Re: Book Binding
Ronn!Blankenship wrote: Note that we have learned by sad experience that when using one of those neat cutting machines it is necessary to make absolutely sure that when the blade is in the raised position that it is completely up and locked before adjusting the paper to be cut with your very vulnerable fingers . . . Ouch. You really did that? Oh how that must have hurt. I usually stick to accidents with the smaller kitchen knifes. Those at least can be selfmedicated. All the rest I'm too scared of to not be extremely carefull with. Sonja GCU: I know where the band-aid is. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
IQtest.com, was Re: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE
William T Goodall wrote: You can do a free IQ test at www.iqtest.com in under 15 minutes. Which I just did. I'm not sure how accurate it is. I got an IQ of 154 which is 'genius' level according to them. That probably makes me an underachiever :) Just did. 156 out of 200. According to them that would make me a genius in the 'nobel prize winners' class, ehum. According to them the score in a non native language should be slightly lower then if I'd done it in Dutch or German (judging my skills in English I doubt that however). So I'm definitely an under achiever. LOL Sonja GCU: Smart housewife. xGCU: Do I get a nobel prize for balancing my checkbook? Pbrt ;o) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Contest: Help improve on ReptiliKlan, etc
In a message dated 3/21/2004 10:28:26 PM US Mountain Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think you just tied ReptiliKlan. I still don't see how Repulsive ties in with just the Republican party. I mean, have you LOOKED at Ted Kennedy recently? : ) Kenedocrats? Demblobocrats? Hineydrunkports? ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
IQtest.com, was Re: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE
Jim Sharkey wrote: John Doe wrote: The test I took had a maximum score of 150, which gives me a score of 137/150 * 100% = 91.3%. Not that I'm bragging or anything. :-) Sounds like bragging to me, Jerry. Sounds like you're ready for that favorite of Brin-L games, My brain is bigger than yours. :) Oh, come on. This is much more fun than shredding each other to bits. :o) Btw found a personality test that was quick easy and rather fun to do. Only click on the colors and they'll tell you how you feel and what your problem is. www.colorquiz.com %3C%3Chttp://www.colorquizz.com%3E%3E My current situation according to them: Sensuous. Inclined to luxuriate in things which give gratification to the senses, but rejects anything tasteless, vulgar, or coarse. Sounds about right. The rest of the results wasn't too far off either. But I suspect it's something like a horoscope. You can interpret it in many ways and one of those will eventually fit your situation. Another nice and quick intelligence test was at densa.com http://www.densa.com/densa/densa1.html Actually they were a list of trick questions Sonja :o) GCU: Selective reading ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Book Binding
At 03:49 AM 3/22/04, Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten wrote: Ronn!Blankenship wrote: Note that we have learned by sad experience that when using one of those neat cutting machines it is necessary to make absolutely sure that when the blade is in the raised position that it is completely up and locked before adjusting the paper to be cut with your very vulnerable fingers . . . Ouch. You really did that? Oh how that must have hurt. I usually stick to accidents with the smaller kitchen knifes. Those at least can be selfmedicated. All the rest I'm too scared of to not be extremely carefull with. Sonja GCU: I know where the band-aid is. Yes, I did that. Note that I am not talking about the type of paper cutter which has a long blade at one side which is hinged at the back and has a handle at the front so you can pull it down to cut the paper at the edge of the board, but the type in which you clamp the paper and then the lever applies some mechanical advantage to press down a heavy straight blade with enough force to cut through at least a couple of hundred sheets of ordinary-weight paper. The problem was that the cutter was set close enough to a wall that it was easy to not get the lever all the way back to the locked position when it was raised, and it slipped and fell under its own weight while I was trying to line up the paper (some multi-colored Post-It pads I was cutting into strips to use as page marker flags) for the next cut. The blade was so sharp that the cut was so clean that it didn't bleed at first, meaning that no one else knew I had cut my thumb until I came back from the bathroom with some paper towels wrapped around it and told them. I lost a piece off one side of that thumb and nail about the size of a small pea, but it healed and grew back just fine, although it was a bit uncomfortable and awkward to use for a few weeks. FWIW, it was at about this time of year: I was using the paper cutter in the copy center at school, and it was the week before spring break, 2 or 3 years ago. -- Ronn! :) Ronn Blankenship Instructor of Astronomy/Planetary Science University of Montevallo Montevallo, AL Disclaimer: Unless specifically stated otherwise, any opinions contained herein are the personal opinions of the author and do not represent the official position of the University of Montevallo. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Rice Responds to Clarke
