Perkins: Oh, your lawyer now, yes sir. Don't you think that might be a bit
of a waste of money, sir.
Edmund: Not when he's the finest mind in English legal history. Ever heard
of Bob Mattingburg?
Perkins: Oh, yes indeed, sir! A most gifted gentleman!
Edmund: I remember Mattingburg's most famous case, the case of the bloody knife.
A man was found next to a murdured body, he had the knife in his hand,
thirteen witnesses that seen him stab the victim, when the police
arrived he said, "I'm glad I killed the bastard." Mattingburg not
only got him off, but he got him knighted in the New Year's Honors
list, and the relatives of the victim had to pay to have the blood
washed out of his jacket.
First, because farmers can't use certain very safe and developed pesticides, they have to use older and much more toxic varieties. Not to mention the actual amount of pesticides residue you eat a year has less cancerogenic substances than a cup of coffee. The thing is, the human body is very resilient and such exposure just doesn't matter.
Care to provide any supporting information for your assertion that organic farmers use "older and much more toxic" pesticides? Talk about pure bullshit...
As for the issue of pesticide residue, I'm sure that the amount of pesticide residue for a given piece of produce usually falls below some FDA threshold, and I'm sure that washing produce helps even more. The point I was trying to make, though, was not that pesticides are eeeeevil. They have their place in agriculture, but there is growing evidence that they are being overused. In short, heavy use of pesticides (and fertilizers) is not sustainable agriculture.
When you need to dose the shit out of your plants (killing pollenating insects and doing other harm to the biosphere) to keep them from being eaten alive, you're doing it wrong. Your crops are too dense. When you need to pour on the fertilizer to make up for the fact that you've pulled all the nutrients out of the soil, you're doing it wrong. It's not sustainable. You're reliant on Monsanto for your engineered seed + RoundUp and Saudi Arabia for your petro-based fertilizers.
My concern is not based in some wooly-headed "o noes chemicals" fear. I would sign up to have a neighborhood-sized pebble-bed nuke plant next to my backyard if I could. I just believe that we can choose better ways to do things.
As ever, the Wikipedia article on the subject provides the much needed citation. Some of the substances they use a really poisonous, and to add insult to injury, not effective enough. Yeah, as you may have heard "organically grown food" is more expensive because there is less of it, one of the reasons is that the "biopesticides" are just not effective enough.
Actually, organic foods would definitely taste better when you're feeling morally superior. However you cannot taste the difference in a double-blinded test. Especially because YMMV, and the big problem to discerning the difference in taste is that when you *know* you're getting organic you attribute any goodness as organic, and when you *know* you're getting non-organic for all untastyness you blame the non-organic origin of the food. You don't get better nutritional value, and especially for your money it's quite a bummer. Just buy better beef without regard of it being free-range or not.
If you don't eat junk food, then you'll get 99% of the health benefits of any food switch. Last 1% you can get if you have a local farmer that supplies you with good food every day, but that's practically impossible.
As I thought I made clear in my original post, my motivation for buying Organic food is not specifically for a perceived superiority in taste. High-quality produce is high-quality produce regardless of whether or not it's Organic.
Yeah, you should totally do that, it's a damn shame that whole organic-food charade. When the whole point should have been "we want better food" we're being f*cked organically when no proof of health benefits have been discovered yet.
Meat, on the other hand, is a whole other ball of wax.
As an example, the "free range" chicken breasts I buy are far and away superior in taste and texture to the premium conventional breasts I buy every once in a while (depending on which grocery I get to). I usually make a chicken vindaloo several times
7. Organic food (when you can find it cheapish). Free range meat (compulsory). Before you roll your eyes, give it a chance. From my experience, organic food tastes better, if that's it's only advantage, infact sometimes epicly better to the point of night and day difference. I can't think how many bad pieces of fruit I've gotten from the
It usually does taste much better, and it is common sense that eating foods which haven't been doused with pesticides is better for you. Irrespective of those arguments, the weight of which vary wildly from person to person, I think that eating certified Organic foods is morally superior. I know, that sounds awfully hippy-dippy, but what cemented it for me was an article which pointed out that organic foods cost more because they're more expensive to produce. Duh, but why? Well, it's because they're produced in a sustainable fashion. The farmers can't use pesticides, so crop density has to be lower. The farmers can't use certain classes of fertilizers, so the yields are smaller. The animals are free-range and not crammed full of growth hormones and antibiotics, so it takes longer to grow fewer of them.
