It does affect everything, agreed. The situation means more than giving up your latte, to answer another reply.
Let's think about school lunch.
"Anne Arundel County public schools pay $2.53 a gallon - about a 40-cent increase over last year. Multiplied by the 10 million miles its drivers cover annually, the difference will mean a $536,000 increase in this year's fuel costs."
That was written last year before gas hit 3.09 and onwards. I think it is safe to assume their increase was actually closer to $1,000,000. They do get their gas subsidized and in bulk so they may not have had to pay over $3.
"Asked in the survey what officials are doing to make ends meet, one administrator responded simply: "praying."
Absent divine intervention, districts are reducing field trips, prohibiting drivers from idling and cutting buses from the fleet. Fairfax County, Va., public schools increased the price of lunch by 20 cents, in part to pay for fuel."
"Several officials said there is little that can be done to grapple with fuel costs. Like other businesses, schools are also paying more for deliveries, yardwork and heating."
"Lunch prices in Miami-Dade schools will rise this fall for the first time in 15 years as the district adjusts for rising costs and flat enrollment.
The School Board voted unanimously Wednesday to impose a 50-cent increase on lunch prices, which will cost a typical student an additional $90 per year. The new price -- $1.75 in elementary schools and $2 in middle schools and senior highs -- is still the same as or lower than lunches in Broward, Hillsborough and Orange counties, and slightly higher than Palm Beach, district officials said. Broward raised its prices earlier this year."
In addition to the additional money you pay just to drive to work, you have to shell out additional cash to feed your child. If you were barely scraping by with the lunch cost before, you may now find yourself in an even tigher position but with an income that is still above the threshold for a subsidized lunch, because that income level hasn't been adjusted yet for the gas situation. It's not just the bus transportation adding to these costs, either -- the transportation of milk and fresh produce - which had a bad weather season to boot - also increases. Even a bagged lunch is unaffected.
So, in a worst case situation, your child is hungry, cold, and doesn't even get to go to the planetarium.
With U=21, b=2 means UB313 is 21 + 2 + 3+ 1 + 3. That's 23+3+1+3, or 30. 2003 UB313 is either 30 or 35, with the 2003, not 32. These add up to 3 or 8.
I guess you could say the difference is five, and that 30 and 35 are divisible by 5, but at this point, I'm thinking of an Ask Cecil quote, emphasis mine:
"I should point out, by way of amplification, that by using the digits 2 and 3 in appropriate combinations you can generate every integer (including 1, if you allow subtraction). Thus we learn that the very foundations of mathematics are mortally infected with Illuminism. Man, those guys are everywhere."
Hyperion has been in movie-territory for awhile now. Leonardio DiCaprio had reportedly shown interest and isn't officially attached according to Dan Simmon's page, but Dan does mention a 'top-flight movie star'.
However, I have heard about this for at least 2 years now, and screenplays do sit on shelves for years in some cases.
"How can the human race survive the next hundred years?'."
Empathy and forethought.
When we consider that other humans will suffer directly and indirectly from our actions, we automatically assume accountability and responsibility. With this consideration, we automatically think before every action. We evaluate consequences, and we make a choice, a conscious decision, to take an action.
It is much harder to fire a gun if you weigh the consequences of the subsequent death and injury, if you examine the other party's physical pain, the loss to their family, and the potential to lose your own freedom.
It is much harder to ignore the poor, the elderly, the starving, if you imagine them as people like yourself, people that go without food, without clean clothing, without friends and family, without self-respect because they must beg in the streets or give up one expensive medicine to afford another.
It is much harder to cheat on an exam if you think about the subsequent curve, that the other students will cheat to keep up with cheating, that you will suffer at your job with incompetent cheaters as your coworkers, that you will cheat yourself of an education you paid for.
It is much harder to make fun of people, to scar your peers psychologically, to be a racist and a bigot, if you project yourself into their shoes, if you stop and ask yourself how they feel in their circumstances, faced with their choices, faced with your words and taunts.
