Not according to the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Hearsay, but according to the hearsay, the latest CMoS says that latin and greek loanwords should merely have an s or an es tacked on the end, rather than the original latin or greek plural. Thus medium becomes mediums. Bacterium becomes bacteriums instead of bacteria. Instead of algae, we have algas. No more data, just datums.
The very heart of my point. In the absence of religion, what axioms would these people choose? If suddenly there were no Jesus/Heaven, what then? What would they pick? And are there choices they're currently not picking just because Invisible Guy is watching?
And that is exactly why many Christians find atheism and atheists scary. Many Christians perhaps think "gosh, if it weren't for religion establishing a morality for me, who knows what kind of a monster I'd be." (read, who knows what axioms I'd pick, of course.) In any large group of people, there is quite likely to be a fair number of them that would naturally be monsters (Dorian Gray?). Religious people look around and say "Thank goodness for religion, keeping all these monsters in check, even though there are sometimes ones that are not kept in check." Then they look around again and find atheists, and think "What about the atheists who also happen to be monsters? They have nothing keeping them in check." Christian morality provides a mostly known quantity, and thus an assurance, which is not provided by the complete unknown (logically) provided by atheism. The unknown there, added to what is known of human nature, is a scary thing. And I certainly have known atheists who were at least somewhat monstrous, just I have known Christians who were somewhat monstrous (even in spite of the Christian morality. Perhaps they are not legitimately Christians?), and it is clear to anyone who watches the news that there are Muslims who are somewhat monstrous.
So yeah, you're saying that if religion weren't holding people in check, then some number of them (larger or smaller, there's not any real way to tell offhand) would be monsters. I completely agree. I don't think that much of anybody consciously goes "Invisible Guy is watching! Oh noes!", in fact many Christians would at least claim (whether or not the claim is true is, as always, another matter) that morality springs from love of God rather than dread of God. (Although "Godfearing" is a common adjective, it is usually understood to mean respect more than abject terror... Like we respect electricity, but don't sit around biting our fingernails off out of fear of it.)
About the gay thing: As I understand it, scripture claims that it is the consummation that should be avoided. Consciousness-consuming lust should also be avoided (according to scripture), but temptation itself is not generally considered to be sinful. The existence of temptation might be enough for you to label someone gay, but that labeling is not what is opposed. Rather the label that gets assigned upon consummation is what is opposed. In my understanding of the most general Christian morality. A sentence fragment preceding. For analogy, consider the reformed alcoholic (and drunk-driver). He doesn't get drunk anymore, so there's no worry about him driving drunk. He is still an alcoholic, but our societal moral code (the law) won't condemn him unless he turns around and gets drunk and drives again. But, if it weren't for the law (or AA, or whatever it was that prompted the guy to reform), he'd have no problem at all going out and getting drunk and driving.
I don't have any problem, nor does the law, with the reformed alcoholic, who nonetheless is still tempted, and in the absence of the restraints, would definitely not be reformed any more.
Ok, I'd definitely be with you in smacking (in a Christ-like loving manner, of course!:-p ) the people from your wife's ethics class (and others) who claim that atheists are incapable of morality. That is just blatant stupidity. Any cursory amount of thought is sufficient to demonstrate the falsity of that claim. Unless of course your axioms necessitate that atheists are incapable of morality (for instance by defining morality as originating with the divine.).
I think that sometimes, I discover something in collective Christian beliefs that I hadn't really thought about hard before, and decide that
you can infer from that statement that the only reason they are moral is because they believe there is an invisible man watching their every move who will drop them in a boiling lake of sulfur if they misbehave.
And where do you get that idea? Ok, ok, I know where you get that idea. Why do you think that since you can possibly infer that, it must be true? After all, there are certainly other things that you could infer, many of which are not nearly so... creepy.
If I understand the origins of the "atheists can't have morals" idea, it has nothing to do with atheists lacking a big-catholic-nun-with-a-ruler in the sky. Instead, it has everything to do with atheists not necessarily having any particular first principles instead of other first principles. One's moral codes derive (if we take an analytic (mathematical) view of philosophy) from one's first axioms. First axioms, otoh, by the very fact that they are first axioms, do not derive from anything. Saying "I am a theist", or stronger, "I am a Christian", is essentially a declaration of a particular first axiom. Saying "I am an atheist", is also a declaration of a particular axiom. However, "I am a Christian" is a much more constricting axiom than "I am an atheist", particularly in the realm of moral codes. "I am a Christian" leads directly to establishing several moral tenets (which could be viewed as logical propositions) as true. "I am an atheist" does not.
Now, of course, the atheist can then turn around and say, for instance, "The survival of the human race/my seed is paramount", and in so doing (s)he establishes an axiom which directly leads to some moral tenets. However, the atheist could just as well (and by just as well I mean without causing a logical contradiction with atheism) say "The death of all life that I see is paramount", which also leads to some moral tenets, but very very different ones. Or, the atheist could say "Whatever whim I have must be followed", and then you have someone who is driven entirely by their animal instincts. The point is, what reason does an atheist have to choose one of these over another? Or, what reason to choose some axiom which leads to one of these over some other axiom which leads to another one of these? Axioms, as I said, do not derive from anything, and thus there can be no reason to choose one over another.
In my experience, most atheists (and agnostics as well) do find themselves following moral tenets which comport quite well with the rest of society. However, the origin of the "Atheists have no morals" is, as far as I can tell, the fact that the statement "I am an atheist" does not logically necessitate any particular morality, whereas "I am a Christian" should.
And yes, I do realize that a) "I am a Christian" can lead to a number of different and conflicting moral codes, depending on various interpretations of eg scripture, and b) many people who say "I am a Christian" do not follow a moral code that could reasonably derive from that axiom.
So, I might well be wrong, and the people you have encountered who have said that could merely be afraid of the wrist-slapping-ruler in the sky. However, that is not the only, and certainly not the most reasonable, basis for the statement.
For further reading: Anything C.S. Lewis has written about what he calls the "Tao" (not to be confused with eastern philosophy). For instance, The Abolition of Man.
Instead of getting rid of the greenhouse gases, we are going to continue to literally mask the problem. Why not just solve the base problem?
