It wasn't until Einstein & Co. came up with the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics was discovered that the nature of atomic elements really begun to be understood.
A snipple, but the basic structure of an atom, with negatively-charged electrons surrounding a positive core was basically understood by 1896 (the "plum pudding" model), several years before quantum theory and relativity.
That's like arguing that the founding fathers never intended for the first amendment to protect what you write down in a notebook because it says "freedom of the press," not "freedom of the notepad" (which is an inferior means of putting your speech to paper for publication).
Bad metaphor. I think the founders meant to cover freedom to write whatever in your notebooks in Article IV, "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...". The freedom of the press means that the government shall not censor published works. Your private notebook isn't published (or else it wouldn't be private). The freedom of speech is the freedom to communicate.
In fact, the Founders thought that the constitution, with its limited government, was so protecting of the rights of the people in the first place, that they Bill of Rights was an afterthought, brought in as amendments to the original document, when the public to whom they were trying to sell the constitution to rightly recognized there weren't strong enough protections for individual rights in the constitution. They never intended to have the amendments in the first place! They only wrote them after the people demanded it, and wouldn't accept a constitution without explicit guarantees of freedom.
the prick is FORCED to pay for the fire service that he doesn't want." Yeah, sounds like a great plan.
You've got the key point backwards: it turns out this prick wanted the firefighting after all. He said he didn't want it, didn't pay for it, and then when push came to shove, he actually wanted it, and was willing to pay for it.
The county does, though. And they should have been collecting that $75.
Who do you think voted for those county commissioners? That's where the buck stops -- voters like this jackass.
The original idea isn't bad. Corporations are supposed to exist to shield investors in a company from liability created by its officers.
Actually, in the US, the original idea of a corporation was that they had to serve the public good. Every 20 years, the corporate charter was reviewed by the secretary of state. If the corporation was no longer serving the public good, its charter was revoked and the corporation was no more. See Thom Hartmann's Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights for the whole history.
This just goes to show you the difference in difficulty between finding a Jupiter-sized planet and an Earth-sized planet.
Or the difference between stargazing with naked eyes versus using a telescope of any kind.
a) There's no physical evidence.
Does radar count? There's plenty of cases where a pilot ( and people on the ground ) report classical ufos ( saucers, cigars, triangles ) and these objects show up on radar.
The only time I've encountered a "fact checker" has been in connection with a magazine article. Magazine articles often are outsourced to freelancers, whose butts are not necessarily available for kicking the next morning if something is wrong, so fact-checkers are employed to verify information before it's published. Typically they'll call a news source: "Is your name really Heywood Jablome?"
I was on an eco-tour in Peru and one of the guys in the trip was a freelance journalist writing a piece about the experience. About a month after the trip,I got a call from his editor, who went through the most mundane details of the story, bit by bit, to confirm them with me. It was all basically correct, but I was really reaching to recall basic facts. Were the mats we slept on on the riverboat foam? Probably. Did that local guide say exactly that to the writer? I was only half-paying attention.
It was pretty thorough, and this wasn't an investigative piece or anything, just entertainment/travelogue. So at least for those kinds of pieces, editors do check up. Or at least one did for one story.
Yeah, but nobody scored...
>sniff<... wasn't it beautiful?
When I interview, I am on the lookout for more than just raw skills... I look for people who turn into raging assholes on hour fourteen in a row on the Sunday night before release. They don't get hired.
How do you see this in a job interview?
...but some other double helix that was more stable...
Why does the molecule of life need be a double helix? Because it was the precursor to D/RNA? Because it folds up and compresses? Because that shape has some stability or protection from radiation?
You were moral because you chose to be, not because you "believed" in some silly magic book; or were too scared, or weak minded, to think for yourself.
Not that I disagree, but why is 'choosing' or 'thinking for yourself' the highest good, the one that some transcendent deity would base its judgment of you on? For all we know, it might judge you based on whether you ever had a toe infection.
If we're going to say that religious people claim that Deity is just and judges people justly, they also claim a lot of other things about Deity that we don't subscribe to (such as it wanting us to have faith). Why do we subscribe to this one?
"What if" is a trademark of Hewlett Packard, so stop using it in your sentences without permission, or risk being sued.
