I think there are very few cases where the use of military force is unambiguously morally okay.
962 karma · joined October 31, 2012
> Defending yourself doesn't mean attacking ...
Here in the U.S. there's a common sports phrase, "The best defense is a good offense." This carries over into our military policies. For example, while other countries may benefit from our military presence, the reason we send our military into a situation is to protect the U.S.. There may be an immediate benefit of protection or it may be a long-play protection (e.g. "placate the nationals so we aren't contributing to the future pool of terrorists"), but ultimately we send our military in to protect ourselves and this is frequently a preemptive defense that can be seen as offensively attacking.
Again, I'm not condoning any terrorist attack, I'm just not buying your statement that "Defending yourself doesn't mean attacking..." I'm also not saying that preemptive offense is a moral correct policy; just that it is a common policy.
> ... you might not be coming across as awkwardly as you think you are ... I have no doubt that I am.
> ... you can address both of those unspoken questions head-on ... I honestly never considered this, but will in future interviews!
> If you live near Philadelphia... Unfortunately not.
> Is there anybody non-technical that might help you? Siblings, parents...?
Unfortunately I tend to have family and friends that are overly critical in a really bad way. The last time I asked my mother to look at my resume I was berated for 30 minutes for being so stupid, not using my god-given-skills, etc (i.e. nothing useful but lots of hurtful). I don't even bother asking the guys in my family, they're far worse than my mother. My friends really are great friends in many, many different ways, but tend to be truly lousy at giving constructive criticism. For example, I told one friend that I was going to be building an JavaScript application. She instantly went off on the evils of Java, how Apple won't run Java, and didn't let me get a word in. When she finally finished her anti-Java tirade, I tried to let her know some of the many differences between JavaScript and Java, but until a couple of other friends started quoting from wikipedia entries and intro tutorials, she wouldn't believe me that they really are two different languages. (I promise, she has been a really good friend in other ways!)
I do participate in a ton of meetups. Would it be appropriate to ask a peer from a meetup group to be a proxy for an interviewer?
I have to admit, I never considered trying to recover after I get the "look" from interviewers. In fact, I had provided multiple recommendations on bug-tracking software, to include setting up demo servers for several different packages (because of those demos and related discussions, our interns started using both bug-tracking software and GitHub for their projects - so that was a definite win).
In all of the interviews I've been to recently, the interviewers continue to press me if I focus on their company and don't say something about why I want to leave my current employer.
After a particularly bad interview, I did start practicing for these types of questions and I'm getting better, but that's still relative. Part of the problem is that I've been in the toxic workplace so long and I'm so desperate to get out of it, that thoughts of escaping push to the front of my brain while I'm in interviews and I either blurt out something I shouldn't [1] or I just freeze up (think deer in headlights), typically a combination of the two which is even worse.
[1] I don't blurt out anything quite as bad as "my current boss is an ass", rather things like "My boss doesn't believe in bug trackers and I think they're extremely important." So far so good, right? But then there's a pregnant pause and I catch myself blurting out, "At least a client threatened to take away our business if we didn't start keeping bug records, so now we have 3-ring binders and paper forms to record our bugs. But that doesn't do any good when the same bug is reported multiple times in every binder and the boss doesn't actually look at the bug reports or give anyone else access to the code." At which point the looks on the interviewers face tell me I've blown it again. (Very true scenarios about our bug reporting and my idiotic blurting out in an interview.)
I recently completed a programming bootcamp and when I explained this to several of my classmates they made a point of highlighting what a great programmer I am (relatively to our peers) and that I'm a really great person to work with "once people get to know me". But, there's the crux of the matter for me - in an interview situation, if I'm ruled out in the first 30 seconds then nobody "gets to know me" or my programming potential. To add to the irony, about 2/3rds of my current co-workers know that I'm looking for a job and they regularly make comments to me about how much they don't want me to go, followed by comments about understanding my need to work in a less toxic environment.
I'd hope to have a similar 'audition' approach that included not only basic programming skills but also –and as a junior level programmer, more importantly– learning skills. For example, commenting or debugging internal framework code (something that all interviewees are experiencing for the first time).
In regard to the linked article's approach - I couldn't afford to take three weeks off of my current job, to learn a new language, even if the training gave me a slim chance of a new job (I still have bills to pay). That said, I do think wish there were more apprenticeship type approaches for junior devs.
I think a good attempt at providing a "3000 ft survey of the JS landscape" is http://alpha.ideavis.co/529cc5f
I'd love to see an automated tool that could aggregate stats from a range of JavaScript repositories (e.g. GitHub, NPM, Bower) into something like Dustin's graphic.
I can't use the water trick day in and day out, because I get habituated to it and end up sleeping through my bathroom visit.
I also have to be careful about how much I drink; too much and the bathroom visit happens in the middle of the night and back to sleep I go. But 10-12 oz consumed rapidly within 10 minutes before my head hits the pillow seems to be the sweet spot.
Don't forget the ending, "Do not take Stelara if you are allergic to Stelara or any of its ingredients."
– Reid Hoffman, founder, LinkedIn
NuSI's approach to test long-standing food science assumptions.
It'd be nice to see a functional demo site.
It'd also be nice to have a direct link to the github repository - https://github.com/redwire/aIRChat
Why zip instead of npm distribution?
There is little doubt that there are benefits to their current model. tvanantwerp covered some of those benefits.
But there are costs and benefits that don't appear to be included in their current calculations. If anybody doubted the difference that lots of little contributions can make need only look at successful crowd-sourcing systems and campaigns.
I believe that most non-profits have been told to go after the big fish donators and if they have to destroy all the little fish in the process, "oh, well". My point, and based on the other comments, I'm not alone, is that the little fishes' contributions may add up and be worth more than the big fishes with a lower overall cost (because it costs to produce and distribute those tons of mail).
In particular, I contacted them asking if contributors were put on mailing lists. I was told that regular membership contributors were added to several mailing lists, but that one-off contributors were only sent a small amount of ACLU generated mail, and if I put a note on my donation to the effect of "do not send ACLU mail" then I wouldn't even get that much. I set up my bank's auto-bill system to send them a $100 monthly check (i.e. regular "one-off" contributions) and had "DO NOT SEND ACLU MAIL" in three different locations on the check and that phrase was the only thing in all caps on the check. Within two weeks of the check being sent I had started getting non-ACLU mail that had a typo from that check. I immediately cancelled my bank's auto-bill to them. That was more than 3 years ago. So their spam has cost them at least $3,600 from me alone.
Is this a unicorn or moon on a stick statement? [1]
In many states there were mandatory appeals for death-row inmates which added to their costs. For most other sentences there were more limits on appeals which in-turn limited the life-sentence appeals costs.
There were higher housing costs for the death-row inmates, although I don't remember seeing a breakdown. I always assumed the differences were because of increased security costs. The housing costs were for entire expected sentences, not by year (while a life-sentence inmate would be expected to need housing for a longer time, the costs were still less than a death-row inmate's costs until execution).
Also, in many prisons, the life-sentence inmates could participate in work programs, with some of the related income being funneled back into the prison. At the time I was doing my research I couldn't find any work programs that allowed death-row inmates to participate. So not only were the life-sentence inmates cheaper, they could potentially work to reduce their own costs.