tossaway322

Just looked up RICO on Wikipedia and it has indeed been used in some dioceses to prosecute the Roman Catholic Church for the pedophilia and coverup that has occurred within the Church's clergy! The relevant excerpt:

"Catholic sex abuse cases[edit]

In some jurisdictions, RICO suits have been filed against Catholic dioceses, using anti-racketeering laws to prosecute the highers-up in the episcopacy for abuses committed by those under their authority[citation needed]. E.g. a Cleveland grand jury cleared two bishops of racketeering charges, finding that their mishandling of sex abuse claims did not amount to criminal racketeering[citation needed]. Notably, a similar suit was not filed against Cardinal Bernard Law, then Archbishop/Emeritus of Boston, prior to his assignment to Vatican City.[11][12] In 2016, RICO charges were considered for cover-ups in Pennsylvania.[13]"

So RICO can be used for both criminal and civil charges?

Jeez, why not live w/o JavaScript?

We keep trying to accomodate a defunct language with insoluble problems. Isn't that an error in our thinking processes?

https://www.wired.com/2015/11/i-turned-off-javascript-for-a-...

How about trying to live without it?

The important parts of Amazon works w/o javascript enabled. Its quicker to boot.

Yet another reason to buy a M1911 instead of a Glock:

Range Instructor: "Mr. Johnson, where's your sidearm?

Mr. Johnson: "I'm sorry sir, the caterpillars ate it!"

But seriously folks, this may turn out to be a problem. I already have ants eating the plastic in my house's wiring.

"'Crazy' Ants, New Invasive Species, Destroys Electric Wiring, Unfazed By Conventional Pesticides":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/crazy-ants-invasive...

This situation is getting out of hand. We need worm- and insect-resistant plastics, obviously!

gjm11 says: "Is there some special bad thing that happens once 410ppm is reached, that's qualitatively different from 400ppm?"

Yes. Climate change proponents post articles such as the OP here and then cry "The sky is falling, the sky is falling and I can prove it! We're at the 410 PPM Threshold, just as we predicted!"

A pension plan is a contract between the municipality and its employees. Like most contracts, you either hold to it or you can be sued, at the least. Expecting to be able to weasel out of paying years later, after employees have retired is certainly a violation of civil law, if not criminal.

The retired employees completed their part of the contract and payment is due in full. They gave up higher levels of income to work at jobs where the pension is guaranteed (cities pay less than private firms, on average). To change the rules once employees have retired and without compensation will result in lawsuits and criminal prosecution, as it should.

WkndTriathlete says: "...it's pretty unrealistic to expect current taxpayers to pay for unrealistic and underfunded plans."

Sorry, that's what taxes are for. And what’s the problem with paying taxes anyway? To live in a city you pay city rates. Paying taxes on a well-managed city budget is one of the best ways to maintain and ensure that your property values increase. But for God’s sake, pay attention to politics and hold leaders accountable!

If you don’t want to pay taxes, then become a “Mountain Man” and move to Montana. Live on a mountaintop w/o roads, sewer, water, hospitals, stores, and cellphones. Or maybe you want your city to go the way of Detroit? You can

– kill your property values,

– call 911 and get nothing, not even a dial tone,

– Burn your own trash,

– Run your own septic system,

– Run your own electric generator,

– Buy a satellite cellphone (no other option – no other service available),

– Drive to another city once a month to stock up on flour, sugar, beans and batteries.

Speaking for the municipal aspect: the municipal voters voted for these measures and certainly voted for the mayors and city councilmen who brought these measures into place. Then the cities, under the same politicians, failed to fully fund the pensions they had set up (they are normally required to fund pensions, each year, to a significant level, but the cities postponed the funding).

Years pass and then the cities lament, crying that these pension funds are now undue "public commitments on the back of the taxpayer", such as aswanson says above. IOW cities are trying to screw retirees out of their pensions.

For example, at this very moment Houston, in the name of "Pension Reform", is trying to coax the state to pass a law that would cut the pension of widows and widowers in half!

And that's just part of the cutbacks Houston is asking.

