For an instance where Israelis and US government got caught collaborating on using software to spy on allies as well as enemy states look at the PROMIS* / Inslaw scandal:
*PROMIS was and is the super-meta-database software for intelligence-gathering / analysis and prosecution management sold to dozens of different countries. It had a back-door built in which allegedly allowed surveilance of intelligence operations even of non-networked computers through spread-spectrum emissions from the dedicated Prime computers on which it ran. Inslaw made PROMIS but the DOJ tried to put them out of business by not paying for the software as contracted. The back door was not Inslaw's doing, AFAIK.
Couldn't you use some kind of phase modulation (perhaps of only one sideband) to carry the digital signal? Ears aren't sensitive to phase distortion, at least in mono. I'd think that that would potentially be a lower-interference option that puts the design burden on the new transmitters and new digital recievers that can be expected to use the fancy new software-defined radio techniques. Rather than eating spectrum that was unused due to legacy-tech limitations, it would make better use of the channel in a way transparent to the old AM receivers.
Yep. Killed a chicken with an axe at 10, at camp. No problem, except for the plucking, which was a PITA even with boiling water to loosen the feathers.
It's silly to be cruel when killing animals - it shows unreasonable concern for their feelings. Non-human animals are not even aware of human cultures, let alone the moral codes of those cultures. Pigs are vicious creatures that would eat you if the tables were turned. Rabbits are generally thought of as quintessential vegetarians - but a grown male rabbit will chew off the testicles of young rabbits if given the opportunity. The purpose of farmed animals is to be eaten, and wild animals to become food when they fail to evade predators. Nature has little room for sentiment when it comes to feeding humans and other natural meat-eaters. We are naturally omnivores, not vegetarians.
Excellent point. Ares is not so much the god of war as of soldiers and slaughter. Athena is closest to a war-goddess in the Greek pantheon, but really her demensne is closer to "strategy", as part of her overall realm of "techne" and "metis".
"Athena" would have been a much better name than "Ares" for the NASA launch vehicle.
From Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, scene in jail in the Philippines, this quote starts p. 801 - see full quote starting from p.799, or better yet, buy the book.
[Randy Waterhouse]"Okay. So the Athena that you honor on your medallion isn't a supernatural being--"
[Enoch Root] "--who lives on a mountain in Greece, et cetera, but rather whatever entity, pattern, trend, or what-have-you that, when perceived by ancient Greek people, and filtered through their perceptual machinery and their pagan worldview, produced the internal mental representation that they dubbed Athena. The distinction being quite important because Athena-the-supernatural-chick-with- the-helmet is of course nonexistent, but 'Athena' the external-generator-of- the-internal-representation-dubbed-Athena-by-the-a ncient-Greeks must have existed back then, or else the internal representation never would have been generated, and if she existed back then, the chances are excellent that she exists now, and if all that is the case, then whatever ideas the ancient Greeks (who, though utter shitheads in many ways, were terrifyingly intelligent people) had about her are probably still quite valid."
"Okay, but why Athena and not Demeter or someone?"
"Well, it's a truism that you can't understand a person without knowing something about her family background, and so we have to do kind of a quick Cliff's Notes number on the ancient Greek Theogony here. We start out with Chaos, which is where all theogonies start, and which I like to think of as a sea of white noise--totally random broadband static. And for reasons that we don't really understand, certain polarities begin to coalesce from this--Day, Night, Darkness, Light, Earth, Sea. Personally, I like to think of these as crystals--not in the hippy-dippy Californian sense, but in the hardass technical sense of resonators, that received certain channels buried in the static of Chaos.....
"So anyway, you probably learned in elementary school that Athena wears a helmet, carries a shield called Aegis,* and is the goddess of war and of wisdom, as well as crafts--such as the aforementioned weaving. Kind of an odd combination, to say the least! Especially since Ares was supposed to be the god of war and Hestia the goddess of home economics--why the redundancy? But a lot's been screwed up in translation. See, the kind of wisdom that we associate with old farts like yours truly, and which I'm trying to impart to you here, Randy Waterhouse, was called 'dike' by the Greeks. That's not what Athena was the goddess of! She was the goddess of 'metis', which means cunning or craftiness, and which you'll recall was the name of her mother in one version of the story. Interestingly Metis (the personage, not the attribute) provided young Zeus with the potion that caused Cronus to vomit up all of the baby gods he'd swallowed, setting the stage for the whole Titanomachia. So now the connection to crafts becomes obvious--crafts are just the practical application of metis."
