I read a quote somewhere that I thought was similar to your statement, that it is better (less likely to get a disease) to live in a community 95% are vaccinated and you are not, than to live in a community where you are vaccinated and 95% are not. It is called group immunity. Being vaccinated is not a guarantee that you won't get the disease, but when a large portion of the community is vaccinated, even those that are not vaccinated are less likely to get the disease.
I do attend a church regularly, and more than half of the people who attend regularly with me never contribute a cent. They are loved just the same as others who do contribute. The only person who knows how much is actually donated is the treasurer. I'm the council president and former treasurer, so I know of what I speak.
On the other hand, I have had friends that attend churches where the whole sermon is about giving money to the church. It was disheartening to them. However, just because it is this way in one, some, many or most, does not mean that it is universal. It is important to note that sacrifice is a part of most religions, in some way or another. The Christian New Testament has a parable about the widow and her two mites, and the rich man an his wealth. This is about sacrifice and not about volume. If you belief in something but are not willing to sacrifice for it, do you truly believe? Or are you there for some side benefit. You don't have to frame this solely in religion. Patriotism (whose concept was abused by our previous president), science, public safety and other noble pursuits are often characterized by sacrifice.
I my church there are many things required of us to be members. Only one of them has to do with money, and all of them have to do with helping humanity (note: not just those of my religion).
I work with Vista, develop software on it, and run in standard user mode (not administrator). I seldom get asked for elevation. The times that I do are when I am installing software, and changing a system setting. Other than that I never get prompts. My wife uses Vista also and she has never gotten a prompt.
I think the complaints about UAC revolve around the unfortunate set of users that think they are "administrators" or power users and run that way and then complain that every time they install the latest malware they get a prompt.
No amount of training will hinder these people. Why do we not see this as much in Linux? The bar to entry is much higher than Windows. This class of user base is smaller on Linux than on Windows.
Good on Facebook: I hope more business moves away from the US...
Although I don't particularly want businesses to move from the USA, I wouldn't mind if they moved to Ireland, since I am a dual-national with Irish citizenship!
I'm a married man, and I haven't had a conjugal visit in 6 months.
I don't get this, unless both of you have agreed to be celibate. I hear this a lot, and my wife and I have discussed this, and she doesn't understand it either. I knew a couple that each privately said to me that they wished they had more sex, and yet they couldn't ask their partner. It's crazy!
IANAP, but it seems that discussing this with your partner would be your best bet. Of course, I may not be in a typical relationship, as I don't have a bad word to say about my in-laws, or about my wife or the amount of sex my wife and I have. So YMMV.
"You can still be a totally productive member of society without a computer."
I totally disagree with this assertion. There are very few occupations of the "living wage" type that can be done without access to a general purpose computer. (I'm assuming you are talking about a GP computer, otherwise the list of jobs is practically zero).
Even when someone is convicted of a crime that has a punishment of a driving license suspension, most are given the ability to drive to and from work.
As a parent post said, Obama "owns" a private url that happens to be his name as much as a person "owns" any other particular private URL; that is he doesn't. I can easily make a page on my website and give it an URL with Obama's name and he wouldn't own it. The only way that I would start to transgress the law is if I claimed (obviously falsely) that I am US Senator Obama. Then no matter what URL I place my claim someone could have an issue with that.
Myspace had no obligation legally to turn over a location on its website. There was no copyright violation, and there was no attempt to defame or libel someone, and there was no attempt to mislead people of an official sanction. Privacy rights are severely curtailed for people in the public eye. No law was broken, no rights infringed.
Another way to look at it, what if another person, with the same name managed that myspace page. What would the issue be then?
Obama was likely not involved in this ruckus, but it has ballooned mightly. Underhanded, misapplied political or legal pressure, and other doings just goes to show how much of a "real" politician Obama is, simply because he hired people that do these things. A far more effective strategy would have been to negotiate, and then at least the campaign could point to the fact that they tried to negotiate, and then blame would not have swiftly landed on the campaign.
You say this is much ado about nothing, but in fact it is a prime example of how politics works. Managing your image is two-faced and dishonest. Most politicians do it, and they lose their humanity by it. It is not the candidate's fault entirely. It is our own fault for letting them get away with it. The candidates lie to us and we know they lie, and we accept their lie and pretend their lie is not a lie.
