I fall in two higher risk categories (over 50 and diabetic), and so have gotten the shots seven years in a row now. I've had no problems, and in fact I got one 2 days ago and had no local reaction, not even redness, and can't even find the spot where I was stuck. Unfortunately, for me flu symptoms are usually not all that much different than the ones they tell me are normal for colds, so I can't swear that I actually avoided any particular strains of flu, but I have had a pretty good run of not getting sick at all most winters.
There were significant elements in the japanese government that were comitted to fighting until they got more than just keeping the emperor (and Shinto, a secondary tier issue, because more of the Japanese had informal contacts assuring them the US had a big thing for freedom of religion). They wanted a "No War Crimes Trials" guarantee for the civilians who had overseen the military and possibly for some of the military personnel as well. The US would have probably given them the assurances on religion quickly, but the issue wasn't as far along in the negotiations as the Imperial presence was. The "No War Crimes Trials" bit, that had all the chance of success of a nitrocellulose cat being chased by an asbestos dog in a grove of already burning white phosporus trees, after word got out about Bataan.
While I agree that the US wanted to test those devices, you have to include the history of the Japanese Politicians who were holding out. These were the very people who had made one wrong predicition after another, and not gotten fired (or ordered to retire for health reasons or actually to commit Sepuku), despite those mistakes. The ones who had sworn that it would be impossible for the US to hit the Japanese mainland with bombers for at least 2 years if Pearl Harbor was attacked. The ones who told the Emperor that since Hawaii wasn't a state, just a territory at the time, the US would be open to a negotiated settlement behind the scenes, whatever their public actions. The ones who swore that the US would have to let the Japanese take territory for at least 2 1/2 years before they could even possibly see a reversal. These were people who every time they made a claim and it turned out to be blowing sunshine up the emperor's kilt, somebody else died for having pointed it out and potentially embarrassing them, and they went right on proclaiming the inevetability of eventual victory.
The US very likely figured the negotiators US diplomats spoke with, were hoping to get a truce, but the warhawks may not have even known what the Ambassador and staff were proposing, and might simply drop the proposals and maybe shoot their own messengers at any time. There were too many well-identified lying bastards, some of whom were known for killing the whole families of people they had political disagreements with, and other such nastiness, who still seemed to be able to just jump in there and gum up any settlement on a whim without facing personal consequences.
You wouldn't be the first thick local yocal gardener to hear a big business discussion, in the main meeting room, with the windows open, when it comes to fantasy films http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/
At least nobody caught you, or you might have had to slog all the way to mount 7 Arts, with soul sucking henchmen dogging your trail the whole way to confront a giant, floating, flaming, time warner logo.
Why does there need to be an explanation of where your supernatural entity (or the parent poster's) comes from?
People used to argue between the Steady State Universe and the Big bang version, and they assumed that the Steady State needed no prior causes, as it was just around forever. The Big Bang version had an origin and so it presumably needed an explanation for that origin. Good, hard physics of the 1880s through 1980s was perfectly fine with the idea that not all things need a prior cause, and was willing to look at the evidence for either sort of universe.
People are discussing your supernatural entity, or various other, not necessarily supernatural things, because the evidence showed a type of universe that seems still to most people to need one. (There are more complex models of the basic Big Bang theory where there really isn't a clear point and moment of origin - that's what Dr. Hawking tried to do in "Brief History of Time" for one example - Hawking's book was an attempt to descibe a Big Bang-like that doesn't need God, or a non-supernatural precessor, such as a black hole in a prior 3 dimensional space expanding to create a new space-time, and an infinte series of such priors, or various other things people have proposed as non-supernatural origins.).
Anyway, if God is illogical by your argument, all those physicists who wasted the 20th century deciding between Big Bang and Steady State should have just rejected the Steady State before any actual evidence, such as the cosmic microwave background, was in. If not having a prior cause automatically invalidates the science of a hypothetical, then the Steady State was never a proper scientific theory to begin with.
Whee! We can totally reject the idea of God as a scientific hypothesis and call all those people who don't fools, but only by declaring that science can decide questions by abstract logic without resorting to actual evidence and experiment anymore. It still amazes me that Dr. Sagan was so totally against a "Priesthood of Science", but relentlessly pushed this same first cause argument, without ever seeing that it sets up precisely that priesthood - one where the scientists don't need to question their axioms. If you truly want free and open scientific enquiry, you can't start from some extra assumptions such as "Everything science considers as a hypothesis must have a prior cause".
People work for the government for job security, as it's harder to get fired just because of a personality conflict with one supervisor. Or they do it for idealism, patriotism or a more specific desire to defeat "the terroists" of the moment. Or the government pays to educate some bright young person and that person feels loyalty afterwards.
I have to disagree with one of your points though. " the private sector pays more..." . Given that the NSA and others seem to have a lot of funding, with much of it hidden in 'black box' sources, and given that Homeland Security seems to be bending a lot of rules, we (the general public), can't be at all sure but what the government, on occasion, pays hefty bonuses to selected persons.
