champu

Based on history, it would appear it would have been dismissed. Okay, so if he had been let off the hook by the tribunal with the argument he gave, then how the hell would the provincial government ever silence anyone's section 13 violation, fine them, and award damages as provided in the CHRA without exposing the whole process as capricious?

He was never let off the hook by the tribunal, as you state. The complainant withdrew the complaint. There was never an actual hearing, nor a ruling. Just a lot of bombastic speaking. He really should get a talk show on Fox. So given that... ...what would have been the likely outcome had the complainant NOT withdrawn the complaint? You do realize that curtailing free speech at the whim of the offended is actually worse than what I was originally arguing against, do you not?

because they are two different things. Hate speech falls under the criminal code (federal). The human rights tribunal in the Levant "case" is a provincial body, which has absolutely nothing to do with the federal criminal code and any case law associated with it. read the following link: http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/publications/report_moon_rapport/page2-en.asp Okay, so it's clear the words I used stumbled upon a division of authority over "federal hate speech" and "provincial offensive speech" that I wasn't aware of. I'm sorry, it was not my intention to suggest that decisions made at a lower level should define the case law for decisions at a higher level. So, setting aside the federal enforcement for a moment... I'll ask my question for a third time (slightly rephrased) If he was let off the hook by the tribunal with that argument then how the hell is the provincial government ever going to silence anyone's "hate speech" section 13 violation, fine them, and award damages as provided in the CHRA without exposing the whole process as capricious?

Nope. And it was hardly an inquisition. He was invited to attend the meeting with the Human Rights Commission. There was a complaint that was filed, he responded to the complaint and the matter was dropped. It's just that he is such a fucking douche bag, he had the make the biggest deal out of the situation that he could. Okay, so back to my original question... If he was let of the hook with that argument then how the hell is the government ever going to silence anyone's "hate speech" without exposing the whole process as capricious?

There was never a case. (Strong hint, video cameras are not allowed in Canadian court rooms) Sorry, does the Levant inquisition set any kind of precedent in Canada?

I have. I agree with much of what he says. Nothing in Canadian law has prevented him from doing exactly what he did. Does the Levant case set any kind of precedent in Canada? When asked about his intentions he told the woman that for the purposes of his case she should just assume his intentions were whatever she found most offensive. If he was let of the hook with that argument then how the hell is the government ever going to silence anyone's "hate speech" without exposing the whole process as capricious?

I like this guy's approach. If you don't have access to youtube: 1) Go to where the WBC protests 2) Set up fundraising station across the street 3) Donate all proceeds to AIDS foundations and lgbt activism groups under WBC's name 4) Send community thank you cards to the Phelps for motivating people to contribute

That website design really takes me back to 1996. It's also interesting to me that the author used a $50 program to create that.

Prop 17 actually made me laugh when I first read about it. It reminds me of "advertised prices reflect cash discount" and the argument that technically that's not the same as charging a fee to use a credit card.

Depends on what the mass of Higgs ends up being (won't know until it's observed) and how many events you can generate. As I understand it, the Tevatron in Chicago could observe a Higgs Boson, but it's much less likely due to the lower energy levels. http://pdg.lbl.gov/2006/reviews/higgs_s055.pdf

Certain aspects of the military budget could be reduced significantly without adversely affecting capability. The strategic nuclear arsenal is one example. What it will take is for congress to give the pentagon a goal and then for congress to actually listen to the pentagon when they come back with cost cutting ideas. Congresspersons suddenly and completely forget what they were trying to accomplish the instant their constituency is threatened. This attention deficit disorder is often overlooked and is a larger part of the problem than either the "military" or "industry" aspects of the military-industrial complex. I do agree with you, however, that the trades presented about, "just one less tank and we could power all the koala orphanages in the world for a week" are asinine. It makes no sense to set out to reduce spending only to earmark every dollar saved for something else. Take a look at the budget and tell me how quickly, say, $10B saved in military spending (rough figure for the cancellation of a medium to large program) would be swallowed up elsewhere and forgotten.

What technologies, military armament technologies? No.

"SO HEY, HOW ABOUT THAT STRATEGIC ARMS TREATY?" Obama has done a pretty good job of emphasizing the separate issues of and strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan, but when I see the two separated only by a forward slash it worries me a bit. I think a little more pragmatism is in order as much as people would like to "Stick it to W" by pulling out of Afghanistan. I'm also reluctant to accept the whole of the cold war as being "idiocy", if that's what you're implying. The technologies developed in the name of "beating those damn commies" really have been amazing.

