I have to object to your assertion that theories of evolution (I intentionally use the plural, as many details of its progress and operation are still open areas of research) do not yield testable predictions. In fact, many observations of the natural world in myriad fields of study -- all subsequent to the formulation of evolution -- have been in accord with its predictions. I give an excerpt from a longer post of mine made at The Bonehead Compendium:
In addition, evolutionary theory did make a number of predictions that were born out by subsequent empirical observations. The occurrence of microevolution is one of them. We have also observed speciation in the wild and in the laboratory, in accordance with evolutionary predictions. More precisely, given populations of the same species (i.e. successfully interbreeding) that are then reproductively separated from one another and subjected to different selection pressures, it has been observed that they will fail to interbreed upon reintroduction to one another. This, in turn, means that speciation has occurred. I refer you to paper to the following papers on the yellow monkey flower [1], fruit flies [2], and rat worms[3].
The existence of vestigial organs is also a phenomenon explained by evolution. Indeed, it is also a phenomenon not well explained by ID, as their superfluous nature contradicts any principles of utilitarian design. The hind limbs of whales are some of the best examples of this, and it is likely the case that the human appendix is one such structure.
Comparative embryology also offers observations that are well explained by evolution. The gill-like structures found on the human embryo serve no purpose in embryonic development except to develop into other structures with significantly different morphology. The existence of these structures in the embryos of a vast catalog of other species is also explained. A piscine common ancestry which is manifested during development makes this phenomenon comprehensible.
These observations, and countless others, are made significantly more comprehensible by the application of an evolutionary paradigm.
The full post and the exchange prompting it are available here. I wish I could revise it, as I fired it off pretty quickly and now lament the quality of the writing. I still stand by the argument and the evidence.
What you have there is a convection oven, a nifty little appliance that integrates a fan into your run-of-the-mill oven. This, in turn, allows for more even heating and a higher rate of heat transfer (i.e. faster cooking). 25 degrees is a common approximation of the gain of a convection oven over its conventional counterpart, though this gain is actually neither constant nor linear.
I'm a bit bugged that so many Slashdotters couldn't put this together, either blaming calibration, altitude, or errant physical constants. Kitchen technology is technology, too -- often cool technology to boot. Maybe there's something to that "gender roles" thing after all.
(Full disclosure -- I'm a twenty-four year old male with an engineering degree. Though I do love being in the kitchen. Maybe I should follow Winnie's lead and do a cookbook for single male computer scientists. These guys are already leading the way.
Take a closer look at the case law. Firstly, it's not companies that are supposedly regarded as people. It's corporations that we're talking about here, and this is a much broader set of entities with a specific definition, i.e. they have been chartered by the state (in this case, a U.S. State). Now the argument is not as to whether corporations are flesh and blood "people", nor can one deny that many of these entities are subject to regulations that an actual person is subject to. However, many of these regulations are imposed for reasons unrelated to their corporate status. For instance, the requirement to publish financial reports is imposed on companies that are publicly traded - it is by virtue of this status that the extra requirement is imposed. Conversely, most privately held corporations have no requirement to publish financial statements to the public. Instead, they do their taxes as an individual must, though they must do their taxes differently by virtue of their corporate nature.
What many people have an issue with (and I get the sense you wish to tar these with you broad brush) is that a corporation are guaranteed the natural rights of a person, most especially those guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment when it says,
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
That a corporation is eligible for these protections is not immediately obvious; after all, you say that they are obviously not people. However, a little decision by the name of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad included a "statement of fact" to the effect that a corporation was entitled to fourteenth amendment protections. This has extended to corporate entities those rights that are guaranteed an actual person. That this was the case was not "obvious" at the time, and many people continue to question this now.
By the way, you should realize when you say "[Corporations] are not regarded as people" that the ability of an entity which is not in fact a human being to enter into contracts and act as a party before the law is granted by way of the legal fiction that these entities may in fact be regarded as people for these purposes. The doctrine of artificial personhood is well documented in common law, as well as the recognition that this personhood is artificial. So, I must reply to your assertion by reminding you that whether or not a corporation is regarded as a person is a question of context - a context you failed to establish. That is to say, there are no separate laws for corporations - only circumstances under which a corporation is or is not a person.
That an entity that represents a set of indemnified stakeholders should be entitled to federal protections of speech, of property, or of civil rights (as they are now) is not so obvious to me. Especially considering that it cannot be thrown in prison or otherwise punished in the ways a corporeal person can. Nor is it obvious that the fourteenth amendment should protect corporate charters from amendment or revocation by the very states that chartered them in the first place. It is especially vexing to think of a moral reason for an entity which is effectively immortal, vastly more resourceful than an individual, not subject to the privations of an individual, and that lacks the mortal conscience of an individual to be granted a full set of rights with which to contest those of actual individuals.
