Reminds me of one Michael Caine's most brilliant ripostes. When asked about what he thought of Jaws 4, he replied "I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
Lou Grant: What religion are you? Mary Richards: Mr. Grant, I don't quite know how to say this, but you're not allowed to ask that when someone's applying for a job. It's against the law. Lou Grant [lifts phone receiver]: Wanna call a cop? Mary Richards: No. Lou Grant: Good. Would you think I was violating your civil rights if I asked if you're married? Mary Richards: Presbyterian.
And what if a potential employer demands access to your email accounts? That's apparently been happening as well. The real solution here is a legislative one, banning the practice.
Indeed. I think if we want have these strict copyright laws, there should be equally harsh penalties when someone attempts to copyright the uncopyrightable or claim copyright on something they do not have rights. How about a fine ten thousand times the size of the damages demanded and immediate and permanent disbarment of the complaint's lawyer(s).
Pi is for losers. Music based on Euler's number, now those are symphonies. Oh, and if I catch one of you pirating thieves trying to steal my Euler tune, I'm gonna get all kinds of ACTA on your asses.
They did make a relatively faithful mini-series adaptation of the first two novels, but the acting was astonishingly bad. Lynch's film, for all the bizarre proprieties it took with the story, at least had the atmosphere of the novel down pat.
Jefferson is the one who came up with the description "wall of separation". Madison, who likely actually wrote the First Amendment, also made clear what the intent was:
Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contary to their conscience, or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform.
- Annals of Congress, Sat Aug 15th, 1789 pages 730 - 731
The Founding Fathers made no secret of the purpose of the Establishment Clause, and SCOTUS has had a sure guide. It is pure bullshit to say that the Establishment Clause is not clear and that the Framers were somehow sitting on a fence. They wanted to make sure that no man in the United States of America would ever be subjected to the kinds of abuses that had been seen in England, and from time to time even in the Colonies. This wasn't some wishy-washy generic kinda-sorta-shouldn't-promote-religion thing, this was men like Madison and Jefferson making clear what the Establishment Clause was to mean.
So putting stickers on biology books, requiring teachers to claim scientific controversy where there is none, trying to pass of Intelligent Design as something other than Creationism, or in general any of the tricks used by the Creationist movement to use the classroom as a tool to proselytize to children violate that wall of separation, and the Founding Fathers make clear that the government is not, in Madison's own words to establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform.
I think the meaning is very clear. It's just that certain groups don't like the meaning, so try to play games with the language to make it mean something less than they and everyone else knows the intent to be.
But boy, try the same thing with their precious Bible, and see the feathers fly.
It's a good thing there is over two centuries of jurisprudence surrounding the First Amendment, so the court already has a lot of case history to go by, and Jefferson's wall of separation, so heavily implied in the text of the First Amendment, is how the Supreme Court interprets it. And since there's no mistaking that ultimately it is the Supreme Court that tests constitutionality, I'm not sure why anyone thinks there is a problem.
I never said they were in universal agreement on everything. The Federalist papers and other records of the time show that. And yet, no one at the time contested Jefferson's interpretation of the First Amendment's intentions. It is only with the rise of a sort of Constitutional literalism where if you go outside of the Constitution itself to find context to a clause in the Constitution to create a ruling, you're somehow some anti-constitutional heathen. It's not like SCOTUS has been consulting the stars, they invoked the writings of Madison, Jefferson et al to frame the discussion of the breadth and intention of the First Amendment.
The people you speak of were Supreme Court justices who used the opinions and explanations of the Framers to inform their decisions. You see, unlike people like Ron Paul, SCOTUS justices actually are interested in context, and not just in mindless religious interpretations of the Constitution.
Did they need to, and is not the Supreme Court permitted to look at the opinions of those that wrote the Bill of Rights to underline intent. Courts can look at old decisions to build a body of case law and interpretation, and so it follows that from that concept stems the one where if one of the authors of a constitutional clause has on record explaining the meaning and intent, ought that not have the same weight?
Whether you can or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is the science, which does not make statements one way or the other on the existence of God. If you have some creator entity that you think is falsifiable, then by all means provide your evidence, predictions you can make and ways in which it could be falsified. You know, do some bloody science.
