In most of the places where these wars take place, the adults experienced war first hand as children. That experience did not lead them to reject war, but rather to embrace warfare as a viable option. Hitler served on the front in WWI and experienced the full horror of it, chemical weapons and all. But like many German veterans, he felt that the German army was not defeated in battle, but was betrayed by peace-seeking politicians at Versailes.
Generations of citizens of Vietnam , Afghanistan, and Israel and its neighbors have witnessed warfare first hand. The horror of war itself was not enough to end the cycle.
Most American families were affected by the deaths of American service men and women in WWII and Korea, yet chose to get involved with the conflict in Vietnam. Direct exposure to the reality of war can desensitize people to devastation it can cause, possibly even worse for young people. I think the dad in this story would have been better off discussing the consequences of war rather than visiting a war zone.
Sounds like a great idea, but that would take time away from the mandatory four years of intense English Literature where we make kids read dozens of 200 page books about fictional events that never happened, while we claim to be preparing them for the "real" world.
Soon after returning from Syria, one of the boys didn't want to go to school because he had a sniffle and a mild fever. So next month the family is packing up again for another trip - this time to West Africa to visit with families affected by the Ebola outbreak. While they're there, with any luck, they will be able to stumble upon a village completely wiped out by the virus. While some have labeled the plan ill timed and the motivations just plain sick, the father hopes that the children will come to appreciate their health if they can interview a dying infectee with blood spewing from every orifice.
Meanwhile, the boys have withdrawn their requests to go see the new Hunger Games movie, and no longer complain about being hot, cold, bored, or anything else.
Nowadays even the charities have gone too far with some of the obnoxious lengths they go to in order to extract one more dollar from their donors. Shortly before my mother died she began sending large monetary gifts to a few of her favorite charities. She ended up getting non-stop calls all throughout the day and night from dozens of charities pleading for her to contribute. Some of them were sneaky, with recurring auto debit agreements buried in fine print. On the phone they were very pushy, fast talking, always closing, and quite presumptuous. Many calls went like this: "Hi, I'm [name] calling on behalf of [name]. We're calling to confirm your donation today to our fundraising campaign. Please confirm your credit card number for a monthly contribution of $120...". We heard this from organizations that she had never contributed to. Most of the call centers were privately contracted, for-profit fundraising companies, probably staff by ex Comcast and AOL CRS's. She was on the National Do Not Call list, but there was no DO NOT CALL list to keep the pestering charities away. The whole experience really turned me off. Since I have special needs kids who don't get any support from any charities or government agencies, my donations go directly into their Special Needs Trust. But if I were to support a charity, I would only do it absolutely anonymously.
What if I didn't like the software running on my scope hardware and I decided to erase all of it, wrote my own software and firmware to load onto the EEPROMS, etc, and then released my software as free and open source, along with installation and usage manuals. Seems like DMCA could be used against me in such as a case as well, or am I wrong?
Launch staff are consistently drilled to launch the nukes on command. They receive launch codes and attempt to arm the nukes. When the codes provided are part of a drill, the nukes don't launch. If the codes are legit, then the launch crew has no idea until they hear the silo doors begin to open.
So as long as the soldiers are properly trained and show a track record of doing what their told, they might as well be a hard circuit to the launch systems.
Busy dismantling "big government" space programs with the expectation that the free market will supply the slingshots and parachutes to get in and out of orbit.
I'm definitely not a fan of global "corporatism" having undue influence and leverage over local and national governments or over the lives of private individuals. But when you say that people should be content with what they have and be happy, understand that the philosophy of Primitivism advocates this as well, and free internet is not a per-requisite.
If we're talking basic human rights, shouldn't the right to food, shelter, clean water, sleep, growing your own food, selling your own products and services, buying your own medication at the global market price, and freedom from conscription come before broadband and Youtube? I'm all for broadband for the people, but there are a lot of other rights that are not guaranteed in the USA or many other countries. And unlike many protectionist, mercantile regulations and policies of urban fascism, free internet is a problem that could be solved at a grass-roots DIY level. Many undeveloped parts of third world countries are coming online with wireless internet networks even though there are no roads, power lines, or sewer lines. Hops are installed that carry signals from village to village. These projects often take place even without government support.
What surprises me is to see lack of any sort of effort in the US to bring about a "public wireless internet", following the same model that brought us public television or public radio stations, pledge drives and all. If the FCC would loosen some restrictions to how HAM radio frequencies are utilized, there are probably already enough amateur technicians that would be eager to plant the seeds for a nationwide ad hoc user supported public network.