I don't have any particular proof of this, but there are historical examples of HSA type organizations, particularly under Nazi Germany and then the post WW2 USSR and its client states, where that was very much a part of what the covert funding went to. The Russians used to joke about how the state security people that lived through the job all seemed to retire to very nice dachas on the seacoasts. The USA may be funneling 'bonuses' that more than make up for those sub-standard salaries to the 'right' people, although I would just about bet that if they are, there's a lengthy chain of systems laundering it, and the people who get it report scrupulously to the IRS.
(This post is not a Godwinning. I'm not claiming that the NSA are Nazis, just that Homeland Security type organizations have a historical record of finding numerous and spectacular ways to pay selected people more than the general government payroll says they should.)
Given the NSA budget, and how much additional they could be getting through Black Box projects we don't even know about, they can afford to recruit some really top notch people. Like, say, an Air Force Chief Warrant officer with an existing Top Secret clearance, a bunch of tech skills and a flawless 12 year history (we could go 20, but lets keep our hypothetical spy young enough to blend in with mid-level tech managment), pay for a couple of years full time training on just the things they want, pay them a salary competitive with a small corp CEOs, and put 10 existing people on falsifying a tremendous amount of background info for the few weeks hat would take. I'm not saying they did that here, but they have the resources if it's that high a priority to them.
Seriously, the way to get a real life James Bond is to find somebody who looks fairly close in the Navy Seals or MI6, a Blackwater style contractor or whatever, somebody who seems highly motivated by the cause you want to employ them at, do additional background checks before you even approach the candidate, and if he or she checks out, then throw lots of money at retooling them into an Uber-agent. If you don't need combat skills, some of the best agents for business infiltration are prosecuting attorneys or accountants who have made a go at starting or running some business of their own. You can figure from this what sort would be attractive to the NSA for infiltrating a software business.
The A.C. you responded to is admittedly not coming off as the sort of person who could spot even a basic mole (hint: there's never a bunch of other people instructed to keep silent, or even a few. At most, one person well above the spy in the civilian organization knows that it was strongly hinted he should hire this person and not ask too many questions.).
If you mean that anybody competent to do software engineering should be able to put together a proper list of who has the physical access needed to put back doors in properly secured development code, then you may be correct. It's a reach, though, to think an engineering degree or even years of good work in the field qualifies a person to narrow that list down.
I'm going to take a stab at empowering you. We're in a long term fight for human freedom. Long term means you may have to influence people now who can just possibly help us, or at least you, ten or twenty years down the road. Pick people who are running for minor or local offices, and need a little help, whether it's contributions or getting out the vote or going door to door. You don't have to spend a fortune or put in fifty hours a week on top of your day job to be remembered as one of those people who helped congressman X get his start in politics. Write letters - you'ld be surprised how many seemingly major pieces of legislation draw two or three letters as they are up for debate, and how getting letters from as few as 10 or 20 people may make a congressman suddenly vote the way he now thinks the vast majority of his constituents want him to vote. Senators and Representitives may see 10,000 e-signatures on a stock electronic petition, but don't usually see even 10 actual letters. A letter thanking them for having done the right thing after it's over is even rarer. Focus on the persons who seem like they have a good chance of making it to higher office eventually. Find out what a Farley file is, and make sure you end up in a few, in a positive way. Work on your spelling and grammer - An eloquent nutcase may be able to pass as a mainstream voter, but a mainstream voter who writes in all caps and spews sentence fragments, can definitely say something eminently sensible and still be labled a nutcase.
Here's a link for Farley Files. Politicians who make it to high office just about invariably use these, so it's always helpful to know about them. Learning to watch for signs a candidate uses the system is a way of spotting the ones who will go high enough they may someday be able to address issues like the NSA programs. It's also useful to consider in judging what a politician truly considers important rather than what he says in prepared speeches - that is, if he or she is using a file, what do they focus on.
Trek fabricators can make all the simple stuff, like food and standard medicines, displays and data storage. People probably don't drive individual cars as much, but then the transporter works at least for earth-moon distances. Per Roddenberry himself, the basics for the average person are dirt cheap. The real question is, how much does it cost if you get a disease that Dr. McCoy can't cure with the wave of a salt shaker and has to actually work on - and those diseases are probably limited to exotic ones the show has to go into deep space to find. Back on Earth, or Vulcan, or any high population core world of the Federation, the chance of getting, say, bitten by a Mugatu, is one in trillions.
On the other hand, building starships takes lots of manual labor from well trained people, and they don't come cheap. Whether those resources are tracked with money or just allocated by computer analysis, they must be pretty expensive. This fits what we've seen in the original series with engineering being a matter of individually tuning the warp drive, power plants, and such, and using exotic materials like 'dilythium'. That's why, in the original series, there are only 12 ships of the Enterprise's class. The cost for building one is a lot more proportionately to feeding and clothing and even entertaining and educating people, or the Federation would have cruisers in the same numbers, relative to all the worlds they need to defend, as the US navy has cruisers relative to the real world,
By the way, it just occured to me that a Cruiser capable of very long range operations (5 year mission), working unsupported by ships of the main line (not attached to a fleet with battleships or some sort of Carrier arrangement at the center), is frequently called a Fleet Intruder. In war, the original Enterprise's job is probably to strike high-value targets such as munitions shipping, well behind enemy lines and get away quickly to harrass the enemy somewhere else. If the Federation is not used to fighting that way, the Enterprise could be expected to join a fleet under Dreadnaught command in time of war. That's what we see in Next Gen., but the original series seldom shows the Enterprise teaming up with any other vessels. Probably every time the Enterprise approaches a new star on that five year mission, her bridge crew is running training exercises to practice finding in-system shipping, ammo depots, intercepting millitary communications, and so on. It's a good thing "Starfleet is not a military organization", so the crew isn't doing what their big, expensive tool is so perfectly designed for.