It is not a matter of selflessness. With empathy, we still have choice. I can look at the beggar and feel pity, but also continue to believe that my money is still more helpful given to a charity rather than to a panhandler. I can look at a test of nonsensical problems and still fudge it if I feel the professor is asking unrealistic questions.
But now I use the faculties provided to me by evolution, by education, by years of social conditioning -- my mind. I think. I choose. I can choose to be helpful, I can choose to be selfish, but in both cases, I have chosen responsibly. I have chosen the consequences. Yes, I may continue to choose that shooting a clerk is worth the $40 in the cash register, but I believe that, in many such cases, if you had asked the perpetrator before they entered that store, "Would you kill someone for $40 if there was an alternative?", they would say no.
If we train people to ask themselves those questions before they act, then we will survive the next century. We will move forward on a foundation of empathy and forethought, building on the recognition that humans will be preserved by the very thing that distinguishes us as humans -- our big brain. Our ability to project, to think ahead, to think beyond ourselves -- these will be our saviors, a solution instead of a bandaid.
"If you are within range of two or more cell towers, then your position can be triangulated. The more towers nearby, the more accurate the reading will be. It's simply the nature of cell phones as broadcast devices. You can't broadcast a signal without revealing your location.
The second part is a different story. Whether or not any government agency has used this ability is unknown; whether it would be accurate enough for their purposes is unknown to me as well. Nevertheless they certainly could use it to at least roughly track you."
This ability was used in a well-known case in the New York area this spring. Darryl Littlejohn was booked for a rape and murder based, in part, on the fact that cell-phone pings showed him to be in the area at an appropriate time where the body was later found.
It is not a very rigorous newspaper, but these are interesting quotes if correct: "When your cell phone is switched on, your network provider knows exactly where you are within 300 YARDS or less." "And a federal rule requires all cell phones to be able to pinpoint their locations within 1,000 feet when 911 is dialed."
Not quite government use, but the law enforcement community is certainly employing the cell towers.
The voting record would indeed be interesting information, particularly as articles are saying this issue fell primarily along party lines, with Democrats for net neutrality and Republicans against, to generalize only slightly.
What I find interesting, too, is the fact that this was such a decisive victory - 269 to 152 - when Google, Ebay, and celebrities did their best to make this a matter of public interest. Further, when this issue started to come out, the news stories were not following, but it gradually built momentum. CNN.com actually had an unbiased, well-written, layman-language article on both sides of net neutrality. I thought that, with so much awareness, the Republicans would at least fear some backlash.
I can't say what the public thought of net neutrality. I don't know if it matters -- our representatives decide what's best for us, not enact our wishes to a T, it seems. However, I am dismayed that backing from well-known companies and organizations did not seem to have any effect on this outcome. It split down party lines, as it probably would have without any intervention by Google and Ms. Milano, without any mainstream news articles.
What kind of message is this? "Don't bother to raise awareness, because representatives will vote by their party's principles." Don't bother if you have millions of dollars. Don't bother if you're well-known. Don't bother if you are a journalist. Don't bother if you're an average citizen. How depressing.
Re:These are the choices we make
on
Death By DMCA
·
· Score: 1
Someone mentioned Ipac. I don't feel their position is strong enough.
I, too, would donate a lot of money to something like stophollywood.com, or whatever phrase best encompasses a loathing for dmca, drm, mpaa, and riaa activities. I imagine a lot of people would.. assuming there was credibility and a plan of action.
The individual boycotting and underground sharing isn't enough. Where's the webpage that sums it all up, the mailing list, the dollars, the concentrated effort to make our opinions known? People have looked to this situation and disputed whether America is a democracy, but who cares if it is, when we refuse to use our democratic privilege of harassing our elected officials to vote for our wishes?
I know, I know -- I have contacted my politicians about various things over the years and gotten a form letter in return that stated they'd do what they wanted to do, thanks for my opinion, bye. Techies are a high-salaried demographic, though - I'm sure we're a desirable group of voters in some fashion.
