See this comment also. Good on ya, Wilgas.

Preventing this type of idiotic heavy-handed action will require bigger changes than one administrator growing a brain and/or balls.

One administrator can and should start the system on this road by growing a brain. They're in that business - growing people's brains. If they can't provide a good example, they deserve a review of their competence, let alone whether they ought to sleep comfortably at night, or look anyone in the eye afterwards.

Better fix it then by downloading the app from that link in the article ... oh wait ...

Neither can the folks in Scunthorpe.

More like the way you didn't see the *WHOOSH* coming from a mile off.

Idiot.*

**WHOOSH*^2

But how hard would it be for some grad student audiologist to knock up an open source algorithm based on published data?

Hard enough that a bobbled corner case might result in hearing damage.

By the time G. Rad Student finishes detecting and fixing those, he'll be far enough behind on his student enslavement^Wloan payments that he'll need more cash from the effort than an independent OSS release is likely to get him in the short term.

And TPTB still won't trust the work and will insist on a SCH1 medical license, again too expensive for someone with chains^Wdebt.

The only path forward is not to call it a hearing assistance device at all. Apps for 'equalization' already exist for bluetooth phones, I believe (I had that idea last year and found examples at the time - hie thee to thy keyboard, Google Grasshopper).

Thomas Merton.

There could be many more of them per police officer (let alone police force) than is feasible for helicopters.

They're much smaller and more agile, allowing access to your daughter's hot tub^W^W^W^W more private areas.

They're much easier to make silent, thus enabling stealth surveillance.

They can operate 24/7/365 in aggregate.

They'd be in the hands of people who do things like this.

'Neo-atheists, gay-rights activists and the like' are not opposed to Christianity.

They are opposed to hatred, ostracism, and lynchings foisted in their direction.

Christians who go on such a warpath are pointedly not with you in thinking that the purpose of Scripture is 'not to give literal history'. If they were, they'd mature faster by understanding the nature and benificial application of metaphor to their own growth and maturation into peaceful, constructive adults.

But a big batch of 'em do not. They take a literal interpretation as license to perpetrate Bronze-age bigotry and terrorism while deflecting responsibility onto an untouchable authority. Small wonder they come in for some criticism now and then.

That should include criticism from the constructive adult Christians who can see the corrosive effect this has on the real moral messages Christianity offers.

When you say evolution is already proven please give a reference to such evidence.

Science does not prove evolution, or any other theory. It demonstrates facts, and uses them to support valid inferences, which become theories (as distinct from hazy conjectures woolgathered over a beer one late night).

The frequency of alleles carried and expressed in a population changes over time due to environmental factors. This is the fact of evolution, and the demonstration involves two microbe cultures in petri dishes, some antibiotic solution, and a few days.

The fact of evolution, acting over sufficient time, serves to explain the existence, distribution, and variation in the populations of living things. This is the theory of evolution. The fossil record supports this inference better than it supports others. For the demonstration of this, go and look yourself - it may take you awhile due to the size of the known fossil record. If you have life and breath left, proceed to the work done on living populations (dogs, for example, or agricultural pests).

And please point to the (ta-da!) ---===[ !!! EVIDENCE !!! ]===--- that you've seen to the contrary, that suffices to negate the work mentioned above.

Thanks.

They've also blown $100's of millions on x-ray machines and explosives detectors.

Those are sitting unused in warehouses too, two years later.

Lewis Black is all over this:

The Devil's Handiwork

The "bowling ball and a feather falling in a vacuum" question decidedly takes the back seat compared to the lack of intuition some people exhibit.

Indeed. I once heard of a science exhibit which was showing multiple shadows cast by colored lights, with the shadows being different colors (the classic color combination demo, like this).

People were asked about their comprehension after going through the exhibit. The interviewers were puzzled at first at the fuzzy responses about the shadows' colors. They eventually figured out that many people don't have a basic understanding of how shadows come about .

That there's some lack of intuition for ya.

In places like

the Free Enterprise Radon Mine.

Personally, I wouldn't bother, but then I'm just some propeller head geek who looks at books all the time.

...
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong

Once there were parking lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it

This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
you got it, you got it

I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
you got it, you got it

And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
you got it, you got it

I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
you got it, you got it

We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
you got it, you got it

This was a discount store,
Now it's turned into a cornfield
you got it, you got it

Don't leave me stranded here
I can't get used to this lifestyle

Nothing But Flowers