Please use proper Eastern European spellings for MD./Baron Froederick Fronkensteen. The baron himself also supports crediting the top-notch work of his entire research compound membership, particularly Eeengah and Eyegor.
I'm starting to think he seriously believes that just so long as it's Obama's AG, and will see no contradiction when a Republican gets in office and suddenly the same people who told him it was unconstitutional start claiming the AG (or the President) has that authority again. I feel very bad about this thread, because it tempts me to start a rumor that the constitution says Presidents whose last names start with vowels can't direct elements of the executive branch during months with an "R" in them, and see if it gains traction with some of these people.
The very same people who told you this, told you Bush 43 could pick and choose any way he wanted simply via a signing statement, under the theory of his having "Unitary Executivehood". The VERY SAME PEOPLE! Why are you letting anyone use you like that without getting angry? Do you not remember these liars telling you the exact opposite when their guy was in power? Are you too young to have noticed what they said only six to ten years ago?
"Driver alledges his dispatcher told him to answer the phone even while driving and he did so, claiming this led to the accident. Company has written records of disciplining some driver employees for not immediately answering phone calls, and ex-employees are available to testify that this was cited by their management in termination. Preliminary investigation showed dispatcher and management did not know the laws of the state where the acccident occurred re. cell phone use. Dispatcher and other management had signed statements on record with their insuror stating they educated their drivers in all applicable state and local laws as part of regular training, and in fact were given a discount on insurance prices for their internal safety program."
That's not a hypothetical - that's settled case law. That's two independent lines of proof, either of which would probably have resulted in the same court decision by itself. The company in question paid millions for both the settlement and in fines by the time the whole matter was over.
Also, Galileo was ordered not to publish in Italian for the common man to read until the church approved the work, and to first present his argument to the church in Latin. He did the equivalent of breaking a court order to take his arguments before the public before allowing the church to rule one way or the other, AND afterwords, he claimed before the papal court that he had not meant calling the pope a simpleton to be insulting AND not understood that he was doing an end run around the church's review. The papal system was of the opinion that he clearly understood both points and was in effect by then 'lying directly to the judge in court'. Now, you could argue that it should not have been up to a religious court to decide scientifc truth, but right now in the 21st century, secular courts rule on matters of scientific truth all the time, and if you call a modern judge a simpleton and disclose court matters despite an injunction, while a perfectly secular civil trial is still in process, the modern system is likely to come down on your ass in a manner at least as severe as house arrest. Once the matter became a trial, the Roman Catholic church did literally nothing to Galileo that, say, the US 9th circuit court of appeals would not do right now, and I'd bet that violating a gag order and insulting the judge will usually get a person a lot worse than Galileo got in most venues today.
According to his accusers, Mr. Xenu is guilty of extreme war crimes including mass murder by the use of nuclear weapons. There is no statute of limitations on such crimes and if his accusers are saying anything that might be corroborated enough to trigger a police or even customs investigation, that's grounds for adding him to the no fly lists. We also seem to have allegations that Mr. Xenu touched somebody's thetans, and I'm shocked, shocked I say, that apparently nobody has called Chris Hansen with these claims. I fully support adding Mr. Xenu to the no fly lists. (Particularly if the airplane in question resembles a gold plated DC-10).
In addition, Mr. Xenu is alleged to be a space alien, and in the case where I have seen him hanging out outside the Scientology campus in Clearwater Fla. he certainly looked like one. and I have a degree in recognizing space aliens from the University of thousands of hours of Stargate-SG1, Farscape, and Trek. Body cavity searches thus constitute data of priceless scientific value. We ignore people's rights for everything else, why not for science?
I'm pretty comfortable with the mod system slashdot uses, and yes, I browse at -1 and put up with some real garbage to see such things as anon coward posts that are still being unfairly downrated (when you start at 0, it doesn't take much to move you to the very bottom under this system).
The only thing I could see along the lines you describe is if there were some people given special points to take the straightforward total trash to negative 2 (and yes, people could choose to browse at -2 to see even those). I'm visualizing some sort of mod that was only to be used when its some specific repeating annoyance, such as the bit about Golden Girls/Cosmonaut, GNAA, the public restroom story or goatse/tubgirl or similar.
I don't want people, however well intentioned, to be able to move something that's a one time, non-repeating bad post or troll or maybe just somebody who's an honest jerk arbitrarily low, but when its something the community has had time to consider and it just keeps repeating, having it vanish into the wilderness below -1 might be the best thing. I probably fit the people you describe - karma at top, sometimes use all my mod points, often don't - but I really don't want the power to push just any fool post to negative infinity or whatever, for fear even people with excellent karma, a history of promoting rather than demoting, and all those other good things will push something sarcastic, or sardonic, or just not easily parsed, into that same limbo.