That said, no one is doing anything because they don't know what to do, I suspect. Korn did a music video that laid out the sad state of the music industry. Did anything change? No. Howard Stern lent his voice to this cause when they came on his show. Did anything change? No. Is it even going to scare the industry if we all stand in front of local music chains and tell all patrons, "Don't go in, today is the boycott day?" Maybe not.
We're not beaten by people who want these organizations to perservere, but by the people who *just don't care* and who will continue to buy cds. We're beaten by politicians who will see that some group of voters is being loud, but who they can afford to ignore because the rest of the voters are apathetic.
What's important to an election? Child molestation. Education laws. Gas rebates. There is nothing emotional about media copying rights. There is no health risk, no cute mascot, no sad face. Put 'legalize dvd copying' on a ballot, and people will check yes, I think, but they won't assemble for it.
They will not *change their buying behavior for it*, and that is the uphill battle. Many will keep buying cds. We just have to hope that this generation of consumers raised on free torrents will come to expect it, then get mad, get EMOTIONAL, when it comes to light that the gov't is taking that away from them.
"Problem #3: Past Legal Obstacles Have Made Prosecuting Child Pornography Cases Very Difficult. Last year, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a federal law that criminalized the possession of "virtual" child pornography, i.e., materials whose production may not have involved the use of real children. This decision has made it immeasurably more difficult to eliminate the traffic in real child pornography.....
Solution #3: Strengthen the Laws Against Child Pornography in Ways that Can Survive Constitutional Review. Among other provisions, the bill will:
Revise and strengthen the prohibition on 'virtual' child pornography. "
"But the fact remains that it is unpopular to advocate that rational thought or contemplation should be considered at all when dealing with such problems. From my limited experience, fewer people have a torches and pitchforks attitude toward even genocide than pedophilia."
Agreed. I've tried to discuss whether the sex offender registry is 'fair' with my mother, and I can literally see the wall of disgust arise behind her eyes.
It's amazing how well the idea of pedophilia can blind the public. That Amber Alert law slipped some things by. The Supreme Court, in 2002 and AGAIN in 2004, decided that the banning of 'simulated child pornography' in the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 was unconstitutional. Quote from wikipedia: "The majority ruling stated that "the CPPA prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims by its production. Virtual child pornography is not 'intrinsically related' to the sexual abuse of children.""
Funnily enough, in 2003 - between 2002 and 2004, note - President Bush passed the Amber Alert law, a law that banned simulated child pornography.
People have been convincted for drawing *cartoons* of children having sex, even though the Supreme Court said that was unconstitutional. I imagine this slipped by because the rest of the bill was just so public-friendly and so anti-sex offenders. Oh, it also sanctions wire-tapping and the watching of 'other communications' in child abuse/kidnapping/sex cases.
I wonder if the language of the above Amber Alert point would permit a police group to demand records from AOL and then take them to court if they refused.
"What does somewhat surprise me is the university students getting this disease. Don't the universities require proof of up-to-date innoculations for incoming students?"
Yes, but they don't follow up in my experience.
I went to college in a year that saw a shortage of the tetanus [i think] vaccine, to the extent that they were only letting the elderly and children get it. As I don't particularly like vaccines to start with, I told them I simply couldn't get this shot, and, in addition, all 3 rounds of hepatitis couldn't be completed in the summer before enrollment. I showed I had had one, and I 'intended' to get the additional shots. They accepted that. I never heard about it again.
My roommate plain-out did not get them and never showed proof. They occasionally notified her for close to two years. She left the college soon after, perhaps still without getting them.
I am not sure how they would keep up with these people in their systems, frankly -- a reminder service every 3 months to follow up with student X that they finally had the vaccines? I doubt there is vaccine management software.
Anyway, as I recall, they wanted menengitis, hepatitis, tb, mmr [mumps, measles, rubella], and chicken pox vaccinations, but only mmr, tb, and tetanus were necessary. The rest of the cocktail was 'recommended'.
Further, you could claim a pregnancy or religious exemption on all of the shots. The religious exemption, if a school attracts a certain demographic, could create a core of unvaccinated students. Further, I remember once reading that there are people who purposely do not have their children vaccinated on the premise that every other child in the school will be vaccinated and so no one will spread anything anyway.