What you're observing when rotating wheels appear to be standing still, moving backwards, or moving forwards at the "wrong" speed is called temporal aliasing. When a repeating pattern (such as the rotating spokes of a wheel) is observed as sequential snapshots* it's possible for the time between snapshots to "sync up" with the time it takes the pattern to repeat. When this happens the wheel will appear to stand still. If you're not quite synced up one way or the other it will appear to rotate slowly forwards or backwards. The reason the wheel appears to spin one way, then stop, then the other, then stop, etc. as the vehicle speeds up or slows down has to do with how many orientations of the wheel appear the same or in other words, how many spokes the wheel has. The more spokes, the greater the number of times this back and forth dance will happen. The "oscillating" and "not oscillating" states described in the article are similar to the wheel situation in that they are an artifact of a shortcoming of the observer, but not the same shortcoming. If you simply imaged the rotating wheel at a faster frame rate you would see that it was spinning all along. With the metallic strip, it is actually in a superposition (fancy word for "a mix") of both states simultaneously. * Note: You'll notice when you watch video or film of a car driving the effect is much more pronounced. This is because video and film have lower hysteresis than your optic nerve (they "reset" more completely between each observation) and they also have a fixed frame rate (your eyes don't make observations at exactly the same interval in all situations.)

buy the oil and do it yourself. You must have voted for Nader.

At least in windows they do you the courtesy giving you a clean crisp BSOD, as if despite the failure the programmer actually had some semblance of control over the situation. A kernel that just throws up all over whatever you were doing comes with a tragic fall from blissful innocence, "You... you mean it doesn't just work?"

Really? If you have an argument to make, please do, I will be glad to respond. I think you assume too much about "all groups that dislike this HC" For example, 45 minutes ago you wrote: You should be careful, because someone you might know just told me that if you dislike the bill then Ronald Reagan is automatically your hero, you love huge debt, all tax breaks, and you've had it your way for a very long time.

Really?

There is a lecture by Steve Blank regarding the history of silicon valley and the role it played in the development of the U2 that's interesting as well. Although definitely not "U2-centric" it's interesting to see the timelines cross. /edited because I've been doing so much writing today that I apparently can't keep articles straight on my first try.

I actually went through most of it back in the November time frame. Most of the main points under discussion are pretty in-your-face. The long and heavily legalese nature of it is because the bill makes numerous changes to the tax code to implement everything. Plus, I think Fox in Socks has more words per page than this bill does. It takes them several pages just to say that employers that subsidise health care have to start reporting the value on W-2s.

Well, two people are disrupting class and need to sit in opposite corners of the room. Lucky... mnealtx... do either of you feel like you're doing anything in this thread besides mindless bickering?

Agreed: The morale of the story: politics, politicians, and pundits are fickle. The messages don't always flip verbatim when parties change power, but either "winged" side will always say whatever is self-serving that day. The one that's the most symmetric is "suck it, your guys had your chance, and what you're complaining about is the last guys fault anyway!" met by "forget the last guy, by NOW your guy should have his shit together, but he's destroying the country!" But no matter what, everyone is either a lunatic war-monger that wants a gigantic unaffordable military with flying solid gold fire breathing pro-life robot dragons or they are a hippie communist who won't rest until the government is bankrupt from buying everyone personal solar-powered gay unicorns that shoot healing rainbows.

A worthwhile read on the subject (as well as on the A-12 and F-117) is Ben Rich's memoir entitled Skunk Works (ISBN 0316743003)

...which is my point. And nobody does huge, broken, stubborn, and unsustainable quite like the US federal government.

The last three words of that sentence are really my only concern with the current healthcare legislation, but it's a fairly big one. Otherwise, day-to-day and month-to-month it's passage shouldn't have a significant effect on me. One of the first things people always seem to bring up when someone raises a concern about social program spending is military spending (I guess for some people it's a requirement that you have to be blindly and adamantly for at least one or the other.) Well, and I've said this before, I agree the military needs serious fat trimmed out of it. Unfortunately, doing so is made difficult because every project seems to be some loud and obnoxious person's pet project. If, some stretch down the road, this healthcare program grows untenable, how likely is it to receive appropriate revisions to get it back under control?