National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice set the record straight in today's Washington Post... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13881-2004Mar21.html Through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda -- which was expected to take years. Our strategy marshaled all elements of national power to take down the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures. Our plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived. It focused on the crucial link between al Qaeda and the Taliban. We would attempt to compel the Taliban to stop giving al Qaeda sanctuary -- and if it refused, we would have sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime. The strategy focused on the key role of Pakistan in this effort and the need to get Pakistan to drop its support of the Taliban. This became the first major foreign-policy strategy document of the Bush administration -- not Iraq, not the ABM Treaty, but eliminating al Qaeda. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Contest: Help improve on ReptiliKlan, etc
Doug Pensinger wrote: ReF**kLieKlan, as in we're all f**ked by this clan of liars. Ties in with another thread, too. -- Doug ... David wrote: O.K., getting better. I give it 10 (out of 10) for denigration, 9 for euphony (unless you want Lie to have a schwa in it) No schwa. Schwashtica, maybe, but no schwa. and 10 for relevance. But I have to ding it two points for obscenity. Still, 27 is a good score. What, no points for trying to be discrete? Of course it's discrete, everything is finite. : ) No points for discretion, since I'm counting ReF**kLieKlan as one entry, with or without the uc. (The user decides how many *s to add, and where.) ... Libertarians - Mobocratarians or Ochlocratarians? Liberterriers (had a fox terrier once - open the door and he was gone. Call his name, he ran the other way.) Are you sure about ochlocracy? I get the sense that it means government by masses of people, which might not be the meaning of mob that you are looking for. ---David ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Rice Responds to Clarke
From: iaamoac [EMAIL PROTECTED] National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice set the record straight in today's Washington Post... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13881-2004Mar21.html Through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda -- which was expected to take years. Our strategy marshaled all elements of national power to take down the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures. Our plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived. It focused on the crucial link between al Qaeda and the Taliban. We would attempt to compel the Taliban to stop giving al Qaeda sanctuary -- and if it refused, we would have sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime. The strategy focused on the key role of Pakistan in this effort and the need to get Pakistan to drop its support of the Taliban. This became the first major foreign-policy strategy document of the Bush administration -- not Iraq, not the ABM Treaty, but eliminating al Qaeda. So now that we have ~three~ former administration officials who have come out of this administration with _the Same Story_, we are supposed to trust this administrations word on anything? Particularly when Stephen Hadley, Rices lapdog was caught Lying on 60 minutes last night? This administration just isn't credible anymore, and no amount of propaganda you point to can change that. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Contest: Help improve on ReptiliKlan, etc
David wrote: Are you sure about ochlocracy? I get the sense that it means government by masses of people, which might not be the meaning of mob that you are looking for. m-w says government by the mob : mob rule... -- Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Nasty cuts Re: Book Binding
Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten wrote: Ronn!Blankenship wrote: Note that we have learned by sad experience that when using one of those neat cutting machines it is necessary to make absolutely sure that when the blade is in the raised position that it is completely up and locked before adjusting the paper to be cut with your very vulnerable fingers . . . Ouch. You really did that? Oh how that must have hurt. I usually stick to accidents with the smaller kitchen knifes. Those at least can be selfmedicated. All the rest I'm too scared of to not be extremely carefull with. Sonja GCU: I know where the band-aid is. Kitchen accidents? My worst was while cleaning a drain stopper/strainer by hand. A metal one. I cut the middle finger of my left hand (I described it as my 'cde' finger when notifying people by e-mail), went to the doctor, got a tetanus booster and a steri-strip on it (needed something to hold it closed, but a stitch would have been overkill). I remember at some point either I or my mother bought a box of Band-Aids labelled Kitchen Assortment. It had 10 each of the standard Band-Aid, the specially shaped ones for fingertips, and the specially shaped ones for knuckles. After less than a year, I think, they stopped selling anything labelled Kitchen Assortment. Now you can get a box of 10 each of just the fingertip and knuckle ones. I have way too many fingertip ones knocking around, we mostly do nasty things to our knuckles. And Dan is paranoid about use of his paper cutter. It stays locked and in the box unless there's a reason to pull it out for use, it's used very, very carefully and then put back immediately. And it has a sort of guard so you'd have to really work at it to chop off a bit of the finger holding the paper down. (And I *just* read Ronn!'s description of the paper cutter he was dealing with, and it sounds *very* nasty.) Oh, and I took a quilting class once from a woman who sliced two fingers off once with a rotary cutter when she was trying to just cut cloth. (They reattached fine.) I don't plan to buy a rotary cutter as a result of hearing that story. :) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Not so likely
