I think the fact of the matter is that the law is open to interpretation such that it does become what you can get the courts to believe- otherwise we wouldn't have the drawn out legal processes we do. I don't want to play the devil's advocate or anything, this isn't so much something to scoff at as it is something to be afraid of, most of the money is on the side that would like the courts to believe something like personal copies = illegal. If we're not careful ( and perhaps even if we are) things like this could sneak into the law.
I understand this has pretty much nothing to do with the article but my prediction for the evolution of language is something a little closer to New Speak... just look at text messaging- Surely the written word can not take such a grievous blow without some damage spilling over into the spoken word. Just you wait... the future of language is double plus ungood!
... Has anyone in the Northern Hemisphere ever worried about the Southern Hemisphere anyways- People pay lip service to the whole in the Ozone layer but who is really immediately and perceivably affected by it in a way they can understand. The same holds true for Global Warming, for most people its something that for the most part is happening somewhere far away, at least as far as they can tell. I think a more successful environmentalist campaign should harp on the immediate affects of our environmental irresponsibility - for example concerns about air quality which can immediately affect people in the form of chronic respiratory conditions. People are way to selfish to protect the environment for future generations, we need to tell them why its good for them now.
I think as long as one of the majors involved was a college preparation path then this isn't such a bad idea. Let the college bound, the ones who care, take the college path.
There are plenty of high school kids that don't want to go to college, why not teach them a vocation or set of skills that will be immediately useful to them out of high school. There are plenty of students just wasting time in college because "c's get degrees" and at the end of their 4 to 6 years they have a college degree thats maybe slightly less worthless that their high school diploma.
At the end of the day the educational system in this country is pretty much a joke...there aren't nearly enough jobs for the number of mediocre college grads we are turning out to keep them out of the service industry, so the only ones this focus on a college education is really benefiting are the educators and administrators.
Maybe if a college degree was a little less common and a little more relevant it might mean something again.
I wrote a paper a few years back for a philosophy of biology class defending altruism as an adaptive trait. Generally we look at selection as a process that takes place within a group for (or against) an individual. The problem with altruism, obviously, is that self sacrifice is not adaptive for an individual. Coming from Wyoming I tend to think of prairie dogs as an example of this. The one that stays above the surface screaming its little head off to warn the others is more likely to get snagged by a predator. However, if the process of selection includes the fitness of the group and not just that of the individual then altruism is really no problem at all. Within the herd the individual is going to share genetic traits with much if not most of the others. Just as a parent is often willing to risk it's own life for its offspring, which makes sense for individual selection, an individual risking its life for all its cousins is still protecting at least some of its own genetic traits. In effect the act of sacrifice is actually selecting for altruism as it allows the herd, with all its altruistic tendencies, to live on. Altruism is an adaptive trait, ergo "hard-wired", and should present no problem for evolutionary theory and no advantage for ID "theory".
I have come to believe that Fox News and company hav called themselves fair and balanced so much that they actually believe that they really are, and that somehow that crackpot liberals they bring on their shows to harass actually represent the liberal community at large. So the problem is fairness according to whom.
Bias is inescapable in the media because people are somewhat oblivious to their own bias and will often present the information, which can only be filtered through the lenses of their existing biases, as fact because thats they way the actually saw the event unfold (within the limits of their biased perceptions).
The fairness doctrine is nice in principal but who is objective and neutral enough to be its enforcer?
No One
What would enivitably happen is that this fairness doctrine would become another buzz word of the day issue of partisan politics wasting everyones time slinging dirt back and forth.
People really just need to be smart enough to recognize the biases for themselves and filter out the useful information out of the news that is presented...all it takes is a grain of salt.
Thats my $0.02
Despite the fact that this is the warmest year since we've started keeping track, I do believe we are still geologically below the average temperature of the earth overall. I would never argue that we don't contribute to the warming of our current era, but to what extent is and probably always will be pretty inconclusive.
We should be careful when we make these comparisons, and realize that even without our help the earth will be both warmer and cooler than it is now at different points in the future. So the penguins and the polar bears were going to be soggy toast eventually anyways, just perhaps not so soon.
Besides there are plenty of other reasons to want to do something about our pollution problem. For example I just read on bbc news that there were 3600 deaths attributed to smog in Iran just last October. The problem with the Global Warming band wagon is that its hard to quantify, but who can deny air quality problems in urban settings. It seems to me that perhaps Global Warming is over emphasized in comparison to things it might be relatively easier to get people to care about. People are generally short sighted, and pretty much only care about what is right in front of them right now, not whats going to happen in 2040.
Trying to get a signifigant portion of the earth's population to change their ways is probably a lost cause no matter how you present it, and the looming spectre of global warming definitely won't be signifigant enough in the herds mind until its way way to late. The problem should be attacked from a different angle. Thats my $0.02 anyways.
During a period of time in which I was pretty damn poor I ate pretty much nothing but ramen for a good couple months and loss almost 30 pounds...yay malnourishment:)
...since we got some of them new fangled in-door out houses!
Good luck finding it out there... someone off the windriver reservation probably already found it and traded it for a case of pbr and a pint of whiskey.
They know what they are 'missing" you make it sound like the Chinese are oblivious to the outside world because of a little censorship. They know their government is corrupt... and are probably less delusional about their government than we in the US are about ours. Fact of the matter is they don't really want what we have. Probably seems quite chaotic and dangerous in our part of the world to them. The only example they have for what happens when a nation such as their's collapses is the former USSR... which we all know is moving along spledidly. Nope...not really missing a thing.
