...some sociologist studying the History of Science will be writing an overly long and heavily footnoted analysis of what the distribution of names used indicates about the culture of NASA at the time.
Goverment declares that the patent has state secrecy implications. Government exercises emminent domain over the patent, and pays them a "fair" (well, laughable) sum. Patent spends the rest of its natural(?) life on a shelf, military applications aside. Lucent and the Government are happy, and the inventor at least is resigned to a clear foundation for the decision in the letter of the constitution (5th amendment).
Of course, doing this would make major patent holders a little more nervous, but it's still a more equitable resultion under the rule of law than "no, you can't sue him, even though you're getting screwed." In the meanwhile, all these guys can do under the current mess is fall back on "peacable petition for redress of grievances"... which is not likely to be effective in this political climate.
I mean in my quote, "Normally, people listen to music on their computers. If you are a car or home stereo user, you should consider purchasing a computer."
No, really: you didn't. The point was conveyed much more vigorously by referring to it as "a regular CD player" rather than "a computer".
It helps us identify courts with bias, and hopefully correct that.
1) This presumes the difference is due to bias. Much of it probably is; however, you should bear in mind that some of it is normal stochastic variation. Determining the direction of bias also implies determining an absolute — how do you do that? An average, perhaps — but what if the courts as a whole have a liberal/conservative/plaintiff/defendant bias?
2) Correct that how?
It's more accurate to say that "researchers are trying to link global warming to these hurricanes". That's just bad science, and I refuse to pay for it.
If they're willing to fail, I don't see that it's bad science. Testing hypotheses, right?
I would love to see a truly open source climate model, where everything is open to scrutiny. And then a distributed project to do it more accurately. I'd especially love to see a physically based model, rather than a fluid dynamics based version (and if you really want, I'd be happy to expand on that comment.)
1) Might be possible; talk to your Congresscritter. NOAA is a public agency, so if Congress says to make their models available as well as the raw data, guess NOAA gets to do? Of course, various private weather data packagers aren't even happy about the accessibility of the model outputs.
2) Less likely. SETI@Home runs at about 75 teraflops last I heard, and FOLDING@Home claimed even higher, versus the NEC Global simulators mere 35... but the SETI & Folding problems are fairly modular: play with one chunk of data. Climate models tend to have successive values computed from multiple adjacent cells, game-of-life style. This makes distributed processing trickier. Also, you have only limited ability to test competing models, even in the multi-teraflop range. Of course, if it's possible, once again talking to a Congresscritter might help. Guess what happens if Congress says "Make a NOAA distributed model screensaver client" (whether or not it IS workable)?
3) Please do.
I was merely pointing out that the data for the last century looks like a sine wave with about a 33 year up and 33 year down (or a 66 year cycle, which fits with your 50-70 figure nicely.)
Ah. Yes, that would be a 66 year cycle, not the 33 year cycle you refered to earlier. And yes, that would match the data... but my objections about the confidence interval versus data period remain.
Looks like about a 33 year cycle, in other words, three solar cycles.
As far as I know, even halfway accurate data on hurricanes only goes back to the 1870's or so, and is pretty nonexistant pre-1800. While enough to note a rough cyclic trend, I don't think there's available evidence about hurricane frequencies comparable to the long term temperature history obtained from polar ice cores, or to the historical records of wheat prices. While I have heard and believe there's a rough cycle, 4 cycles worth or so probably can only yield a rather rough confidence interval. (I've also heard a 50-70 year value for the cycle quoted more often.) It's like trying to measure outbreaks of racial violence in US history: too short a timeframe. Or do you know of longer term data sources for hurricane records?
So, yes, it's likely in part due to the apparent cycle; of course, the question remains, how much due? More data needed, dammit; fund more research so we can have a more interesting arguement. =)
[...]never blame an improved sensititvity in your system of measurement for an apparent increase in the measured number.
A partially valid point. They may well have missed some of the 1933 storms. On the other hand, we've had weather satellites for spotting hurricanes for decades, and this is certainly a larger number than since we first started measuring that way. If you're dedicated, you could even do a comparison of the five years before and after, and the storms reported by both observation methods, in to calculate a likely fraction of hurricanes that probably went unobserved by the old method. This might not be many: the oceans have a lot of traffic.
Of course, from a literalist viewpoint, I'd still claim I'm right: a storm couldn't help set a record unless it was recorded. =P
Sorry to spoil everything but you completely missed his joke.
I got the reference. I'm just noting: the odds are we won't get far enough to reach Hurricane Omega, even as bad as the year is looking. Still, people may get pretty antsy at an Alpha Hurricane... or go nuts at a Gamma Hurricane.
"Perhaps" is a hell of a thing to be throwing billions of dollars at.