The result of choosing organic produce and meats is that we eat less meat. In my mind, this is a good thing. As a society, we've allowed the agribusiness industry to externalize costs, which results in artificially reduced prices for their products. They don't account for the increased societal health costs of a corn- and meat-heavy diet. They don't account for the pollution that results from factory farming (Fertilizer Runoff, Pigshit Lagoons, etc.), and they're doing it all with nice juicy federal subsidies. What is wrong with us?? We're paying them (via taxes and at the grocery store) to make us less healthy!!
I know that many people don't have the luxury of spending more for their calories. My family is fortunate enough that we can. I look at it as an investment in our own health and as an investment in sustainable agriculture. I'm under no illusions that we'll ever make factory farming go away, but if enough informed consumers choose to pay more for better product, then we'll at least put pressure on Big Ag to clean themselves up.
I agree wholeheartedly to the rest of your post, however this one is pure bullshit.
First, because farmers can't use certain very safe and developed pesticides, they have to use older and much more toxic varieties. Not to mention the actual amount of pesticides residue you eat a year has less cancerogenic substances than a cup of coffee. The thing is, the human body is very resilient and such exposure just doesn't matter.
Actually, organic foods would definitely taste better when you're feeling morally superior. However you cannot taste the difference in a double-blinded test. Especially because YMMV, and the big problem to discerning the difference in taste is that when you *know* you're getting organic you attribute any goodness as organic, and when you *know* you're getting non-organic for all untastyness ou blame the non-organic origin of the food. You don't get better nutritional value, and especially for your money it's quite a bummer. Just buy better beef without regard of it being free-range or not.
If you don't eat junk food, then you'll get 99% of the health benefits of any food switch. Last 1% you can get if you have a local farmer that supplies you with good food every day, but that's practically impossible.
2.) They ignore how many distractions come from the radio in the car - they would never move to ban radios
Not the same. I will vote to ban the radio the instant it started demanding my attention and screaming if I didn't respond...
3.) They ignore how many distractions come from passengers/pets - they would never more to ban passengers/pets
Not the same. Passengers shut up when you're distracted or in a dangerous situation.
4.) They hold on to the idea that if a phone was in the car, it caused the accident, no matter what the actual cause was 5.) To such people, the citing of a couple of personal examples shows what all of humankind is like 6.) They fit into the general pattern of those who want to tell others what to do
That is a strawman argument. Nobody argues such things.
In any case, it's like drinking and driving. Nobody's blaming the alcohol, but the person who chose to be intoxicated. And if you chose to use the phone... tough luck.
Let me sum it up for you. Public driveways are public property. If Mr. Youdumbfuck doesn't want to drive responsibly then he should be banned from driving.
The truth is that when bad things happen, people inevitably seek to blame whatever thing/behavior that they don't like but think they have good enough chances of hanging the blame on. Aren't there any studies on actual distraction level and human tolerance for such? Statistics taken at the scene of accidents are just as unreliable as they were in the 80's when any car with any amount of alcohol in it, regardless of form (groceries, sealed bottles, etc) was considered an "alcohol-related" accident.
Nope. Scientific evidence is provided that phonecalls and texting are distracting to drivers AND said drivers underestimate how distracting they are. Since the law has to be as unambiguous as possible, the small cost of not having phonecalls without handsfree and texting by the driver are banned is justified, provided the safety increase.
Both ways, no health insurance for you. YOU are still screwed. Who the fuck cares if they are getting screwed, you are, and that is all you care about.
Actually, the Hawking radiation doesn't come from inside the black hole.
When a particle/anti-particle pair tunnels into existence at the edge of a black hole, for some reason, the anti-particle tunnels into existence inside the black hole and is immediately annihilated by an already existing particle in the black hole (thus reducing the mass of the black hole by one particle's worth). The particle that tunneled into existence outside the black hole spins off and is referred to as "Hawking Radiation".
