When the culture of a place encourages professionalism, reporting of corruption, etc..., corruption becomes much harder. When the culture becomes "if I report what you're doing, I can kiss any chance of promotion next month goodbye," you get corruption.
Look for the video of the cop who went to arrest the guy for drunk driving, then found out the guy was a cop from a neighboring town. I saw it on TV a while back, but it's probably up on youtube.
A great deal of the power in Eastern Canada is hydro because of Niagra Falls, because the population's not that big (12 Million in Ontario, 8 million in Quebec), and because it's much cooler than the US. (So much less air conditioning in the summer.)
Costs are much higher than production costs, mostly because of massive mismanagement by the utilities years ago that incurred massive debts they haven't yet been able to pay off.
(1) Occasionally someone will see a funny post but want to give props to the author instead of just the comment. IIRC, Funny mod points increase the score of the comment, but Insightful mod points increase both the score of the comment and the user's Karma.
(2) On rare occasions, moderating a ridiculous, comical, sarcastic, or satirical comment as informative is in itself a funny thing.
(3) Maybe the mod in question just really needs to kill superman.
The scoutreachbsa.org link is to a private organization's grants, so far as I can tell, not for government money.
Of the Fannie May links, some are for girl scouts rather than the BSA; others are for the learning for life program, which (I believe) doesn't subscribe to the scout oath and law and so may be less rigid about gender-orientation; some are for drug-awareness programs.
Now one or two are general operating grants, and of course those are much more questionable, given that federal law prevents awarding those grants to organizations that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. That being said, I have to wonder what the effectual difference would be, if there are other organizations that applied for the grants that could have done more for the communities in question, etc...
I'm not saying I approve of the BSA's stance--I've known people who nearly never had even the same kinds of experiences that the BSA program can give, and who never expected to again, and it's really sad that it's so much harder for them to be a part of that experience because of the National Committee's beliefs. Though the National Committee would say it's because of their beliefs.
It can be a hard thing, when two groups believe so differently.
Still, I think it's very easy to condemn a group for doing one thing wrong, and to so overlook so many things that they can do well. The automatic BSA==homophobes==despicable organization that seems to come to the forefront of many peoples' minds is at least as closed-minded as gay==immoral==can't be scouts or leaders.
I'm not saying you're doing that; it just comes to mind when we see an article like this and the overwhelming response is "They hate gays! OMG!" instead of "they have a massive youth program and do a lot of good things for millions of people every year." Granted, the issue is controversial at best, but it's far from the defining characteristic of the organization.
Write your senators, please--this is akin to the police closing a library for six months to two years because they found a novel on the floor and they can't positively determine that it's a legal copy.
Only, because of the internet, someone who's never even been to the library can drop it there. Furthermore, it doesn't even have to be there--if a cop says he thinks he saw one, that counts. *and*, because it's computer hardware as well as software, the overall value and lifetime expectancy of the library decreases tremendously over the time it's not usable.
What religious emblem serves a requirement to advance in rank? They generally allow you to wear the appropriate original insignia (which would be an unusual thing to do) or the appropriate square knot, which is quite common among adult scouters but is far from expected for anyone.
It really does, or the pack, in the case of Cub Scouts. I'm sorry you had a bad experience, and of course many people do; but many others have wonderful experiences. Overall, it's a very ambitious and far-reaching program that I think does a lot of good, though of course there are many, many things about it that could be done differently and there's a tremendous amount of institutional momentum to overcome when it comes to changes on a national level.
On the local level, unit politics (within the troop or pack leadership) or personal failings on the part of some can result in a bad experience for many, and that's unfortunate. But it's a failure to be found in any organization, and there really are many, many good things that come out of the scouting movement today.
The article suggests the grant in question is for the Great Alaska Council, which, while a member council of the BSA, is not the same as the BSA. The BSA doesn't give up the right to discriminate because one of their councils receives a grant that's only supposed to be given to people who don't discriminate--the council isn't speaking for the organization. (And I don't know the details of whether the council agreed not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, or the grant is only supposed to be given to those who don't discriminate on that basis.)
