Me neither, but I have to admit that I'm the only person I know who is still using a desktop. Even my geek friends have switched. I suppose I might if I was thinking I needed more power and laptops had come down in price to the cost of a new motherboard, processor, and RAM. Otherwise I'll just do what I usually do, and upgrade the internals. Also I'd miss my Model M keyboard... Nope, I'm just going to evolve into the old geezer using the antiquated tech and shaking my cane at the kids on the lawn.
Yep, but in fairness, the RC's settled down considerably with the Protestant Reformation. After that the chief evil of the office was protecting pederasts, which is still pretty bad, but their hold over 'Christendom' was considerably weakened.
Unfortunately, I don't see Islam getting a reformation. With the Protestant reformation entire nation states effectively said, 'screw that noise' and came up with some version of Christianity light. In this day and age, Moslem nation states are more likely to choose moderate Islam as their 'light' version. That can look like progress, but the problem is that it's more easily reversible than a switch to something else, whereas the Protestant Reformation proved to be irreversible.
It would be nice to believe that the moderates in Islam could create an enduring global transformation of Islam, but at this point in history, I don't see how.
I'm sorry, the "US" Great Lakes? Did you guys annex them or something? Did you forget you actually SHARE 4 out of 5 of those lakes?
Perhaps it refers to a lesser volume, just the water in the US portion of the Great Lakes. Might be clearer if they just used some sort of volume measure. I'm not sure how much water is in the Great lakes, Canadian portion, American portion, or the two combined, anyway.
James Joyce defined pornographic art as art created with the intention of inspiring desire to possess the object. By this definition, advertising art is pornographic, and there's no shortage of that on the web! Perhaps a third of the content on the web isn't pornographic.
"Making a good impression" would sort of imply Obama would have to retroactively cease being the single politician who has received the largest financial contributions from BP, though, wouldn't you think??
Given how critical Obama has been of BP, they might want to ask for a refund and give the money to Rand Paul instead. Paul understands that sometimes, you know, accidents just happen, and in blaming business Obama is being decidedly un-American. At very least BP should send Paul a fruit basket.
I wonder if Obama has too much integrity for his own good. As President, he's got more important things to do with his time than volunteer to clean birds, yet you're right, politically that would go a long way. Likewise, one resident of the area I heard on radio was convinced that he wasn't doing anything because there weren't a lot of military and coast guard ships out there. Sure, there wouldn't be much for them to do since BP is the entity dealing with the problem, but it would create the appearance of government involvement in a solution, that is to say, it would look like he was doing something. On the one hand I respect him for his playing it straight, but on the other, if he wants to do good and do good for a second term, there's something to be said for making a good impression.
Cover it with a giant tarp with channel to sewer for runoff. Sounds simplistic, but I actually read the fine article, and the problem appears to be that much of the city is built over a valley filled in with volcanic pumice prone to erode when exposed to water.
but by mislabeling the feature a sinkhole, it distracts from a dangerous situation that could be mitigated, if not neutralized, by better handling of the city's runoff and waste water.
Leaving it totally open and exposed to the elements like that doesn't seem wise.
We need a term to describe things which appear to be science but in fact which are not.
They saw a problem, came up with an hypothesis, designed an experiment to test it -- sounds like science to me. You can blow holes in their experimental design easily enough, especially since not many beehives are equipped with a pair of phones (I believe bees communicate through some sort of dance, if some vague memory of an old tv documentary is correct), but the worst you can call it is bad science.
I suppose you could say that bad science gives science a bad reputation, but I'm pretty sure the philosophy and the method will survive it. If you're concerned about science as a belief system, well, I'm not a believer so will refrain from comment.
A telecomm regulator there said "Facebook will be re-opened once we erase the pages that contain the obnoxious images." And how do they propose to do that?
If they have a great wall type firewall that everything goes through, they could filter the facebook traffic and replace the offending images with ones that had text reading "A fatwah is declared upon the creators of this disgraceful contest".
I can see the youngsters around me (and not only the youngsters, people of all ages seem to be affected) just don't care about anything or anyone anymore.
Well, not anything. There seems to be a lot of caring about things. Apple products in particular;)
As for anyone, I suspect a lot of them still love their moms. Beyond that, the circle does seem to be shrinking.
It's not sad just from an ethical perspective, but perception of social realities depends on it to a large degree. How can one look at the news and get a balanced picture of conflicts if you can't put yourself in the shoes of both parties? The exercise may reveal that one set of shoes doesn't fit terribly well, but even attempting to wrestle with those shoes will provide greater insight into the original wearer.
That's why the "They hate our freedom" argument had some traction after 9/11, and still does to some extent. It takes a deeper look into the people themselves to discern real motivations like these people have hard lives, blame us for it, find meaning in a cause without which their lives would have no meaning.
