It can help to understand and distinguish between Muslims and Islamists. Islamists are the often-violent fundamentalists, similar to the "Christians" who shoot abortion providers because, ah, the sanctity of life is so precious to them.
It's perfectly reasonable to aim any number of criticisms at Islam in general as it is to any other religion. The problem here is that by overstating the target --characterizing it as all of Islam, rather than the radical and violent subsets of it-- you tend to alienate potential allies.
As a non-US citizen that never went to the US, I'd like to propose something even more radical: ending the abomination of "extrajudicial killings" of non-US citizens too. It'd come a long way towards making most non-US citizens out there start ignoring, or even liking, the US again.
Something tells me that you probably wouldn't like the "intrajudicial" killing of non-US citizens all that much, either...
you should have told them the path to prosperity was; the North Korean government should completely and radically change from a multi-generational dictatorship to a representative Democracy and Capitalistic System, with the intent of reunification with their southern brothers. Close the Concentration Camps (Yes, I said Concentration Camps), get rid of the failed centralized economy, stop starving your citizens and stop trying to cling to power and accept that the citizens of NK probably would be much better off without the current NK government.
...because that totally would have worked. Just telling them that would have caused them to have a change of heart and divest themselves of power they've spent lifetimes accumulating.
However accurate your statements about what needs to happen might be (I think they are on the mark, if anything not comprehensive enough), who has ever responded positively to this kind of demand? To work with those who are both power-hungry and indisputably in charge of their domain, you need to appeal to their self-interest, not from your own sense of righteousness.
Too bad they tried to sneak it in. I bet there's a marketing ploy that could make horse meat burgers a profitable commodity. Haven't yet myself, but I'd really like to try horsemeat; some have said it's quite tasty. Personally I'd like to know how it compares to venison, a meat I very much enjoy.
It would be nice to have more accessible options for red meat than corn fed (or, for a premium, grass-fed) cow. I understand how fat and marbling affects flavor and texture, but it makes sense to me to train yourself to prefer healthier foods. It seems a fair assumption that horse meat will be a lot leaner than cow meat.
What a pain; you have my sympathies. Did they send you a copy of the validation, and did it otherwise satisfy the FDCPA validation requirements?
FDCPA Â 809. Validation of debts [15 USC 1692g]
(a) Within five days after the initial communication with a consumer in connection with the collection of any debt, a debt collector shall, unless the following information is contained in the initial communication or the consumer has paid the debt, send the consumer a written notice containing --
(1) the amount of the debt;
(2) the name of the creditor to whom the debt is owed;
(3) a statement that unless the consumer, within thirty days after receipt of the notice, disputes the validity of the debt, or any portion thereof, the debt will be assumed to be valid by the debt collector;
(4) a statement that if the consumer notifies the debt collector in writing within the thirty-day period that the debt, or any portion thereof, is disputed, the debt collector will obtain verification of the debt or a copy of a judgment against the consumer and a copy of such verification or judgment will be mailed to the consumer by the debt collector; and
(5) a statement that, upon the consumer's written request within the thirty-day period, the debt collector will provide the consumer with the name and address of the original creditor, if different from the current creditor.
(b) If the consumer notifies the debt collector in writing within the thirty-day period described in subsection (a) that the debt, or any portion thereof, is disputed, or that the consumer requests the name and address of the original creditor, the debt collector shall cease collection of the debt, or any disputed portion thereof, until the debt collector obtains verification of the debt or any copy of a judgment, or the name and address of the original creditor, and a copy of such verification or judgment, or name and address of the original creditor, is mailed to the consumer by the debt collector.
(c) The failure of a consumer to dispute the validity of a debt under this section may not be construed by any court as an admission of liability by the consumer.
I've found that the most effective way to get these kinds of wrong-person debt collection calls to stop is to tell the collector that they have to validate the debt. (It helps to read through the entire FDCPA, so you're familiar with the details.)
This is useful because of the way these kinds of bottom-feeder debt collection agencies work. They buy packages of debts from various companies for pennies on the dollar. The agency gets to keep any money they collect from these accounts. The cheapest past due accounts will usually not have much detail: the more likely an account will be successfully collected upon, the more expensive it is. Validating a debt --which they are legally obligated to do upon request-- requires enough time and effort on their part to make most accounts unprofitable, even when they have the right person. It usually makes more sense for them to not bother further, and to move on to the next debt on the list.
And even if they *do* validate the debt, they'll have handily furnished you with proof that the debt is not yours.