And they don't badger you when you visit in person, given that you can recognize faces and wait for people to get into their cars and follow them home. No, mega corporations prefer to rip you off from a very safe distance with no way to identify the front-line "retention specialists".
My credit has been crap for years mostly due to a steady flow of medical and therapy bills for my "special needs" child that far exceeds my ability to pay. But one benefit of not giving a fork about my FICO score is that I don't even bother to deal with the BS from cable, cell phone, internet, gym memberships, "free" trials, or anything else. When I want to change or drop a service I find it much more convenient to just close my bank account and open a new one than to deal with "Customer Retention Counselors". Sure, I get letters for debt collectors every day, but no one has bothered to sue me. Of course, if I had any savings or disposable income that could be a different matter.
Microsoft isn't really laying off these people. They just expect they will come back and code for free and for the love of coding as they launch the development of Windows OPEN. Coming soon to sourceforge.com.
Physicians tend to partner up with other professionals, like lawyers, bankers and CPAs when they start their own private practices. Many established physicians ARE going broke and filling for bankruptcy after getting drawn too deep into the business side of medicine. Instead of keeping focus on patient treatment, many physicians have their entire life savings linked to the profitability of their practice, which has more to do with negotiating the best deals for insurance reimbursement, malpractice insurance, building leases, utilities, and capital expenses such as X-ray, EKG, or sonogram machines. The bankers and lawyers structure things so they have the lion's share of ROI while the physician is personally exposed to the most liability. Then they have lawyers, bankers, limited partners, and shareholders pressuring them to be more "profitable", which means cutting face time with patients from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, prescribing drugs from suppliers that will pay back "incentives", referring to other specialists and facilities that offer kickbacks, separating physician fees from facility fees to juice more from insurance, performing more tests than necessary to defend against liability while receiving more reimbursement from insurance and medicare, performing sneaky out-of-network or uncovered services on unsuspecting patients with deep pockets, and more frequently flat-out defrauding medicare, medicaid, and private insurance companies.
Patients and physicians both would benefit from either a single-payer system like the UK and Canada have, or a maybe a public-private system like Australia has, where those willing to pay more direct or willing to buy commercial insurance can be treated by private physicians rather than publicly employed physicians, just like we have public and private schools in the US. In the US we actually have a shortage of physicians, especially if we are going to start covering care for more of our poor and working class. Yet many excellent candidates are not admitted to medical school because only the cream of the cream were selected. There are also many qualified physicians educated in Europe and Asia that cannot EVER practice in the US simply because they didn't get their degree here. Direct government investment in programs to train and certify physicians without forcing them into hundreds of thousands of dollars of unforgivable student loan debt would be a benefit to aspiring physicians and patients alike. Direct government assumption of financial liability and discipline of physicians would free physicians to earn an honest and comfortable living while providing patient care that serves the interest of the patient.
Gradually shortening the terms of pharmaceutical patents and finding more cures and treatments through non-profit, grant-funded, university research would help to substantially lower the family burden when it comes to the cost of care. At the end of the day it is the scientists putting in 80-120 hours each week that makes cures possible, and even those scientists working for Big Pharma are not raking in the dough compared to the executives, lawyers, and pharma sales reps. Scientists are not paid any less at the University level so the argument of profit incentive is rather mute.
If the plot from Invasion USA starts to be implemented, I am holding Chuck Norris personally responsible to get out there and kill ALL the terrorists. With his fists. While drinking hot tea.
I have to agree. If someone posts Jihadist fantasies online and is also heavily involved in a pyrotechnic hobby, I think we (law enforcement) step in and do something about it. Kids have been arrested and tried as adults when they had notebooks filled with very detailed Columbine-like plots against their schools. You are free to have creepy thoughts all you want, but if those thoughts appear to a jury to be a murder or terrorist plot, then be prepared to serve some time for those thought.
The trick now is to re-phrase your death threats in the form of a fictional story, poem, or lyric and post it online as a work of art. Recall that movie that involved a plot to assassinate Bush?
It's hard to find deer meat at the local grocery store, but yet all my friends have tons deer sausage overflowing out of their freezer. The key is to simply change your mindset and harvest the "wildlife" you see coming out of a vegan restaurant. Myself, I like corn-feed meat, so I would probably set up my hunting blind in a Golden Corral parking lot. I've been told it tastes like veal.
Slashdot Mirror
In most of the places where these wars take place, the adults experienced war first hand as children. That experience did not lead them to reject war, but rather to embrace warfare as a viable option. Hitler served on the front in WWI and experienced the full horror of it, chemical weapons and all. But like many German veterans, he felt that the German army was not defeated in battle, but was betrayed by peace-seeking politicians at Versailes.