The wikipedia article is excellent.
Yet you failed to grasp the actual idea.
It is a VIRTUAL particle/antiparticle pair that gets created out of nothing for a very short time. The pair annihilates in normal circumstances, releasing no energy since none was given in the first place. Strange concept really, but works mathematically.
However near the black hole one of the pair can escape and the other may not. Then the falling virtual particle annihilates with a real one, and the escaping one just escapes. By escaping it carries some of the energy of the black hole away.
Are you capable of forming an opinion on a subject without requiring a study to back it up? Are human beings in general able to master things that the average person in the average study wasn't capable of?
I don't doubt that many people are too stupid or unskilled to safely text while driving. There's also a lot of people who can't juggle, and most can't walk on a tight rope over a canyon without falling to their deaths. Yet somehow, some people are able to do these things. I can type out a text message on my phone while watching traffic and barely even thinking about the message I'm sending, the same way I can type at 100 WPM on a keyboard while simultaneously holding a conversation with someone on a different subject. It comes from practice. Maybe you aren't practiced or skilled enough; I'm sorry. That doesn't change the fact that I can do these things, and neither do your studies.
You can't. Really, you just can't do it. Your overinflated ego can twist and turn the facts in you head to make you believe you can do it, but you really can't. And by doing those things you are making all of us unsafe.
Most drunk drivers believe they can drive just fine on three beers. They can't, it's a proven fact. It's also a proven fact that people believe they can do it, and this does not make it so.
You may not have yet killed someone, but I urge you to stop your stupidity before you do. THEN it will be too late.
You can complain about MS all you want, but aside from the malware tool they occasionally send, they do not push NEW software over their updates. They offer them through the Windows Update website as optional / recommended updates that are NOT preselected.
Well, duh! All MS components are already on the machine. If PCs came with all Apple software preinstalled the wouldn't be pushing extra software would they?
The license is available for applications on any platform, except for applications that compete directly with the five Office applications that currently have the new UI (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access). We wanted to make the IP available broadly to partners because it has benefits to Microsoft and the Office Ecosystem. At the same time, we wanted to preserve the uniqueness of the Office UI for the core Office productivity applications.
Firefox does not compete with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook or Access. Microsoft might claim Thunderbird competes with Outlook, if the Mozilla folks want to add ribbons there as well, but unless the actual license text is substantially different, there should not be any problem for Firefox other than possibly users' objections.
Then it's a stupid idea to implement it. This way you're furthering the use of a patented technology thus software patents.
You make the mistake of assuming that the 'evidence' presented is true. you also make the mistake assuming any trial by jury is a fair one, considering anybody that is a member of FIJA is almost immediately removed from the jury pool. That leaves out the informed people, leaving only the idiots to judge your guilt or innocence.
Idiots without Fox News is still way better than idiots with Fox News.
I have a good friend who is a licensed Chiropractor, and also licensed as a family-practice M.D. He fully understands the limitations of Chiropractic techniques and won't hesitate to advise patients go to a medical specialist for any condition he might detect. Additionally, he would never make any claims he knows to be false, for example, that chiropractic adjustments can help conditions like ulcers, or whatever other ridiculous things fraud Chiropractors claim. He advises companies on ergonomics, and frequently attends health fairs.
Are there fraud Chiropractors? Yes. Are all Chiropractors frauds? Of course not.
Guess what? There are also fraud M.D.s. And fraud lawyers, and fraud plumbers and...
Yes, and fraud lawyers and M.D.s are persecuted by the law? As a criminal offence that is... So your point is?
Great post, and exactly right. These anti-alternative-therapy people keep claiming alternative therapies "aren't scientific", but neither is traditional medicine. Doctors are just trained to compare symptoms with available pharmaceuticals and prescribe something and see if it works. It's totally shooting in the dark, and there's very little work in the medical industry that I see to understand how the body really works and develop safe and effective therapies for problems. Worse, all the pharmaceuticals have loads of negative side-effects.