One measly zig? That's not going to efficiently couple my torque rotation constant. I want a crank with a minimum of five zigs and, for fuck's sake, a bare minimum of *three* zags... and that will be the "intro" model. The "pro" crank will come with seven zigs and five zags. The "custom" option will end the zigzags with a loop.
Throw in enough, and the bike will basically pedal itself. All I need to figure out now is how to perfect my shake weight handlebars. Still having problems with the braking on those things.
Thank you for your patience. That is quite a gracious reply to someone who devolved into caps-yelling, and a humbling one.
And I will readily grant you that the Clinton administration's surplus was very much a benefit of context. And after all, those were also the days of the Newt-led House.
Disgreeing about speculations of alternate futures are probably only useful in what they tell us about how we think. There is no way either of us can ever prove what would have happened, had things gone differently. I believe that some of the more disastrous aspects of W's administration would not have been part of a Gore presidency: specifically, disregarding the reports of Hans Blix and invading Iraq, as well as combining a military increase with a tax cut. Those are not particularly complicated issues, and the political benefits are/would have been clear to Gore. At least those points seem to me much more reasonable than the thought that Gore would have led us into Iraq and cut taxes the way W did. I do believe the housing and banking crushes wouldn't have differed much, if at all.
What I suppose might be the most frustrating is how the argument against voting compares to the 2000 Florida results. Basically the idea is either that your vote counts for so little that it will not affect the outcome -- and usually this is true, for any given individual. OR the idea is that elections are so corrupted that your vote will never count at all. What I see is that: there was one time when a presidential election hinged upon nine thousandths of a percent of a single state's voter outcome, and while antidemocratic electoral manipulation is a reality (as we continue to see in Florida, still), it is not in complete control of the outcome, but rather more like a thumb on a scale that can still be overcome.
My apologies, BlueStrat. I lost my temper, and declined into a useless form of discussion. I find the thought that Gore would have given us the same world as Bush (or a worse one) so ludicrous that it is difficult for me to treat it as a seriously, sincerely, and considered point of view.
As a result, my frustration got the better of me, and my apologies to you for that. Perhaps you really do believe what you've said. If so, you clearly have an idea of how strongly I disagree with you. I regret that the expression of my disagreement probably came off more as polarizing and judgmental than it did convincing.
Why would it be different with Gore than with Obama? Remember, Obama accused Bush of being irresponsible for wanting to raise the US debt ceiling.
I will point something out *again*. In the 2000 election, Gore had 8 years of experience in the executive office, as VP under Bill Clinton. During his time in executive office, the US created a budget *surplus*. With a budget surplus, a budget debt ceiling is unnecessary. Before his 8 years as VP, Gore was a US House Representative for 8 years, and a US Senator for 8 years. He has a long, and many would say a distinguished Congressional career.
It is certainly a consistent one. His 24 years of experience in federal office before the 2000 election gave him quite a record at the time of that election.
You seem to feel that it would be more reasonable to compare Al Gore circa 2000 to someone else entirely, with only four years of Congressional experience, than it is to compare 2000 circa Gore to the 1976-1999 Gore, with 8 years as a Rep, 8 years as a Senator, and 8 years as Veep.
But yes, since Obama promised something he actually didn't but you still see as a sort of betrayal, Gore similarly would have stepped directly into what history has labeled "the Bush doctrine", he would have invaded Iraq in response to 9-11 attacks by Saudi nationals based in Afghanistan, he would have pursued financial deregulation (the same regulation he helped put into place while in Congress), he would have JESUS FUCKING CHRIST DO I HAVE TO ACTUALLY CONTINUE WITH THIS IN A REASONABLE MANNER.
VOTE, YOU FUCKING ELIGIBLE-TO-VOTE ASSHOLES. IT MATTERS, IT REALLY DOES. IF YOU HAD VOTED IN 2000, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE A TSA TO BITCH ABOUT NOW. YOU DIDN'T THEN, AND THANKS TO YOU WE HAVE THE TSA. FUCK YOU FOR THAT.
If the point of this meat is to develop a new food source, overlooking the culinary uses of its own unique form could be a mistake. There might be excellent & tasty uses for meat jelly or even liquid meat that aren't currently possible with the cuts of tissue that we already know.
Gelatin is already prominent in food production, for example. It's possible that meat jelly could create similar structural effects while enhancing nutritional content.
One can't know of course, one can only speculate. But it seems reasonable to look to Gore's legislative and executive track records as both Congressman and VP, as well as to what lobbys proved to be most influential with him, for a fair guess.
