If the person died in a firefight against soldiers we would not be having the discussion would we? Nope, but that is not the reality. An assassination based on hearsay which repeatedly uses the word "imagine" is not the same thing. "I think" is not a crime, "I do" is a crime.
Read the Bill of Rights, and it will become clear. The law is spelled out very well in the 5th and 6th amendments.
This is unconstitutional, period. No person shall be punished for any crime without a trial, read your Bill of Rights. There is no exception clause for US Citizen, it's all people. Them claiming "We think he's going to do something" does not even meet their own criteria. Should we all post on Facebook that Angelina Merkel is going to bomb a post office so that she can be killed by a drone? Yes, that is exactly why they killed the person in question. No proof of any plans, just that they believed it was eminent (I'm sure that they believe in the Easter Bunny too, as long as it's a convenient excuse to do something they want).
The US Government has given weapons, training, and funding to Al Qada in Libya and Syria. Of course we killed a few in Iraq and Afghanistan, because you know. "Terrorists". So the real problem with these groups is whether or not they are playing ball with the US, or have duped the US into believing they are playing ball. Nothing more, nothing less. If they don't play ball, obviously they are terrorists that are going to build canoes and paddle to the US and nuke us with all of the materials they can fit in their canoes.
If certain people had their way, there would be numerous OWS casualties as well. Instead we just see them illegally imprisoned on an abandoned pier in NYC, beat by cops everywhere else.
Part of me wonders whether advertising actually works, or is simply a formalized form of hidden bribery
Sure, advertising works. That's why we have had TV commercials since very early on. Does it work the way people claim it does on the Internet? Well, that is a different question and that answer is "depends".
I think an important thing to remember, is that a metric assload of science has been done specifically for advertising. For some reason, that science is not really used with advertising on Web sites.
What works? Easy. Products and placement with certain colors and sounds, targeting your average audience. This is why demographics for TV and Radio shows are important. Have younger females listening? Advertise woman's products, "light" alcohol, and healthier foods. Have a bunch of younger males watching? Advertise beer, fast food (Extra Big Ass Fries), and men's products. Have a mix of younger adults, run gender neutral ads for cleaning products, baby products, and "family" style food.
The key here is that ads have to be appealing, not overwhelming. Sure, some people fall for the infomercial fast talking guy showing off their "Amazing (Billy Mayes TM)" products, but those are an extreme minority. The majority of web sites either don't care about overloading consumers or don't realize they are doing it.
What does not work? Overload. Slashdot currently has dozens of adds, all blinking and flashing in an attempt to get your attention. This method of advertising is equivalent to having 10 TV commercials simultaneously sharing your TV screen. It's annoying, and the overwhelming majority of people won't click anything even if they might be interested. What they will do is open a new browser window and search in clean space for the product and information. This way they can get it without the overloading of senses. Web sites decided a while ago that since you can't target an audience by any rational means, the majority of the time, you have to overload people with everything they might possibly want and pray that a user clicks and generates a fraction of a penny.
Services like Google ads try to make more sense of your audience so that you can target them more like TV/Radio commercials. Web sites on a massive scale may use the targeted ads, but are still overloading "hoping" for a click.
Psychological studies have shown how good sensory overloading can be at causing discomfort and confusing the audience. Ever wonder why CNN and MSNBC have shit flashing all over the place? Overloading is a huge reason why, and yes it's intentionally done. Not for advertising purposes, but it's an interesting one to study.
Common Core is being unnecessary vilified by people who don't understand it. All Common Core does is define a base line of standards for all children in all states that adopt it. I
Poisoning the well, and then show that you don't know a damn thing about Common Core (funny how you threw that accusation at me). No, it's not just standards. It's standards where the materials must come from Common Core as part of the Copyrights you agree to when signing up for the program. Materials that are horribly confusing intentionally, go look at some of the math examples that people are complaining about. Materials by the way, that are very expensive due to copyrights, are not designed or written by educators (and educators have 0 input), and where the material is trying to get your kids to purchase products at least as much as teach them something.
Common Core is not "Standards Testing", we have "Standards Testing" already and it's of questionable value (Many teachers will tell you that it's very bad for education and worse now that testing is quarterly at most schools).
How about reading a bit of actual book from Common Core and then talking, instead of repeating propaganda and claiming other people just "don't understand". Talk to educators that have read the book and understand the material. I have not read the _whole_ book, it's about 4" thick and I made it through about 400 pages so far. I have friends and relatives who are educators, and I trust their perspective on the material more than I trust you repeating what I can find on a propaganda web site.
First of all, what most students learn in college is what they should learn in high school.
This I agree with 100%, Common Core makes things worse. As does pretty much anything a massive bureaucracy gets it's hand on. But in the US, it's not just the Bureaucracy, it's Media. Watch some prime time TV. It is cool to be stupid, and if you are stupid somehow you can make millions of dollars just being stupid (or slutty, or a criminal, etc...). So not only has our education system gone to shit, but Media has helped them drastically.