There's a lot of people with various problems (like chronic fatigue syndrome) that traditional medicine has done absolutely nothing to find relief for, so they're forced to turn to anything that might help. You can cry all you want that it's bogus, but trying nearly anything beats sitting on your ass and suffering.
Oh come on. You might as well explain that mechanics are not using science since they poke at a machine to see if it wriggles and then do something to make it work again.
Yes, MDs are educated to be mechanics and not scientists, but that does not mean they don't USE GOOD, RIGOROUSLY TESTED science. In any case it is solar years ahead of the "alternative medicine" whatever that means.
Which is as it should be - if I write "Darkness404 molests goats" then unless it is true why should I not compensate you for the resulting harm to your reputation? Whereas if it is true, then I have done nothing but convey the truth of the situation to the audience.
It does look like guilty until proven innocent, and that's what confuses a lot of people. But if you think about it, the defendant has accused the plaintiff of something, so yes, it's up to the defendant to prove it.
Except that's not true. Simon said "science behind the treatment is bogus", not that the chiropractors were bogus, which means that tey are misinformed, not lying intentionally. And the science behind the treatments they propose is bogus.
An old journalists' proverb is "if in doubt, leave it out".
Yeah, that's what I say - if you can't prove that you don't molest children you must not deny the charges?
Expecting the plaintiff to prove the statements aren't true is ridiculous. Unless Darkness404 has been shadowed by numerous independent witnesses for his entire life he can't prove that he never ever indulged in a little caprine frolicking.
Well it depends if its libel. Simon said the treatments are not proven, which he CAN defend. The problem is the judge interprets his words as "chiropractors are lying to patient" which he did not say and did not mean.
Justifying the statement is not an exercise in proving its absolute truth, either.
If you can convince the court is true, then that's good enough.
You may remember the cases that Fat Bob Maxwell won against Private Eye; at least some of the accusations were factually true, but the magazine couldn't prove it at the time. So legally, they were false.
Yeah, the problem is the court actually misunderstood the words Simon was saying. They are trying him for the equivalent of saying "chiropractors know they are not helping people but lie to them" (which is not only not what he meant but is indefensible in every sense of the word) vs the actual words "treatments chiropractors give have not been proven to be scientifically sound". All the problems are the misinterpretation of the word BOGUS.
Why didn't the professor just ask them to leave then?
Or maybe it was not one or two students? Maybe half the audience disliked the speech for some reason. In any case, I don't see it as a given right to spew bullshit and have the freedom of not being shouted down.
Well it depends on what you mean by force someone not to listen to someone else. It's one too many negatives so it's not quite clear.
For example, let's say PETA has a de-humanizing rally like they usually do. And I create some posters exposing them as the terrorist scum they are - am I free to show them to the bystanders? Can PETA demand that I don't give my brochures and that on their rally only they have that right?
If people are DUMB enough so that the class didn't want to hear the speaker, who's to blame? Or if it was one-two students, just have them out of the room - it's ok, the professor is in charge and he has the right.
Have you been to the lecture? Have you actually witnessed it first account?
Yes, I demand the right to speak but that does not stop me from exercising MY right to speak. If I deem speech to be inappropriate for the audience, like some quack homeopath nutritionist horse-shit peddler (as dara o'briain said) selling bullcrap to an uninformed audience I WILL feel compelled to silence him. Yes, I would use rational arguments, and I will probably wait for him to finish.
But that's me. Maybe those students didn't have the nerve to watch that guy spew hatred towards their own people. Maybe they didn't have the capacity to let him finish. I can't judge them because I wasn't there, and so shouldn't you.
Being a guest speaker does not give you any kind of immunity. It is ludicrous to demand that - freedom to speak does imply freedom to be heard.
And no, punishing students for disagreeing with merely a point of view of a guest speaker is not fair by a long shot.
Maintaining order is another point, but I have not been to the lectures mentioned in the thread and so you haven't. A mere "we want the borders closed with Mexico and Canada" can convey quite a lot of hatred by being said in the proper context and proper intonation, so I really can't judge the students.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it's quite a miracle that USA is still free despite that religion thing. I wouldn't expect that to last, though.
Yes, he's 99% right.
Quit trolling.
