Pangloss

Well neither do I, but I guess what I'm saying above is that I don't see how that can be the case here. The family members actually testified at the trial, about the value of the life of the victim. If that can't be construed as prejudicial, I don't see how wearing buttons in the gallery can.

Hehe, I almost feel sorry for the guy. There's just not a lot of pro-establishment popular music out there. (grin)

Perspective is an incredible distortion of reality.

Just last week I was ranting about how the far right has been over-the-top in its criticism of the Judiciary and blaming everything in sight on "activist judges". Then the far left goes and makes their case for them. On Friday the 9th Circuit court of appeals overturned a 1995 murder conviction because relatives of the victim wore buttons with a picture of the murder victim on their clothing during the trial. No, really. Here's a link to a news article reporting the appeals court verdict: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/04/08/state/n172951D73.DTL Reuters/NY Time article (requires registration): http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/national/10BADGES.html? Apparently the state can appeal to an 11-judge panel, or re-try the case. The one dim light of intelligence came from the dissenting judge:

The New York Times ran a funny sidebar story today about President Bush's Ipod playlist. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/politics/11letterbox.html? Apparently one of his aids downloads the tunes from Apple and installs them for him, and he listens while running. Or signing important bills. Something like that. Anyway, here were some of the artists and tunes from the list. Mostly C/W, but some fun '80s stuff. Oddly, no sign of Huey Lewis's "Hip to Be Square". John Fogerty, "Centerfield" Van Morrison, "New Biography," "Brown Eyed Girl" John Hiatt, "Circle Back" Alan Jackson George Jones Alejandro Escovedo, "Castanets" Joni Mitchell, "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" The Gourds, "El Paso" Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, "Swinging From the Chains of Love" Stevie Ray Vaughan, "The House is Rockin' " James McMurtry, "Valley Road" The Thrills, "Say It Ain't So" The Knack, "My Sharona" Can you think of some funnier tunes for his Playlist?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0412/p06s03-wome.html http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=8146766 It will be interesting to see how this goes. The angle I'm wondering about is the idea that a rapid pullout by Syria may end up becoming an example of why the US should NOT pull out of Iraq early.

Interesting editorial by Joseph B. White (automobile industry editor) in the Wall Street Journal today (Sunday, 4/11) about hybrids. I'm afraid it's a subscription deal, but here are a couple of interesting quotes:

Reminds me of an old Steve Martin routine. "Yeah, gonna get me some hostages. And when they find me, I'm going to have three demands: 1) One million dollars. 2) A getaway car. 3) I want the letter "M" stricken from the English language. See, you have to have at least one crazy demand so that if you're caught you can plead insanity. <evil chuckle> getaway car...."

You think there's only one stock market?

One of the more interesting ways to look at issues like this is to look at the ability of competition to arise in a monopolistic market. It always comes down to whether you believe that a high market can be easily maintained, or not. Opinions on this vary, but over the course of US history I think we've seen it go both ways -- monopolies or high-market-share position lost due to poor management, not just government-enduced change. So it kinda boils down to whether you agree with this statement: Those are the words of Alan Greenspan in 1961 ("Antitrust", from Ayn Rand's "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal"). One of the main contentions of libertarians and objectivists is that the existence of regulation has created a system which, by regulating monopolies, actually protects them. An obvious example would be Major League Baseball's exemption, but even a case like Microsoft enjoys support from a regulated market. How? Because of hair-splitting legal decisions in its favor, and because of careful definition of what's allowed and not allowed. For example, if you have a government regulation that says you are not allowed to sell X widgets on Y days, then you'd better believe that a company will make every effort to sell X widgets on Y+1 days, or X+1 (slightly modified) widgets on Y days. Business is like that -- it's not just Microsoft. If it's legal, it's legal. Someone's going to do it. And so libertarians and objectivists say that we should have just kept our noses out of it altogether. The problem with that arises, of course, from compassion, and trying to decide where to draw the line in the most eggregious cases of employee abuse. Just to give an example of where I think a line can be drawn (and I don't think predatory pricing is such a point), I think it's legitimate to have workplace safety regulations. Yes, one might argue that if a workplace is dangerous then the employee should seek employment elsewhere. The problem lies in the employee's ability to detect whether or not safety is an issue. Technology has grown way beyond "common sense". A nuclear power plant worker may go his entire career not knowing that he's going to die ten minutes after he retires. But the power plant operator might know it full well.