I agree. Which, if you note, is why I suggested some money should be thrown at the research first, so we can have a better idea of what is the best direction to be throwing tens to hundreds of billions in. The cost to the American economy and taxpayers of an unneeded Kyoto implementation would be staggering. The cost of repeated rebuilding from ever increasing hurricanes would be comparably staggering. Let's get some more raw data, some more rigorous statistical analyses, and have some nice testing for correlations to competing and null hypotheses to boot. At a later point, sic some economists into the mix to deal with finding which of the solutions likely to give the least overall costs, and come up with some proposals for the most equitable distribution of said costs.
Perhaps, maybe, we ought to blow up a lot of nuclear bombs to cause a likely "Global-Winter" in order to compensate for the possible "Global-Warming" that might possibly be happening.
Possibly. However if it comes to that, using the nukes to deliberatly induce volcanic eruptions is likely to yield greater net cooling per curie of radioactives released; additionally, volcanic ash is generally beneficial to soil fertility in the modestly longer term.
Fortunately, I'm pretty sure we're not there yet. You don't use an impulse drive if a conventionally fueled rocket will work... especially until you're sure what trajectory you want. There's the old question of whether human-CO2 impact is the only thing delaying an ice age.
All I hear as proof is media stories linking to each other as absolute proof.
So we may hit a total that we hit in 1933. How is this evidence of a change or part of the global warming debate?
Because of the question as to whether this is from a natural cycle, or whether from global warming effects causing increased baseline ocean temperatures, or simply a statistical fluke year. As a first pass, either of the first two sounds credible as a cause. (If you RTFA, the last sounds less so.)
We know climate moves in cycles; we also know that hurricanes are formed by (and get their energy from) warm water. We don't have detailed records for a long enough time frame to readily determine if it's just a natural swing in the cycle. Ergo, we should be doing climate research, perhaps specifically focused on what affects hurricane formation.
Perhaps it's Global Warming; perhaps it's a natural oscilation in the deep ocean currents; perhaps it's just a statistical outlier event. Depending on which, the responses might be different. If it's an outlier, we can just plan for a short term headache with the rebuilding. If it's caused by human-induced global warming, we should start taking measures to ameliorate it. If it's just an unstoppable natural cycle unrelated to human influence, we should start considering what extent build-up of coastal developments ought to be insurable/taxed/regulated/&c, and considering how to minimize the impact on our national transportation infrastructure.
The fact that we are headed for a record year and don't know the cause suggests we should be doing more research into climate and oceanography, in order to determine the best reactions... preferably backed more by clearly stated measurements and mathematically calculated confidence intervals, rather than more by political pre-evaluation of what the implications might be for Senator Bedfellow's congressional district. Mother nature doesn't give a damn what we think the world ought to be like; she's going to hit us with the way it is.
If they get to Omega, it will mean we will have had more than doubled the previous record year for hurricanes. While this looks like a monumentally bad season, even this year it's unlikely we'll get even halfway through the Greek alphabet by November.
Of course, they don't usually name Nor'easters, or the problem would be different. =)
And in some state it is illegal not to pay taxes on illegal drugs.
There are several jurisdictions that require tax stamps for marijuana; Kansas, for instance. Yes, it's mildly insane. On the other hand, the country's attitude about marijuana is pretty schizophrenic, and Kansas is a farm state after all....
why do small businesses need to buy XP pro when XP home has enough of the features to do everything that is 'easier' to do in XP Pro?
As far as I have been able to find, there is no practical way to set advanced file permissions on a XP Home OS -- EG, removing all permissions from a troublesome file to preclude "accidental" execution OR reinstallation. And, yes, this is really useful in many security situations.
USB Floppy Drive
USB NIC with XP recognized driver set
BART PE CD
Knoppix CD
USB CD Drive, for easy use of said boot CDs on more recent BIOSes.
Self-powered (plug into the wall) USB Hub, to connect all your toys at once....
I also haven't seen anyone mention the obvious basic NAT router. Even a cheapo model is usually good for safely patching up new installs on the bad days when you're not sure what viruses wandered in via random visiting laptop. A slightly higher-end model capable of MAC address capture is useful for unofficially hiding its presence from more facist Network groups. Leaving it unplugged and in a drawer when not in use also helps.
FWIW, I was actually thinking more of Jefferson's failure to free his slaves upon his death, which was in turn driven by his "fiscal irresponsibility" (i.e. greed, laziness, and selfishness.)
