There are opposing positions to Al Gore's propaganda movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." There are opposing views that should be discussed.
No one diputes the fact that the Earth is warming. However, there is not scientific consensus that it is caused, or substantially increased, by humans. The inconvenient truth that Gore fails to mention is that about 10,000 years ago, the Earth was so warm that citrus fruits were growing in what is now northern Germany.
There were no cars and precious few people to cause the Earth to be so warm. That period was followed by an ice age. When the ice age ended, the Earth began warming, and has been warming ever since. It will continue to warm, until another ice age occurs.
Many publications on global warming deliberately leave out these facts, so as to lend credence to the theory that we are causing global warming. The culprit is not the Earth's habitants; it is the sun, which we sometimes see in the Pacific Northwest. The Earth has been in a continual cycle of heating and cooling, and there is nothing we can to about it. That's another "inconvenient truth."
Muzzling attempt?
AMS CERTIFIED WEATHERMAN STRIKES BACK AT WEATHER CHANNEL CALL FOR DECERTIFICATION
January 19, 2007
"In 2005 I upgraded the AMS seal of approval to the new "Certified Broadcast Meteorologist" designation. The CBM is the highest level of certification from the AMS, and involves academic requirements, on-air performance, a rigorous examination, and continuing education. I am CBM number 33, meaning I am the 33rd person in the nation to earn it. I wanted to be the first in Alabama, but a couple of guys in Huntsville beat me to it. Just not enough hours in the day!
Well, well. Some "climate expert" on "The Weather Channel" wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent "global warming" is a natural process. So much for "tolerance", huh?
I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can't find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:
*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at "The Weather Channel" probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab.
*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, lets not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.
If you don't like to listen to me, find another meteorologist with no tie t
(There will be those that try to cast this argument as an "anti-warming" statement, so I preface.)
Climate change and warming are happening. It's the cause, the driving force that is at issue. There are those that claim the debate is over, that man-caused climate change is in progress, and that all the scientists agree, case closed. Not exactly the case.
There 2 books, one published in December, the other due out shortly that make a very strong case for cyclical change.
Two powerful new books say today's global warming is due not to human activity but primarily to a long, moderate solar-linked cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years, by physicist Fred Singer and economist Dennis Avery was released just before Christmas. The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and former BBC science writer Nigel Calder (Icon Books), is due out in March.
Singer and Avery note that most of the earth's recent warming occurred before 1940, and thus before much human-emitted CO2. Moreover, physical evidence shows 600 moderate warmings in the earth's last million years. The evidence ranges from ancient Nile flood records, Chinese court documents and Roman wine grapes to modern spectral analysis of polar ice cores, deep seabed sediments, and layered cave stalagmites.
Unstoppable Global Warming shows the earth's temperatures following variations in solar intensity through centuries of sunspot records, and finds cycles of sun-linked isotopes in ice and tree rings. The book cites the work of Svensmark, who says cosmic rays vary the earth's temperatures by creating more or fewer of the low, wet clouds that cool the earth. It notes that global climate models can't accurately register cloud effects.
The Chilling Stars documents how cosmic rays amplify small changes in the sun's irradiance fourfold, creating 1-2 degree C cycles in earth's temperatures: Cosmic rays continually slam into the earth's atmosphere from outer space, creating ion clusters that become seeds for small droplets of water and sulfuric acid. The droplets then form the low, wet clouds that reflect solar energy back into space. When the sun is more active, it shields the earth from some of the rays, clouds wane, and the planet warms.
Unstoppable Global Warming documents the reality of a moderate, natural, 1500-year climate cycle on the earth. The Chilling Stars explains the why and how.
I have 3 machines with various flavors of XP. Each has undergone significant upgrade, update, repair in the past 5 years. At no time have I had to re-purchase the O.S.
I was able to move an install of XP from a dead desktop to a laptop and then a year later, back to a new desktop (I installed Linux, temporarily on the laptop before ditching it). All it took was a phone call each time and an explanation of why I was moving the install.
This person is, either:
Lying about the whole thing in an effort to flamebait an MS discussion
Bought the eMachine from someone with a pirated copy of the OS
Purposely installed a pirated copy that he may/may not have paid for
Is not diligent enough to actually deal with MS
Is dealing with a brain dead computer store pseudo-geek (really, if they are that good, they can get a much better job, the computer store geek is to real geeks what MacDonald cooks are to Chefs)
And WRT Vista being bad for the environment, aren't the people saying it just a little bit... crazy?