That's just one portrait empathy might come up with, and no doubt doesn't apply to all militant Islamists. There might even be some grey bearded old mullah who genuinely does hate American 'freedom', though he would be more likely to term it 'self centered licentiousness'. Even there, though, with a little empathy you might have to concede that he isn't entirely wrong, and echoes something of the parent's point.
When it comes right down to it, lack of empathy is a form of retardation, something which seriously impairs one's ability to perceive social realities. And social animal who believes social realities aren't as important as material realities has its head up its ass.
Very few Christians believe much of the Old Testament. It's the fundamentalists (with the emphasis on "mentalist") who do, and they're a relatively small but very vocal bunch.
Are these people so repressed that even the suggestion of a "naughty word" is enough to get them complaining ?
They enjoy naughty words. They sit alone in closets, or sometimes in pairs when they want to be really 'bad', and speak them aloud -- sometimes whispering them slowly and softly, other times barking them hard and fast. The more these words become acceptable, the more their pleasure is diminished.
I say Bob should dump Alice and go with Eve. Bad girls are hot.
Though dumped good girls can be trouble as well, so the original problem remains.
Sadly, as long as Eve (or Alice) are sufficiently determined to intercept Bob's communications, he's got problems. The only answer may be to become a celibate monk in a monastery committedly observing a vow of silence.
A terrorist, intent on striking against us infidels, will shove explosives up his ass or have something surgically implanted around his body.
I believe there are jurisdictions which prohibit body scanning of children because it conflicts with laws regarding child porn. The really sad scenario is one in which the weapon is put on the person of a child accompanying the hijacker. That would be a lot easier than surgery or even dynamite up the ass.
then they're just being naive if they think people will pay for an inferior product out of some sense of loyalty.
Loyalty shmoyalty! It's the law, dammit. You have to buy their product warts and all because they control it, and you must suffer the inconveniences which have been *legally* imposed.
You, sir, are a scofflaw. It is precisely this sort of rationalization which leads people to believe that they have *choices*, choices which are not supported in law and which are in fact breaking the law. My god, man, there could be children reading your post! Do you want them to learn that free will extends even to breaking the law? Whence goes society then? Anarchy! Anarchy I tell you!
allofmp3.com scared the shit out the RIAA with its cheap downloads so much that it pressured the US gov't to pressure the Russian gov't to shut it down. They could have cut the ground right out from under allofmp3.com by providing the same value themselves, but they're not interested in competition. Then they have the gall to whine about p2p.
People will pay a reasonable price for music that's what they want and easy to get with no DRM. I'm not sure whether the music industry is stupid, or if they've run the numbers and determined that soaking people for a buck a song makes more money even if it encourages a certain amount of file sharing. The numbers they base their decisions on internally, and the numbers they use publically to suggest that file sharing is rampant and causing gazillions of dollars in losses, may be very different.
Since you have a British-style parliament, aren't you able to do things like votes of no confidence to get rid of a PM (or any MP, for that matter)?
No confidence would bring down the government. Then there would be an election, and because the left is split and Canadians collectively are too daft to vote strategically, even though the Conservatives only have 34% support last poll I looked at, they'd still get the most votes and we'd be right back where we are now.
What's required isn't a revolution, but a coalition such as that proposed after the last election. But the Liberals backed down. It's not difficult to see why they are so unpopular. A coalition would have represented the will of the Canadian people, the majority of which voted left of centre. The sooner the Liberal party gets rid of Ignatieff and replaces him with someone with some backbone, the better it will be for both the Liberals and the people of Canada.
I was wondering about explosives, just have an American sub fire off some torpedoes to collapse the hole. But 5,000 feet translates to roughly 1500 meters. Looking at this wikipedia article on operational depths of subs, the hole is below the crush depth of even the deepest diving sub listed there. No doubt special purpose deep exploration devices exist, and perhaps they'll play a role, but simply having a sub cruise on by and fire off some torpedoes doesn't look like an option.
It really seems like an understatement to call this a 'spill', as though it were a limited quantity from an oil freighter or something. It's an underwater gusher. I knew it was a huge disaster when it was reported as such with the addendum of at least 30 days to fix. At least. How would they even fix something like that? Has anything like this been attempted before?
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Well, stout yeoman, four ounces of Caerphilly, if you please.
Me neither, but I have to admit that I'm the only person I know who is still using a desktop. Even my geek friends have switched. I suppose I might if I was thinking I needed more power and laptops had come down in price to the cost of a new motherboard, processor, and RAM. Otherwise I'll just do what I usually do, and upgrade the internals. Also I'd miss my Model M keyboard... Nope, I'm just going to evolve into the old geezer using the antiquated tech and shaking my cane at the kids on the lawn.