Give me that power, and I might clean up more junk, but then somebody would post something I'd take literally, and miss a common cultural reference and I'd end up condemning a perfectly cromulent post. (I'm in my mid 50's dammit, do you want to give me some kind of authority when I probably don't even know any of your favorite bands, watch any of the hot shows (TV's a vast wasteland again now that Fringe is over), and barely tolerate Superhero films or any Bond since Connery? (And get off my lawn, dammit!)
Or maybe to draw a simpler analogy, if you offer me something and I take it, can you then turn around and accuse me of theft?
Sssshhh - the people who post here claiming copyright violation is really theft won't want this type of copyright violation considered in that same light. CV must stay so uberthefty that it's still theft even with permission, or somebody might have to wrap their minds around the concept that whatever violation is, it's different from theft.
The idea is that there is always an energy cost in producing extra chemicals or biological structures in a living thing. If there's nothing around to make the extra chemicals or structures useful, the living thing would be better off not wasting energy making it. That's probably true in the vast majority of cases, but some compounds and structures have more than one use, and there's a second possibility (see below).
The people who did this doubtless figured that there was a cost in producing round-up resisting compounds if there wasn't any roundup in that wild plant's environment. Again, that's solidly in accord with one part of modern Evolutionary theory. It would count as a real fluke if these compounds turned out to be useful for something else so the plant still benefited from making them. I'd expect most professional mollecular biologists to work from that principle and take it into account routinely. However, what the persons considering that probably did is, they thought something like "It would count as a real fluke if these compounds turned out to be useful for something else so the plant still benefited from making them, but it didn't already evolve naturally.". That sounds logical too, but the last clause doesn't always follow from theory, again because of the second possibility.
What's that possibility? Another idea that's a solid part of modern evolutionary theory is that selection proceeds, as a metaphorical mindless robot, towards a local optimum at the time the selection pressure is being applied, never towards any abstract goal of longer term perfection. There may be many things that some organism might benefit from if they could be developed enough, but the intermediate stages have drawbacks and so selection never makes it 'over the hump'. These plants may have never evolved whatever advantage this gene gives them because there was an intermediate disadvantage unless the plant had the whole package. it isn't a fluke that something advantagious hasn't already evolved because of this - it happens all the time.
There's probably several ways humans might have naturally developed with more of many traits we think of as positive, but they have short term consequences that aren't (for ex. there's an idea that what kept humans from naturally evolving down one pathway towards more strength is that the pathway has an intermediate stage where people get more succeptable to famine, and if we keep advanced civilization together for a few tens of thousands more years, traits supporting more strength will evolve naturally, just so we manage to feed a good portion of each generation without famine becoming near universal.
Even the pros have to resist the tendency to say 'nature wants' or 'this gene wants', or other such phrases. It's hard to really visualize that selection has no goals, but proceeds mechanically towards the most locally optimum outcome, and take that consistently into account in describing evolutionary outcomes.
Absolutely! When people get drawn into debates over whether a bad act is deliberate malice or just stupidity, the bad acts end up both unpunished and, more importantly, uncorrected. Corrupt organizations love to see the debate become focused on whether there's deliberate intent before any serious efforts to fix the problem even get started. Saying we can't fix the problems until we decide the question of the individual's motives is a great way to never fix the problem. It's the same trick when the subordinate says they were just following orders and the superior says their orders were misinterpreted. The real solution is to discipline both of them the same way as if these 'defenses' had never been uttered.
Sigh, I suspect it's just another Warhammer 40K player.
Try picturing a My Little Pony saying: "Moral authority rightly belongs only to those who have the strength of will and the genetic and religious purity to wield it. Now hand me an apple!"
Second little known fact; Bangladesh is essentially all lowlands/river delta type terrain. If AGW projections are right, even a pretty rosy one says Bangladesh will be hit very hard over the next 50 years or so, as in 20 million fatalities, mostly in a war for lebensroom. Midline projections mean that #8 on population will drop to about #107.
Here's the thing - we could get a system that doesn't single out any racial or ethnic group for targeting. It could talk nice about equal rights for women and minorities, and even be for equality for GLBT people and so on. But that system could still be fascist. It could create its scapegoats by blaming some sort of made up group (for example, claiming people like Snowden were "Unmutualists", as in the original "The Prisoner" TV show). It could stifle dissent by claiming often enough and loudly enough, that anyone dissenting was supporting terrorists or pedophiles. It could put tremendous numbers of people in prison, and show a strong anti-minority bias, but shift all arguments to the question of whether the opportunities for those minority members not (yet) imprisoned were equal, and talk the talk of supporting equality. It could even allow some criticism by admitting that everything wasn't perfect yet, just so the critic didn't cross the line into saying theings were getting worse. A Fascism that didn't need to follow classic anti-minority lines but created its enemies piecemeal could probably survive better than one that was obviously racist or sexist. One that allowed some dissent within limits could probably survive better than one which quickly brought out the iron boot - and one that shifted the focus of its two minute hates often enough could probably supress dissent even better than one that always brought up Emmanuel Goldstein.