Had Gore turned out to have the same foreign and domestic policy as Bush, it would have been extremely inconsistent with his past actions.
That's fine because voting is the same as not voting at all too.
How anyone can maintain this perspective, given that Bush -v- Gore hinged on a vote margin of 0.009%, of the state electorate, AND that the results of that election directly resulted in the TSA... it just baffles me. Yes, your vote might technically matter a mere fraction of a percentage. AAAND there is one excellent, obvious example where a 0.01% difference would have resulted in a dramatically different outcome.
Please try this mental exercise: reconsider your position on the importance of voting as you imagine how the country and the world would have been different had President Bush Jr., VP Cheney, Secretary of State Rice, Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito, AG Gonzales, et al never been a reality.
Al Jazeera are vastly better than American news networks . . . . I cannot watch CNN for more than a couple of minutes at a time. The other news channels don't even get a look in. It's the BBC World Service, Al Jazeera, or nothing, I'm sorry to say.
Very much agreed. I believe what explains the difference in quality is the source of funding. BBC & AJ do not have to rely on ad revenue. For profit American news networks do, and the most profitable ad revenue entertainment model appears to pretty consistently be race to the bottom, broad stroke, fast food, familiar coverage in bite sized morsels. When profit is removed from the equation, American news source quality improves: PBS and ProPublica are examples of high quality news coverage.
I wish I could include NPR as well, but their most informative news coverage by far is their rebroadcast of BBC World Service. The rest of their programming ratio seems to be 1/16th headline news summaries to 15/16th A Prairie Home Companion.
I've been surprised at how dismissive Slashdot has been of Chromebooks. The main criticism seems to have been how underpowered these things are compared to hardware at a similar price point. The second main criticism seems have been about how limited its apps options are.
The criticism has seemed surprisingly short-sighted. The price point, robustness of the OS (it has an impressively fast hard cycle, and restores all browser tabs that were open when you mashed the power button, should you ever need to actually shut it off), its battery lasts an order of magnitude longer than that of my previous laptops... it has serious appeal. Not just to clueless moms whose other "app" is the solitare game on their underpowered windows desktop, but also to the person who eventually notices that they spend 99% of their Macbook time... in a browser. Plus, chicklet keys.
In our area we have someone who's spliced a radio stations into the ground circuit for an entire city block. Makes it impossible to tone out wires at a few of our network racks -- we can't hear the trace tone over the salsa music.
That's an amusing problem. I'm not familiar with trace tones, but can you adjust the frequency of the tone to match a specific key? If you can set it to a telltale tone that is very dissonant to the common keys of salsa tunes (I believe they're usually in horn-friendly keys, like F, b-flat, and e-flat), a dissonant interval that rarely appears --such as a minor ninth-- it might make the song sound "out of tune" enough to hear the trace tone.
Sort of like adding a trace of toothpaste flavor into the gallons of orange juice. If it tastes/sounds "off", you've got a trace.
If you promote the quality of selfishness, you'll end up with a world of selfish people. Time to promote long-term altruism...
The problem is that selfishness promotes itself in the form of amassing wealth, luxury, and power, and conspicuous demonstrations of these things seem to appeal to base parts of human nature.
Docs was designed to eat Word's lunch. Sure, Word is more mature than Docs. Docs was created in an environment to compete with Word.
Besides hundreds of formatting functions, what does Word have that Docs lacks? And when was the last time you read something that came out of a local printer? Sure, Docs functions are not particularly mature, at this point. But Docs is free, and platform independent. Docs never relies on local device storage.
The useful features of Word are one part of the development path of Docs. The killer feature here is revenue stream. Docs gives the license away, and profits by mining ad data from original content. Word profits by selling you a license to use Word. Aside from the format compatibility issues, how many crucial Word 2012 features do you use that weren't present in Word '95? Why would a business pay for the same thing, repeatedly?
However, bread goes stale faster in the refrigerator because it speeds up the process of starch crystallization
I've heard the claim that bread goes faster in the fridge *a lot.* It even appeared on an episode of Big Bang Theory. Well, turns out Sheldon was wrong.
It's not accurate that bread stays fresher outside of the fridge, and this is easily testable and verifiable at home. Buy a loaf of bread. Use the same type of packaging --doesn't seem to matter as long as it's relatively airtight. Two breadbags if you have them, or even just put a couple slices in ziplock bags. Keep a few slices in the fridge, and a few outside of the fridge. Take a bite every few days, and notice how the texture develops over the course of time.
