I'm more inclined to believe this narrow view of politics that anything else.

People do vote on narrow issues. When their union is saying that party X will prevent their job from being outsourced, the choice is clear. When party Y offers generous handouts to a particular constituency they lap it up. Last election here in Australia, a coworker told me she voted singlehandedly for a particular party because they provided more generous maternity benefits. When it comes down to it, people have neither the time, effort or often the desire to analyse and determine the utilitarian option. Cynical sure, but just about everything from my experiences has supported this view.

Capitalism as a system, is built on incentives. Correctly calibrated with the right regulatory adjustments to prevent malfeasants like pollution, moral hazard and other negative externalities, it works incredibly well.

I think the same thing should apply to politics. For all intents and purposes that's what (a representational) democracy is grounded in anyway. Elected officials act in the interest of their constituents because that's what gets them elected. When, as in the US, campaign contributions (as a result of the almost limitless campaign financing rules) play such an important role, incentives are skewed. Curtis seems to draw the distorted view that adapting politics to a more capitalist based system implies surrendering its authority wholly to private companies when this is simply not a fair representation of game theory which on its pure theory alone implies or suggests nothing of the sort.

I really like Curtis's work, it often provides a very well thought out philosophy grounded in reason but I think he tends to oversimplify and draw swathes in describing complex issues.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^Zonbie:
Brings a whole new meaning to the term "Military Porn"

That's a term I've never heard.


"Military porn" is footage of really cool military gear like tanks and A10 Warthogs and the p173 Self-correcting .50 calibre sniper bullet etc etc. I just read it for the articles.

http://213.251.145.96/cable/2007/12/07PARIS4723.html

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 004723

USTR FOR SUSAN SCHWAB
DEPARTMENT FOR E - REUBEN JEFFERY AND EB - DAN SULLIVAN
FROM AMBASSADOR STAPLETON

SUBJECT: FRANCE AND THE WTO AG BIOTECH CASE

¶1. (C) Summary: Mission Paris recommends that that the USG reinforce
our negotiating position with the EU on agricultural biotechnology by
publishing a retaliation list when the extend "Reasonable Time
Period" expires. In our view, Europe is moving backwards not
forwards on this issue with France playing a leading role, along with
Austria, Italy and even the Commission. In France, the "Grenelle"
environment process is being implemented to circumvent science-based
decisions in favor of an assessment of the "common interest."
Combined with the precautionary principle, this is a precedent with
implications far beyond MON-810 BT corn cultivation. Moving to
retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to
EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices.
In fact, the pro-biotech side in France -- including within the farm
union -- have told us retaliation is the only way to begin to begin
to turn this issue in France. End Summary.

¶2. (C) This is not just a bilateral concern. France will play a
leading role in renewed European consideration of the acceptance of
agricultural biotechnology and its approach toward environmental
regulation more generally. France expects to lead EU member states
on this issue during the Slovene presidency beginning in January and
through its own Presidency in the second half of the year. Our
contacts have made clear that they will seek to expand French
national policy to a EU-wide level and they believe that they are in
the vanguard of European public opinion in turning back GMO's. They
have noted that the member states have been unwilling to support the
Commission on sanctioning Austria's illegal national ban. The GOF
sees the ten year review of the Commission's authorization of MON 810
as a key opportunity and a review of the EFSA process to take into
account societal preferences as another (reftels).

¶3. (C) One of the key outcomes of the "Grenelle" was the decision to
suspend MON 810 cultivation in France. Just as damaging is the GOF's
apparent recommitment to the "precautionary principle." Sarkozy
publicly rejected a recommendation of the Attali Commission (to
review France's competitiveness) to move away from this principle,
which was added to the French constitution under Chirac.

¶4. (C) France's new "High Authority" on agricultural biotech is
designed to roll back established science-based decision making. The
recently formed authority is divided into two colleges, a scientific
college and a second group including civil society and social
scientists to assess the "common interest" of France. The
authority's first task is to review MON 810. In the meantime,
however, the draft biotech law submitted to the National Assembly and
the Senate for urgent consideration, could make any biotech planting
impossible in practical terms. The law would make farmers and seed
companies legally liable for pollen drift and sets the stage for
inordinately large cropping distances. The publication of a registry
identifying cultivation of GMOs at the parcel level may be the most
significant measure given the propensity for activists to destroy GMO
crops in the field.