Why do pro-Obama people try to cast this Joe person in such a negative light? It is simply because they KNOW this looks bad, but want to purpetuate the lie that Obama is not a "real" politician. "Joe is just an extortionist" they say. But isn't that just like a politico, "My candidate is perfect (why can't you see it), but this guy is a terrorist."
It is a sad day - Obama actually had a chance to not only get the Democratic party vote, but the millions of disaffected Republicans votes. At least we thought he wasn't one of them.
I think in history there have been two ways to look at new technology. Fear and avoidance, or exuberant acceptance. But sometimes thing that are accepted as breakthroughs are actually deadly for us. Can you say X-Ray shoe fitting.
Technology such as cell phones are so mysterious to average non-technophiles, and that mystery is frightening. Fightening precisely because of the past "breakthroughs" that causes people great harm.
As a former alarm installer, all I can say is that alarm companies don't control the hardware, they only install it. Also, alarm equipment tends to lag behind current technology. Most alarms company receivers (the ones that receive the call and translate the DTMF or other coding scheme to an alarm code for the operator) run on Z-80 processors. Not that mature technology is bad, or that Z-80 processors are bad, but the alarm equipment manufacturers like to pick technology and stick with it.
Just one point, there is case law already (from more than a decade back) that GPS tracking of suspects is equivalent to other standard forms of surveillance currently employed by law enforcement. There is no problem for law enforcement to "tail" a suspect on foot, by car, or by other vehicle. GPS is a natural extension of this. This point has been made in many cases, and I am unaware of any limiting statements made by judges in those case. Tailing of a suspect never needs a warrent.
What is different about GPS vs. a human tracker is that human tracking requires a much greater expenditure of resources. With a GPS-enabled tracker, law enforcement could easily computerize the tracking and integrate a vast amount of tracking data easily with very little resources expended. It is far easier to tell when law enforcement has dramatically increased its personnel, but far harder to track when law enforcement has increased its surveillance. I'm assuming this is what the judge was referring to when he warned about wholesale tracking.
From what I know, the MVCC is in-memory only. I've followed the happenings at Firebird and Netfrastructure (Jim Starkey's previous company, from which Falcon is derived), and he has commented that the MVCC is handled in-memory. Disk-based records are always a single copy with no concept of back-records.
The backup and restore issue in Firebird hopefully will be worked on soon, as I agree it is a big problem with high transaction rate applications. This is completely different than the sweep/vacuum issue, which again isn't an issue because there are no on-disk back-records to sweep.
Suggesting that since Falcon and Interbase/Firebird share a common "parent" they are indentical in performance, features, or drawbacks is a foolish argument. Jim Starkey hasn't been involved in Interbase development in more than 15 years (maybe 20). To recommend against a piece of software because the same architect designed/coded it is quite short-sighted. The matra should be the right tool for the job. If Firebird/IB didn't work for your purposes then fine, it was right for you to switch to something else. It does not mean that it is not right for other peoples purposes. What about all of the things that Firebird provides that Postgres does not? Postgres would absolutely not work for some of my projects, where FB is a perfect fit.
Re:What about employee safety?
on
UFOs In the News
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· Score: 3, Informative
I'm sure real pilots just haven't seen your comment, but this is not true. All major to medium airports have radar and radar does not only pick up metal. The transponder is something completely different. With it you are given a "squawk" code if you are flying a filed flight plan, otherwise you can fly VFR and use the common squawk code of 2700 (this is obviously only for General Aviation, not commercial). This transponder is used for specific aircraft identification and again, has nothing to do with radar. Radar will pick up even small objects in the airspace, such as groups of birds, etc.
BTW large birds are definately not "stealthy"! In the future you might want to learn something about the subject you are commenting on before getting just about every detail wrong.
If you haven't noticed Canada and the US are quite different in many regards. Elections are one of them. This is not to say that the US cannot learn from the Canadian system or even the French system, but there are (probably) fundamental differences between elections in each country that don't make for easy comparisons.
One example is that the US federal system is part of the reason we don't have one unifying body that handles elections at the national level. Even within each state, counties/parishes are the ones that control many aspects of the voting process. I think this is a flaw in the US system. Having so many different systems and a small amount of state oversight is problematic. However, even state oversight is not enough because politicians can be bought or blackmailed. In California we had a problem with our Secretary of State that result because of lack of intelligence or having the "wool pulled over his eyes" by Diebold.