"I associate the word 'crafts' with making crappy belts and ashtrays in summer camp," Randy says. "I mean, who wants to be the fucking goddess of macrame?"
"It's all bad translation. The word that we use today, to mean the same thing, is really technology."
"Okay. Now we're getting somewhere."
"Instead of calling Athena the goddess of war, wisdom, and macrame, then, we should say war and technology. And here again we have the problem of an overlap with the jurisdiction of Ares, who's supposed to be the god of war. And let's just say that Ares is a complete asshole. His personal aides are Fear and Terro
"before mandatory public schooling, people were illiterate and innumerate."
I'll let the idea that schooling must be mandatory and public fall to the weight of the lengthy arguments in Gatto's book and go after the heart of your mistake: your assertion that schooling (or even teaching) is needed for learning. This conception is illogical and contradicted by the evidence. In fact, much of modern schooling actually inhibits learning - for example: "whole word" reading instruction, the idea of "appropriate reading levels", the idea that it takes years of teaching to learn to read, the idea that mathematics is what is done in math class and entails a definite sequence of curriculum, and most of all, that learning is something that can be received passively rather than something which the student's own thought must actively seize.
If you had checked out that source I gave more fully, the first page of the table of contents has this quote:
Chapter Three - Eyeless In Gaza
Something strange has been going on in government schools, especially where the matter of reading is concerned. Abundant data exist to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent, wherever such a thing mattered. Yet compulsory schooling existed nowhere. Between the two world wars, schoolmen seem to have been assigned the task of terminating our universal reading proficiency.
and doubtless being a red-meat maths-and-facts kind of guy, you would have looked at the section of that chapter titled "The National Adult Literacy Survey", which has this to say:
The National Adult Literacy Survey represents 190 million U.S. adults over age sixteen with an average school attendance of 12.4 years. The survey is conducted by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey. It ranks adult Americans into five levels. Here is its 1993 analysis:
1. Forty-two million Americans over the age of sixteen can't read. Some of this group can write their names on Social Security cards and fill in height, weight, and birth spaces on application forms.
2. Fifty million can recognize printed words on a fourth- and fifth-grade level. They cannot write simple messages or letters.
3. Fifty-five to sixty million are limited to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade reading. A majority of this group could not figure out the price per ounce of peanut butter in a 20-ounce jar costing $1.99 when told they could round the answer off to a whole number.
4. Thirty million have ninth- and tenth-grade reading proficiency. This group (and all preceding) cannot understand a simplified written explanation of the procedures used by attorneys and judges in selecting juries.
5. About 3.5 percent of the 26,000-member sample demonstrated literacy skills adequate to do traditional college study, a level 30 percent of all U.S. high school students reached in 1940, and which 30 percent of secondary students in other developed countries can reach today. This last fact alone should warn you how misleading comparisons drawn from international student competitions really are, since the samples each country sends are small elite ones, unrepresentative of the entire student population. But behind the bogus superiority a real one is concealed.
6. Ninety-six and a half percent of the American population is mediocre to illiterate where deciphering print is concerned. This is no commentary on their intelligence, but without ability to take in primary information from print and to interpret it they are at the mercy of commentators who tell them what things mean. A working definition of immaturity might include an excessive need for other people to interpret information for us.
Thus your argument is not only disproven, but there is reason to suspect that eliminating state-controlled schooling would actually improve basic education.
On the contrary, mandatory schooling has squandered potential, abused and imprisoned free minds and taught citizens to hate academics. See John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education.
I could regale you with mountains of statistics to illustrate the damage schools cause. I could bring before your attention a line of case studies to illustrate the mutilation of specific individuals--even those who have been apparently privileged as its "gifted and talented."[3] What would that prove? You've heard those stories, read these figures [-] until you went numb from the assault on common sense. School can't be that bad, you say. You survived, didn't you? Or did you? Review what you learned there. Has it made a crucial difference for good in your life? Don't answer. I know it hasn't. You surrendered twelve years of your life because you had no choice. You paid your dues, I paid mine. But who collected those dues?...
