If you think that's bad, you should read about how our kind, loving god killed every first-born child in Egypt just because their leader wouldn't let go of a bunch of his slaves. Yep, killed kids right in their cribs over a political conflict they had nothing to do with. With a god like that, who needs a Satan?
Seriously, most Jews and Christians have no idea what's really in there. And what they do know is filtered through a bunch of distortions introduced by subsequent religious leaders (often codified in the Talmud and other interpretations). They can quote verse after verse, but they haven't once sat down and considered the big picture, or really took a hard look at the text as an outsider might.
So, as Penn and Teller once observed, religion is really all about picking and choosing the parts of the text you like, and ignoring or downplaying the ones you don't.
I'm pretty sure a court of law wouldn't accept "But I'm very immature" as a defense in a statutory rape case. But if it makes you feel better while reading romantic books about a creepy 100-year-old guy who still hangs around teenagers like some pathetic loser dreaming of his high school glory days, then more power to you. Personally, I find the whole premise laughable.
I find it very hard to believe that anyone is going to Mars (and presumably back) on the price of a single Shuttle launch. Private industry is generally more efficient, but not THAT much more efficient.
your Lord and Savior Ron Paul wants to abolish it.
Ha, you don't know me very well. The current crop of Republicans and Libertarians scare the shit out of me. But I would contend that the more extreme elements of the environmental movement are actually hurting the cause way more than helping it. It's because of the extremists that someone like Ron Paul can stand up and say "See how crazy these people are?" and then use that as ammo to advocate abolishing the EPA and regulations like the Clean Air Act that we really do need.
If the vast majority of Americans perceive environmentalism as some crazy movement made up of wild-eyed hippies who want to blow up dams then that makes it very hard for any politician to defend the kind of sane policies that we need to keep companies from dumping whatever shit into our air and water they want to increase profits. We are not well-served by those who would make environmentalism look like some kind of fringe movement.
I know this is probably going to get me flamed, but my biggest problem with the more extremist environmentalists out there (aside for their propensity for wild-eyed, quasi-religious Chicken Little alarmism) is that they often jump up to protest without any real answer to the question "Well, what's a reasonable alternative?" Most of the alternatives that they do have seem more like pipe dreams to me (at least for now). Sure it would be nice to have giant solar and wind farms that could supply all our energy needs. But those things are, even in the best case scenario, decades away. The idea that we're just going to run out and start shutting down coal and nuclear plants now, with no real replacement save some *hope* for a future of wind and solar is just nuts.
If you're going to advocate something radical, you had damn well have a pretty good answer on *how* where going to do it without throwing society into chaos. It's nice to save the environment, but we humans are part of that environment too.
The fact is that there is a serious choke point for the vast majority of users (in the U.S. at least). A handful of big name companies control almost all the broadband ISP's and trunk lines in the U.S. You can't very easily "route around it" if the few providers in your area are censored. In my area, you can choose from 1 cable ISP, 1 DSL ISP, and 3 major cell providers. All five of these are major companies who would bow to the government in an instant if asked. If they were all effectively censored, there would be nowhere to turn save a satellite provider.
There are always ways around censorship for the hardcore techies, of course. But it really wouldn't be that hard to censor the internet for 99% of the population if the government really wanted to.
Porn, websites that criticize the government, members of Al-Qaeda--that whole country is like a big ole' fun game of hide-and-seek. The government hides it, and you get to seek.
It would be nice to think that rulings like this might have some effect on the traditional corporate practice of making new users sign "contracts" that basically give one party the right to change the terms any damn time they want and in any damn way they want, while giving the other party the right to pay their money and shut up. It would also be nice to think we may live in a country some day where consumer protection laws will actually be geared towards protecting *consumers* and not just the corporations who write all our the laws in the U.S., making these kind of rulings unnecessary in the first place.
Of course, while I'm dreaming, I had may as well wish for a threeway with Katee Sackhoff and Natalie Portman in my new Ferrari.
That's true. But there are ways to adjust for it. If you have three teachers in the same school (or teaching comparable students in similar schools) and they all teach the same subject, and the students of one of the three consistently do worse than the students of the other two--well then it's pretty safe to say that this is a bad teacher. Either she's lazy, incompetent, or both. And, in any case, that's who you need to fire.
Of course, no one can ever be fired for laziness or incompetence in a union school district. Which means that if your kid gets stuck with such a teacher, you have two alternatives--try to get your kid into a charter school where they don't have to deal with this union bullshit, home school them yourself, and send them to a private school. No matter which alternative you choose, you still get to pay taxes to support that public school teacher who sucks, of course.
Producer: We've obtained this thoughtful science fiction story about the passengers finding meaning in their lives aboard a generation ship, dealing with relationships and aging in lives where they know they will never live to see their ship's destination. It's a very thoughtful story on human individualism and purpose vs. the common social good.