That was the precise point I was thinking of and alluding to by the phrase, yes. As I recall, his will did in fact stipulate freeing his slaves at his death, just like Washington. However, Mount Vernon was situated on excellent farmland. The lands around Montecello were mediocre at best; the nailery (relying on slave labor) was the main thing keeping Jefferson from total bankrupcy... highly ironic considering that it was Hamilton who desired a nation of industry, and Jefferson who envisioned a nation of yeoman farmers. Jeffererson's taste for books and imported French Wine didn't help matters, but probably only exacerbated an unsolvable problem. At his death, his estate's debts exceeded the assets... until one included the slaves. Given the times, the results were inevitable.
Still, he could have done more. Then again, so could we all.
Most of why I call Jefferson a blowhard is not because of his absence from the convention, but because the "wall of separation" quote comes from a much later period when Jefferson was "legacy building."
<BZZZT>. The quote comes from a letter written in 1802. A scarce decade after the 1791 ratification of the Bill of Rights (wherein the foundation of such wall lies) hardly qualifies as "much later". Furthermore, it was still during Jefferson's first term as President — not the point in any career (even one as colossal as Jefferson's!) that one might normally refer to for "legacy building". Furthermore, the position he takes therein is entirely consistent with the language he authored in the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which not co-incidentally is considered inspiration for the relevant portion of the 1st Amendment. I would characterize his time post-presidency, such as spent on the establishing the University of Virgina from 1816 and onward, as his "legacy building" period.
(Lest we forget, the conservatives won Scopes.)
True, to a point. The religious conservatives won before the jury; the case (but not the law) was reversed on technical grounds on appeal, and I have seen it argued that this was in part to prevent the law from being struck down in a higher court. While not a Pyrrhic victory, it was hardly an epic triumph either.
I would also disagree that Scopes was the primary reason for the withdrawal, although contributory. The spectacular failure of the great Prohibition experiment, backed as it was by so many churches, was a greater blow to the politics of the far right, and in my opinion the prime cause of such withdrawal.
However, starting in the 70's, the sleeping giant of conservative Christianity awoke, and didn't like what it saw.
In my more cynical moments, I would attribute it more to the rousing Southern racism in the 60's, and their alliance with the Republicans after the failure of Wallace to swing the 1968 election to the house of Representatives. In my political debates, I have noted far too often the reactionary religious agenda being a warning sign of a reactionary racial and gender agendas. Not universally; but far too common. And far too often, such reactionaries attempt to conceal their more unsavory motivations in the language and company of religion.
Personally, I think that the federal gov't needs to get out of the church state issue, which it has gotten into consequent to Supreme Court rulings on the scope of the 14th ammendment. This is an issue where regional opinions are radically different, and dealing with those sorts of differences is the peculiar genius of federalism.
This of course depends on whether one feels that the 14th extended all, some, or non
That's exactly why you should have a seperate personal email account, even if you have one from your place of business: use the personal account for personal matters, and use the business account for business matters.
It's like using personal stationary versus corporate letterhead for snail mail.
The first person to land on Mars, and to live there some specified minimum duration (such as a year), and to return alive owns the entire Red Planet.
The proposal, while less ludicrous than some things I've heard, implies insufficient attention given when reading Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.
"The government is in a stew about that nominal colony we left behind. Every man in it joined in signing away his so-called Larkin rights-assigned them to the government-before we left Earth."
It seems a likely enough scenario. (A previous expidition's sole survivor, befreinded by natives, showing up to cramp the plan seems rather less likely.) In addition, the US isn't in a position to make such a proclamation to the other governments of the world... and such would mean nothing while military might is still used to settle territorial disputes between sovereign powers. Any claimant who cannot back it up with weapons as needed renders their claim moot. In turn, if there's no-one powerful enough to take it away from you, any argument it doesn't belong to you becomes very moot.
Call it poetic, or call it ironic, but call it by the proper name: Any claim to own Mars, which the Romans named for their God of War, would ultimately have to rest on a formidable foundation of the Right Of Conquest.
Remember Divx? No not the MPEG-4 compressor but the orignal Divx, the one from Circut City. It was to be the DVD replacement.
Yes. I have a Divx player. I picked it up secondhand together with a used VCR, for $35 and half a bottle of mediocre Bourbon. =)
Divx wasn't supposed to replace DVD in general, but replace DVD rentals. You also exagerate its popularity with the studios. And yes, that was a flop for MANY reasons-- the original relatively high price of the unit being one of them. However, the unit also plays standard DVDs just fine. In fact, I can play DVD+R and DVD-R disks on it as well... which is more than I can say for most other players of the time. I haven't been able to find a DVD-RAM disk to test it with, but I'd give even money that would work too. The main part about it that sucks is that the remote has an unwholesome appetite for batteries; they last about 2 months, compared with about a year for most of my other remotes. But, aside from that, I'm absolutely delighted at the money (and booze) I invested in getting it.