All alleged reforms have left schooling exactly in the shape they found it, except bigger, richer, politically stronger. And morally and intellectually worse by the standards of the common American village of yesteryear which still lives in our hearts. Many people of conscience only defend institutional schooling because they can't imagine what would happen without any schools, especially what might happen to the poor. This compassionate and articulate contingent has consistently been fronted by the real engineers of schooling, skillfully used as shock troops to support the cumulative destruction of American working-class and peasant culture, a destruction largely effected through schooling....
School wreaks havoc on human foundations in at least eight substantive ways so deeply buried few notice them, and fewer still can imagine any other way for children to grow up:
1) The first lesson schools teach is forgetfulness; forcing children to forget how they taught themselves important things like walking and talking. This is done so pleasantly and painlessly that the one area of schooling most of us would agree has few problems is elementary school--even though it is there that the massive damage to language-making occurs. Jerry Farber captured the truth over thirty years ago in his lapidary metaphor "Student as Nigger" and developed it in the beautiful essay of the same name. If we forced children to learn to walk with the same methods we use to force them to read, a few would learn to walk well in spite of us, most would walk indifferently, without pleasure, and a portion of the remainder would not become ambulatory at all. The push to extend "day care" further and further into currently unschooled time importantly assists the formal twelve-year sequence, ensuring utmost tractability among first graders.
2) The second lesson schools teach is bewilderment and confusion. Virtually nothing selected by schools as basic is basic, all curriculum is subordinate to standards imposed by behavioral psychology, and to a lesser extent Freudian precepts compounded into a hash with "third force" psychology (centering on the writings of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow). None of these systems accurately describes human reality, but their lodgement in university/business seven-step mythologies makes them dangerously invulnerable to common-sense criticism.
None of the allegedly scientific school sequences is empirically defensible. All lack evidence of being much more than superstition cleverly hybridized with a body of borrowed fact. Pestalozzi's basic "simple to complex" formulation, for instance, is a prescription for disaster in the classroom since no two minds have the same "simple" starting point, and in the more advanced schedules, children are frequently more knowledgeable than their overseers--witness the wretched record of public school computer instruction when compared to self-discovery programs undertaken informally. Similarly, endless sequences
"If he is doing somethat that he feels he needs to hide, he probably shouldn't be doing it. "
Why do people think this is outrageous when a police chief says it, but acceptable for a parent? A bright 12-year old is more capable than the average adult, after all.
It seems people are all in favor of dictatorial surveilance and control as long as they get to do the monitoring and give the orders. Cue the "it's my house, and what I say goes" BS from the pipsqueak patriarchs who conveniently forget that modern society has been consciously designed to prevent children and adolescents from having independence, earnings, and freedom.
But everybody should be able to tell by inspection that the answer will be in the the high 10^13 - low 10^14 order of magnitude. Anybody who can't is no better off than an ape with a calculator.
The real way to do it is to use an annular coil of neutronium accelerated to 0.995c in less than a microsecond. The frame-dragging effect provides the "thrust". See Robert Forward's work for more.
I thought he was referring to the Arian heresy,(named after a guy named Arius): "it denies that the Son is of one essence, nature, or substance with God; He is not consubstantial with the Father, and therefore not like Him, or equal in dignity, or co-eternal, or within the real sphere of Deity."
So being an Arian robot would be a bad thing; you would have to agree with 99.5% of papist claptrap to be a proper Arian.
I agree. The idea that all natural languages are equally expressive is akin to the idea that all turing-complete computers and languages are equally powerful. In theory it's true, but in practice speed and memory are essential to utility. Considering the very limited working memory of humans, a small-vocabulary and thus prolix language cannot effectively communicate complex and nuanced ideas as precisely as a richer language. Humans have limits to the length of sentences they can hold in their minds, so that a language whose words represent less precise concepts will allow a smaller range of thought than a richer and more precise language.
By reading this post ("mental software") you agree that the following EULA ("mental software") applies to the mental software and you are bound thereby. Any material cross-referenced, colocated or mentally associated with this post is an unauthorized derivative work and becomes the property of Savantissimo. Any futher use of such tainted mental software is prohibited and immoral. This EULA is a limited license to use the contained mental software for purposes other than thinking, and expressly does not include first sale rights or any associated IP transfer rights, whether such transfer is conducted internally or externally. Liquidated damages for violation of this EULA by the licencee shall be title to the violator's life, thoughts, genetic code and all derivative works.
Oops - should re-research such things thoroughly first;) It was an eight-pointed silvery sun blocking about 1/2 of the outer 6/7 of the nipple and the center is open, so about 4/7 of the nipple was exposed. I'll have to examine the pictures at ah... greater length to determine their um... magickal significance.
