I find your proposition interesting. Can you provide links to reputable, scientific studies showing a positive correlation between pornography and rape?
On the contrary, most of the reputable sources I can find have distinct quotes such as:
One of the first authoritative bodies to spell out an unequivocal verdict of not guilty for
pornography was the Danish Medico-Legal Council whose 1965 report to the Danish Penal
Law Committee concluded that, to the Council's knowledge, based on criminological and
clinical evidence 'there exists no scientific investigations to form a basis for the supposition
that pornography . . . can contribute to normal adult's or young persons' committing sexual
offences' (Penal Law Committee 1966, p. 80). This distinguished body of forensic
physicians and psychiatrists explicitly mentioned that the statement referred to pornographic
writings, pictures and films describing normal as well as perverted sexual phenomena.
Five years later the United States Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (1970,
p. 53) (or rather twelve of the seventeen participating members) arrived at a similar
conclusion, stating that 'empirical research designed to clarify the question has found no
evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the
causation of delinquent or criminal behaviour among youth or adults'. Another verdict of not-
guilty
but this time based on overwhelming amounts of research: careful reviews of earlier
research and thirty-nine additional effect studies sponsored by the Commission."
and
"a
number of researchers in the late 1970s who, applying modern sexological laboratory
techniques, were able to measure erectile responses in convicted rapists and normals who
were watching, listening to, or reading depictions of sexual activities including consenting and
coercive sex. The first results (several studies by Abel, Barbaree, Marshall, Quinsey and
others) seemed very promising: while normals showed greater arousal to scenes of mutually
consenting sex than they did to similar scenes involving coerced sex, rapists appeared to be
equally aroused by the consensual and the coerced scenes.
However, subsequent large-scale replications of these studies, as well as a more recent
intensive study have shown that among a group of rapists, arousal to forced sex was
significantly lower than it was to consenting sex; moreover, the rapists did not differ in this
regard from groups of ordinary men (Kutchinsky 1991; forthcoming).
Meanwhile, despite the negative findings of the United States Obscenity Commission,
which were later reiterated by the British Williams Committee in 1979, the idea that
pornography may be the direct cause of rape had continued to gain support among anti-
pornography groups; and since the mid-1970s the Christian/Conservative moralists
viewpoints (which had been voiced, among others, by the minority of the U.S. Obscenity
Commission) were joined by feminist oriented groups."
On the other hand, one of our local Clear Channel stations plays "They paved paradise" at least once every hour.
The irony of a company that has reduced the number of local independant sources of on-air music from over 23 to about 5 playing that songs makes me RTFL.
The point is not grabbing a gun to go to a lan party. The point is that if you are the type of person willing to take responsibility for your own protection and the protection of those around you, you carry (almost) everywhere. If you do decide to carry it is important (and the responsible thing to do) to keep your weapon concealed. First this improves your situation immensely if you ever are in a position to actually need a weapon, because the bad guy isn't expecting it. Keeping the weapon properly concealed also keeps from (to use an old convention term) "freaking the mundanes." One of the biggest problems that someone who has just gotten thier permit, or someone who only carries infrequently, faces is the fact that they are not natural with carrying a weapon, and frequently give themselves away because of it. For those who carry day-in and day-out, you never forget you are carrying, but you gain a comfort level that keeps you from standing out.
Now, as to why carry a weapon to a lan party... Home invasions are not frequent, however, certainly not unheard of. In my town just a couple years ago, four guys burst into a families home, killed 5 people in thier living room, stole $200 and the TV set, and got away clean. Imagine if you live next to one of the bad guys and they see 3-4 pasty geeks carry large amounts of high-end gamer gear into your house every Saturday morning. Nice tasty target with high resale value I would think.
In all the years I've carried, I've only been in one situation where I ever felt the need to even draw my gun, and that was while I was on duty as an armed security guard. However, three times, I've stopped at gas stations or convenience stored within 5 hours of thier having been robbed, and on one of those occasions the clerk was killed. Could someone carrying a concealed weapon have preveted it, maybe, maybe not, but not having someone there to protect the clerk obviously wasn't the answer.