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/sciences/story/ 0,12243,1164894,00.html A scientist has calculated that there is a 67% chance that God exists. Dr Stephen Unwin has used a 200-year-old formula to calculate the probability of the existence of an omnipotent being. Bayes' Theory is usually used to work out the likelihood of events, such as nuclear power failure, by balancing the various factors that could affect a situation. The Manchester University graduate, who now works as a risk assessor in Ohio, said the theory starts from the assumption that God has a 50/50 chance of existing, and then factors in the evidence both for and against the notion of a higher being. Factors that were considered included recognition of goodness, which Dr Unwin said makes the existence of God more likely, countered by things like the existence of natural evil - including earthquakes and cancer. snip However, Graham Sharp, media relations director at William Hill[1], said there were technical problems with giving odds on the existence of God. The problem is how you confirm the existence of God. With the Loch Ness monster we require confirmation from the Natural History Museum to pay out, but who are we going to ask about God? The church would definitely confirm his existence. Mr Sharp said William Hill does take bets on the second coming, which currently stand at 1,000/1. For this confirmation is needed from the Archbishop of Canterbury. We do take bets on the second coming, whether that confirms the existence of God is up to the theologians to argue, most people wouldn't believe that, though. [1] Bookmakers for you foreigners. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE
Erik said: Yes, I think atheists are less than 10% in America (much less, I think). Let's suppose that they make up 10% of the population. Furthermore, let's assume that 90% of the atheists are smart and 10% stupid. Then if we pick a hundred representative people, we can expect one stupid atheist, nine smart atheists, 49 stupid theists and 41 smart theists. This means that if we pick a random atheist, we have a 90% chance of picking a smart one, but if we pick a random smart person, we have only a 21.9% chance of picking an atheist. In other words, about four out of five smart people are theists even if atheists are much smarter than average. Which shows that perhaps the Fool and Debbi could both be more or less right. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE
On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 09:17:10PM +, Richard Baker wrote: Let's suppose that they make up 10% of the population. Furthermore, let's assume that 90% of the atheists are smart and 10% stupid. Then if we pick a hundred representative people, we can expect one stupid atheist, nine smart atheists, 49 stupid theists and 41 smart theists. This means that if we pick a random atheist, we have a 90% chance of picking a smart one, but if we pick a random smart person, we have only a 21.9% chance of picking an atheist. 18% -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE
Erik said: 18% Yes, you're right. I stupidly calculated 9/41... Rich, who is his own counterexample! ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Not so likely
However, Graham Sharp, media relations director at William Hill[1], said there were technical problems with giving odds on the existence of God. The problem is how you confirm the existence of God. With the Loch Ness monster we require confirmation from the Natural History Museum to pay out, but who are we going to ask about God? The church would definitely confirm his existence. Mr Sharp said William Hill does take bets on the second coming, which currently stand at 1,000/1. For this confirmation is needed from the Archbishop of Canterbury. We do take bets on the second coming, whether that confirms the existence of God is up to the theologians to argue, most people wouldn't believe that, though. Except, Monty Python already settled it, years ago: God exists, by a decision of two falls to one. -- Tom Beck my LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/tomfodw/ I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never thought I'd see the last. - Dr. Jerry Pournelle -- ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: IQtest.com, was Re: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 02:44 AM To: Killer Bs Discussion Subject: IQtest.com, was Re: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE William T Goodall wrote: You can do a free IQ test at www.iqtest.com in under 15 minutes. Which I just did. I'm not sure how accurate it is. I got an IQ of 154 which is 'genius' level according to them. That probably makes me an underachiever :) Just did. 156 out of 200. According to them that would make me a genius in the 'nobel prize winners' class, ehum. According to them the score in a non native language should be slightly lower then if I'd done it in Dutch or German (judging my skills in English I doubt that however). So I'm definitely an under achiever. LOL Yowza - I got 160. Anyone else been tested at multiple points in their past? If so, have you maintained your score? -its all meaningless, anyways- ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Britain punishes the innocent