I'd agree, it's a question of marginal benefits: Blu Ray isn't worth it, especially while Modern Hollywood Sucks (and Bujold, Brust, SR Donaldson, LK Hamilton, GRR Martin, Pratchett, and V Vinge do not). But the content industry didn't understand that in Eldred v. Ashcroft, and they still don't get it. How anyone can get that rich without understanding marginal value, whether elastic or time-value, is beyond me.
I've seen from other sources that synthetic fuel production from coal produces about twice as much waste carbon dioxide then if you just simply burned the coal alone.
Not possible; if you start with N moles of carbon, you can only end with N moles CO2 at the end (barring seriously exotic not-in-your-grandkids-lifetimes nuclear power schemes). Coal cumbustion is pretty complete these days. Pending a cited journal source, I call bullshit.
Also natural gas reserves are becoming increasingly depleted so methane isn't going to be easy to come, unless you want to go through this coal oxidation process which is just going to increase global warming.
Natural gas depletion can be expected, yes. Anticipate exploration of continental shelf methyl clathrates. And yes, expect nasty global warming consequences, such as more Cat5 hurricanes making landfall, and killer bees making it all the way to Canada. (Eat honey, maple-boys!)
I actually think coal mining is one of the worse ways fuel sources, the mines destroy the landscape, the fuel creates acid rain, it generates more (albeit diffuse) radioactivity than nuclear power plants, it creates plenty of carbon dioxide and it centralizes power generation.
Yes, coal sucks as a fuel source. Coal mining is messy, and there's no avoiding the way coal fuel will continue to increase CO2 levels. Using it for synthetic petroleum (SP) production, however, allows stripping most of the sulfur (one acid rain source) and thorium (main radioisotope IIR) from the SP. Furthermore, even with the wretched environmental impacts, it's about the only fuel source the US can get on line to replace gasoline FAST if, say, the Saudi Oil fields peak in the next year.
Wind power can not run your car, can not transport food from the farm to your grocery store, and can not provide feedstocks for either plastics or fertilizers. Organically grown biodiesel is the probable longer term answer if we're going to maintain a technloglical civilization; but I'm betting SP from coal — a proven technology — will be the stopgap used in the next decade. The bad news is, the US has at most only a century's worth of coal. So, yes, this will be a very short term answer.
I hope Google uses this as an opportunity to launch GMoney or whatever they're calling it.
It might be Google.bucks, or it might be an unnamed earlier part in the public Master Plan a step or two before Google.Gov. A pity they can't roll THAT out at this point; they at least have some understanding of infrastructute....
I, for one, would welcome just about any new overlords, given the quality level of the current one. Frogs to Jove: King Stork has not been an improvement over King Log.
However, I have to disagree that the best way to characterize this was as a "wall of separation" between church and state, whatever Jefferson said. Jefferson was a blowhard with grand ideas and bad morals who wasn't even involved in the Constitutional convention--I don't take him very seriously.
Fair, to a point. It's not certain how his political enemies would have reacted if he had freed and then married Sally Hemmings instead of having a protracted (but non-adulterous, given the timeframe) affair. Still, his fiscal irresponsibility is close enough to bad morals that I won't argue that aspect of him. As I noted, our founding fathers were all very human.
However, it's misleading to assume that he had no influence on the constitution because he was ambassador to France. Even if he didn't correspond in a timely manner on the specifics (postal times of the era make it unlikely, but I'm not expert enough to be sure), he was a long time freind, mentor, and confidant of his nearby neighbor James Madison, who was and is widely considered the Father of the Constitution.
Furthermore, my comments were written in direct response to someone who invoked Jefferson to defend the role of religion in government. Even if his view is not the most correct, it was the most immediately pertinent.
At the time of the constitution, Massachussetts was a theocracy!
You exaggerate substantially the impact of Article III of their state constitution. I'm not sure of the timeframe of the Amendment that superceded that; nonetheless I will agree that there was indeed some state sponsorship of religion there for a time. Given that they sponsored specifically Protestant ministers, as a Catholic taxpayer I would strongly disapprove.
Second, much of the thinking on this subject has been guided by ideologies overtly hostile to Christianity--i.e. militant atheism and agressive pluralism.
Only in the direction of pro-separation; there are two forces struggling here, or else there would be no struggle. In the other direction, the anti-separation has been guided by Evangelical Fundamentalists, with ideologies overtly hostile to any faith other than Christianity, and even to other sects within their faith. Given a choice of aggressive pluralism of faiths, and aggressive monoculturalism of faith, guess which I prefer? I'll have no trouble suitibly indoctrinating my own kids pretty effectively as long as the state keeps it's hands off the Sabbath.
Is it really a violation of the establishment clause for some school teacher, working for a county in Virginia, to pray with a student?
