Unless the quarters are poisonous or explosive (unlikely scenarios), it doesn't really matter if carrying them is unusual. The TSA's job is to protect airplanes from threats carried onto them by passengers, not to act as a fourth-amendment-exempt general-purpose law enforcement agency.
My money is on most of the threats getting stopped by the government agencies and military units that we know very little about. The Border Patrol and the TSA are just there for show.
Every working person in the United States pays Social Security and Medicare taxes, which are withheld from their income, and there are no exemptions, deductions, or refunds for those. That's a baseline 7.65% income tax, not counting the employer's matching contribution. For the self-employed, it's 15.3%.
When did "sexually explicit" go from participating in sexual acts to just saying sexually themed things? Next thing you know, thinking dirty thoughts near children will be a crime.
The fact of the matter is, whether the guy actually did it in front of the children, or merely post-edited to make it look like he did, he should not be considered a sex offender. He didn't actually have sex with the children, or even have sex (with an adult) in view of the children. He is facing 20 years in prison for making a bad joke. People who actually had sex with children have gotten shorter prison sentences.
This hysteria has gone too far. It's one thing to investigate this video, determine that not only was no sexual act involving children committed but in fact the video was edited after the fact, and then drop the investigation. It's entirely another thing to decide to charge the creator of the video with sexual abuse of a minor. If successful, this will literally destroy this person as a human being. Assuming he survives the prison time (which most likely will involve frequent, genuine sexual abuse), he will be placed on the sex offender registry, which is essentially a life sentence. He will not be able to live or approach anywhere near any place that has anything to do with children (i.e., most of the country), his name will be publicly and legally slandered in perpetuity, and he will be unable to secure any meaningful employment. Even if the prosecution fails, his name will have been dragged the mud so badly that he may be disowned by his family and forced to move.
All for what? Because some child somewhere may have possibly been exposed to some slightly disturbing words? Even if the video genuinely showed some guy talking trash to children, chances are they didn't understand it or found him silly and ridiculous. Children are remarkably resilient to such things.
I can't tell if you're joking or not, but I'm going to assume you are not. Sic is a transitive verb (it means to attack or to incite to attack), and sics is one of the conjugated forms of that verb. The spelling "six" applies only to the number 6. It should have been fairly obvious that an adjective (or noun) was nonsensical in that position of the title.
You really ought to study your history a little more, and I say this as someone at least sympathetic to your claim. Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan, titans all, were no less ruthless than today's corporate executives, and all of them started over 150 years ago. The government was drastically different then, but don't delude yourself into thinking that it was less manipulable, or that these men didn't take advantage of every loophole and extralegal arrangement they could get their hands on. Nor should you think that politicians were all upstanding individuals who would never collude with massive corporations; such deals are the backbone of the American economy, then just as much as now. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to vilify Vanderbilt et al., they were all philanthropists and very smart men, but that does not mean they weren't among the most ruthless businessmen to ever walk this Earth.
And in regards to the parent post, corporate executives are accountable for the actions of the company. They are accountable to the board of directors and more importantly to the shareholders. No CEO walked away from a failing corporation with a massive bonus that wasn't approved by the shareholders, although that approval most likely came as a term of employment made when the company was still in the black. To suggest that a corporate executive should be held accountable to an extra-corporate body (like a government) for the actions of the corporation at large (rather than just his own actions) is to fail to understand the purpose of a corporation. A corporation is not a sole proprietorship, and a CEO is not a dictator. If the CEO encourages or engages in illegal behavior, then he has committed a personal crime and can be accused, tried, and convicted of such. If the company engages in illegal or unethical behavior, without the direct (demonstrable) support or involvement of the CEO, then a government can take action against the corporation (such as fining it, dividing it, disbanding it, or even nationalizing it, depending on the laws), but it cannot take action against the CEO (assuming that contract law carries weight in the country where the corporation resides, as in most of the world).
The employee is paid by AOL, not by AOL's customers; by preventing them from being able to cancel, he is in fact preserving the revenue that is necessary for his job to continue. Vicious cycle, and all that. Of course, this makes him a robot rather than a human, but I don't see you offering to provide him with an alternate source of income.
[substitute the appropriate pronouns as you see fit should Capt. Skinny not be male]
Let me try to address your questions in a manner that is not disrespectful.
1) The assertion that 0.999... = 1 is not equivalent to or in any way related to assertions like 0.888... = 1, which are false (why? there exists a real number between 0.888... and 1, take 0.9 for example). However, you could think of it as being related to the assertion that 0.888... = 8/9.
2) Yes, the assertion has everything to do with the infinite number of repeating digits. For comparison, the assertion that 0.999...9 = 1, where there is a finite number of 9s, is false, no matter how large that number of 9s is.