This is a shame. Next the FBI will be bringing charges based upon the use of crystal balls, hair samples, spirit photography, and talking goats. All scientifically validated by the NBS and DOD undoubtedly.

The article unfortunately does not address the question of whether current mathematical analysis is an appropriate framework for a description of space/time. We are, in the end, dealing with elements "smaller than" (if that's the right phrase!) the Planck length. Of course, you can choose to ignore that and use what's already been provided, but to do so is "whistling past the graveyard". This has ramifications for all of string theory, quantum gravity et al.

Confirmation of insanity, I would say.

heshex says:>"I don't think that's a problem that is solvable with technology."

Why not, for example, a drug that suppresses appetite? We have many already. Technology has an endless supply of solutions.

gph says:>"... the problem of China not respecting copyright or any type of intellectual property. "

And, after thirty years' trying, mainland Chinese still make very low-quality hand tools and have severely damaged Western suppliers of the same.

"Give me a good screwdriver and a place to stand - I will move the Earth." - Archimedes322

P.S. Why the downvote? Compare the quality of USA-, European- and Chinese-made (except Taiwanese, which are often exquisite) hand tools. The mainland Chinese don't measure up to a 1920's standards of manufacture in the West.

Ma notwithstanding, history shows that trade does not prevent war (and that the idea that it does springs from unbridled optimism about the nature of man). This has been much discussed:

"Can Free Trade Really Prevent War?": https://mises.org/library/can-free-trade-really-prevent-war

"Trade Can Bring War": http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/01/09/review-tra...

"Terror filter."

This.

Why the broadspread interest in a technology so unpredictable, whose payoff is so little and that requires so much investment in hardware/developer time? Wouldn't you be better off learning tools you can understand and that can be used to build reliable and predictable programs?

Why not warn graduate students:

"You'll be working on this project for about two years. We don't know what to tell you about how to solve the problems involved. We don't have any good general guidelines; this field is changing all the time; nobody knows how these things work except in very broad terms (there is no explanatory power). Sometimes it takes years to find something useful. Luck is the key - if you're unlucky, you're screwed."

"Nothing useful will come of your work when you're done. At completion you'll be dumber than when you started, because you will not have learned anything useful except possibly 'patience', a trait not valued in our field and sometimes viewed as equivalent to 'stupidity' or 'stubbornness'. You will, as a result of working with deep learning/NN, forget that sometimes you must cut your losses and quit exploring a particular solution path. At the end, you _may_ get a Master's degree, if you can show you made a good effort or even some progress. Three months after graduation, everything you have done will be obsolete and no firm will hire you: those familiar with NN because your knowledge is obsolete; those not in NN because they see no particular value in your training."

The cheat sheet has at least one error. Using set notation, A="long hair", and B="woman", then the phrase

"not long hair and not woman"

does not correspond to the expression

P(complement(A intersect B))

shown on the cheat sheet.

It instead corresponds to

P(complement(A) intersect complement(B))

Which is equivalent to

P(complement(A union B))

Why limit yourself to a "kill box" when there are so many useful and charming patterns available: the "kill banana" ("Oops! Slipped!"), the "kill cross"(reserved for non-Christians) and my favorite, the "kill doily"(for the most vile of the unfaithful, cake-haters)?

I can almost see the UI for the "kill design" now: pre-defined patterns + GUI etch-a-sketch (for personalized kill pattern design), a kill pattern library, a website discussing design principles and associated blog, twitter feed ("Killing you softly NOW!"). It will be all the rage.

+10 on the dental floss. I've been trying to find a way to buy (the remainder of) a lifetime's supply in case of thermonuclear war.

Once out of floss, I can either pull my teeth out (Well, OK, every _other_ tooth) or kill myself. Life w/o floss is unimaginable.

Some places like men's stall 3 in the 24 Hour Fitness Super Sport Gym in the Village, Houston, Texas!8-((

aryehof asks>"Has AI advanced from the 1990s?"

No.

But lots of progress in pattern recognition & classification. So whatever AI exists can see better, hear better, speak better.

Unfortunately nothing remotely approaching the intelligence of a cat or dog, much less a human being, has appeared except in very limited domains.