Because we know how to do this. Getting rid of already extant greenhouse gases is going to be a much trickier problem. I've heard an awful lot of moaning and doom-and-glooming over global warming, and precious little in the way of actual solutions. Especially the type of solutions that are implementable. Telling everyone to stop driving their cars and stop using electricity generated from greenhouse-producing generators is about as effective as telling the tides not to come in. Besides, even that would only decrease (albeit significantly) our production of greenhouse gases. It wouldn't do much at all to reduce their actual concentration in the atmosphere. However, global dimming type projects could very well counter the effects of the greenhouse gases, giving us enough time to figure out a way to actually reduce those gases. Or, giving us time to implement long-term reduction plans, such as replacing gas-burning cars as quickly as possible, planting more trees, and waiting for the trees to eat up all the CO2. And the dimming would mitigate the warming effect that forests have by virtue of their lower albedo than pretty much any other type of terrain.
If the doomsday proclaimers are right, then we have precious little time before global warming goes out of control and we turn into venus (exaggeration, yes I know). Decreasing the total amount of insolation could buy us enough time to actually fix things. Now, of course, we should choose something to implement the dimming that we can easily undo, or that will undo itself (requiring us to maintain it for as long as we need it).
I have used a lot of rubber dome keyboards where the keys got sticky (wouldn't come back up after pressing, esp. the spacebar), or where the keys got unresponsive. That is one of the most frustrating things to me when typing. I'm not sure what use these were put through, because they weren't mine (school machines). I've never used a Model M which had either of these problems (except for when I screwed up my first model M through stupidity, and water literally corroded away a couple of the traces on the internal membranes).
Also, the loud click reinforces the feeling of the key moving, so that you know much more certainly (albeit subconsciously) that the key has been pressed. This knowing of the key press is also reinforced by the feeling of the key, where the force increases up to a certain point (as you move the key down), and then suddenly drops down to near zero (as the spring buckles). The way the switch is designed, that buckling point is simultaneous with the keypress being detected by the board. Once you've passed the buckling point, there is no way in heaven or on earth that you can prevent the keypress from registering. Unless of course the board is screwed up and it won't register no matter what. The buckling point also coincides exactly with the audible click. So you've got two different, simultaneous, very definite stimuli which tell your brain "ok, this key has been pressed!", and furthermore, once you get those stimuli, the keypress has been registered.
Now contrast this with most other keyboard designs. The quiet is nice, simply because it is quiet, but you can't have it both ways. Either you get the auditory stimulus or you don't. The force vs. distance plot wouldn't look quite the same with the sudden drop off; instead it is fairly steady I believe. At any rate, the dropoff is much less marked with most other designs. Furthermore, the drop off, whatever noise there might be, and the keypress registering do not necessarily all occur at the same time. I often find myself, when first using a rubber dome board, lifting my finger back from the key once the dome has buckled (force drop off), but before the keypress has registered. After several minutes of using a rubber dome board, I find myself pounding the keys much harder than necessary in order to insure that the keypress does register.
So, all the mess about simultaneity and all goes to this: If you have those subconscious stimuli that match up with the keypress quite well, then most people will find themselves able to type a little bit faster. Your brain knows that the keypress has occurred as soon as it gets the stimuli, and so the finger does not need to linger for an extra instant in order to make sure of the keypress. I type slower on other boards, and I make more typing errors.
Also, as I said above, I pound much harder on other boards, which should definitely be avoided, as it can lead to RSI type problems.
The design of the Model M tends to prevent dust and liquid damage. The keycaps act like umbrellas, and so no liquid will usually enter the electronics. Instead it just runs down the plastic plate that is in there, and out the drain holes (yes it has drain holes!). Dust and other gribbly junk settles down in between the keys on that same plastic plate, rather than getting into the key mechanism or the electronics.
Those umbrella keycaps can be removed and rearranged. So if you want a dvorak keyboard, or a french AZERTY board, you can just move your keycaps around. Except for some of the special-shaped keys (Enter, Tab, Backspace, etc), the keycaps are all identical in shape and size.
The curve of the keyboard matches the natural position of your fingers as they move up and down from the center. There are of course boards which are more ergonomic in this regard, but the gentle curve is much better than the standard flat of cheaper boards.
And then there's the durability. Most Model Ms have been around for a very long time now. There really aren't any
From my POV, AJAX has made the web usable as a dynamic thingamajigger rather than a static doohicky. (How's that for buzzwords? good grief. (vitriol directed at tech writers, not you)) I detested, loathed, and desired to eradicate web email interfaces, because they were so slow, what with the page reload on every click. Web-based word processors, calendars, etc. etc. etc. were in the same boat prior to AJAX. Blog and social networking sites, otoh, don't really require ajax, nor do wikis. So, you've got at least two mostly independent novel (novel in widespread-ness, anyway) concepts here, AJAX (usable dynamic-ness) and bazaar-style content, which are collectively the driving things behind ``Web 2.0''.
I hadn't really thought about it before, but it is interesting that these two don't really inform each other that much. Wikis and blogs are maybe a little bit more fun to use with AJAX (barring the nastiness about URLs not really being URLs anymore, and suchlike things), but the lack of AJAX certainly isn't even close to a showstopper for these. Web apps can be slightly more useful with the collaborative/open stuff, but again, the lack thereof is no showstopper. Certainly, there are projects which use both, but even in those cases, one is really the interesting thing about it, and the other is just icing.
So Web 2.0 is two concepts, one technological and one sociological. It is interesting that these two areas are also where the Web (1.0?) made its biggest splashes. However, in Web 1.0 (barf barf), the technological was the driving force, and the sociological was the result. You could even look at Web 2.0 as a similar thing, where the sociological aspect is really just the next development resulting from Web 1.0 technology (and from the ideals of Open Source Software?, but those ideals are sociological too, and were only really enabled by Web 1.0 tech.), but AJAX is really something new, which may wind up driving another sociological change.
This is almost turning into a proto-essay. Good grief. Sorry for my rambling.
2) Make your objections clear, if they insist, LET THEM. Anything they find is inadmisable as evidence (any decent lawyer will get it thrown out).
Bzzt! If you waive your rights, then your rights are gone. You consent to a search of your car, and anything they find is admissible as evidence. If they search your car without your consent, then anything they find is inadmissible.
