Slim chance to get hired at a big firm, best shot is to make very good friends with someone already on the inside that can vouch for you but that's still slim. It's not laziness on HR's part, they're just covering themselves. The unfortunate reality is, as much as you may think you've turned your life around, nobody wants the liability of hiring a felon. If you ever accused of doing something, no matter **how small** someone would trace back and find out you were a felon and automatically (unfairly) cast blame on that lone fact. Even if it's only an accusation, it will likely blow up. Say someone files a fictitious sexual harassment suit against you and then bam. Not only are you done because you're already guilty without an investigation, but also someone will then get fired in HR for disregarding your criminal past and blamed for hiring you to begin with. Very few people are willing to take that risk on a person with a criminal record when there are other clean candidates out there, the ocean has too many fish. It's not IT's fault, it's not even HR's fault, it's society's fault for setting things up this way and being "OK" with we treat other human beings.

My recommendation is to just go for a small firm where you have a better chance of getting to know people there, and have less stringent hiring practices. That's probably your best shot?

We often miss an important distinction between weather and climate. We don't have very good accuracy with weather year over year. Hell, we can't even predict the weather over the next 10 days, forget next year. Weather can wildly change week over week, year over year. Climate on the other hand measures changes over vast periods of time, 50 years, 100 years, 10,000 years, etc. Those are easier to guess because they're at a global "macro" level. The concern regarding global warming is at the climate level, not the weather level. All the hoopla over global climate change is all around the climate temperature rising a mere few degrees over the next 100 years. Between now and then it's expected we'll have hot and cold spells varying from month to month, year to year. Record breaking cold snaps and hot snaps are just examples of changing weather. Looking at just single hot years and cold years in varying weather patterns is like a pharmaceutical focusing on but a few patients during a live human drug test and ignoring the 1,000 others.

You're either severely overestimating today's computing technology or severely underestimating human brain power. Scratch that, you're most likely severely doing both. As of today, computers are only good at reproducing very specific tasks and doing them extremely well (most times). Solving massive computational problems does not equate intelligence!!!!

Intelligence: Intelligence has been defined in many different ways such as in terms of one's capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory, planning, creativity and problem solving. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

Like countless folks have already said, modern computational technology has barely touched the surface of intelligence. There's no scratch there yet, not even a finger print blemish. You'll struggle to make comparisons with even the dumbest living organism on earth, like for instance the amoeba, against the likes of today's AI. I for one don't expect we'll make any major break-through in AI until we actually figure out how our own damned brains work.

Doesn't a gas tax effectively do that? Heavier vehicles usually indicate heavier guzzlers?

I call and raise - very few industrial processes produce *just* CO2 as a waste product. Both in the air and on the ground, there's usually a slew of other nasties that bum along for the party.

On the bright side, the Chinese are happy their smog offers the potential to impede the use of laser weapon technology. Yay!

Oh I'm sure they're *trying*. The problem is it's difficult to judge how good their models are without 1000's of years of solid data. While they do have tons of data I'm sure it's no where near what they'd want to have. A lot of the data they have to rely on from these past events has to be gathered from physical records which is arguably not as good as measuring and observing it today. Not even mentioning we're talking about us altering the current environment in ways that have not been seen naturally occurring for thousands of millennia making any climate modelling increasingly difficult because we're in uncharted territory.

So I think to say they shouldn't say anything at all until they have ALL criteria necessary to produce a REAL guess is a bit too blindly optimistic. It's true it would be ideal in a perfect world, but in reality we'd be sitting here for a hundred years or more before we'd be able to make conjectures following that rule. That's just not extremely practical. The debate in that arena has to stay healthy for it to evolve and the fact that scientists readily admit mistakes with new findings is a good sign. I'm heads over heels against sensationalizing the topic but to sit here and ignore the problem until the science is flawless would be a grave mistake. There's absolutely nothing wrong with us being good custodians and keeping our one and only home clean. It would be the responsible thing for us to do.

Yes, it's true it's not 100% accurate... but so are you saying we should give up trying? You can use that argument to vaporize all of the research & theoretical sciences. Yikes.

I thought that's what I said but I must have made the wording too difficult to follow lol

This is the equivalent of UPS charging an online retailer additional fees for delivering too many packages thereby placing an undue burden on UPS's existing their distribution network, even though all of their buyers already paid for shipping. Common sense should already deem this silly.