Trying to simplify the balloting would be great, except that each election there are numerous things to vote on, especially in California with a strong ballot proposition tradition. Hand counting all of the propositions and elected offices, some of which can have 12 or more candidates, would be very painful, and likely introduce more error than other technical means.
Ultimately we are to blame because we expect quickness of election results rather than correctness of election results.
It all depends upon your market what you will see. Where I live, in a semi-rural location in California, there are very limited options for health plans. Dental was even worse, in that the dental plan offered only covered dentists that were more than 60 miles away.
Even if your health plan doesn't drop you, they will make it very difficult for you to continue with them. I was with Blue Shield of CA, and when I started my premiums were $4800 a year. Three years later they jumped to $11200 a year. In one quarter they jumped 41%, and 3 year average of 77% a year increase. Unfortunately at the moment I had to drop them and am looking at alternatives.
However, my kids still need to go to the doctor. What did I find out. The co-pay for my children's doctor with PPO insurance was $35. The cash price the same doctor charges is $40. So in this instance, the insurance was saving my $5 a visit, and essentially was acting like a catastrophic coverage plan.
HP recently asked me to extend my warrantee on a laptop whose warrantee is about to expire. The problem is that the price for a 3 year extension was $375 which is quite close (within $100) of the original price I paid for the laptop! I think I'd just backup my stuff regularly and replace the laptop with the current model that I can get for $450 or so if it does break.
"...saying that not being able to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater is [censorship is] like saying that your right to bear arms is infringed by not being able to shoot people at will."
This quote (slightly altered) is the funniest, most concise expression about the limits of freedom of speech I have ever heard.
While telephone calls are far more intrusive and annoying, my local sheriff constantly bombarded/spammed my e-mail with re-election pleas. I responded that I was an undecided voter and that spamming was a way to make me and others like me hate him. No response. More spam. Responded that I would now never vote for him in any election for any reason because of the spam. Either he got the hint or got so many other negative complaints about the spam, that they have stopped and I did not receive any for the run-off election tomorrow. I am also sticking to my pledge not to vote for him.
"The fact of the matter is that there's a lot of women out there with poor self-esteem".
This can't be emphasize enough. Often the most beautiful women (both outside and inside) are the ones that have problems. Some think they can overcome it by becoming sluts. Others just don't date, or date men that know how to exploit poor self-esteem.
I see this in my own (extended) family. My wife's cousin, 20 years old, very beautiful, blond, sweet and loving, has a hard time dating. Two of her recent boyfriends have either been extremely needy and dishonest or been somewhat aggresive and helped her to make poor choices for her life. I just can't understand it. I just assumed beautiful people had it made. It turns out that even beautiful people can have self-image problems.
It is all in how you look at things. I don't know how Jews interpret the passages referenced, but the two "New Testament" references cited (aside from #11 and 12) are only pointing to the "Old Testament" reference about which Jesus was being questioned (the idea of brothers successively marrying their sister-in-law if no children produced).
As for #11, this is a bad thing? If divorce were an OK thing emotionally and socially, then this could rightly be a criticism. But divorce is neither. Jesus said only for sexual immorality is divorce an option. What Jesus was trying to eliminate is legalistic thinking of what marriage had become. Divorce was easy and it could have the effect of making women destitute. Marriage is supposed to be more than a contract, and most christians do not think of it as a contract.
The "better not to marry" question is not about marriage particularly, but about salvation. The first cite is about how it would be better not to marry than to commit adultery. Looking at this statement from a Christian religious perspective, it is true. It would be better to have salvation than to commit adultery (any sin really). This is not unlike the studied concept that inventors and other scholars do less work and have fewer "breakthroughs" _after_ they get married. Maybe Einstein shouldn't have been married, he might have had another breakthrough.
The second cite is more to the point of the criticism. But again, what is St. Paul saying. It would be good not to get married, but because the sexual urge is strong, please get married as it is better to find salvation in marriage than to forsake salvation. What about the not getting married aspect? It again is about salvation. Marriage, family, children take up a lot of time. If you were not married you could devote this time to religious pursuits. This is what St. Paul is expressing.
The third cite of #12 (I Cor 7:27-28) is actually about divorce (When criticizing it might be best not to blindly cite what others have put together, and to not even cite the original source). What is most instructive is what was left out of the cites from I Cor 7:32-34, 7:38. Passages 35-37 and 39-40 give St. Paul's reasonings behind those cites. Those reasonings I have condensed above.
