That is... not true, at least for Poland. I happen to live there, you see, and health insurance does not expire with unemployement benefits. It is tied to unemployed *status*, not benefits, and as long as a person is registered as unemployed, they have their health insurance paid by the State, whether they are still eligible for the benefts or not.
A very successful Saturn orbiter mission, Cassini, has been going on for years. Numerous moon flybys, lots of interesting data, pretty pics as well.
Beyond that, the main problem is cost. Uranus is four times farther away from the Sun than Jupiter, Neptune is six times farther away. Travel by direct transfer requires burning lots of fuel in Earth orbit, which makes it very expensive. Using gravity assist requires lots of time, and a long mission requires employing personnel and devoting resources for many years, which is also expensive. Not to mention that the probe must survive ten or twenty years in space and only then perform the actual mission, which makes the design expensive as well.
The singular pair of Voyager missions was only possible thanks to very lucky arrangement of planets at that time. Unfortunately, this won't repeat any time soon.
I tire of repeating myself over and over. Read my other posts in this thread.
Believe me, I have...
I will only give you these hints: advertising has en effect that diminishes with time, so an established party with a huge budget and repeated media recognition (like the current government) will suffer far less then a small party whose tiny budget offered it only a modicum of advertising before the "cooling off" period. By the time the election comes the effect of advertising of smaller players will be nullified.
If that were true, smaller parties would be severely disadvantaged and would gradually disappear. Care to run a reality check for some European countries, where such laws are in effect?
As to the government being disadvantaged it is laughable. Exactly the opposite happens (that is why the laws were made - by the governments in power) as it affords whomever is controlling the process an opportunity to indirectly harass the other players by either accusing them of "breaking the law" or making exceptions for the ruling elite because of "particularly malicious attacks" etc.
I call bullshit. At least in the case of my country, there are no exceptions whatsoever to the radio silence period and all the media refrain from reporting anything even remotely political - which actually looks kinda weird, as for a day or two news program are filled with absolute trivialities.
And then there is the fact that most media these days are owned by affiliates of one of the major parties or even outright by candidates themselves and media are not exempt from "reporting" on the other, usually "upstart" challengers, who of course have no recourse.
Again, please run a reality check. All media are forbidden to report anything that could be considered election-related or politics-related. There have been some highly-publicised early transgressions that ended up with huge fines and universal disapproval, and now the situation is absolutely clean election after election.
Censorship never "helps" democracy. It is in fact the very anathema of it.
Citation needed. There are in fact multiple censorship laws in force around the world, like forbidding publishing Nazi ideology, hate speech etc., and democracy does not seem to suffer as a result. Care to point to some example country where there is no such restrictions and democracy actually flourishes?
If the laws were truly meant to help democracy they would concern themselves with ensuring that smaller players have a level playing field and that all candidates have a chance to make last-second replies. They would ensure that the voters get maximum exposure to information, complete with information kiosks at the polls where all parties could post last minute appeals free of charge so they stay fresh in the voter's minds, etc and so on.
There are multiple ways in which smaller players are being favoured in many countries I know of, including mandatory airtime in public media and state-allotted funds for running both the party and the campaign itself. If what you claim were true, the discussed laws would grossly favour current political establishment, and the government side in particular. Care to check whet the situation actually looks like in Europe and how often ruling parties change?
Please note that in many countries outside the Rich West current government has an additional advantage in form of direct access to public media. One of the explicit goals of such "blackout periods" is often removing manipulation power from the current government. If you don't think such access could be used for aiding the currently-ruling political option to remain in power, think again.
On the other hand, could you please state the disadvantages of such mandatory silence periods? Yes, I know you call them "censorship", but anything besides that? Any side loses anything? Anybody is manipulated? Anybody gains unfair advantage? Or do you simply believe any restriction on personal freedom at all is always evil and must be opposed?
Nice try. It is not a question of being adults or not, but rather of human beings in general being susceptible to certain psychological tricks. Like the government of the moment launching a massive FUD campaign in public media just before voting commences. Or the same government publishing fabricated polls during the election itself with the aim of swaying undecided people. How would you have them handle the issue afterwards? "Ooops, sorry 'bout that"?
I don't believe telling all interested parties to shut up for a day or two and think the matter - arguably the most important matter for the country - through is not censorship. Furthermore, I believe much of the world agrees, judging by rules of this sort being in place in multiple countries of very diverse backgrounds.
Contrary to what I have heard sometimes, absolute and unrestricted freedom to say anything without any consequences is not the optimum state. Think crying "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Think libel. And how exactly do you impose consequences after elections won by last-minute false mud-throwing campaign? "Oops, sorry"?
As many have written already, this has very little to do with censorship and much to do with providing elections free from sociological manipulations. Mandating political silence just before and during the actual voting prevents primitive sociological tricks like "party X is doing really poor in the polls and is unlikely to clear the parliament-admission threshold, don't waste your vote on them, vote for similar party Y instead!" where people might get semi-consciously swayed at the last minute.
And, contrary to what many people write, such a ban is actually fairly easy to enforce. Simply monitor such cases, and post-factum declare parts of the overall voting process (in certain regions, circuits, whatever you have) invalid. This forces repeating parts of the election and, provided the society is at least somewhat legalistic, creates strong bias against the offending candidates or parties. (There may be significant financial penalties involved as well). In my country (Poland) this approach works surprisingly well, the ban is universally obeyed and the very rare transgressions are universally looked down at.
Yeah, I know, its not fashionable to actually like office 2003, but its a good product, I've always liked it. Besides, ever tried writing a doctoral thesis in OpenOffice? I have, it's not easy.
I did, in chemistry no less. Worked really OK, and it was the 1.0.x version of OOo then. I also supervised several masters' theses that were written in Word 2k, and they were the reason why I chose OOo.
That said, in Word 2k3 MS corrected many of the most hideous bugs, so it works decently now.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information. "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that," s
The rule on staying alive as a program manager is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