For more on this see Robert Anton Wilson's "Ishtar Rising" (IIRC at one point titled "The Book of the Breast")
Of course, the Catholic Hierarchy had been inteligent (and by their own lights, right) all along: Repression is never a static process, but must always be dynamic, either moving forward toward total control or retreating backward as the floodgates open to that force which French intellectuals quite correctly capitalize: Desire. Shakespeare asked how Beauty could survive, being no stronger than a flower, and Tennessee Williams answered (in Camino Real) that the flowers in the mountains always break through the rocks. The cry of "Flower Power" in the 1960's might as well have been Nipple Power. Once those gentle buds had crashed through the rocks of repression, Desire was free and the walls of the cities began to shake. Real language began to be heard on the screens of movie houses; other parts of the body, one by one, crept out of the darkness of shame and concealment; topless clubs appeared with bottomless clubs soon after; Blacks rebelled against poverty, students against monotony, even straight citizens raised their voices against a war that made no sense (but when had straight citizens ever objected to a war on those grounds before?); the Indians emerged from the depression that had crushed them since their last defeat at Wounded Knee and began to agitate again; eventually there were mutinies in prisons, in armies, on ships, even among Air Force officers. In Frederick Perl's terminology, people had stopped harboring their resentments and began to make demands -- and a large number of them were proclaiming, in loud voices, that they would use any means necessary to get what they wanted. By the end of the decade, the Jesus Freaks, the women's liberationists and the silent majority were all in a panic, trying desperately to rebuild at least some of the walls of repression which traditionally have kept civilized humanity from attempting to immanentize the eschaton. This phrase is from conservative historian Kurt Vogelin and refers, in technical theological language, to the heresy of the Gnostics, who wished to produce heaven on this earth instead of postponing it until after death. Vogelin says this heresy underlies all forms of radicalism and rebellion, and he is probably right. Modern history is a war between Authority and Desire, and if Authority must demand submission, Desire will settle for nothing less than the attainment of its gratification.
As an aside, it's interesting that so few people point out that Janet Jackson did not actually expose more than about 10% of her nipple - it was almost completely covered by a big 5-pointed silver star! (In Latin "argentum astrum" a.k.a. according to some "A:.A:." for you Crowley and R.A.W. fans.) It is clear to most people that this was no "wardrobe malfunction", but I think that it may not have been a mere publicity stunt, either, but rather a magickal act designed to bring about the end of an excessively masculine power in the zeitgeist.
It isn't primarily the hardness but the stiffness that prevents blunt impact injury in armor design. The impulse is distributed over a wide area so that the peak force is less than the threshold for bruising. Crumpling is used in secondary foam in helmets (which does not contact the wearer directly). In helmets, the outer shell, the resilient inner foam and the skull provide the force-spreading function. Crumpling is not relevant to armor design since the purpose is not to absorb the energy but to distribute it, and crumpling material would be far too bulky for ski armor anyway.
"If Irreducible Complexity were understood as most do (that there is no evolutionary path for something), it's clearly and provably incorrect."
Not to advocate ID, but they do have some good points in their overall fallacious argument. Science has still not (yet) given a convincing account of the orgin of the first cell(s), and evolution requires the existence of a population for natural selection to operate on, so the answer will require scientific theory beyond neo-Darwinian natural selection alone.
It seems to me that the herd mentality and internal censorship of ideas is strongest in disciplines where the evidence is objectively weakest: theology is the worst, followed in turn by sociology, anthropology, archaeology, paleobiology, psychology, biology, and chemistry. Physics is more tolerant of new ideas than the others precisely because they are so subject to test. Being wrong or deviating from the mainstream in a logically coherent way in the softer disciplines is far more likely to shut down a person's career than it is in the harder sciences.
The evidence and theory in evolutionary biology is not so tidy and complete as polemicists try to present. Even when you have seen something happen repeatedly under controlled circumstances there is always room for radically new hypotheses being required as the data become more precise, and evolutionary theory as it exists today hasn't yet fully come to grips with all the oddities already in the evidence. I believe it will in time, but it will require at least as much reworking and addition as physics has over the past 300 years. Theology isn't the answer, but neither is disingenuously trying to act like everything in evolutionary thory has been sewn up since Darwin.