It is worth noting that the first link is not in fact a publication, but rather conference proceedings. Almost as good, but not quite. You have to be aware of what you're looking at with these online databases of physics papers, because an awful lot of them are preprints that either haven't yet or never will make it into a peer-review journal. In other words, papers you find online are often not peer reviewed. You can check where they were published (if anywhere), and then look something up about the journal to determine their worth.
For papers in a peer-review journal, you can nearly always trust them. Conference proceedings, also you can probably trust, although conference proceedings are not peer-reviewed, and it is not uncommon for a conference talk to never be published because there was some problem with the analysis. Preprints (never been published or presented), it is up to you to read the paper and evaluate its validity, but be aware that anyone can post a "preprint" paper.
Pretty much all physicists worth their salt share an aesthetic which biases us towards simple theories. Now, the GP is just wild speculation, as is your post, but nonetheless, it is the specialists, not the lay public, who are driving for simple theories.
Additionally, history has shown that as a general rule, simpler theories tend to be more successful.
Except that it is actually quite important for the general public to understand the laws. Physics and friends, while much more interesting IMHO, are not required, for the good functioning of our country (or any halfway democracy), to be understood by the lay public.
On the other hand, the fact that the OLPC project exists, and is generating such controversy (at least on/.), is likely to have the effect of increasing the amount of food money donated. People who don't like OLPC obviously won't donate anything to the cause, but because they have been asked to donate to one cause, and in particular one that has caught their eye, they will be more likely to donate to something that they consider more worthwhile.
If you provide people with an outlet that they don't much care for for feeling like they are making a difference in the world, then they are much more likely to search for another one. OLPC gets into/.ers heads the way one more piece of junk mail from the Food for People Without Food charity will not do.
This mission could be considered a failure as well. NASA completely and utterly failed in their estimation of how long these things would be operational. Now, it appears that this is a good thing, but it could very well have resulted in much waste. Suppose that some mission critical element such as communication channels had been designed with 90 sols in mind, and no more than 90 sols. Everything else would still work, but if you can't talk to the bot, it don't work. Or suppose that NASA had not been prepared to continue accumulating data after 90 sols. In that case, we'd still be able to send the bots around and have them do and examine things, but the data would be lost. Ok, disk space is cheap, so that scenario is a little far fetched. However, my point still stands. NASA should be doing a better job of evaluating the duration of its missions. Random variation, yes. This much random variation, I'm sufficiently skeptical that I will point the finger and call it failure.
even when there's little evidence that the wholesale surrender of our civil liberties has really foiled any terrorist plots.
What is far more important is evidence that the wholesale surrender of our civil liberties will foil any terrorist plots. If it has foiled some plot, then it is just that much more likely that the next plot will avoid that particular weakness. Also, "foiled" plots are easy to manufacture, whereas sound, well-reasoned arguments for why a given action will foil future plots are much much harder to come by.
They have satellites up there which are dedicated to monitoring the amazon, as well as radar stations on the ground. So they're using google earth for mapping, not for imaging, I would infer. I know that they have active satellites in orbit currently because my father worked on the project that put them there. I'm rather puzzled though by this story which does not mention either the company my father works for nor the name of the project.
I'm not quite sure how you're planning to teach statistics in any meaningful way without using calculus.
You're right that professional mathematicians, depending on their field of course, don't need much calculus. For instance, group theory is pretty hot now, and it doesn't involve calculus, unless you're studying some algebraic properties of something involving calculus. Graph theory doesn't involve calculus really. But statistics certainly does involve calculus, unless you're planning to teach a quite naive form of statistics. A naive stat will involve necessary weaknesses which will quickly begin to be exploited by newspaper studies, just as a complete lack of statistical knowledge is exploited now.
My own field, physics, is the same way. You can teach algebra-based physics, but it is much harder to learn than cal based physics, and you can't do nearly as much with it.
One might want to study social networks. What better way to do this than to make a graph (as in the nodes and edges type) of myspace or facebook and study that? How are you going to do this? Well, seems like making a spider would be a quite sensible way.
You interpolate more into his meaning than is actually there. He says nothing about what his basic stance on anyone he doesn't know is. He merely says that the presence or absence of a uniform does not make a difference to the amount of respect he gives someone. Now, if he gives unknown non-uniformed people no respect, then he would accordingly give unknown uniformed people no respect. But, he never says how much respect he gives to unknown human beings in the absence of any other qualification.
In fact, to put myself at risk of doing the same thing I'm accusing you of doing, I would read into your comments that you don't give much respect to J. Random Man off the street unless he is wearing a uniform. I think this because you stress so fervently the idea that a uniform deserves respect simply because of the uniform. From this I would deduce that without a uniform, someone would get less respect from you. I don't think that this is right. You have to operate on a presumption of common human decency with anyone, uniform or not. You appear to think that when you meet someone, you owe them nothing, respect or otherwise, simply because they are a person, unless of course they have a uniform. So, I think that I am much more like the OP than I am like you. The uniform itself is not the source of my respect for anyone, policeman or otherwise. The source of my presumption of decency is the fact that it is a human being inside the uniform.
There is no other way to interpret the entirety of the post in question except that he likes and respects cops - but not until he's seen their worth demonstrated.
I think you are wrong here as well. I have read the entirety of the post, several times over. I have also read the other things that the poster has written in this thread in an attempt to defend himself from your misjudgment of his words (He agrees with me, btw. I'm not sure how you can argue over interpretation with the author of what you are interpreting, but whatever.). He likes and respects cops just as much as he likes and respects any human being. Not less, not more. Once someone, police or otherwise, has become known to me or to him, they might win more respect, or they might win less respect. However, the uniform itself, both in my view and in his, is not a source nor a cause of respect. I would hope the OP himself speaking up and saying that he specifically agrees with me would be enough for you to concede that you have misinterpreted his post.
Perhaps your posture with respect to general non-uniformed humanity is the cause of your (as you've described) extensive interaction with the police.