While the movie may not have been a critical success, they the makers did not develop the most interesting part of the plot, I came out of the movie saying to my wife that this was they way I saw America and its government changing. My wife hates politics and think rosy thoughts usually, and even she was agreeing with me.
I think this is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. As a software developer for a largely computer illiterate user base, I have found that users try to get rid of dialog boxes as fast as possible, without ever reading the text. The longer the text (say over 8 words), the less likely they are to read it. Often they will always press 'yes' or always press 'no' until after a few tries they don't get the response they thought and try a different button.
I try to ask as few questions as possible. Users often don't want options, just action, and the ability to undo the action after it has happened.
It is not like this everywhere in California. 2 of the 4 places I have lived have been in unincorporated areas of a county. The county regulations are usually less severe than city regulations. For example, where I live now, I only had to make a statement that I would not have customers coming to the house. Other than that, they didn't care as long as I paid $100 for the business permit. Same thing with the other unincorporated area.
In one of the cities (pop 140,000) I lived, I also had to make a statement that I would not have customers come to the house. I still had to go through the planning department, but they rubber-stamped it.
Though not everybody has a choice in where to live and start a business, and in general I agree that there are too many restrictions on very small businesses.
I don't agree. I realize that optional items that interface with games are not likely to be programmed for. However, an external HD-DVD player doesn't do any game interaction. It is simply a way to play media/games on the machine. A hard drive (which MS was stupid not to include) is different in that a game can use it (write data to it). Unless were talking about an HD-DVD (re)writable drive, only games that want to be on the HD-DVD would even care that it is there.
FWIW, About 15 years ago I was very interested in lucid dreams. I had a couple of dreams before then that I was able to control a little bit. I read some books and earnestly worked on some of the techniques described to induce lucid dreaming. It took about a week of constantly attempting it. Just about when I was going to give up, I started having dreams that I could control. The ones I liked were when I could induce them at night when first going to bed. Those were much better than the ones that happened just before waking up. If I had a lucid dream in the morning, I would almost always wake up right in the middle of a fun part and couldn't get myself to stay asleep. For a while after consistently practicing the techniques, I had lucid dreams, and then they just kind of stopped happening. It was a little too much work for the reward.
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I read a quote somewhere that I thought was similar to your statement, that it is better (less likely to get a disease) to live in a community 95% are vaccinated and you are not, than to live in a community where you are vaccinated and 95% are not. It is called group immunity. Being vaccinated is not a guarantee that you won't get the disease, but when a large portion of the community is vaccinated, even those that are not vaccinated are less likely to get the disease.
I do attend a church regularly, and more than half of the people who attend regularly with me never contribute a cent. They are loved just the same as others who do contribute. The only person who knows how much is actually donated is the treasurer. I'm the council president and former treasurer, so I know of what I speak.
On the other hand, I have had friends that attend churches where the whole sermon is about giving money to the church. It was disheartening to them. However, just because it is this way in one, some, many or most, does not mean that it is universal. It is important to note that sacrifice is a part of most religions, in some way or another. The Christian New Testament has a parable about the widow and her two mites, and the rich man an his wealth. This is about sacrifice and not about volume. If you belief in something but are not willing to sacrifice for it, do you truly believe? Or are you there for some side benefit. You don't have to frame this solely in religion. Patriotism (whose concept was abused by our previous president), science, public safety and other noble pursuits are often characterized by sacrifice.
I my church there are many things required of us to be members. Only one of them has to do with money, and all of them have to do with helping humanity (note: not just those of my religion).
I work with Vista, develop software on it, and run in standard user mode (not administrator). I seldom get asked for elevation. The times that I do are when I am installing software, and changing a system setting. Other than that I never get prompts. My wife uses Vista also and she has never gotten a prompt.
I think the complaints about UAC revolve around the unfortunate set of users that think they are "administrators" or power users and run that way and then complain that every time they install the latest malware they get a prompt.
No amount of training will hinder these people. Why do we not see this as much in Linux? The bar to entry is much higher than Windows. This class of user base is smaller on Linux than on Windows.
Good on Facebook: I hope more business moves away from the US...
Although I don't particularly want businesses to move from the USA, I wouldn't mind if they moved to Ireland, since I am a dual-national with Irish citizenship!
I'm a married man, and I haven't had a conjugal visit in 6 months.
