Your opinion isn't necessarily unreasonable, but the point is that if the first judge disagreed, she couldn't very well appeal the decision, could she?

Estimating it takes on average four months to get a court date, she's 7 months along at the first hearing. When the appeal hearing occurred, the baby would be two months old. If she "wins" the appeal, does that mean she kills the 2 month old infant? Obviously not, so there would no effective appeal. That's the point of my post.

> The father certainly should be involved in any kind of decision like that

Funny you say that, while saying that regardless of the facts, he has absolutely zero right to even alert the judicial system to what's going on.

> where women are still treated by many of the old-thought people as property, possessions, and pawns to manipulate and direct as they choose.

But you insist on treating babies very lives as property to be destroyed at whim? Odd.

In my personal opinion, facts matter. Let's say we have a typical happy family of four. White picket fence
and all that. Their third child is due in one month. Then she falls back into smoking crack cocaine, the
nemesis she thought she had defeated fifteen years prior. In that factual situation, I believe dad has a
duty to protect his children.

The GPL licence, the Apache license, CCa, and just about anything but the WTFPL have restrictions on redistribution. Typical restrictions include:

If you distribute, you may not further restrict others from doing the same.
If you distribute binaries, you must distribute source.
If you distribute, you must acknowledge the original author.

Suppose a couple wanted to have a baby. They spent a year planing for a baby and trying to get pregnant. They get pregnant and they are decorating
the nursery, etc. Then, three months pregnant, she changes her mind and wants to kill the kid and go back to partying all night like she did in college.
Pretty quickly, it's going to be too late to appeal a decision either way.

Similarly a release of information case, such as this one. Once DHS has been forced to release the document, they can't effectively appeal to unrelease it.
In this case, "left the door open for the agency to appeal the ruling" means they have 30 days to appeal BEFORE they have to release the document.

DHS was granted 30 days before they have to release the document, to allow time for an appeal.

You can always appeal, but it sometimes an appeal would be pointless because it would be too late.
In this case, plaintiff wants a document released. Normally, that would mean the document would be released immediately.
How do you appeal a decision to release a document AFTER it's been released, though? Plaintiff is going to publish the information.
If DHS wins the appeal, would plaintiff be ordered to unpublish it?

In such cases, a court will grant a "stay", meaning everything stays as it is until the appeals court gets the case or time runs out.

> do want to necessitate giving some experimental medicine to 10,000 people before assessing whether it's a good idea or not?

Yes. Before giving it to a million people, we should run statistical calculations on the first 10,000 to better asses safety and efficacy.

Oh, you meant as opposed to a trial with 200 people. But that's a false dichotomy. You run run stats on the first 200 to see whether
or not it's likely safe, then run stats on 10,000 to confirm it. Which is to say, you'd wait until you managed a smaller P before announcing a conclusion. In the meantime, with a P of 0.05, you'd label it as a tentative conclusion, a likely theory.

It sounds like you have a clue about statistics. Do you know of a good forum to ask a fairly involved statistics question? I have a set of measured variables A-E which all tend to indicate the likelihood of X. The relationships are a bit complex and unknown, though, so I need help with how I should analyze the historical data in order to come up with parameters to use in the future for making "predictions" of X based on known values of A-E.

Thirteen hours ago you said it means "without god". That's what you said. You said that meaning has been the same for thousands of years. Now, you seem to have changed your mind. Time flies.

No. The phone I'm typing this on is not like the Slashdot server cluster. That's client-server, like most internet activity.

Slashdot.org and CNET.com are peers. Note they don't communicate, there's no peer-to-peer communication.

Sure some elements of the infrastructure involve peer communication.

> The Greek word transliterated as atheos means "without a god"

without God, lacking God. As opposed to "fighting against God". Which is precisely what I had said.

See also "immoral" versus amoral.
immoral: opposite to moral
amoral: without reference to morality.

In English, privative a is most often cognate to "un", through German.
Had the greek come to us via the normal route, we'd write the same word as "un-theist".
  athiest == untheist == ungod != antigod

"Atheist" groups used the word to describe what is in fact _against_ God, not merely _lacking_ God.
Antitheist would be a far more accurate word for those groups.

> That said, could you please explain why the Atheist League should be called the Antichrist league,
> as opposed to the Anti-Kali, Anti-Mohammedan, or Anti-Pastafarian league?
> Sure, there are tons of different sects that profess the divinity of Christ - Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, Mormons, members of the Unification Church, etc...