A more subtle question is, does it constitute an abuse of an authority position for the teacher to encourage it?
Does it really constitute a violation to put a copy of the ten commandments on a courthouse wall along with a copy of the Magna Carta and the code of Hammurabi?
Do the other documents get added before, or after, the local atheist zealots file their lawsuit? Is one given any vastly greater prominence than the others?
Is it really an establishment issue to allow a community group to put a nativity scene on the courthouse steps?
What other seasonal displays are allowed to be placed on the courthouse steps by other community groups?
The point then is that America was not a "Christian nation", but neither was America founded on the position that America should drive religion from the public sphere
Conceeded. However, due to the evangelical nature of many sects that will not stop short of their faith and sect being universally mandatory, they will need to beaten back to their proper limited role when it is overstepped. And given the plurality of faiths, and the mutual intolerance of many, it remains to be seen whether such a compromise, short of French-style mandated secularism in matters of state, is possible. I hope it is.
--which is the end objective of many on the religious left.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, doing this would make major patent holders a little more nervous, but it's still a more equitable resultion under the rule of law than "no, you can't sue him, even though you're getting screwed." In the meanwhile, all these guys can do under the current mess is fall back on "peacable petition for redress of grievances"... which is not likely to be effective in this political climate.
No, really: you didn't. The point was conveyed much more vigorously by referring to it as "a regular CD player" rather than "a computer".
1) This presumes the difference is due to bias. Much of it probably is; however, you should bear in mind that some of it is normal stochastic variation. Determining the direction of bias also implies determining an absolute — how do you do that? An average, perhaps — but what if the courts as a whole have a liberal/conservative/plaintiff/defendant bias?
2) Correct that how?
If they're willing to fail, I don't see that it's bad science. Testing hypotheses, right?
I would love to see a truly open source climate model, where everything is open to scrutiny. And then a distributed project to do it more accurately. I'd especially love to see a physically based model, rather than a fluid dynamics based version (and if you really want, I'd be happy to expand on that comment.)
1) Might be possible; talk to your Congresscritter. NOAA is a public agency, so if Congress says to make their models available as well as the raw data, guess NOAA gets to do? Of course, various private weather data packagers aren't even happy about the accessibility of the model outputs.
2) Less likely. SETI@Home runs at about 75 teraflops last I heard, and FOLDING@Home claimed even higher, versus the NEC Global simulators mere 35... but the SETI & Folding problems are fairly modular: play with one chunk of data. Climate models tend to have successive values computed from multiple adjacent cells, game-of-life style. This makes distributed processing trickier. Also, you have only limited ability to test competing models, even in the multi-teraflop range. Of course, if it's possible, once again talking to a Congresscritter might help. Guess what happens if Congress says "Make a NOAA distributed model screensaver client" (whether or not it IS workable)?
3) Please do.
I was merely pointing out that the data for the last century looks like a sine wave with about a 33 year up and 33 year down (or a 66 year cycle, which fits with your 50-70 figure nicely.)
Ah. Yes, that would be a 66 year cycle, not the 33 year cycle you refered to earlier. And yes, that would match the data... but my objections about the confidence interval versus data period remain.
As far as I know, even halfway accurate data on hurricanes only goes back to the 1870's or so, and is pretty nonexistant pre-1800. While enough to note a rough cyclic trend, I don't think there's available evidence about hurricane frequencies comparable to the long term temperature history obtained from polar ice cores, or to the historical records of wheat prices. While I have heard and believe there's a rough cycle, 4 cycles worth or so probably can only yield a rather rough confidence interval. (I've also heard a 50-70 year value for the cycle quoted more often.) It's like trying to measure outbreaks of racial violence in US history: too short a timeframe. Or do you know of longer term data sources for hurricane records?
So, yes, it's likely in part due to the apparent cycle; of course, the question remains, how much due? More data needed, dammit; fund more research so we can have a more interesting arguement. =)
Their name, or the name of a rival company?
A partially valid point. They may well have missed some of the 1933 storms. On the other hand, we've had weather satellites for spotting hurricanes for decades, and this is certainly a larger number than since we first started measuring that way. If you're dedicated, you could even do a comparison of the five years before and after, and the storms reported by both observation methods, in to calculate a likely fraction of hurricanes that probably went unobserved by the old method. This might not be many: the oceans have a lot of traffic.
Of course, from a literalist viewpoint, I'd still claim I'm right: a storm couldn't help set a record unless it was recorded. =P
I got the reference. I'm just noting: the odds are we won't get far enough to reach Hurricane Omega, even as bad as the year is looking. Still, people may get pretty antsy at an Alpha Hurricane... or go nuts at a Gamma Hurricane.