Actually creatures as large as humans are probably impossible in this environment. To have large animals, you need a relatively large supply of smaller animals/plants that reproduce quickly enough to be eaten and keep the large animal supplied with food/energy. (If you posit smaller animals, the same applies all the way down the food chain until you get to plants.) To have a large supply of plant life to feed the rest of the food chain, there has to be a large energy input into the system. For most of the earth this source is the sun. For Lake Vostok, buried under 4 miles of ice, I doubt that much sunlight ever makes it down there. There may be geothermal vents, which could introduce a lot of energy, but even so they would be very localized, and not suitable for powering a large food chain that would include large animals.
He did not say that efforts to stop terrorism shouldn't be made, only that the efforts that are currently being made are pure PR fluff. Having M16 armed national guardsmen at airports was absurd. What were they supposed to accomplish? In any instance, opening fire with a machine gun in a crowded airport lobby would kill far more innocent people than terrorists. Not to mention, just how were these guardsmen supposed to tell if someone was a terrorist, before blowing themselves up or driving an explosive laden vehicle into the terminal?
Lets talk about other "safety" measures:
1) Turn all airport screeners into government employees. Well, now our dear TSA is moving to recertify airports to use private screeners.
2) Even with government screeners, security is like tissue paper. I attended a conference last week, and one of the vendors was giving out "swiss army" type knives, 5 blades + corkscrew, etc. He told me he had dumped a box 50 of these into his bag, and at the last minute decided to carry that bag on instead of checking it. He didn't even remember that the box was in there until he was in the air. He stayed quiet about it until after he landed, because he didn't want to get stuck somewhere in middle america. Security never even noticed. (BTW, he said he did report it to airport security after he landed and was outside the secured zone.)
If we are going to be serious about security follow El Al's proceedures, most of which are deliberately kept very quiet and out of the public view. Instead the current administration follows a typical american penchant to do something, anything that makes a lot of noise and is very visible for "feel good" moments, but which accomplish either nothing, or the opposite of what they are supposed to.
dissappointments are that he feeds at the pork trough like eveyone else (my community has been the benficiary of about $60k in various matching grants for small projects)
You and the people in your community probably pay about the same percentage of taxes as everyone else. Are you really saying that you would rather have that money go to communities in other states or regions, than have it spent in your area?
Of course the real solution would be to both remove the taxes and stop paying for the pork, but I don't know of any electable candidate that would support that position. I thought we might have had it when the Republicans won both houses and signed the "Contract with America", but like so many other things it was just an opportunity for political grandstanding and sound bites. I saw a slight but real decrease in my taxes, but at the same time the budget ballooned out of control. Now we are facing massive deficits, tremendous amounts of pork projects, and no political will power to do anything about it.
Although, since for most readers here the date would be of either the inflatable or the 2-D variety, having a watch that vibrates your hand up and down might actually be the ultimate couch potato accessory.
I mean we are now eliminting most of the effort in what might be the last form of exercise and exertion that many of these people have.
I can agree with this. Luckily, I use Wells Fargo. When I started thier online banking I had exactly the same experience you describe. Except that, when I contacted customer support, they actually asked me what browser and version I was using. I told them at the time that I had IE 5.x that wasn't loading, but what I usually used was the then current version of Opera. The customer support person told me the exact date the new IE version would be allowed access, and that Opera was not on the current testing list, but he would send a note to the site devs. The day after the date he had told me, I received an email annoncing the upgrade to the site, and inviting users to try the site with the new version of IE (looked like a boilerplate advertisement from MS). I went to the site, and was surprised to find it allowed, not only IE, but allowed Opera, set to report as Opera. I have nothing but kudos for the web devs at Wells Fargo.
Re:can always get your /.
on
WiFi Gone Wild
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The big practical use for this is to truckers. They are required by law to "rest" (read that as do anything other than drive a truck) for a certain number of hours each day, and this requirement has recently increased the number of hours. What the state is hoping to accomplish is that by giving truckers more amenities along the road they will be more willing to follow the regs and less likely to "push it".
But by your logic, when crude prices drop everyone in the chain should immediately see that thier replacement cost will be less, and so be able to immediately drop thier prices. That is what the GP poster was complaining about. Retailers seem to be precient on price rises but laggards on price drops.
