Here in Norfolk, we had a young man that decided to just start shooting. He first killed a 17-year old kid in Norfolk, who was waiting at a traffic light.

When the police were investigating, he shot at them, and killed one, severely wounded to other.

There then was another cop who responded, and ordered the shooter to stand down; he started to shoot, and was killed.

Now, I'm going to point out that the cop who died was a really good guy, who would always tell his coworkers, 'it doesn't matter what happens here, so much as it matters what happens in heaven. That's why you need to get right with Jesus.'

Now, with an attitude like that, I suspect he would have been a little slower on the draw. It's too bad he died.

I also think he had a good effect on those around him. It's too bad he died.

If someone's going to die, I don't prefer that the cop be the first one to die. I prefer that nobody dies.

Oops.

What's to escalate? When the schedule flat out doesn't work, and your calls to customer service get handed over to a customer svc agent's voice mail, unless they want to talk to you, and they don't... that was what happened with us, I have no idea what happened with them... escalate doesn't help.

Actually, it isn't quite that. Tenure at universities is part of academic freedom, which in turn is there to protect the deans from white elephants, such as a ten-million dollar donation with strings that the teachers must teach whoositztheory, or that they must not teach whassis to undergrads.

Thing is, donaters love strings. That's why they donate; and if the donation is turned down, then the bigwig works hard to destroy the one who turned it down.

Universities evolved the fiction of academic freedom (and the attendant tenure) to combat that. Typically speaking, at primary and secondary schools that isn't a problem at that level: bigwigs take it to the state government.

It is not the same in EVERY Virginia city, but in Norfolk whenI was a taxi driver, the city licensed a cetin number of cabs to operate. Like the commercial fisherman's license, if you had a license, you had every incentive NOT to operate a vehicle, but to rent it out to a licensed cabdriver for a rental fee of more than $100 per day. That's 1992 dollars.

Moreover, your incentive to maintain a working vehicle was almost minimal. So they were real pieces of trash, that harvested money from poor cabbies and poorer clientele, and redirected it into the pockets of the owner of each cab company.

That's the Virginia way of doing things. YMMV.

We've never had a free market. Our ancestors back 150 years ago may have, I don't know-- it's hard to describe "free" when slaves are also part of that market.

But what we have had is a regulated market, which tends to evolve into a fascist market.

Regulated markets are not free. Patent law, copyright,are aspects of regulation. They were enacted for the benefit of king's friends, and not for the benefit of either producers or consumers.

I don't know if a free market is even possible, as great as the demand for slaves is in the human psyche. However, I do take offense at people using the current American Fascism as proof that free markets don't work. Especially since they are the same people who continually prevent free markets from ever being tried.

Simply say, "I don't want you to have a free market because it scares me to not have slaves" and be done with it. Or say, "I profit from the current lack of freedom. Get back to work and shut up." But cut the malarky about âoeWe tried letting the slaves choose whether to hoe or shuck, and it proves freedom doesn't work."

The proof that you have no concept of what freedom is, is that you use that word so much.

It's not just Amazon. Back about 1985, James Madison University's associated hospital got a "cancer center". By 1988, the hospital had tripled in size. By 1992, I saw cancer centers at hospitals throughout the state. By 1998, most hospitals had tripled in size.
    Then the other specialist centers started popping up.

But it's also in education. It's in research. It's in banking. It's in central banking. It's in real estate. It's in investment houses. It's in computer software.

And yes, it HAS metastasized.

Let me name it for what it is: chesterton professionalism. When justice fails, then people learn that they can get paid only for doing the opposite of their job, and holding society hostage. When each group learns how to do that, then they take over thir profession, and the cancer has just spread to another organ.

It

If you can get fusion, you don't need to worry about losing the protein. Suppose you have a protein shaped like your chest, with your two arms tied behind your back with a highly unstable bond in the tie. In each hand is a hydrogen atom ball. You enzymatically manufacture the proteins cold, you raise the temperature until the bonds start bursting and driving the nuclei together, and in one out of ten thousand of them you get tunneling fusion... it's good enough.

No, robotic taxis will monetize the poor the same way they do now: by licensing only a limited number of companies to operate the taxis. Today, that mans that Joe Schmoe, who wants to be a taxi driver, has to rent his taxi at a hundred dollars a day from a taxi company that doesn't drive, doesn't properly repair, doesn't upkeep its vehicles.

That keeps him poor, and the prices high, and the other poor poor.

Do the same thing with robotic taxis, and you simply have locked down the poor with yet another set of shackles.

The GP really did have it right.

I'm all for exploring ideas that are energy-economically feasible, as well as potentially resource-econemically feasible.

However, I really think that the cold-fusion idea was killed by stupidity prematurely, and --no offense -- I think that for those who want to work on a cheap fusion alternative, they should look at protein-folding to see if there is a way to get nuclei momentarily within a reasonable tunnelling cross section.

Point being, they could work on their protein folding designs on a computer to their heart's content. Then, if they do find something interesting, they can publish that as a theoretical protein model for cold-fusion purposes. Get THAT accepted, and one can then work on DNA recombination to develop the thing.

The epitome of word processing was achieved a generation befor that, with PC-Write.

It could do underline, and italics, and real text characters!

Really, I think it was far better than wordstar, and even better than write-now. In any case,it was better for programming and could handle word processing okay.

Ethical simply means following a consistent ethic (rule). So "I steal everything I can, and some I can't" is immoral, but ethical as long as that is the rule you consistently follow.

Which is why I hate the use of the word "ethical" in our society. It's a lie.

Bill Clinton was our most ethical president ever.

And if anyone didn't know ahead of time what was going to happen to whistleblowers with "the most transparent administration ever", they didn't understand the meaning of "transparent".

Hint: I absolutely despise modern language.

Get better efficiency for your solar dollar. Use solar driven steam turbines. Or go with wind power. Sun heats air, air makes wind, wind turns windmill. Or go one better if you're a country like Indonesia: use wave power. Sun heats air, air makes wind, wind pushes wave, wave powers wave mill. That for the short term, perhaps. More bang for the same buck. Solar panels are very material- and energy-intensive for the total solar dollar, and the debris is not terribly useful and somewhat toxic.

I don't know that anyone thinks lead caused the downfall of the Roman Empire. I think it is attributed as 'one of many factors'. I think the more immediate cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire, was the invasion of the Huns, who conquered one germanic tribe, took their land, and promised them freedom if they would then conquer the next tribe over, for them. This triggered a cascade of refugees, of which the Vandals came to Northern Italy, starving. The Senate voted to tell them 'come halfway to Rome, stop, and we will give you humanitarian aid' [food]. They then gave the contract for the food to a senator who was expected to embezzle most of the money. He embezzled it all, and the Vandals went through the whole Roman empire looking for food, and picking up slaves who walked away from their jobs to join the Vandals. Thus, the Empire lost its labor force. After that, since it still was the crown jewel for despots, it got conquered continuously.

Kindof like Iraq, kindof like Poland, Kindof like Lithuania, kindof like what'll happen to Russia, kindof like what's happening to the US.

oh, and ---- almost forgot.

No, monuments weren't first introduced to later Rome with concrete. Nor were big buildings. Come to think of it, nor were concrete buildings. All of that long predated Rome.

Horrible article. Fine slashdot fare, if I ever saw it.

It would be better to say, "the fall of Rome was caused by the introduction of Slashdot. Polling shows that..."

Boy, this makes me feel so good about not working for NASA. People all the time used to say I ought to work there, and I didn't have a good reply. But I'd do better in industry, I think.