After about a week (often much sooner), the unrefrigerated bread will be unmistakably stale, or crumbly enough to be well on its way to stale. The refrigerated bread will still be noticeably fresher: it won't crumble or break as readily, and the texture will not have changed noticeably from the first day. Give them both another week or two if you're curious. Leave the unrefrigerated bread out until it goes fully stale, and you'll find that the bread in the fridge will still be quite moist. Bread in the fridge lasts for weeks.
While the fridge-stales-bread theory might hold true if you're leaving the bread out on unwrapped (because it's in a drier environment), in any relatively airtight container -- such as the bread bags that most bread comes in-- bread will stay fresh much longer in the fridge than it will outside of it.
Don't just take my word for it. Try it. This is one of those culinary conceptions (like letting wine "breathe") that is very easy to test, and where the difference is noticeable even to those with the crudest senses of taste and texture.
I wouldn't bother with Dewey or LOC call numbering, unless your collection approaches 10,000 or more books (about 800 shelf fee), or unless you want to be able to search your collection by subject heading. Just use alphanumeric ordering, either by title or author last name. Whichever you choose, decide ahead of time on the exceptions --whether to ignore titles that begin with articles (A, An, The), if compilations should default to editor or first listed author, etc. Have an exceptional shelving area for oversized books (anything that can't be faced on your normal shelves, see below.)
This requirement makes things more difficult for you:
Finally, as many of the books are old folios or fairly precious first editions, everything must be non-destructive and should be removable without damage to the books if need be.
RFID tags, barcodes, and stickers are nifty and serve useful purposes, but they usually cannot be removed from a surface without causing damage, particularly after the adhesive has cured. So you're talking custom book jackets for every book. Given your reluctance to go with RFID, think optical, such as UPC codes or QR codes... but carefully consider their purpose. It sounds like you basically just want to keep track of lending books out. It doesn't sound like you need subject searching capabilities for your collection, and it doesn't sound like you'll be circulating thousands of titles per year. So what would take less time over the remainder of your life span: manually entering a title and the borrower's name into a calendar (w/ a reminder set to go off after a ~4 weeks) a few times a year, or creating thousands of book jackets, cataloging the data, and syncing it with QR codes... then manually entering the name of the borrower? Or will you create a circulation account, and give your friends cards, as well? (You'll still need to enter their personal info once, anyway.)
So keep track of the physical collection this way: face your books. This means align them so that the spines rest at the edge of the shelf (rather than pushing them as far back as they can go.) While it won't fool a careful book thief, most people don't even notice when a shelf is faced. When shelved this way, it's easy to see what books have been dislodged. Keep track of your circulation by just entering borrower name/title into a google calendar as a future appointment, and have it set to email/text you a reminder to get it back.
It's not easy, but it can be done. The work of courts is complex. While it is inevitable that politics will on some level guide a court's composition, the task of a judge differs from that of a legislator or executive. It's rarely the kind of sexy work that makes big headlines, and judges are really supposed to avoid the grandstanding, campaigning, and sloganeering we're used to for legislative and executive elections.
So start searching for the work of your local trial, regional appellate, and state supreme courts as part of your newsgathering. This is usually easier with high profile cases, but the less sexy property disputes of local business bigshots will be a good source, too.
At trial, a judge is there to ensure the fairness of the process, not to guarantee a specific verdict. So you want to look at how they shape the process, rather outcomes. For example, the judge in the Colorado movie theater shootings eliminated cameras from the courtroom after that early hearing that resulted in orange-haired pictures being plastered all over the place. The sort of thing you should consider: do you think that kind of move will enhance the integrity of a fair trial, or do you think that it would be in the interest of justice for wide-open media access?
Once you get a better sense for what you think a good judge is, you can then investigate the records of various candidates to determine their qualification. Many will come from DA offices or large practices. Some will already have time on other benches, but you have to extrapolate how qualified they will be in ensuring a just process by their work as an advocate.
Good heavens, how could this be modded "informative"?Taking the story of your extortionist at face value is a very bad move. Let's talk it through.
An extra $1,000 or so later... you find out from the documentation that the "competitor" is in Lebanon, that the Lebanon legal system has no concept of tortious interference, their criminal evidence standards do not consider back stories and documentation from the actor to have any credibility, that extortion of $1,000 or so is the Lebanese equivalent of a nonviolent misdemeanor and that Lebanon has no extradition for misdemeanors, and when you spend even more money to try to pursue a civil action it turns out the documentation you paid a grand for is fraudulent and that there was no competitor, neither in Lebanon nor anywhere else to begin with.... etc.
