That's just the point I was trying to make, which whooshed about a thousand miles over your head! I haven't particularly made up my mind on this case, I just showed how the very same 'facts' one poster was citing could be spun in the opposite direction.
Still, I don't feel particularly insulted by being accused of using facts to back up a decision - most of us will come to a conclusion at some point in cases such as this, and sooner or later start focusing more on seeing how new facts will fit into our existing mental picture than on building one from scratch. At that point, it will take more and more significant facts to jar any of us out of our mental grooves. We are all like that, including you - that's what's sometimes called the human existential position. Fortunately, some of us are more open to changing our minds than others.
It's absolutely clear that there is evidence in this case. That became settled the moment the judge let the prosecutor introduce exhibits. What is far from clear is how much that evidence is worth, even in proving that the wife is dead, let alone proving that the death was a murder, and eventually proving who did it. So what you probably meant was that you don't think it's clear that the evidence is sufficient, in which case, I agree strongly. As of yet, I haven't heard anything that is convincing beyond a reasonable doubt.
No No, this is capitalism. The corporation has a perfect right to see absolutely anything it wants. The consumer has no right to see the corporation's books, question its practices, or set up any kind of oversight, governmental or non. All governmental interference that doesn't favor the insurance corporations is socialism. All government protection of the insurance companies is freedom, just so its paid for by taxes on individuals, not corporations. All private, non-coercive financial attempts to regulate the industry are also socialism. We are all equal in the free market, but some of us are more equal than others. Anything else would be something only a dirtyrottencommirat would want.
There are some "maybe" motives, but the parent poster used the modifier "clear". A clear motive means there is more than just a general sense that some other accused has had that motive before and it might fit this time too. Otherwise, we could argue that anyone who was "wronged" in some sense, took out insurance, or had quirky behaviors must "clearly" be guilty, because some people have clearly had motivations such as revenge, money, or insanity before.
But, the kind of people who clean out other people's bank accounts are also often the kind who split and hide out afterwards. The kind of people who are sleeping with someone else are often the kind who just run off to be with that somebody else, and so on. In fact, there's probably more cases of an adulteress running away with the boyfriend than her being murdered by a jealous husband, and I would not be surprised if its at least a full order of magnitude more probable (There are so many more relationships that break up with both parties alive than end in murder. Murder is actually so rare, that if a mere 2 or 3 % of cheating spouses slip off instead of waiting for a legal divorce, that outcome would be vastly more likely).
It's even half way reasonable to argue that the kind of people who routinely lie to a new employer about their marital status may have other lies and schemes in their past. (I wouldn't bet that most people who fudge a resume would commit a serious fraud, but there's certainly some overlap there) Roughly half your motives fit her doing something illegal as much or more than him. We could also make up a similar list for her. Add the ones you gave that fit her to these, and we're up to five for her too.
"Clear" motives for Nina to commit a fraud:
1. Mail order bride whose real goal might have been to get out of Russia by any means necessary. 2. Willing to enter into a loveless, arranged marriage for financial advantages....
It's not blind acceptance if you have evidence. To believe the FBI is lying about this, you have to also believe that they have voluntarily come clean about a situation where they could have just hidden all the facts by merely never bringing them up. They would have to be both honest and exceptionally punctilious, doing their full duty in accordance with the law, when it comes to some points we actually know, and dishonest only on one of the points we can't directly verify.
Yes, that's still possible, but since it leads to very complex plots that seem likely to unravel at the slightest glitch, or otherwise don't usually make a lot of sense, most of us figure the facts we observe support the FBI having played fair with the law, at least in this case. We extend them a certain amount of trust, because simply shutting up about the whole thing is a strategy a criminal organization would so likely use in a case such as this. That's not necessarily unlimited trust, but the action itself is definitely reasoned, not blind.
If I see somebody wearing an orange shirt and carrying a lit flashlight, and he claims he wasn't out to sneak around in the dark, I'm not blindly accepting anything to believe him.
You'd observe both living Basset Hounds and examples found in the fossil record, and note that they are ultra-rapidly selected against in the absence of human support.:-)
More seriously, breeder's logs, photos from kennel clubs, and such ARE the equivalent of a fossil record. Artificial selection has happened over such an accelerated timespan that the record for the evolution of Basset Hounds is far more complete than for any natural species from its immediate predecessors. Extremely rapid change, at a rate far exceeding known natural examples, is itself likely an indicator of intelligent choice.
Obviously, if I was just a context-free alien spaceprobe, and a Basset Hound and a Wolf both wandered in sight of my cameras, I'd have a near impossible task recognizing which one was the result of only natural selection. But, there's probably some level of additional knowledge that falls short of knowing all the facts beforehand, yet would still let me derive the conclusion.
As i understand it, her claim is that the entry was made after the first lawsuit (in small claims) was filed. You say irresponsible, I say it's at least one of: tampering with evidence, court fraud, or perjury. (Assuming her claim to know the date of the data entry can be fully proven, of course).
Plus, if the claims about altering their own in-store records after the initial claim was filed are true, Best Buy attempted fraud to prevent the state from producing a proper judgment in small claims court. Whaaa! It's so unfair! Businesses shouldn't be threatened with court cases escalating just because they committed fraud! Their management has a fiduciary obligation to the stockholders to lie and destroy evidence! It's communism, I tell you!
The point is, quite serious proponents of evolution have said "ALL biological organisms gained their form from natural selection." (The preceding was an exact quote from a speech delivered by Richard Dawkins). 'Responsible', 'sober', 'rationalist' scientists really are going so far as to claim evolution is a universal principle, applying to the whole cosmos, and trying to extend the metaphor of selection to 'Stellar Evolution'. Natural selection is being described as a single overwhelming principle that admits no exceptions what-so-ever, anywhere in the field of observation that is science. Biologists are telling Astrophysicists that they know more about Cosmology than the Physicists do, and telling Geologists that their calculations for the age of the Earth must be wrong because they disagree with Biology.
Natural selection may explain Wolves, but it simply doesn't explain Basset Hounds. We know of cases of artificial selection, and we know that the very non-supernatural artificer there has the property of intelligence (unless you are claiming that humans are non-sentient). At this point, we have absolute proof that some forms of selection involve intelligence, we know of both natural selection and an existing alternative, and a group of articulate scientists who are so committed to their theory that they are denying that fact, is calling another group biased.