3) There are many explanations behind this infinite nature. One of the basic ones is that 0.999... is actually representing a series (infinite sum), in this case a geometric series of the form 0.9 * (0.1^0 + 0.1^1 + 0.1^2 + 0.1^3 +...). The sum of a geometric series with ratio r is 1/(1-r), and so the sum of the series is 0.9 * 1/(1-0.1) = 0.9 * 1/0.9 = 1. I've seen some other, more elegant explanations offered here and elsewhere, but this explanation is sound and requires only knowledge of calculus (the proof of the summation formula requires limits).
4) There is no "property" that enables this assertion. Instead, this claim arises because of the disparity between the representation of numbers and the numbers themselves. Within the real numbers, 0.999... and 1 are not distinct. They appear distinct because of the decimal representation (and indeed, a representation in any base exhibits the same characteristic). This is true for all rational numbers when represented as decimals, e.g. 0.4999... = 0.5 or 0.888... = 8/9 from above.
In WW2, 100% of the actors possessing nuclear weapons used them during the course of the war, and 100% of the operational nuclear arsenal of the world was detonated before the end of the war. I would say that qualifies as a "nuclear war."
There are three things I think are important to test in any driver suspected of impairment:
- Reaction, which is how quickly the subject responds to a stimulus (quantifiable); - Coordination, which is how well the subject is able to perform simple mental and physical tasks (demonstrable); and - Judgment, which is whether or not the subject is making rational decisions (subjective).
I don't think we should rely so heavily on breathalyzers anyway, for two reasons. First, they shift the focus from detecting signs of impairment to detecting a single type of intoxication. Impairment comes in many forms. Second, reliable tests for impairment are not administered en masse. They are targeted to individuals whose behavior has elicited suspicion.
I strongly support the idea that officers should need reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle, and driving on a holiday night is not in and of itself a suspicious activity. I also understand that people who drive impaired endanger the lives of others, and so once suspicious conditions have been identified, I think it is perfectly reasonable to afford police officers wide latitude in determining whether or not a driver is impaired. Nowadays (i.e., since circa 1990), every step in this process can be recorded by dashboard cameras, which protect both officers and suspects. In my opinion, this strikes the best balance between the state's interest in policing its roadways and the driver's presumption of innocence, which is a right regardless of whether driving itself is.
Actually, that is precisely what state sovereign immunity does protect. See Hans v. Louisiana. Apparently, the immunity arises from the peculiar nature of the sovereignty of states predating the sovereignty of the United States.
There is a line of thought that holds that compelling someone to sign away their rights in order to perform a lawful act should be unconstitutional. Alas, this is just a line of thought amongst crazy people, not a serious well considered legal argument, and plus it would be a slippery slope (if we could drive without signing away some rights, then we could buy guns or hold peaceful rallies without signing away some rights) and not the good kind (where one well checked new government power leads to another, until any concept of checks and balances is purely superficial).
If 50 million people died every year of alcohol-related fatalities, the entire population of the United States would be dead in 6 to 10 years (depending on migration/reproduction).
Your justification is incredibly open-ended. Consider the following:
1. Installing mandatory breathalyzers in all new vehicles. You must pass the test in order for the car to start. Right now, you have to commit a DUI first, but we can't be too careful.
2. Installing GPU tracking devices in all new vehicles. The devices alert the police whenever you weave too much or drive at unreasonable (too fast/too slow) speeds.
3. Placing cameras in the dashboards of all new vehicles. If you cause a collision, the recordings can be used as evidence against you at trial. The cameras could also be monitored (live) remotely over the cellular telephone network.
All of these measures taken alone or together would probably result in a decrease in the incidence of drunk driving. Do you think any of these go too far? Surely your justification applies to all of them, because obviously one life saved is worth the minimal cost to personal liberties.
Breathalyzers are invasive and unreliable. Reasonable people can agree that driving while impaired is an unacceptable and justifiably illegal act and disagree upon exactly how that is enforced. A field sobriety test is a perfectly legitimate alternative for people who refuse to breathalyze. Driving may be a privilege, but that doesn't mean we give up all our rights to do it.
It's funny how none of those are political freedoms. Or perhaps that was your point--we have all the freedom in the world to do things that are of no consequence to our government of the people, for the people, by the people.
What makes a theory "wildly accepted"? Does it mean there are a bunch of scientists who gather spontaneously at impromptu bonfires and ululate their heathen belief in a carnal fashion?
Slashdot Mirror
Unless the quarters are poisonous or explosive (unlikely scenarios), it doesn't really matter if carrying them is unusual. The TSA's job is to protect airplanes from threats carried onto them by passengers, not to act as a fourth-amendment-exempt general-purpose law enforcement agency.
Just make sure it's under 3 ounces.