My impression is that the term "politically incorrect" originated in academia in the late '80s as a humorous term in informal discussions among liberals to refer to wryly refer to deviations from their own subculture's dogma. The original tongue-in-cheek term was "politically correct", which was likely first used in a serious sense much earlier by doctrinare Marxists.
Sagan correctly and originally predicted that Venus would be hot due to a runaway greenhouse effect. Drs. Wildt and Velikovsky had predicted that Venus would be very hot prior to Sagan. In his later years, at least, Professor Sagan was almost purely a pop scientist. If he wasn't at a big social function where he was getting honored more than anyone else there, he preferred to be virtually a hermit. Although a professor, his teaching was limited to an occasional graduate seminar. He made a huge amount of money from his celebrity, but seldom spent much time talking with fans or students. His TV series "Cosmos" was great, but he was a bit disappointing in person. His postmodern cliffside mansion in Cayuga Heights is pretty cool, though.
Brian Greene is extremely impressive in person, whereas his popular books and TV series which attempt to talk about string/M-theory without any math are about as satisfying as dehydrated water. If you read his scientific papers, however, you may feel like your brain is suddenly too big for your skull.
Slight correction - "13 times more likely to die in a car crash in a given year than you are to die in a terrorist attack" - if the year is 2001 (40,000/3,000 = 13.3) - over the 10-year period, by your figures it's 114 times.
"the next thing you know, two Girl Scouts calling each other in Denver will be grounds for wiretapping.... "
You mean: "an international paramilitary organization with links to cookie-racketeering and trans-fat sabotage of the national circulatory system", don't you, you pinko liberal terrorist collaborator?
(At traffic stop) Hello, Trooper Harris! How is your wife, Brandy? Really? She sure has been buying a lot of birth control recently. Surprising considering how great Timmy and Candy are turning out. Why, Timmy hasn't been sent to the pricipal's office in over two weeks! Have Brandy say hi to Trooper Mbesi for me. He's a great guy- if you had his shift you could see Brandy as much as he does. Still, that shift differential helps pay your $14,111.48 in credit card debt and your $121,998.62 mortgage on 123 Steeltoe Way. Not to mention the big cash withdrawals you make every month that your reported cash seizures fall below $8,000.
Glad we could have this chat, must do it again over beers some time - bring your "friend" John - oh, that's right, s/he changed it to Joan last year, didn't s/he? Oops, my big mouth, you met this year, didn't you? Well, a word to the wise - check out the goods before you accept roadside payment, that's all I'm saying. Toodles!
Slashdot Mirror
For an instance where Israelis and US government got caught collaborating on using software to spy on allies as well as enemy states look at the PROMIS* / Inslaw scandal:
l aw.html
http://cryptome.org/promis-mossad.htm
(most detailed in allegations, but read critically)
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/INSLAW/
http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/ins
(First issue of Wired - more on the DOJ's role in attempting to crush Inslaw.)
*PROMIS was and is the super-meta-database software for intelligence-gathering / analysis and prosecution management sold to dozens of different countries. It had a back-door built in which allegedly allowed surveilance of intelligence operations even of non-networked computers through spread-spectrum emissions from the dedicated Prime computers on which it ran. Inslaw made PROMIS but the DOJ tried to put them out of business by not paying for the software as contracted. The back door was not Inslaw's doing, AFAIK.
Couldn't you use some kind of phase modulation (perhaps of only one sideband) to carry the digital signal? Ears aren't sensitive to phase distortion, at least in mono. I'd think that that would potentially be a lower-interference option that puts the design burden on the new transmitters and new digital recievers that can be expected to use the fancy new software-defined radio techniques. Rather than eating spectrum that was unused due to legacy-tech limitations, it would make better use of the channel in a way transparent to the old AM receivers.
Yep. Killed a chicken with an axe at 10, at camp. No problem, except for the plucking, which was a PITA even with boiling water to loosen the feathers.
It's silly to be cruel when killing animals - it shows unreasonable concern for their feelings. Non-human animals are not even aware of human cultures, let alone the moral codes of those cultures. Pigs are vicious creatures that would eat you if the tables were turned. Rabbits are generally thought of as quintessential vegetarians - but a grown male rabbit will chew off the testicles of young rabbits if given the opportunity. The purpose of farmed animals is to be eaten, and wild animals to become food when they fail to evade predators. Nature has little room for sentiment when it comes to feeding humans and other natural meat-eaters. We are naturally omnivores, not vegetarians.