Yeah ... it's not illegal, only when we want to put you in jail we'll invoke it. If you only do what we want you to, there is no need to worry.
Raw fish hazardous to your health? Go figure!
RTFA
It's mislabeled anyway
Obligatory quote from The Black Adder:
Perkins: Oh, your lawyer now, yes sir. Don't you think that might be a bit
of a waste of money, sir.
Edmund: Not when he's the finest mind in English legal history. Ever heard
of Bob Mattingburg?
Perkins: Oh, yes indeed, sir! A most gifted gentleman!
Edmund: I remember Mattingburg's most famous case, the case of the bloody knife.
A man was found next to a murdured body, he had the knife in his hand,
thirteen witnesses that seen him stab the victim, when the police
arrived he said, "I'm glad I killed the bastard." Mattingburg not
only got him off, but he got him knighted in the New Year's Honors
list, and the relatives of the victim had to pay to have the blood
washed out of his jacket.
First, because farmers can't use certain very safe and developed pesticides, they have to use older and much more toxic varieties. Not to mention the actual amount of pesticides residue you eat a year has less cancerogenic substances than a cup of coffee. The thing is, the human body is very resilient and such exposure just doesn't matter.
Care to provide any supporting information for your assertion that organic farmers use "older and much more toxic" pesticides? Talk about pure bullshit...
Here's what the EPA has to say about it.
As for the issue of pesticide residue, I'm sure that the amount of pesticide residue for a given piece of produce usually falls below some FDA threshold, and I'm sure that washing produce helps even more. The point I was trying to make, though, was not that pesticides are eeeeevil. They have their place in agriculture, but there is growing evidence that they are being overused. In short, heavy use of pesticides (and fertilizers) is not sustainable agriculture.
When you need to dose the shit out of your plants (killing pollenating insects and doing other harm to the biosphere) to keep them from being eaten alive, you're doing it wrong. Your crops are too dense. When you need to pour on the fertilizer to make up for the fact that you've pulled all the nutrients out of the soil, you're doing it wrong. It's not sustainable. You're reliant on Monsanto for your engineered seed + RoundUp and Saudi Arabia for your petro-based fertilizers.
My concern is not based in some wooly-headed "o noes chemicals" fear. I would sign up to have a neighborhood-sized pebble-bed nuke plant next to my backyard if I could. I just believe that we can choose better ways to do things.
As ever, the Wikipedia article on the subject provides the much needed citation. Some of the substances they use a really poisonous, and to add insult to injury, not effective enough. Yeah, as you may have heard "organically grown food" is more expensive because there is less of it, one of the reasons is that the "biopesticides" are just not effective enough.
Actually, organic foods would definitely taste better when you're feeling morally superior. However you cannot taste the difference in a double-blinded test. Especially because YMMV, and the big problem to discerning the difference in taste is that when you *know* you're getting organic you attribute any goodness as organic, and when you *know* you're getting non-organic for all untastyness you blame the non-organic origin of the food. You don't get better nutritional value, and especially for your money it's quite a bummer. Just buy better beef without regard of it being free-range or not.
If you don't eat junk food, then you'll get 99% of the health benefits of any food switch. Last 1% you can get if you have a local farmer that supplies you with good food every day, but that's practically impossible.
As I thought I made clear in my original post, my motivation for buying Organic food is not specifically for a perceived superiority in taste. High-quality produce is high-quality produce regardless of whether or not it's Organic.
Yeah, you should totally do that, it's a damn shame that whole organic-food charade. When the whole point should have been "we want better food" we're being f*cked organically when no proof of health benefits have been discovered yet.
Meat, on the other hand, is a whole other ball of wax.