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I fall in two higher risk categories (over 50 and diabetic), and so have gotten the shots seven years in a row now. I've had no problems, and in fact I got one 2 days ago and had no local reaction, not even redness, and can't even find the spot where I was stuck. Unfortunately, for me flu symptoms are usually not all that much different than the ones they tell me are normal for colds, so I can't swear that I actually avoided any particular strains of flu, but I have had a pretty good run of not getting sick at all most winters.
I'd like to know more...
There were significant elements in the japanese government that were comitted to fighting until they got more than just keeping the emperor (and Shinto, a secondary tier issue, because more of the Japanese had informal contacts assuring them the US had a big thing for freedom of religion). They wanted a "No War Crimes Trials" guarantee for the civilians who had overseen the military and possibly for some of the military personnel as well. The US would have probably given them the assurances on religion quickly, but the issue wasn't as far along in the negotiations as the Imperial presence was. The "No War Crimes Trials" bit, that had all the chance of success of a nitrocellulose cat being chased by an asbestos dog in a grove of already burning white phosporus trees, after word got out about Bataan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March
While I agree that the US wanted to test those devices, you have to include the history of the Japanese Politicians who were holding out. These were the very people who had made one wrong predicition after another, and not gotten fired (or ordered to retire for health reasons or actually to commit Sepuku), despite those mistakes. The ones who had sworn that it would be impossible for the US to hit the Japanese mainland with bombers for at least 2 years if Pearl Harbor was attacked. The ones who told the Emperor that since Hawaii wasn't a state, just a territory at the time, the US would be open to a negotiated settlement behind the scenes, whatever their public actions. The ones who swore that the US would have to let the Japanese take territory for at least 2 1/2 years before they could even possibly see a reversal. These were people who every time they made a claim and it turned out to be blowing sunshine up the emperor's kilt, somebody else died for having pointed it out and potentially embarrassing them, and they went right on proclaiming the inevetability of eventual victory.
The US very likely figured the negotiators US diplomats spoke with, were hoping to get a truce, but the warhawks may not have even known what the Ambassador and staff were proposing, and might simply drop the proposals and maybe shoot their own messengers at any time. There were too many well-identified lying bastards, some of whom were known for killing the whole families of people they had political disagreements with, and other such nastiness, who still seemed to be able to just jump in there and gum up any settlement on a whim without facing personal consequences.
You wouldn't be the first thick local yocal gardener to hear a big business discussion, in the main meeting room, with the windows open, when it comes to fantasy films http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/
At least nobody caught you, or you might have had to slog all the way to mount 7 Arts, with soul sucking henchmen dogging your trail the whole way to confront a giant, floating, flaming, time warner logo.
Why does there need to be an explanation of where your supernatural entity (or the parent poster's) comes from?
People used to argue between the Steady State Universe and the Big bang version, and they assumed that the Steady State needed no prior causes, as it was just around forever. The Big Bang version had an origin and so it presumably needed an explanation for that origin. Good, hard physics of the 1880s through 1980s was perfectly fine with the idea that not all things need a prior cause, and was willing to look at the evidence for either sort of universe.
People are discussing your supernatural entity, or various other, not necessarily supernatural things, because the evidence showed a type of universe that seems still to most people to need one. (There are more complex models of the basic Big Bang theory where there really isn't a clear point and moment of origin - that's what Dr. Hawking tried to do in "Brief History of Time" for one example - Hawking's book was an attempt to descibe a Big Bang-like that doesn't need God, or a non-supernatural precessor, such as a black hole in a prior 3 dimensional space expanding to create a new space-time, and an infinte series of such priors, or various other things people have proposed as non-supernatural origins.).
Anyway, if God is illogical by your argument, all those physicists who wasted the 20th century deciding between Big Bang and Steady State should have just rejected the Steady State before any actual evidence, such as the cosmic microwave background, was in. If not having a prior cause automatically invalidates the science of a hypothetical, then the Steady State was never a proper scientific theory to begin with.
Whee! We can totally reject the idea of God as a scientific hypothesis and call all those people who don't fools, but only by declaring that science can decide questions by abstract logic without resorting to actual evidence and experiment anymore. It still amazes me that Dr. Sagan was so totally against a "Priesthood of Science", but relentlessly pushed this same first cause argument, without ever seeing that it sets up precisely that priesthood - one where the scientists don't need to question their axioms. If you truly want free and open scientific enquiry, you can't start from some extra assumptions such as "Everything science considers as a hypothesis must have a prior cause".
OK, you've got his head and both arms inside the dryer - I like where this seems to be going... Let me get a camera...
People work for the government for job security, as it's harder to get fired just because of a personality conflict with one supervisor. Or they do it for idealism, patriotism or a more specific desire to defeat "the terroists" of the moment. Or the government pays to educate some bright young person and that person feels loyalty afterwards.
I have to disagree with one of your points though. " the private sector pays more..." . Given that the NSA and others seem to have a lot of funding, with much of it hidden in 'black box' sources, and given that Homeland Security seems to be bending a lot of rules, we (the general public), can't be at all sure but what the government, on occasion, pays hefty bonuses to selected persons.
I don't have any particular proof of this, but there are historical examples of HSA type organizations, particularly under Nazi Germany and then the post WW2 USSR and its client states, where that was very much a part of what the covert funding went to. The Russians used to joke about how the state security people that lived through the job all seemed to retire to very nice dachas on the seacoasts. The USA may be funneling 'bonuses' that more than make up for those sub-standard salaries to the 'right' people, although I would just about bet that if they are, there's a lengthy chain of systems laundering it, and the people who get it report scrupulously to the IRS.