"Athena" would have been a much better name than "Ares" for the NASA launch vehicle.
From Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, scene in jail in the Philippines, this quote starts p. 801 - see full quote starting from p.799, or better yet, buy the book.
I'll let the idea that schooling must be mandatory and public fall to the weight of the lengthy arguments in Gatto's book and go after the heart of your mistake: your assertion that schooling (or even teaching) is needed for learning. This conception is illogical and contradicted by the evidence. In fact, much of modern schooling actually inhibits learning - for example: "whole word" reading instruction, the idea of "appropriate reading levels", the idea that it takes years of teaching to learn to read, the idea that mathematics is what is done in math class and entails a definite sequence of curriculum, and most of all, that learning is something that can be received passively rather than something which the student's own thought must actively seize.
If you had checked out that source I gave more fully, the first page of the table of contents has this quote: and doubtless being a red-meat maths-and-facts kind of guy, you would have looked at the section of that chapter titled "The National Adult Literacy Survey", which has this to say:
Thus your argument is not only disproven, but there is reason to suspect that eliminating state-controlled schooling would actually improve basic education.
My bad.
"If he is doing somethat that he feels he needs to hide, he probably shouldn't be doing it. "
Why do people think this is outrageous when a police chief says it, but acceptable for a parent? A bright 12-year old is more capable than the average adult, after all.
It seems people are all in favor of dictatorial surveilance and control as long as they get to do the monitoring and give the orders. Cue the "it's my house, and what I say goes" BS from the pipsqueak patriarchs who conveniently forget that modern society has been consciously designed to prevent children and adolescents from having independence, earnings, and freedom.
But everybody should be able to tell by inspection that the answer will be in the the high 10^13 - low 10^14 order of magnitude. Anybody who can't is no better off than an ape with a calculator.
Guns don't shoot people - Vice-Presidents shoot people!
The real way to do it is to use an annular coil of neutronium accelerated to 0.995c in less than a microsecond. The frame-dragging effect provides the "thrust". See Robert Forward's work for more.
Perhaps he's the reincarnation of James Joyce.
I thought he was referring to the Arian heresy,(named after a guy named Arius): "it denies that the Son is of one essence, nature, or substance with God; He is not consubstantial with the Father, and therefore not like Him, or equal in dignity, or co-eternal, or within the real sphere of Deity."
So being an Arian robot would be a bad thing; you would have to agree with 99.5% of papist claptrap to be a proper Arian.
I agree. The idea that all natural languages are equally expressive is akin to the idea that all turing-complete computers and languages are equally powerful. In theory it's true, but in practice speed and memory are essential to utility. Considering the very limited working memory of humans, a small-vocabulary and thus prolix language cannot effectively communicate complex and nuanced ideas as precisely as a richer language. Humans have limits to the length of sentences they can hold in their minds, so that a language whose words represent less precise concepts will allow a smaller range of thought than a richer and more precise language.
"After OSX86 Project recieved it's DMCA shut down notice, people are moving discussion to the OSX86 China Forums"
Ahhh...the irony! Moving out of the oppressive USA to China, where speech is free!
By reading this post ("mental software") you agree that the following EULA ("mental software") applies to the mental software and you are bound thereby. Any material cross-referenced, colocated or mentally associated with this post is an unauthorized derivative work and becomes the property of Savantissimo. Any futher use of such tainted mental software is prohibited and immoral. This EULA is a limited license to use the contained mental software for purposes other than thinking, and expressly does not include first sale rights or any associated IP transfer rights, whether such transfer is conducted internally or externally. Liquidated damages for violation of this EULA by the licencee shall be title to the violator's life, thoughts, genetic code and all derivative works.
Oops - should re-research such things thoroughly first ;)
It was an eight-pointed silvery sun blocking about 1/2 of the outer 6/7 of the nipple and the center is open, so about 4/7 of the nipple was exposed. I'll have to examine the pictures at ah... greater length to determine their um... magickal significance.
As an aside, it's interesting that so few people point out that Janet Jackson did not actually expose more than about 10% of her nipple - it was almost completely covered by a big 5-pointed silver star! (In Latin "argentum astrum" a.k.a. according to some "A:.A:." for you Crowley and R.A.W. fans.) It is clear to most people that this was no "wardrobe malfunction", but I think that it may not have been a mere publicity stunt, either, but rather a magickal act designed to bring about the end of an excessively masculine power in the zeitgeist.