I reiterate, we know of at least two sources for biological design, and we know of ways to distinguish at least some of their effects. A hypothesis that there could be a third source can't just be dismissed by the argument that it violates Occam, because we already know of a reason to multiply hypothesis - that is the single explanation from Natural Selection doesn't account for all cases. It can't be dismissed by the counter-argument that intelligence isn't sometimes a necessary attribute for a source of biological design either, because we know of one concrete, non-supernatural source where intelligence clearly is a necessary factor.
I'd gladly debate some issues relating to ID with you, if you can demonstrate an open mind, but I think I have every right to insist on the demonstration first, if you are one of those people who are insisting that Basset Hounds don't prove the existence of artificial selection. I won't waste my time debating anything if you are of the opinion that humans themselves don't possess intelligence.
In 3.5 hybrid classes were rough to play; why would you want to play a Paladin (a weak fighter bolted to a weak cleric) when you could play one of the core four and do something well? Fourth edition solves this issue by looking at the roles behind the classes rather than at class particulars. The Rogue, for example, is the classic Striker. He uses stealth and guile to cause spikes of high damage at opportune times.
Yeah, why would you want to play a class that has this huge tradition of honor and service and steadfast devotion to a cause and a range of abilities that revolve around that concept, when you can play a character that can hit things better?
The fair question is, why would you want to play a class that charges you huge effectiveness penalties just so you can be recognized by other characters as belonging to an order that has a tradition of honor and steadfast devotion? Why should your paladin character have a major feature that only gets useful if the DM runs a relatively 'quasi-medieval realistic' and dark campaign (with plagues and rampant diseases), so you can use laying on of hands more than once in 20 or 30 gaming sessions?
Why should that same class have a reduced strength turn undead effect? He usually tries to turn undead creatures only when the party cleric has already blown it, and typically has about a 1 in 5 chance of succeeding in that situation, so there's another special ability he only draws on about 1 game in 10, and he usually fails at it when he uses it.
How does playing a character who is second best at many game related things and best at none of them have anything to do with that core concept of honor and devotion you speak of? The 3rd ed. paladin's abilities don't actually revolve around his core conception, because he doesn't get to use them very often at all, so he ends up being defined by things irrelevant to piety, that come up far more often. Hence all the paladins that are played as prigs and moralizers, and all the stereotypical test the paladin unto destruction scenarios.
The biggest thing I see in favor of a 4th edition is that WotC has studied real games in progress pretty extensively, and they know certain abilities don't give much bang for the buck in just about any character design. They know that DMs are constrained and even straight-jacketed by certain character ability combinations, and they know there are certain bits in character designs that add a lot of complexity but only get used about 1 game in 10 or less. There are already elements that just about any character can use, such as flanking maneuvers or grappling, but that very seldom get used in play, and WotC doesn't see much point in encouraging elements that are specific to a particular character but are even more rarely useful and at least equally complex.
You're seeing that the rules are still very combat focused, and don't much facilitate non-combat interactions, but that's true of the existing versions too. Something like GURPS, or a lot of people's home brewed rules, will beat any version of stock D&D when it comes to non-combat situations. At least here, what's combat related is intended to be useful even if the DM doesn't provide favored enemies, or undead, or diseases, on a particular schedule.
You are missing a few points. For example you're talking about "what if my fighter wants to avoid a fight except when absolutely necessary", in response to the phrase 'something interesting to do in a fight". Your character's only chance to avoid a fight is before the fight starts. Just like in the real world, and in any game (except maybe "Time Travelers and Troglodytes"), your skills, intentions, or methods for avoiding a fight have nothing to do with what happens once a fight actually starts. Your character could still be very interested in avoiding a fight even if he has options every round if one starts, or could want to provoke a fight even if he has little useful to do if one
The law contains a special exemption for sports bars. The churches that do this are generally trying to provide a sports bar like atmosphere without alcohol. The want to give people a chance to enjoy being in a group of peers to have some fun without the pressure to drink and drink to excess. The law as written clearly makes any place that supports the consumption of alcohol superior to ones that believe in temperance as a religious principle, and thus clearly is unconstitutional.
Your definition of 'performance in expectation' is exactly backwards to the law's. That same constitution holds that the state cannot give special rank under law to a purely intangible 'reward', such as 'salvation' or 'life after death'. If the government were to say that the church received something of value simply by attracting members (as opposed to real value like tithes), then the government would be doing something you apparently oppose, favoring an establishment of religion. So you are in effect arguing for the government to selectively apply the first amendment, just only when you want.
The church is in the right here, 100%, regardless of whether you agree with them on anything else. Your last remark thus amounts to "Oh Noes! Those nasty, nasty Xians! They're trying to keep me from getting spattered by a post Superbowl drunk driver! Is there no limit to their eeeevil?".
Disclosure: I'm an occasionally practicing Episcopalian. That faith generally drinks. They serve wine at church dinners and receptions, and usually expect most members to control their own consumption. One Episcopalian founded Alcoholics Anon. for those people who couldn't, but the faith as a whole has no issue with sports bars (or with watching the Superbowl on Sundays).
I'm also not personally concerned that you are going to Hell if I don't convert you. I think that if you can twist something that most probably will benefit you* into yet another reason to hate, you have a problem with hatred, and need to confront your feelings now, in this world, whether there's another one or not.
*Assuming you're not a drunk driver who wants to deliberately avoid a non-coercive chance not to drink and drive.
Charles Simonyi, (formerly of Microsoft), has donated $20 million, and Bill Gates (also formerly of Microsoft if memory serves) $10 million to help build the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile. The LSST is a super-widefield scope, expected to be able to survey the entire sky every three nights. One of its major uses will be early spotting of earth crossing asteroids. Total cost of the project is around 400 Million. The two donations above will fund three of the scope's main mirrors. Observations are expected to start in 2015. I know Microsoft isn't too popular around here, but you can relax a little - someone is funding a huge, (not so) cheap project that could potentially help save the entire Earth from annihilation.