Except of course Jefferson himself (one of the authors of the Bill of Rights) made it very clear what the authors' intentions were, and it was very much a "wall of separation" (his words).
That is until it goes once again to Federal Court, the Creationists are once again handed their asses on the state ends up having to fork over all kinds of money in damages and legal fees. Ah well, they can always blame pro-active courts legislating from the bench blah blah blah blah.
No, because I think despite his obvious lack of talent, Wood actually loved making films. His films are bad, but there's a sincerity to them. He had to know that he was never going to make it big, that even B film directors thought he was a joke, but he kept going not because of success, but despite a total lack of it.
Bay, on the other hand, seems to me to be a cynical operator. He's got this demographic that is outrageously profitable, and he's just pushing the garbage at them as long as they'll take it. I can't get it myself. There's no care to them, no thoughtfulness, so sense that even if he is a shitty filmmaker that somewhere in his heart beats a little love for the cinema.
We're talking about a guy who makes films where a long shot is what, 40 or 50 seconds? I mean, how does someone edit a film like Transformers 2 without suffering epileptic seizures? It's a lot of explosions, bangs, crashes, dialogue so wooden and awful that even George Lucas seems like Grade A scriptwriter. From even a strictly mechanics point of view, his films have scenes that are about as sensible as filming someone throwing paint at a wall and speeding it up four or five times.
I know I know. I sound like one of those kinds of guys that don't get it, and you're right, I don't get it. I mean, I've seen my share of awful films, and even took part in bad film nights where you'd watch the kinds of movies that MST3K would eventually parody, but at least there was some notion of composition, of balance, of trying to make shots that made sense from even a geometrical point of view. I literally do not think Michael Bay actually knows how to make a film.
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Reminds me of one Michael Caine's most brilliant ripostes. When asked about what he thought of Jaws 4, he replied "I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
One of the great moments in TV history:
Lou Grant: What religion are you?
Mary Richards: Mr. Grant, I don't quite know how to say this, but you're not allowed to ask that when someone's applying for a job. It's against the law.
Lou Grant [lifts phone receiver]: Wanna call a cop?
Mary Richards: No.
Lou Grant: Good. Would you think I was violating your civil rights if I asked if you're married?
Mary Richards: Presbyterian.
And what if a potential employer demands access to your email accounts? That's apparently been happening as well. The real solution here is a legislative one, banning the practice.
Not for very bloody long.
Indeed. I think if we want have these strict copyright laws, there should be equally harsh penalties when someone attempts to copyright the uncopyrightable or claim copyright on something they do not have rights. How about a fine ten thousand times the size of the damages demanded and immediate and permanent disbarment of the complaint's lawyer(s).
Pi is for losers. Music based on Euler's number, now those are symphonies. Oh, and if I catch one of you pirating thieves trying to steal my Euler tune, I'm gonna get all kinds of ACTA on your asses.
They did make a relatively faithful mini-series adaptation of the first two novels, but the acting was astonishingly bad. Lynch's film, for all the bizarre proprieties it took with the story, at least had the atmosphere of the novel down pat.
Not very far from the truth at all.
Jefferson is the one who came up with the description "wall of separation". Madison, who likely actually wrote the First Amendment, also made clear what the intent was:
- Annals of Congress, Sat Aug 15th, 1789 pages 730 - 731
The Founding Fathers made no secret of the purpose of the Establishment Clause, and SCOTUS has had a sure guide. It is pure bullshit to say that the Establishment Clause is not clear and that the Framers were somehow sitting on a fence. They wanted to make sure that no man in the United States of America would ever be subjected to the kinds of abuses that had been seen in England, and from time to time even in the Colonies. This wasn't some wishy-washy generic kinda-sorta-shouldn't-promote-religion thing, this was men like Madison and Jefferson making clear what the Establishment Clause was to mean.
So putting stickers on biology books, requiring teachers to claim scientific controversy where there is none, trying to pass of Intelligent Design as something other than Creationism, or in general any of the tricks used by the Creationist movement to use the classroom as a tool to proselytize to children violate that wall of separation, and the Founding Fathers make clear that the government is not, in Madison's own words to establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform.