Well, suppose Ronald and Ralph are conservatives, and Debbie is a liberal. All three are running. Now suppose that 60% of the populace has a conservative political stance. So, they are quite likely to agree with either Ronald or with Ralph on most issues, and quite unlikely to agree with Debbie on most issues, or at least on the hot ones for this particular campaign. The remaining 40% have liberal leanings, and so are quite likely to agree with Debbie, and quite unlikely to agree with Ronald or Ralph. That is, 60% of the people will vote for a conservative, and 40% will vote for a liberal. Now, Election day comes along. Debbie gets 40% of the vote, Ronald gets 34% of the vote, and Ralph gets 25% of the vote, and Lenny the libertarian gets 1%. So, more people walked into the voting booth and said "I want Debbie" than did for the other two. But, now 60% of the populace is unhappy because they wanted a conservative, and got a liberal.
Suppose that we had a series of three runoffs:
Debbie vs. Ronald: Debbie 40%, Ronald 60%. Ronald would win over Debbie.
Debbie vs. Ralph: Debbie 40%, Ralph 60%. Ralph would also win over Debbie. So either conservative is preferred over the liberal here.
Ronald vs. Ralph: Ronald 58%, Ralph 42%. Ronald wins over Ralph.
So Ronald wins both of his pairwise elections, and Debbie loses both of hers. The majority of voters prefer anyone over Debbie. But our current system elects Debbie. It ought to elect Ralph, who was preferred over every other candidate. But the fact that two candidates were fairly similar meant that they both lost, even though one of them should have won.
And look at poor Lenny. Actually, 10% of the people think he would make the best elected official, but they don't vote for him because that'd be "throwing away their vote". And they're right in this case, but not always! So the libertarian/green/ex-movie-star party can't gain any traction, because even if 40% (enough for a plurality, certainly!) of the people want that candidate, they all think they're throwing away their vote, and pick one of the established parties.
So to sum up, our system works great when there are only two choices. When you add a third, or more, then the system tends to pick the least liked candidate, rather than the most liked candidate. A system which tends to pick the least liked candidate sure seems fundamentally flawed to me!
This problem of not working with three candidates explains quite nicely why there have historically only ever been two strong political parties at once. Even before our current two parties existed, and we have had quite a nice number of parties in the US throughout history, there were generally only two at any one time. Also, the current system tends to favor those who are in large political parties. Since I'm not in favor of political parties on the whole, I consider a system which encourages parties to be fundamentally flawed as well. But naturally many people will not agree with me there.
You mean Instant-Runoff Voting? IRV has many of the same problems as plurality voting (our current system). It is slightly better, but not enough. I would either go with Approval voting, (easy to understand by the populace, as well as being quite robust) or one of the many Condorcet methods (more difficult to understand, but quite robust in general).
Or we could start on local and state levels with an "initiative". That would require a popular endorsement, and it would bypass the established powers who would likely oppose it. We can move on to Congress or a nationwide initiative later...
But you have to operate on a presumption of decency on the part of the police
Can't you understand what I am trying to say? NOBODY IS DISPUTING THIS, at least in this thread. This is NOT, I repeat NOT, the topic under discussion. In case you are curious, I do agree that a presumption of decency is necessary, at least until reasonable suspicion of a lack of decency arises. However, that is irrelevant to what I and the OP are saying.
He never claimed that people in uniform did not deserve respect, or jack shit, or whatever the hell you want to try and make him say.
Yes: he says there are good cops and bad.
How odd. I say "He never claimed that people in uniform did not deserve... jack shit", and you say "Yes: he says there are good cops and bad cops.". Now from the "Yes", I would conclude that you agree with me. And yet later on, you directly contradict me: "The OP's exact phrase... speaks of a pre-emptive position of distrust,". So do you agree with me on this point or not? Looking at your sentence as a whole, on the other hand, I'm not sure whether you are agreeing with me or not; "he says there are good cops and bad cops" seems to be a completely irrelevant addition to "Yes:", and causes me to wonder if the "Yes:" is somehow connected with the rest of the sentence, and therefore not even relevant to what I've claimed.
The OP does NOT take a pre-emptive position of distrust. He claims that one fact does not lead to automatic respect. This is a completely different thing from claiming automatic distrust. Even the phrase you are so hung up on shows this clearly; I refer to the part where he says "But that doesn't mean...". This phrase you keep repeating is meaningless unless you know the antecedent which "that" refers to. If you lack that antecedent, then the entire phrase literally carries no meaning. It most certainly doesn't mean "cops don't deserve jack shit.". With the antecedent, it is even more clear that it doesn't mean "cops don't deserve jack shit.".
The OP does NOT claim that cops don't deserve jack-shit. He claims that the existence of good cops does not cause all cops to deserve jack-shit. Read again this portion of the phrase you keep referencing: "But that doesn't mean...".
There are logical statements of the form "X implies Y", and also of the form "X does not imply Y". The original poster made a statement of the latter form, "X does not imply Y". In this case, X = "the existence of good cops", and Y = "cops deserve respect". Now the key thing to note here is that even if a statement of the form "X does not imply Y" is true, "not Y" is not implied. Or, to put it another way, I am making a new "X does not imply Y" statement, where X = "'X does not imply Y' is true", and Y = "Y is false". So, the OP is in no way claiming that cops don't deserve jack-shit. He is simply making a logical statement that says "The existence of good cops does not imply that cops deserve respect.".
He does say there are good cops and bad cops. You got that right. However, he is saying that that is unconnected with whether or not cops deserve respect. He is not saying that cops deserve no respect. As the OP replied to you, don't put words in his mouth!
cops don't "deserve jack shit"
You are right to leave "cops don't" out of the quotation marks, because the OP did not say that. In fact, this is not even a reasonable paraphrase of the OP.
My list of reasons for presuming decency on the part of cops does not include "because some cops are good". This is a reasonable paraphrase of the OP, except for the fact that my version implies that I do presume decency, whereas the OP implied nothing on this point. Nothing. Got it? Nothing. He didn't imply that he trusts cops, and he didn't imply that he distrusts cops.