Yep, but in fairness, the RC's settled down considerably with the Protestant Reformation. After that the chief evil of the office was protecting pederasts, which is still pretty bad, but their hold over 'Christendom' was considerably weakened.
Unfortunately, I don't see Islam getting a reformation. With the Protestant reformation entire nation states effectively said, 'screw that noise' and came up with some version of Christianity light. In this day and age, Moslem nation states are more likely to choose moderate Islam as their 'light' version. That can look like progress, but the problem is that it's more easily reversible than a switch to something else, whereas the Protestant Reformation proved to be irreversible.
It would be nice to believe that the moderates in Islam could create an enduring global transformation of Islam, but at this point in history, I don't see how.
I'm sorry, the "US" Great Lakes? Did you guys annex them or something? Did you forget you actually SHARE 4 out of 5 of those lakes?
Perhaps it refers to a lesser volume, just the water in the US portion of the Great Lakes. Might be clearer if they just used some sort of volume measure. I'm not sure how much water is in the Great lakes, Canadian portion, American portion, or the two combined, anyway.
James Joyce defined pornographic art as art created with the intention of inspiring desire to possess the object. By this definition, advertising art is pornographic, and there's no shortage of that on the web! Perhaps a third of the content on the web isn't pornographic.
Is this a DNS thing, where Turks could get around it by using a different DNS server than their ISP's?
Not everyone out there is a complete cold-hearted dick when it comes to their elders
Especially when there's a chance one might be remembered in their will.
"Making a good impression" would sort of imply Obama would have to retroactively cease being the single politician who has received the largest financial contributions from BP, though, wouldn't you think??
Given how critical Obama has been of BP, they might want to ask for a refund and give the money to Rand Paul instead. Paul understands that sometimes, you know, accidents just happen, and in blaming business Obama is being decidedly un-American. At very least BP should send Paul a fruit basket.
I wonder if Obama has too much integrity for his own good. As President, he's got more important things to do with his time than volunteer to clean birds, yet you're right, politically that would go a long way. Likewise, one resident of the area I heard on radio was convinced that he wasn't doing anything because there weren't a lot of military and coast guard ships out there. Sure, there wouldn't be much for them to do since BP is the entity dealing with the problem, but it would create the appearance of government involvement in a solution, that is to say, it would look like he was doing something. On the one hand I respect him for his playing it straight, but on the other, if he wants to do good and do good for a second term, there's something to be said for making a good impression.
Cover it with a giant tarp with channel to sewer for runoff. Sounds simplistic, but I actually read the fine article, and the problem appears to be that much of the city is built over a valley filled in with volcanic pumice prone to erode when exposed to water.
but by mislabeling the feature a sinkhole, it distracts from a dangerous situation that could be mitigated, if not neutralized, by better handling of the city's runoff and waste water.
Leaving it totally open and exposed to the elements like that doesn't seem wise.
We need a term to describe things which appear to be science but in fact which are not.
They saw a problem, came up with an hypothesis, designed an experiment to test it -- sounds like science to me. You can blow holes in their experimental design easily enough, especially since not many beehives are equipped with a pair of phones (I believe bees communicate through some sort of dance, if some vague memory of an old tv documentary is correct), but the worst you can call it is bad science.
I suppose you could say that bad science gives science a bad reputation, but I'm pretty sure the philosophy and the method will survive it. If you're concerned about science as a belief system, well, I'm not a believer so will refrain from comment.
A telecomm regulator there said "Facebook will be re-opened once we erase the pages that contain the obnoxious images." And how do they propose to do that?
If they have a great wall type firewall that everything goes through, they could filter the facebook traffic and replace the offending images with ones that had text reading "A fatwah is declared upon the creators of this disgraceful contest".
I can see the youngsters around me (and not only the youngsters, people of all ages seem to be affected) just don't care about anything or anyone anymore.
Well, not anything. There seems to be a lot of caring about things. Apple products in particular ;)
As for anyone, I suspect a lot of them still love their moms. Beyond that, the circle does seem to be shrinking.
It's not sad just from an ethical perspective, but perception of social realities depends on it to a large degree. How can one look at the news and get a balanced picture of conflicts if you can't put yourself in the shoes of both parties? The exercise may reveal that one set of shoes doesn't fit terribly well, but even attempting to wrestle with those shoes will provide greater insight into the original wearer.
That's why the "They hate our freedom" argument had some traction after 9/11, and still does to some extent. It takes a deeper look into the people themselves to discern real motivations like these people have hard lives, blame us for it, find meaning in a cause without which their lives would have no meaning.
