I'm curious as to how you've drawn this conclusion. Please elaborate.

That's a matter of a being having the capability of standing up and asserting that it truly is a being and has the ability to determine its own future for itself and to make that future for itself.

We are definitely not there yet.

Good, you listened that it's always, "a dildo," and never, "your dildo."

I don't necessarily agree with instilling too much compassion.

I think that it may be better to teach her to own her decisions, as in, don't just go along with the flow, but to actually think-out and make a real decision on things. Your daughter is in the process of entering a part of her life that will fundamentally change who she is in her adolescence. She'll be faced with the social pressures of maturing into adulthood along with the internal pressures of body changes. You need to teach her to truly think about the ramifications of her decisions, to understand that in many circumstances there's no choice with all-positive results, and to accept the bad along with the good when she decides. She needs to confidently own her decisions with education, with dating, with employment. That confidence will carry her a long way, much longer than simple compassion, or in teaching blind respect.

Remember, not everyone deserves the same respect, but the reasons that individuals may deserve more or less respect is based on the individual, not on any easy category that the individual has no control over. She should judge people, but she should judge them for things within their control, for their choices. Everyone should start out as a blank slate and through observation the level of respect is determined.

I don't think that the religious expression, "the meek shall inherit the Earth," is a good thing, I think it's a cautionary tale. The meek will get what's left over after everyone else that isn't meek is done with it. That means the scraps, the used up, worn out remains. She needs to not be meek, she needs to be strong, she needs to be assertive, she needs to figure out what she wants and to make it happen, and to make decisions when others are willing to just go with the flow. She needs to understand true Machiavellianism (ie, the understanding that there are times to come into direct conflict with others, even those in authority, but that there could be consequences or long-term ramifications for treading on such people) and that life simply isn't fair. What she wants she has to go get. The Universe owes her nothing, and will give her a raw deal (ie, the expected loss of her father) and that her life is what she makes of it.

Sorry if this is tough to hear, but I'm pretty sure that it's the truth. Life is what we make of it for ourselves. Our decisions at one point affect our options at other points, and we have to assert what we want if we're actually to get it.

This hits the nail on the head for a lot of things-computing.

For e-mail encryption to be practical it needs to be extremely simple to use. It's not simple to use, so there's not much encouragement to use it, so it doesn't get adopted for wide use.

It was an exaggeration, but not a huge one, given the general silence in-dissent compared to the Democratic Party.

Maybe they'll high-five each other into a workers' compensation claim, exacerbating that old carpal tunnel injury...

There are parallels that can be drawn to how devices capable of home recording were viewed when they were new.

The manufacturer has chosen to market this device specifically for the production of firearms. They do not appear to have marketed this as a general-purpose device. It's reasonable to expect that purchased units will be used for the purposes of producing firearms. It doesn't really matter much that the device is capable of producing other goods, that's not how it's being sold.

Mills, lathes, and other metalworking equipment sold as general-purpose machine-shop equipment don't have this problem because they're not being marketeted for this specific purpose.

This contrasts well with the situation of home recording because devices capable of making recordings but intended to be general-purpose machines (ie, tuning for live watching, playback of commercial tapes, etc) were marketed differently than devices sold specifically for duplication or mass recording.

FedEx is free to choose with whom they'll conduct business. If they feel they are taking-on risk by shipping these machines then they're free to not ship them, like how cutomers and businesses are free to use anyone else that will take them to do such shipping.

Several years ago we got to see a presentation from Dr. Peter Diamandis on the X-Prize Foundation and he was really excited about the lunar rover X-Prize. Then nothing for many years. I'm glad there's some forward progress on this.

Apple fronted GT Technologies the money to build the facility in order to build displays for Apple products, and requred GT itself as collateral. Apple then chose not to buy GT-manfuactured Sapphire screens, and acquired GT when they could not pay back the money fronted. Tell me again how that's an honest business practice.

thats_the_joke.jpg

Because they already screwed GT Technologies out of their Mesa, AZ facility to now repurpose it into a datacenter. They don't have to spend very much money to do this, so it doesn't make more than local news.

He's still alive?

Fifteen year old article on his death.

I was quite saddened when I thought that the United States had lost one of its premiere science guys...

Married her, now among my duties are to see her through crowds safely...

When my wife and I were fairly new as a couple she would get annoyed when I would precede her through crowds. What she came to realize though, was that since my work takes me into secondary schools and I have to navigate halls between periods, I've had to become a master of the Morpheus Walk, referring to the scene in The Matrix where Fishburne's character is teaching Neo of the risks of agents in the Matrix, and the crowd parts for him while Reeves' character is colliding with all of the simulated people. I'm also fairly tall, and I'm able to put on a demeanor that usually gets people to move out of my way.

Once she saw how much easier it is to navigate a crowd that way she has been a lot happier in crowded situations to let me go first. If she sticks close behind then she can follow easily and we end up where we want to faster.