I agree. Which, if you note, is why I suggested some money should be thrown at the research first, so we can have a better idea of what is the best direction to be throwing tens to hundreds of billions in. The cost to the American economy and taxpayers of an unneeded Kyoto implementation would be staggering. The cost of repeated rebuilding from ever increasing hurricanes would be comparably staggering. Let's get some more raw data, some more rigorous statistical analyses, and have some nice testing for correlations to competing and null hypotheses to boot. At a later point, sic some economists into the mix to deal with finding which of the solutions likely to give the least overall costs, and come up with some proposals for the most equitable distribution of said costs.
Perhaps, maybe, we ought to blow up a lot of nuclear bombs to cause a likely "Global-Winter" in order to compensate for the possible "Global-Warming" that might possibly be happening.
Possibly. However if it comes to that, using the nukes to deliberatly induce volcanic eruptions is likely to yield greater net cooling per curie of radioactives released; additionally, volcanic ash is generally beneficial to soil fertility in the modestly longer term.
Fortunately, I'm pretty sure we're not there yet. You don't use an impulse drive if a conventionally fueled rocket will work... especially until you're sure what trajectory you want. There's the old question of whether human-CO2 impact is the only thing delaying an ice age.
All I hear as proof is media stories linking to each other as absolute proof.
Yes, yes, we all read Slashdot: far too much of science reporting in the media is bad reporting, even leaving aside the Weekly World News and such. But how much time do you spend reading refereed climatology journals?
Elegant troll, by the way. =)
Because of the question as to whether this is from a natural cycle, or whether from global warming effects causing increased baseline ocean temperatures, or simply a statistical fluke year. As a first pass, either of the first two sounds credible as a cause. (If you RTFA, the last sounds less so.)
We know climate moves in cycles; we also know that hurricanes are formed by (and get their energy from) warm water. We don't have detailed records for a long enough time frame to readily determine if it's just a natural swing in the cycle. Ergo, we should be doing climate research, perhaps specifically focused on what affects hurricane formation.
Perhaps it's Global Warming; perhaps it's a natural oscilation in the deep ocean currents; perhaps it's just a statistical outlier event. Depending on which, the responses might be different. If it's an outlier, we can just plan for a short term headache with the rebuilding. If it's caused by human-induced global warming, we should start taking measures to ameliorate it. If it's just an unstoppable natural cycle unrelated to human influence, we should start considering what extent build-up of coastal developments ought to be insurable/taxed/regulated/&c, and considering how to minimize the impact on our national transportation infrastructure.
The fact that we are headed for a record year and don't know the cause suggests we should be doing more research into climate and oceanography, in order to determine the best reactions... preferably backed more by clearly stated measurements and mathematically calculated confidence intervals, rather than more by political pre-evaluation of what the implications might be for Senator Bedfellow's congressional district. Mother nature doesn't give a damn what we think the world ought to be like; she's going to hit us with the way it is.
If they get to Omega, it will mean we will have had more than doubled the previous record year for hurricanes. While this looks like a monumentally bad season, even this year it's unlikely we'll get even halfway through the Greek alphabet by November.
Of course, they don't usually name Nor'easters, or the problem would be different. =)
There are several jurisdictions that require tax stamps for marijuana; Kansas, for instance. Yes, it's mildly insane. On the other hand, the country's attitude about marijuana is pretty schizophrenic, and Kansas is a farm state after all....
As far as I have been able to find, there is no practical way to set advanced file permissions on a XP Home OS -- EG, removing all permissions from a troublesome file to preclude "accidental" execution OR reinstallation. And, yes, this is really useful in many security situations.
3: routinely spend far too much time doing the newspaper's daily cryptogram instead of your job.
USB NIC with XP recognized driver set
BART PE CD
Knoppix CD
USB CD Drive, for easy use of said boot CDs on more recent BIOSes.
Self-powered (plug into the wall) USB Hub, to connect all your toys at once....
I also haven't seen anyone mention the obvious basic NAT router. Even a cheapo model is usually good for safely patching up new installs on the bad days when you're not sure what viruses wandered in via random visiting laptop. A slightly higher-end model capable of MAC address capture is useful for unofficially hiding its presence from more facist Network groups. Leaving it unplugged and in a drawer when not in use also helps.
That was the precise point I was thinking of and alluding to by the phrase, yes. As I recall, his will did in fact stipulate freeing his slaves at his death, just like Washington. However, Mount Vernon was situated on excellent farmland. The lands around Montecello were mediocre at best; the nailery (relying on slave labor) was the main thing keeping Jefferson from total bankrupcy... highly ironic considering that it was Hamilton who desired a nation of industry, and Jefferson who envisioned a nation of yeoman farmers. Jeffererson's taste for books and imported French Wine didn't help matters, but probably only exacerbated an unsolvable problem. At his death, his estate's debts exceeded the assets... until one included the slaves. Given the times, the results were inevitable.
