get the world's powerful sociopaths to worry about global warming.
Look, the NSA has already done more damage to the United States technology industry than any other enemy. RSA and the rest are just private branches of the state. Fuck them.
Please let this be a simulation. That way, the programmer can reboot us once he's convinced we've destroyed the planet. Maybe she'll leave out the staff of Fox News next time.
Hey, Color Run, shouldn't you be suing Slashdot for pointing out that you are complete assholes? After all, you have big pockets for attorneys, so you're allowed to steal.
"societies" -- hey, why is there no "edit" button, Captain? ;)
One of the funniest moments in the Star Trek series came when they brought aboard a frozen 20th century businessman. The tragedy of the commons became all too real when the businessman discovered he could just touch the wall and demand to see the Captain.
Federation society was based on an ethic of getting along, not demanding everyone's attention for yourself. If that ethic exists in humanity, it is certainly not nurtured by the corporate capitalism that now controls the world's resources. Sadly, this may explain why we never hear from technologically advanced society's -- either they destroy themselves or they learn to hide.
[EOM]
All he got was metadata.
Next week's report: Snowden used flexible plastic card to break into secure server room. These commie cheats will stop at nothing, I tell you. Better double NSA's funding.
They tried to use an automated tool in developing healthcare.gov but were told it was classified. Someone argued, I think, but top management fired him. Automated tools are no way to get more direct reports, you know. And we need unemployment to go down, not up.
Did you know you can double your "lines of code" output with just a few keystrokes? Write for more info!
Any organization involved in this blatant piracy should have, at the least, a one year ban on internet access. The only issue is who can enforce the punishment.
It will be a complete waste of time. Mr. Ham isn't there to change his opinion of anything.
It's not about convincing Ham. It's about exposing Ham's congregation to actual arguments. If fundie parents sit down and watch this with their kids, the kids might come away with a few new ideas. That's a good thing.
In America, at least, it has long seemed that watching a debate is more about choosing one's side and cheerleading on its behalf than about analyzing facts.
Facts can backfire and increase certainty in falsehoods -- http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/
“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”
For $20K, it will broadcast how your PHB's PHB's PHB spends his day.
In related news, I am pleased to announce my new "virtual slave" hardware, which intercepts communication from the "Virtual Boss" device to PHBServer and provides an excellent replacement stream of communication indicating you always participate in meetings, visit precisely three fellow employees for ten minutes each day, and never go to the bathroom. ("Virtual Slave eXtreme" will be available soon, with many customization options.)
I agree with xtal that one or the other of the "nuclear options" is not unlikely. But I doubt that nuclear in its existing implementation is a solution, in that the more existing-style plants there are, the more accidents there will be, the more public resistance there will be, and the more likely the plants will be permanently shut down.
What is needed, and I'm not saying it's about to happen, is to rearrange economies so that energy is priced at or higher than its real cost to the environment. I don't know how that happens in a democracy, so maybe China really will lead the way. For any jurisdiction to impose the extraordinarily high fuel taxes that this would require, it will have to become the common understanding in that jurisdiction that all of economics has been fatally wrong for at least fifty years, and that material growth is not a good thing for an economy if the economy happens to exist on a finite planet.
Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Too many of us put too much faith in the media and in democracy, and Ibsen's masterwork is an accurate corrective. Newspapers engage in crusades as long as it doesn't hurt their bottom line. People will ignore facts that are inconvenient. Politicians will do what majorities ask for, even if it means trashing the truth. We live in the tobacco company era and are still ignoring the global science community's warnings about climate change -- unless enough of us learn to think for ourselves, our prospects are not good.
"Wouldn't it be undemocratic if all the big states could, at the country level, impose laws on the smaller states without the consent of the inhabitants of said smaller states?"
No, democracy *means* majority rule. Minority rights are also important, which is why it's important to have a Constitution and a court system to protect the minorities. While the early federation of states might have considered states as equal entities, the reality of our system is that the states are mostly vestiges, the entities which should be represented in DC are called citizens, and the entities actually represented in DC are called corporations (the Senator from ADM, the Senator from Monsanto, the Senator from Boeing, etc...)
No, I think it's useful to have a branch of government that has longer terms and fewer members. I just think citizens should have relatively equal representation in it, so that each Senator represents a geographical area with a population of about 3 million people.