I understand it from a business perspective, but it really irks me when they cry on T.V. about thier low profit margins and how they have to respond immediately to price rises, but then don't follow through with the same logic when it comes time to drop prices. I would hate them just as much, but at least have more respect for them if they just came out and admitted that there is industry wide price fixing and collusion (every gas station in town is within $0.03, and the price changes at every one on the same day) and they were out to make the public pay as much as they can.
We all have to remember that at this time of the highest gasoline and energy prices in history, the oil companies are making record profits. And therein lies the proof to the lies.
It doesn't make any difference, full time or not. Here in Texas the legislature only meets for a few months every two years. In that time they still only (just barely) get the budget voted on and waste money and time looking at useless crap. Then the governor calls two "special" sessions, which by law can only last 30 days, to attend to real problems like school finance (Which they still couldn't agree on, so the courts will get to decide it again).
Re:While RFID tags have anti-theft applications, .
on
RFID Leaders Talk Privacy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Well let's see:
1) To track return of items (both by item and by customer),
2) To offer "enhanced" services to frequent customers (as evidenced by the number and type of RFID tags they have on them entering the store),
3) To offer "enhanced" services to people wearing competitor's RFID tags.
And those are just a few reasons. There are companies already trying to leverage the information that will be available from this data. From the linked website:
Offer a total system that identifies, tracks, manages and assists post-sale product life cycle events.
Provide technology that can turn any physical location, with an Internet-connected PC, into a fully automated product ownership information and return center.
Become the "gateway" for eCommerce fulfillment services, especially package returns for misplaced items and those requiring service or support under product warranty programs.
Well, if we're depending on an increase in human intelligence (as opposed to machine intelligence) for the next level of advancement, we're all doomed. We'll just be trying to remember how to bang the rocks together by 2035. At least judging by what passes for the current level of intelligence, and watching the trend in the people around me.
This is the type of thinking that so pervades the "green" movement and irritates the rest of us. You treat the idea of a clean, renewable energy source as a "good for the world, bad for the individual" idea. You are right that if biodiesel, or any other alternate energy source, costs more than what consumers are paying right now, in both at-the-pump prices and new vehicles, then it would take a massive popular movement to make a switch. A movement that will never happen because the vast majority really will live their life according to their pocketbook, despite what they may say they support.
But the reality that you fail to recognize is that if you want a "greener" technology world, just make the economics right for it. Even if you make new biodiesel cars that cost the same (actually a mass produced bio/regular diesel car woudld cost about the same or less) and the pump price was the same (the economics show that biodiesel would probably be cheaper than current gasoline prices) with exactly equivalent costs, most people will pick the cleaner alternative, because they do recognize the desirablity of it. You just have to make the costs equivalent or less.
The "greens" need to stop talking about "making sacrifices for the good of the world" and start promoting technologies that allow people to maintain their high standard of living at equivalent cost, but much lower negative global impact. If they would do that, then they would find everyone beating a path to their door. If, instead they keep trying to get people to pay more for a seriously less convenient and less comfortable lifestyle, they will continue to (rightly) be called loonies.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, more and more, it is the state that I am protecting my children from.
I find your proposition interesting. Can you provide links to reputable, scientific studies showing a positive correlation between pornography and rape?
On the contrary, most of the reputable sources I can find have distinct quotes such as:
and
On the other hand, one of our local Clear Channel stations plays "They paved paradise" at least once every hour.
The irony of a company that has reduced the number of local independant sources of on-air music from over 23 to about 5 playing that songs makes me RTFL.
The point is not grabbing a gun to go to a lan party. The point is that if you are the type of person willing to take responsibility for your own protection and the protection of those around you, you carry (almost) everywhere. If you do decide to carry it is important (and the responsible thing to do) to keep your weapon concealed. First this improves your situation immensely if you ever are in a position to actually need a weapon, because the bad guy isn't expecting it. Keeping the weapon properly concealed also keeps from (to use an old convention term) "freaking the mundanes." One of the biggest problems that someone who has just gotten thier permit, or someone who only carries infrequently, faces is the fact that they are not natural with carrying a weapon, and frequently give themselves away because of it. For those who carry day-in and day-out, you never forget you are carrying, but you gain a comfort level that keeps you from standing out.
