Most states in the U.S. now have "Romeo and Juliet" laws for precisely this reason. They are exceptions to the statutory rape laws for consenting people around the age of 18, plus-or-minus maybe two years; it varies by state.
The laws are comparatively new, however -- most were passed in the '90s and '00s, AFAIK -- and I know of people who got screwed before they were passed. In particular, there was a guy who was 18 or 19; his girlfriend was 16 or 17, and the girl was being abused by her father. When the boyfriend supported the girl and encouraged her to come out about the abuse, the father retaliated by getting the boyfriend convicted on statutory rape charges. And the father never ended up facing any criminal charges himself.
Yep, housing is insane -- I had a friend about five years ago who was paying about $600/mo for what was literally a closet in Chinatown (the entire space was filled by a twin bed, and there was not room to stand).
And this is also one reason why many people live in NJ and commute. The median income for a family in one of these commuter towns is $120k, and houses are typically around $700k. This is much cheaper than NYC.
So clearly $150k isn't poor, but it's just middle-of-the-road in that area.
The cop already had his gun drawn, so this fantasy could never have happened. The second the motorcyclist reached for his gun, the cop would have fired. What you describe is the surest way for the motorcyclist to have gotten himself killed.
I read the same in Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee, and the idea is pretty compelling. There are a few catches though (which might be worth even accepting!).
The first is that hunter-gathering societies lack advanced medicine, so early death from childbirth and disease would be more common (to what extent modern medicine can be adapted to a hunter-gatherer society I think is an interesting question). That said, diseases of excess -- diabetes, heart disease -- would also be less common, and evidence suggests that hunter-gatherers were better nourished and healthier than their agricultural peers until quite recent history (biologically speaking), so it has positives to go with the negatives.
The second is that many fewer people can be supported per acre of land. To deal with this, hunter-gatherer societies practiced (and some still practice) infanticide -- something we find repugnant -- to keep the population within sustainable limits. Terrible as it may sound, I sometimes think they have a point; most of mankind's ills -- pollution, hyper-competition -- currently seem to stem from an excess of people.
At this point, however, I do have to remind myself -- as tempting as it is to romanticize the noble savage -- that were it not for civilization I would be dead. Maybe that's a selfish point, but as counterarguments go it's hard for that not to resonate with me.
Taxation will only get so far based on the Laffer curve
Yep... to add to this, though, AFAIK studies that have been done indicate that the maximum is well to the right (higher taxation) side of where the U.S. gov't has tax rates now...
Agreed; I like those suggestions! If I ever decided I wanted to commit to a tattoo, and specifically if I decided to get a math one, it would not be an equation; it would be something geometric (math is more than algebra, after all). Maybe an icosahedron? I also really like SO(3), but I'm not sure how to render that in a nice way; it's just too high-dimensional...
That said, it's hard to say that what I thought was cool when I was in my 20s would still entertain me at 50. I mean, just look at my Slashdot username; I've got this whole Starcraft angry-human reference thing going on which is now pretty pointless to me, and which persists only because I don't want to break continuity. I'd hate to have an equivalent tattoo.
AFAIK, FPS games are precisely the ones that don't trust the client at all. They just send commands to the server and receive state updates; any simulation that happens on the client side is entirely for prediction (i.e., aesthetic) purposes.
It's RTS games that tend to trust clients more, simply because of the extremely large game states involved. These often run deterministic simulations for all players, and exchange user inputs. Cheating is ameliorated here because any modification to the game state will cause the two players to get "out of sync," but maphacks are hard to avoid with these sorts of implementations. See e.g. this article; it's not exactly new but AFAIK this is still how things are done.
Yeah, it's not the voting system that locks out third parties; it's the reward system: In winner-take-all systems (as opposed to proportional systems as in many European parliaments), two-party systems emerge. This is Duverger's Law, a mostly-true empirical observation which has some possible theoretical explanations.
He shouldn't have to bow to the sensibilities of anti-gun cowards.
I hate the newsmedia. God do I hate them. How the hell can a story about some kid's lego rubber band shooter turn into a divisive gun-politics issue?! Bloody hell...
These aren't even guns! They shoot rubber bands, not bullets!! They're basically this -- a toy that's existed for ages -- except the kid built them out of legos! There's not even anything "responsible" (or irresponsible) about him "breaking down the 'guns;'" what on earth is an (oh no!) terrorist cell supposed to do with such a thing, play cops and robbers?!
I really don't get it. As sensationalist headlines go, this one is pretty goddamn ridiculous. I'm pretty sure Barbie does more real harm every year in dead anorexic girls than all the lego slingshots in the world...
Slashdot Mirror
he's hot gay
Well-placed typo!
More on this idea: Designing Personal Tele-embodiment by Paulos & Canny at Berkeley. In particular, see the "previous work" section.
Thanks for the sources. I was using similar numbers -- 25% vs. your 20%. The issue was ratios vs. odds.
3:1 odds for not having an STD <==> 1/(3+1) = 25% chance of having one.
That's it.
only hundreds to one.
Actually 3:1, according to most studies(!)...
Most of that is herpes...
On the subject of light into matter, let me contribute a useless computation:
(Annual energy consumption of Earth population) / (Speed of light)^2 / (Mass of 1967 Volkwagen Beetle) = 6.3.
That's more than I expected...
Depends how much you work out?