I can keep going, but you'll need to pay me $500 to give you more detail.
Slashdot Mirror
It can help to understand and distinguish between Muslims and Islamists. Islamists are the often-violent fundamentalists, similar to the "Christians" who shoot abortion providers because, ah, the sanctity of life is so precious to them.
It's perfectly reasonable to aim any number of criticisms at Islam in general as it is to any other religion. The problem here is that by overstating the target --characterizing it as all of Islam, rather than the radical and violent subsets of it-- you tend to alienate potential allies.
As a non-US citizen that never went to the US, I'd like to propose something even more radical: ending the abomination of "extrajudicial killings" of non-US citizens too. It'd come a long way towards making most non-US citizens out there start ignoring, or even liking, the US again.
Something tells me that you probably wouldn't like the "intrajudicial" killing of non-US citizens all that much, either...
you should have told them the path to prosperity was; the North Korean government should completely and radically change from a multi-generational dictatorship to a representative Democracy and Capitalistic System, with the intent of reunification with their southern brothers. Close the Concentration Camps (Yes, I said Concentration Camps), get rid of the failed centralized economy, stop starving your citizens and stop trying to cling to power and accept that the citizens of NK probably would be much better off without the current NK government.
...because that totally would have worked. Just telling them that would have caused them to have a change of heart and divest themselves of power they've spent lifetimes accumulating.
However accurate your statements about what needs to happen might be (I think they are on the mark, if anything not comprehensive enough), who has ever responded positively to this kind of demand? To work with those who are both power-hungry and indisputably in charge of their domain, you need to appeal to their self-interest, not from your own sense of righteousness.
Too bad they tried to sneak it in. I bet there's a marketing ploy that could make horse meat burgers a profitable commodity. Haven't yet myself, but I'd really like to try horsemeat; some have said it's quite tasty. Personally I'd like to know how it compares to venison, a meat I very much enjoy.
It would be nice to have more accessible options for red meat than corn fed (or, for a premium, grass-fed) cow. I understand how fat and marbling affects flavor and texture, but it makes sense to me to train yourself to prefer healthier foods. It seems a fair assumption that horse meat will be a lot leaner than cow meat.
FDCPA Â 809. Validation of debts [15 USC 1692g]
(a) Within five days after the initial communication with a consumer in connection with the collection of any debt, a debt collector shall, unless the following information is contained in the initial communication or the consumer has paid the debt, send the consumer a written notice containing --
(1) the amount of the debt;
(2) the name of the creditor to whom the debt is owed;
(3) a statement that unless the consumer, within thirty days after receipt of the notice, disputes the validity of the debt, or any portion thereof, the debt will be assumed to be valid by the debt collector;
(4) a statement that if the consumer notifies the debt collector in writing within the thirty-day period that the debt, or any portion thereof, is disputed, the debt collector will obtain verification of the debt or a copy of a judgment against the consumer and a copy of such verification or judgment will be mailed to the consumer by the debt collector; and
(5) a statement that, upon the consumer's written request within the thirty-day period, the debt collector will provide the consumer with the name and address of the original creditor, if different from the current creditor.
(b) If the consumer notifies the debt collector in writing within the thirty-day period described in subsection (a) that the debt, or any portion thereof, is disputed, or that the consumer requests the name and address of the original creditor, the debt collector shall cease collection of the debt, or any disputed portion thereof, until the debt collector obtains verification of the debt or any copy of a judgment, or the name and address of the original creditor, and a copy of such verification or judgment, or name and address of the original creditor, is mailed to the consumer by the debt collector.
(c) The failure of a consumer to dispute the validity of a debt under this section may not be construed by any court as an admission of liability by the consumer.
I've found that the most effective way to get these kinds of wrong-person debt collection calls to stop is to tell the collector that they have to validate the debt. (It helps to read through the entire FDCPA, so you're familiar with the details.)
This is useful because of the way these kinds of bottom-feeder debt collection agencies work. They buy packages of debts from various companies for pennies on the dollar. The agency gets to keep any money they collect from these accounts. The cheapest past due accounts will usually not have much detail: the more likely an account will be successfully collected upon, the more expensive it is. Validating a debt --which they are legally obligated to do upon request-- requires enough time and effort on their part to make most accounts unprofitable, even when they have the right person. It usually makes more sense for them to not bother further, and to move on to the next debt on the list.