http://www.sundayherald.com/40592 We locked you up in jail for 25 years and you were innocent all along? Thatll be £80,000 please Blunkett charges miscarriage of justice victims food and lodgings By Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor WHAT do you give someone whos been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didnt commit? An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if youre David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majestys Pleasure in British prisons. On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldnt have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets. Blunketts fight has been described as outrageous, morally repugnant and the sickest of sick jokes, but his spokesmen in the Home Office say its a completely reasonable course of action as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they werent in prison. The government deems the claw-back Saved Living Expenses. Paddy Hill was one of the Birmingham Six. He spent 16 years behind bars for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings by the IRA. Hill now lives on a farm with his wife and children near Beith in Scotland. He has been charged £50,000 for living expenses by the Home Office. It wasnt until two years ago that Hill was finally awarded £960,000 in compensation. However, during the years since his release, while waiting for the pay-out, the government had given him advances of around £300,000. When his compensation came through, the £300,000 was taken back along with interest on the interim payments charged at 23% that cost him a further £70,000. The whole system is absurd, Hill said. Im so angry about what has happened to me. I try and tell people about being charged for bed and board in jail and they cant believe it. When I left prison I was given no training for freedom no counselling or psychological preparation. Yet the guilty get that when they are released. To charge me for the food I ate and the cell I slept in is almost as big an injustice as fitting me up in the first place. While I was in prison, my family lost their home, yet they get no compensation. But the state wants its money back. Its like being kicked in the head when someone has beat you already. I have to put up with this, yet there has not been one police officer convicted of fitting people up. The Home Office had no shortage of money to keep me in jail or to run a charade of a trial. But they had enough money to frame me. Nevertheless, when it comes to paying out compensation for ruining my life they happily rip me to shreds. Hill is not leading the legal action against the government instead he has handed the baton to another high-profile victim of miscarriage of justice: Mike OBrien. OBrien spent 10 years in jail wrongly convicted of killing a Cardiff newsagent. His baby daughter died while he was in prison and he was charged £37,500 by the Home Office for his time behind bars. Hill said he cannot lead the legal fight as the Birmingham Six have fought every legal action together, but now three of them are over 70 and Hill believes it is too much to ask them to join him in taking on the government yet again. He said he was also worried about the compensation payments for the other members of the Birmingham Six being affected if they joined him in court against the government. The establishment hate me and people like me as we proved them wrong, he said. They either want to ignore us or hurt us. OBrien took the Home Office to court last March and won, but Blunkett appealed the decision. On Tuesday, the rights and wrongs of the government policy will be decided at the Royal Courts. OBrien said: Morally, the position of the government is just outrageous. It shows total contempt for the victims of miscarriages of justice. It makes me livid. I really believe if we win the appeal this week, the government is evil enough to take me to the House of Lords. They are trying to break us. I really think this is personal as far as the government is concerned. A government really cant get much worse than this. But I am confident that we will win as the law and morality are on our side. Vincent Hickey, one of the Bridgewater Four who was wrongly convicted for killing a paperboy, was charged £60,000 for the 17 years he spent in jail. He said: If I had known this I would have stayed on hunger-strike longer, that way I would have had a smaller bill. John McManus, of the Scottish Miscarriage of Justice Organisation, said: This is
zebras' muscles
Cooperation urged on invasives AIBS meeting participants say US Department of Homeland Security could coordinate efforts | By Eugene Russo WASHINGTON, DCPolicymakers are not doing nearly enough to curb the negative ecological and economic consequences of invasive species, biologists said snip Getting the bill passed, however, will be a struggle, Ehlers said. Several committees have jurisdiction; coordinating policies across international borders is tricky; and some members of Congress need to be better educated about the issue. (According to Ehlers, at one hearing about the problem of zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, one puzzled representative asked why they should spend so much money on zebras' muscles.) http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040322/03 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Shrub admin Makes False Claims
Shrub claims: collected by: http://www.centerforamericanprogress.org/ CLAIM #1: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to. - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked urgent asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending Al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says principals did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat. No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11. - White House Press Release, 3/21/04 CLAIM #2: The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11. Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that It is not surprising that people make that connection between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said we dont know if there is a connection. CLAIM #3: [Clarke] was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cybersecurity side of things. - Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04 FACT: Dick Clarke continued, in the Bush Administration, to be the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and the President's principle counterterrorism expert. He was expected to organize and attend all meetings of Principals and Deputies on terrorism. And he did. - White House Press Release, 3/21/04 CLAIM #4: In June and July when the threat spikes were so high we were at battle stations The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's Strategic Plan from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area. - Washington Post, 3/22/04 CLAIM #5: The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks. Washington Post, 3/22/04 CLAIM #6: Well, [Clarke] wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff - Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/22/04 FACT: The Government's interagency counterterrorism crisis management forum (the Counterterrorism Security Group, or CSG) chaired by Dick Clarke met regularly, often daily, during the high threat period. - White House Press Release, 3/21/04 CLAIM #7: [Bush] wanted a far more effective policy for trying to deal with [terrorism], and that process was in motion throughout the spring. - Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh, 3/22/04 FACT: Bush said [in May of 2001] that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and 'I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.' Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took place. - Washington Post, 1/20/02 - Shrub 04: Don't Switch Horsemen Mid-Apocalypse ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE
At 03:17 PM 3/22/04, Richard Baker wrote: Erik said: Yes, I think atheists are less than 10% in America (much less, I think). Let's suppose that they make up 10% of the population. Furthermore, let's assume that 90% of the atheists are smart and 10% stupid. Then if we pick a hundred representative people, we can expect one stupid atheist, nine smart atheists, 49 stupid theists and 41 smart theists. This means that if we pick a random atheist, we have a 90% chance of picking a smart one, but if we pick a random smart person, we have only a 21.9% chance of picking an atheist. In other words, about four out of five smart people are theists even if atheists are much smarter than average. This calculation seems to include some unstated assumptions about the distribution of intelligence in believers . . . and IIRC it was an unproven assertion about the intelligence of believers that began this discussion . . . Which shows that perhaps the Fool and Debbi could both be more or less right. But as I said, I don't think this calculation answers the question at all, because we still know nothing about the actual correlation between intelligence and belief. AFAIK, there is no way to obtain such information without studying a random sample of the population. And I expect that it may be difficult to come up with definitions of intelligence and belief which are acceptable to all. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Nasty cuts Re: Book Binding
At 10:23 AM 3/22/04, Julia Thompson wrote: Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten wrote: Ronn!Blankenship wrote: Note that we have learned by sad experience that when using one of those neat cutting machines it is necessary to make absolutely sure that when the blade is in the raised position that it is completely up and locked before adjusting the paper to be cut with your very vulnerable fingers . . . Ouch. You really did that? Oh how that must have hurt. I usually stick to accidents with the smaller kitchen knifes. Those at least can be selfmedicated. All the rest I'm too scared of to not be extremely carefull with. Sonja GCU: I know where the band-aid is. Kitchen accidents? My worst was while cleaning a drain stopper/strainer by hand. A metal one. I cut the middle finger of my left hand (I described it as my 'cde' finger when notifying people by e-mail), went to the doctor, got a tetanus booster and a steri-strip on it (needed something to hold it closed, but a stitch would have been overkill). I remember at some point either I or my mother bought a box of Band-Aids labelled Kitchen Assortment. It had 10 each of the standard Band-Aid, the specially shaped ones for fingertips, and the specially shaped ones for knuckles. After less than a year, I think, they stopped selling anything labelled Kitchen Assortment. Now you can get a box of 10 each of just the fingertip and knuckle ones. I have way too many fingertip ones knocking around, we mostly do nasty things to our knuckles. And Dan is paranoid about use of his paper cutter. It stays locked and in the box unless there's a reason to pull it out for use, it's used very, very carefully and then put back immediately. And it has a sort of guard so you'd have to really work at it to chop off a bit of the finger holding the paper down. (And I *just* read Ronn!'s description of the paper cutter he was dealing with, and it sounds *very* nasty.) It is the type you find in book-binding operations, which is why I brought it up in this discussion. Though FWIW it was one of the smaller ones of that type I have seen, in the sense that it couldn't have handled sheets much larger than ordinary-size 8.5x11-inch paper, and they make them that are large enough to cut larger sheets, e.g. in the print department of one computer company I worked at which published their own manuals in-house the old-fashioned way, before desktop publishing could produce a product indistinguishable from a fancy typeset version . . . Oh, and I took a quilting class once from a woman who sliced two fingers off once with a rotary cutter when she was trying to just cut cloth. (They reattached fine.) I don't plan to buy a rotary cutter as a result of hearing that story. :) The paper cutter I have at home has a rotary cutter, FWIW. (I don't often need to cut a couple of hundred sheets at a time.) So far I have never cut anything with it but the paper I was trying to cut at the time . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Not so likely
