I really don't have a problem with him changing his mind as long as he stays consistent with his core beliefs of being a hardcore liberal.
Come on now. The guy is by no means a hardcode liberal. No gay marriage, no decriminalization of pot, equivocates on the subject of abortion, is a devout Christian. Man I wish he were for some of those things.
My experience is that people who help in the name of religion are doing more of a look at me thing. They want to look good and want to go to heaven. It is a peer system like highschool. They want to be cool and in the 'in' crowd. So they go along.
That's certainly true of Catholics, anyway. Newsflash: works != salvation.
I'm an agnostic, but that's what my Baptist wife tells me.:)
FWIR about 1/3 of Iran's population is blonde haired and blue eyed. The Caucuses mountain range (from which we get the term Caucasian) is partly in Iran. So if Iran or part of their population (the government) is evil that whole profiling thing starts to not work real fast.
I'm not arguing against profiling, but stating that 1/3 of Iran's population is "blond haired and blue eyed" is totally misleading.
Caucasian != look like you're from Sweden
About the "whitest" people in Iran are the Azeri, and maybe the Mazandarani, and I highly doubt you'd label any of them blond haired and blue eyed.
Reminds me of when I flew from ORD to LAX about 60 days after 9/11.
After getting through security and checking out all the army guys with huge guns, I get to the ORD snack/food area for my terminal. I assume that before 9/11 they were handing out plastic utensils, because that's what they were handing out post-9/11...except for the plastic knives.
Yep, they had decided that plastic knives were a threat, but plastic forks or spoons were OK. All of which can be made into a stabby plastic weapon in a few seconds. Why were the knives singled out? Forks are probably more dangerous; their handle is certainly sturdier...
I don't recall much scoffing at Dennis Kucinich's attempt to hold impeachment hearings on President Bush. No, I guess that was all about a righteous avenger shining a spotlight on The Greatest Evil Our Planet Has Ever Known.
Well, how would *you* go about doing it? It's obvious that Bush could easily be impeached (and tossed out of office) if the winds were blowing strongly enough against him; there's plenty of evidence, just no political will to follow through.
Kind of like 3rd party candidates...are they "stunts" as well? If you were a minor political party trying to field a candidate, would you see it as a stunt? Or is it in the eye of the beholder?
I was a "Mac Genius" for about 8 months in 2003. Terrible job, but there is a lot of training:
1) Got an official Apple "Desktop Support Technician" certification. Pretty silly, but it ensures you know your way around OS X. Really basic stuff, setting up network connections, changing settings, etc. Nothing complicated.
2) They fly you to Cupertino for 2 weeks (9 or 10 full 8-hour days) of hardware training. Fully took apart and put back together every piece of Apple hardware from the last 5 years or so (volley-ball iMacs, original CRT iMacs, eMacs, the Cube, powerbooks, ibooks, G3s, G4s, XServes, you name it). Graded by instructor, can'r have any "leftover" screws at the end. Taught proper tech techniques (grounding bracelet, how not to electrocute yourself on a CRT, etc).
Just going to the Mothership was amazing. Got to eat at Cafe Macs (sweet!). Luckily I brought a lot of knowledge to the job that helped, mainly Linux/UNIX stuff.
Certainly consciousness and intelligence come with responsibility. But why? I postulate that there is no external scale for anything, that all measurements are made with scales constructed within any given system. There is no good or evil external to the sentient mind. There is also no external scale that says we are better than other animals.
Spot on! Good and evil are constructs of our society, and we're so used to "having them in our head" that it's very hard to think about it in any other way. There is no such thing as external, non-human-projected good or evil.
"I've discovered this whole new set of people - science fan boys - that I didn't know existed, really. They're interesting. Their almost fundamentalists, in a way. They are much more pedantic than professional scientists. I just interact with professional scientists most of the time and I must say, I've said this a couple of times now, but I've found the scientists that I like to work with particularly - there's a particular type of person I enjoy working with in science - all those went to see Sunshine and loved it. They thought that the portrayal of the physicist was wonderful and the emotional impact that science can have on you - the real reason you want to be a scientist - they found that really vivid in the film and enjoyed it a lot.