That's just one portrait empathy might come up with, and no doubt doesn't apply to all militant Islamists. There might even be some grey bearded old mullah who genuinely does hate American 'freedom', though he would be more likely to term it 'self centered licentiousness'. Even there, though, with a little empathy you might have to concede that he isn't entirely wrong, and echoes something of the parent's point.
When it comes right down to it, lack of empathy is a form of retardation, something which seriously impairs one's ability to perceive social realities. And social animal who believes social realities aren't as important as material realities has its head up its ass.
Very few Christians believe much of the Old Testament. It's the fundamentalists (with the emphasis on "mentalist") who do, and they're a relatively small but very vocal bunch.
Also very selective, as humorously pointed out in Why Can't I Own a Canadian?.
Are these people so repressed that even the suggestion of a "naughty word" is enough to get them complaining ?
They enjoy naughty words. They sit alone in closets, or sometimes in pairs when they want to be really 'bad', and speak them aloud -- sometimes whispering them slowly and softly, other times barking them hard and fast. The more these words become acceptable, the more their pleasure is diminished.
wouldn't it be foolish to drop something like that and not retrieve it?
And what's to stop someone else from recovering it? I think I'll set up a saved search on Ebay for it. Wonder what it will go for?
Damn you misconfigured autoexec.bat! You led me down this path to the cubical I now live in!
Insightful. Woefully, tragically, OMG what have I done with my life, insightful.
I say Bob should dump Alice and go with Eve. Bad girls are hot.
Though dumped good girls can be trouble as well, so the original problem remains.
Sadly, as long as Eve (or Alice) are sufficiently determined to intercept Bob's communications, he's got problems. The only answer may be to become a celibate monk in a monastery committedly observing a vow of silence.
A terrorist, intent on striking against us infidels, will shove explosives up his ass or have something surgically implanted around his body.
I believe there are jurisdictions which prohibit body scanning of children because it conflicts with laws regarding child porn. The really sad scenario is one in which the weapon is put on the person of a child accompanying the hijacker. That would be a lot easier than surgery or even dynamite up the ass.
then they're just being naive if they think people will pay for an inferior product out of some sense of loyalty.
Loyalty shmoyalty! It's the law, dammit. You have to buy their product warts and all because they control it, and you must suffer the inconveniences which have been *legally* imposed.
You, sir, are a scofflaw. It is precisely this sort of rationalization which leads people to believe that they have *choices*, choices which are not supported in law and which are in fact breaking the law. My god, man, there could be children reading your post! Do you want them to learn that free will extends even to breaking the law? Whence goes society then? Anarchy! Anarchy I tell you!
allofmp3.com scared the shit out the RIAA with its cheap downloads so much that it pressured the US gov't to pressure the Russian gov't to shut it down. They could have cut the ground right out from under allofmp3.com by providing the same value themselves, but they're not interested in competition. Then they have the gall to whine about p2p.
People will pay a reasonable price for music that's what they want and easy to get with no DRM. I'm not sure whether the music industry is stupid, or if they've run the numbers and determined that soaking people for a buck a song makes more money even if it encourages a certain amount of file sharing. The numbers they base their decisions on internally, and the numbers they use publically to suggest that file sharing is rampant and causing gazillions of dollars in losses, may be very different.
I think actors want what they consider to be their fair share of the big money. If there wasn't big money, their expectations would also be smaller.
Since you have a British-style parliament, aren't you able to do things like votes of no confidence to get rid of a PM (or any MP, for that matter)?
No confidence would bring down the government. Then there would be an election, and because the left is split and Canadians collectively are too daft to vote strategically, even though the Conservatives only have 34% support last poll I looked at, they'd still get the most votes and we'd be right back where we are now.
What's required isn't a revolution, but a coalition such as that proposed after the last election. But the Liberals backed down. It's not difficult to see why they are so unpopular. A coalition would have represented the will of the Canadian people, the majority of which voted left of centre. The sooner the Liberal party gets rid of Ignatieff and replaces him with someone with some backbone, the better it will be for both the Liberals and the people of Canada.
I was wondering about explosives, just have an American sub fire off some torpedoes to collapse the hole. But 5,000 feet translates to roughly 1500 meters. Looking at this wikipedia article on operational depths of subs, the hole is below the crush depth of even the deepest diving sub listed there. No doubt special purpose deep exploration devices exist, and perhaps they'll play a role, but simply having a sub cruise on by and fire off some torpedoes doesn't look like an option.
It really seems like an understatement to call this a 'spill', as though it were a limited quantity from an oil freighter or something. It's an underwater gusher. I knew it was a huge disaster when it was reported as such with the addendum of at least 30 days to fix. At least. How would they even fix something like that? Has anything like this been attempted before?