Whenever I seem to do it....

Has it? That sounds interesting, do you have any other information on that that I could read up on? (I mean specifically about Saudi Arabia falsifying information about its oil reserves or production capacity.)

There were no witnesses today in the Michael Jackson trial. Apparently they all had a big spelling test. (Jey Leno)

It's how an adjective is turned into a noun in Spanish, I believe. I'm just borrowing it.

Looks like Saudi Arabia has a lot more oil than previously believed. They're talking about an increase of almost two-fold, and enough of it is from new sources that they're looking at a 33-50% capacity increase (from 10 to 15 million barrels per day). Of course this is just a drop in the bucket compared with the 20+ mbpd increase we're looking at over the next 5-10 years from China+India alone, but I think it does underscore the point that you can never really say that we fully understand what's going on down there. Arab News: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=61713&d=7&m=4&y=2005 Bloomberg: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/energy/3122146

Oh I see, so it was actually the normal teacher's decision. Well I guess it's no big deal for something like that to happen once in a while. (shrug) I don't have a problem with showing BOTH sides of a controversial issue. Do you know of any Hollywood movies that do this? (grin) Yah, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm afraid of. So like schools these days, to treat students like trainees rather than pupils. Like Eco's Brother William, I find myself in full retreat to my Plutarch: "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted!" (sigh) At any rate, I'm glad we're on the same page there. And thanks for the feedback.

In short, does it involve wearing women's clothing?

Makes sense, I can see the value in that. With Lion King, was it shown in Spanish? That would seem like a good idea to me, at least in princinple, although I'd probably show segments or scenes instead, chosen for various levels of difficulty, etc.

I understand practicalities, but I'm a little confused why you had to show a movie. Surely you had other options. Why did they call you (a highly trained educator) at all? Why not just have an administrator show the movie? As a parent, I wouldn't sign a general permission slip like that. Study hall works for me, and if need be I'll give them some extra homework to do while they're in there. (I'm not a parent, just saying if I were.) As an educator (I've taught in both academic (community college) and corporate environments), I have serious reservations about the use of mainstream movies in education. I do know that they can be good for visualization. My mother's been a high school latin teacher for decades, and sometimes uses movies about Ancient Rome to demonstrate some aspect of that culture. That's fine, I have no problem with that. But films are very BAD about critical thinking and analysis. Not only do they effectively shut the analytical brain completely off, but they often skirt the truth in doing so. I would have serious misgivings about any teacher who wants to use a movie to make a socio-political point of *any* kind. Even Schindler's List, for example. Or Forrest Gump -- I could see using it to show certain aspects of technology, or possibly something historical in nature. But not political. And I would immediately follow it up with a discussion about whether protestors against Vietnam were the saints that they might think they were after seeing that movie. Pointing out the aspects of their life shown in that movie that are less than perfect, and moving on to talk about where they might have crossed lines, substituting religious fervor for critical thinking. Students should be spending their time in a socratic relationship with their teacher, not watching a movie. Mixing things up once in a while to maintain that connection? Great. Giving the kids a little entertainment because of a problem or to give someone a break? Not if I have anything to say about it. Not trying to give you a hard time here, just expressing my opinion and trying to understand. I still haven't ruled out teaching high school (love the idea; worry about the control issues), and would appreciate any further thoughts you might have.

Okay, I'm pretty sure all Brits are posh. I'm not sure what that is, but it's my duty as an American to label you with something I'm not entirely sure about, so there you have it!