At 12:38 PM 3/22/04, William T Goodall wrote: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/sciences/story/ 0,12243,1164894,00.html A scientist has calculated that there is a 67% chance that God exists. snip Mr Sharp said William Hill does take bets on the second coming, which currently stand at 1,000/1. For this confirmation is needed from the Archbishop of Canterbury. You mean the Archbishop has to call Mr Sharp after he gets off the phone after he gets the call from Salt Lake City? -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Rice Responds to Clarke
From Tapped: A BUSH PRIORITIES READER. Since Condoleezza Rice seems to have pulled the assignment of defending the administration from former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's rather explosive allegations about Bush's mishandling of al-Qaeda this seems like a good time to note that Rice's pre-election essay on Republican foreign policy priorities (of which, Tapped readers will recall, al-Qaeda is not one) is, in fact, available online courtesy of the Council on Foreign Relations. On the same site you can also find the thoughts of current US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick on how a Republican president would conduct foreign policy. Once again, terrorism is not so much as mentioned, although evil and people who are hard at work to develop nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, along with the missiles to deliver them do get a plug. Ron Suskind also has a memo written by Don Rumsfeld in the early weeks of the administration in which, once again, missile defense and Iraq figure prominently as threats, while al-Qaeda goes unmentioned. So if the administration really was making terrorism a priority, they seem to have decided for some reason to keep it a secret, not only from the public, but from the Secretary of Defense as well. Also courtesy of the Council on Foreign Relations you can see candidate statements on the issue of terrorism. Both Bush and Gore had some tough talk to offer (Bush: Our response will be devastating; Gore: America will hunt you down and stop you cold) but when you get down to specific proposals, Gore offers actual ideas for homeland security while Bush -- you guessed it -- supports . . . installing missile defense systems. Atrios, meanwhile, notes what appears to be at least one outright lie in Rice's op-ed. The really important issue here, of course, isn't just that they got in wrong before 9/11 but that they've continued the same misguided set of priorities even after having been proven wrong by any reasonable standard. UPDATE: See also this document from the Justice Department obtained by the Center for American Progress where counterterrorism is pointedly nothighlighted as one of John Ashcroft's priorities as late as August 2001. Unlike Rice and Rumsfeld, Ashcroft at least doesn't go so far as to imply that the subject should be totally ignored, it's just less important than catching drug dealers. --Matthew Yglesias -- Tom Beck my LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/tomfodw/ I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never thought I'd see the last. - Dr. Jerry Pournelle -- ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE
On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 06:05:29PM -0600, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: But as I said, I don't think this calculation answers the question at all, By totally missing the point, you have perhaps provided a useful data point... -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Race to the Bottom
On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 07:41:08PM -0800, Doug Pensinger wrote: A few questions. In the late '70s oil prices spiked and the result was double digit inflation (one of the things that killed Carter's re-elction bid). This year oil prices are growing and predicted to go higher by some. The news about reserves probably won't help. Is it possible that we will see that kind of runaway inflation again? Inflation is complicated. I doubt anyone unfamiliar with it would have been able to predict its behavior from first principles. For example, I've never been able to understand from first principles why a small positive inflation rate might be optimal for economic growth. Not that I don't have an idea (I would say that you would ideally like to sit at 0% inflation but deflation makes monetary policy harder so to reduce the risk of deflation you tolerate a little bit of inflation), but I can't see anyone coming up with that reasoning from first principles -- rather, it is concluded from observations of the working economy. Also, inflation has many, many forms. There are raw materials prices, energy prices, wages, food prices, health care prices, short-term interest rates, long-term interest rates, etc. The Fed has some control over short term interest rates, but long-term interest rates are largely market driven. Energy and health care prices may go up but not food prices or wages. There is the consumer price index and the producer price index. There is also the CPI minus energy and food. I think it is an oversimplification to just talk about inflation when you could have several of these components moving in different directions. In contrast, employment, capital, investment, and GDP are all rather simple and easy to imagine without having studied them. If you want to produce something, you need workers and capital, and the more workers and capital you have, the more you can produce. On inflation, I tend to think that there is a slower moving