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Comment: Re:No wrongful death? (Score 5, Insightful) 676

But they are still human beings and worthy of being cared for and protected.

.....and the government is going to be the one to do that, huh?

Maybe I DON'T WANT MY FUCKING TAX DOLLARS being spent to "protect" a weakling, by punishing the strong.

If we continue to coddle weak mindedness in our society, the only possible outcome will be our eventual downfall, and enslavement to a society which chose another path.

Bullshit. Picking on gay kids makes society weak. Our society will be much stronger when that type of behavior is minimized.

Comment: Re:No wrongful death? (Score 5, Insightful) 676

Secretly filming your roommate having gay sex is a little worse than just saying something random and mean on slashdot.

If I were to overreact like that, I would have been dead by now, several times over. Somehow I don't think that I would want anyone to be punished for my own instability, though.

That is a weaselly statement. Ravi isn't being punished for Tyler Clementi's instability. He is being punished for spying on him, trying to destroy evidence, and trying to coordinate statements with a witness. He is guilty as sin for all of those crimes.

But even if he were being punished for causing Clementi's suicide, he had to have known that he was selecting an extremely vulnerable victim. He knew that Clementi was a loner and semi-closeted and was afraid of being open about it--and then he exploited him. If he were to be charged with the hypothetical crime of pushing this poor gay kid to suicide, then he wouldn't be punished for Clementi's instability. He would instead be punished for exploiting it.

Comment: Re:No wrongful death? (Score 5, Insightful) 676

You seem to be living in the fantasy world that everyone is strong and should be able to take punishment.

People are weak. They don't know how to cope. But they are still human beings and worthy of being cared for and protected. We should be outraged that this poor gay kid was driven to suicide.

This case is different that secretly filming your roommate having straight sex for exactly those reasons. Dharum Ravi exploited Tyler Clementi when he spied on him. He exploited his fears and insecurities.

Don't consider crimes like black boxes. The entire circumstances matter. The motives matter. Society had a role, no doubt. Tyler Clementi lamented that people on Ravi's twitter feed were disgusted by Clementi's relationship but not one of them called out Ravi and said that what he was doing was wrong. More than anything else, this is probably what drove him to suicide. He saw people unanimously disgusted by him with no defenders or anyone who opposed his privacy being violated. He had no faith that even if he changed roommates that conditions would get better. Think about that before you call him a coward again you fucking asshole.

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Police Called Over 11-Year-Old's Science Project 687

Posted by samzenpus
from the duck-and-cover dept.
garg0yle writes "Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?"

Comment: Re:Atheists Unite... as a religion (Score 1) 845

by Aglassis (#30618498) Attached to: Ireland's Blasphemy Law Goes Into Effect

Atheism is a religion. Atheism has everything in common with other religions. Set beliefs, morality, purpose in life, etc. Agnosticism is not a religion because it has no definite beliefs, morality or purpose. Atheism does.

No, the key difference is that religions appeal to the supernatural or some true essence to explain the universe, while atheism appeals only to the natural world. Atheism does not require some Daddy figure (or figures) nor does it need some essentialist background. It rejects those. Its beliefs are based on logic, something religions can't claim (except coincidentally).

Comment: Re:Ugh. (Score 1) 309

by Aglassis (#27460029) Attached to: Three Mile Island Memories

If you read the article, you'd realize it was a very significant wake up call. Death was narrowly avoided because the reactor containment vessel was over-engineered compared to the typical design.

Are you talking about the reactor vessel or the containment? These are different things. The containment is designed to keep fission fragments from being released to the public following a design basis accident. It is typically a hemispherical shell made of about a 5 ft thickness of reinforced concrete attached to a concrete base mat and lined with a stainless steel shell. The reactor vessel simply houses the core, forms part of the primary coolant pressure boundary, has a flange for connection to the vessel head, and contains connections for the hot legs, cold legs, and safety injection system. The reactor vessel is typically carbon steel with a stainless steel liner that is heat treated to reduce any stress at weld points. The reactor vessel is one of many things that fits within a containment.

Comment: Re:CO2 causes Global Warming? (Score 5, Informative) 397

by Aglassis (#27027593) Attached to: Is Climate Change Affecting Bushfires?

I guess that you fail to consider that the "shitload" of CO2 (from all sources, including man-made) account for a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So if 0.5% constitutes a "shitload", what would you call the other 99.5%?

And since you brought up observations of Mars and Venus, perhaps you can explain how the recent warming trend has also been detected on Mars? That would lead the cause of warming to be something the planets have in common - the Sun. Empirical measurements show solar output higher, so wouldn't you think that the most likely explanation would be the most logical one, rather than simple-minded "explanations" of processes that we don't nearly understand?

First, the Earth's atmosphere consists of about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon, and trace other gases (including water of about 0.5% and CO2 of about 0.05%). Nitrogen is not a greenhouse gas, oxygen is not a greenhouse gas, and argon is not a greenhouse gas. Thus, of the 32 K greenhouse effect, CO2 plays a very important role. Water is the dominant greenhouse gas, but it primarily serves to amplify the effect of other greenhouse gases since warmer air can hold more water. Additionally, water isn't as significant as it may appear (having a tenfold higher concentration than CO2) because it will precipitate out at colder elevations. Thus, CO2 and methane are the primary greenhouse gases that are really driving the greenhouse effect (with their effect amplified by the water vapour).

Second, the possible effects of a slight increase in solar intensity have been noted. They are too small to account for the increase in atmospheric temperature if they exist. And even the largest potential effect could only account for about a quarter of the warming that has been observed.

Comment: Re:CO2 causes Global Warming? (Score 5, Interesting) 397

by Aglassis (#27026955) Attached to: Is Climate Change Affecting Bushfires?

Climate change isn't the theory. It is the effect. The theory is that greenhouse gases raise the temperature of the atmosphere of a planet. This has been well tested with small scale experiments and large scale observations (such as observing the atmospheric composition and temperatures of Mars and Venus). There are a lot of details that go into climate change, but the general idea is very common sense:

Step 1: Shine some light in the visible spectrum on an object through a gas that doesn't absorb a huge amount of energy at most of those wavelengths (for example, from any random object that you might see that has a 5780 K blackbody temperature).
Step 2: Choose an appropriate gas (like CO2 or methane) that will absorb a lot of energy from the blackbody emissions of that object (Stefan's Law).
Step 3: Watch the temperature of that gas rise.

Do you get the gist? It isn't rocket science. If you add a shitload of CO2 to the atmosphere, the temperature of the surface of the planet is going to rise.

"Tell the truth and run." -- Yugoslav proverb

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