Consider it as those who should be marginalized self-identifying for you, so you don't have to listen to more of their fringe-speak to determine if they have anything important to say. They are the example of people who just can't pick their battles, so they shotgun it and by doing so, put themselves on the fringe.
If you're going to be an activist, learn to pick your battles.
Ironically, the dinosaurs are playing a leading role in our own Global Warming Saga.
Or, not. I think the dead, liquid dinosaurs are the scapegoats. I think people are afraid to admit that its that pesky Sun, on a warming cycle, and volcanic action, there's been a lot, and just plain cycles.
People are afraid to admit it because then it is out of our control, and one thing people really like is to be in control.
you sound like a pirate agreeing with your own statements.
Nicey nicely, I must nonconfrontationaly disagree:
You are mixing "Aye" (pronounced "eye") with "Ay" (rhymes with "hay"). But, for making me respond thusly, I feel like calling you a "poop head" but the Minister of Canadidian Nicey Niceness and Politely Living will through me in the Less than Nicey Nice Time Out Center for the Not So Pentitent. So, you are not a "poop head". But, I'm allowed to call you a "dunder head" even though I'm not sure what it means.
I'm sorry, I've had time to think about my flip response to you and it's very clear that you've been damaged in your past. It is unfair of me to have been so glib.
It is readily apparent that you have not been given the proper coping tools, and you are deficient. I only wish your parents, relatives, or some other role model could have influenced you in a positive manner so that you would not have turned into such a violent, angry, sad, little boy. Your inner child cries for attention, and you have found none. I weep for you.
Last time I posted about this, some Virtual Fan Boy, with some Level 38 Condescention Skill took me to task but, here goes:
Why would someone spend good hard cash to get virtual stuff simply for the game play? This follows a question of course, after that Korean chap killed himself with exhaustion after DAYS of nonstop gaming, WHY?
Nope, the t-shirt I bought at the Nicey Nice Authorized Tourist Shop for Non-Socialist Money Grubbers in Victoria, B.C. clearly has the word "Ay" emblazened upon it's Non-Socialist, First Nation's Friendly front.
Those nicey nice Canadidians with their "Ay" and hockey. Hollywood is going to implement tough DRM just because of them. Or, they will stop making movies until Canadidia plays nicey nice with them.
I'd say invade them, hell, their navy has 3 row boats, a buoy, and a guy that knows how to fly fish. Their Air Force has 2 crop dusters and a guy who once did the voice overs for Superman ("Look, up in the sky.") And their Army knows where the ground is when given a multiple choice. It's the Marines I'm afraid of, they know all the words to "I'm a Lumberjack". But, what really scares me about invading Canadidia is that they may want to hug us.
I'd say, send them all our illegals, but they already have the French, and thats worse.
Wow, while I generally eschew psychiatry, as you may have gathered, have you considered therapy?
But, I think I detected the sarcasm in your response and laughed along with you. Good job of illustrating, almost precisely, my point. Kudos, sir, kudos.
I signed on with eCharge in the Fall of 2000. They promised the moon, even the VP that interviewed me told me everything was fine. They paid for my move from Boise to the Seattle area.
On the day my wife was closing on the sale of our house in Boise (Jan 2001), employees were in a conference room in Seattle being told the company was shuttering its doors retroactively to the beginning of our Christmas vacation.
A few months later, the relocation company that did my relocation, approached me for the cost of the move, corporate apartment (I had been in it for 30 days), shipping, real estate search, etc. I told them to go jump. They told me they would sue.
At the mention of that word, I realized, it's good to have a brother who is a lawyer. We crafted a nice letter informing the group that their contract was with eCharge, not me. My contract was with eCharge. So, in essence, we were both screwed by eCharge. That shut them up. I didn't hear from them again, and they went out of business. A collection agency trying to collect from them, called me, they got the same response. A year later, Mayflower shipping called me trying to collect from me. They got the same response. While I came out of it o.k., it cost me a year and a half of BS.
I was the one to get in trouble. While I think (and many others would agree) I was justified neither my parents or school faculty would be sympatetic stating I was oversensitivity, had lack of anger management, etc.
Without knowing the situation you were responding to, I would say it was your parents and the school that were responding with pop-psych crap of the post-60's.