These social non-vaccinations probably account for a small percentage of a student population, though.
A lot of comments take the stance that Baigent et al are simply grubbing for money off Brown's successful novel with a shot in the dark. I will go out on a limb and empathize with Baigent's frustration: the authors spent several years researching French genealogies, medieval charters, property listings, and folk tales, then made several films about it and wrote the book. I'm aware that their academic peers were dissatisfied with the rigor of their research, but the authors put in a substantial amount of effort nonetheless.
The back cover of my edition has a quote from Newsweek that says, "Like Chariots of the Gods?... The plot has all the elements of an international thriller." When I read that, I felt immediately like Dan Brown had read it, too. Brown mentions Holy Blood, Holy Grail in The DaVinci Code. Many activities of the characters mirror events in HBHG as well. It's not a casual correlation.
Yes, it is Baigent's loss for not couching the book in fiction and missing the right place and the right time for publishing. You can't own an idea, from what many of you are saying, and, indeed, other professors, quoted by Baigent, had speculated about Jesus's marital status. These professors didn't sue them for 'stealing their idea', either.
The broader question is perhaps better framed hypothetically: if someone researches and publishes an innovative theory, then someone else takes that theory and research and gives it some fictional characters, is it their new idea now? This may be immaterial anyway; copyright is based on expression, not ideas, and Baigent et al expressed their original idea as nonfiction, whereas Brown expressed a less-original? idea as fiction. Is that enough of a distinction, though? Brown added characters and a plot to someone else's foundation. He did create a new thing -- but does he owe the people who built his basement nothing? Is acknowledging them in the text enough? Is there any point, in a nonfiction to fiction situation, where you go from 'standing on the shoulders of giants' to a complete ripoff?
I would point people interested in this topic to Steve Pinker's The Language Instinct. He makes a compelling argument against the above author's case that the slang used in instant messaging is 'violence' to English.
To summarize: Language is hard-wired into our brains as humans. We will automatically think in a pattern of grammar. Slang is subject to language rules as well. Email shorthand must also follow some logical pattern.
1) Children who grow up to immigrant parents who cannot speak the native language develop a pidgin language, then a creole with a precise structure and grammar. Within one generation, they have a stable and structured language with new elements shared by neither parent language.
2) Deaf children have formed a sign language independent of their teachers and used it to communicate successfully with each other. Upon inspection, this language had a logical structure as well. I believe this was the case of Nicaraguan sign language.
3) A deaf man who lived in isolation his entire life was able to learn sign language when found as an adult and communicate his experiences to that point. He was thinking without a 'real' language like English or sign for his entire life and able to translate that into sign language later.
4) Slang languages often have a grammatical pattern, too. A study of Ebonics revealed an underlying grammar that was in one way logically superior to English, according to Pinker.
If our current slang is indeed so special as to be unintelligible and ambiguous, whereas other generations' slang was not, then that's both a deviation and interesting achievement, but I'm not sure you can make that case to start with. Blogging and truthiness are words accepted by dictionaries and/or authority figures creating 'word of the year' lists. Those words started as slang and apparently developed credibility and a stable definition. There was presumably a point in their existence where they were ambiguous in definition, and other people did not understand their users, but you can't say that the thought processes of writer and reader were damaged in some way. There is nothing inherently special about slang that makes it detrimental to the mind, except perhaps its short lifespan. The author does not make this point, or any point, actually; he merely rails against people who can't write, grinds an axe, and couches it all in pretty phrases while offering no evidence to support his stance.
He emphasizes jargon as well. Purposely using words that are ambiguous, consistently, is problematic, agreed. I believe this is a danger, though not for the arrogant reason he states. People who read ambiguous statements constantly will attempt to analyze them and fail. They may eventually develop a distrust of written words in general or stop analyzing them from the start. If the average person suspect that they have no chance of understanding what the author of a memo meant, will they even read it? When people cease to comprehend the written word or are -taught- and -trained- to expect that it is unfathomable, -that- is a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
It does affect everything, agreed. The situation means more than giving up your latte, to answer another reply.