Iron doesn't fission or fuse, so steel is only risky if it's got mechanical potential energy. Ergo, we must ban weightlifting and tall buildings. All other elements besides iron are potentially capable of liberating energy by either fusing to make iron or fissioning to make iron, so it's all other elements we must ban. If we just make the whole universe iron, and pack it all into one ball so nothing can fall any farther, then everybody will,at last, be safe. Uhm, wait...
I agree that the human race is unlikely to make the decision to save the Manatees at the cost of less jobs, fewer lifestyle options, and such, but it is becoming apparent that impoverishing the rest of the capital E Ecology or even local ecologies hurts us as well. Maybe Manatees aren't that significant, maybe Alligators can all go, just maybe we could pave the whole everglades without losing carrying capacity for humans, but take out enough species, whole biomes, and so on, and it will hit us too.
Even before that, safe for which humans? Plenty of us wouldn't care about something that only kills people on the coasts, if we live inland, but those people on the coasts get to vote too, most places. If wave rockers on the Texas coast affect erosion of the few remaining sandbars protecting New Orleans, Texas may think they're great, but Louisiana won't.
Even before extinctions, something that commits large parts of the world's coastlines to power generation will probably have impacts we don't like on good old us, for example, tankers hit coastlines sometimes - what happens when an oil tanker mishap also takes down part of the wind and wave grid for a double whammy? (Hint, the oil company says it was all the wave rocker floats fault and the tanker wouldn't have run aground at all if not for them - after all, if you had just loss a valuable asset in an accident involving your competitors, and they were about to sue you, wouldn't you try to prove they were at fault? Oil companies don't sue mother nature for putting rocks there, but when someone owns the coast and covered it with big moving objects that 'affect currents', that's different.)
Beryllium is slightly hazardous. As a dust, it causes an allergic reaction in about 10-15% of people exposed, which can lead to some pretty severe long term health consequences for people with that dust in their lungs. This particular Beryllium is more likely to come down as significantly sized bits of metal than as a dust, so effects are most likely to be totally non-existent, unless a piece actually lands on somebody.
In a real pinch it's technically possible - the question is, is viewing a target worth shortening the life of the bird by however much? Maybe for a rogue nuke scenario, like in some sort of Tom Clancy novel, there are guys at Langley that can authorize it.
Nothing that involves a high concentration of energy and a low concentration can ever be completely safe. Energy is the ability to do work, and it may end up doing work you don't want it to do. Now here's the real problem: You feel you have been lied to, that somebody promised you breeder reactors are completely safe, or that other kinds of reactors are completely safe or something. Well, somebody lied to you all right, when they told you that any power generation could ever be completely safe.
Read up on 'loss of blade' accidents for windmills, dam failures for hydro, and how coal releases radiation (lots of it) and other toxins (lots of them). Read up on what chemical compounds are used in solar cells, or just how hot a commercial sterling solar engine is at the mirror's focal point. Look at the political consequences of breeders, but also at the political consequences of the existing fuel oil demand. Look at the environmental consequences of nuclear, but also at the environmental consequences of big oil. Find out how even wave and tide, if scaled up to produce tens or hundreds of gigawatts, means thousands of small boat accidents a year, plus Manatees and probably many other species will inevitably become extinct and whole ecologies such as the everglades will likely follow. For any power source, read up on where it is to be located, and the human costs of sending the power to where it is to be used. THERE IS NO SAFE!
The real definition is the first one you stated, but then you stop making sense. For instance if there is no hierarchy, how can laws be enforced?
First, before you take me to task to make sense, shouldn't you find out if I support anarchy or am just describing what some of its supporters think? Maybe I'm a feudalist syncretist psycho-technocrat who wants to restore absolute power to only those centralized groupings of hereditary barons who can reanimate human remains, make earthquake machines or have robot armies. Maybe I'm something really weird, like a dixiecrat. Maybe I was talking about a they, and your real point is they don't make sense.
I can answer you on this question, even though I'm not an anarchist. The loss of hierarchy usually assumes Laws still get enforced by people paid to do so (Specialization is not hierarchy). These people would have to gain no special status for doing that job. Judges could still put people in jail for actually disrupting the trail process, but not just for offending the judge's personal dignity. The U.S. Congress could pass a social security law and the government have a social security administration, but government workers, and even congress itself, couldn't be specially exempt from paying the resulting taxes. I can think of plenty of examples that don't parse my logic processor this easily, which is one of the reasons I'm not an anarchist. What amazes me is that there are so many people who haven't even thought of examples like the two I gave, yet they are terribly, terribly sure they aren't anarchists either.
Anarchy literally means NO Archy, as in No Hierarchy. No person set up over other persons, everybody equal, and so on. Technically, the phrase "A nation of laws and not men" fits this definition. A strict definition of the word equates to having "No rulers", but not necessarily or even likely having no laws.
This is not just a matter of semantics. I wouldn't bother with this point if the vast majority of 'anarchists' were "Chaoticists" misusing the word to mean doing away with all law. The word is actually, very frequently used to mean no rulers. In the UK, there have been literally over 10,000 people put on lists of suspected anarchists because they oppose Monarchy (literally "One-archy"). They are people advocating getting rid of the British monarchy, including having no House of Lords, but many still support elections and laws, including having a House of Commons based parlimentary system. The U.S. gets these lists as part of establishing its own no-fly, and no-visit lists, and the US's intelligence services usually take the British anarchist designation as meaning "opposed to all government" so the U.S. is currently keeping "British anarchists" out of the country because they are people who don't support the current heir to the throne of George III. Funny, I thought the U.S. got started that way.
If our descendants are still around in 40 million years, and especially if they have diversified into many different forms, I'm pretty confident things overall will be "interesting". If even one of those forms preserves and extends technological civilization, minor things such as gas clouds will also be completely safe for transhumanity.
The infrastructure makes a real difference in the need for good preservatives, agreed. That said, there are lots of reasons to go ahead and build that infrastructure in the third world.
1. lots of clinics with reliable refrigeration will let those clinics preserve samples where an outbreak of something really nasty, such as Ebola Zaire, is suspected. Better roads, or even runways and committed planes, will let local governments and the UN respond to such outbreaks more quickly. A dedicated radio type link would let them be reported more quickly, in the first place.