There are other ways to ensure the political compliance of the intelligence community. It's funny you should mention the CIA; in the wake of Porter Goss's resignation, Sidney Blumenthal wrote a piece for Spiegel Online that can be found at http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,15 18,415638,00.html which discussed the recent history of the agency. Rather than stacking it with loyalists, the current administration is attempting to gut the CIA and transfer the lion's share of its duties to the Pentagon. The current culture of the U.S. armed forces is much more amenable to the administration's agenda than CIA could ever be, and whatever civics training that its personnel have matters little in face of their adherence to the chain of command.
In reality, the administration has very nearly accomplished the objective you allude to, i.e. the elimination of whatever respect for the rights of Americans that the intelligence community still has. They have simply been more clever about it. The Spiegel article makes clear that these actions are very serious; I can only hope that the backlash you speak of will actually become manifest.
The TV tower in Berlin's Alexanderplatz has some pretty decent food in the restaurant up top. I particularly liked the sautéed rabbit. Maybe slightly overpriced, but not nearly so much as in your other examples. Honestly, I think plenty of other restaurants at ground level on Alexanderplatz are much worse for your money. Plus, getting a table for three at 6PM on a Thursday took no more than five minutes (i.e. no reservations necessary). That, and the aerial view of Berlin is positively spectacular. You can really get a sense of the living history of the city.
By the by, this is obviously one of the great date locations in Berlin. My Berliner friends report high rates of success when having dined there. If it's really as successful at getting you laid as they say, then what you're paying is an absolute bargain.
The difference between the two films should come as no surprise upon taking into account the difference in directors; the first ("The Bourne Identity") was directed by Doug Liman. This is the man who shot "Swingers" on $250,000 and managed to make it look as good as it did. It's this background in low budget, independent film that allows him to pull all the hand cam shooting in Identity off; he uses the hand cam as an obstacle that he has to overcome. Because of his experience in doing exactly that, he can give the audience focus and interesting frame composition while also achieving that kinetic and gritty effect that you tend to get from a hand cam.
Greengrass, on the other hand, seems to be trying to imitate Liman's style without having much of a taste for it himself; he's even recruited the same cinematographer and camera crew that Liman used in the first film. When he decides that a given shot or sequence should be done with a handheld, all he cares about doing is letting the audience know that he's using a handheld. At these times, he completely shirks his role as the principal storyteller - look at the hand-to-hand combat in Supremacy between Bourne and the other treadstone vet. In essence, Greengrass is doing a Liman impression, and one of the keys to doing impressions is exaggeration.
If they make the third film, I hope the either brng back Liman or find someone with the courage to shoot it with their own cinematic style.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to object to your assertion that theories of evolution (I intentionally use the plural, as many details of its progress and operation are still open areas of research) do not yield testable predictions. In fact, many observations of the natural world in myriad fields of study -- all subsequent to the formulation of evolution -- have been in accord with its predictions. I give an excerpt from a longer post of mine made at The Bonehead Compendium:
The full post and the exchange prompting it are available here. I wish I could revise it, as I fired it off pretty quickly and now lament the quality of the writing. I still stand by the argument and the evidence.
What you have there is a convection oven, a nifty little appliance that integrates a fan into your run-of-the-mill oven. This, in turn, allows for more even heating and a higher rate of heat transfer (i.e. faster cooking). 25 degrees is a common approximation of the gain of a convection oven over its conventional counterpart, though this gain is actually neither constant nor linear.
I'm a bit bugged that so many Slashdotters couldn't put this together, either blaming calibration, altitude, or errant physical constants. Kitchen technology is technology, too -- often cool technology to boot. Maybe there's something to that "gender roles" thing after all.
(Full disclosure -- I'm a twenty-four year old male with an engineering degree. Though I do love being in the kitchen. Maybe I should follow Winnie's lead and do a cookbook for single male computer scientists. These guys are already leading the way.
Take a closer look at the case law. Firstly, it's not companies that are supposedly regarded as people. It's corporations that we're talking about here, and this is a much broader set of entities with a specific definition, i.e. they have been chartered by the state (in this case, a U.S. State). Now the argument is not as to whether corporations are flesh and blood "people", nor can one deny that many of these entities are subject to regulations that an actual person is subject to. However, many of these regulations are imposed for reasons unrelated to their corporate status. For instance, the requirement to publish financial reports is imposed on companies that are publicly traded - it is by virtue of this status that the extra requirement is imposed. Conversely, most privately held corporations have no requirement to publish financial statements to the public. Instead, they do their taxes as an individual must, though they must do their taxes differently by virtue of their corporate nature.