As an example, the "free range" chicken breasts I buy are far and away superior in taste and texture to the premium conventional breasts I buy every once in a while (depending on which grocery I get to). I usually make a chicken vindaloo several times
7. Organic food (when you can find it cheapish). Free range meat (compulsory). Before you roll your eyes, give it a chance. From my experience, organic food tastes better, if that's it's only advantage, infact sometimes epicly better to the point of night and day difference. I can't think how many bad pieces of fruit I've gotten from the
It usually does taste much better, and it is common sense that eating foods which haven't been doused with pesticides is better for you. Irrespective of those arguments, the weight of which vary wildly from person to person, I think that eating certified Organic foods is morally superior. I know, that sounds awfully hippy-dippy, but what cemented it for me was an article which pointed out that organic foods cost more because they're more expensive to produce. Duh, but why? Well, it's because they're produced in a sustainable fashion. The farmers can't use pesticides, so crop density has to be lower. The farmers can't use certain classes of fertilizers, so the yields are smaller. The animals are free-range and not crammed full of growth hormones and antibiotics, so it takes longer to grow fewer of them.
The result of choosing organic produce and meats is that we eat less meat. In my mind, this is a good thing. As a society, we've allowed the agribusiness industry to externalize costs, which results in artificially reduced prices for their products. They don't account for the increased societal health costs of a corn- and meat-heavy diet. They don't account for the pollution that results from factory farming (Fertilizer Runoff, Pigshit Lagoons, etc.), and they're doing it all with nice juicy federal subsidies. What is wrong with us?? We're paying them (via taxes and at the grocery store) to make us less healthy!!
I know that many people don't have the luxury of spending more for their calories. My family is fortunate enough that we can. I look at it as an investment in our own health and as an investment in sustainable agriculture. I'm under no illusions that we'll ever make factory farming go away, but if enough informed consumers choose to pay more for better product, then we'll at least put pressure on Big Ag to clean themselves up.
I agree wholeheartedly to the rest of your post, however this one is pure bullshit.
First, because farmers can't use certain very safe and developed pesticides, they have to use older and much more toxic varieties. Not to mention the actual amount of pesticides residue you eat a year has less cancerogenic substances than a cup of coffee. The thing is, the human body is very resilient and such exposure just doesn't matter.
Actually, organic foods would definitely taste better when you're feeling morally superior. However you cannot taste the difference in a double-blinded test. Especially because YMMV, and the big problem to discerning the difference in taste is that when you *know* you're getting organic you attribute any goodness as organic, and when you *know* you're getting non-organic for all untastyness ou blame the non-organic origin of the food. You don't get better nutritional value, and especially for your money it's quite a bummer. Just buy better beef without regard of it being free-range or not.
If you don't eat junk food, then you'll get 99% of the health benefits of any food switch. Last 1% you can get if you have a local farmer that supplies you with good food every day, but that's practically impossible.
Could you repeat that, I was busy texting.
Damn I almost spilt the coffee on my laptop just while I was going on the freeway.
2.) They ignore how many distractions come from the radio in the car - they would never move to ban radios
Not the same. I will vote to ban the radio the instant it started demanding my attention and screaming if I didn't respond...
3.) They ignore how many distractions come from passengers/pets - they would never more to ban passengers/pets
Not the same. Passengers shut up when you're distracted or in a dangerous situation.
4.) They hold on to the idea that if a phone was in the car, it caused the accident, no matter what the actual cause was
5.) To such people, the citing of a couple of personal examples shows what all of humankind is like
6.) They fit into the general pattern of those who want to tell others what to do
That is a strawman argument. Nobody argues such things.
In any case, it's like drinking and driving. Nobody's blaming the alcohol, but the person who chose to be intoxicated. And if you chose to use the phone ... tough luck.
Let me sum it up for you. Public driveways are public property. If Mr. Youdumbfuck doesn't want to drive responsibly then he should be banned from driving.
The truth is that when bad things happen, people inevitably seek to blame whatever thing/behavior that they don't like but think they have good enough chances of hanging the blame on. Aren't there any studies on actual distraction level and human tolerance for such? Statistics taken at the scene of accidents are just as unreliable as they were in the 80's when any car with any amount of alcohol in it, regardless of form (groceries, sealed bottles, etc) was considered an "alcohol-related" accident.
Nope. Scientific evidence is provided that phonecalls and texting are distracting to drivers AND said drivers underestimate how distracting they are. Since the law has to be as unambiguous as possible, the small cost of not having phonecalls without handsfree and texting by the driver are banned is justified, provided the safety increase.