Minors have no such right to retain. I'm not sure where the confusion lies. Basically what I'm saying is that one of the fallacies that often arises in this debate, as it's usually played out in the public discourse (not necessarily here -- I'm not debating anybody, just making observations), is when people believe that "it's about the kids". In fact this debate is really about the parents, or rather "parenting". We hold parents responsible for raising their children, at least in part because we as a society do not know the best way to raise children (or at least cannot agree on the subject). We can hardly hold them responsible on one hand, ensuring them that their judgement is accepted as "what's best for their child", while at the same time making it impossible for them to do what they feel is right. It's a Catch-22. Like asking a soldier to subjugate a town full of AK-47-wielding terrorists, but "without hurting anybody". So as a society, we basically have a choice: 1) Control every aspect of child rearing, and dictate exactly how every aspect of it is to be handled. (or) 2) Keep our noses out of it unless absolutely necessary to maintain the immediate welfare of the minor. So getting back to the subject at hand, the question of whether pornography on the Internet should be controlled or censored, this is actually a very simple question: Can the rights of parents to decide what their children can or cannot see be controlled if we elect NOT to control access to pornography? If the answer to that question is "no", then under the implied constitutional principle of protection of minorities against the will of the majority, the right to view uncontrolled pornography must be denied. Therefore arguments in favor of open access become illogical, and are reduced to either personal preference or a desire to impress a specific set of beliefs upon other people. For most folks (such as here), it's the former. For a few far-left demogogues, it's the latter (but they gladly yank the rest of us along, trying to pretend it's the former and ignore/deny the parenting issue). Of course, pornography on the Internet can't actually BE controlled, so the point is more or less moot anyway. But it was a given for the discussion that the opposite was true, so here we are. My two bits, for what it's worth. (shrug)

Free access to whatever floats your boat doesn't concern me. Respecting the boundaries of parental right to child-raising, however, concerns me a great deal. A lot of the rhetoric that flies around under the auspices of "free speach" in this issue is really more about indoctrination and political correctness. Phrases like "you can't stop them from looking at naughty pictures" are often followed by "you can't tell them that you think getting married before having sex is a good idea", or "you can't enforce gender stereotyping on them". Is that really the business we want our government to be in? Telling parents how to raise their children? Because if you start down this slope by taking away the parents' right to censor a minor's multimedia input, I guarantee you that you're heading hell-bent-for-leather towards state-run child-rearing (or zero childbirth in the middle and upper tax brackets). The funny thing is, the far left is all about "staying out of the home" when it comes to issues like gay rights (like getting anal sex laws struck from the books). But when it comes to politically correct behavior, they're more than happy to tell you exactly how you must behave. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say that what the far left is trying to sell you is every bit as dangerous as what the far right is trying to sell you.

I should have mentioned this in my first post, but another thing to keep in mind would be that whether you're moving at 1mph, 1000mph, or the speed of light, if you turn on a light bulb then the assumption under Newtonian physics is that it would automatically exceed the normal speed of light on at least one vector (your forward vector). The fact that it does not do so tells us exactly the same thing in all three cases. So the part of the question in Post #1 that states "and we're travelling at the speed of light" is really not relevent at all. Total red herring. (Nothin' wrong with asking, though. Only one person in the entire history of the human race ever figured out for himself why this happens, so unless you're smarter than he was, you might as well ask.)

Yeah there was a story that made the rounds about that a few months ago, possibly around the time Google bought out Keyhole. Something about how the tops of certain buildings were greyed out for national security reasons, etc etc. I'm afraid I don't remember the details now.

This is no great relevation of course, but one of the most prominent commonalities I see in this thread is the idea that mainstream news sources are too superficial. This seems to be a common agreement amongst people who either work in scientific or engineering areas, or follow them as a hobby. It's interesting how the Web has filled that niche need so fully. These general feelings had to pre-exist the Web, but the scientist/intellectual was always restricted to traditional social structures, which the stereotype tends to avoid. Now we have places to go to talk about this stuff and really explore and investigate the detail that isn't available in a 30-minute network news broadcast. So this post won't be a total wash, let me toss out a few more favorite niche-market news sites: Aviation Week News: http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/ Scientific American: http://www.sciam.com Federation of American Scientists: http://www.fas.org/main/home.jsp Global Security: http://globalsecurity.org/ How Stuff Works: http://www.howstuffworks.com/index.htm Electronic Privacy Information Center: http://www.epic.org/ Centrist Policy Network: http://www.centrists.org/