Malaria is affected by sickle cell trait and it can be useful to have blood samples and test populations to see how many have a sickle cell gene on just one side of their code, as they are resistant to Malaria's spread. The UN has expressed an interest in being able to test rural populations in bulk and get advance predictions for which ones are more vulnerable to Malaria epidemics. Right now, such testing involves trying to take a random sample of a small percentage of people and hopefully get ones who are not more closely genetically related than the average for the area, which is pretty tricky.
2. There are other medications that need refrigerated or transported quickly besides vaccines. Some of the statin drugs, for example, are both light and heat sensitive, time sensitive, and extremely useful but have to be given in large quantities - too large to want to use a mercury based preservative even if the smaller amounts found in vaccines are completely safe. Anti-parasite drugs, particularly targeting some of the larger worms, commonly have this problem too (you probably don't want to know more).
Some vaccines don't work well with mercury preservatives and sometimes, development of a new vaccine has been stopped because it didn't do well in small scale trials just because it wasn't ruggedized enough to stay effective in the areas where that disease was prevalent.
I really don't tend to call people like that names, because it turns some people off to my side of the argument. That said, you're right. It's not just that they have earned our disrespect, but that speaking respectfully to them itself reinforces their sense that they can keep getting away with lying to us. They take getting the social status, money, and generally polite environment that goes with their job as an affirmation that they will never be called out on their conduct.
It's funny you should mention beach-front property in SD though. I left Slashdot to go to the NOAA national weather site and saw the color coded map of the 48 contiguous states with various weather advisories. South Dakota was an odd purple, which when I looked on the key, turned out to be Tsunami warnings!
So you're saying we should accept a morality that says our ethical response stops at the edge of our own village? Or are you still claiming that's what the Bible says?
What Dawkins and such mean by genetic altruism is the exact opposite of your definition. You're arguing for the existence of something much of modern science claims to have debunked, and that the very book you're dismissing supports. I won't waste time telling you to read the Book you're so critical of, but if it's not too much trouble, could you read something about modern Biology? Maybe you could start with "The Selfish Gene".
Then there's your second paragraph. Aside from the gratuitous insult, that first sentence has no subjects associated with its verbs. The next sentence uses how in place of the generally preferred what, but more importantly, the second sentence obviously refers to some part of the first, yet I would love to have the faintest clue which part you thought that was.
Using something other than the government can be a good idea. Look at how functional Underwriter's Laboratories is. And I grant you, restrictive liscensing can go far beyond any public good. For examples, there's no real reason to have a full doctor evaluate the average cold or flue case, delivering babies has worked well with midwives in the past, the military regularly turns over medical care decisions to PA's (4 year degree) and RNs (2 year or better), that are doctors only decisions in the civilian world, with very good success rates (the problems at military hospitals aren't related to having PA's, etc, in fact the numbers show the opposite).
But in the original discussion, posters were mentioning how a lot of people evade the requirement for a driver's liscense as proof the government can't get it right. I'd point out that there are very few people if any managing to fly a commercial aircraft without a commercial pilot's full set of certifications, liscences and records. There are pretty few cases of unliscenced brain surgery out there as well. It's a pretty safe bet that anyone who can fly a 747 safely either has all those, or has come very close to completing the set and lost out on some small factor. There just isn't anybody who has never logged any flight hours for record in any jet aircraft but who could safely do that job. Yes, there may be people who have practiced with smaller jets and have lots of natural talent and drive and could theoretically do better than the bottom few percent of those others who have that last bit of paper. But the cut off there is way, way above not having anything on record at all.
Sometimes, a government program gets 95% or better success at controlling unqualified practitioners, so pointing out that one area, such as regular car drivers, isn't working that well is either a wrong generalization (that is, we have counter examples where the government does much better), or it reduces to saying that "government is bad, because it doesn't achieve an absolute 100% success." (in which case, I'd like the 'free market' alternatives judged by that same standard).
Actually, I'm not sure if you and your wife can practice adultery. Did you pay her dad for her? If it wasn't an old testament style marriage, how can you break the related rule? Maybe, at most, you're breaking half a new testament rule. (Where Christ said "In Heaven there is no marriage or giving into marriage", if you're like most modern couples, there was never any 'giving into' part, so the requirements for technical compliance have obviously changed).
Hey, I'm divorced, and getting along great with the Ex-Snooky-Ookims - crazier yet, we seem to be being faithful to each other with no legal or theological requirement - it's like we can't see the point in bothering with anyone else when what's between us is again working. What God really has joined together, no man can put apart, kinda like crazy glue.
It doesn't really matter what behavior the person is engaged in, a fair percentage of people will do things that tend to get them judged and ostracized by their local group. Biological theories of ethics say this is to be expected. Are you claiming that Obama wouldn't have gotten any flack over not wearing a flag pin except for religion making people intolerant? What about the girls who smeared one of their own cliques reputation until she committed suicide in an argument that started over nail polish? Did that happen because the book of Thessalonians calls foundation and blusher abominations? Did the McCarthy hearings happen because there's some Bible verse saying "Thou shalt not suffer a Stalinist to live?
The Bible verse we are discussing says that judging people means you deserve to be judged with equal fervor, so remember that before you escalate to primate style stone throwing. It takes the opposite stance from an evolutionary based ethic, where altruism has to compete with heirarchial dominance as a value, and says the two principles don't compete, rather one is absolute. It doesn't say anything about, this is only for things that the group throwing stones wouldn't care about except for their religion. It counts for all judging people, anywhere. If you don't like that the example given is for a specifically religious violation, how about getting the reading comprehension to see that it is clearly intended to be applied more broadly.
The Bible also gives the parable of the Good Samaritan. Genetic Altruism says your neighbor is the being who shares your rare genes, as explained in several of Dawkin's books. The Bible says - NO! That alien Samaritan who stops to help is more your neighbor than the people of your same race who pass you by. Genetic Altruism is again, not an absolute but a balancing act with other evolutionary drives, while the the Bible is saying (at least there) shared physical heredity counts for absolutely nothing in deciding who's a friend and who isn't.
Look, you're certainly free to say the Bible is wrong about such points or any others, but saying the Bible doesn't say anything about ethics we can't get from science is basically saying red is green.