> More seriously, a person who enjoys child porn almost certainly enjoys looking at children in real life, as well. So should we ban children from all public spaces just in case there happens to be a paedophile around who will have bad thoughts because they happen to see a child they find attractive? I mean, having separate "child habitats" where children are made safe from the problems of the real world is the next logical step in the continued cotton-balling of our kids.
Actually, we take the opposite approach, creating a special children's space and banning adults, while not banning children from public-space-at-large: The playgrounds in New York, for example, often ban unaccompanied adults.
From a theoretical standpoint, that works assuming you can run through or predict the outcome of every possible input sequence anyone can give it. (Or at least, say, the most frequent 80-90% of possible inputs if you want bad copies.) Even a computer can't play-test a modern game to that degree of completion, though maybe a computer with a human to spend a lot of time patching conditional state changes into it could.
To my knowledge, though, nobody has gotten a system together which is theoretically uncrackable. (Without having holes in the theory, anyway.) So we haven't gone down the "if you can watch it and you can hear it, you can copy it route." Well, not for games, anyway.
They should, but the IRS doesn't say firmly that they should or they shouldn't, so lots of people do. (I think they mostly have you figure out if you NEED one, so a lot of people, following their directions, by default use their SSN.)
The concern here, since it's aggregate transactions instead of every transaction (don't kid yourself, that day will come), is actually with identity theft as opposed to privacy.
(I'm distinguishing between the two in the following way, though someone can correct me if other definitions tend to be used: privacy reflects an individual's right to practice what activities he chooses without fear of persecution; identity theft reflects a criminal stealing your SSN and/or other data and building a phony life or racking up massive debt that is attributed to you.)
Using those definitions, the point being made is that this is an identity theft issue, because many small businesses use their SSN as their tax reporting number rather than an Employer Identification Number, especially for one-person businesses. So their SSN #s go into a new industry standard database, which is bad.
Privacy is still an issue, but more in a slippery-slope way: the amount of information the govt. is asking for will gradually increase as the framework comes into play. Though given what I've heard of how the IRS does software development, they may collect the data without actually connecting it to tax revenues in our lifetimes.
Drug crimes are often not victimless, quite aside from the chance of OD-ing and the financial burden of addiction, you're funneling money into a criminal enterprise with massive resources. This encourages corruption in law enforcement both here and abroad, and it keeps open regular channels of unmonitored (even more unmonitored than usual) material transfer into the country.
Among other things, the massive criminal enterprises drug abuse in this country funds in other countries discourages tourism and business investments there, creating barriers to trade and development. Ultimately, we lose a lot of money.
On the flipside of the coin, drug crimes often aren't victimless because people can get caught: in Massachussets, for example, I think two joints qualifies as intent to distribute these days. That's the end of someone's federal student aid, at the least.
Would drug crimes be victimless if they weren't on the books? Would there then be a need for criminality? Sometimes they'd be victimless, probably; and sometimes, not; but they are certainly not victimless crimes today.
If you're falling asleep on the road, you're more likely to make the error of driving to one side. Similarly, if you're getting distracted by a stray thought, your concentration can suffer and are more likely to make errors in your primary task. You may not predict the exact error, but you can reasonably forecast an increased probability of error.
Why else would car insurance rates rise when you get into an accident? Um... you know, aside from evil insurance companies?
Slashdot Mirror
When the culture of a place encourages professionalism, reporting of corruption, etc..., corruption becomes much harder. When the culture becomes "if I report what you're doing, I can kiss any chance of promotion next month goodbye," you get corruption.
Look for the video of the cop who went to arrest the guy for drunk driving, then found out the guy was a cop from a neighboring town. I saw it on TV a while back, but it's probably up on youtube.
So sayeth the tao of slashdot.