It isn't primarily the hardness but the stiffness that prevents blunt impact injury in armor design. The impulse is distributed over a wide area so that the peak force is less than the threshold for bruising. Crumpling is used in secondary foam in helmets (which does not contact the wearer directly). In helmets, the outer shell, the resilient inner foam and the skull provide the force-spreading function. Crumpling is not relevant to armor design since the purpose is not to absorb the energy but to distribute it, and crumpling material would be far too bulky for ski armor anyway.
"If Irreducible Complexity were understood as most do (that there is no evolutionary path for something), it's clearly and provably incorrect."
Not to advocate ID, but they do have some good points in their overall fallacious argument. Science has still not (yet) given a convincing account of the orgin of the first cell(s), and evolution requires the existence of a population for natural selection to operate on, so the answer will require scientific theory beyond neo-Darwinian natural selection alone.
It seems to me that the herd mentality and internal censorship of ideas is strongest in disciplines where the evidence is objectively weakest: theology is the worst, followed in turn by sociology, anthropology, archaeology, paleobiology, psychology, biology, and chemistry. Physics is more tolerant of new ideas than the others precisely because they are so subject to test. Being wrong or deviating from the mainstream in a logically coherent way in the softer disciplines is far more likely to shut down a person's career than it is in the harder sciences.
The evidence and theory in evolutionary biology is not so tidy and complete as polemicists try to present. Even when you have seen something happen repeatedly under controlled circumstances there is always room for radically new hypotheses being required as the data become more precise, and evolutionary theory as it exists today hasn't yet fully come to grips with all the oddities already in the evidence. I believe it will in time, but it will require at least as much reworking and addition as physics has over the past 300 years. Theology isn't the answer, but neither is disingenuously trying to act like everything in evolutionary thory has been sewn up since Darwin.
My impression is that the term "politically incorrect" originated in academia in the late '80s as a humorous term in informal discussions among liberals to refer to wryly refer to deviations from their own subculture's dogma. The original tongue-in-cheek term was "politically correct", which was likely first used in a serious sense much earlier by doctrinare Marxists.
Sagan correctly and originally predicted that Venus would be hot due to a runaway greenhouse effect. Drs. Wildt and Velikovsky had predicted that Venus would be very hot prior to Sagan. In his later years, at least, Professor Sagan was almost purely a pop scientist. If he wasn't at a big social function where he was getting honored more than anyone else there, he preferred to be virtually a hermit. Although a professor, his teaching was limited to an occasional graduate seminar. He made a huge amount of money from his celebrity, but seldom spent much time talking with fans or students. His TV series "Cosmos" was great, but he was a bit disappointing in person. His postmodern cliffside mansion in Cayuga Heights is pretty cool, though.
Brian Greene is extremely impressive in person, whereas his popular books and TV series which attempt to talk about string/M-theory without any math are about as satisfying as dehydrated water. If you read his scientific papers, however, you may feel like your brain is suddenly too big for your skull.
Slight correction - "13 times more likely to die in a car crash in a given year than you are to die in a terrorist attack" - if the year is 2001 (40,000/3,000 = 13.3) - over the 10-year period, by your figures it's 114 times.
"the next thing you know, two Girl Scouts calling each other in Denver will be grounds for wiretapping.... "
You mean: "an international paramilitary organization with links to cookie-racketeering and trans-fat sabotage of the national circulatory system", don't you, you pinko liberal terrorist collaborator?
(At traffic stop)
Hello, Trooper Harris! How is your wife, Brandy? Really? She sure has been buying a lot of birth control recently. Surprising considering how great Timmy and Candy are turning out. Why, Timmy hasn't been sent to the pricipal's office in over two weeks! Have Brandy say hi to Trooper Mbesi for me. He's a great guy- if you had his shift you could see Brandy as much as he does. Still, that shift differential helps pay your $14,111.48 in credit card debt and your $121,998.62 mortgage on 123 Steeltoe Way. Not to mention the big cash withdrawals you make every month that your reported cash seizures fall below $8,000.
Glad we could have this chat, must do it again over beers some time - bring your "friend" John - oh, that's right, s/he changed it to Joan last year, didn't s/he? Oops, my big mouth, you met this year, didn't you? Well, a word to the wise - check out the goods before you accept roadside payment, that's all I'm saying. Toodles!