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That's just the point I was trying to make, which whooshed about a thousand miles over your head! I haven't particularly made up my mind on this case, I just showed how the very same 'facts' one poster was citing could be spun in the opposite direction.
Still, I don't feel particularly insulted by being accused of using facts to back up a decision - most of us will come to a conclusion at some point in cases such as this, and sooner or later start focusing more on seeing how new facts will fit into our existing mental picture than on building one from scratch. At that point, it will take more and more significant facts to jar any of us out of our mental grooves. We are all like that, including you - that's what's sometimes called the human existential position. Fortunately, some of us are more open to changing our minds than others.
It's absolutely clear that there is evidence in this case. That became settled the moment the judge let the prosecutor introduce exhibits. What is far from clear is how much that evidence is worth, even in proving that the wife is dead, let alone proving that the death was a murder, and eventually proving who did it. So what you probably meant was that you don't think it's clear that the evidence is sufficient, in which case, I agree strongly. As of yet, I haven't heard anything that is convincing beyond a reasonable doubt.
No No, this is capitalism. The corporation has a perfect right to see absolutely anything it wants. The consumer has no right to see the corporation's books, question its practices, or set up any kind of oversight, governmental or non. All governmental interference that doesn't favor the insurance corporations is socialism. All government protection of the insurance companies is freedom, just so its paid for by taxes on individuals, not corporations. All private, non-coercive financial attempts to regulate the industry are also socialism. We are all equal in the free market, but some of us are more equal than others. Anything else would be something only a dirtyrottencommirat would want.
There are some "maybe" motives, but the parent poster used the modifier "clear". A clear motive means there is more than just a general sense that some other accused has had that motive before and it might fit this time too. Otherwise, we could argue that anyone who was "wronged" in some sense, took out insurance, or had quirky behaviors must "clearly" be guilty, because some people have clearly had motivations such as revenge, money, or insanity before.
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But, the kind of people who clean out other people's bank accounts are also often the kind who split and hide out afterwards. The kind of people who are sleeping with someone else are often the kind who just run off to be with that somebody else, and so on. In fact, there's probably more cases of an adulteress running away with the boyfriend than her being murdered by a jealous husband, and I would not be surprised if its at least a full order of magnitude more probable (There are so many more relationships that break up with both parties alive than end in murder. Murder is actually so rare, that if a mere 2 or 3 % of cheating spouses slip off instead of waiting for a legal divorce, that outcome would be vastly more likely).
It's even half way reasonable to argue that the kind of people who routinely lie to a new employer about their marital status may have other lies and schemes in their past. (I wouldn't bet that most people who fudge a resume would commit a serious fraud, but there's certainly some overlap there) Roughly half your motives fit her doing something illegal as much or more than him. We could also make up a similar list for her. Add the ones you gave that fit her to these, and we're up to five for her too.
"Clear" motives for Nina to commit a fraud:
1. Mail order bride whose real goal might have been to get out of Russia by any means necessary.
2. Willing to enter into a loveless, arranged marriage for financial advantages.
It's not blind acceptance if you have evidence. To believe the FBI is lying about this, you have to also believe that they have voluntarily come clean about a situation where they could have just hidden all the facts by merely never bringing them up. They would have to be both honest and exceptionally punctilious, doing their full duty in accordance with the law, when it comes to some points we actually know, and dishonest only on one of the points we can't directly verify.
Yes, that's still possible, but since it leads to very complex plots that seem likely to unravel at the slightest glitch, or otherwise don't usually make a lot of sense, most of us figure the facts we observe support the FBI having played fair with the law, at least in this case. We extend them a certain amount of trust, because simply shutting up about the whole thing is a strategy a criminal organization would so likely use in a case such as this. That's not necessarily unlimited trust, but the action itself is definitely reasoned, not blind.
If I see somebody wearing an orange shirt and carrying a lit flashlight, and he claims he wasn't out to sneak around in the dark, I'm not blindly accepting anything to believe him.
You'd observe both living Basset Hounds and examples found in the fossil record, and note that they are ultra-rapidly selected against in the absence of human support. :-)
More seriously, breeder's logs, photos from kennel clubs, and such ARE the equivalent of a fossil record. Artificial selection has happened over such an accelerated timespan that the record for the evolution of Basset Hounds is far more complete than for any natural species from its immediate predecessors. Extremely rapid change, at a rate far exceeding known natural examples, is itself likely an indicator of intelligent choice.
Obviously, if I was just a context-free alien spaceprobe, and a Basset Hound and a Wolf both wandered in sight of my cameras, I'd have a near impossible task recognizing which one was the result of only natural selection. But, there's probably some level of additional knowledge that falls short of knowing all the facts beforehand, yet would still let me derive the conclusion.
As i understand it, her claim is that the entry was made after the first lawsuit (in small claims) was filed. You say irresponsible, I say it's at least one of: tampering with evidence, court fraud, or perjury. (Assuming her claim to know the date of the data entry can be fully proven, of course).
Plus, if the claims about altering their own in-store records after the initial claim was filed are true, Best Buy attempted fraud to prevent the state from producing a proper judgment in small claims court. Whaaa! It's so unfair! Businesses shouldn't be threatened with court cases escalating just because they committed fraud! Their management has a fiduciary obligation to the stockholders to lie and destroy evidence! It's communism, I tell you!
The point is, quite serious proponents of evolution have said "ALL biological organisms gained their form from natural selection." (The preceding was an exact quote from a speech delivered by Richard Dawkins). 'Responsible', 'sober', 'rationalist' scientists really are going so far as to claim evolution is a universal principle, applying to the whole cosmos, and trying to extend the metaphor of selection to 'Stellar Evolution'. Natural selection is being described as a single overwhelming principle that admits no exceptions what-so-ever, anywhere in the field of observation that is science. Biologists are telling Astrophysicists that they know more about Cosmology than the Physicists do, and telling Geologists that their calculations for the age of the Earth must be wrong because they disagree with Biology.
Natural selection may explain Wolves, but it simply doesn't explain Basset Hounds. We know of cases of artificial selection, and we know that the very non-supernatural artificer there has the property of intelligence (unless you are claiming that humans are non-sentient). At this point, we have absolute proof that some forms of selection involve intelligence, we know of both natural selection and an existing alternative, and a group of articulate scientists who are so committed to their theory that they are denying that fact, is calling another group biased.