Scentcone, I'm afraid that you are the one who is confusing discussion of a particular incident (please go back and look at the first couple of comments in this thread, and read them please) with discussion of cops and arrests as a whole. I've read several of the threads on this article, and not many people think that all cops are evil, nor that they all delight in beating people, nor that everyone will just lay down their weapons and say "it's a fair cop, guv'nor!". However, in THIS PARTICULAR INCIDENT, the amount of force was not justified, the police should be punished, and things like that should be prevented in the future. In other incidents, a similar amount of force has been and will be justified. Even deadly force is occasionally justified on the part of the police. I realize that. Other people realize that. Hitting someone in the head (not the face, as you can knock someone out just as easily by hitting them in the back of the head as in the face, while being less brutal) in order to subdue him so you can put him in handcuffs in one thing. That is sometimes justified. Holding down someone's arms who is already subdued so that you can repeatedly punch him in the face is not justified, ever. If the intention was to cuff the man and put him in the police car, IN THIS PARTICULAR INCIDENT, then that could have been accomplished without hitting him in the face. He was restrained sufficiently to be cuffed. However, the officers in question were not putting handcuffs on him. They were taking the opportunity to repeatedly strike him in the face. This is not justified. This is police brutality.
Now, please understand, I like cops. They are good people for the most part, and I do have a great deal of respect for them. Let me repeat, in case you didn't get it at the first reading. I like cops. They are good people for the most part, and I do have a great deal of respect for them. They do a difficult job that I wouldn't want to do. They have to make decisions that I wouldn't want to make. Sometimes, in an attempt to prevent a great evil, they do too much and commit a small evil. That is not good, but it is understandable. Some cops, however, commit evils which would in no way aid them in their job. This is far worse. Excess zeal to do one's job is one thing, but excess zeal to cause injury which does not forward one's job is an entirely different ballgame. Now, just in case you didn't understand: I think cops are good people for the most part! I do not claim that all cops are evil. Nor do most people on slashdot!
Slashdot Mirror
Not according to the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Hearsay, but according to the hearsay, the latest CMoS says that latin and greek loanwords should merely have an s or an es tacked on the end, rather than the original latin or greek plural. Thus medium becomes mediums. Bacterium becomes bacteriums instead of bacteria. Instead of algae, we have algas. No more data, just datums.
Personally, I think it is a load of hooey.
And that is exactly why many Christians find atheism and atheists scary. Many Christians perhaps think "gosh, if it weren't for religion establishing a morality for me, who knows what kind of a monster I'd be." (read, who knows what axioms I'd pick, of course.) In any large group of people, there is quite likely to be a fair number of them that would naturally be monsters (Dorian Gray?). Religious people look around and say "Thank goodness for religion, keeping all these monsters in check, even though there are sometimes ones that are not kept in check." Then they look around again and find atheists, and think "What about the atheists who also happen to be monsters? They have nothing keeping them in check." Christian morality provides a mostly known quantity, and thus an assurance, which is not provided by the complete unknown (logically) provided by atheism. The unknown there, added to what is known of human nature, is a scary thing. And I certainly have known atheists who were at least somewhat monstrous, just I have known Christians who were somewhat monstrous (even in spite of the Christian morality. Perhaps they are not legitimately Christians?), and it is clear to anyone who watches the news that there are Muslims who are somewhat monstrous.
:-p ) the people from your wife's ethics class (and others) who claim that atheists are incapable of morality. That is just blatant stupidity. Any cursory amount of thought is sufficient to demonstrate the falsity of that claim. Unless of course your axioms necessitate that atheists are incapable of morality (for instance by defining morality as originating with the divine.).
So yeah, you're saying that if religion weren't holding people in check, then some number of them (larger or smaller, there's not any real way to tell offhand) would be monsters. I completely agree. I don't think that much of anybody consciously goes "Invisible Guy is watching! Oh noes!", in fact many Christians would at least claim (whether or not the claim is true is, as always, another matter) that morality springs from love of God rather than dread of God. (Although "Godfearing" is a common adjective, it is usually understood to mean respect more than abject terror... Like we respect electricity, but don't sit around biting our fingernails off out of fear of it.)
About the gay thing: As I understand it, scripture claims that it is the consummation that should be avoided. Consciousness-consuming lust should also be avoided (according to scripture), but temptation itself is not generally considered to be sinful. The existence of temptation might be enough for you to label someone gay, but that labeling is not what is opposed. Rather the label that gets assigned upon consummation is what is opposed. In my understanding of the most general Christian morality. A sentence fragment preceding. For analogy, consider the reformed alcoholic (and drunk-driver). He doesn't get drunk anymore, so there's no worry about him driving drunk. He is still an alcoholic, but our societal moral code (the law) won't condemn him unless he turns around and gets drunk and drives again. But, if it weren't for the law (or AA, or whatever it was that prompted the guy to reform), he'd have no problem at all going out and getting drunk and driving.
I don't have any problem, nor does the law, with the reformed alcoholic, who nonetheless is still tempted, and in the absence of the restraints, would definitely not be reformed any more.
Ok, I'd definitely be with you in smacking (in a Christ-like loving manner, of course!
I think that sometimes, I discover something in collective Christian beliefs that I hadn't really thought about hard before, and decide that
If I understand the origins of the "atheists can't have morals" idea, it has nothing to do with atheists lacking a big-catholic-nun-with-a-ruler in the sky. Instead, it has everything to do with atheists not necessarily having any particular first principles instead of other first principles. One's moral codes derive (if we take an analytic (mathematical) view of philosophy) from one's first axioms. First axioms, otoh, by the very fact that they are first axioms, do not derive from anything. Saying "I am a theist", or stronger, "I am a Christian", is essentially a declaration of a particular first axiom. Saying "I am an atheist", is also a declaration of a particular axiom. However, "I am a Christian" is a much more constricting axiom than "I am an atheist", particularly in the realm of moral codes. "I am a Christian" leads directly to establishing several moral tenets (which could be viewed as logical propositions) as true. "I am an atheist" does not.
Now, of course, the atheist can then turn around and say, for instance, "The survival of the human race/my seed is paramount", and in so doing (s)he establishes an axiom which directly leads to some moral tenets. However, the atheist could just as well (and by just as well I mean without causing a logical contradiction with atheism) say "The death of all life that I see is paramount", which also leads to some moral tenets, but very very different ones. Or, the atheist could say "Whatever whim I have must be followed", and then you have someone who is driven entirely by their animal instincts. The point is, what reason does an atheist have to choose one of these over another? Or, what reason to choose some axiom which leads to one of these over some other axiom which leads to another one of these? Axioms, as I said, do not derive from anything, and thus there can be no reason to choose one over another.
In my experience, most atheists (and agnostics as well) do find themselves following moral tenets which comport quite well with the rest of society. However, the origin of the "Atheists have no morals" is, as far as I can tell, the fact that the statement "I am an atheist" does not logically necessitate any particular morality, whereas "I am a Christian" should.