Actually, even a lot of the kids who go to the Ivy League don't learn Latin any more.
(Though most of them would still get "curricula" right.)
The Protestants in the New World used to have massive family bibles with hundreds of pages in the back telling them how to interpret it, too.
The commuter trains into NYC are electric, as is the subway.
The bear of the problem is cars, though, at least today. Amdahl's law and all that.
A great deal of the power in Eastern Canada is hydro because of Niagra Falls, because the population's not that big (12 Million in Ontario, 8 million in Quebec), and because it's much cooler than the US. (So much less air conditioning in the summer.)
Costs are much higher than production costs, mostly because of massive mismanagement by the utilities years ago that incurred massive debts they haven't yet been able to pay off.
(1) Occasionally someone will see a funny post but want to give props to the author instead of just the comment. IIRC, Funny mod points increase the score of the comment, but Insightful mod points increase both the score of the comment and the user's Karma.
(2) On rare occasions, moderating a ridiculous, comical, sarcastic, or satirical comment as informative is in itself a funny thing.
(3) Maybe the mod in question just really needs to kill superman.
If this winds up going to the Supreme Court over the Right to Privacy, it could give them an excuse to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Why on earth wouldn't a computer be able to read new email to you?
Oh, Viagra spam in the morning!
Both are listed in the dictionary.
The scoutreachbsa.org link is to a private organization's grants, so far as I can tell, not for government money.
Of the Fannie May links, some are for girl scouts rather than the BSA; others are for the learning for life program, which (I believe) doesn't subscribe to the scout oath and law and so may be less rigid about gender-orientation; some are for drug-awareness programs.
Now one or two are general operating grants, and of course those are much more questionable, given that federal law prevents awarding those grants to organizations that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. That being said, I have to wonder what the effectual difference would be, if there are other organizations that applied for the grants that could have done more for the communities in question, etc...
I'm not saying I approve of the BSA's stance--I've known people who nearly never had even the same kinds of experiences that the BSA program can give, and who never expected to again, and it's really sad that it's so much harder for them to be a part of that experience because of the National Committee's beliefs. Though the National Committee would say it's because of their beliefs.
It can be a hard thing, when two groups believe so differently.
Still, I think it's very easy to condemn a group for doing one thing wrong, and to so overlook so many things that they can do well. The automatic BSA==homophobes==despicable organization that seems to come to the forefront of many peoples' minds is at least as closed-minded as gay==immoral==can't be scouts or leaders.
I'm not saying you're doing that; it just comes to mind when we see an article like this and the overwhelming response is "They hate gays! OMG!" instead of "they have a massive youth program and do a lot of good things for millions of people every year." Granted, the issue is controversial at best, but it's far from the defining characteristic of the organization.
Write your senators, please--this is akin to the police closing a library for six months to two years because they found a novel on the floor and they can't positively determine that it's a legal copy.
Only, because of the internet, someone who's never even been to the library can drop it there. Furthermore, it doesn't even have to be there--if a cop says he thinks he saw one, that counts. *and*, because it's computer hardware as well as software, the overall value and lifetime expectancy of the library decreases tremendously over the time it's not usable.
What religious emblem serves a requirement to advance in rank? They generally allow you to wear the appropriate original insignia (which would be an unusual thing to do) or the appropriate square knot, which is quite common among adult scouters but is far from expected for anyone.
> I guess it really depends on the troop
It really does, or the pack, in the case of Cub Scouts. I'm sorry you had a bad experience, and of course many people do; but many others have wonderful experiences. Overall, it's a very ambitious and far-reaching program that I think does a lot of good, though of course there are many, many things about it that could be done differently and there's a tremendous amount of institutional momentum to overcome when it comes to changes on a national level.
On the local level, unit politics (within the troop or pack leadership) or personal failings on the part of some can result in a bad experience for many, and that's unfortunate. But it's a failure to be found in any organization, and there really are many, many good things that come out of the scouting movement today.
