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Shark

Journal Journal: Burn, Baby, Burn! 1

"Sustainability" is, as far as I can see, a project designed to keep this culture - this lifestyle - afloat. The modern human economy is an engine of mass destruction. Of course, I am conflicted about this. I live at the heart of this machine; like you, I am a beneficiary of it. If it falls apart, I will probably suffer, and I don't want to. ...

Medicine

Journal Journal: Gimme Gimme Penicillin! 3

China 'seals off' town after man dies of bubonic plague
"A Chinese town has been sealed off and 151 people placed in quarantine since last week after a man died of bubonic plague, state media said Tuesday.

The 30,000 people living in Yumen in the northwestern province of Gansu are not being allowed to leave, and police at roadblocks on its perimeter are telling motorists to find alternative routes, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) said.

Comment Re:Biden is talking coding?? (Score 3, Interesting) 225

Joe Biden is a bit of a buffoon, but that thing about firing a shotgun through a front door is taken out of context. He was referring to someone's question about hypothetical end of days where target ID rules likely aren't such a big deal.

Biden did actually advocated firing a warning shot through a window, which is illegal and presumably not during the end of days. Not very clever, Uncle Joe.

It's kind of like the Al Gore Internet stuff. I am not Al's biggest fan, but the guy never said anything about inventing the Internet. Al Gore was instrumental in getting the Federal Government to begin using the networks, particularly for check processing. He saved the taxpayers quite a bit of money by doing this. Gore was one of the first elected officials to really get what the Internet was going to do for society.

The Internet

Journal Journal: Was the Internet Created for Covert Domestic Surveillance?

"From its creation by DoD contracts and grants to research institutions, there have been aspersions cast by those easily dismissed as "fringe" commentators, on the nefarious, or at least covert, motivation to create the Internet. Conspiracy theory may have been met by reality in recent months with now commonplace reporting, first by Wikileaks and later, in the more extensive

Submission + - Was the Internet Originally Created for Covert Domestic Surveillance?

Jeremiah Cornelius writes: From its creation by DoD contracts and grants to research institutions, there have been aspersions cast by those easily dismissed as "fringe" commentators, on the nefarious, or at least covert, motivation to create the Internet. Conspiracy theory may have been met by reality in recent months with now commonplace reporting, first by Wikileaks and later, in the more extensive Edward Snowden revelations. It is still almost canon, that NSA mass-surveillance and warrantless information analysis occurred through coopting the burgeoning Internet, and diverting traffic in a way that is counter to the ideals of its creators and promoters. But what if the social, commercial Internet were always intended as a sort of giant honeypot? The idea would still seem farfetched, if it weren't recently disclosed by William Binney that the NSA is recording 80% of all US phone conversations — not simply metadata. Closer examination of the record shows that ARPAnet was being used to clandestinely gather information on the legitimate activities of US citizens — and transmit the information to the US Army Intelligence Command NSA — as far back as 1968! According to articles published in 1975 by MIT in "The Tech":


"via the ARPANET, a computer network connecting more than 50 government agencies and universities throughout the country. The network is funded by the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)... The information, according to intelligence sources, was transferred and stored at the headquarters of the National Security Agency (NSA), at Fort Meade, Maryland. The Army files were transmitted on the ARPANET in about January 1972, sources say, more than two years after the material — and the data banks maintained at the [Army's] Fort Holabird facility — were ordered destroyed."


MIT officials were worried 40 years ago, about this abuse of interconnected TCP communications and the complicity of their own research scientists. These concerns arose at the height of the Watergate fallout and downfall of President Nixon for illegal wiretapping and information theft allegations. The danger of Government "record keeping" was outlined by Senator Sam Ervin, in an address to MIT that was also profiled in the same publication. Clearly, this did not begin in the last decade, and clearly pre-dates the 2001 "Global War on Terror" pretext. It is important to remember, the NSA was an almost unknown agency at this time, and was chartered to strictly forbid intel on US citizens and those dwelling within US borders.

Comment Re:On fundamentalists (Score 1) 13

The cursing thing *might* have come from a bit of reverse semitic paranoia. In some far out fundamentalist theologies- Jews are actually revered and considered *closer* to God than Christians ( a strict literal interpretation of the events of the Pentateuch).

Oddly enough, I've noticed this in non-fundamentalist forms of Christianity as well, especially my own Catholicism. There is a reason why Pope Benedict XVI forbade the sacred name from being spoken in Mass, out of respect for our older brethren, and why a good deal of 20th and 21st century theology has been devoted to the consideration of Christianity as a sect of Judaism.

Comment Re:On fundamentalists (Score 1) 13

Had a girl who acted like this in my wife's daycare. One day, due to misbehaving, I put her in what we call a "Daddy time out", which is one of the more serious corrective actions we take (spanking's not allowed in our state, and you can even get your own kid taken away). Instead of sitting with me on the couch, she spent the whole four minutes (a minute per year of age) standing ramrod straight, as if I was about to do something to her.

I found out later she had been abused, and her mother had converted to fundamentalist Xianity to get her some free counseling. Due to my Daddy Time Out and her reaction to it, she was removed from the daycare soon after, presumably to one run only by women.

Comment Re:I by no means missed the point (Score 1) 32

If Christ is the meaning of life then why do you cherry pick only some of his words and deeds when describing things you consider virtuous? Shouldn't you take him in his entirety?

What makes you think I don't?

While I will continue to point out that Marx's communist ideals have essentially never even come close to being realized for any population over a few hundred anywhere at any time, your continued insistence on confusing communism and socialism is quite simply silly.

Trumped by your desperate attempts to differentiate them by, like, an order of magnitude. National Socialist German Workers Party. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Own it.

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The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford

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