It's nice to think that we should just grow a thick skin, and maybe you would've been able to ignore and withstand the experiences I went through. But somehow I doubt anyone can go through being bullied and called the problem without some... issues.
But that's my point. I went through bullying. My father was in the military, we moved every few years. I was the perpetual new kid. I was skinny, pale, short. I was called queer, fag, UNIVAC (I love that one). I was jumped, almost on cue within a few weeks of arriving at a new school. I went through all of it. We all would like to think that our experiences are unique, and somehow worse than others have gone through. It's just not true.
Being bullied did not turn me into a quivering mass then or now. I have a friend right now who, at 50, is still affected by it, and he uses the words "unfair" and "harrassment" on a daily basis. He is also one of the most unhappy and angry people I have ever met.
As a result of the bullying I've:
Been a successful Programmer that stands up to deadline pressures
Been a successful MTI (drill instructor) in the USAF
Been a successful varsity soccer fullback
Been the Far East Training manager for a tech company, and based in Japan
In other words, the experiences and lessons of my youth have shaped me into what I am now, a positive minded, achieving individual who has gone to class reunions and sat down and had drinks and dinner with some of my most abhorrent tormentors in school. I've grown, they've grown. I've apologized for giving them the bloody nose when I was 14, and they've apologized for their actions that triggered the bloody nose. And, I've learned, with one exception, they are all fine up-standing, contributing citizens now.
It is too late to equip some children with the tools necessary. I think they must have somewhere before they get into Junior High. But, they will have to learn, none-the-less.
I submit that, if I truly had a problem with self control, I would have crushed that guy when I had the chance. All I really wanted, however, was for him to leave me alone, and I got that.
You prove my point: You had the self-control. At some point in your childhood, rather than protect you from the big bad world, you were given the tools, by some sort of role-model, be it parent, relative, friend, sports hero, whomever, and you internalized it. Had you not been given the tools to cope, you may have grabbed a gun and met him in a dark alley, hallway, whereever and exercised your Dylan and Klebold response.
Your response was proportionate and in the fine tradition of all bully responders. You stood up for yourself in a measured and effective manner. Yes, it went against what you had been told, "Johnny mustn't hurt his playmates", and you got into some minor trouble for it, but in the end, you and those around you, learned a valuable lesson, and one that most don't learn now.
In my community, near Tacoma, we have had several incidents that have involved kids bringing guns to school to settle scores. One was deadly. When I grew up, we had the same access to guns. But, we also had tools to cope. I would submit that school psychologists and school pacifist and protection movements have done more to foster extreme violence than help. They may be the ones that are trying to convince us to protect our children.
I'm not sure how things are working in other cultures, but in the U.S. part of our problem is bowing to the overly sensitive.
If we give our kids the tools to handle pressure, and the outlets to deal with it, they will be much healthier adults. Since the 1970's, we've psychoanalized ourselves into a morass or "feelings" and "inner child" excuses. We want to legislate and be protected from things that "offend" us. So, our children grow up, not being able to handle the pressure and they go to the extreme when they snap.
I'm reminded of the line in an Eagles song, "I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass." (Get Over It). The term now-a-days is "Man Up". If you went crying to school administration, or you father, they'd tell you to get tough.
If you don't teach kids how to deal with it, how to get angry, but control it, how to defend yourself, but don't start it then we will soon have a nation of people who shouldn't be allowed out of their homes.
I was listening to local talk radio yesterday and the discussion was about a Texas town where the word "nigger" was going to be outlawed. One of the callers couldn't understand why the radio host considered people a little too oversensitive to the word. The caller wanted all hateful words legislated out of usage because it was his right to be protected from them. He told the host that if someone used the word "nigger" on him, he would pull out a gun and shoot him. His inability to deal with the harshness of the world makes him see murder as a proportionate response to a racial slur. He literally said that in order to avoid him shooting someone, government should make a law against the slur so he could take the person to court. (Seattle Dori Monson Show.)
We need to teach kids to deal with it, react appropriately and proportionately and responsibly, and not expect to be protected from things that offend them.
String Theory was proven on July 16, 2003, and confirmed after peer review and over 20 separate duplicated efforts, including a lab in Dallas, Texas.
Proven: When you need a piece of string to tie something up, and you find a piece of string in a junk drawer, it will always be too short for use, or too long and when cut to the appropriate length, the remaining piece will be too short for further use.