Still, he could have done more. Then again, so could we all.
Most of why I call Jefferson a blowhard is not because of his absence from the convention, but because the "wall of separation" quote comes from a much later period when Jefferson was "legacy building."
<BZZZT>. The quote comes from a letter written in 1802. A scarce decade after the 1791 ratification of the Bill of Rights (wherein the foundation of such wall lies) hardly qualifies as "much later". Furthermore, it was still during Jefferson's first term as President — not the point in any career (even one as colossal as Jefferson's!) that one might normally refer to for "legacy building". Furthermore, the position he takes therein is entirely consistent with the language he authored in the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which not co-incidentally is considered inspiration for the relevant portion of the 1st Amendment. I would characterize his time post-presidency, such as spent on the establishing the University of Virgina from 1816 and onward, as his "legacy building" period.
(Lest we forget, the conservatives won Scopes.)
True, to a point. The religious conservatives won before the jury; the case (but not the law) was reversed on technical grounds on appeal, and I have seen it argued that this was in part to prevent the law from being struck down in a higher court. While not a Pyrrhic victory, it was hardly an epic triumph either.
I would also disagree that Scopes was the primary reason for the withdrawal, although contributory. The spectacular failure of the great Prohibition experiment, backed as it was by so many churches, was a greater blow to the politics of the far right, and in my opinion the prime cause of such withdrawal.
However, starting in the 70's, the sleeping giant of conservative Christianity awoke, and didn't like what it saw.
In my more cynical moments, I would attribute it more to the rousing Southern racism in the 60's, and their alliance with the Republicans after the failure of Wallace to swing the 1968 election to the house of Representatives. In my political debates, I have noted far too often the reactionary religious agenda being a warning sign of a reactionary racial and gender agendas. Not universally; but far too common. And far too often, such reactionaries attempt to conceal their more unsavory motivations in the language and company of religion.
Personally, I think that the federal gov't needs to get out of the church state issue, which it has gotten into consequent to Supreme Court rulings on the scope of the 14th ammendment. This is an issue where regional opinions are radically different, and dealing with those sorts of differences is the peculiar genius of federalism.
This of course depends on whether one feels that the 14th extended all, some, or non
Unfortunately, they are in the end backed by Ultima Ratio Regum... or become moot.
That's exactly why you should have a seperate personal email account, even if you have one from your place of business: use the personal account for personal matters, and use the business account for business matters.
It's like using personal stationary versus corporate letterhead for snail mail.
The proposal, while less ludicrous than some things I've heard, implies insufficient attention given when reading Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.
It seems a likely enough scenario. (A previous expidition's sole survivor, befreinded by natives, showing up to cramp the plan seems rather less likely.) In addition, the US isn't in a position to make such a proclamation to the other governments of the world... and such would mean nothing while military might is still used to settle territorial disputes between sovereign powers. Any claimant who cannot back it up with weapons as needed renders their claim moot. In turn, if there's no-one powerful enough to take it away from you, any argument it doesn't belong to you becomes very moot.Call it poetic, or call it ironic, but call it by the proper name: Any claim to own Mars, which the Romans named for their God of War, would ultimately have to rest on a formidable foundation of the Right Of Conquest.
Yes. I have a Divx player. I picked it up secondhand together with a used VCR, for $35 and half a bottle of mediocre Bourbon. =)
Divx wasn't supposed to replace DVD in general, but replace DVD rentals. You also exagerate its popularity with the studios. And yes, that was a flop for MANY reasons-- the original relatively high price of the unit being one of them. However, the unit also plays standard DVDs just fine. In fact, I can play DVD+R and DVD-R disks on it as well... which is more than I can say for most other players of the time. I haven't been able to find a DVD-RAM disk to test it with, but I'd give even money that would work too. The main part about it that sucks is that the remote has an unwholesome appetite for batteries; they last about 2 months, compared with about a year for most of my other remotes. But, aside from that, I'm absolutely delighted at the money (and booze) I invested in getting it.
I'd agree, it's a question of marginal benefits: Blu Ray isn't worth it, especially while Modern Hollywood Sucks (and Bujold, Brust, SR Donaldson, LK Hamilton, GRR Martin, Pratchett, and V Vinge do not). But the content industry didn't understand that in Eldred v. Ashcroft, and they still don't get it. How anyone can get that rich without understanding marginal value, whether elastic or time-value, is beyond me.
Not possible; if you start with N moles of carbon, you can only end with N moles CO2 at the end (barring seriously exotic not-in-your-grandkids-lifetimes nuclear power schemes). Coal cumbustion is pretty complete these days. Pending a cited journal source, I call bullshit.