(This post is not a Godwinning. I'm not claiming that the NSA are Nazis, just that Homeland Security type organizations have a historical record of finding numerous and spectacular ways to pay selected people more than the general government payroll says they should.)
Given the NSA budget, and how much additional they could be getting through Black Box projects we don't even know about, they can afford to recruit some really top notch people. Like, say, an Air Force Chief Warrant officer with an existing Top Secret clearance, a bunch of tech skills and a flawless 12 year history (we could go 20, but lets keep our hypothetical spy young enough to blend in with mid-level tech managment), pay for a couple of years full time training on just the things they want, pay them a salary competitive with a small corp CEOs, and put 10 existing people on falsifying a tremendous amount of background info for the few weeks hat would take. I'm not saying they did that here, but they have the resources if it's that high a priority to them.
Seriously, the way to get a real life James Bond is to find somebody who looks fairly close in the Navy Seals or MI6, a Blackwater style contractor or whatever, somebody who seems highly motivated by the cause you want to employ them at, do additional background checks before you even approach the candidate, and if he or she checks out, then throw lots of money at retooling them into an Uber-agent. If you don't need combat skills, some of the best agents for business infiltration are prosecuting attorneys or accountants who have made a go at starting or running some business of their own. You can figure from this what sort would be attractive to the NSA for infiltrating a software business.
The A.C. you responded to is admittedly not coming off as the sort of person who could spot even a basic mole (hint: there's never a bunch of other people instructed to keep silent, or even a few. At most, one person well above the spy in the civilian organization knows that it was strongly hinted he should hire this person and not ask too many questions.).
If you mean that anybody competent to do software engineering should be able to put together a proper list of who has the physical access needed to put back doors in properly secured development code, then you may be correct. It's a reach, though, to think an engineering degree or even years of good work in the field qualifies a person to narrow that list down.
I'm going to take a stab at empowering you.
We're in a long term fight for human freedom. Long term means you may have to influence people now who can just possibly help us, or at least you, ten or twenty years down the road. Pick people who are running for minor or local offices, and need a little help, whether it's contributions or getting out the vote or going door to door. You don't have to spend a fortune or put in fifty hours a week on top of your day job to be remembered as one of those people who helped congressman X get his start in politics.
Write letters - you'ld be surprised how many seemingly major pieces of legislation draw two or three letters as they are up for debate, and how getting letters from as few as 10 or 20 people may make a congressman suddenly vote the way he now thinks the vast majority of his constituents want him to vote. Senators and Representitives may see 10,000 e-signatures on a stock electronic petition, but don't usually see even 10 actual letters. A letter thanking them for having done the right thing after it's over is even rarer.
Focus on the persons who seem like they have a good chance of making it to higher office eventually. Find out what a Farley file is, and make sure you end up in a few, in a positive way. Work on your spelling and grammer - An eloquent nutcase may be able to pass as a mainstream voter, but a mainstream voter who writes in all caps and spews sentence fragments, can definitely say something eminently sensible and still be labled a nutcase.
Here's a link for Farley Files. Politicians who make it to high office just about invariably use these, so it's always helpful to know about them. Learning to watch for signs a candidate uses the system is a way of spotting the ones who will go high enough they may someday be able to address issues like the NSA programs. It's also useful to consider in judging what a politician truly considers important rather than what he says in prepared speeches - that is, if he or she is using a file, what do they focus on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file
Trek fabricators can make all the simple stuff, like food and standard medicines, displays and data storage. People probably don't drive individual cars as much, but then the transporter works at least for earth-moon distances. Per Roddenberry himself, the basics for the average person are dirt cheap. The real question is, how much does it cost if you get a disease that Dr. McCoy can't cure with the wave of a salt shaker and has to actually work on - and those diseases are probably limited to exotic ones the show has to go into deep space to find. Back on Earth, or Vulcan, or any high population core world of the Federation, the chance of getting, say, bitten by a Mugatu, is one in trillions.
On the other hand, building starships takes lots of manual labor from well trained people, and they don't come cheap. Whether those resources are tracked with money or just allocated by computer analysis, they must be pretty expensive. This fits what we've seen in the original series with engineering being a matter of individually tuning the warp drive, power plants, and such, and using exotic materials like 'dilythium'. That's why, in the original series, there are only 12 ships of the Enterprise's class. The cost for building one is a lot more proportionately to feeding and clothing and even entertaining and educating people, or the Federation would have cruisers in the same numbers, relative to all the worlds they need to defend, as the US navy has cruisers relative to the real world,
By the way, it just occured to me that a Cruiser capable of very long range operations (5 year mission), working unsupported by ships of the main line (not attached to a fleet with battleships or some sort of Carrier arrangement at the center), is frequently called a Fleet Intruder. In war, the original Enterprise's job is probably to strike high-value targets such as munitions shipping, well behind enemy lines and get away quickly to harrass the enemy somewhere else. If the Federation is not used to fighting that way, the Enterprise could be expected to join a fleet under Dreadnaught command in time of war. That's what we see in Next Gen., but the original series seldom shows the Enterprise teaming up with any other vessels. Probably every time the Enterprise approaches a new star on that five year mission, her bridge crew is running training exercises to practice finding in-system shipping, ammo depots, intercepting millitary communications, and so on. It's a good thing "Starfleet is not a military organization", so the crew isn't doing what their big, expensive tool is so perfectly designed for.