A similar, but as yet unproven theory is in testing: When you have a piece of string and measure it by "eyeballing" it will always be too short for actual use.
Doesn't matter. I'm not eating it, and neither are the users of any site I have a hand in developing.
Huh? Did he just...? Are the Obvious Police available?
Come on, guys - how many times you have to be bitten by these monopolists to realize that they can't be trusted? Or put another way, we (developers) write the rules now, and we don't have to let them in! Or as James T. Kirk said: "Let them die!"
Are you seriously calling them "monopolists"? How can they be a monopolist in the online, web development arena when folks out there claim that most of the web is dominated by SOTMS (Someone Other Than Microsoft)? You can't have it both ways. They cannot be monopolists if there is a sizeable or even more dominant alernative out there. Now, their philosphy may smack of monopoly, but in reality, they are just another competitor.
OS - Microsoft is a monopoly and Linux, Apple, Sun have failed, or MS is a competitor and Linux, Apple, Sun are doing fine.
Web - Microsoft.NET and IIS are a monopoly and Linux, Apache, Java, Perl, PHP...are dead, or MS is a competitor and others are dominating.
You can't have it both ways. Just admit, you've joined the "in", the "cool", the "hip" crowd of the Anti-Microsoft cult, you've stopped critical thought on the matter, and if it has MS attached, you will instantly hate it. It's o.k. to admit. Really.
That's Al Gore's next target. He's afraid the Earth, and most notably, the U.S. is using too much Sun. Apparently, we are using so much Sun that it is causing it to overheat. This is causing not only the Earth to heat up, but Mars as well.
"If we continue to use the Sun as much as we are, it's going to burn out. Where are we going to be then?" Gore further went on to say, "If there is life on Mars, and I'm convinced of the possiblity, we may be killing it. The eco-system of Mars is very delicate and life there is used to existing in the conditions that have existed for eons. Our over use of the Sun may just kill our neigbors. Katrina was nothing compared to what might happen to Mars. Now, let's move onto the superstorms we are causing on Jupiter..."
Scientists around the world were quick to support Gore's statements, "While we are still working on his claims that we are overusing the Sun, and we can't be sure that aliens aren't manipulating its coronasphere, we recommend a complete halt to Sun usage, just to be safe. After all, what would it hurt?" The Scientists around the world are funded by the non-partisan "Special Interest Lobby Who Believe America and Capitalism Are Ruining the World and Besides We Just Want Everybody to Be Communist" (SILWBACARWBWJWEBC) and are involved with the equally non-partisan "Study to Prove We Are Using Too Much Sun and America is to Blame Because They Use More Than Anyone and Even Save It for Daylight Savings Time" (SPWAUTMSABBTUMTAESIDST).
God, just the mention of the Telerik tools is enough to make me...well, I love Telerik. Talk about making it so damned easy.
I met these guys at DevConnections last year. Good guys, and their product is great. I love the "outlook" stuff. Especially when the customer's management see the end results. If you can make web-based apps indistiguishable from the desktop apps that PHB's use, BONUS.
I've been playing with this since this last summer. It's come a long way. A few Anti-AJAX friends of mine, who honestly, have been using AJAX concepts for years, but didn't know someone had put a pretty ribbon on it and called it AJAX, really like the ASP.NET AJAX. I think what caught them was the RAD ability now.
I like it because I have customers who wanted a more Windows Forms based design for their web-based applications.
The great thing here is, it is capable of turning SharePoint into a really slick platform. I only wish it worked on SharePoint 2.0 the way it works on 3.0, since I still have customers using the older platform.
DARPA has yet to acknowledge the project that I was working on 3 years from now in 2010. Last week, January 14, 2012 we will successfully tested the Time Redaction Project. So, I gave myself the plans tomorrow so that I will be submitting them a few years ago to get the grant money. DOD has used this to send a nuke to kill the dinosaurs. I hope it works.
The exploding robots are part of a Japanese Supervillians group of henchmen, who, as many are aware, always explode spectacularly when hit in just the right way.
Slashdot Mirror
From the Senate:
There are opposing positions to Al Gore's propaganda movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." There are opposing views that should be discussed.
No one diputes the fact that the Earth is warming. However, there is not scientific consensus that it is caused, or substantially increased, by humans. The inconvenient truth that Gore fails to mention is that about 10,000 years ago, the Earth was so warm that citrus fruits were growing in what is now northern Germany.
