"During the flight that will be conducted along the mutually agreed route, Russian specialists* on board of the aircraft will ensure strict compliance with the agreed flight schedule and monitor the use of the equipment stipulated by the treaty."

*every time I read this, 'specialists' rhymes with schmostages.

My education didn't fail me, I just don't live in a fantasy utopia.

I didn't say life was about MONEY, did I? Not at all.

I said life is about work:
- working to earn a living to have a home, food, clothing
- working to raise your kids
- working to keep your marriage together

If you assume you are somehow entitled to any of those things, without putting in a great deal of effort, you're a naive utopian who hasn't the faintest concept of the bloody, dirty, gritty underpinnings of the blithely thoughtless life you apparently drift through.

Life is rich and wonderful, moreso when you understand how much it took to earn the peaceful, safe, stable world most of us enjoy.

BoAS has been crying that the world is in *imminent* danger of destruction since at least the 1970s. At a certain point, even they have to question their own credibility insisting that the sky will be falling 'any moment now'.

Look at their logo for the doomsday clock, for pete's sake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... it implies there is no conceivable reading in which we're not in immediate, constant danger.

This is PRECISELY the sort of crap that has led to much of the public disregarding "science" as a thing that can speak to many issues in our daily life - the BoAS may be staffed by nominal scientists, but they're otherwise pretty much typical, naive, left-wing academics trying desperately to parlay their "sciency" credentials into credibility in foreign policy and geopolitics.

Would you read a periodical on Particle Physics written by Michelle Bachman, Henry Kissinger, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi? Maybe for the laughs, I admit.
Then why would anyone give any more credence to a political pamphlet published by scientists?

Since the majority of college attendees AND college graduates are women, does that mean they're looking particularly for men?

Somehow, I doubt it.

I've heard this before, and it's kind of a load of bollocks. "Oh noes! The 'system' is indoctrinating people to be workers in their patriarchy!"

First, I'm not sure what's wrong with that. Contrary to millenialist fantasies, life is about work (even communists are too pragmatic to believe otherwise). You work the bulk of your adult life in an office, or a shop, or a factory, as a surrogate for roaming the woods fighting bears for food. It's simple. If you don't work, someone else has to gather food for you. Even "the rich" who don't apparently work, somewhere back in their history (or their family's) is someone who worked their ASS off to ensure their descendants could take it easier. So I honestly don't see the problem with a higher-educational system focused on providing absolutely needed work-focused skills, especially when our primary/secondary education seems to be more focused on self-esteem than fundamental knowledge.

We could, of course, always go BACK to the system where college was a luxury enjoyed by the wealthy and/or extremely talented. In that case, sure college could just be about teaching kids how to be better humans. (When you're spending tax dollars to make sure that nearly every Mary and John go to college, the public has a right to insist that there be measurable value/skills delivered for their funding.) The public tax rolls are not there to ensure that poor people get a better life, sorry. That's really one of the basic reasons why you should be working hard NOT TO BE POOR.

Shh honey, grownups are talking now.

If you ever believed that any country was the "good guys" on some sort of objectivist good/evil framework and didn't realize that EVERY country is solely focused on its own interests and security, then you're staggeringly naive in the first place.

And you're absolutely correct.
I went back to the book I read that in, and I misunderstood Nixon's role.
However, it doesn't materially change my point that Nixon witnessed the courts siding strongly in favor of the confidentiality of the president and his files, which later turned out to be not quite so when HE wanted to be.

I'm sorry, I think it's pretty well assumed that anything written online is implicitly prefaced with "I believe that..." or "I think that..." - even if they are an ostensible expert (which I'm not, let's be clear, since apparently I NEED TO BE!).

If you're really going to post in opposition to every time someone asserts a fact without explicitly stating these caveats, you better have a fuckton of spare time. The internet's a big place.

Oh, and regarding synaptic pruning, yes, it IS believed to be a thing. Quite mainstream, too. Might want to look that up before your meds fade next time.

How the fuck can you be an "alumnus" of something THAT ISN'T EVEN RELEASED YET?

Seriously, the dizzying anticipatory (or desperately self-justifying, depending on how you view people pouring $70+ million into the kickstarter) hype has now apparently even crossed the bounds of 'pedestrian' chronology.

Any day now I'm expecting the nostalgic articles about how "great" Star Citizen was, along with triumphal marketing videos about how it redefined an entire genre and 'set the standard' for all the games that followed.

It would be wonderful if they'd review apps for needless privacy intrusion. Why does a radio player app need to access my camera? Why does a weather app need to access my contacts? I can't count the number of apps that I uninstalled because the new update wants nonsensical accesses....

Anyway, I know that's not going to happen.

Do we know yet exactly what we are getting with win 10?

I mean, I don't think I'm going to trade in my win-whatever if it means I get a shiny new os....that I have to pay monthly (or whatever) or they remotely kill it.

I understand the point you're making, and while I agree basically, I think the relationship is a little more subtle.

The human brain is fundamentally a language machine. While this certainly ossifies with age as the system prunes neural circuits that it believes it no longer needs, I think the ability to learn multiple languages is in fact hard wired into h. sapiens from birth.

It's this plasticity that makes languages easily learnt, but the APPLICATION of learning - the actual deformation/reformation of conceptual paradigms foundational to a language family - is what grants a person the alternate perspectives that are gained by learning other methods of communication.*

*not, by any means should this be limited to literal languages; math, music, and a number of creative media likewise (I believe) are mind-opening communication alternatives

Plus, paradox has a stellar record of ongoing support for their titles for years, kind of the opposite of ea there, too.

During the McCarthy hearings, this was a primary bone of contention between McCarthy and Eisenhower (who, despite both being Republicans, personally despised one another). Ike insisted that the president's records, and those of the executive branch, could NOT be subpoena'd for McCarthy's hearings.
When the courts tended toward finding that the PRESIDENT's correspondence and files were sacrosanct by the separation of powers rules*, this didn't apply to the State Dept records, so Ike had the State Dept file cabinets physically moved to the Oval Office.
McCarthy, hinting that the President was doing this because he might have something embarrassing in the files, had finally crossed the line by maligning a figure of such public reverence that the public couldn't tolerate it. Logically, he was perfectly correct; it seems unreasonable that Ike would have gone to such lengths to simply defend a presidential prerogative on principle alone, but then again his personal enmity for McCarthy likely played a role as well.

*final curious appendix to this story: one of the Junior Congressmen working for McCarthy, who saw how the courts went to the mat to defend the IRONCLAD sanctity of Ike's files from Congressional snooping would later find that such precedents were little defense in protecting his own files, Mr Richard Nixon.