Let's think about school lunch.
"Anne Arundel County public schools pay $2.53 a gallon - about a 40-cent increase over last year. Multiplied by the 10 million miles its drivers cover annually, the difference will mean a $536,000 increase in this year's fuel costs."
That was written last year before gas hit 3.09 and onwards. I think it is safe to assume their increase was actually closer to $1,000,000. They do get their gas subsidized and in bulk so they may not have had to pay over $3.
"Asked in the survey what officials are doing to make ends meet, one administrator responded simply: "praying."
Absent divine intervention, districts are reducing field trips, prohibiting drivers from idling and cutting buses from the fleet. Fairfax County, Va., public schools increased the price of lunch by 20 cents, in part to pay for fuel."
"Several officials said there is little that can be done to grapple with fuel costs. Like other businesses, schools are also paying more for deliveries, yardwork and heating."
Source
In another example:
"Lunch prices in Miami-Dade schools will rise this fall for the first time in 15 years as the district adjusts for rising costs and flat enrollment.
The School Board voted unanimously Wednesday to impose a 50-cent increase on lunch prices, which will cost a typical student an additional $90 per year. The new price -- $1.75 in elementary schools and $2 in middle schools and senior highs -- is still the same as or lower than lunches in Broward, Hillsborough and Orange counties, and slightly higher than Palm Beach, district officials said. Broward raised its prices earlier this year."
Source
In addition to the additional money you pay just to drive to work, you have to shell out additional cash to feed your child. If you were barely scraping by with the lunch cost before, you may now find yourself in an even tigher position but with an income that is still above the threshold for a subsidized lunch, because that income level hasn't been adjusted yet for the gas situation. It's not just the bus transportation adding to these costs, either -- the transportation of milk and fresh produce - which had a bad weather season to boot - also increases. Even a bagged lunch is unaffected.
So, in a worst case situation, your child is hungry, cold, and doesn't even get to go to the planetarium.
With U=21, b=2 means UB313 is 21 + 2 + 3+ 1 + 3. That's 23+3+1+3, or 30. 2003 UB313 is either 30 or 35, with the 2003, not 32. These add up to 3 or 8.
I guess you could say the difference is five, and that 30 and 35 are divisible by 5, but at this point, I'm thinking of an Ask Cecil quote, emphasis mine:
"I should point out, by way of amplification, that by using the digits 2 and 3 in appropriate combinations you can generate every integer (including 1, if you allow subtraction). Thus we learn that the very foundations of mathematics are mortally infected with Illuminism. Man, those guys are everywhere."
Hyperion has been in movie-territory for awhile now. Leonardio DiCaprio had reportedly shown interest and isn't officially attached according to Dan Simmon's page, but Dan does mention a 'top-flight movie star'.
However, I have heard about this for at least 2 years now, and screenplays do sit on shelves for years in some cases.
http://www.dansimmons.com/news/movies.htm
"How can the human race survive the next hundred years?'."
Empathy and forethought.
When we consider that other humans will suffer directly and indirectly from our actions, we automatically assume accountability and responsibility. With this consideration, we automatically think before every action. We evaluate consequences, and we make a choice, a conscious decision, to take an action.
It is much harder to fire a gun if you weigh the consequences of the subsequent death and injury, if you examine the other party's physical pain, the loss to their family, and the potential to lose your own freedom.
It is much harder to ignore the poor, the elderly, the starving, if you imagine them as people like yourself, people that go without food, without clean clothing, without friends and family, without self-respect because they must beg in the streets or give up one expensive medicine to afford another.
It is much harder to cheat on an exam if you think about the subsequent curve, that the other students will cheat to keep up with cheating, that you will suffer at your job with incompetent cheaters as your coworkers, that you will cheat yourself of an education you paid for.
It is much harder to make fun of people, to scar your peers psychologically, to be a racist and a bigot, if you project yourself into their shoes, if you stop and ask yourself how they feel in their circumstances, faced with their choices, faced with your words and taunts.