And even if they *do* validate the debt, they'll have handily furnished you with proof that the debt is not yours.
One measly zig? That's not going to efficiently couple my torque rotation constant. I want a crank with a minimum of five zigs and, for fuck's sake, a bare minimum of *three* zags... and that will be the "intro" model. The "pro" crank will come with seven zigs and five zags. The "custom" option will end the zigzags with a loop.
Throw in enough, and the bike will basically pedal itself. All I need to figure out now is how to perfect my shake weight handlebars. Still having problems with the braking on those things.
Thank you for your patience. That is quite a gracious reply to someone who devolved into caps-yelling, and a humbling one.
And I will readily grant you that the Clinton administration's surplus was very much a benefit of context. And after all, those were also the days of the Newt-led House.
Disgreeing about speculations of alternate futures are probably only useful in what they tell us about how we think. There is no way either of us can ever prove what would have happened, had things gone differently. I believe that some of the more disastrous aspects of W's administration would not have been part of a Gore presidency: specifically, disregarding the reports of Hans Blix and invading Iraq, as well as combining a military increase with a tax cut. Those are not particularly complicated issues, and the political benefits are/would have been clear to Gore. At least those points seem to me much more reasonable than the thought that Gore would have led us into Iraq and cut taxes the way W did. I do believe the housing and banking crushes wouldn't have differed much, if at all.
What I suppose might be the most frustrating is how the argument against voting compares to the 2000 Florida results. Basically the idea is either that your vote counts for so little that it will not affect the outcome -- and usually this is true, for any given individual. OR the idea is that elections are so corrupted that your vote will never count at all. What I see is that: there was one time when a presidential election hinged upon nine thousandths of a percent of a single state's voter outcome, and while antidemocratic electoral manipulation is a reality (as we continue to see in Florida, still), it is not in complete control of the outcome, but rather more like a thumb on a scale that can still be overcome.
My apologies, BlueStrat. I lost my temper, and declined into a useless form of discussion. I find the thought that Gore would have given us the same world as Bush (or a worse one) so ludicrous that it is difficult for me to treat it as a seriously, sincerely, and considered point of view.
As a result, my frustration got the better of me, and my apologies to you for that. Perhaps you really do believe what you've said. If so, you clearly have an idea of how strongly I disagree with you. I regret that the expression of my disagreement probably came off more as polarizing and judgmental than it did convincing.
Why would it be different with Gore than with Obama? Remember, Obama accused Bush of being irresponsible for wanting to raise the US debt ceiling.
I will point something out *again*. In the 2000 election, Gore had 8 years of experience in the executive office, as VP under Bill Clinton. During his time in executive office, the US created a budget *surplus*. With a budget surplus, a budget debt ceiling is unnecessary. Before his 8 years as VP, Gore was a US House Representative for 8 years, and a US Senator for 8 years. He has a long, and many would say a distinguished Congressional career.
It is certainly a consistent one. His 24 years of experience in federal office before the 2000 election gave him quite a record at the time of that election.
You seem to feel that it would be more reasonable to compare Al Gore circa 2000 to someone else entirely, with only four years of Congressional experience, than it is to compare 2000 circa Gore to the 1976-1999 Gore, with 8 years as a Rep, 8 years as a Senator, and 8 years as Veep.
But yes, since Obama promised something he actually didn't but you still see as a sort of betrayal, Gore similarly would have stepped directly into what history has labeled "the Bush doctrine", he would have invaded Iraq in response to 9-11 attacks by Saudi nationals based in Afghanistan, he would have pursued financial deregulation (the same regulation he helped put into place while in Congress), he would have JESUS FUCKING CHRIST DO I HAVE TO ACTUALLY CONTINUE WITH THIS IN A REASONABLE MANNER.
VOTE, YOU FUCKING ELIGIBLE-TO-VOTE ASSHOLES. IT MATTERS, IT REALLY DOES. IF YOU HAD VOTED IN 2000, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE A TSA TO BITCH ABOUT NOW. YOU DIDN'T THEN, AND THANKS TO YOU WE HAVE THE TSA. FUCK YOU FOR THAT.
If the point of this meat is to develop a new food source, overlooking the culinary uses of its own unique form could be a mistake. There might be excellent & tasty uses for meat jelly or even liquid meat that aren't currently possible with the cuts of tissue that we already know.
Gelatin is already prominent in food production, for example. It's possible that meat jelly could create similar structural effects while enhancing nutritional content.