The problem we have is that pretty much every job requires a college degree and pretty much every education system is underfunded.
Wrong on both accounts. First, most jobs don't require a college degree but people have been using that as a measure for some time for people that can succeed. It's wrong, and we need to somehow re-educate employers.
To the 2nd part, the education system is not underfunded at all. In fact it's over funded to cover all of the bureaucratic positions that Schools and Colleges have been adding for the last couple decades. UC for example has numerous regents who make very high 6 figure salaries to do nothing. There are backups to the backups to the assistants in many schools, meanwhile a professor has their pay cut and are blamed for the woes in funding. Most public schools today have a paid board, where when I was a kid boards were voluntary and made up of parents. So no, there is no funding problem. There is an abuse problem made partially by Government and partially by greed and nepotism.
But now, I understand and respect their perspective. For example, I proofread the paper of one kid who wrote in response to Plato. Now, he misunderstood what Plato said - but I have to blame the teacher for that, not the student, as his response was appropriate and clever. He responded to the idea that people are of different types - and interpreted it as meaning that a "gold" person is one who comes from influential parents and a "silver" person would come from military parents - whereas of course Plato actually envisioned a world where the children were separated from their parents because birth was not a determinant. Plato was still wrong, of course, because he had children judged far too early, but he never implied it was genetic.
No offense, but you don't understand Plato either. According to Plato, Socrates stated that the Military (Guardians) would not be able to raise their own children while performing their duties, so THEIR children would be raised by the community. The remainder of society would be raising their children just like we do today.
Socrates also stated much earlier in "The Republic" that in order to found a Republic you would have to kick all of the adults out of your society because they knew what corruption was and would bring corruption into the newly found Republic. Therefor, the only way to form a Republic in his opinion was to start with all children, educate them in Philosophy, and then a Republic was possible.
If you want an excellent version of The Republic I can provide one. What we normally see in College Philosophy text books is a gross distortion of the actual "The Republic" (with the exception of The Allegory of the Cave).
Based on how you write, I'm going to guess that either English is your second language or you are not an Educator at your college.
The US Government has spent over a trillion dollars funding a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, over 6 billion dollars funding a revolt in the Ukraine, at least 9 million dollars funding rebels in Syria (I have not looked at any numbers past what Obama did last September), Billions in beefing up US Local police forces, Billions more on DHS, FEMA, and the TSA, Billions more funding Egypt's various revolutions, and untold amounts in "black budgets" all over Africa. Even the GOA who is supposed to ensure accountability for spent tax dollars, spends millions on a lavish party for 33 people in Las Vegas.
And you think average people who's salaries and average wealth has gone down by nearly 30% in the last decade alone should pay even more money because they could not spent anything on Roads and Infrastructure whilst they pissed away your money everywhere else?
You can't restrict this to just political party affiliation. Most 3 letter government agencies pay for edits under various programs, each as potentially nefarious as the former.
Try correcting something on the Sarin Gas page for example (I had this edit war personally) where someone from a Government IP address last year added a statement that "Assad and Syria were proven to have used Sarin on it's own population". The UN investigations have repeatedly shown that the FSA rebels have used chemical weapons against the populace, and the FSA has been caught smuggling materials from Turkey on several occasions. The UN has never ever concluded that Assad or the Syrian army has done any such thing.
After making a simple correction to "The US alleges" the edit war was on, and every day a new Government IP would have new edits attempting to make it appear factual that Assad had used Sarin on the Syrian population. Every day I would remove and correct information. I don't get paid to edit, so gave up after about a month. It was simply too much time to invest. This is one of many pages edited purely for propaganda purposes by the US Government (ARIN [whois] is free to use, so you can easily see what agency is making edits, even when anonymously).
You never hit traffic, or do you actually arrive early but then wait in the car until "at 8:00AM"? This would be "between 6:00 AM and 8:00" if that is the case.
I used to work with a guy just like that. Would not start work until 8:00 on the dot, but he was in the parking lot at 7:30-7:45 on most days. At 11:25 he would start to clean up for lunch, at if he was done before 11:30 he stood at his desk and walked away at 11:30 sharp. Always back by about 12:25 and would wait to open back up until exactly 12:30. Then at 4:55 he would lock up for the night, and stand at his desk again until 5:00 PM on the dot.
I could see reasons for this based on some things the company had done in the past, but this guy was holding a grudge for a decade. I'd quit before I became a robot like this guy.. but to each their own.
The shitty scan would prevent you from reading most of it anyway, which is bizarre in itself. Did the FBI give them a CD full of shitty scan data with poor resolution images so it can't scale? Trying to download the content I hit a auth wall requiring a ScribeD account.. I could probably find a different method of access, but it's not worth the effort for something trivial like this.
Personally outside of the fact that the FBI actually answered a FOIA request I don't see this as "News" and especially not "News worthy". If they would have answered a question about the government harassment of Senator Jon DeCamp I'd be impressed.
"Little else matters than to write good code." -- Karl Lehenbauer