Wow, a solid citation. You do realize you're only hurting your argument by singling out a single person out of a world of 6B people as proof that rich people cheat. Don't make yourself look blatantly ignorant, back up your opinions man. Besides, I don't think most people would consider a CEO that makes money in the $100+K/year a CEO of much of anything. Many regular white collar jobs make more money than that. That's probably upper-middle class at best, which in fact works against your conclusions.

You can't be a Pole, if you were you'd already be suspicious what Russia's intentions from the very beginning. The truth is, there is close to zero appetite for war from any of the western nations of any kind, with any kind of involvement. Especially the United States. All everyone wants is Russia to leave Ukraine. If Putin is so *desperate* to avoid conflict in Ukraine then then please explain why he's even there to begin with? Oh, he only wanted Crimea, I forgot. But nothing else, he has promised! Don't worry! Anyway, if you were truly a Pole you'd be taking note of Putin's actions, not his words. Nobody wants a war, not even Russia, not the West, nobody. In fact Russia would much, much prefer to do this quietly via political maneuvering and flexing its military muscle rather than actually starting a conflict. However if everyone did as you suggest and stood aside, it'll be a few years and Putin will do it again with yet another country. Just wait and see.

You're right on WW1, you're right on Iraq, but you're wrong on this one and you're also conveniently ignoring WW2. History doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme. Stick with the facts, Russia unequivocally annexed Crimea. I'm sorry but taking land from another country is sort of considered a "big deal" if you know what I mean.

Russia has no choice, they have to do everything in their power to stem the international avalanche of disdain that would otherwise befall them. Think about it:

1. 1. Russia denies wanting to annex eastern Ukraine
2. 2. Russia denies supporting rebels
3. 3. Russia denies arming rebels
4. 4. Rebels then shoot down an international civilian aircraft using the very weapons they weren't supposed to have

If the rebels are ever confirmed to have shot down the plane all of Russia's denials fall apart like a house of cards. Caught red handed. Except now there's international blood on their hands instead of just Ukrainian. Unfortunately for Ukraine, nobody really cares about them except their neighbors. So on that note, you can be guaranteed they will stop at nothing to prove rebels were not at fault. I have no doubt there will be people that will be "silenced". The stakes are simply too damn high.

I can attest to this personally. I'm unfortunately the most green person I personally know but I never wear it on my sleeve. My motives aren't completely altruistic all the time since I'm often motivated in doing it by saving money. My town's recycling tote is full every week, I turn off appliances and devices like a nazi, I carpool at every opportunity even if it's me the one driving, I keep the temperatures very conservative in my house, I minimize my laundering, I reuse grocery bags instead of buying garbage bags, I buy LEDs whenever I can score 50%-off or more (my house is 75% LED now, rest is CFL), I drive instead of flying whenever practical, I've always hypermile'd all of my vehicles including my latest Prius which pushes 60mpg, buy things in bulk to reduce packaging, solar powered exterior lights, and I even use the bare minimum for soaps and detergents. Notice nearly all of these save me money. The green aspect is extra bonus. Whether or not global warming is man made, no one can dispute the benefits of keeping our environment clean if it's easy to do.

However, contrast that with some friends and family which are bleeding heart tree huggers, but all have gigantic houses with AC on full blast, drink their plastic water bottles on a daily basis, throw things out that are perfectly recyclable, running incandescent lights, have 3 cars, and driving their SUVs, sports car, and/or Hummers. But they donate money to renewable green energy sources!!!! lol

If anyone is going to accuse me of being a tree hugger it's going to be because they've been watching me carefully, not because I've been preaching it...

It would be extraordinarily depressing if our current mindset on life in our galaxy will mimic our early mindset of life in our solar system 100 years ago. We all thought for sure Mars and Venus would have little green men :(

His point on this item:

I've witnessed and do witness over and over. Whether it's about evolution, dark matter, global warming, etc. It's just a basic fallacy of human nature. I know something you don't (even though I'm not privy to a complete understanding of how it works) therefore I must be smarter than you and you must be dumb... but don't you dare challenge me any questions on it because I will get super pissed. Kind of the applied definition of "ignorance" in action.

Or in other words, believing in science others have painstakingly proven for you is not an automatic cure for ignorance. When you put it that way, it's common sense isn't it?