I don't get this, unless both of you have agreed to be celibate. I hear this a lot, and my wife and I have discussed this, and she doesn't understand it either. I knew a couple that each privately said to me that they wished they had more sex, and yet they couldn't ask their partner. It's crazy!
IANAP, but it seems that discussing this with your partner would be your best bet. Of course, I may not be in a typical relationship, as I don't have a bad word to say about my in-laws, or about my wife or the amount of sex my wife and I have. So YMMV.
"You can still be a totally productive member of society without a computer."
I totally disagree with this assertion. There are very few occupations of the "living wage" type that can be done without access to a general purpose computer. (I'm assuming you are talking about a GP computer, otherwise the list of jobs is practically zero).
Even when someone is convicted of a crime that has a punishment of a driving license suspension, most are given the ability to drive to and from work.
As a parent post said, Obama "owns" a private url that happens to be his name as much as a person "owns" any other particular private URL; that is he doesn't. I can easily make a page on my website and give it an URL with Obama's name and he wouldn't own it. The only way that I would start to transgress the law is if I claimed (obviously falsely) that I am US Senator Obama. Then no matter what URL I place my claim someone could have an issue with that.
Myspace had no obligation legally to turn over a location on its website. There was no copyright violation, and there was no attempt to defame or libel someone, and there was no attempt to mislead people of an official sanction. Privacy rights are severely curtailed for people in the public eye. No law was broken, no rights infringed.
Another way to look at it, what if another person, with the same name managed that myspace page. What would the issue be then?
Obama was likely not involved in this ruckus, but it has ballooned mightly. Underhanded, misapplied political or legal pressure, and other doings just goes to show how much of a "real" politician Obama is, simply because he hired people that do these things. A far more effective strategy would have been to negotiate, and then at least the campaign could point to the fact that they tried to negotiate, and then blame would not have swiftly landed on the campaign.
You say this is much ado about nothing, but in fact it is a prime example of how politics works. Managing your image is two-faced and dishonest. Most politicians do it, and they lose their humanity by it. It is not the candidate's fault entirely. It is our own fault for letting them get away with it. The candidates lie to us and we know they lie, and we accept their lie and pretend their lie is not a lie.
Why do pro-Obama people try to cast this Joe person in such a negative light? It is simply because they KNOW this looks bad, but want to purpetuate the lie that Obama is not a "real" politician. "Joe is just an extortionist" they say. But isn't that just like a politico, "My candidate is perfect (why can't you see it), but this guy is a terrorist."
It is a sad day - Obama actually had a chance to not only get the Democratic party vote, but the millions of disaffected Republicans votes. At least we thought he wasn't one of them.
I think in history there have been two ways to look at new technology. Fear and avoidance, or exuberant acceptance. But sometimes thing that are accepted as breakthroughs are actually deadly for us. Can you say X-Ray shoe fitting.
Technology such as cell phones are so mysterious to average non-technophiles, and that mystery is frightening. Fightening precisely because of the past "breakthroughs" that causes people great harm.
As a former alarm installer, all I can say is that alarm companies don't control the hardware, they only install it. Also, alarm equipment tends to lag behind current technology. Most alarms company receivers (the ones that receive the call and translate the DTMF or other coding scheme to an alarm code for the operator) run on Z-80 processors. Not that mature technology is bad, or that Z-80 processors are bad, but the alarm equipment manufacturers like to pick technology and stick with it.
Just one point, there is case law already (from more than a decade back) that GPS tracking of suspects is equivalent to other standard forms of surveillance currently employed by law enforcement. There is no problem for law enforcement to "tail" a suspect on foot, by car, or by other vehicle. GPS is a natural extension of this. This point has been made in many cases, and I am unaware of any limiting statements made by judges in those case. Tailing of a suspect never needs a warrent.
What is different about GPS vs. a human tracker is that human tracking requires a much greater expenditure of resources. With a GPS-enabled tracker, law enforcement could easily computerize the tracking and integrate a vast amount of tracking data easily with very little resources expended. It is far easier to tell when law enforcement has dramatically increased its personnel, but far harder to track when law enforcement has increased its surveillance. I'm assuming this is what the judge was referring to when he warned about wholesale tracking.
From what I know, the MVCC is in-memory only. I've followed the happenings at Firebird and Netfrastructure (Jim Starkey's previous company, from which Falcon is derived), and he has commented that the MVCC is handled in-memory. Disk-based records are always a single copy with no concept of back-records.