component, which is primarily determined by whether GDP is growing above or below potential GDP. You might also say that it is determined by capacity utilization. And then there are so-called shocks to the system, such as spikes in the price of oil when the cartel decides to hold-back supply, or spikes in the price of food one year when there are natural disasters affecting crop harvests. I tend to think of the latter as noise on top of the more steady and predictable signal of the former. While I doubt whether anyone can predict the latter, it also may not be all that useful to predict the shocks, since they will tend to come and go quickly. It is easier to predict the inertial level of inflation by looking at capacity utilization and comparing potential GDP to actual GDP. Right now capacity utilization is historically very low. Inertial inflation does not seem to be a significant risk. But there is one unusual component -- the huge current account deficit. First private foreign investors and recently the Chinese and Japanese governments have been heavily investing in the US, allowing the huge deficit to continue. That foreign investment is what allows the government to keep up the deficit spending while the private sector consumes like mad and saves very little. If that foreign investment were to stop, then either the dollar would fall a lot further, or interest rates would have to rise, or both. Traditionally, a falling dollar should be inflationary since imports become more expensive, but so far this has been muted since the foreign companies have absorbed a lot of the weak dollar by reducing their margins on their exports to America. But they can't keep doing that forever, so a falling dollar would eventually push up inflation. Alternatively, higher interest rates could reduce the dollar's fall, and they would also choke off investment, reducing aggregate demand and thus holding back inflation. But lower investment and lower demand would be devestating to GDP growth, probably causing a deep recession. I guess the Fed would rather let the dollar continue to fall than risk that. But you never know. How would that [runaway inflation] effect your predictions? Heck if I know. My model is far too simple to include inflation, especially inflation shocks. I would point out, however, that energy inflation does not necessarily imply wage inflation. Since there are a lot of people looking for work, there is not much pressure on employers for rising wages. With productivity high, capacity utilization low, and no wage pressure, it doesn't seem likely that high energy prices would result in any economy-wide broad-based inflation. The Philips curve specifies a relation between unemployment and inflation, but it has been largely discredited and I think the correlation is very weak. I guess if there were an economy-wide inflation, then demand for workers would go up temporarily. But I just don't see such a broad-based inflation coming with capacity
Re: Race to the Bottom
Erik wrote: Now that I can answer. Higher interest rates would almost surely result in a recession in the current environment. That would mean lower employment. Thanks for an informative answer. One follow up. I was under the impression that all prices have an energy component so that any price increases in oil would have a ripple effect on all prices. Wrong? -- Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Race to the Bottom
--- Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Also, interest rates have been low for a long time. What's holding them low and what would be the effect of a substantial increase? The Fed is holding short term rates low to stimulate the economy! You must have read that in the newspaper sometime in the past couple years? Also, Chinese and Japanese purchases of US bonds have been helping to keep longer term rates low. Very interesting discussion. Two points I would add: First, the historically low levels of inflation for a prolonged period of time are often attributed to the influence of globalization, forcing companies to hold the line on prices. This may explain why - despite the increase in oil prices - inflation has been basically non-existent for a prolonged period of time. Second, interest rates may not be as low as they seem. They are often thought of as real interest rates - the interest rate minus the inflation rate. Given the extremely low inflation rate, real interest rates aren't (I believe) at historically low levels. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Race to the Bottom
On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 07:47:08PM -0800, Doug Pensinger wrote: Thanks for an informative answer. One follow up. I was under the impression that all prices have an energy component so that any price increases in oil would have a ripple effect on all prices. Wrong? I can't answer that. Inflation is complicated! -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE
Ronn! said: This calculation seems to include some unstated assumptions about the distribution of intelligence in believers . . . Does it? I said very clearly let's assume... Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Nasty cuts Re: Book Binding
Julia Thompson wrote: Kitchen accidents? My worst was while cleaning a drain stopper/strainer by hand. A metal one. I cut the middle finger of my left hand (I described it as my 'cde' finger when notifying people by e-mail), went to the doctor, got a tetanus booster and a steri-strip on it (needed something to hold it closed, but a stitch would have been overkill). I once got my hand squashed in an industrial dough mixer. No severe damage other than a sprained wrist, though that wrist has been a little thicker and less tolerant of pressure ever since. -- Matt ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