And yes, I do realize that a) "I am a Christian" can lead to a number of different and conflicting moral codes, depending on various interpretations of eg scripture, and b) many people who say "I am a Christian" do not follow a moral code that could reasonably derive from that axiom.
So, I might well be wrong, and the people you have encountered who have said that could merely be afraid of the wrist-slapping-ruler in the sky. However, that is not the only, and certainly not the most reasonable, basis for the statement.
For further reading: Anything C.S. Lewis has written about what he calls the "Tao" (not to be confused with eastern philosophy). For instance, The Abolition of Man.
If the doomsday proclaimers are right, then we have precious little time before global warming goes out of control and we turn into venus (exaggeration, yes I know). Decreasing the total amount of insolation could buy us enough time to actually fix things. Now, of course, we should choose something to implement the dimming that we can easily undo, or that will undo itself (requiring us to maintain it for as long as we need it).
I have used a lot of rubber dome keyboards where the keys got sticky (wouldn't come back up after pressing, esp. the spacebar), or where the keys got unresponsive. That is one of the most frustrating things to me when typing. I'm not sure what use these were put through, because they weren't mine (school machines). I've never used a Model M which had either of these problems (except for when I screwed up my first model M through stupidity, and water literally corroded away a couple of the traces on the internal membranes).
Also, the loud click reinforces the feeling of the key moving, so that you know much more certainly (albeit subconsciously) that the key has been pressed. This knowing of the key press is also reinforced by the feeling of the key, where the force increases up to a certain point (as you move the key down), and then suddenly drops down to near zero (as the spring buckles). The way the switch is designed, that buckling point is simultaneous with the keypress being detected by the board. Once you've passed the buckling point, there is no way in heaven or on earth that you can prevent the keypress from registering. Unless of course the board is screwed up and it won't register no matter what. The buckling point also coincides exactly with the audible click. So you've got two different, simultaneous, very definite stimuli which tell your brain "ok, this key has been pressed!", and furthermore, once you get those stimuli, the keypress has been registered.
Now contrast this with most other keyboard designs. The quiet is nice, simply because it is quiet, but you can't have it both ways. Either you get the auditory stimulus or you don't. The force vs. distance plot wouldn't look quite the same with the sudden drop off; instead it is fairly steady I believe. At any rate, the dropoff is much less marked with most other designs. Furthermore, the drop off, whatever noise there might be, and the keypress registering do not necessarily all occur at the same time. I often find myself, when first using a rubber dome board, lifting my finger back from the key once the dome has buckled (force drop off), but before the keypress has registered. After several minutes of using a rubber dome board, I find myself pounding the keys much harder than necessary in order to insure that the keypress does register.
So, all the mess about simultaneity and all goes to this: If you have those subconscious stimuli that match up with the keypress quite well, then most people will find themselves able to type a little bit faster. Your brain knows that the keypress has occurred as soon as it gets the stimuli, and so the finger does not need to linger for an extra instant in order to make sure of the keypress. I type slower on other boards, and I make more typing errors.
Also, as I said above, I pound much harder on other boards, which should definitely be avoided, as it can lead to RSI type problems.
The design of the Model M tends to prevent dust and liquid damage. The keycaps act like umbrellas, and so no liquid will usually enter the electronics. Instead it just runs down the plastic plate that is in there, and out the drain holes (yes it has drain holes!). Dust and other gribbly junk settles down in between the keys on that same plastic plate, rather than getting into the key mechanism or the electronics.
Those umbrella keycaps can be removed and rearranged. So if you want a dvorak keyboard, or a french AZERTY board, you can just move your keycaps around. Except for some of the special-shaped keys (Enter, Tab, Backspace, etc), the keycaps are all identical in shape and size.
The curve of the keyboard matches the natural position of your fingers as they move up and down from the center. There are of course boards which are more ergonomic in this regard, but the gentle curve is much better than the standard flat of cheaper boards.
And then there's the durability. Most Model Ms have been around for a very long time now. There really aren't any
Unicomp will fix your Model M for something like 30$ I believe. Worth looking into for sure.
From my POV, AJAX has made the web usable as a dynamic thingamajigger rather than a static doohicky. (How's that for buzzwords? good grief. (vitriol directed at tech writers, not you)) I detested, loathed, and desired to eradicate web email interfaces, because they were so slow, what with the page reload on every click. Web-based word processors, calendars, etc. etc. etc. were in the same boat prior to AJAX. Blog and social networking sites, otoh, don't really require ajax, nor do wikis. So, you've got at least two mostly independent novel (novel in widespread-ness, anyway) concepts here, AJAX (usable dynamic-ness) and bazaar-style content, which are collectively the driving things behind ``Web 2.0''.
I hadn't really thought about it before, but it is interesting that these two don't really inform each other that much. Wikis and blogs are maybe a little bit more fun to use with AJAX (barring the nastiness about URLs not really being URLs anymore, and suchlike things), but the lack of AJAX certainly isn't even close to a showstopper for these. Web apps can be slightly more useful with the collaborative/open stuff, but again, the lack thereof is no showstopper. Certainly, there are projects which use both, but even in those cases, one is really the interesting thing about it, and the other is just icing.
So Web 2.0 is two concepts, one technological and one sociological. It is interesting that these two areas are also where the Web (1.0?) made its biggest splashes. However, in Web 1.0 (barf barf), the technological was the driving force, and the sociological was the result. You could even look at Web 2.0 as a similar thing, where the sociological aspect is really just the next development resulting from Web 1.0 technology (and from the ideals of Open Source Software?, but those ideals are sociological too, and were only really enabled by Web 1.0 tech.), but AJAX is really something new, which may wind up driving another sociological change.
This is almost turning into a proto-essay. Good grief. Sorry for my rambling.
It is worth noting that the first link is not in fact a publication, but rather conference proceedings. Almost as good, but not quite. You have to be aware of what you're looking at with these online databases of physics papers, because an awful lot of them are preprints that either haven't yet or never will make it into a peer-review journal. In other words, papers you find online are often not peer reviewed. You can check where they were published (if anywhere), and then look something up about the journal to determine their worth.