My money is on most of the threats getting stopped by the government agencies and military units that we know very little about. The Border Patrol and the TSA are just there for show.
If our only objective is to protect from invasion, then we're grossly overpaying.
Every working person in the United States pays Social Security and Medicare taxes, which are withheld from their income, and there are no exemptions, deductions, or refunds for those. That's a baseline 7.65% income tax, not counting the employer's matching contribution. For the self-employed, it's 15.3%.
Not if the articles get deleted. Deletion destroys the history record, at least the publicly accessible one.
This is why you have to read metadata. The OP is commenting on the title of the post, and his title explains his comment.
"Firefox 4 the Last Big Release From Mozilla" posted by CmdrTaco
--- "Bad Title" posted by Shikaku
When did "sexually explicit" go from participating in sexual acts to just saying sexually themed things? Next thing you know, thinking dirty thoughts near children will be a crime.
The fact of the matter is, whether the guy actually did it in front of the children, or merely post-edited to make it look like he did, he should not be considered a sex offender. He didn't actually have sex with the children, or even have sex (with an adult) in view of the children. He is facing 20 years in prison for making a bad joke. People who actually had sex with children have gotten shorter prison sentences.
This hysteria has gone too far. It's one thing to investigate this video, determine that not only was no sexual act involving children committed but in fact the video was edited after the fact, and then drop the investigation. It's entirely another thing to decide to charge the creator of the video with sexual abuse of a minor. If successful, this will literally destroy this person as a human being. Assuming he survives the prison time (which most likely will involve frequent, genuine sexual abuse), he will be placed on the sex offender registry, which is essentially a life sentence. He will not be able to live or approach anywhere near any place that has anything to do with children (i.e., most of the country), his name will be publicly and legally slandered in perpetuity, and he will be unable to secure any meaningful employment. Even if the prosecution fails, his name will have been dragged the mud so badly that he may be disowned by his family and forced to move.
All for what? Because some child somewhere may have possibly been exposed to some slightly disturbing words? Even if the video genuinely showed some guy talking trash to children, chances are they didn't understand it or found him silly and ridiculous. Children are remarkably resilient to such things.
How does one misspell the word "identities" and then also spell it again, correctly in the same paragraph?
I can't tell if you're joking or not, but I'm going to assume you are not. Sic is a transitive verb (it means to attack or to incite to attack), and sics is one of the conjugated forms of that verb. The spelling "six" applies only to the number 6. It should have been fairly obvious that an adjective (or noun) was nonsensical in that position of the title.
You really ought to study your history a little more, and I say this as someone at least sympathetic to your claim. Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan, titans all, were no less ruthless than today's corporate executives, and all of them started over 150 years ago. The government was drastically different then, but don't delude yourself into thinking that it was less manipulable, or that these men didn't take advantage of every loophole and extralegal arrangement they could get their hands on. Nor should you think that politicians were all upstanding individuals who would never collude with massive corporations; such deals are the backbone of the American economy, then just as much as now. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to vilify Vanderbilt et al., they were all philanthropists and very smart men, but that does not mean they weren't among the most ruthless businessmen to ever walk this Earth.
And in regards to the parent post, corporate executives are accountable for the actions of the company. They are accountable to the board of directors and more importantly to the shareholders. No CEO walked away from a failing corporation with a massive bonus that wasn't approved by the shareholders, although that approval most likely came as a term of employment made when the company was still in the black. To suggest that a corporate executive should be held accountable to an extra-corporate body (like a government) for the actions of the corporation at large (rather than just his own actions) is to fail to understand the purpose of a corporation. A corporation is not a sole proprietorship, and a CEO is not a dictator. If the CEO encourages or engages in illegal behavior, then he has committed a personal crime and can be accused, tried, and convicted of such. If the company engages in illegal or unethical behavior, without the direct (demonstrable) support or involvement of the CEO, then a government can take action against the corporation (such as fining it, dividing it, disbanding it, or even nationalizing it, depending on the laws), but it cannot take action against the CEO (assuming that contract law carries weight in the country where the corporation resides, as in most of the world).
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
The employee is paid by AOL, not by AOL's customers; by preventing them from being able to cancel, he is in fact preserving the revenue that is necessary for his job to continue. Vicious cycle, and all that. Of course, this makes him a robot rather than a human, but I don't see you offering to provide him with an alternate source of income.
[substitute the appropriate pronouns as you see fit should Capt. Skinny not be male]
Let me try to address your questions in a manner that is not disrespectful.
1) The assertion that 0.999... = 1 is not equivalent to or in any way related to assertions like 0.888... = 1, which are false (why? there exists a real number between 0.888... and 1, take 0.9 for example). However, you could think of it as being related to the assertion that 0.888... = 8/9.