The backup and restore issue in Firebird hopefully will be worked on soon, as I agree it is a big problem with high transaction rate applications. This is completely different than the sweep/vacuum issue, which again isn't an issue because there are no on-disk back-records to sweep.
Suggesting that since Falcon and Interbase/Firebird share a common "parent" they are indentical in performance, features, or drawbacks is a foolish argument. Jim Starkey hasn't been involved in Interbase development in more than 15 years (maybe 20). To recommend against a piece of software because the same architect designed/coded it is quite short-sighted. The matra should be the right tool for the job. If Firebird/IB didn't work for your purposes then fine, it was right for you to switch to something else. It does not mean that it is not right for other peoples purposes. What about all of the things that Firebird provides that Postgres does not? Postgres would absolutely not work for some of my projects, where FB is a perfect fit.
I'm sure real pilots just haven't seen your comment, but this is not true. All major to medium airports have radar and radar does not only pick up metal. The transponder is something completely different. With it you are given a "squawk" code if you are flying a filed flight plan, otherwise you can fly VFR and use the common squawk code of 2700 (this is obviously only for General Aviation, not commercial). This transponder is used for specific aircraft identification and again, has nothing to do with radar. Radar will pick up even small objects in the airspace, such as groups of birds, etc.
BTW large birds are definately not "stealthy"! In the future you might want to learn something about the subject you are commenting on before getting just about every detail wrong.
If you haven't noticed Canada and the US are quite different in many regards. Elections are one of them. This is not to say that the US cannot learn from the Canadian system or even the French system, but there are (probably) fundamental differences between elections in each country that don't make for easy comparisons.
One example is that the US federal system is part of the reason we don't have one unifying body that handles elections at the national level. Even within each state, counties/parishes are the ones that control many aspects of the voting process. I think this is a flaw in the US system. Having so many different systems and a small amount of state oversight is problematic. However, even state oversight is not enough because politicians can be bought or blackmailed. In California we had a problem with our Secretary of State that result because of lack of intelligence or having the "wool pulled over his eyes" by Diebold.
Trying to simplify the balloting would be great, except that each election there are numerous things to vote on, especially in California with a strong ballot proposition tradition. Hand counting all of the propositions and elected offices, some of which can have 12 or more candidates, would be very painful, and likely introduce more error than other technical means.
Ultimately we are to blame because we expect quickness of election results rather than correctness of election results.
It all depends upon your market what you will see. Where I live, in a semi-rural location in California, there are very limited options for health plans. Dental was even worse, in that the dental plan offered only covered dentists that were more than 60 miles away.
Even if your health plan doesn't drop you, they will make it very difficult for you to continue with them. I was with Blue Shield of CA, and when I started my premiums were $4800 a year. Three years later they jumped to $11200 a year. In one quarter they jumped 41%, and 3 year average of 77% a year increase. Unfortunately at the moment I had to drop them and am looking at alternatives.
However, my kids still need to go to the doctor. What did I find out. The co-pay for my children's doctor with PPO insurance was $35. The cash price the same doctor charges is $40. So in this instance, the insurance was saving my $5 a visit, and essentially was acting like a catastrophic coverage plan.
HP recently asked me to extend my warrantee on a laptop whose warrantee is about to expire. The problem is that the price for a 3 year extension was $375 which is quite close (within $100) of the original price I paid for the laptop! I think I'd just backup my stuff regularly and replace the laptop with the current model that I can get for $450 or so if it does break.
There is an old saying (I think Chinese, but I could be wrong):
"When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers."
"...saying that not being able to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater is [censorship is] like saying that your right to bear arms is infringed by not being able to shoot people at will."
This quote (slightly altered) is the funniest, most concise expression about the limits of freedom of speech I have ever heard.
While telephone calls are far more intrusive and annoying, my local sheriff constantly bombarded/spammed my e-mail with re-election pleas. I responded that I was an undecided voter and that spamming was a way to make me and others like me hate him. No response. More spam. Responded that I would now never vote for him in any election for any reason because of the spam. Either he got the hint or got so many other negative complaints about the spam, that they have stopped and I did not receive any for the run-off election tomorrow. I am also sticking to my pledge not to vote for him.
"The fact of the matter is that there's a lot of women out there with poor self-esteem".
This can't be emphasize enough. Often the most beautiful women (both outside and inside) are the ones that have problems. Some think they can overcome it by becoming sluts. Others just don't date, or date men that know how to exploit poor self-esteem.