Studio: Great. Cast an A-list action star. Call Michael Bay and see if he's available to direct. Add a subplot with a murder investigation...no fuck it, make that the main plot. Write in at least four good chase scenes. Cast a hot young actress, see if you can get one with nice tits--just not Lindsay Lohan, no way the insurance would cover us on that. Have the CGI boys start working on the chase sequences, tell them we need it yesterday. And make sure there's a happy ending and all that shit.
Producer: But what about the story of humanity on the generation ship?
Studio: What the fuck is a generation ship? Look, just put one of those young guys with the 6-pack abs in the lead and don't even worry about a script. And tell the marketing boys to get to work on some internet viral promotion crap. See if you can get some decent product placement deals in place before we start filming this bastard too. All that CGI ain't going to be cheap.
Give me a call when Chrome has NoScript and isn't developed by a company that has grown notorious for its privacy issues, user web tracking, and targeted ads.
That's the kind of scenario the 4th Amendment was intended to address. Unfortunately, the Constitution has become toilet paper when it comes to digital possessions and effects. And the Supreme Court, being a bunch of ancient farts (and a *conservative* bunch of ancient farts at that), has had its thumb implanted up its ass on the whole issue of anything related to "one of them new-fangled computing boxes" for a long time now.
Theoretically, in the non-digital world, the cops would have to have a warrant to search your stuff, one where they have to go before a judge and showing probable cause and some indication of the kind of material what they're looking for and the scope of the search. If they found evidence of a different crime, they could seize it, but would later have to get a separate search warrant for it too.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, we'll get on that right after we finish playing Skyrim. And watching TV. And playing Angry Birds.
Well, tomorrow for sure.
If you think that's bad, you should read about how our kind, loving god killed every first-born child in Egypt just because their leader wouldn't let go of a bunch of his slaves. Yep, killed kids right in their cribs over a political conflict they had nothing to do with. With a god like that, who needs a Satan?
Seriously, most Jews and Christians have no idea what's really in there. And what they do know is filtered through a bunch of distortions introduced by subsequent religious leaders (often codified in the Talmud and other interpretations). They can quote verse after verse, but they haven't once sat down and considered the big picture, or really took a hard look at the text as an outsider might.
So, as Penn and Teller once observed, religion is really all about picking and choosing the parts of the text you like, and ignoring or downplaying the ones you don't.
I'm pretty sure a court of law wouldn't accept "But I'm very immature" as a defense in a statutory rape case. But if it makes you feel better while reading romantic books about a creepy 100-year-old guy who still hangs around teenagers like some pathetic loser dreaming of his high school glory days, then more power to you. Personally, I find the whole premise laughable.
Hurricane, Tornado, Twister, Tsunami, Earthquake, Tremor, Flood
Are they trying to catch real-world terrorists or Lex Luthor?
I guess at least we should be happy that "Dissent", "Protest", "Occupy", "Tea party", and "Third Party" aren't on there...well, not yet anyway.
Not only that, but I heard that a 100-year-old man has sex with a teenage girl in those books.
PayPal wants them to also censor depictions of consenting, non-related adults acting out incest fantasies.
Someone better tell George Martin not to use Paypal.
Come on man, we just need one more hit of petroleum. Then we'll quit tomorrow, we promise.
is this a good idea?
Probably not. But when a junkie needs his fix, he NEEDS his fix.
I find it very hard to believe that anyone is going to Mars (and presumably back) on the price of a single Shuttle launch. Private industry is generally more efficient, but not THAT much more efficient.
your Lord and Savior Ron Paul wants to abolish it.
Ha, you don't know me very well. The current crop of Republicans and Libertarians scare the shit out of me. But I would contend that the more extreme elements of the environmental movement are actually hurting the cause way more than helping it. It's because of the extremists that someone like Ron Paul can stand up and say "See how crazy these people are?" and then use that as ammo to advocate abolishing the EPA and regulations like the Clean Air Act that we really do need.
If the vast majority of Americans perceive environmentalism as some crazy movement made up of wild-eyed hippies who want to blow up dams then that makes it very hard for any politician to defend the kind of sane policies that we need to keep companies from dumping whatever shit into our air and water they want to increase profits. We are not well-served by those who would make environmentalism look like some kind of fringe movement.
Your post sounds like you fixate on the nuts so you can ignore the sane people.
I don't have a problem with the sane people.
A single shuttle launch costs that much, in today's dollars.
Seriously, guys?
Most of the people I know who take sleeping pills are not necessarily the most stable people in the world to begin with. Sorry to all you Ambien fans.
Yes, I have heard of it. If everyone is blocked at the ISP level, how does Tor route around it again?