Both ways, no health insurance for you. YOU are still screwed. Who the fuck cares if they are getting screwed, you are, and that is all you care about.
Well, a lot of wasted efforts to circumnavigate the obvious solution - universal healthcare...
Actually, the Hawking radiation doesn't come from inside the black hole.
When a particle/anti-particle pair tunnels into existence at the edge of a black hole, for some reason, the anti-particle tunnels into existence inside the black hole and is immediately annihilated by an already existing particle in the black hole (thus reducing the mass of the black hole by one particle's worth). The particle that tunneled into existence outside the black hole spins off and is referred to as "Hawking Radiation".
The wikipedia article is excellent.
Yet you failed to grasp the actual idea.
It is a VIRTUAL particle/antiparticle pair that gets created out of nothing for a very short time. The pair annihilates in normal circumstances, releasing no energy since none was given in the first place. Strange concept really, but works mathematically.
However near the black hole one of the pair can escape and the other may not. Then the falling virtual particle annihilates with a real one, and the escaping one just escapes. By escaping it carries some of the energy of the black hole away.
Are you capable of forming an opinion on a subject without requiring a study to back it up? Are human beings in general able to master things that the average person in the average study wasn't capable of?
I don't doubt that many people are too stupid or unskilled to safely text while driving. There's also a lot of people who can't juggle, and most can't walk on a tight rope over a canyon without falling to their deaths. Yet somehow, some people are able to do these things. I can type out a text message on my phone while watching traffic and barely even thinking about the message I'm sending, the same way I can type at 100 WPM on a keyboard while simultaneously holding a conversation with someone on a different subject. It comes from practice. Maybe you aren't practiced or skilled enough; I'm sorry. That doesn't change the fact that I can do these things, and neither do your studies.
You can't. Really, you just can't do it. Your overinflated ego can twist and turn the facts in you head to make you believe you can do it, but you really can't. And by doing those things you are making all of us unsafe.
Most drunk drivers believe they can drive just fine on three beers. They can't, it's a proven fact. It's also a proven fact that people believe they can do it, and this does not make it so.
You may not have yet killed someone, but I urge you to stop your stupidity before you do. THEN it will be too late.
Disappear - yes, they may not notice. Start telling everyone that WinXP is insecure and actually have a proof - damn they will care.
You can complain about MS all you want, but aside from the malware tool they occasionally send, they do not push NEW software over their updates. They offer them through the Windows Update website as optional / recommended updates that are NOT preselected.
Well, duh! All MS components are already on the machine. If PCs came with all Apple software preinstalled the wouldn't be pushing extra software would they?
From your link:
Firefox does not compete with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook or Access. Microsoft might claim Thunderbird competes with Outlook, if the Mozilla folks want to add ribbons there as well, but unless the actual license text is substantially different, there should not be any problem for Firefox other than possibly users' objections.
Then it's a stupid idea to implement it. This way you're furthering the use of a patented technology thus software patents.
You make the mistake of assuming that the 'evidence' presented is true. you also make the mistake assuming any trial by jury is a fair one, considering anybody that is a member of FIJA is almost immediately removed from the jury pool. That leaves out the informed people, leaving only the idiots to judge your guilt or innocence.
Idiots without Fox News is still way better than idiots with Fox News.
I have a good friend who is a licensed Chiropractor, and also licensed as a family-practice M.D. He fully understands the limitations of Chiropractic techniques and won't hesitate to advise patients go to a medical specialist for any condition he might detect. Additionally, he would never make any claims he knows to be false, for example, that chiropractic adjustments can help conditions like ulcers, or whatever other ridiculous things fraud Chiropractors claim. He advises companies on ergonomics, and frequently attends health fairs.
Are there fraud Chiropractors? Yes. Are all Chiropractors frauds? Of course not.
Guess what? There are also fraud M.D.s. And fraud lawyers, and fraud plumbers and...
Yes, and fraud lawyers and M.D.s are persecuted by the law? As a criminal offence that is... So your point is?