Generations of citizens of Vietnam , Afghanistan, and Israel and its neighbors have witnessed warfare first hand. The horror of war itself was not enough to end the cycle.
Most American families were affected by the deaths of American service men and women in WWII and Korea, yet chose to get involved with the conflict in Vietnam. Direct exposure to the reality of war can desensitize people to devastation it can cause, possibly even worse for young people. I think the dad in this story would have been better off discussing the consequences of war rather than visiting a war zone.
Mod parent up! Come on!
Finally, a rational thought expressed on Slashdot.
Sounds like a great idea, but that would take time away from the mandatory four years of intense English Literature where we make kids read dozens of 200 page books about fictional events that never happened, while we claim to be preparing them for the "real" world.
Soon after returning from Syria, one of the boys didn't want to go to school because he had a sniffle and a mild fever. So next month the family is packing up again for another trip - this time to West Africa to visit with families affected by the Ebola outbreak. While they're there, with any luck, they will be able to stumble upon a village completely wiped out by the virus. While some have labeled the plan ill timed and the motivations just plain sick, the father hopes that the children will come to appreciate their health if they can interview a dying infectee with blood spewing from every orifice.
Meanwhile, the boys have withdrawn their requests to go see the new Hunger Games movie, and no longer complain about being hot, cold, bored, or anything else.
Nowadays even the charities have gone too far with some of the obnoxious lengths they go to in order to extract one more dollar from their donors. Shortly before my mother died she began sending large monetary gifts to a few of her favorite charities. She ended up getting non-stop calls all throughout the day and night from dozens of charities pleading for her to contribute. Some of them were sneaky, with recurring auto debit agreements buried in fine print. On the phone they were very pushy, fast talking, always closing, and quite presumptuous. Many calls went like this: "Hi, I'm [name] calling on behalf of [name]. We're calling to confirm your donation today to our fundraising campaign. Please confirm your credit card number for a monthly contribution of $120...". We heard this from organizations that she had never contributed to. Most of the call centers were privately contracted, for-profit fundraising companies, probably staff by ex Comcast and AOL CRS's. She was on the National Do Not Call list, but there was no DO NOT CALL list to keep the pestering charities away. The whole experience really turned me off. Since I have special needs kids who don't get any support from any charities or government agencies, my donations go directly into their Special Needs Trust. But if I were to support a charity, I would only do it absolutely anonymously.
What the heck is a sitting dug?
What if I didn't like the software running on my scope hardware and I decided to erase all of it, wrote my own software and firmware to load onto the EEPROMS, etc, and then released my software as free and open source, along with installation and usage manuals. Seems like DMCA could be used against me in such as a case as well, or am I wrong?
Launch staff are consistently drilled to launch the nukes on command. They receive launch codes and attempt to arm the nukes. When the codes provided are part of a drill, the nukes don't launch. If the codes are legit, then the launch crew has no idea until they hear the silo doors begin to open.
So as long as the soldiers are properly trained and show a track record of doing what their told, they might as well be a hard circuit to the launch systems.
It could also solve their over-population problems as well.
Busy dismantling "big government" space programs with the expectation that the free market will supply the slingshots and parachutes to get in and out of orbit.
And hopefully they won't, ever. Because that's where I plan to head when SHTF. Illegal immigration works both ways IMHO.
I'm definitely not a fan of global "corporatism" having undue influence and leverage over local and national governments or over the lives of private individuals. But when you say that people should be content with what they have and be happy, understand that the philosophy of Primitivism advocates this as well, and free internet is not a per-requisite.
If we're talking basic human rights, shouldn't the right to food, shelter, clean water, sleep, growing your own food, selling your own products and services, buying your own medication at the global market price, and freedom from conscription come before broadband and Youtube? I'm all for broadband for the people, but there are a lot of other rights that are not guaranteed in the USA or many other countries. And unlike many protectionist, mercantile regulations and policies of urban fascism, free internet is a problem that could be solved at a grass-roots DIY level. Many undeveloped parts of third world countries are coming online with wireless internet networks even though there are no roads, power lines, or sewer lines. Hops are installed that carry signals from village to village. These projects often take place even without government support.
What surprises me is to see lack of any sort of effort in the US to bring about a "public wireless internet", following the same model that brought us public television or public radio stations, pledge drives and all. If the FCC would loosen some restrictions to how HAM radio frequencies are utilized, there are probably already enough amateur technicians that would be eager to plant the seeds for a nationwide ad hoc user supported public network.