Now, as to why carry a weapon to a lan party... Home invasions are not frequent, however, certainly not unheard of. In my town just a couple years ago, four guys burst into a families home, killed 5 people in thier living room, stole $200 and the TV set, and got away clean. Imagine if you live next to one of the bad guys and they see 3-4 pasty geeks carry large amounts of high-end gamer gear into your house every Saturday morning. Nice tasty target with high resale value I would think.
In all the years I've carried, I've only been in one situation where I ever felt the need to even draw my gun, and that was while I was on duty as an armed security guard. However, three times, I've stopped at gas stations or convenience stored within 5 hours of thier having been robbed, and on one of those occasions the clerk was killed. Could someone carrying a concealed weapon have preveted it, maybe, maybe not, but not having someone there to protect the clerk obviously wasn't the answer.
Actually creatures as large as humans are probably impossible in this environment. To have large animals, you need a relatively large supply of smaller animals/plants that reproduce quickly enough to be eaten and keep the large animal supplied with food/energy. (If you posit smaller animals, the same applies all the way down the food chain until you get to plants.) To have a large supply of plant life to feed the rest of the food chain, there has to be a large energy input into the system. For most of the earth this source is the sun. For Lake Vostok, buried under 4 miles of ice, I doubt that much sunlight ever makes it down there. There may be geothermal vents, which could introduce a lot of energy, but even so they would be very localized, and not suitable for powering a large food chain that would include large animals.
So, to the islanders, the world really is black and white, with some shades of grey?
So what happens if, like me, you are never home when the postman does his rounds?
Heck, I have to make special arrangements with Fedex and leave work early just to catch that guy on his last round of the day.
I don't know. All of mine have seemed pretty happy in the position. Not to mention that their pay is quite a bit higher than mine.
I think you missed his point, Dook"43".
He did not say that efforts to stop terrorism shouldn't be made, only that the efforts that are currently being made are pure PR fluff. Having M16 armed national guardsmen at airports was absurd. What were they supposed to accomplish? In any instance, opening fire with a machine gun in a crowded airport lobby would kill far more innocent people than terrorists. Not to mention, just how were these guardsmen supposed to tell if someone was a terrorist, before blowing themselves up or driving an explosive laden vehicle into the terminal?
Lets talk about other "safety" measures:
1) Turn all airport screeners into government employees. Well, now our dear TSA is moving to recertify airports to use private screeners.
2) Even with government screeners, security is like tissue paper. I attended a conference last week, and one of the vendors was giving out "swiss army" type knives, 5 blades + corkscrew, etc. He told me he had dumped a box 50 of these into his bag, and at the last minute decided to carry that bag on instead of checking it. He didn't even remember that the box was in there until he was in the air. He stayed quiet about it until after he landed, because he didn't want to get stuck somewhere in middle america. Security never even noticed. (BTW, he said he did report it to airport security after he landed and was outside the secured zone.)
If we are going to be serious about security follow El Al's proceedures, most of which are deliberately kept very quiet and out of the public view. Instead the current administration follows a typical american penchant to do something, anything that makes a lot of noise and is very visible for "feel good" moments, but which accomplish either nothing, or the opposite of what they are supposed to.
You and the people in your community probably pay about the same percentage of taxes as everyone else. Are you really saying that you would rather have that money go to communities in other states or regions, than have it spent in your area?
Of course the real solution would be to both remove the taxes and stop paying for the pork, but I don't know of any electable candidate that would support that position. I thought we might have had it when the Republicans won both houses and signed the "Contract with America", but like so many other things it was just an opportunity for political grandstanding and sound bites. I saw a slight but real decrease in my taxes, but at the same time the budget ballooned out of control. Now we are facing massive deficits, tremendous amounts of pork projects, and no political will power to do anything about it.
Although, since for most readers here the date would be of either the inflatable or the 2-D variety, having a watch that vibrates your hand up and down might actually be the ultimate couch potato accessory.
I mean we are now eliminting most of the effort in what might be the last form of exercise and exertion that many of these people have.
But then people interesting in toothing are pretty much just begging to get a virus anyway.
Easy solution...
Get a better, upgraded wife.