2) Yes, the assertion has everything to do with the infinite number of repeating digits. For comparison, the assertion that 0.999...9 = 1, where there is a finite number of 9s, is false, no matter how large that number of 9s is.
3) There are many explanations behind this infinite nature. One of the basic ones is that 0.999... is actually representing a series (infinite sum), in this case a geometric series of the form 0.9 * (0.1^0 + 0.1^1 + 0.1^2 + 0.1^3 + ...). The sum of a geometric series with ratio r is 1/(1-r), and so the sum of the series is 0.9 * 1/(1-0.1) = 0.9 * 1/0.9 = 1. I've seen some other, more elegant explanations offered here and elsewhere, but this explanation is sound and requires only knowledge of calculus (the proof of the summation formula requires limits).
4) There is no "property" that enables this assertion. Instead, this claim arises because of the disparity between the representation of numbers and the numbers themselves. Within the real numbers, 0.999... and 1 are not distinct. They appear distinct because of the decimal representation (and indeed, a representation in any base exhibits the same characteristic). This is true for all rational numbers when represented as decimals, e.g. 0.4999... = 0.5 or 0.888... = 8/9 from above.
In WW2, 100% of the actors possessing nuclear weapons used them during the course of the war, and 100% of the operational nuclear arsenal of the world was detonated before the end of the war. I would say that qualifies as a "nuclear war."
There are three things I think are important to test in any driver suspected of impairment:
- Reaction, which is how quickly the subject responds to a stimulus (quantifiable);
- Coordination, which is how well the subject is able to perform simple mental and physical tasks (demonstrable); and
- Judgment, which is whether or not the subject is making rational decisions (subjective).
I don't think we should rely so heavily on breathalyzers anyway, for two reasons. First, they shift the focus from detecting signs of impairment to detecting a single type of intoxication. Impairment comes in many forms. Second, reliable tests for impairment are not administered en masse. They are targeted to individuals whose behavior has elicited suspicion.
I strongly support the idea that officers should need reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle, and driving on a holiday night is not in and of itself a suspicious activity. I also understand that people who drive impaired endanger the lives of others, and so once suspicious conditions have been identified, I think it is perfectly reasonable to afford police officers wide latitude in determining whether or not a driver is impaired. Nowadays (i.e., since circa 1990), every step in this process can be recorded by dashboard cameras, which protect both officers and suspects. In my opinion, this strikes the best balance between the state's interest in policing its roadways and the driver's presumption of innocence, which is a right regardless of whether driving itself is.
Nevermind, Anonymous Coward.
GPS*
Shame you got modded down, funny comment.
Why the Ninth Amendment of course. It states (I'm sure you weren't aware, as most of the legal community isn't either):
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Actually, that is precisely what state sovereign immunity does protect. See Hans v. Louisiana. Apparently, the immunity arises from the peculiar nature of the sovereignty of states predating the sovereignty of the United States.
There is a line of thought that holds that compelling someone to sign away their rights in order to perform a lawful act should be unconstitutional. Alas, this is just a line of thought amongst crazy people, not a serious well considered legal argument, and plus it would be a slippery slope (if we could drive without signing away some rights, then we could buy guns or hold peaceful rallies without signing away some rights) and not the good kind (where one well checked new government power leads to another, until any concept of checks and balances is purely superficial).
If 50 million people died every year of alcohol-related fatalities, the entire population of the United States would be dead in 6 to 10 years (depending on migration/reproduction).
Your justification is incredibly open-ended. Consider the following:
1. Installing mandatory breathalyzers in all new vehicles. You must pass the test in order for the car to start. Right now, you have to commit a DUI first, but we can't be too careful.
2. Installing GPU tracking devices in all new vehicles. The devices alert the police whenever you weave too much or drive at unreasonable (too fast/too slow) speeds.
3. Placing cameras in the dashboards of all new vehicles. If you cause a collision, the recordings can be used as evidence against you at trial. The cameras could also be monitored (live) remotely over the cellular telephone network.
All of these measures taken alone or together would probably result in a decrease in the incidence of drunk driving. Do you think any of these go too far? Surely your justification applies to all of them, because obviously one life saved is worth the minimal cost to personal liberties.
Breathalyzers are invasive and unreliable. Reasonable people can agree that driving while impaired is an unacceptable and justifiably illegal act and disagree upon exactly how that is enforced. A field sobriety test is a perfectly legitimate alternative for people who refuse to breathalyze. Driving may be a privilege, but that doesn't mean we give up all our rights to do it.
It's funny how none of those are political freedoms. Or perhaps that was your point--we have all the freedom in the world to do things that are of no consequence to our government of the people, for the people, by the people.
What makes a theory "wildly accepted"? Does it mean there are a bunch of scientists who gather spontaneously at impromptu bonfires and ululate their heathen belief in a carnal fashion?