Great post, and exactly right. These anti-alternative-therapy people keep claiming alternative therapies "aren't scientific", but neither is traditional medicine. Doctors are just trained to compare symptoms with available pharmaceuticals and prescribe something and see if it works. It's totally shooting in the dark, and there's very little work in the medical industry that I see to understand how the body really works and develop safe and effective therapies for problems. Worse, all the pharmaceuticals have loads of negative side-effects.
There's a lot of people with various problems (like chronic fatigue syndrome) that traditional medicine has done absolutely nothing to find relief for, so they're forced to turn to anything that might help. You can cry all you want that it's bogus, but trying nearly anything beats sitting on your ass and suffering.
Oh come on. You might as well explain that mechanics are not using science since they poke at a machine to see if it wriggles and then do something to make it work again.
Yes, MDs are educated to be mechanics and not scientists, but that does not mean they don't USE GOOD, RIGOROUSLY TESTED science. In any case it is solar years ahead of the "alternative medicine" whatever that means.
It does look like guilty until proven innocent, and that's what confuses a lot of people. But if you think about it, the defendant has accused the plaintiff of something, so yes, it's up to the defendant to prove it.
Except that's not true. Simon said "science behind the treatment is bogus", not that the chiropractors were bogus, which means that tey are misinformed, not lying intentionally. And the science behind the treatments they propose is bogus.
An old journalists' proverb is "if in doubt, leave it out".
Yeah, that's what I say - if you can't prove that you don't molest children you must not deny the charges?
Expecting the plaintiff to prove the statements aren't true is ridiculous. Unless Darkness404 has been shadowed by numerous independent witnesses for his entire life he can't prove that he never ever indulged in a little caprine frolicking.
Well it depends if its libel. Simon said the treatments are not proven, which he CAN defend. The problem is the judge interprets his words as "chiropractors are lying to patient" which he did not say and did not mean.
Justifying the statement is not an exercise in proving its absolute truth, either.
If you can convince the court is true, then that's good enough.
You may remember the cases that Fat Bob Maxwell won against Private Eye; at least some of the accusations were factually true, but the magazine couldn't prove it at the time. So legally, they were false.
Yeah, the problem is the court actually misunderstood the words Simon was saying. They are trying him for the equivalent of saying "chiropractors know they are not helping people but lie to them" (which is not only not what he meant but is indefensible in every sense of the word) vs the actual words "treatments chiropractors give have not been proven to be scientifically sound". All the problems are the misinterpretation of the word BOGUS.
And the professor was free to eject the student if he deemed it was needed to maintain order.
Why didn't the professor just ask them to leave then?
Or maybe it was not one or two students? Maybe half the audience disliked the speech for some reason. In any case, I don't see it as a given right to spew bullshit and have the freedom of not being shouted down.
Well it depends on what you mean by force someone not to listen to someone else. It's one too many negatives so it's not quite clear.
For example, let's say PETA has a de-humanizing rally like they usually do. And I create some posters exposing them as the terrorist scum they are - am I free to show them to the bystanders? Can PETA demand that I don't give my brochures and that on their rally only they have that right?
If people are DUMB enough so that the class didn't want to hear the speaker, who's to blame? Or if it was one-two students, just have them out of the room - it's ok, the professor is in charge and he has the right.
Have you been to the lecture? Have you actually witnessed it first account?
Yes, I demand the right to speak but that does not stop me from exercising MY right to speak. If I deem speech to be inappropriate for the audience, like some quack homeopath nutritionist horse-shit peddler (as dara o'briain said) selling bullcrap to an uninformed audience I WILL feel compelled to silence him. Yes, I would use rational arguments, and I will probably wait for him to finish.
But that's me. Maybe those students didn't have the nerve to watch that guy spew hatred towards their own people. Maybe they didn't have the capacity to let him finish. I can't judge them because I wasn't there, and so shouldn't you.
Being a guest speaker does not give you any kind of immunity. It is ludicrous to demand that - freedom to speak does imply freedom to be heard.
And no, punishing students for disagreeing with merely a point of view of a guest speaker is not fair by a long shot.
Maintaining order is another point, but I have not been to the lectures mentioned in the thread and so you haven't. A mere "we want the borders closed with Mexico and Canada" can convey quite a lot of hatred by being said in the proper context and proper intonation, so I really can't judge the students.