For papers in a peer-review journal, you can nearly always trust them. Conference proceedings, also you can probably trust, although conference proceedings are not peer-reviewed, and it is not uncommon for a conference talk to never be published because there was some problem with the analysis. Preprints (never been published or presented), it is up to you to read the paper and evaluate its validity, but be aware that anyone can post a "preprint" paper.
Pretty much all physicists worth their salt share an aesthetic which biases us towards simple theories. Now, the GP is just wild speculation, as is your post, but nonetheless, it is the specialists, not the lay public, who are driving for simple theories.
Additionally, history has shown that as a general rule, simpler theories tend to be more successful.
Except that it is actually quite important for the general public to understand the laws. Physics and friends, while much more interesting IMHO, are not required, for the good functioning of our country (or any halfway democracy), to be understood by the lay public.
On the other hand, the fact that the OLPC project exists, and is generating such controversy (at least on /.), is likely to have the effect of increasing the amount of food money donated. People who don't like OLPC obviously won't donate anything to the cause, but because they have been asked to donate to one cause, and in particular one that has caught their eye, they will be more likely to donate to something that they consider more worthwhile.
/.ers heads the way one more piece of junk mail from the Food for People Without Food charity will not do.
If you provide people with an outlet that they don't much care for for feeling like they are making a difference in the world, then they are much more likely to search for another one. OLPC gets into
This mission could be considered a failure as well. NASA completely and utterly failed in their estimation of how long these things would be operational. Now, it appears that this is a good thing, but it could very well have resulted in much waste. Suppose that some mission critical element such as communication channels had been designed with 90 sols in mind, and no more than 90 sols. Everything else would still work, but if you can't talk to the bot, it don't work. Or suppose that NASA had not been prepared to continue accumulating data after 90 sols. In that case, we'd still be able to send the bots around and have them do and examine things, but the data would be lost. Ok, disk space is cheap, so that scenario is a little far fetched. However, my point still stands. NASA should be doing a better job of evaluating the duration of its missions. Random variation, yes. This much random variation, I'm sufficiently skeptical that I will point the finger and call it failure.
Of course, us techno not-idiots here on slashdot can certainly agree on the authoritativeness and objectivity of a web site.
They have satellites up there which are dedicated to monitoring the amazon, as well as radar stations on the ground. So they're using google earth for mapping, not for imaging, I would infer. I know that they have active satellites in orbit currently because my father worked on the project that put them there. I'm rather puzzled though by this story which does not mention either the company my father works for nor the name of the project.
I'm not quite sure how you're planning to teach statistics in any meaningful way without using calculus.
You're right that professional mathematicians, depending on their field of course, don't need much calculus. For instance, group theory is pretty hot now, and it doesn't involve calculus, unless you're studying some algebraic properties of something involving calculus. Graph theory doesn't involve calculus really. But statistics certainly does involve calculus, unless you're planning to teach a quite naive form of statistics. A naive stat will involve necessary weaknesses which will quickly begin to be exploited by newspaper studies, just as a complete lack of statistical knowledge is exploited now.
My own field, physics, is the same way. You can teach algebra-based physics, but it is much harder to learn than cal based physics, and you can't do nearly as much with it.
One might want to study social networks. What better way to do this than to make a graph (as in the nodes and edges type) of myspace or facebook and study that? How are you going to do this? Well, seems like making a spider would be a quite sensible way.
In fact, to put myself at risk of doing the same thing I'm accusing you of doing, I would read into your comments that you don't give much respect to J. Random Man off the street unless he is wearing a uniform. I think this because you stress so fervently the idea that a uniform deserves respect simply because of the uniform. From this I would deduce that without a uniform, someone would get less respect from you. I don't think that this is right. You have to operate on a presumption of common human decency with anyone, uniform or not. You appear to think that when you meet someone, you owe them nothing, respect or otherwise, simply because they are a person, unless of course they have a uniform. So, I think that I am much more like the OP than I am like you. The uniform itself is not the source of my respect for anyone, policeman or otherwise. The source of my presumption of decency is the fact that it is a human being inside the uniform.
I think you are wrong here as well. I have read the entirety of the post, several times over. I have also read the other things that the poster has written in this thread in an attempt to defend himself from your misjudgment of his words (He agrees with me, btw. I'm not sure how you can argue over interpretation with the author of what you are interpreting, but whatever.). He likes and respects cops just as much as he likes and respects any human being. Not less, not more. Once someone, police or otherwise, has become known to me or to him, they might win more respect, or they might win less respect. However, the uniform itself, both in my view and in his, is not a source nor a cause of respect. I would hope the OP himself speaking up and saying that he specifically agrees with me would be enough for you to concede that you have misinterpreted his post.
Perhaps your posture with respect to general non-uniformed humanity is the cause of your (as you've described) extensive interaction with the police.
Well, suppose Ronald and Ralph are conservatives, and Debbie is a liberal. All three are running. Now suppose that 60% of the populace has a conservative political stance. So, they are quite likely to agree with either Ronald or with Ralph on most issues, and quite unlikely to agree with Debbie on most issues, or at least on the hot ones for this particular campaign. The remaining 40% have liberal leanings, and so are quite likely to agree with Debbie, and quite unlikely to agree with Ronald or Ralph. That is, 60% of the people will vote for a conservative, and 40% will vote for a liberal. Now, Election day comes along. Debbie gets 40% of the vote, Ronald gets 34% of the vote, and Ralph gets 25% of the vote, and Lenny the libertarian gets 1%. So, more people walked into the voting booth and said "I want Debbie" than did for the other two. But, now 60% of the populace is unhappy because they wanted a conservative, and got a liberal.
Suppose that we had a series of three runoffs:
Debbie vs. Ronald: Debbie 40%, Ronald 60%. Ronald would win over Debbie.
Debbie vs. Ralph: Debbie 40%, Ralph 60%. Ralph would also win over Debbie. So either conservative is preferred over the liberal here.
Ronald vs. Ralph: Ronald 58%, Ralph 42%. Ronald wins over Ralph.
So Ronald wins both of his pairwise elections, and Debbie loses both of hers. The majority of voters prefer anyone over Debbie. But our current system elects Debbie. It ought to elect Ralph, who was preferred over every other candidate. But the fact that two candidates were fairly similar meant that they both lost, even though one of them should have won.