There were no cars and precious few people to cause the Earth to be so warm. That period was followed by an ice age. When the ice age ended, the Earth began warming, and has been warming ever since. It will continue to warm, until another ice age occurs.
Many publications on global warming deliberately leave out these facts, so as to lend credence to the theory that we are causing global warming. The culprit is not the Earth's habitants; it is the sun, which we sometimes see in the Pacific Northwest. The Earth has been in a continual cycle of heating and cooling, and there is nothing we can to about it. That's another "inconvenient truth."
Muzzling attempt?
Check out this blog post from James Spann:
From his blog - his bio:
Official bio here
(There will be those that try to cast this argument as an "anti-warming" statement, so I preface.)
Climate change and warming are happening. It's the cause, the driving force that is at issue. There are those that claim the debate is over, that man-caused climate change is in progress, and that all the scientists agree, case closed. Not exactly the case.
There 2 books, one published in December, the other due out shortly that make a very strong case for cyclical change.
I like the ATMEL line. They are straight forward and highly functional.
Aren't we missing the most obvious solution here?
We are geeks after all. And we know what will calm a volcano.
V I R G I N S
O.K., I need 3 Linux nerds, and 3 Linux nerdettes (come on, you know, you mention Linux at a party, you ain't getting laid).
Volunteers?
Free trip to Indonesia.
I smell serious BS on this one.
I have 3 machines with various flavors of XP. Each has undergone significant upgrade, update, repair in the past 5 years. At no time have I had to re-purchase the O.S.
I was able to move an install of XP from a dead desktop to a laptop and then a year later, back to a new desktop (I installed Linux, temporarily on the laptop before ditching it). All it took was a phone call each time and an explanation of why I was moving the install.
This person is, either:
Even a /. editor should have spotted this one.
Consider it as those who should be marginalized self-identifying for you, so you don't have to listen to more of their fringe-speak to determine if they have anything important to say. They are the example of people who just can't pick their battles, so they shotgun it and by doing so, put themselves on the fringe.
If you're going to be an activist, learn to pick your battles.
Or, not. I think the dead, liquid dinosaurs are the scapegoats. I think people are afraid to admit that its that pesky Sun, on a warming cycle, and volcanic action, there's been a lot, and just plain cycles.
People are afraid to admit it because then it is out of our control, and one thing people really like is to be in control.
Nicey nicely, I must nonconfrontationaly disagree:
You are mixing "Aye" (pronounced "eye") with "Ay" (rhymes with "hay"). But, for making me respond thusly, I feel like calling you a "poop head" but the Minister of Canadidian Nicey Niceness and Politely Living will through me in the Less than Nicey Nice Time Out Center for the Not So Pentitent. So, you are not a "poop head". But, I'm allowed to call you a "dunder head" even though I'm not sure what it means.
I'm sorry, I've had time to think about my flip response to you and it's very clear that you've been damaged in your past. It is unfair of me to have been so glib.
It is readily apparent that you have not been given the proper coping tools, and you are deficient. I only wish your parents, relatives, or some other role model could have influenced you in a positive manner so that you would not have turned into such a violent, angry, sad, little boy. Your inner child cries for attention, and you have found none. I weep for you.
Last time I posted about this, some Virtual Fan Boy, with some Level 38 Condescention Skill took me to task but, here goes:
Why would someone spend good hard cash to get virtual stuff simply for the game play? This follows a question of course, after that Korean chap killed himself with exhaustion after DAYS of nonstop gaming, WHY?
Nope, the t-shirt I bought at the Nicey Nice Authorized Tourist Shop for Non-Socialist Money Grubbers in Victoria, B.C. clearly has the word "Ay" emblazened upon it's Non-Socialist, First Nation's Friendly front.
AY!
Not to be confrontational, ay.
Hugs, anyone?
Modded Flamebait? Boy, some idiot didn't get the joke.
Those nicey nice Canadidians with their "Ay" and hockey. Hollywood is going to implement tough DRM just because of them. Or, they will stop making movies until Canadidia plays nicey nice with them.
I'd say invade them, hell, their navy has 3 row boats, a buoy, and a guy that knows how to fly fish. Their Air Force has 2 crop dusters and a guy who once did the voice overs for Superman ("Look, up in the sky.") And their Army knows where the ground is when given a multiple choice. It's the Marines I'm afraid of, they know all the words to "I'm a Lumberjack". But, what really scares me about invading Canadidia is that they may want to hug us.