But then I see scientists that I think are dull - w*nkers you could call them [laughs] - who have seen it and didn't like it. I can almost use it as a way of working out who I want to work with. I'd say: "Watch this, and tell me what you think of it". If they don't like it, then I don't want to work with them [laughs].
It's very interesting. These guys that get really pedantic are really, I think, missing the point about what science is all about. It's about precision, when you're doing it. So when you're doing research it's all about precision and attention to detail and that's the difficult bit, and that's what you learn how to do. But deciding what research field you want to do, and having really good ideas about what to go and measure, and what to try and find out, that's a creative process. I think a lot of the pedants kinda miss that. Like you say, Sunshine is not a documentary. It's trying to just, in an hour and forty minutes, get across a feeling of what it's like - not only to be a scientist, because obviously there's much more in it than that. So, I found it interesting to watch the kind of people that get upset because the gravity is wrong."
Go watch Sunshine, that movie definitely evoked those same kind of feelings in me.
There's an amazing scene where they watch Mercury transit across the Sun, and while we admittedly have the same view from here on Earth, imagining those folks were really on their way to the heart of the solar system, with one last, tiny gatekeeper between them and the monster that is the Sun is just AWESOME.
True true. It's just that these people have SO much. And our society flourishes best if a some (not all, or even a lot) resources are re-distributed to those in need.
Mortgage payment on a condo in Southern California: $3000/mo. Not so rich after all.
A household making $250K gross at a 35% tax rate would net $162.5K per year. So after that $3000 mortgage payment (which I'm sure includes escrow for taxes), you'd have used only 22% of your monthly net income, well below the recommended 28% max.
I've lived inside the DC beltway in a rented condo. While housing costs may be ridiculous, cost of living does not scale upwards for everything. Groceries are pretty much the same as elsewhere. Consumer good you order online are the same. etc. I'd kill to have $10K left over EVERY MONTH after a $3K mortgage payment.
Then again, gotta pay installments on your Hummer and Country Club membership, which are apparently necessities when you live in SoCal (on $250K a year anyway). Rich people have lots of money sinks; they could save ASSPILES (or pay more taxes) if they wanted to.
Welcome to the "Curse of the Thinking Man". Question everything!
I think what really frees most peoples' thinking is when they realize that "there is no why". Either that, or the plan/"why" is so alien, so outside of what we call the human experience (3D space, unidirectional time, etc), so dependent on things outside our frame of reference, that we haven't a prayer (pun intended) of ever "seeing" it.
PS - The *last* group of folks I'd expect to be "right" are desert tribesmen from 2000 years ago who thought all sorts of wrong/atrocious things.
You shouldn't ever walk around on a roof, it causes a lot of wear and tear and damage to the roofing material.
You aren't a roofing contractor, are you?
"Mam, I'd like to say your new roof will last another 20 years, but with all the running around on it the roofers did while completing it, they completely wore 75% of it out. Would would you like us to come back and install the new one?"
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't have a problem with him changing his mind as long as he stays consistent with his core beliefs of being a hardcore liberal.
Come on now. The guy is by no means a hardcode liberal. No gay marriage, no decriminalization of pot, equivocates on the subject of abortion, is a devout Christian. Man I wish he were for some of those things.
My experience is that people who help in the name of religion are doing more of a look at me thing. They want to look good and want to go to heaven. It is a peer system like highschool. They want to be cool and in the 'in' crowd. So they go along.
That's certainly true of Catholics, anyway. Newsflash: works != salvation.
I'm an agnostic, but that's what my Baptist wife tells me. :)
FWIR about 1/3 of Iran's population is blonde haired and blue eyed. The Caucuses mountain range (from which we get the term Caucasian) is partly in Iran. So if Iran or part of their population (the government) is evil that whole profiling thing starts to not work real fast.