I can agree with this. Luckily, I use Wells Fargo. When I started thier online banking I had exactly the same experience you describe. Except that, when I contacted customer support, they actually asked me what browser and version I was using. I told them at the time that I had IE 5.x that wasn't loading, but what I usually used was the then current version of Opera. The customer support person told me the exact date the new IE version would be allowed access, and that Opera was not on the current testing list, but he would send a note to the site devs. The day after the date he had told me, I received an email annoncing the upgrade to the site, and inviting users to try the site with the new version of IE (looked like a boilerplate advertisement from MS). I went to the site, and was surprised to find it allowed, not only IE, but allowed Opera, set to report as Opera. I have nothing but kudos for the web devs at Wells Fargo.
If you play with it a bit it'll grow to 10GB. Honest.
Maybe methane?
The big practical use for this is to truckers. They are required by law to "rest" (read that as do anything other than drive a truck) for a certain number of hours each day, and this requirement has recently increased the number of hours. What the state is hoping to accomplish is that by giving truckers more amenities along the road they will be more willing to follow the regs and less likely to "push it".
But by your logic, when crude prices drop everyone in the chain should immediately see that thier replacement cost will be less, and so be able to immediately drop thier prices. That is what the GP poster was complaining about. Retailers seem to be precient on price rises but laggards on price drops.
I understand it from a business perspective, but it really irks me when they cry on T.V. about thier low profit margins and how they have to respond immediately to price rises, but then don't follow through with the same logic when it comes time to drop prices. I would hate them just as much, but at least have more respect for them if they just came out and admitted that there is industry wide price fixing and collusion (every gas station in town is within $0.03, and the price changes at every one on the same day) and they were out to make the public pay as much as they can.
We all have to remember that at this time of the highest gasoline and energy prices in history, the oil companies are making record profits. And therein lies the proof to the lies.
You have it all backwards. Yes, it was to identify the stupid people, get them all in a few locations, then get rid of everyone else.
I've said it before. I'll say it again. It is not in the best interest of the sheperd to raise smarter sheep.
It doesn't make any difference, full time or not. Here in Texas the legislature only meets for a few months every two years. In that time they still only (just barely) get the budget voted on and waste money and time looking at useless crap. Then the governor calls two "special" sessions, which by law can only last 30 days, to attend to real problems like school finance (Which they still couldn't agree on, so the courts will get to decide it again).
Well let's see:
1) To track return of items (both by item and by customer),
2) To offer "enhanced" services to frequent customers (as evidenced by the number and type of RFID tags they have on them entering the store),
3) To offer "enhanced" services to people wearing competitor's RFID tags.
And those are just a few reasons. There are companies already trying to leverage the information that will be available from this data. From the linked website:
At $150 I don't see many of the current OO users changing to it.
Because we all know what a great storytelling vehicle a good porno is.
Well, if we're depending on an increase in human intelligence (as opposed to machine intelligence) for the next level of advancement, we're all doomed. We'll just be trying to remember how to bang the rocks together by 2035. At least judging by what passes for the current level of intelligence, and watching the trend in the people around me.
This is the type of thinking that so pervades the "green" movement and irritates the rest of us. You treat the idea of a clean, renewable energy source as a "good for the world, bad for the individual" idea. You are right that if biodiesel, or any other alternate energy source, costs more than what consumers are paying right now, in both at-the-pump prices and new vehicles, then it would take a massive popular movement to make a switch. A movement that will never happen because the vast majority really will live their life according to their pocketbook, despite what they may say they support.
But the reality that you fail to recognize is that if you want a "greener" technology world, just make the economics right for it. Even if you make new biodiesel cars that cost the same (actually a mass produced bio/regular diesel car woudld cost about the same or less) and the pump price was the same (the economics show that biodiesel would probably be cheaper than current gasoline prices) with exactly equivalent costs, most people will pick the cleaner alternative, because they do recognize the desirablity of it. You just have to make the costs equivalent or less.
The "greens" need to stop talking about "making sacrifices for the good of the world" and start promoting technologies that allow people to maintain their high standard of living at equivalent cost, but much lower negative global impact. If they would do that, then they would find everyone beating a path to their door. If, instead they keep trying to get people to pay more for a seriously less convenient and less comfortable lifestyle, they will continue to (rightly) be called loonies.