I know this is probably going to get me flamed, but my biggest problem with the more extremist environmentalists out there (aside for their propensity for wild-eyed, quasi-religious Chicken Little alarmism) is that they often jump up to protest without any real answer to the question "Well, what's a reasonable alternative?" Most of the alternatives that they do have seem more like pipe dreams to me (at least for now). Sure it would be nice to have giant solar and wind farms that could supply all our energy needs. But those things are, even in the best case scenario, decades away. The idea that we're just going to run out and start shutting down coal and nuclear plants now, with no real replacement save some *hope* for a future of wind and solar is just nuts.
If you're going to advocate something radical, you had damn well have a pretty good answer on *how* where going to do it without throwing society into chaos. It's nice to save the environment, but we humans are part of that environment too.
The fact is that there is a serious choke point for the vast majority of users (in the U.S. at least). A handful of big name companies control almost all the broadband ISP's and trunk lines in the U.S. You can't very easily "route around it" if the few providers in your area are censored. In my area, you can choose from 1 cable ISP, 1 DSL ISP, and 3 major cell providers. All five of these are major companies who would bow to the government in an instant if asked. If they were all effectively censored, there would be nowhere to turn save a satellite provider.
There are always ways around censorship for the hardcore techies, of course. But it really wouldn't be that hard to censor the internet for 99% of the population if the government really wanted to.
Porn, websites that criticize the government, members of Al-Qaeda--that whole country is like a big ole' fun game of hide-and-seek. The government hides it, and you get to seek.
It would be nice to think that rulings like this might have some effect on the traditional corporate practice of making new users sign "contracts" that basically give one party the right to change the terms any damn time they want and in any damn way they want, while giving the other party the right to pay their money and shut up. It would also be nice to think we may live in a country some day where consumer protection laws will actually be geared towards protecting *consumers* and not just the corporations who write all our the laws in the U.S., making these kind of rulings unnecessary in the first place.
Of course, while I'm dreaming, I had may as well wish for a threeway with Katee Sackhoff and Natalie Portman in my new Ferrari.
That's true. But there are ways to adjust for it. If you have three teachers in the same school (or teaching comparable students in similar schools) and they all teach the same subject, and the students of one of the three consistently do worse than the students of the other two--well then it's pretty safe to say that this is a bad teacher. Either she's lazy, incompetent, or both. And, in any case, that's who you need to fire.
Of course, no one can ever be fired for laziness or incompetence in a union school district. Which means that if your kid gets stuck with such a teacher, you have two alternatives--try to get your kid into a charter school where they don't have to deal with this union bullshit, home school them yourself, and send them to a private school. No matter which alternative you choose, you still get to pay taxes to support that public school teacher who sucks, of course.
He, Brainstorm was actually a pretty good movie. Outland was too, but not really science fiction (more like a western with a futuristic setting).
Producer: We've obtained this thoughtful science fiction story about the passengers finding meaning in their lives aboard a generation ship, dealing with relationships and aging in lives where they know they will never live to see their ship's destination. It's a very thoughtful story on human individualism and purpose vs. the common social good.
Studio: Great. Cast an A-list action star. Call Michael Bay and see if he's available to direct. Add a subplot with a murder investigation...no fuck it, make that the main plot. Write in at least four good chase scenes. Cast a hot young actress, see if you can get one with nice tits--just not Lindsay Lohan, no way the insurance would cover us on that. Have the CGI boys start working on the chase sequences, tell them we need it yesterday. And make sure there's a happy ending and all that shit.
Producer: But what about the story of humanity on the generation ship?
Studio: What the fuck is a generation ship? Look, just put one of those young guys with the 6-pack abs in the lead and don't even worry about a script. And tell the marketing boys to get to work on some internet viral promotion crap. See if you can get some decent product placement deals in place before we start filming this bastard too. All that CGI ain't going to be cheap.
Give me a call when Chrome has NoScript and isn't developed by a company that has grown notorious for its privacy issues, user web tracking, and targeted ads.
I think a company announcing they're NOT doing a marketplace would probably get bigger headlines these days.
We must close the heroin vaccine gap with Mexico before the Lohans attack again!
That's the kind of scenario the 4th Amendment was intended to address. Unfortunately, the Constitution has become toilet paper when it comes to digital possessions and effects. And the Supreme Court, being a bunch of ancient farts (and a *conservative* bunch of ancient farts at that), has had its thumb implanted up its ass on the whole issue of anything related to "one of them new-fangled computing boxes" for a long time now.
Theoretically, in the non-digital world, the cops would have to have a warrant to search your stuff, one where they have to go before a judge and showing probable cause and some indication of the kind of material what they're looking for and the scope of the search. If they found evidence of a different crime, they could seize it, but would later have to get a separate search warrant for it too.
In the post-911 digital world, who knows?