I'm not arguing against profiling, but stating that 1/3 of Iran's population is "blond haired and blue eyed" is totally misleading.
Caucasian != look like you're from Sweden
About the "whitest" people in Iran are the Azeri, and maybe the Mazandarani, and I highly doubt you'd label any of them blond haired and blue eyed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Caucasus-ethnic_en.svg
Reminds me of when I flew from ORD to LAX about 60 days after 9/11.
After getting through security and checking out all the army guys with huge guns, I get to the ORD snack/food area for my terminal. I assume that before 9/11 they were handing out plastic utensils, because that's what they were handing out post-9/11...except for the plastic knives.
Yep, they had decided that plastic knives were a threat, but plastic forks or spoons were OK. All of which can be made into a stabby plastic weapon in a few seconds. Why were the knives singled out? Forks are probably more dangerous; their handle is certainly sturdier...
Won't you help the poor orphans of Stormwind?
I don't recall much scoffing at Dennis Kucinich's attempt to hold impeachment hearings on President Bush. No, I guess that was all about a righteous avenger shining a spotlight on The Greatest Evil Our Planet Has Ever Known.
Well, how would *you* go about doing it? It's obvious that Bush could easily be impeached (and tossed out of office) if the winds were blowing strongly enough against him; there's plenty of evidence, just no political will to follow through.
Kind of like 3rd party candidates...are they "stunts" as well? If you were a minor political party trying to field a candidate, would you see it as a stunt? Or is it in the eye of the beholder?
Ah, I got hung up on the "last few years" bit.
We were doing this shit in grad school in 2003. Not new.
Depends, I happen to live next to the second most visited national park, the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
Driving through does not count as visiting. If that were the case, I've visited the Daniel Boone National Forest quite a few times...
Italy is about 2 steps away from being in South America. What a country.
Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring Anglophone!
I was a "Mac Genius" for about 8 months in 2003. Terrible job, but there is a lot of training:
1) Got an official Apple "Desktop Support Technician" certification. Pretty silly, but it ensures you know your way around OS X. Really basic stuff, setting up network connections, changing settings, etc. Nothing complicated.
2) They fly you to Cupertino for 2 weeks (9 or 10 full 8-hour days) of hardware training. Fully took apart and put back together every piece of Apple hardware from the last 5 years or so (volley-ball iMacs, original CRT iMacs, eMacs, the Cube, powerbooks, ibooks, G3s, G4s, XServes, you name it). Graded by instructor, can'r have any "leftover" screws at the end. Taught proper tech techniques (grounding bracelet, how not to electrocute yourself on a CRT, etc).
Just going to the Mothership was amazing. Got to eat at Cafe Macs (sweet!). Luckily I brought a lot of knowledge to the job that helped, mainly Linux/UNIX stuff.
Certainly consciousness and intelligence come with responsibility. But why? I postulate that there is no external scale for anything, that all measurements are made with scales constructed within any given system. There is no good or evil external to the sentient mind. There is also no external scale that says we are better than other animals.
Spot on! Good and evil are constructs of our society, and we're so used to "having them in our head" that it's very hard to think about it in any other way. There is no such thing as external, non-human-projected good or evil.
Kudos for being very, very open-minded.
That was the stupidest movie since Red Planet [imdb.com].
http://www.sci-fi-online.50megs.com/2006_Interviews/07-08-27_brian-cox.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)
"I've discovered this whole new set of people - science fan boys - that I didn't know existed, really. They're interesting. Their almost fundamentalists, in a way. They are much more pedantic than professional scientists. I just interact with professional scientists most of the time and I must say, I've said this a couple of times now, but I've found the scientists that I like to work with particularly - there's a particular type of person I enjoy working with in science - all those went to see Sunshine and loved it. They thought that the portrayal of the physicist was wonderful and the emotional impact that science can have on you - the real reason you want to be a scientist - they found that really vivid in the film and enjoyed it a lot.
