It looks like they're holding the signs because otherwise you'd think they were just more homeless. My favorite line from the article on UCB's website:
About 300 employees did not report to work, yet it is unknown how many of them
were participating in the strike.
Gotta love unions. From the article it doesn't sound like anybody has noticed their absense because many workers and custodial staff are not striking.
Today I didn't eat breakfast or lunch and then went to sleep and eventually got dinner around 7pm. When I finally left to go eat my weight had dropped all the way to 139.6lbs, the lowest I've seen it since I started tracking.The measure, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, is the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years. It includes a divisive element that Mr. Bush had deemed essential: legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program he approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Obama Statement on FISAWhat about the "lessor of two evils", libertarian candidate Bob Barr? He doesn't look [politically, not just the mustache] that great either, he supported the Patriot Act, authored the Defense of Marriage Act, and supported the Iraq war. And he has at least one skeleton in his closet.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Printable
Format
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Michael Ortiz, 202 228
5566
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today released the following statement on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Earlier today, Senator Obama voted in favor of the Dodd-Feingold amendment to repeal retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies (S. Amdt. 3907). He also supported other amendments to improve the bill, including the Feingold-Webb-Tester amendment to protect Americans from unwarranted surveillance (S. Amdt. 3979), and the Feingold amendment to protect Americans from the bulk collection of communications (S. Amdt. 3912). "I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty. There is no reason why telephone companies should be given blanket immunity to cover violations of the rights of the American people - we must reaffirm that no one in this country is above the law. "We can give our intelligence and law enforcement community the powers they need to track down and take out terrorists without undermining our commitment to the rule of law, or our basic rights and liberties. That is why I am proud to cosponsor several amendments that protect our privacy while making sure we have the power to track down and take out terrorists. "This Administration continues to use a politics of fear to advance a political agenda. It is time for this politics of fear to end. We are trying to protect the American people, not special interests like the telecommunications industry. We are trying to ensure that we don't sacrifice our liberty in pursuit of security, and it is past time for the Administration to join us in that effort."
They need to chill out. I've heard dog is actually decent- and it's not like foreigners can read the menu anyway."Beijing wants dogs off menu during Olympics"
"China cracks down on cars for Olympics"
"China fund managers asked to stay for Games" (to "ensure stock market stability")
"China shoots dead five ‘holy war’ militants" (who "were a pressing threat to next month's Olympic Games")
"Beijing unrepentant over Olympic motto"
"Beijing issues Olympics clapping guide"And from NY Times: "No Spitting on the Road to Olympic Glory"
The most obvious fact about the history of the universe is the growth of entropy from the early times to the late times.Did the author really not realize the omelet was a "simple explanation of entropy"?
The fact that you can turn eggs into omelets but not vice versa is a thing we know from our kitchens.
You don't need to spend millions of dollars on telescopes to discover it.
Can you give me a simple explanation of entropy?
One way of explaining entropy is to say it's the number of ways you can rearrange the constituents of a system so that you don't notice the change macroscopically.
If you mix milk into a cup of coffee, the more mixing that occurs, the more disordered the milk molecules become and the more entropy builds.
If all the milk was somehow separated from the coffee, that would be low entropy.
Are you saying that our universe came from some other universe?I don't think that's what he's saying at all.
Right. It came from a bigger space-time that we don't observe. Our universe came from a tiny little bit of a larger high-entropy space.
I'm not saying this is true; I'm saying this is an idea worth thinking about.
You're saying that in some universes there could be a person like you drinking coffee, but out of a blue cup rather than a red one.
Our experience of time depends upon the growth of entropy. You can't imagine a person looking around and saying, "Time is flowing in the wrong direction," because your sense of time is due to entropy increasing. . . . This feeling that we're moving through time has to do with the fact that as we live, we feed on entropy. . . . Time exists without entropy, but entropy is what gives time its special character.Unfortunately the author is not able to carry the topic any deeper. Scientific American fortunately goes into more detail. If anyone would like to discuss these ideas further, leave a comment.
Entropy gives time its appearance of forward motion?
Yeah, its directionality. The distinction between past and future. If you're floating in outer space, in a spacesuit, there would be no difference between one direction and another. However, nowhere in the universe would you confuse yesterday and tomorrow. That's all because of entropy, and that's the arrow of time.