Because they LIKE the whole Pastafarian thing, they are PRO-pastafarian. :)

Seriously, though, you're right, anti-theist is more technically accurate, and I considered using that word.
However, on a practical level, the organizations I'm talking about spend their time being anti-Christian. You don't see "atheist" vs Hindu court cases in the news all the time. Recognizing that fact, antichrist is accurate for practical purposes and using the familiar term brings another level of frankness to the discussion. Whereas misusing the word "atheist" disguises their agenda, the word "antichrist" is the opposite - it puts their agenda it bold letters. So "antitheist" for technical accuracy, "atheist" for disguise, and "antichrist" to say it loud and proud.

> As soon as that line is crossed, I become, indeed, an anti-theist.

I appreciate your frankness. It's far more useful and interesting to have a conversation with someone who is clear about their beliefs and acknowledges them than someone who tries to wear a mask. So often we see, for example, people vehemently denying that they are socialists while they're quoting Trotsky.

> d. "This man has to die because he is an asshole" is a valid argument, "This man has to die because my Holy Book says the penalty for what he's done is death" is not.

How does this logic work for you:

The ancient wisdom says murder is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The same ancient wisdom says cheating on your wife is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The ancient wisdom says to reserve one day for rest and for family is a good idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The same ancient wisdom says treating your parents with respect is a good idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The same ancient wisdom says stealing is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The same ancient wisdom says perjury is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The same ancient wisdom says envy is a bad idea. Given the above, this one just might be true as well.

Whether or not that's CORRECT, it's certainly a more LOGICAL argument than "he's an asshole, so he should die", to use your example.

You listed off a bunch of different religions and denominations who have slightly different viewpoints around the central theme of a certain phenomenon. I have no doubt that each of them has come to some mistaken conclusions. Some of them have completely missed the point (Falwell?). It is interesting, though, that around the world they all put this phenomenon they call "God" or "Allah" at the center.

Much of what they say sounds like it's describing the same phenomenon I've directly experienced on more than one occasion. It reminds me of what might happen if you went around asking kindergartners to explain the common cold - what causes a cold, what the effects are, and the mechanism around the those effects. They'd come up with many entertaining explanations I'm sure. I bet many of them would include anthropomorphized "bugs". Most of them have experienced a cold, but they don't understand it. I suspect that the world's religions are full of people trying in vain to explain something many of them have experienced, but don't understand. They anthropomorphize what they don't understand in the same way that office workers do their computer, speaking, and thinking, as if the computer "wants" something because they have no understanding of the internal workings.

> Why should I change who I am just so I'm "acceptable" or "normal" to other people. I like me.

Do you still poop your diaper? If not, you've made changes, switched to something more effective than what you had been doing.

> > Understand the people you're working with, what they need, and provide that.

> Worrying about what people think ... then you are still going through puberty and all the pubescent insecurity that entails.

I've said things like that before. Every so often, I have to remind myself of the following:

If your customers think you suck, you do indeed suck. You may have provided them with a wonderful solution to problem X, but since you didn't listen and ask questions you didn't know their problem was Y. For the problem at hand, your solution sucks, and your poor communication caused it.

If you don't "worry about what people think" when it comes to your boss, you'll not know she thinks it's critically important that your application is very easy to use because the old farts in the C suite will be the primary users. Lack of communication = suck, for the purpose at hand.

If the people report to you think you suck, they'll leave, after having no interest in getting your projects done and probably bad mouthing you (accurately). Again, the results suck because you're only interested in what you think.

Being interested in what other people think, need, and want is the first requirement for a successful project. Not paying due attention to what other people think makes you an arrogant asshole.

I've never had someone "with different background and views" get upset when I've asked them how they're doing, or complimented them, or asked them for suggestions or ...

If you converse rather than proselytize I don't think you'll run into too many problems.

Ps - it's funny how the word "atheist" has been co-opted. The prefix "a" means "not applicable", or "not concerned with". Someone who is actually a-theitical is someone who is not interested in theology. The word has become most often used as a disguise by people who are very much interested, who are anti-God. If they described were honest enough to use accurate wording for their cause, the Atheist League would be called the Antichrist League. I wonder why they aren't honest, why they lie by labeling themselves as people not interested in the topic.

Grandpa was incorrect. If you wish to purchase pussy, $20 bills are the preferred form of payment. Though, I did notice some backpage ads listing 290 roses / hour.

Google's numbers based on 100,000 drives showed that specific model numbers are reliable or not, while brand name doesn't matter as much.
All manufacturers make bad models and good models.