The article suggests the grant in question is for the Great Alaska Council, which, while a member council of the BSA, is not the same as the BSA. The BSA doesn't give up the right to discriminate because one of their councils receives a grant that's only supposed to be given to people who don't discriminate--the council isn't speaking for the organization. (And I don't know the details of whether the council agreed not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, or the grant is only supposed to be given to those who don't discriminate on that basis.)
> More seriously, a person who enjoys child porn almost certainly enjoys looking at children in real life, as well. So should we ban children from all public spaces just in case there happens to be a paedophile around who will have bad thoughts because they happen to see a child they find attractive? I mean, having separate "child habitats" where children are made safe from the problems of the real world is the next logical step in the continued cotton-balling of our kids.
Actually, we take the opposite approach, creating a special children's space and banning adults, while not banning children from public-space-at-large: The playgrounds in New York, for example, often ban unaccompanied adults.
What part of your setup is illegal in New York?
From a theoretical standpoint, that works assuming you can run through or predict the outcome of every possible input sequence anyone can give it. (Or at least, say, the most frequent 80-90% of possible inputs if you want bad copies.) Even a computer can't play-test a modern game to that degree of completion, though maybe a computer with a human to spend a lot of time patching conditional state changes into it could.
To my knowledge, though, nobody has gotten a system together which is theoretically uncrackable. (Without having holes in the theory, anyway.) So we haven't gone down the "if you can watch it and you can hear it, you can copy it route." Well, not for games, anyway.
They should, but the IRS doesn't say firmly that they should or they shouldn't, so lots of people do. (I think they mostly have you figure out if you NEED one, so a lot of people, following their directions, by default use their SSN.)
The concern here, since it's aggregate transactions instead of every transaction (don't kid yourself, that day will come), is actually with identity theft as opposed to privacy.
(I'm distinguishing between the two in the following way, though someone can correct me if other definitions tend to be used: privacy reflects an individual's right to practice what activities he chooses without fear of persecution; identity theft reflects a criminal stealing your SSN and/or other data and building a phony life or racking up massive debt that is attributed to you.)
Using those definitions, the point being made is that this is an identity theft issue, because many small businesses use their SSN as their tax reporting number rather than an Employer Identification Number, especially for one-person businesses. So their SSN #s go into a new industry standard database, which is bad.
Privacy is still an issue, but more in a slippery-slope way: the amount of information the govt. is asking for will gradually increase as the framework comes into play. Though given what I've heard of how the IRS does software development, they may collect the data without actually connecting it to tax revenues in our lifetimes.
This is a Heinlein question--read The Man Who Sold the Moon, he has a lot of fun with it.
Drug crimes are often not victimless, quite aside from the chance of OD-ing and the financial burden of addiction, you're funneling money into a criminal enterprise with massive resources. This encourages corruption in law enforcement both here and abroad, and it keeps open regular channels of unmonitored (even more unmonitored than usual) material transfer into the country.
Among other things, the massive criminal enterprises drug abuse in this country funds in other countries discourages tourism and business investments there, creating barriers to trade and development. Ultimately, we lose a lot of money.
On the flipside of the coin, drug crimes often aren't victimless because people can get caught: in Massachussets, for example, I think two joints qualifies as intent to distribute these days. That's the end of someone's federal student aid, at the least.
Would drug crimes be victimless if they weren't on the books? Would there then be a need for criminality? Sometimes they'd be victimless, probably; and sometimes, not; but they are certainly not victimless crimes today.
E=mc^2 is a special case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence#Background
"Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to."
--Buckaroo Banzai to assisting doctor, while performing neurosurgery.
If you're falling asleep on the road, you're more likely to make the error of driving to one side. Similarly, if you're getting distracted by a stray thought, your concentration can suffer and are more likely to make errors in your primary task. You may not predict the exact error, but you can reasonably forecast an increased probability of error.
Why else would car insurance rates rise when you get into an accident? Um... you know, aside from evil insurance companies?