I reiterate, we know of at least two sources for biological design, and we know of ways to distinguish at least some of their effects. A hypothesis that there could be a third source can't just be dismissed by the argument that it violates Occam, because we already know of a reason to multiply hypothesis - that is the single explanation from Natural Selection doesn't account for all cases. It can't be dismissed by the counter-argument that intelligence isn't sometimes a necessary attribute for a source of biological design either, because we know of one concrete, non-supernatural source where intelligence clearly is a necessary factor.
I'd gladly debate some issues relating to ID with you, if you can demonstrate an open mind, but I think I have every right to insist on the demonstration first, if you are one of those people who are insisting that Basset Hounds don't prove the existence of artificial selection. I won't waste my time debating anything if you are of the opinion that humans themselves don't possess intelligence.
In 3.5 hybrid classes were rough to play; why would you want to play a Paladin (a weak fighter bolted to a weak cleric) when you could play one of the core four and do something well? Fourth edition solves this issue by looking at the roles behind the classes rather than at class particulars. The Rogue, for example, is the classic Striker. He uses stealth and guile to cause spikes of high damage at opportune times.
Yeah, why would you want to play a class that has this huge tradition of honor and service and steadfast devotion to a cause and a range of abilities that revolve around that concept, when you can play a character that can hit things better?
The fair question is, why would you want to play a class that charges you huge effectiveness penalties just so you can be recognized by other characters as belonging to an order that has a tradition of honor and steadfast devotion? Why should your paladin character have a major feature that only gets useful if the DM runs a relatively 'quasi-medieval realistic' and dark campaign (with plagues and rampant diseases), so you can use laying on of hands more than once in 20 or 30 gaming sessions?
Why should that same class have a reduced strength turn undead effect? He usually tries to turn undead creatures only when the party cleric has already blown it, and typically has about a 1 in 5 chance of succeeding in that situation, so there's another special ability he only draws on about 1 game in 10, and he usually fails at it when he uses it.
How does playing a character who is second best at many game related things and best at none of them have anything to do with that core concept of honor and devotion you speak of? The 3rd ed. paladin's abilities don't actually revolve around his core conception, because he doesn't get to use them very often at all, so he ends up being defined by things irrelevant to piety, that come up far more often. Hence all the paladins that are played as prigs and moralizers, and all the stereotypical test the paladin unto destruction scenarios.
The biggest thing I see in favor of a 4th edition is that WotC has studied real games in progress pretty extensively, and they know certain abilities don't give much bang for the buck in just about any character design. They know that DMs are constrained and even straight-jacketed by certain character ability combinations, and they know there are certain bits in character designs that add a lot of complexity but only get used about 1 game in 10 or less. There are already elements that just about any character can use, such as flanking maneuvers or grappling, but that very seldom get used in play, and WotC doesn't see much point in encouraging elements that are specific to a particular character but are even more rarely useful and at least equally complex.
You're seeing that the rules are still very combat focused, and don't much facilitate non-combat interactions, but that's true of the existing versions too. Something like GURPS, or a lot of people's home brewed rules, will beat any version of stock D&D when it comes to non-combat situations. At least here, what's combat related is intended to be useful even if the DM doesn't provide favored enemies, or undead, or diseases, on a particular schedule.
You are missing a few points. For example you're talking about "what if my fighter wants to avoid a fight except when absolutely necessary", in response to the phrase 'something interesting to do in a fight". Your character's only chance to avoid a fight is before the fight starts. Just like in the real world, and in any game (except maybe "Time Travelers and Troglodytes"), your skills, intentions, or methods for avoiding a fight have nothing to do with what happens once a fight actually starts. Your character could still be very interested in avoiding a fight even if he has options every round if one starts, or could want to provoke a fight even if he has little useful to do if one
The law contains a special exemption for sports bars. The churches that do this are generally trying to provide a sports bar like atmosphere without alcohol. The want to give people a chance to enjoy being in a group of peers to have some fun without the pressure to drink and drink to excess. The law as written clearly makes any place that supports the consumption of alcohol superior to ones that believe in temperance as a religious principle, and thus clearly is unconstitutional.
Your definition of 'performance in expectation' is exactly backwards to the law's. That same constitution holds that the state cannot give special rank under law to a purely intangible 'reward', such as 'salvation' or 'life after death'. If the government were to say that the church received something of value simply by attracting members (as opposed to real value like tithes), then the government would be doing something you apparently oppose, favoring an establishment of religion. So you are in effect arguing for the government to selectively apply the first amendment, just only when you want.
The church is in the right here, 100%, regardless of whether you agree with them on anything else. Your last remark thus amounts to "Oh Noes! Those nasty, nasty Xians! They're trying to keep me from getting spattered by a post Superbowl drunk driver! Is there no limit to their eeeevil?".
Disclosure: I'm an occasionally practicing Episcopalian. That faith generally drinks. They serve wine at church dinners and receptions, and usually expect most members to control their own consumption. One Episcopalian founded Alcoholics Anon. for those people who couldn't, but the faith as a whole has no issue with sports bars (or with watching the Superbowl on Sundays).
I'm also not personally concerned that you are going to Hell if I don't convert you. I think that if you can twist something that most probably will benefit you* into yet another reason to hate, you have a problem with hatred, and need to confront your feelings now, in this world, whether there's another one or not.
*Assuming you're not a drunk driver who wants to deliberately avoid a non-coercive chance not to drink and drive.
Charles Simonyi, (formerly of Microsoft), has donated $20 million, and Bill Gates (also formerly of Microsoft if memory serves) $10 million to help build the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile. The LSST is a super-widefield scope, expected to be able to survey the entire sky every three nights. One of its major uses will be early spotting of earth crossing asteroids.
Total cost of the project is around 400 Million. The two donations above will fund three of the scope's main mirrors. Observations are expected to start in 2015.
I know Microsoft isn't too popular around here, but you can relax a little - someone is funding a huge, (not so) cheap project that could potentially help save the entire Earth from annihilation.