One can't know of course, one can only speculate. But it seems reasonable to look to Gore's legislative and executive track records as both Congressman and VP, as well as to what lobbys proved to be most influential with him, for a fair guess.
Had Gore turned out to have the same foreign and domestic policy as Bush, it would have been extremely inconsistent with his past actions.
That's fine because voting is the same as not voting at all too.
How anyone can maintain this perspective, given that Bush -v- Gore hinged on a vote margin of 0.009%, of the state electorate, AND that the results of that election directly resulted in the TSA... it just baffles me. Yes, your vote might technically matter a mere fraction of a percentage. AAAND there is one excellent, obvious example where a 0.01% difference would have resulted in a dramatically different outcome.
Please try this mental exercise: reconsider your position on the importance of voting as you imagine how the country and the world would have been different had President Bush Jr., VP Cheney, Secretary of State Rice, Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito, AG Gonzales, et al never been a reality.
Al Jazeera are vastly better than American news networks . . . . I cannot watch CNN for more than a couple of minutes at a time. The other news channels don't even get a look in. It's the BBC World Service, Al Jazeera, or nothing, I'm sorry to say.
Very much agreed. I believe what explains the difference in quality is the source of funding. BBC & AJ do not have to rely on ad revenue. For profit American news networks do, and the most profitable ad revenue entertainment model appears to pretty consistently be race to the bottom, broad stroke, fast food, familiar coverage in bite sized morsels. When profit is removed from the equation, American news source quality improves: PBS and ProPublica are examples of high quality news coverage.
I wish I could include NPR as well, but their most informative news coverage by far is their rebroadcast of BBC World Service. The rest of their programming ratio seems to be 1/16th headline news summaries to 15/16th A Prairie Home Companion.
I've been surprised at how dismissive Slashdot has been of Chromebooks. The main criticism seems to have been how underpowered these things are compared to hardware at a similar price point. The second main criticism seems have been about how limited its apps options are.
The criticism has seemed surprisingly short-sighted. The price point, robustness of the OS (it has an impressively fast hard cycle, and restores all browser tabs that were open when you mashed the power button, should you ever need to actually shut it off), its battery lasts an order of magnitude longer than that of my previous laptops... it has serious appeal. Not just to clueless moms whose other "app" is the solitare game on their underpowered windows desktop, but also to the person who eventually notices that they spend 99% of their Macbook time... in a browser. Plus, chicklet keys.
With a new woman. His obsession will fade, and the domains will expire.
In our area we have someone who's spliced a radio stations into the ground circuit for an entire city block. Makes it impossible to tone out wires at a few of our network racks -- we can't hear the trace tone over the salsa music.
That's an amusing problem. I'm not familiar with trace tones, but can you adjust the frequency of the tone to match a specific key? If you can set it to a telltale tone that is very dissonant to the common keys of salsa tunes (I believe they're usually in horn-friendly keys, like F, b-flat, and e-flat), a dissonant interval that rarely appears --such as a minor ninth-- it might make the song sound "out of tune" enough to hear the trace tone.
Sort of like adding a trace of toothpaste flavor into the gallons of orange juice. If it tastes/sounds "off", you've got a trace.
If you promote the quality of selfishness, you'll end up with a world of selfish people. Time to promote long-term altruism...
The problem is that selfishness promotes itself in the form of amassing wealth, luxury, and power, and conspicuous demonstrations of these things seem to appeal to base parts of human nature.
Not sure I'm getting your gist. Can you try a car metaphor?
Docs was designed to eat Word's lunch. Sure, Word is more mature than Docs. Docs was created in an environment to compete with Word.
Besides hundreds of formatting functions, what does Word have that Docs lacks? And when was the last time you read something that came out of a local printer? Sure, Docs functions are not particularly mature, at this point. But Docs is free, and platform independent. Docs never relies on local device storage.
The useful features of Word are one part of the development path of Docs. The killer feature here is revenue stream. Docs gives the license away, and profits by mining ad data from original content. Word profits by selling you a license to use Word. Aside from the format compatibility issues, how many crucial Word 2012 features do you use that weren't present in Word '95? Why would a business pay for the same thing, repeatedly?
However, bread goes stale faster in the refrigerator because it speeds up the process of starch crystallization
I've heard the claim that bread goes faster in the fridge *a lot.* It even appeared on an episode of Big Bang Theory. Well, turns out Sheldon was wrong.