What many people have an issue with (and I get the sense you wish to tar these with you broad brush) is that a corporation are guaranteed the natural rights of a person, most especially those guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment when it says,
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
That a corporation is eligible for these protections is not immediately obvious; after all, you say that they are obviously not people. However, a little decision by the name of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad included a "statement of fact" to the effect that a corporation was entitled to fourteenth amendment protections. This has extended to corporate entities those rights that are guaranteed an actual person. That this was the case was not "obvious" at the time, and many people continue to question this now.
By the way, you should realize when you say "[Corporations] are not regarded as people" that the ability of an entity which is not in fact a human being to enter into contracts and act as a party before the law is granted by way of the legal fiction that these entities may in fact be regarded as people for these purposes. The doctrine of artificial personhood is well documented in common law, as well as the recognition that this personhood is artificial. So, I must reply to your assertion by reminding you that whether or not a corporation is regarded as a person is a question of context - a context you failed to establish. That is to say, there are no separate laws for corporations - only circumstances under which a corporation is or is not a person.
That an entity that represents a set of indemnified stakeholders should be entitled to federal protections of speech, of property, or of civil rights (as they are now) is not so obvious to me. Especially considering that it cannot be thrown in prison or otherwise punished in the ways a corporeal person can. Nor is it obvious that the fourteenth amendment should protect corporate charters from amendment or revocation by the very states that chartered them in the first place. It is especially vexing to think of a moral reason for an entity which is effectively immortal, vastly more resourceful than an individual, not subject to the privations of an individual, and that lacks the mortal conscience of an individual to be granted a full set of rights with which to contest those of actual individuals.
As for what is "right"
"In Soviet Russia, the means of production seize you!"
I'm so sorry to have posted that. But you asked for it.
There are other ways to ensure the political compliance of the intelligence community. It's funny you should mention the CIA; in the wake of Porter Goss's resignation, Sidney Blumenthal wrote a piece for Spiegel Online that can be found at http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,15 18,415638,00.html which discussed the recent history of the agency. Rather than stacking it with loyalists, the current administration is attempting to gut the CIA and transfer the lion's share of its duties to the Pentagon. The current culture of the U.S. armed forces is much more amenable to the administration's agenda than CIA could ever be, and whatever civics training that its personnel have matters little in face of their adherence to the chain of command.
In reality, the administration has very nearly accomplished the objective you allude to, i.e. the elimination of whatever respect for the rights of Americans that the intelligence community still has. They have simply been more clever about it. The Spiegel article makes clear that these actions are very serious; I can only hope that the backlash you speak of will actually become manifest.
The TV tower in Berlin's Alexanderplatz has some pretty decent food in the restaurant up top. I particularly liked the sautéed rabbit. Maybe slightly overpriced, but not nearly so much as in your other examples. Honestly, I think plenty of other restaurants at ground level on Alexanderplatz are much worse for your money. Plus, getting a table for three at 6PM on a Thursday took no more than five minutes (i.e. no reservations necessary). That, and the aerial view of Berlin is positively spectacular. You can really get a sense of the living history of the city.
By the by, this is obviously one of the great date locations in Berlin. My Berliner friends report high rates of success when having dined there. If it's really as successful at getting you laid as they say, then what you're paying is an absolute bargain.
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version 3.12
GB/CS/E/FA/IT/L/MU/PA/P/S/SS d--(++) s:+ a-- C++++ ULSB++++ P+++(--) L++>++++ E+>++ W++ N+ o? K++ w(--) !O M+@ V-- PS+@ PE Y+>++ PGP++>+++ t+@ S+ X++ R@ tv-- b+>+++ DI+++ D++ G+>++ e+>++ h(-) r% y?
-----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
The difference between the two films should come as no surprise upon taking into account the difference in directors; the first ("The Bourne Identity") was directed by Doug Liman. This is the man who shot "Swingers" on $250,000 and managed to make it look as good as it did. It's this background in low budget, independent film that allows him to pull all the hand cam shooting in Identity off; he uses the hand cam as an obstacle that he has to overcome. Because of his experience in doing exactly that, he can give the audience focus and interesting frame composition while also achieving that kinetic and gritty effect that you tend to get from a hand cam.
Greengrass, on the other hand, seems to be trying to imitate Liman's style without having much of a taste for it himself; he's even recruited the same cinematographer and camera crew that Liman used in the first film. When he decides that a given shot or sequence should be done with a handheld, all he cares about doing is letting the audience know that he's using a handheld. At these times, he completely shirks his role as the principal storyteller - look at the hand-to-hand combat in Supremacy between Bourne and the other treadstone vet. In essence, Greengrass is doing a Liman impression, and one of the keys to doing impressions is exaggeration.
If they make the third film, I hope the either brng back Liman or find someone with the courage to shoot it with their own cinematic style.