Iron doesn't fission or fuse, so steel is only risky if it's got mechanical potential energy. Ergo, we must ban weightlifting and tall buildings. All other elements besides iron are potentially capable of liberating energy by either fusing to make iron or fissioning to make iron, so it's all other elements we must ban. If we just make the whole universe iron, and pack it all into one ball so nothing can fall any farther, then everybody will ,at last, be safe. Uhm, wait...
I agree that the human race is unlikely to make the decision to save the Manatees at the cost of less jobs, fewer lifestyle options, and such, but it is becoming apparent that impoverishing the rest of the capital E Ecology or even local ecologies hurts us as well. Maybe Manatees aren't that significant, maybe Alligators can all go, just maybe we could pave the whole everglades without losing carrying capacity for humans, but take out enough species, whole biomes, and so on, and it will hit us too.
Even before that, safe for which humans? Plenty of us wouldn't care about something that only kills people on the coasts, if we live inland, but those people on the coasts get to vote too, most places. If wave rockers on the Texas coast affect erosion of the few remaining sandbars protecting New Orleans, Texas may think they're great, but Louisiana won't.
Even before extinctions, something that commits large parts of the world's coastlines to power generation will probably have impacts we don't like on good old us, for example, tankers hit coastlines sometimes - what happens when an oil tanker mishap also takes down part of the wind and wave grid for a double whammy? (Hint, the oil company says it was all the wave rocker floats fault and the tanker wouldn't have run aground at all if not for them - after all, if you had just loss a valuable asset in an accident involving your competitors, and they were about to sue you, wouldn't you try to prove they were at fault? Oil companies don't sue mother nature for putting rocks there, but when someone owns the coast and covered it with big moving objects that 'affect currents', that's different.)
Beryllium is slightly hazardous. As a dust, it causes an allergic reaction in about 10-15% of people exposed, which can lead to some pretty severe long term health consequences for people with that dust in their lungs. This particular Beryllium is more likely to come down as significantly sized bits of metal than as a dust, so effects are most likely to be totally non-existent, unless a piece actually lands on somebody.
In a real pinch it's technically possible - the question is, is viewing a target worth shortening the life of the bird by however much? Maybe for a rogue nuke scenario, like in some sort of Tom Clancy novel, there are guys at Langley that can authorize it.
Nothing that involves a high concentration of energy and a low concentration can ever be completely safe. Energy is the ability to do work, and it may end up doing work you don't want it to do. Now here's the real problem: You feel you have been lied to, that somebody promised you breeder reactors are completely safe, or that other kinds of reactors are completely safe or something. Well, somebody lied to you all right, when they told you that any power generation could ever be completely safe.
Read up on 'loss of blade' accidents for windmills, dam failures for hydro, and how coal releases radiation (lots of it) and other toxins (lots of them). Read up on what chemical compounds are used in solar cells, or just how hot a commercial sterling solar engine is at the mirror's focal point. Look at the political consequences of breeders, but also at the political consequences of the existing fuel oil demand. Look at the environmental consequences of nuclear, but also at the environmental consequences of big oil. Find out how even wave and tide, if scaled up to produce tens or hundreds of gigawatts, means thousands of small boat accidents a year, plus Manatees and probably many other species will inevitably become extinct and whole ecologies such as the everglades will likely follow. For any power source, read up on where it is to be located, and the human costs of sending the power to where it is to be used. THERE IS NO SAFE!
The real definition is the first one you stated, but then you stop making sense. For instance if there is no hierarchy, how can laws be enforced?
First, before you take me to task to make sense, shouldn't you find out if I support anarchy or am just describing what some of its supporters think? Maybe I'm a feudalist syncretist psycho-technocrat who wants to restore absolute power to only those centralized groupings of hereditary barons who can reanimate human remains, make earthquake machines or have robot armies. Maybe I'm something really weird, like a dixiecrat. Maybe I was talking about a they, and your real point is they don't make sense.
I can answer you on this question, even though I'm not an anarchist. The loss of hierarchy usually assumes Laws still get enforced by people paid to do so (Specialization is not hierarchy). These people would have to gain no special status for doing that job. Judges could still put people in jail for actually disrupting the trail process, but not just for offending the judge's personal dignity. The U.S. Congress could pass a social security law and the government have a social security administration, but government workers, and even congress itself, couldn't be specially exempt from paying the resulting taxes. I can think of plenty of examples that don't parse my logic processor this easily, which is one of the reasons I'm not an anarchist. What amazes me is that there are so many people who haven't even thought of examples like the two I gave, yet they are terribly, terribly sure they aren't anarchists either.
Anarchy literally means NO Archy, as in No Hierarchy. No person set up over other persons, everybody equal, and so on. Technically, the phrase "A nation of laws and not men" fits this definition. A strict definition of the word equates to having "No rulers", but not necessarily or even likely having no laws.
This is not just a matter of semantics. I wouldn't bother with this point if the vast majority of 'anarchists' were "Chaoticists" misusing the word to mean doing away with all law. The word is actually, very frequently used to mean no rulers. In the UK, there have been literally over 10,000 people put on lists of suspected anarchists because they oppose Monarchy (literally "One-archy"). They are people advocating getting rid of the British monarchy, including having no House of Lords, but many still support elections and laws, including having a House of Commons based parlimentary system. The U.S. gets these lists as part of establishing its own no-fly, and no-visit lists, and the US's intelligence services usually take the British anarchist designation as meaning "opposed to all government" so the U.S. is currently keeping "British anarchists" out of the country because they are people who don't support the current heir to the throne of George III. Funny, I thought the U.S. got started that way.
If our descendants are still around in 40 million years, and especially if they have diversified into many different forms, I'm pretty confident things overall will be "interesting". If even one of those forms preserves and extends technological civilization, minor things such as gas clouds will also be completely safe for transhumanity.
The infrastructure makes a real difference in the need for good preservatives, agreed. That said, there are lots of reasons to go ahead and build that infrastructure in the third world.
1. lots of clinics with reliable refrigeration will let those clinics preserve samples where an outbreak of something really nasty, such as Ebola Zaire, is suspected. Better roads, or even runways and committed planes, will let local governments and the UN respond to such outbreaks more quickly. A dedicated radio type link would let them be reported more quickly, in the first place.
