Domain: thebatt.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to thebatt.com.
Comments · 12
-
Re:prequel?
errrrr I think I missed something:
link here -
This is not new.
Here's an article from 2003: http://www.thebatt.com/media/paper657/news/2003/0
9 /11/Scitech/Flexing.Metal.Muscles-462763.shtml?nor ewrite200603191516&sourcedomain=www.thebatt.com I'm pretty sure I read about this in mid 90's as well. -
Re:Meet George Deutsch
A full list of his columns (or reader responses to them) is here. As you may notice, there are articles there extending through summer 2004. IIRC, the Batt doesn't allow non-student contributions to the paper, and at A&M it's common to list yourself as "class of (year you entered college + 4)." So, it seems likely that Deutsch may be class of 2003, but actually graduated a year and a half later.
Honestly, the journalism major at A&M is a bit of a joke. Our journalism department was closed in 2003. And just down the highway in Austin, they have one of the top journalism departments in the country, and pretty much if you can get into A&M, you can get into UT, so coming to A&M for journalism means you've purposely chosen a much weaker school in that department.
So, tool who is massively underqualified and in over his head? It's okay, Georgey, you can tell the scientific community you tried to discredit their work because you were high. I'm sure they'll understand. -
Re:Meet George Deutsch
A full list of his columns (or reader responses to them) is here. As you may notice, there are articles there extending through summer 2004. IIRC, the Batt doesn't allow non-student contributions to the paper, and at A&M it's common to list yourself as "class of (year you entered college + 4)." So, it seems likely that Deutsch may be class of 2003, but actually graduated a year and a half later.
Honestly, the journalism major at A&M is a bit of a joke. Our journalism department was closed in 2003. And just down the highway in Austin, they have one of the top journalism departments in the country, and pretty much if you can get into A&M, you can get into UT, so coming to A&M for journalism means you've purposely chosen a much weaker school in that department.
So, tool who is massively underqualified and in over his head? It's okay, Georgey, you can tell the scientific community you tried to discredit their work because you were high. I'm sure they'll understand. -
Re:Marketing? During the election they said...
It must have been lost in the mail. Have any of you recieved your draft notices yet? When do you ship out?
You'd be funnier if these people weren't dying.
But oopsie, point out that the Bush administration is full of liars who have a pathological fear of the truth, and suddenly you're a seditious liberal hippie communist. Point out that modern religions don't like it when you bear false witnesses, and neocons scream "Why do you hate America so?!"
Besides, Bush can't even keep his story straight on Iraq. What would the kids be going to fight? The war on 911terroristWMDfascistbrutaldictatoroil? -
Re:What does this have to do with anything?
Not to mention Oil Profits:
Shell2003. Shell 2004. Exxon2003. Exxon 2004.
I'm sure you can find others by googling. -
Impact?
"Far from "group think," American nuclear and intelligence experts argued bitterly over the tubes. A "holy war" is how one Congressional investigator described it. But if the opinions of the nuclear experts were seemingly disregarded at every turn, an overwhelming momentum gathered behind the C.I.A. assessment. It was a momentum built on a pattern of haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and a persistent failure in the Bush administration and among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ask hard questions."
If this were a surprise, it might matter more. However, I have trouble believing that an intelligent person can believe most of the things the Bush administration says. I do not think this will hurt Bush because his supporters are completely uninterested in knowing the truth.
Do you remember the cost estimates of the Republician Drug Plan? (e.g. here, here).
What about WMD?
Do you believe him when he talks about how much better is the economy?
Did you believe Bush or Greenspan when they talked about the need for tax reductions because the federal government was going to have too large a surplus?
"But continuing to run surpluses beyond the point at which we reach zero or near-zero federal debt brings to center stage the critical longer-term fiscal policy issue of whether the federal government should accumulate large quantities of private (more technically nonfederal) assets. At zero debt, the continuing unified budget surpluses currently projected imply a major accumulation of private assets by the federal government. This development should factor materially into the policies you and the Administration choose to pursue.
"I believe, as I have noted in the past, that the federal government should eschew private asset accumulation because it would be exceptionally difficult to insulate the government's investment decisions from political pressures. Thus, over time, having the federal government hold significant amounts of private assets would risk sub-optimal performance by our capital markets, diminished economic efficiency, and lower overall standards of living than would be achieved otherwise.