I'd say, send them all our illegals, but they already have the French, and thats worse.
Wow, while I generally eschew psychiatry, as you may have gathered, have you considered therapy?
But, I think I detected the sarcasm in your response and laughed along with you. Good job of illustrating, almost precisely, my point. Kudos, sir, kudos.
I signed on with eCharge in the Fall of 2000. They promised the moon, even the VP that interviewed me told me everything was fine. They paid for my move from Boise to the Seattle area.
On the day my wife was closing on the sale of our house in Boise (Jan 2001), employees were in a conference room in Seattle being told the company was shuttering its doors retroactively to the beginning of our Christmas vacation.
A few months later, the relocation company that did my relocation, approached me for the cost of the move, corporate apartment (I had been in it for 30 days), shipping, real estate search, etc. I told them to go jump. They told me they would sue.
At the mention of that word, I realized, it's good to have a brother who is a lawyer. We crafted a nice letter informing the group that their contract was with eCharge, not me. My contract was with eCharge. So, in essence, we were both screwed by eCharge. That shut them up. I didn't hear from them again, and they went out of business. A collection agency trying to collect from them, called me, they got the same response. A year later, Mayflower shipping called me trying to collect from me. They got the same response. While I came out of it o.k., it cost me a year and a half of BS.
GET IT IN WRITING AND MAKE THEM STICK TO IT.
Without knowing the situation you were responding to, I would say it was your parents and the school that were responding with pop-psych crap of the post-60's.
But that's my point. I went through bullying. My father was in the military, we moved every few years. I was the perpetual new kid. I was skinny, pale, short. I was called queer, fag, UNIVAC (I love that one). I was jumped, almost on cue within a few weeks of arriving at a new school. I went through all of it. We all would like to think that our experiences are unique, and somehow worse than others have gone through. It's just not true.
Being bullied did not turn me into a quivering mass then or now. I have a friend right now who, at 50, is still affected by it, and he uses the words "unfair" and "harrassment" on a daily basis. He is also one of the most unhappy and angry people I have ever met.
As a result of the bullying I've:
In other words, the experiences and lessons of my youth have shaped me into what I am now, a positive minded, achieving individual who has gone to class reunions and sat down and had drinks and dinner with some of my most abhorrent tormentors in school. I've grown, they've grown. I've apologized for giving them the bloody nose when I was 14, and they've apologized for their actions that triggered the bloody nose. And, I've learned, with one exception, they are all fine up-standing, contributing citizens now.
It is too late to equip some children with the tools necessary. I think they must have somewhere before they get into Junior High. But, they will have to learn, none-the-less.
You prove my point: You had the self-control. At some point in your childhood, rather than protect you from the big bad world, you were given the tools, by some sort of role-model, be it parent, relative, friend, sports hero, whomever, and you internalized it. Had you not been given the tools to cope, you may have grabbed a gun and met him in a dark alley, hallway, whereever and exercised your Dylan and Klebold response.
Your response was proportionate and in the fine tradition of all bully responders. You stood up for yourself in a measured and effective manner. Yes, it went against what you had been told, "Johnny mustn't hurt his playmates", and you got into some minor trouble for it, but in the end, you and those around you, learned a valuable lesson, and one that most don't learn now.
In my community, near Tacoma, we have had several incidents that have involved kids bringing guns to school to settle scores. One was deadly. When I grew up, we had the same access to guns. But, we also had tools to cope. I would submit that school psychologists and school pacifist and protection movements have done more to foster extreme violence than help. They may be the ones that are trying to convince us to protect our children.
I'm not sure how things are working in other cultures, but in the U.S. part of our problem is bowing to the overly sensitive.
If we give our kids the tools to handle pressure, and the outlets to deal with it, they will be much healthier adults. Since the 1970's, we've psychoanalized ourselves into a morass or "feelings" and "inner child" excuses. We want to legislate and be protected from things that "offend" us. So, our children grow up, not being able to handle the pressure and they go to the extreme when they snap.
I'm reminded of the line in an Eagles song, "I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass." (Get Over It). The term now-a-days is "Man Up". If you went crying to school administration, or you father, they'd tell you to get tough.
If you don't teach kids how to deal with it, how to get angry, but control it, how to defend yourself, but don't start it then we will soon have a nation of people who shouldn't be allowed out of their homes.