Arm has Flash tanks in the first 5 minutes? Brawlers afterward? (There is no problem that cannot be solved by a sufficient number of Brawlers!)
Most states in the U.S. now have "Romeo and Juliet" laws for precisely this reason. They are exceptions to the statutory rape laws for consenting people around the age of 18, plus-or-minus maybe two years; it varies by state.
The laws are comparatively new, however -- most were passed in the '90s and '00s, AFAIK -- and I know of people who got screwed before they were passed. In particular, there was a guy who was 18 or 19; his girlfriend was 16 or 17, and the girl was being abused by her father. When the boyfriend supported the girl and encouraged her to come out about the abuse, the father retaliated by getting the boyfriend convicted on statutory rape charges. And the father never ended up facing any criminal charges himself.
"Justice."
Son #1
Is that what it says on his birth certificate?
It's funny, because, while entirely true, it also sounds like a paraphrased quote from Das Kapital.
Yep, housing is insane -- I had a friend about five years ago who was paying about $600/mo for what was literally a closet in Chinatown (the entire space was filled by a twin bed, and there was not room to stand).
And this is also one reason why many people live in NJ and commute. The median income for a family in one of these commuter towns is $120k, and houses are typically around $700k. This is much cheaper than NYC.
So clearly $150k isn't poor, but it's just middle-of-the-road in that area.
i don't know about +5 romantic, but i'll happily give you +5 internets. well played, sir.
Romantic? I thought it had weird Oedipal vibes.
The cop already had his gun drawn, so this fantasy could never have happened. The second the motorcyclist reached for his gun, the cop would have fired. What you describe is the surest way for the motorcyclist to have gotten himself killed.
Likewise, the average penis is just over two feet long.
I read the same in Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee, and the idea is pretty compelling. There are a few catches though (which might be worth even accepting!).
The first is that hunter-gathering societies lack advanced medicine, so early death from childbirth and disease would be more common (to what extent modern medicine can be adapted to a hunter-gatherer society I think is an interesting question). That said, diseases of excess -- diabetes, heart disease -- would also be less common, and evidence suggests that hunter-gatherers were better nourished and healthier than their agricultural peers until quite recent history (biologically speaking), so it has positives to go with the negatives.
The second is that many fewer people can be supported per acre of land. To deal with this, hunter-gatherer societies practiced (and some still practice) infanticide -- something we find repugnant -- to keep the population within sustainable limits. Terrible as it may sound, I sometimes think they have a point; most of mankind's ills -- pollution, hyper-competition -- currently seem to stem from an excess of people.
At this point, however, I do have to remind myself -- as tempting as it is to romanticize the noble savage -- that were it not for civilization I would be dead. Maybe that's a selfish point, but as counterarguments go it's hard for that not to resonate with me.
He's apparently also involved in the 8-bit demoscene: Craft by lft.
Taxation will only get so far based on the Laffer curve
Yep... to add to this, though, AFAIK studies that have been done indicate that the maximum is well to the right (higher taxation) side of where the U.S. gov't has tax rates now...
If you tempt him, Bender, he just might...
Agreed; I like those suggestions! If I ever decided I wanted to commit to a tattoo, and specifically if I decided to get a math one, it would not be an equation; it would be something geometric (math is more than algebra, after all). Maybe an icosahedron? I also really like SO(3), but I'm not sure how to render that in a nice way; it's just too high-dimensional...
That said, it's hard to say that what I thought was cool when I was in my 20s would still entertain me at 50. I mean, just look at my Slashdot username; I've got this whole Starcraft angry-human reference thing going on which is now pretty pointless to me, and which persists only because I don't want to break continuity. I'd hate to have an equivalent tattoo.
I assume he also told you that the Tooth Fairy gives great head.
I'm going to point out the obvious fact now that the Tooth Fairy is really your mom...
AFAIK, FPS games are precisely the ones that don't trust the client at all. They just send commands to the server and receive state updates; any simulation that happens on the client side is entirely for prediction (i.e., aesthetic) purposes.
It's RTS games that tend to trust clients more, simply because of the extremely large game states involved. These often run deterministic simulations for all players, and exchange user inputs. Cheating is ameliorated here because any modification to the game state will cause the two players to get "out of sync," but maphacks are hard to avoid with these sorts of implementations. See e.g. this article; it's not exactly new but AFAIK this is still how things are done.
Yeah, it's not the voting system that locks out third parties; it's the reward system: In winner-take-all systems (as opposed to proportional systems as in many European parliaments), two-party systems emerge. This is Duverger's Law, a mostly-true empirical observation which has some possible theoretical explanations.
He shouldn't have to bow to the sensibilities of anti-gun cowards.
I hate the newsmedia. God do I hate them. How the hell can a story about some kid's lego rubber band shooter turn into a divisive gun-politics issue?! Bloody hell...
WTF?! (agreeing with you.)
These aren't even guns! They shoot rubber bands, not bullets!! They're basically this -- a toy that's existed for ages -- except the kid built them out of legos! There's not even anything "responsible" (or irresponsible) about him "breaking down the 'guns;'" what on earth is an (oh no!) terrorist cell supposed to do with such a thing, play cops and robbers?!
I really don't get it. As sensationalist headlines go, this one is pretty goddamn ridiculous. I'm pretty sure Barbie does more real harm every year in dead anorexic girls than all the lego slingshots in the world...
*ugh*
I'd love to see that source. IEEE Spectrum?