I see this in my own (extended) family. My wife's cousin, 20 years old, very beautiful, blond, sweet and loving, has a hard time dating. Two of her recent boyfriends have either been extremely needy and dishonest or been somewhat aggresive and helped her to make poor choices for her life. I just can't understand it. I just assumed beautiful people had it made. It turns out that even beautiful people can have self-image problems.
It is all in how you look at things. I don't know how Jews interpret the passages referenced, but the two "New Testament" references cited (aside from #11 and 12) are only pointing to the "Old Testament" reference about which Jesus was being questioned (the idea of brothers successively marrying their sister-in-law if no children produced).
As for #11, this is a bad thing? If divorce were an OK thing emotionally and socially, then this could rightly be a criticism. But divorce is neither. Jesus said only for sexual immorality is divorce an option. What Jesus was trying to eliminate is legalistic thinking of what marriage had become. Divorce was easy and it could have the effect of making women destitute. Marriage is supposed to be more than a contract, and most christians do not think of it as a contract.
The "better not to marry" question is not about marriage particularly, but about salvation. The first cite is about how it would be better not to marry than to commit adultery. Looking at this statement from a Christian religious perspective, it is true. It would be better to have salvation than to commit adultery (any sin really). This is not unlike the studied concept that inventors and other scholars do less work and have fewer "breakthroughs" _after_ they get married. Maybe Einstein shouldn't have been married, he might have had another breakthrough.
The second cite is more to the point of the criticism. But again, what is St. Paul saying. It would be good not to get married, but because the sexual urge is strong, please get married as it is better to find salvation in marriage than to forsake salvation. What about the not getting married aspect? It again is about salvation. Marriage, family, children take up a lot of time. If you were not married you could devote this time to religious pursuits. This is what St. Paul is expressing.
The third cite of #12 (I Cor 7:27-28) is actually about divorce (When criticizing it might be best not to blindly cite what others have put together, and to not even cite the original source). What is most instructive is what was left out of the cites from I Cor 7:32-34, 7:38. Passages 35-37 and 39-40 give St. Paul's reasonings behind those cites. Those reasonings I have condensed above.
While the movie may not have been a critical success, they the makers did not develop the most interesting part of the plot, I came out of the movie saying to my wife that this was they way I saw America and its government changing. My wife hates politics and think rosy thoughts usually, and even she was agreeing with me.
I think this is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. As a software developer for a largely computer illiterate user base, I have found that users try to get rid of dialog boxes as fast as possible, without ever reading the text. The longer the text (say over 8 words), the less likely they are to read it. Often they will always press 'yes' or always press 'no' until after a few tries they don't get the response they thought and try a different button.
I try to ask as few questions as possible. Users often don't want options, just action, and the ability to undo the action after it has happened.
It is not like this everywhere in California. 2 of the 4 places I have lived have been in unincorporated areas of a county. The county regulations are usually less severe than city regulations. For example, where I live now, I only had to make a statement that I would not have customers coming to the house. Other than that, they didn't care as long as I paid $100 for the business permit. Same thing with the other unincorporated area.
In one of the cities (pop 140,000) I lived, I also had to make a statement that I would not have customers come to the house. I still had to go through the planning department, but they rubber-stamped it.
Though not everybody has a choice in where to live and start a business, and in general I agree that there are too many restrictions on very small businesses.
I don't agree. I realize that optional items that interface with games are not likely to be programmed for. However, an external HD-DVD player doesn't do any game interaction. It is simply a way to play media/games on the machine. A hard drive (which MS was stupid not to include) is different in that a game can use it (write data to it). Unless were talking about an HD-DVD (re)writable drive, only games that want to be on the HD-DVD would even care that it is there.
FWIW, About 15 years ago I was very interested in lucid dreams. I had a couple of dreams before then that I was able to control a little bit. I read some books and earnestly worked on some of the techniques described to induce lucid dreaming. It took about a week of constantly attempting it. Just about when I was going to give up, I started having dreams that I could control.
The ones I liked were when I could induce them at night when first going to bed. Those were much better than the ones that happened just before waking up. If I had a lucid dream in the morning, I would almost always wake up right in the middle of a fun part and couldn't get myself to stay asleep.
For a while after consistently practicing the techniques, I had lucid dreams, and then they just kind of stopped happening. It was a little too much work for the reward.