And look at poor Lenny. Actually, 10% of the people think he would make the best elected official, but they don't vote for him because that'd be "throwing away their vote". And they're right in this case, but not always! So the libertarian/green/ex-movie-star party can't gain any traction, because even if 40% (enough for a plurality, certainly!) of the people want that candidate, they all think they're throwing away their vote, and pick one of the established parties.
So to sum up, our system works great when there are only two choices. When you add a third, or more, then the system tends to pick the least liked candidate, rather than the most liked candidate. A system which tends to pick the least liked candidate sure seems fundamentally flawed to me!
This problem of not working with three candidates explains quite nicely why there have historically only ever been two strong political parties at once. Even before our current two parties existed, and we have had quite a nice number of parties in the US throughout history, there were generally only two at any one time. Also, the current system tends to favor those who are in large political parties. Since I'm not in favor of political parties on the whole, I consider a system which encourages parties to be fundamentally flawed as well. But naturally many people will not agree with me there.
You mean Instant-Runoff Voting? IRV has many of the same problems as plurality voting (our current system). It is slightly better, but not enough. I would either go with Approval voting, (easy to understand by the populace, as well as being quite robust) or one of the many Condorcet methods (more difficult to understand, but quite robust in general).
Or we could start on local and state levels with an "initiative". That would require a popular endorsement, and it would bypass the established powers who would likely oppose it. We can move on to Congress or a nationwide initiative later...
Can't you understand what I am trying to say? NOBODY IS DISPUTING THIS, at least in this thread. This is NOT, I repeat NOT, the topic under discussion. In case you are curious, I do agree that a presumption of decency is necessary, at least until reasonable suspicion of a lack of decency arises. However, that is irrelevant to what I and the OP are saying.
How odd. I say "He never claimed that people in uniform did not deserve ... jack shit", and you say "Yes: he says there are good cops and bad cops.". Now from the "Yes", I would conclude that you agree with me. And yet later on, you directly contradict me: "The OP's exact phrase ... speaks of a pre-emptive position of distrust,". So do you agree with me on this point or not? Looking at your sentence as a whole, on the other hand, I'm not sure whether you are agreeing with me or not; "he says there are good cops and bad cops" seems to be a completely irrelevant addition to "Yes:", and causes me to wonder if the "Yes:" is somehow connected with the rest of the sentence, and therefore not even relevant to what I've claimed.
The OP does NOT take a pre-emptive position of distrust. He claims that one fact does not lead to automatic respect. This is a completely different thing from claiming automatic distrust. Even the phrase you are so hung up on shows this clearly; I refer to the part where he says "But that doesn't mean...". This phrase you keep repeating is meaningless unless you know the antecedent which "that" refers to. If you lack that antecedent, then the entire phrase literally carries no meaning. It most certainly doesn't mean "cops don't deserve jack shit.". With the antecedent, it is even more clear that it doesn't mean "cops don't deserve jack shit.".
The OP does NOT claim that cops don't deserve jack-shit. He claims that the existence of good cops does not cause all cops to deserve jack-shit. Read again this portion of the phrase you keep referencing: "But that doesn't mean...".
There are logical statements of the form "X implies Y", and also of the form "X does not imply Y". The original poster made a statement of the latter form, "X does not imply Y". In this case, X = "the existence of good cops", and Y = "cops deserve respect". Now the key thing to note here is that even if a statement of the form "X does not imply Y" is true, "not Y" is not implied. Or, to put it another way, I am making a new "X does not imply Y" statement, where X = "'X does not imply Y' is true", and Y = "Y is false". So, the OP is in no way claiming that cops don't deserve jack-shit. He is simply making a logical statement that says "The existence of good cops does not imply that cops deserve respect.".
He does say there are good cops and bad cops. You got that right. However, he is saying that that is unconnected with whether or not cops deserve respect. He is not saying that cops deserve no respect. As the OP replied to you, don't put words in his mouth!
You are right to leave "cops don't" out of the quotation marks, because the OP did not say that. In fact, this is not even a reasonable paraphrase of the OP.
My list of reasons for presuming decency on the part of cops does not include "because some cops are good". This is a reasonable paraphrase of the OP, except for the fact that my version implies that I do presume decency, whereas the OP implied nothing on this point. Nothing. Got it? Nothing. He didn't imply that he trusts cops, and he didn't imply that he distrusts cops.
Are you a native English speaker
Scentcone, I'm afraid that you are the one who is confusing discussion of a particular incident (please go back and look at the first couple of comments in this thread, and read them please) with discussion of cops and arrests as a whole. I've read several of the threads on this article, and not many people think that all cops are evil, nor that they all delight in beating people, nor that everyone will just lay down their weapons and say "it's a fair cop, guv'nor!". However, in THIS PARTICULAR INCIDENT, the amount of force was not justified, the police should be punished, and things like that should be prevented in the future. In other incidents, a similar amount of force has been and will be justified. Even deadly force is occasionally justified on the part of the police. I realize that. Other people realize that. Hitting someone in the head (not the face, as you can knock someone out just as easily by hitting them in the back of the head as in the face, while being less brutal) in order to subdue him so you can put him in handcuffs in one thing. That is sometimes justified. Holding down someone's arms who is already subdued so that you can repeatedly punch him in the face is not justified, ever. If the intention was to cuff the man and put him in the police car, IN THIS PARTICULAR INCIDENT, then that could have been accomplished without hitting him in the face. He was restrained sufficiently to be cuffed. However, the officers in question were not putting handcuffs on him. They were taking the opportunity to repeatedly strike him in the face. This is not justified. This is police brutality.
Now, please understand, I like cops. They are good people for the most part, and I do have a great deal of respect for them. Let me repeat, in case you didn't get it at the first reading. I like cops. They are good people for the most part, and I do have a great deal of respect for them. They do a difficult job that I wouldn't want to do. They have to make decisions that I wouldn't want to make. Sometimes, in an attempt to prevent a great evil, they do too much and commit a small evil. That is not good, but it is understandable. Some cops, however, commit evils which would in no way aid them in their job. This is far worse. Excess zeal to do one's job is one thing, but excess zeal to cause injury which does not forward one's job is an entirely different ballgame. Now, just in case you didn't understand: I think cops are good people for the most part! I do not claim that all cops are evil. Nor do most people on slashdot!