Another conspiracy-provoking item about the Kennedy assassination in particular was just how badly the investigation was handled in a number of different ways. The most obvious way is the autopsy; people really couldn't believe that it was so clumsy (which it was), but in fact that clumsiness was perfectly normal. The public reaction led to real improvements in procedures, with the public benefit of having the opportunity to watch David Caruso [1] take off his sunglasses well into the twenty-first century.
1. star of a TV show about Crime Scene Investigation
Let's not ignore the extent to which a "community anti-poverty group" is radical to the wingers...
FungiFromYuggoth @109:Regarding a solution - it sounds to me like experts are better off writing free white papers on their own sites, which can be cited (or not) by Wikipedians.
In my opinion, that would be true in any case; mostly because referencing dynamic material is so annoying, but also because tone matters (and is usually destroyed by disjoint authorship).
TNH:How is it possible to be any more useless than that?
Now there is a contest to attract my interest!
- Braille driving maps?
- a perfectly secure computer?
- a black-ink-and-black-paper writing kit?
Well, maybe not; but I'm sure I'll come up with something, even if no one tries to explain the phrase "rhetorical question" to me.
Yes, Allen has conceded. I have to admit that I was afraid the Supreme Court was going to declare him the winner.
See, what I don't get (and if James D. MacDonald can't explain it to me, maybe nobody can) is why this isn't (more or less) exactly the advertisement that the Democrats are running.
In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting. (Rutherford, supposedly)
Which isn't really true, but "Planet-ness" is stamp collecting.
Lis Riba: "I find it interesting how different generations perceive Shakespeare."
Absolutely. I, for instance, am one generation older than when I first read Romeo and Juliet. I doubt I will shock anyone when I claim that it is a completely different story than it "used" to be.
[Stupid, whining teenagers...]
I'm really tired of "conservatives" claiming they hold moral high ground. This is as clear a case of a government decision on morality as there can possibly be, and my government is on the wrong side.
TNH said: The other thing I know is that if exit polls are unreliable, they ought to be comparably unreliable from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Their unreliability ought not vary with the voting machines used.
Both of those things may be correlated with other, less-than-obviously related factors. Low-income and minority voting equipment tends to be considerably older than average. The voters from such areas might also be less cooperative with pollsters than those in other areas.
If the correlation continues to hold with fancy, new (but suspect) voting technology, that would be much more of a smoking gun.
PNH: As I said on the panel at Boskone, I'm interested in thinking about the kind of compulsory licensing system used in the business of music performance.
It has worked well in music, but I'm not clear on how it would apply to publishing. What is the analogue of "performance" in the publishing world?
(Charlie Stross:)
Pet peeve: "pirates" and "piracy". It's a pretty extreme label to pin on a practice which is, on the small scale, about equal to shoplifting, and on a large commercial scale roughly equivalent to any other form of forgery (watches, scent, designer handbags, whatever). But it's an example of how the folks who pin the label on the donkey get to define the debate.
One of the things I have learned in fandom (probably from Patrick, although I no longer remember for sure) is that this use isn't new. The OED lists uses of the word "piracy" in this sense going back to the 18th century. So that label was pinned on this particular donkey long before anyone currently around got to participate in the argument.
But that point is only about who to blame for the debate-framing effect; I certainly agree with Charlie that violating copyright is not comparable to a crime of violence. If you need a metaphor (and I wouldn't be surprised if writers really do need one), forgery is far closer.
Teresa will be carrying a camera and taking pictures of as many of you as can be induced not to run.
Fine. I'll just have to take a picture of her, then...
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