¶5. (C) Both the GOF and the Commission have suggested that their
respective actions should not alarm us since they are only
cultivation rather than import bans. We see the cultivation ban as a
first step, at least by anti-GMO advocates, who will move next to ban
or further restrict imports. (The environment minister's top aide
told us that people have a right not to buy meat raised on biotech
feed, even though she acknowledged there was no possible scientific
basis for a feed based distinction.) Further, we should not be
prepared to cede on cultivation because of our considerable planting
seed business in Europe and because farmers, once they have had
experience with biotech, become its staunchest supporters.

¶6. Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target
retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a
collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the
worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious and
must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an
early victory.

¶7. (C) President Sarkozy noted in his address in Washington to the
Joint Session of Congress that France and the United States are
"allies but not aligned." Our cooperation with France on a range of
issues should continue alongside our engagement with France and the
EU on ag biotech (and the next generation of environmental related
trade concerns.) We can manage both at the same time and should not
let one set of priorities detract from the other.

PARIS 00004723 002 OF 002



Stapleton

At a guess I would put it down to this .

one of the main ways we know we are going left or right when blind folded and with no other stimuli would be by using inner ear ,

the inner ear probably lacks a calibration centre point or awareness of when it is in a central aligned posistoin and relies on the eyes or other senses for it to be calibrated as its centre point.

what happens is the inner ear sensing changes due to general movement or variations in persons leaning , vibrations or lateral Gs. however because it has no resting point or definitive centre the person percives it that they need to compensate and as a result ends up moving arounf in cercals ,

the cercals get tighter and tighter as the persons perception of the inner ear remains off and they keep turning extra to compensate.

so yes, yes, yes this is wrong, this is evil, police state, fascism, violation of civil liberties, waste of time and money, etc etc etc. yes, i agree.

but as far the nudey scanners go; i don't like them for all the reason above. but it's not really being seen gray-blurry-naked by a trumped up security guard that bothers me so much. I did CT scans for 8 years, night after night, and the first image taken in a CT scan is called a "scout" or a "topograph" (so we can line up where we will start and end the actual scan), and it's essentially the same image these machines will produce, a low dose backscatter image. There is nothing at all arousing or interesting about these blurs of outlines of naked-under-their-clothes bodies. Sure, the first one you ever see may be fascinating, but not the 300th. I am almost certain that all they're looking at after the first hundred bodies they scan are oddly shaped or shiny metal objects. grey blurry people just aren't that interesting in aggregate.


oh also, they thought CT scanners were only emitting a fraction of the radiation that they actually emit until just a few years ago.. CT scanners are run/maintained/calibrated by people who went to college (for several years) specifically to learn essentially nothing but how to run machines that emit radiation and shoot it at peoples body to take an image. and all the ethics/technology/troubleshooting/caution/physics/risks/common sense that goes along with it. .... they are not run/maintained/calibrated by security guards.

also, how much training are the various people looking at these devices going to be given in how to recognize the hundreds of different things (sometimes extrememly sensitive and embarrassing things) people can have implanted in their bodies. it took me several years of experience before i got very skilled in judging things like how close to the surface of the skin is given artifact, is this inside their bodies or out of the body, wtf is this thing and why the fuck it inside that mans balls/ladies vagina....etc etc. i feel like a lot of people are going to be subjected to humiliating strip searches because the people inspecting these images don't have a medical education and are looking for danger.

Apparently something in the singulated dialstyc combobulator had too much side fumbling. This could have been prevented with the use of a proper cardinal grammeter calibration prior to enabling the panametric fam. I'd suggest using a higher quality retro-encabulator.

I stopped this after two minutes because it's just pseudoscience. I'm not saying you can't do a proper bio-mechanical analysis of running, but I'm saying this video has no clue what it's doing.

First issue: They're trying to measure real world distances in image space without proper camera calibration.

Second issue: Someone bouncing up and down by four inches does NOT equal miles of vertical climbing. Bouncing, in fact, requires NO energy other than what is lost to friction. There's a question of just how efficiently the human skeletal system can rebound, but this video isn't getting in to that. They simply assume that an up and down motion is using a lot of energy. Physics 1 would teach you how wrong this is.

