Cupertino95014

I don't see what this contributes. Written laws are immutable in the common sense of the word. That's what "legal certainty" means as an ideal: citizens can know what they'll be punished for. If it's unclear talk to your lawyer.

> The constitution is not a immutable document

Actually, yes it is. You can amend it, but you can't edit it.

Secondly, there's a body of legal scholarship that your "different judge" has to master. It's not just a matter of policy preference.

There are lots of authors and journalists who either go there, or interview people who escaped. I think we learn a lot more from them than we would by taking a heavily curated tour of pre-screened sites.

> you would discover a lot of things

actually, no I wouldn't, because when a Westerner goes to NK, he or she is strictly controlled as to what they can see. In particular, no citizen will talk unguardedly to you because of their intense fear of the police.

If you think that's not true, why don't you tell us about your trip there (you did take one, didn't you?)

> You should visit countries before you trash them.

I haven't visited North Korea either. That shouldn't stop anyone from opining on it.

I went to one little company where they had a unisex bathroom. This was not for gender equality -- it was because they had so few women that they didn't think it worthwhile to build a bathroom for them.

True, although in my experience a long time ago, IBM was so extraordinarily considerate that I almost went to work there! They even gave me cash at the end of the interview, so I didn't have to file an expense report (unlike every other place).

The thing to always remember is: the way they treat you at the interview is the best they will EVER treat you.

Do they ask if you need water, coffee, etc.? Do they give you time to use the bathroom? Do they keep you waiting excessively? Do they listen to your answers and look you in the eye, or do they keep staring at the resume as if they've never seen it before?

What they say is certainly interesting, but what they do is more so.

certainly not the intended parsing.

Correct. The UK and France put together were as exhausted as Germany. And "exhaustion" can't be measured just in body counts. Recall that France had some very serious mutinies around the time of the battle of Verdun.

The "lessons of Versailles" is a dumb phrase. Germany only asked for an Armistice "on the basis of the 14 Points" although Wilson didn't manage to pull that off over England and France's objections.

So we have two counterfactuals, neither of which can be settled:

1) Wilson doesn't propound his 14 Points. Perhaps he loses the election of 1912.

2) He does and the Armistice happens as it actually did, but the Paris Peace Conference declares that the Allies are going to occupy Germany and reshape its government, or maybe Germany is to be dismembered.

It's #2 that this phrase seems to imply. I'd claim that if that happens, no peace treaty is signed at all, similar to the way that the Korean War is technically still going on. The Allies would not have invaded Germany. Russia was already out of the war.

The US had lost 116,000 dead. They were hardly raring to go.

The British and French were equally exhausted. Their casualties combined were about the same as Germany's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties

You're right that Germany was whipped, but the persistence of the "stab in the back" theory in the 20's and 30's demonstrated that they hadn't quite internalized that. After all, they hadn't been invaded, and "news" back then was so heavily censored that the Germans didn't all know the real situation.

Genuinely curious here: who was doing horizontal drilling before fracking, and what were they doing with it?

"True communism has never been tried."

Maybe look at WHY government-built housing is always so lousy. Saying "We need to change the whole system" is just a cop-out.

OK, that was a reasonable reading of "he can get complete systems with some deformities/problems to the Soviets and then have them reverse engineer the system while correcting/fixing the problem parts/deformities"

All he could possibly know is "this thing may be sabotaged." I suppose that is some help to the Soviets.

> The First World War did not arise from a vacuum, it was merely the accumulated atrocities of a century of Imperial expansion, turned inward in a final paroxysm of violence as the Great Power system of the 19th century imploded under the weight of its own contradictions.

A stupid and historically ignorant thing to say. The "Great Power system" avoided a general war for 100 years, but every system needs some maintenance when conditions change. "Germany going from a collection of principalities to the most powerful nation in Europe" was one of those conditions. The Ottoman Empire decaying was another.

It was not "the accumulated atrocities of a century of Imperial expansion" that brought on the Great War.

> have them reverse engineer the system while correcting/fixing the problem parts/deformities

So you're assuming the Austrian actually knows what the US deformed? Why would they tell him?

Now do the KGB.

Did you also say that compulsion is OK, if Harlem River House-level housing is available?

A little research shows this to be a New Deal project that doesn't seem particularly replicable or sustainable:

https://www.courthousenews.com/harlem-public-housing-tenants...

https://pix11.com/news/3-big-problems-plague-harlem-river-ho...

Really? Name some of your ideal cities. We'll check and see what their policies are for sleeping on the streets.

So if they do force people to move on, despite this "affordable and available" housing, that pretty well destroys your argument, doesn't it? Because all compulsion is bad, as you said.

So you're saying "let's put them in jail?"

All you people trashing shelters as they exist:

is there ANY definition of "housing" under which you'd be willing to compel homeless people to take it, under penalty of fines & jail? Please tell us.

So here's a question for you: is there ANY definition of "housing" under which you'd be willing to compel homeless people to take it, under penalty of fines & jail? Please tell us.

> I've learned that you sort of have to sneak up new information to them without making them feel challenged by a non-expert

that might apply to you (depending on your background), but Warren had some serious credentials. Doctors are supposed to stay current on work like his.

Thanks. I've been to Sweden and Italy, and they definitely do not follow stereotypes. Swedes, especially, are not all or even mostly blond & blue-eyed.

I don't think you've ever studied molbio.

Whether and when a gene gets expressed is everything. The non-coding part of the DNA quite often plays a role in that, as do many other factors.

I can't argue, not having been there. Still, I wonder if anyone here has?

Honest, no-agenda question: if you go to East Africa where homo sapiens originated, there is (reportedly) much more genetic diversity than in the rest of the world. I haven't been there, myself.

So forgetting scientific studies for the moment: if you just walk around in a city, is that apparent to you? Do you think, "Wow, there sure are a lot of different types of people here?"

.. and then, of course, there's "able to visualize an object when rotated in three dimensions."

I think the percentage of people who can't do that is way higher than 1%. I'm not great at it myself.

You could imagine a top-secret Japanese effort to infiltrate the US and kidnap a Navajo person. Might not work, of course, but there are a lot of Navajos.

But even that wouldn't have worked.

What I like about the code talkers is: the Japanese knew it was Navajo. But even that wasn't enough, because they used particular code words, so even if you knew Navago it didn't solve the problem.