It is not a matter of selflessness. With empathy, we still have choice. I can look at the beggar and feel pity, but also continue to believe that my money is still more helpful given to a charity rather than to a panhandler. I can look at a test of nonsensical problems and still fudge it if I feel the professor is asking unrealistic questions.
But now I use the faculties provided to me by evolution, by education, by years of social conditioning -- my mind. I think. I choose. I can choose to be helpful, I can choose to be selfish, but in both cases, I have chosen responsibly. I have chosen the consequences. Yes, I may continue to choose that shooting a clerk is worth the $40 in the cash register, but I believe that, in many such cases, if you had asked the perpetrator before they entered that store, "Would you kill someone for $40 if there was an alternative?", they would say no.
If we train people to ask themselves those questions before they act, then we will survive the next century. We will move forward on a foundation of empathy and forethought, building on the recognition that humans will be preserved by the very thing that distinguishes us as humans -- our big brain. Our ability to project, to think ahead, to think beyond ourselves -- these will be our saviors, a solution instead of a bandaid.
"If you are within range of two or more cell towers, then your position can be triangulated. The more towers nearby, the more accurate the reading will be. It's simply the nature of cell phones as broadcast devices. You can't broadcast a signal without revealing your location.
The second part is a different story. Whether or not any government agency has used this ability is unknown; whether it would be accurate enough for their purposes is unknown to me as well. Nevertheless they certainly could use it to at least roughly track you."
This ability was used in a well-known case in the New York area this spring. Darryl Littlejohn was booked for a rape and murder based, in part, on the fact that cell-phone pings showed him to be in the area at an appropriate time where the body was later found.
It is not a very rigorous newspaper, but these are interesting quotes if correct: "When your cell phone is switched on, your network provider knows exactly where you are within 300 YARDS or less." "And a federal rule requires all cell phones to be able to pinpoint their locations within 1,000 feet when 911 is dialed."
Not quite government use, but the law enforcement community is certainly employing the cell towers.
The voting record would indeed be interesting information, particularly as articles are saying this issue fell primarily along party lines, with Democrats for net neutrality and Republicans against, to generalize only slightly.
What I find interesting, too, is the fact that this was such a decisive victory - 269 to 152 - when Google, Ebay, and celebrities did their best to make this a matter of public interest. Further, when this issue started to come out, the news stories were not following, but it gradually built momentum. CNN.com actually had an unbiased, well-written, layman-language article on both sides of net neutrality. I thought that, with so much awareness, the Republicans would at least fear some backlash.
I can't say what the public thought of net neutrality. I don't know if it matters -- our representatives decide what's best for us, not enact our wishes to a T, it seems. However, I am dismayed that backing from well-known companies and organizations did not seem to have any effect on this outcome. It split down party lines, as it probably would have without any intervention by Google and Ms. Milano, without any mainstream news articles.
What kind of message is this? "Don't bother to raise awareness, because representatives will vote by their party's principles." Don't bother if you have millions of dollars. Don't bother if you're well-known. Don't bother if you are a journalist. Don't bother if you're an average citizen. How depressing.
Someone mentioned Ipac. I don't feel their position is strong enough.
I, too, would donate a lot of money to something like stophollywood.com, or whatever phrase best encompasses a loathing for dmca, drm, mpaa, and riaa activities. I imagine a lot of people would.. assuming there was credibility and a plan of action.
The individual boycotting and underground sharing isn't enough. Where's the webpage that sums it all up, the mailing list, the dollars, the concentrated effort to make our opinions known? People have looked to this situation and disputed whether America is a democracy, but who cares if it is, when we refuse to use our democratic privilege of harassing our elected officials to vote for our wishes?
I know, I know -- I have contacted my politicians about various things over the years and gotten a form letter in return that stated they'd do what they wanted to do, thanks for my opinion, bye. Techies are a high-salaried demographic, though - I'm sure we're a desirable group of voters in some fashion.
That said, no one is doing anything because they don't know what to do, I suspect. Korn did a music video that laid out the sad state of the music industry. Did anything change? No. Howard Stern lent his voice to this cause when they came on his show. Did anything change? No. Is it even going to scare the industry if we all stand in front of local music chains and tell all patrons, "Don't go in, today is the boycott day?" Maybe not.