Also natural gas reserves are becoming increasingly depleted so methane isn't going to be easy to come, unless you want to go through this coal oxidation process which is just going to increase global warming.
Natural gas depletion can be expected, yes. Anticipate exploration of continental shelf methyl clathrates. And yes, expect nasty global warming consequences, such as more Cat5 hurricanes making landfall, and killer bees making it all the way to Canada. (Eat honey, maple-boys!)
I actually think coal mining is one of the worse ways fuel sources, the mines destroy the landscape, the fuel creates acid rain, it generates more (albeit diffuse) radioactivity than nuclear power plants, it creates plenty of carbon dioxide and it centralizes power generation.
Yes, coal sucks as a fuel source. Coal mining is messy, and there's no avoiding the way coal fuel will continue to increase CO2 levels. Using it for synthetic petroleum (SP) production, however, allows stripping most of the sulfur (one acid rain source) and thorium (main radioisotope IIR) from the SP. Furthermore, even with the wretched environmental impacts, it's about the only fuel source the US can get on line to replace gasoline FAST if, say, the Saudi Oil fields peak in the next year.
Wind power can not run your car, can not transport food from the farm to your grocery store, and can not provide feedstocks for either plastics or fertilizers. Organically grown biodiesel is the probable longer term answer if we're going to maintain a technloglical civilization; but I'm betting SP from coal — a proven technology — will be the stopgap used in the next decade. The bad news is, the US has at most only a century's worth of coal. So, yes, this will be a very short term answer.
It might be Google.bucks, or it might be an unnamed earlier part in the public Master Plan a step or two before Google.Gov. A pity they can't roll THAT out at this point; they at least have some understanding of infrastructute....
I, for one, would welcome just about any new overlords, given the quality level of the current one. Frogs to Jove: King Stork has not been an improvement over King Log.
Fair, to a point. It's not certain how his political enemies would have reacted if he had freed and then married Sally Hemmings instead of having a protracted (but non-adulterous, given the timeframe) affair. Still, his fiscal irresponsibility is close enough to bad morals that I won't argue that aspect of him. As I noted, our founding fathers were all very human.
However, it's misleading to assume that he had no influence on the constitution because he was ambassador to France. Even if he didn't correspond in a timely manner on the specifics (postal times of the era make it unlikely, but I'm not expert enough to be sure), he was a long time freind, mentor, and confidant of his nearby neighbor James Madison, who was and is widely considered the Father of the Constitution.
Furthermore, my comments were written in direct response to someone who invoked Jefferson to defend the role of religion in government. Even if his view is not the most correct, it was the most immediately pertinent.
At the time of the constitution, Massachussetts was a theocracy!
You exaggerate substantially the impact of Article III of their state constitution. I'm not sure of the timeframe of the Amendment that superceded that; nonetheless I will agree that there was indeed some state sponsorship of religion there for a time. Given that they sponsored specifically Protestant ministers, as a Catholic taxpayer I would strongly disapprove.
Second, much of the thinking on this subject has been guided by ideologies overtly hostile to Christianity--i.e. militant atheism and agressive pluralism.
Only in the direction of pro-separation; there are two forces struggling here, or else there would be no struggle. In the other direction, the anti-separation has been guided by Evangelical Fundamentalists, with ideologies overtly hostile to any faith other than Christianity, and even to other sects within their faith. Given a choice of aggressive pluralism of faiths, and aggressive monoculturalism of faith, guess which I prefer? I'll have no trouble suitibly indoctrinating my own kids pretty effectively as long as the state keeps it's hands off the Sabbath.
Is it really a violation of the establishment clause for some school teacher, working for a county in Virginia, to pray with a student?
A more subtle question is, does it constitute an abuse of an authority position for the teacher to encourage it?
Does it really constitute a violation to put a copy of the ten commandments on a courthouse wall along with a copy of the Magna Carta and the code of Hammurabi?
Do the other documents get added before, or after, the local atheist zealots file their lawsuit? Is one given any vastly greater prominence than the others?
Is it really an establishment issue to allow a community group to put a nativity scene on the courthouse steps?
What other seasonal displays are allowed to be placed on the courthouse steps by other community groups?
The point then is that America was not a "Christian nation", but neither was America founded on the position that America should drive religion from the public sphere
Conceeded. However, due to the evangelical nature of many sects that will not stop short of their faith and sect being universally mandatory, they will need to beaten back to their proper limited role when it is overstepped. And given the plurality of faiths, and the mutual intolerance of many, it remains to be seen whether such a compromise, short of French-style mandated secularism in matters of state, is possible. I hope it is.
--which is the end objective of many on the religious left.