When hardline socialist parties gain power they tend to become more pragmatic. Such parties usually still consider themselves socialist and think of themselves as working toward eventual socialism.

The Socialist Party in France is a good illustration of this. Go back and look at the history of the Mitterrand presidency. In 1984 he abandoned nationalization of industry so that France would qualify for the European Monetary System. The subsequent collapse of the leftist coalition forced him to "cohabit" with Chirac's conservative RPR. Since then it'd be fair to characterize PS as a center-left party.

You've just described most of particles physics - most of the really interesting particles are so unstable on their own that they can only be detected by their byproducts. Quarks for example basically don't exist outside a proton or neutron -we know they're there by tracing the energy "fingerprints" of their nergetic interactions: To consistently get A and B from C and D, the intermediate components must have the following properties...

If it were pushing against some hitherto unknown particle, that would possibly be even MORE dramatic - we'd have a fundamentally new particle, and with it all new physics to explain how it can interact with normal matter / microwaves in such a way that it's only been detected in this very specific scenario, despite the fact that it must exist everywhere and be capable of passing through normal matter largely unimpeded. Even the "here there be dragons" of Dark Matter won't qualify- this appears to be interacting far to strongly with EM fields.

Technically a "socialist" is anyone who believes in "social ownership" of the means of production. A "communist" is someone who believes in the common ownership of the means of production. This may sound like a distinction without a difference, but "social ownership" is a broader concept than common ownership. Common ownership is just one form of "social ownership". Worker cooperatives are another form of social ownership.

Logically then, all communists are socialists, and not all socialists are communists. Some communists see non-communist socialism as a desirable intermediate step toward communism, others do not. Some communist and socialist ideologies fit within the umbrella of "social democracy", others do not.

Socialists and especially communists tend to be idea-fetishists, and so often display a peculiar mania for mutual ideological excommunication.

Most "democratic socialist" parties are socialist (like the DSP in the US), or have at some point in their history been socialist, or at least see socialism as a desirable long-term goal. But I'm sure there are exceptions. What you really have to do is ask what someone *believes*, not what they call themselves.

Sanders has never run away from the word "socialist", but what he seems to believe in is a strong welfare safety net, labor unions operating in a market economy which allows private profit but with regulatory restrictions on the ability of private entities to externalize costs like pollution. There are plenty of people who would call that "socialist", but most people who just plain call themselves "socialist" wouldn't. What he wants is for the US to be more like "Nordic model" country such as Sweden or Denmark. Maybe that's not your personal idea of political paradise, but it's a hell of a long way from North Korea.

As to why Sanders would call himself a socialist, it may be that's what he calls "socialism", but I think it's because he's a contrarian and gadfly who likes to rile people up but excels at retail politics in a tiny, tiny state. I'm all for his preferred policies, but personally I think he'd be terrible president because he's a self-righteous political prig who'd alienate and undermine any of his allies that didn't toe the line.

True, but I'm not sure it's worth the baggage.

Not quite, I'd say there's something inherently shameful about inserting porn into a technical field not caring or realizing that there's people who won't want to view it in a professional setting. I would call that asshole-ish.

But not appropriate for a computer vision class regardless of the age.

Kids aren't stupid, they'll figure out the source of the photo and everyone will know. The nature of the photo creates the context.

And if a lot of people shared your strong objections to car pictures than I'd agree schools should avoid unnecessary photos of cars.

You've missed the point entirely.

The problem isn't that me or a woman in the class is objectifying women because of the picture.

The problem is that there are men in the class who are objectifying women, or thinking it's appropriate to objectify women, because of the picture.

Whether or not I'm one of those men is irrelevant, merely the fact women have a reasonable expectation that those men are there objectifying them makes it an issue.

Which is one of the reasons that Western women are more sexually liberated, but the differences persist.

Ask any woman, it's still something they have to be aware of, I know many girls who won't trail run by themselves because they're worried about guys attacking them. That's a concern that never even crossed my mind.

And it's not just rape, spousal abuse is still terrifyingly common and there's certainly a sexual component to that.

That last sentence was supposed to be a hint to the fact that you don't know what you are talking about when you speak for "the liberals".

What you hear on Fox and talk radio is not what "the liberals" actually believe or want. It's a caricature that they can more easily attack.

Cerro de Pasco

14,210 ft elevation, pop 70,000, one of many populations this high up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

No, you can thank increased tax receipts due to the dot-com boom. Government had damn near nothing to do with it.

No, he calls himself a democratic socialist. That isn't socialist. It's more-or-less the mainstream "left" party in most countries in Western Europe. And he'd fit well in those parties.

Nader got fewer votes from registered Democrats in Florida than Bush did. By an order of magnitude.

So no, Nader wasn't the cause of Bush's victory. Gore's terrible campaign was. According to Al Gore himself.

No, he calls himself a democratic socialist. Democratic socialists are not socialists.

H1B visas are not immigration visas. They are temporary.

But nice try speaking for "the liberals".

Well to be fair the man calls himself a socialist; he's just wrong about that. You're spot on about the bailout though. It's like my Bolshie Uncle Ivan used to say. "Kid," he'd say, "nobody really believes in socialism. Nobody believes in capitalism either. It's 'socialism for me, capitalism for you!'"

You are aware that budgets take effect the *following year*, right? The US fiscal year X starts in October of X-1.

The 103rd Congress was elected in November 1992, convened in Jan 1993, so they had input into the FY 1994 and FY 1995 budgets. In FY 1994 the federal deficit went down by 52 billion, and in FY 1995 the federal deficit went down by 39 billion. This means the deficit went down by about 20% in both the 103rd Congress/Clinton budgets.

But to be fair to George H.W. Bush the deficit was already coming down. After the deficit peaked at 290.3 billion in FY '92 , GHWB reneged on his famous "read my lips" promise and new taxes in FY '93 to reduced the deficit by about 12% to 255 billion.