But then I see scientists that I think are dull - w*nkers you could call them [laughs] - who have seen it and didn't like it. I can almost use it as a way of working out who I want to work with. I'd say: "Watch this, and tell me what you think of it". If they don't like it, then I don't want to work with them [laughs].
It's very interesting. These guys that get really pedantic are really, I think, missing the point about what science is all about. It's about precision, when you're doing it. So when you're doing research it's all about precision and attention to detail and that's the difficult bit, and that's what you learn how to do. But deciding what research field you want to do, and having really good ideas about what to go and measure, and what to try and find out, that's a creative process. I think a lot of the pedants kinda miss that.
Like you say, Sunshine is not a documentary. It's trying to just, in an hour and forty minutes, get across a feeling of what it's like - not only to be a scientist, because obviously there's much more in it than that. So, I found it interesting to watch the kind of people that get upset because the gravity is wrong."
Go watch Sunshine, that movie definitely evoked those same kind of feelings in me.
There's an amazing scene where they watch Mercury transit across the Sun, and while we admittedly have the same view from here on Earth, imagining those folks were really on their way to the heart of the solar system, with one last, tiny gatekeeper between them and the monster that is the Sun is just AWESOME.
Goose-bump city.
True true. It's just that these people have SO much. And our society flourishes best if a some (not all, or even a lot) resources are re-distributed to those in need.
Just color me socialist I guess.
Mortgage payment on a condo in Southern California: $3000/mo. Not so rich after all.
A household making $250K gross at a 35% tax rate would net $162.5K per year.
So after that $3000 mortgage payment (which I'm sure includes escrow for taxes), you'd have used only 22% of your monthly net income, well below the recommended 28% max.
I've lived inside the DC beltway in a rented condo. While housing costs may be ridiculous, cost of living does not scale upwards for everything. Groceries are pretty much the same as elsewhere. Consumer good you order online are the same. etc. I'd kill to have $10K left over EVERY MONTH after a $3K mortgage payment.
Then again, gotta pay installments on your Hummer and Country Club membership, which are apparently necessities when you live in SoCal (on $250K a year anyway). Rich people have lots of money sinks; they could save ASSPILES (or pay more taxes) if they wanted to.
Sucks to be a family in California or New York. Good policy for DINCs in Kansas though.
California median household income: $53,770.
New York median household income: $48,201.
5X the median household income? Sounds pretty rich to me.
* what defines 'rich'?
Any household that pulls down more than $250K gross per year. Next question?
I remember gas in the late 80's fall to $0.97 a gallon... does that mean he is giving us $0.03 to take a gallon of his gas???
I remember that in either fall 1999 or spring 2000, gas hit $0.99 in the Chicago suburbs. Hasn't been that long...
"Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?"
God that song is so depressing. I 3 The Wall as a whole though.
Don't forget to mention that it is a DEMOCRATIC controlled Congress.
Yeah, by like 2 votes. Bush will veto anything he doesn't like, and the Dems can't get anything passed by a veto-proof margin.
Welcome to the "Curse of the Thinking Man". Question everything!
I think what really frees most peoples' thinking is when they realize that "there is no why". Either that, or the plan/"why" is so alien, so outside of what we call the human experience (3D space, unidirectional time, etc), so dependent on things outside our frame of reference, that we haven't a prayer (pun intended) of ever "seeing" it.
PS - The *last* group of folks I'd expect to be "right" are desert tribesmen from 2000 years ago who thought all sorts of wrong/atrocious things.
Because lots of people own 2-story homes. 2 of my 4 gutters are at a height of 22' or so. That wand only goes to 6'.
And operating one on a ladder would be, well, interesting. :)
You shouldn't ever walk around on a roof, it causes a lot of wear and tear and damage to the roofing material.
You aren't a roofing contractor, are you?
"Mam, I'd like to say your new roof will last another 20 years, but with all the running around on it the roofers did while completing it, they completely wore 75% of it out. Would would you like us to come back and install the new one?"