Please use proper Eastern European spellings for MD./Baron Froederick Fronkensteen. The baron himself also supports crediting the top-notch work of his entire research compound membership, particularly Eeengah and Eyegor.
I'm starting to think he seriously believes that just so long as it's Obama's AG, and will see no contradiction when a Republican gets in office and suddenly the same people who told him it was unconstitutional start claiming the AG (or the President) has that authority again. I feel very bad about this thread, because it tempts me to start a rumor that the constitution says Presidents whose last names start with vowels can't direct elements of the executive branch during months with an "R" in them, and see if it gains traction with some of these people.
The very same people who told you this, told you Bush 43 could pick and choose any way he wanted simply via a signing statement, under the theory of his having "Unitary Executivehood". The VERY SAME PEOPLE! Why are you letting anyone use you like that without getting angry? Do you not remember these liars telling you the exact opposite when their guy was in power? Are you too young to have noticed what they said only six to ten years ago?
"Driver alledges his dispatcher told him to answer the phone even while driving and he did so, claiming this led to the accident. Company has written records of disciplining some driver employees for not immediately answering phone calls, and ex-employees are available to testify that this was cited by their management in termination. Preliminary investigation showed dispatcher and management did not know the laws of the state where the acccident occurred re. cell phone use. Dispatcher and other management had signed statements on record with their insuror stating they educated their drivers in all applicable state and local laws as part of regular training, and in fact were given a discount on insurance prices for their internal safety program."
That's not a hypothetical - that's settled case law. That's two independent lines of proof, either of which would probably have resulted in the same court decision by itself. The company in question paid millions for both the settlement and in fines by the time the whole matter was over.
Also, Galileo was ordered not to publish in Italian for the common man to read until the church approved the work, and to first present his argument to the church in Latin. He did the equivalent of breaking a court order to take his arguments before the public before allowing the church to rule one way or the other, AND afterwords, he claimed before the papal court that he had not meant calling the pope a simpleton to be insulting AND not understood that he was doing an end run around the church's review. The papal system was of the opinion that he clearly understood both points and was in effect by then 'lying directly to the judge in court'. Now, you could argue that it should not have been up to a religious court to decide scientifc truth, but right now in the 21st century, secular courts rule on matters of scientific truth all the time, and if you call a modern judge a simpleton and disclose court matters despite an injunction, while a perfectly secular civil trial is still in process, the modern system is likely to come down on your ass in a manner at least as severe as house arrest. Once the matter became a trial, the Roman Catholic church did literally nothing to Galileo that, say, the US 9th circuit court of appeals would not do right now, and I'd bet that violating a gag order and insulting the judge will usually get a person a lot worse than Galileo got in most venues today.
According to his accusers, Mr. Xenu is guilty of extreme war crimes including mass murder by the use of nuclear weapons. There is no statute of limitations on such crimes and if his accusers are saying anything that might be corroborated enough to trigger a police or even customs investigation, that's grounds for adding him to the no fly lists. We also seem to have allegations that Mr. Xenu touched somebody's thetans, and I'm shocked, shocked I say, that apparently nobody has called Chris Hansen with these claims. I fully support adding Mr. Xenu to the no fly lists. (Particularly if the airplane in question resembles a gold plated DC-10).
In addition, Mr. Xenu is alleged to be a space alien, and in the case where I have seen him hanging out outside the Scientology campus in Clearwater Fla. he certainly looked like one. and I have a degree in recognizing space aliens from the University of thousands of hours of Stargate-SG1, Farscape, and Trek. Body cavity searches thus constitute data of priceless scientific value. We ignore people's rights for everything else, why not for science?
I'm pretty comfortable with the mod system slashdot uses, and yes, I browse at -1 and put up with some real garbage to see such things as anon coward posts that are still being unfairly downrated (when you start at 0, it doesn't take much to move you to the very bottom under this system).
The only thing I could see along the lines you describe is if there were some people given special points to take the straightforward total trash to negative 2 (and yes, people could choose to browse at -2 to see even those). I'm visualizing some sort of mod that was only to be used when its some specific repeating annoyance, such as the bit about Golden Girls/Cosmonaut, GNAA, the public restroom story or goatse/tubgirl or similar.
I don't want people, however well intentioned, to be able to move something that's a one time, non-repeating bad post or troll or maybe just somebody who's an honest jerk arbitrarily low, but when its something the community has had time to consider and it just keeps repeating, having it vanish into the wilderness below -1 might be the best thing. I probably fit the people you describe - karma at top, sometimes use all my mod points, often don't - but I really don't want the power to push just any fool post to negative infinity or whatever, for fear even people with excellent karma, a history of promoting rather than demoting, and all those other good things will push something sarcastic, or sardonic, or just not easily parsed, into that same limbo.