I was listening to local talk radio yesterday and the discussion was about a Texas town where the word "nigger" was going to be outlawed. One of the callers couldn't understand why the radio host considered people a little too oversensitive to the word. The caller wanted all hateful words legislated out of usage because it was his right to be protected from them. He told the host that if someone used the word "nigger" on him, he would pull out a gun and shoot him. His inability to deal with the harshness of the world makes him see murder as a proportionate response to a racial slur. He literally said that in order to avoid him shooting someone, government should make a law against the slur so he could take the person to court. (Seattle Dori Monson Show.)
We need to teach kids to deal with it, react appropriately and proportionately and responsibly, and not expect to be protected from things that offend them.
String Theory was proven on July 16, 2003, and confirmed after peer review and over 20 separate duplicated efforts, including a lab in Dallas, Texas.
Proven: When you need a piece of string to tie something up, and you find a piece of string in a junk drawer, it will always be too short for use, or too long and when cut to the appropriate length, the remaining piece will be too short for further use.
A similar, but as yet unproven theory is in testing: When you have a piece of string and measure it by "eyeballing" it will always be too short for actual use.
TinFoilJones said:
Huh? Did he just...? Are the Obvious Police available?
Are you seriously calling them "monopolists"? How can they be a monopolist in the online, web development arena when folks out there claim that most of the web is dominated by SOTMS (Someone Other Than Microsoft)? You can't have it both ways. They cannot be monopolists if there is a sizeable or even more dominant alernative out there. Now, their philosphy may smack of monopoly, but in reality, they are just another competitor.
OS - Microsoft is a monopoly and Linux, Apple, Sun have failed, or MS is a competitor and Linux, Apple, Sun are doing fine.
Web - Microsoft .NET and IIS are a monopoly and Linux, Apache, Java, Perl, PHP...are dead, or MS is a competitor and others are dominating.
You can't have it both ways. Just admit, you've joined the "in", the "cool", the "hip" crowd of the Anti-Microsoft cult, you've stopped critical thought on the matter, and if it has MS attached, you will instantly hate it. It's o.k. to admit. Really.
That's Al Gore's next target. He's afraid the Earth, and most notably, the U.S. is using too much Sun. Apparently, we are using so much Sun that it is causing it to overheat. This is causing not only the Earth to heat up, but Mars as well.
Scientists around the world were quick to support Gore's statements, "While we are still working on his claims that we are overusing the Sun, and we can't be sure that aliens aren't manipulating its coronasphere, we recommend a complete halt to Sun usage, just to be safe. After all, what would it hurt?" The Scientists around the world are funded by the non-partisan "Special Interest Lobby Who Believe America and Capitalism Are Ruining the World and Besides We Just Want Everybody to Be Communist" (SILWBACARWBWJWEBC) and are involved with the equally non-partisan "Study to Prove We Are Using Too Much Sun and America is to Blame Because They Use More Than Anyone and Even Save It for Daylight Savings Time" (SPWAUTMSABBTUMTAESIDST).
God, just the mention of the Telerik tools is enough to make me...well, I love Telerik. Talk about making it so damned easy.
I met these guys at DevConnections last year. Good guys, and their product is great. I love the "outlook" stuff. Especially when the customer's management see the end results. If you can make web-based apps indistiguishable from the desktop apps that PHB's use, BONUS.
I've been playing with this since this last summer. It's come a long way. A few Anti-AJAX friends of mine, who honestly, have been using AJAX concepts for years, but didn't know someone had put a pretty ribbon on it and called it AJAX, really like the ASP.NET AJAX. I think what caught them was the RAD ability now.
I like it because I have customers who wanted a more Windows Forms based design for their web-based applications.
The great thing here is, it is capable of turning SharePoint into a really slick platform. I only wish it worked on SharePoint 2.0 the way it works on 3.0, since I still have customers using the older platform.
DARPA has yet to acknowledge the project that I was working on 3 years from now in 2010. Last week, January 14, 2012 we will successfully tested the Time Redaction Project. So, I gave myself the plans tomorrow so that I will be submitting them a few years ago to get the grant money. DOD has used this to send a nuke to kill the dinosaurs. I hope it works.
The exploding robots are part of a Japanese Supervillians group of henchmen, who, as many are aware, always explode spectacularly when hit in just the right way.