They give a number later that one runner is doing 2.5 times as much work as another. Clearly B.S. Ok I'm done trying to do these guys work for them. Put the runners on a treadmill with a motion capture system and oxygen meters if you want to do this properly.

V2.0 military edition will have miniature miniature .22 calibre stamp mini guns

V2.0 military edition will have miniature miniature .22 calibre stamp mini guns

The I assume the device simply reads EEG , due to everyone's minds been different you cannot cearly extrapolate much precise data or causality from what happens.

it depends how the EEG reader is calibrated as well , as eeg can measure multiple degrees of brain activity i asume this is calibrated to brain inactivity rather than a specific typ of brain activity/brain signature.


I think it would be intresting to use contrast die and have people play games whalst in a CT scanner to get procise data on how peoples brains work when playing games , this has been done with f1 drivers or people that are good at specifc activities and you can normaly see that people that are better at acitvities have increased blood flow to specifc parts of the brain , for reactive typ games people that tend to be good are people that can have the natural instinkt part of the brain do the working out.

>> ^BoneRemake:

"to me end result looked a bit naff.
I mean bit of an arse to make but seems a bit tacky I guess you are just gona eat it and its for a buffet table its not really meant to be high art.
this is like the food equivalent of them space spray painted images. only at least this is edible. "
as seen on http://videosift.com/video/Watermelon-carving
Seems westy is of the high art society calibre.


well thing is the news is drawing atention to this guy but ignoring thousends of other people with just as valid artistic talent or ablity but are maby operating within a more traditoinal way ,

allso i wouldnt have anny issue with what this guy is doing it just seems to me its lacking emgination , if u going to draw on dusty car windows im sure with a bit of thought he can think of some way to use the dust or the car that realy makes something specail with the images. as it is what he is doing is not that difrent from scraping one of them charcholl images , and he is not doing a very good job of it considering he is just coppying a photo.

"to me end result looked a bit naff.

I mean bit of an arse to make but seems a bit tacky I guess you are just gona eat it and its for a buffet table its not really meant to be high art.

this is like the food equivalent of them space spray painted images. only at least this is edible. "

as seen on http://videosift.com/video/Watermelon-carving

Seems westy is of the high art society calibre.

@blankfist, Netflix predicts 3 stars from me, so my expectations have been appropriately calibrated. I'm guessing I'll like it more than that, because I have a soft spot in my heart for post-apocalyptica, and like a lot of the same things that you and dag like.

His defense of hide the decline is pathetic. The entire thing about Jones and Mann's work is the matching of proxy data like tree rings to the measured temperature record. I can't find the full text of the email anywhere, but if the quote is referring to hiding a decline in temperature reconstructions from tree-rings, then it clearly is a major problem. The reason being that Jones and Mann's most famous contribution to climate study is the hockey stick graph, showing that based on proxy data, like TREE RINGS, the temperatures from 1000 through 1900 show stable temperatures, and from 1900 through to today temperature increasing like never before in the last one thousand years.

Wait you'll say, if that was true it should've been evident in the original study for all to see. The answer is that it in fact is. If you go look at the studies by Jones and Mann on their hockey stick graph, their appendix will link you to graphs of the raw proxy data, including tree rings, that they used. It is plain to see that the proxy data does not change AT ALL after 1900, yet somehow the reconstruction that is made with that data spikes up like mad at that point. The paper and email reference in essence the same thing, the use of the measured temperature record to calibrate select years of the proxy data to get a better result. It's not without reason that there has been a lot of questioning of the statistical methods used to create their reconstruction. In 10 years time this will be a foot note.

Hate to say it, but I'd side with the casino on this one. The machine was calibrated so that the highest payout is $99k. It flipped a nugget and said the dude won $166mil. I'd say that was a pretty substantial malfunction. If, for example, it rolled out $95k and they pulled a "oh, it's broke...it should never do that...", I'd say the outrage would be justifiable.

And if I recall correctly, "malfunction voids all pays and plays" is pretty much the law everywhere that gaming for profit equipment is concerned. Quick google search shows a few cases where it was brought up under similar circumstances. I really feel for anyone in that situation, staring down some huge winnings when the machine freaks out. But in reading some of those cases, it's pretty obvious that the machine choked and the the "win" was false.