It's not accurate that bread stays fresher outside of the fridge, and this is easily testable and verifiable at home. Buy a loaf of bread. Use the same type of packaging --doesn't seem to matter as long as it's relatively airtight. Two breadbags if you have them, or even just put a couple slices in ziplock bags. Keep a few slices in the fridge, and a few outside of the fridge. Take a bite every few days, and notice how the texture develops over the course of time.
After about a week (often much sooner), the unrefrigerated bread will be unmistakably stale, or crumbly enough to be well on its way to stale. The refrigerated bread will still be noticeably fresher: it won't crumble or break as readily, and the texture will not have changed noticeably from the first day. Give them both another week or two if you're curious. Leave the unrefrigerated bread out until it goes fully stale, and you'll find that the bread in the fridge will still be quite moist. Bread in the fridge lasts for weeks.
While the fridge-stales-bread theory might hold true if you're leaving the bread out on unwrapped (because it's in a drier environment), in any relatively airtight container -- such as the bread bags that most bread comes in-- bread will stay fresh much longer in the fridge than it will outside of it.
Don't just take my word for it. Try it. This is one of those culinary conceptions (like letting wine "breathe") that is very easy to test, and where the difference is noticeable even to those with the crudest senses of taste and texture.
I've been holding an invisibility demo in the downtown area of a major city for over a week straight now, and nobody's noticed yet. It's going great!
This requirement makes things more difficult for you:
Finally, as many of the books are old folios or fairly precious first editions, everything must be non-destructive and should be removable without damage to the books if need be.
RFID tags, barcodes, and stickers are nifty and serve useful purposes, but they usually cannot be removed from a surface without causing damage, particularly after the adhesive has cured. So you're talking custom book jackets for every book. Given your reluctance to go with RFID, think optical, such as UPC codes or QR codes... but carefully consider their purpose. It sounds like you basically just want to keep track of lending books out. It doesn't sound like you need subject searching capabilities for your collection, and it doesn't sound like you'll be circulating thousands of titles per year. So what would take less time over the remainder of your life span: manually entering a title and the borrower's name into a calendar (w/ a reminder set to go off after a ~4 weeks) a few times a year, or creating thousands of book jackets, cataloging the data, and syncing it with QR codes... then manually entering the name of the borrower? Or will you create a circulation account, and give your friends cards, as well? (You'll still need to enter their personal info once, anyway.)
So keep track of the physical collection this way: face your books. This means align them so that the spines rest at the edge of the shelf (rather than pushing them as far back as they can go.) While it won't fool a careful book thief, most people don't even notice when a shelf is faced. When shelved this way, it's easy to see what books have been dislodged. Keep track of your circulation by just entering borrower name/title into a google calendar as a future appointment, and have it set to email/text you a reminder to get it back.
It's not easy, but it can be done. The work of courts is complex. While it is inevitable that politics will on some level guide a court's composition, the task of a judge differs from that of a legislator or executive. It's rarely the kind of sexy work that makes big headlines, and judges are really supposed to avoid the grandstanding, campaigning, and sloganeering we're used to for legislative and executive elections.
So start searching for the work of your local trial, regional appellate, and state supreme courts as part of your newsgathering. This is usually easier with high profile cases, but the less sexy property disputes of local business bigshots will be a good source, too.
At trial, a judge is there to ensure the fairness of the process, not to guarantee a specific verdict. So you want to look at how they shape the process, rather outcomes. For example, the judge in the Colorado movie theater shootings eliminated cameras from the courtroom after that early hearing that resulted in orange-haired pictures being plastered all over the place. The sort of thing you should consider: do you think that kind of move will enhance the integrity of a fair trial, or do you think that it would be in the interest of justice for wide-open media access?
Once you get a better sense for what you think a good judge is, you can then investigate the records of various candidates to determine their qualification. Many will come from DA offices or large practices. Some will already have time on other benches, but you have to extrapolate how qualified they will be in ensuring a just process by their work as an advocate.
Good heavens, how could this be modded "informative"?Taking the story of your extortionist at face value is a very bad move. Let's talk it through.
An extra $1,000 or so later... you find out from the documentation that the "competitor" is in Lebanon, that the Lebanon legal system has no concept of tortious interference, their criminal evidence standards do not consider back stories and documentation from the actor to have any credibility, that extortion of $1,000 or so is the Lebanese equivalent of a nonviolent misdemeanor and that Lebanon has no extradition for misdemeanors, and when you spend even more money to try to pursue a civil action it turns out the documentation you paid a grand for is fraudulent and that there was no competitor, neither in Lebanon nor anywhere else to begin with.... etc.
I can keep going, but you'll need to pay me $500 to give you more detail.