We're not beaten by people who want these organizations to perservere, but by the people who *just don't care* and who will continue to buy cds. We're beaten by politicians who will see that some group of voters is being loud, but who they can afford to ignore because the rest of the voters are apathetic.
What's important to an election? Child molestation. Education laws. Gas rebates. There is nothing emotional about media copying rights. There is no health risk, no cute mascot, no sad face. Put 'legalize dvd copying' on a ballot, and people will check yes, I think, but they won't assemble for it.
They will not *change their buying behavior for it*, and that is the uphill battle. Many will keep buying cds. We just have to hope that this generation of consumers raised on free torrents will come to expect it, then get mad, get EMOTIONAL, when it comes to light that the gov't is taking that away from them.
A reference for all interested:
h tm
....
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2003/April/03_ag_266.
Quote:
"Problem #3: Past Legal Obstacles Have Made Prosecuting Child Pornography Cases Very Difficult. Last year, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a federal law that criminalized the possession of "virtual" child pornography, i.e., materials whose production may not have involved the use of real children. This decision has made it immeasurably more difficult to eliminate the traffic in real child pornography.
Solution #3: Strengthen the Laws Against Child Pornography in Ways that Can Survive Constitutional Review. Among other provisions, the bill will:
Revise and strengthen the prohibition on 'virtual' child pornography. "
"But the fact remains that it is unpopular to advocate that rational thought or contemplation should be considered at all when dealing with such problems. From my limited experience, fewer people have a torches and pitchforks attitude toward even genocide than pedophilia." Agreed. I've tried to discuss whether the sex offender registry is 'fair' with my mother, and I can literally see the wall of disgust arise behind her eyes. It's amazing how well the idea of pedophilia can blind the public. That Amber Alert law slipped some things by. The Supreme Court, in 2002 and AGAIN in 2004, decided that the banning of 'simulated child pornography' in the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 was unconstitutional. Quote from wikipedia: "The majority ruling stated that "the CPPA prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims by its production. Virtual child pornography is not 'intrinsically related' to the sexual abuse of children."" Funnily enough, in 2003 - between 2002 and 2004, note - President Bush passed the Amber Alert law, a law that banned simulated child pornography. People have been convincted for drawing *cartoons* of children having sex, even though the Supreme Court said that was unconstitutional. I imagine this slipped by because the rest of the bill was just so public-friendly and so anti-sex offenders. Oh, it also sanctions wire-tapping and the watching of 'other communications' in child abuse/kidnapping/sex cases. I wonder if the language of the above Amber Alert point would permit a police group to demand records from AOL and then take them to court if they refused.
"What does somewhat surprise me is the university students getting this disease. Don't the universities require proof of up-to-date innoculations for incoming students?"
Yes, but they don't follow up in my experience.
I went to college in a year that saw a shortage of the tetanus [i think] vaccine, to the extent that they were only letting the elderly and children get it. As I don't particularly like vaccines to start with, I told them I simply couldn't get this shot, and, in addition, all 3 rounds of hepatitis couldn't be completed in the summer before enrollment. I showed I had had one, and I 'intended' to get the additional shots. They accepted that. I never heard about it again.
My roommate plain-out did not get them and never showed proof. They occasionally notified her for close to two years. She left the college soon after, perhaps still without getting them.
I am not sure how they would keep up with these people in their systems, frankly -- a reminder service every 3 months to follow up with student X that they finally had the vaccines? I doubt there is vaccine management software.
Anyway, as I recall, they wanted menengitis, hepatitis, tb, mmr [mumps, measles, rubella], and chicken pox vaccinations, but only mmr, tb, and tetanus were necessary. The rest of the cocktail was 'recommended'.
Further, you could claim a pregnancy or religious exemption on all of the shots. The religious exemption, if a school attracts a certain demographic, could create a core of unvaccinated students. Further, I remember once reading that there are people who purposely do not have their children vaccinated on the premise that every other child in the school will be vaccinated and so no one will spread anything anyway.