And they don't badger you when you visit in person, given that you can recognize faces and wait for people to get into their cars and follow them home. No, mega corporations prefer to rip you off from a very safe distance with no way to identify the front-line "retention specialists".
[Cue Voice of Achmed]: "SILENCE! I bill you!"
My credit has been crap for years mostly due to a steady flow of medical and therapy bills for my "special needs" child that far exceeds my ability to pay. But one benefit of not giving a fork about my FICO score is that I don't even bother to deal with the BS from cable, cell phone, internet, gym memberships, "free" trials, or anything else. When I want to change or drop a service I find it much more convenient to just close my bank account and open a new one than to deal with "Customer Retention Counselors". Sure, I get letters for debt collectors every day, but no one has bothered to sue me. Of course, if I had any savings or disposable income that could be a different matter.
Microsoft isn't really laying off these people. They just expect they will come back and code for free and for the love of coding as they launch the development of Windows OPEN. Coming soon to sourceforge.com.
Physicians tend to partner up with other professionals, like lawyers, bankers and CPAs when they start their own private practices. Many established physicians ARE going broke and filling for bankruptcy after getting drawn too deep into the business side of medicine. Instead of keeping focus on patient treatment, many physicians have their entire life savings linked to the profitability of their practice, which has more to do with negotiating the best deals for insurance reimbursement, malpractice insurance, building leases, utilities, and capital expenses such as X-ray, EKG, or sonogram machines. The bankers and lawyers structure things so they have the lion's share of ROI while the physician is personally exposed to the most liability. Then they have lawyers, bankers, limited partners, and shareholders pressuring them to be more "profitable", which means cutting face time with patients from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, prescribing drugs from suppliers that will pay back "incentives", referring to other specialists and facilities that offer kickbacks, separating physician fees from facility fees to juice more from insurance, performing more tests than necessary to defend against liability while receiving more reimbursement from insurance and medicare, performing sneaky out-of-network or uncovered services on unsuspecting patients with deep pockets, and more frequently flat-out defrauding medicare, medicaid, and private insurance companies.
Patients and physicians both would benefit from either a single-payer system like the UK and Canada have, or a maybe a public-private system like Australia has, where those willing to pay more direct or willing to buy commercial insurance can be treated by private physicians rather than publicly employed physicians, just like we have public and private schools in the US. In the US we actually have a shortage of physicians, especially if we are going to start covering care for more of our poor and working class. Yet many excellent candidates are not admitted to medical school because only the cream of the cream were selected. There are also many qualified physicians educated in Europe and Asia that cannot EVER practice in the US simply because they didn't get their degree here. Direct government investment in programs to train and certify physicians without forcing them into hundreds of thousands of dollars of unforgivable student loan debt would be a benefit to aspiring physicians and patients alike. Direct government assumption of financial liability and discipline of physicians would free physicians to earn an honest and comfortable living while providing patient care that serves the interest of the patient.
Gradually shortening the terms of pharmaceutical patents and finding more cures and treatments through non-profit, grant-funded, university research would help to substantially lower the family burden when it comes to the cost of care. At the end of the day it is the scientists putting in 80-120 hours each week that makes cures possible, and even those scientists working for Big Pharma are not raking in the dough compared to the executives, lawyers, and pharma sales reps. Scientists are not paid any less at the University level so the argument of profit incentive is rather mute.
No, that would be Denny's.
If the plot from Invasion USA starts to be implemented, I am holding Chuck Norris personally responsible to get out there and kill ALL the terrorists. With his fists. While drinking hot tea.
I have to agree. If someone posts Jihadist fantasies online and is also heavily involved in a pyrotechnic hobby, I think we (law enforcement) step in and do something about it. Kids have been arrested and tried as adults when they had notebooks filled with very detailed Columbine-like plots against their schools. You are free to have creepy thoughts all you want, but if those thoughts appear to a jury to be a murder or terrorist plot, then be prepared to serve some time for those thought.
The trick now is to re-phrase your death threats in the form of a fictional story, poem, or lyric and post it online as a work of art. Recall that movie that involved a plot to assassinate Bush?
Well, he used a computer at some point so it's Slashdot material :)
Which, incidentally, also makes it patentable and a criminal offense. Back to jail he goes.
It's hard to find deer meat at the local grocery store, but yet all my friends have tons deer sausage overflowing out of their freezer. The key is to simply change your mindset and harvest the "wildlife" you see coming out of a vegan restaurant. Myself, I like corn-feed meat, so I would probably set up my hunting blind in a Golden Corral parking lot. I've been told it tastes like veal.
OK, I pulled that out of my arse, but FB is still a creepy corporation.