I think the meaning is very clear. It's just that certain groups don't like the meaning, so try to play games with the language to make it mean something less than they and everyone else knows the intent to be.
But boy, try the same thing with their precious Bible, and see the feathers fly.
It's been a week since the last Raspberry Pi article, quick, let's create another that doesn't have much to say!
I had a girlfriend like that once. She'd phone me up in the middle of the night to see if I still loved her.
Too bad you got lost on the way to your little meet and great and ended up in your parents bedroom instead.
It's a good thing there is over two centuries of jurisprudence surrounding the First Amendment, so the court already has a lot of case history to go by, and Jefferson's wall of separation, so heavily implied in the text of the First Amendment, is how the Supreme Court interprets it. And since there's no mistaking that ultimately it is the Supreme Court that tests constitutionality, I'm not sure why anyone thinks there is a problem.
I never said they were in universal agreement on everything. The Federalist papers and other records of the time show that. And yet, no one at the time contested Jefferson's interpretation of the First Amendment's intentions. It is only with the rise of a sort of Constitutional literalism where if you go outside of the Constitution itself to find context to a clause in the Constitution to create a ruling, you're somehow some anti-constitutional heathen. It's not like SCOTUS has been consulting the stars, they invoked the writings of Madison, Jefferson et al to frame the discussion of the breadth and intention of the First Amendment.
The people you speak of were Supreme Court justices who used the opinions and explanations of the Framers to inform their decisions. You see, unlike people like Ron Paul, SCOTUS justices actually are interested in context, and not just in mindless religious interpretations of the Constitution.
Except obviously it does matter, because SCOTUS has used the metacomments to inform First Amendment decisions for years.
Did they need to, and is not the Supreme Court permitted to look at the opinions of those that wrote the Bill of Rights to underline intent. Courts can look at old decisions to build a body of case law and interpretation, and so it follows that from that concept stems the one where if one of the authors of a constitutional clause has on record explaining the meaning and intent, ought that not have the same weight?
There is no theory of Creationism. It is not science, therefore it has no place in the science class room.
And a smaller group of con-artists willfully misusing the word.
Whether you can or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is the science, which does not make statements one way or the other on the existence of God. If you have some creator entity that you think is falsifiable, then by all means provide your evidence, predictions you can make and ways in which it could be falsified. You know, do some bloody science.
Except of course Jefferson himself (one of the authors of the Bill of Rights) made it very clear what the authors' intentions were, and it was very much a "wall of separation" (his words).
That is until it goes once again to Federal Court, the Creationists are once again handed their asses on the state ends up having to fork over all kinds of money in damages and legal fees. Ah well, they can always blame pro-active courts legislating from the bench blah blah blah blah.
Actually Darwin himself disproved Lamarckian descent.
No, because I think despite his obvious lack of talent, Wood actually loved making films. His films are bad, but there's a sincerity to them. He had to know that he was never going to make it big, that even B film directors thought he was a joke, but he kept going not because of success, but despite a total lack of it.
Bay, on the other hand, seems to me to be a cynical operator. He's got this demographic that is outrageously profitable, and he's just pushing the garbage at them as long as they'll take it. I can't get it myself. There's no care to them, no thoughtfulness, so sense that even if he is a shitty filmmaker that somewhere in his heart beats a little love for the cinema.
We're talking about a guy who makes films where a long shot is what, 40 or 50 seconds? I mean, how does someone edit a film like Transformers 2 without suffering epileptic seizures? It's a lot of explosions, bangs, crashes, dialogue so wooden and awful that even George Lucas seems like Grade A scriptwriter. From even a strictly mechanics point of view, his films have scenes that are about as sensible as filming someone throwing paint at a wall and speeding it up four or five times.
I know I know. I sound like one of those kinds of guys that don't get it, and you're right, I don't get it. I mean, I've seen my share of awful films, and even took part in bad film nights where you'd watch the kinds of movies that MST3K would eventually parody, but at least there was some notion of composition, of balance, of trying to make shots that made sense from even a geometrical point of view. I literally do not think Michael Bay actually knows how to make a film.
The Palladium roleplaying game was pretty awesome too