Malaria is affected by sickle cell trait and it can be useful to have blood samples and test populations to see how many have a sickle cell gene on just one side of their code, as they are resistant to Malaria's spread. The UN has expressed an interest in being able to test rural populations in bulk and get advance predictions for which ones are more vulnerable to Malaria epidemics. Right now, such testing involves trying to take a random sample of a small percentage of people and hopefully get ones who are not more closely genetically related than the average for the area, which is pretty tricky.
2. There are other medications that need refrigerated or transported quickly besides vaccines. Some of the statin drugs, for example, are both light and heat sensitive, time sensitive, and extremely useful but have to be given in large quantities - too large to want to use a mercury based preservative even if the smaller amounts found in vaccines are completely safe. Anti-parasite drugs, particularly targeting some of the larger worms, commonly have this problem too (you probably don't want to know more).
Some vaccines don't work well with mercury preservatives and sometimes, development of a new vaccine has been stopped because it didn't do well in small scale trials just because it wasn't ruggedized enough to stay effective in the areas where that disease was prevalent.
I really don't tend to call people like that names, because it turns some people off to my side of the argument. That said, you're right. It's not just that they have earned our disrespect, but that speaking respectfully to them itself reinforces their sense that they can keep getting away with lying to us. They take getting the social status, money, and generally polite environment that goes with their job as an affirmation that they will never be called out on their conduct.
It's funny you should mention beach-front property in SD though. I left Slashdot to go to the NOAA national weather site and saw the color coded map of the 48 contiguous states with various weather advisories. South Dakota was an odd purple, which when I looked on the key, turned out to be Tsunami warnings!
So you're saying we should accept a morality that says our ethical response stops at the edge of our own village? Or are you still claiming that's what the Bible says?
What Dawkins and such mean by genetic altruism is the exact opposite of your definition. You're arguing for the existence of something much of modern science claims to have debunked, and that the very book you're dismissing supports. I won't waste time telling you to read the Book you're so critical of, but if it's not too much trouble, could you read something about modern Biology? Maybe you could start with "The Selfish Gene".
Then there's your second paragraph. Aside from the gratuitous insult, that first sentence has no subjects associated with its verbs. The next sentence uses how in place of the generally preferred what, but more importantly, the second sentence obviously refers to some part of the first, yet I would love to have the faintest clue which part you thought that was.
Using something other than the government can be a good idea. Look at how functional Underwriter's Laboratories is. And I grant you, restrictive liscensing can go far beyond any public good. For examples, there's no real reason to have a full doctor evaluate the average cold or flue case, delivering babies has worked well with midwives in the past, the military regularly turns over medical care decisions to PA's (4 year degree) and RNs (2 year or better), that are doctors only decisions in the civilian world, with very good success rates (the problems at military hospitals aren't related to having PA's, etc, in fact the numbers show the opposite).
But in the original discussion, posters were mentioning how a lot of people evade the requirement for a driver's liscense as proof the government can't get it right. I'd point out that there are very few people if any managing to fly a commercial aircraft without a commercial pilot's full set of certifications, liscences and records. There are pretty few cases of unliscenced brain surgery out there as well. It's a pretty safe bet that anyone who can fly a 747 safely either has all those, or has come very close to completing the set and lost out on some small factor. There just isn't anybody who has never logged any flight hours for record in any jet aircraft but who could safely do that job. Yes, there may be people who have practiced with smaller jets and have lots of natural talent and drive and could theoretically do better than the bottom few percent of those others who have that last bit of paper. But the cut off there is way, way above not having anything on record at all.
Sometimes, a government program gets 95% or better success at controlling unqualified practitioners, so pointing out that one area, such as regular car drivers, isn't working that well is either a wrong generalization (that is, we have counter examples where the government does much better), or it reduces to saying that "government is bad, because it doesn't achieve an absolute 100% success." (in which case, I'd like the 'free market' alternatives judged by that same standard).
Actually, I'm not sure if you and your wife can practice adultery. Did you pay her dad for her? If it wasn't an old testament style marriage, how can you break the related rule? Maybe, at most, you're breaking half a new testament rule. (Where Christ said "In Heaven there is no marriage or giving into marriage", if you're like most modern couples, there was never any 'giving into' part, so the requirements for technical compliance have obviously changed).
Hey, I'm divorced, and getting along great with the Ex-Snooky-Ookims - crazier yet, we seem to be being faithful to each other with no legal or theological requirement - it's like we can't see the point in bothering with anyone else when what's between us is again working. What God really has joined together, no man can put apart, kinda like crazy glue.
It doesn't really matter what behavior the person is engaged in, a fair percentage of people will do things that tend to get them judged and ostracized by their local group. Biological theories of ethics say this is to be expected. Are you claiming that Obama wouldn't have gotten any flack over not wearing a flag pin except for religion making people intolerant? What about the girls who smeared one of their own cliques reputation until she committed suicide in an argument that started over nail polish? Did that happen because the book of Thessalonians calls foundation and blusher abominations? Did the McCarthy hearings happen because there's some Bible verse saying "Thou shalt not suffer a Stalinist to live?
The Bible verse we are discussing says that judging people means you deserve to be judged with equal fervor, so remember that before you escalate to primate style stone throwing. It takes the opposite stance from an evolutionary based ethic, where altruism has to compete with heirarchial dominance as a value, and says the two principles don't compete, rather one is absolute. It doesn't say anything about, this is only for things that the group throwing stones wouldn't care about except for their religion. It counts for all judging people, anywhere. If you don't like that the example given is for a specifically religious violation, how about getting the reading comprehension to see that it is clearly intended to be applied more broadly.
The Bible also gives the parable of the Good Samaritan. Genetic Altruism says your neighbor is
the being who shares your rare genes, as explained in several of Dawkin's books. The Bible says - NO! That alien Samaritan who stops to help is more your neighbor than the people of your same race who pass you by. Genetic Altruism is again, not an absolute but a balancing act with other evolutionary drives, while the the Bible is saying (at least there) shared physical heredity counts for absolutely nothing in deciding who's a friend and who isn't.
Look, you're certainly free to say the Bible is wrong about such points or any others, but saying the Bible doesn't say anything about ethics we can't get from science is basically saying red is green.