Give me that power, and I might clean up more junk, but then somebody would post something I'd take literally, and miss a common cultural reference and I'd end up condemning a perfectly cromulent post. (I'm in my mid 50's dammit, do you want to give me some kind of authority when I probably don't even know any of your favorite bands, watch any of the hot shows (TV's a vast wasteland again now that Fringe is over), and barely tolerate Superhero films or any Bond since Connery? (And get off my lawn, dammit!)
...a wooden stake hammered through the body pinning it in place...
suicide effectively gets you mistaken for Dracula
I never thought I'd stoop to this, but.. There, fixed that for you!
What's spookier is, by your argument, the NSA presumably already has all the good porn.
Or maybe to draw a simpler analogy, if you offer me something and I take it, can you then turn around and accuse me of theft?
Sssshhh - the people who post here claiming copyright violation is really theft won't want this type of copyright violation considered in that same light. CV must stay so uberthefty that it's still theft even with permission, or somebody might have to wrap their minds around the concept that whatever violation is, it's different from theft.
The idea is that there is always an energy cost in producing extra chemicals or biological structures in a living thing. If there's nothing around to make the extra chemicals or structures useful, the living thing would be better off not wasting energy making it. That's probably true in the vast majority of cases, but some compounds and structures have more than one use, and there's a second possibility (see below).
The people who did this doubtless figured that there was a cost in producing round-up resisting compounds if there wasn't any roundup in that wild plant's environment. Again, that's solidly in accord with one part of modern Evolutionary theory. It would count as a real fluke if these compounds turned out to be useful for something else so the plant still benefited from making them. I'd expect most professional mollecular biologists to work from that principle and take it into account routinely. However, what the persons considering that probably did is, they thought something like "It would count as a real fluke if these compounds turned out to be useful for something else so the plant still benefited from making them, but it didn't already evolve naturally.". That sounds logical too, but the last clause doesn't always follow from theory, again because of the second possibility.
What's that possibility? Another idea that's a solid part of modern evolutionary theory is that selection proceeds, as a metaphorical mindless robot, towards a local optimum at the time the selection pressure is being applied, never towards any abstract goal of longer term perfection. There may be many things that some organism might benefit from if they could be developed enough, but the intermediate stages have drawbacks and so selection never makes it 'over the hump'. These plants may have never evolved whatever advantage this gene gives them because there was an intermediate disadvantage unless the plant had the whole package. it isn't a fluke that something advantagious hasn't already evolved because of this - it happens all the time.
There's probably several ways humans might have naturally developed with more of many traits we think of as positive, but they have short term consequences that aren't (for ex. there's an idea that what kept humans from naturally evolving down one pathway towards more strength is that the pathway has an intermediate stage where people get more succeptable to famine, and if we keep advanced civilization together for a few tens of thousands more years, traits supporting more strength will evolve naturally, just so we manage to feed a good portion of each generation without famine becoming near universal.
Even the pros have to resist the tendency to say 'nature wants' or 'this gene wants', or other such phrases. It's hard to really visualize that selection has no goals, but proceeds mechanically towards the most locally optimum outcome, and take that consistently into account in describing evolutionary outcomes.
Absolutely! When people get drawn into debates over whether a bad act is deliberate malice or just stupidity, the bad acts end up both unpunished and, more importantly, uncorrected. Corrupt organizations love to see the debate become focused on whether there's deliberate intent before any serious efforts to fix the problem even get started. Saying we can't fix the problems until we decide the question of the individual's motives is a great way to never fix the problem. It's the same trick when the subordinate says they were just following orders and the superior says their orders were misinterpreted. The real solution is to discipline both of them the same way as if these 'defenses' had never been uttered.
Sigh, I suspect it's just another Warhammer 40K player.
Try picturing a My Little Pony saying: "Moral authority rightly belongs only to those who have the strength of will and the genetic and religious purity to wield it. Now hand me an apple!"
Second little known fact; Bangladesh is essentially all lowlands/river delta type terrain. If AGW projections are right, even a pretty rosy one says Bangladesh will be hit very hard over the next 50 years or so, as in 20 million fatalities, mostly in a war for lebensroom. Midline projections mean that #8 on population will drop to about #107.
Here's the thing - we could get a system that doesn't single out any racial or ethnic group for targeting. It could talk nice about equal rights for women and minorities, and even be for equality for GLBT people and so on. But that system could still be fascist. It could create its scapegoats by blaming some sort of made up group (for example, claiming people like Snowden were "Unmutualists", as in the original "The Prisoner" TV show). It could stifle dissent by claiming often enough and loudly enough, that anyone dissenting was supporting terrorists or pedophiles. It could put tremendous numbers of people in prison, and show a strong anti-minority bias, but shift all arguments to the question of whether the opportunities for those minority members not (yet) imprisoned were equal, and talk the talk of supporting equality. It could even allow some criticism by admitting that everything wasn't perfect yet, just so the critic didn't cross the line into saying theings were getting worse. A Fascism that didn't need to follow classic anti-minority lines but created its enemies piecemeal could probably survive better than one that was obviously racist or sexist. One that allowed some dissent within limits could probably survive better than one which quickly brought out the iron boot - and one that shifted the focus of its two minute hates often enough could probably supress dissent even better than one that always brought up Emmanuel Goldstein.