These social non-vaccinations probably account for a small percentage of a student population, though.
A lot of comments take the stance that Baigent et al are simply grubbing for money off Brown's successful novel with a shot in the dark. I will go out on a limb and empathize with Baigent's frustration: the authors spent several years researching French genealogies, medieval charters, property listings, and folk tales, then made several films about it and wrote the book. I'm aware that their academic peers were dissatisfied with the rigor of their research, but the authors put in a substantial amount of effort nonetheless.
... The plot has all the elements of an international thriller." When I read that, I felt immediately like Dan Brown had read it, too. Brown mentions Holy Blood, Holy Grail in The DaVinci Code. Many activities of the characters mirror events in HBHG as well. It's not a casual correlation.
The back cover of my edition has a quote from Newsweek that says, "Like Chariots of the Gods?
Yes, it is Baigent's loss for not couching the book in fiction and missing the right place and the right time for publishing. You can't own an idea, from what many of you are saying, and, indeed, other professors, quoted by Baigent, had speculated about Jesus's marital status. These professors didn't sue them for 'stealing their idea', either.
The broader question is perhaps better framed hypothetically: if someone researches and publishes an innovative theory, then someone else takes that theory and research and gives it some fictional characters, is it their new idea now? This may be immaterial anyway; copyright is based on expression, not ideas, and Baigent et al expressed their original idea as nonfiction, whereas Brown expressed a less-original? idea as fiction. Is that enough of a distinction, though? Brown added characters and a plot to someone else's foundation. He did create a new thing -- but does he owe the people who built his basement nothing? Is acknowledging them in the text enough? Is there any point, in a nonfiction to fiction situation, where you go from 'standing on the shoulders of giants' to a complete ripoff?
I would point people interested in this topic to Steve Pinker's The Language Instinct. He makes a compelling argument against the above author's case that the slang used in instant messaging is 'violence' to English.
To summarize: Language is hard-wired into our brains as humans. We will automatically think in a pattern of grammar. Slang is subject to language rules as well. Email shorthand must also follow some logical pattern.
1) Children who grow up to immigrant parents who cannot speak the native language develop a pidgin language, then a creole with a precise structure and grammar. Within one generation, they have a stable and structured language with new elements shared by neither parent language.
2) Deaf children have formed a sign language independent of their teachers and used it to communicate successfully with each other. Upon inspection, this language had a logical structure as well. I believe this was the case of Nicaraguan sign language.
3) A deaf man who lived in isolation his entire life was able to learn sign language when found as an adult and communicate his experiences to that point. He was thinking without a 'real' language like English or sign for his entire life and able to translate that into sign language later.
4) Slang languages often have a grammatical pattern, too. A study of Ebonics revealed an underlying grammar that was in one way logically superior to English, according to Pinker.
If our current slang is indeed so special as to be unintelligible and ambiguous, whereas other generations' slang was not, then that's both a deviation and interesting achievement, but I'm not sure you can make that case to start with. Blogging and truthiness are words accepted by dictionaries and/or authority figures creating 'word of the year' lists. Those words started as slang and apparently developed credibility and a stable definition. There was presumably a point in their existence where they were ambiguous in definition, and other people did not understand their users, but you can't say that the thought processes of writer and reader were damaged in some way. There is nothing inherently special about slang that makes it detrimental to the mind, except perhaps its short lifespan. The author does not make this point, or any point, actually; he merely rails against people who can't write, grinds an axe, and couches it all in pretty phrases while offering no evidence to support his stance.
He emphasizes jargon as well. Purposely using words that are ambiguous, consistently, is problematic, agreed. I believe this is a danger, though not for the arrogant reason he states. People who read ambiguous statements constantly will attempt to analyze them and fail. They may eventually develop a distrust of written words in general or stop analyzing them from the start. If the average person suspect that they have no chance of understanding what the author of a memo meant, will they even read it? When people cease to comprehend the written word or are -taught- and -trained- to expect that it is unfathomable, -that- is a problem.