"Short of an extraordinarily rapid and highly undesirable short-term dissipation of unified surpluses or a transferring of assets to individual privatized accounts, it appears difficult to avoid at least some accumulation of private assets by the government." (From here)
When I hear Bush or his crew talk, I know that the truth is the exact opposite of their opinion.
Iraq was a hotbed of terrorists before we invaded? NO!
Iraq is now a hotbed for terrorists because Bush invaded? YES!
Did Bush look like a "little boy" who did not really belong in that first debate? -
Re:Please don't start...I'm one of those paranoid people who decided that the US Census Bureau didn't need to know my race. I declined to answer that particular question.
Several friends of mine have accused me of being paranoid. They'll say something like "Why bother hiding that? It's something that anybody can tell just by looking at you!"
And I'll say, "Yeah, I guess you're right. It's not like the U.S. government has ever used the census lists to go out and round up racial minorities. Oh, wait! Yes it has! "In 2000, the Census Bureau released an official apology for their part in assisting the government to round up thousands of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. During World War II, the bureau released its statistical data to the FBI so that the FBI could target particular cities and neighborhoods for persons whose only crime was being of Japanese descent.
But those were different times, right? America's changed a lot, and we've learned from that and it could never happen again.
Oh wait, it's already happening again. (from the same article)Recently the Census Bureau gave the Department of Homeland Security specially tabulated population statistics on Arab Americans in response to a request from the Customs and Border Protection division. This statistical information includes data on the number of people of Arab descent that live in a particular ZIP code, the names of cities with more than 1,000 Arab American residents and ZIP code level breakdowns of Arab American inhabitants sorted by their country of origin.
But hey, I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to worry about, right? -
Re:Good God...If you can't afford to pay your bills, don't borrow the money.
Why not? Sometimes loans are are forgiven .
-
Re:US Gov. not serious about War on TerrorWhen running a game-server, I ran across someone who pretty much fit the government's "terrorism checklist" to a T, he was talking about not being alive for more than the next couple of days, and the government was proclaiming a high risk time with the probable deadline about the same time that my 'friend' was expecting to die.
I spent an entire day trying find someone who might take my report seriously... This inclded finding out that 'terrorist hotlines' were closed only a few months after they were opened to big fanfare, and being bounced around by people who had absolutely no idea what to do with my data.
I finally talked to someone who seemed entirely nonplussed with my information.
Now, in my world, I was dealing with someone who was -- at the very least -- borderline suicidal. Even if it was only his life at stake, I figure that people should be trying to hunt him down and make sure that he was OK. Given that there was other infomation that led me to believe that this could be a bit more than 'just' a suicidal kid, the unwillingness of anybody to take this information seriously really left me pissed.
If the government is going to use 9/11 as an excuse to invade oilfields and investigate people for membership in human rights organizations (like they did this kid), then I'm not interested.
Most of the nastiest human rights violations on this continent have been comitted by the right ring, not the left wing...
From the KKK, to Pinkerman's hired thugs gunning down strikers to the Oklahoma bombing.And they're asking this kid if he's a member of friggin UT watch???. They're far more interested in fighting tuitin fee hikes and questionable firings than they are in blowing up campus buildings (which would raise tuition).
Give me a break!
-
Re:Perverse incentives
... if I was given a job, I'll try my darn best to do it well (IRS tax system included).Well, I did say that those perverse incentives had nothing to do with the problems. I'm sure that it's the usual amalgam of unrealistic specifications, creeping featuritis, management by committee, and so on, which afflicts pretty much every large project.
Remember ``The Bridge on the River Kwai'' ? Professional pride can get folks to do some crazy things, including shoot themselves in the foot for the public good (think whistle-blowers), or sabatoge their own side's war effort (in that movie), or make it easier for a particularly nasty bureaucracy to do harm.
I would guess that most of the people working on the project are pretty frustrated by the progress it's making, and would be very proud of themselves if they got things back on track. I would also guess that most of them have thought, at one time or another: ``It's a good thing we're not getting all the government we're paying for.''
My point was that any one of the taxpayers who's working on that is going to realize that if it fails, despite his best efforts, there's a bright side: he won't have to worry about his past tax returns coming back to haunt him. The tax code is complex enough, and confusing enough, that everyone is in some danger from the IRS, no matter how hard they try to pay all their taxes.
-
Re:how to fix email
"only degenerates and hotmail users recieve spam."
Or you could have the misfortune of attending a university that gave away a list of every student's email addresses in response to a FOIA request! 40,000+ formerly useful mail accounts down the drain. Effing bureacracy, it's making us all degerates.