Slashdot Mirror
We're home of the jackalope! (and although imaginary they out number us by at least 2:1)
I think the fact of the matter is that the law is open to interpretation such that it does become what you can get the courts to believe- otherwise we wouldn't have the drawn out legal processes we do. I don't want to play the devil's advocate or anything, this isn't so much something to scoff at as it is something to be afraid of, most of the money is on the side that would like the courts to believe something like personal copies = illegal. If we're not careful ( and perhaps even if we are) things like this could sneak into the law.
I understand this has pretty much nothing to do with the article but my prediction for the evolution of language is something a little closer to New Speak... just look at text messaging- Surely the written word can not take such a grievous blow without some damage spilling over into the spoken word. Just you wait... the future of language is double plus ungood!
Every road leads to porn...
... Has anyone in the Northern Hemisphere ever worried about the Southern Hemisphere anyways- People pay lip service to the whole in the Ozone layer but who is really immediately and perceivably affected by it in a way they can understand. The same holds true for Global Warming, for most people its something that for the most part is happening somewhere far away, at least as far as they can tell. I think a more successful environmentalist campaign should harp on the immediate affects of our environmental irresponsibility - for example concerns about air quality which can immediately affect people in the form of chronic respiratory conditions. People are way to selfish to protect the environment for future generations, we need to tell them why its good for them now.
I think as long as one of the majors involved was a college preparation path then this isn't such a bad idea. Let the college bound, the ones who care, take the college path.
There are plenty of high school kids that don't want to go to college, why not teach them a vocation or set of skills that will be immediately useful to them out of high school. There are plenty of students just wasting time in college because "c's get degrees" and at the end of their 4 to 6 years they have a college degree thats maybe slightly less worthless that their high school diploma.
At the end of the day the educational system in this country is pretty much a joke...there aren't nearly enough jobs for the number of mediocre college grads we are turning out to keep them out of the service industry, so the only ones this focus on a college education is really benefiting are the educators and administrators.
Maybe if a college degree was a little less common and a little more relevant it might mean something again.
I wrote a paper a few years back for a philosophy of biology class defending altruism as an adaptive trait. Generally we look at selection as a process that takes place within a group for (or against) an individual. The problem with altruism, obviously, is that self sacrifice is not adaptive for an individual. Coming from Wyoming I tend to think of prairie dogs as an example of this. The one that stays above the surface screaming its little head off to warn the others is more likely to get snagged by a predator. However, if the process of selection includes the fitness of the group and not just that of the individual then altruism is really no problem at all. Within the herd the individual is going to share genetic traits with much if not most of the others. Just as a parent is often willing to risk it's own life for its offspring, which makes sense for individual selection, an individual risking its life for all its cousins is still protecting at least some of its own genetic traits. In effect the act of sacrifice is actually selecting for altruism as it allows the herd, with all its altruistic tendencies, to live on. Altruism is an adaptive trait, ergo "hard-wired", and should present no problem for evolutionary theory and no advantage for ID "theory".
If one pedestrian in fifty had a couple of kilos of nitroglycerin in their backpack i'd say the war on terror was about to escalate signifigantly...
I have come to believe that Fox News and company hav called themselves fair and balanced so much that they actually believe that they really are, and that somehow that crackpot liberals they bring on their shows to harass actually represent the liberal community at large.
So the problem is fairness according to whom.
Bias is inescapable in the media because people are somewhat oblivious to their own bias and will often present the information, which can only be filtered through the lenses of their existing biases, as fact because thats they way the actually saw the event unfold (within the limits of their biased perceptions).
The fairness doctrine is nice in principal but who is objective and neutral enough to be its enforcer?
No One
What would enivitably happen is that this fairness doctrine would become another buzz word of the day issue of partisan politics wasting everyones time slinging dirt back and forth.
People really just need to be smart enough to recognize the biases for themselves and filter out the useful information out of the news that is presented...all it takes is a grain of salt.
Thats my $0.02
Despite the fact that this is the warmest year since we've started keeping track, I do believe we are still geologically below the average temperature of the earth overall. I would never argue that we don't contribute to the warming of our current era, but to what extent is and probably always will be pretty inconclusive. We should be careful when we make these comparisons, and realize that even without our help the earth will be both warmer and cooler than it is now at different points in the future. So the penguins and the polar bears were going to be soggy toast eventually anyways, just perhaps not so soon. Besides there are plenty of other reasons to want to do something about our pollution problem. For example I just read on bbc news that there were 3600 deaths attributed to smog in Iran just last October. The problem with the Global Warming band wagon is that its hard to quantify, but who can deny air quality problems in urban settings. It seems to me that perhaps Global Warming is over emphasized in comparison to things it might be relatively easier to get people to care about. People are generally short sighted, and pretty much only care about what is right in front of them right now, not whats going to happen in 2040. Trying to get a signifigant portion of the earth's population to change their ways is probably a lost cause no matter how you present it, and the looming spectre of global warming definitely won't be signifigant enough in the herds mind until its way way to late. The problem should be attacked from a different angle. Thats my $0.02 anyways.
During a period of time in which I was pretty damn poor I ate pretty much nothing but ramen for a good couple months and loss almost 30 pounds...yay malnourishment :)
...since we got some of them new fangled in-door out houses!
Good luck finding it out there... someone off the windriver reservation probably already found it and traded it for a case of pbr and a pint of whiskey.
They know what they are 'missing" you make it sound like the Chinese are oblivious to the outside world because of a little censorship. They know their government is corrupt... and are probably less delusional about their government than we in the US are about ours. Fact of the matter is they don't really want what we have. Probably seems quite chaotic and dangerous in our part of the world to them. The only example they have for what happens when a nation such as their's collapses is the former USSR... which we all know is moving along spledidly. Nope...not really missing a thing.