Slashdot Mirror

The perception is that politicians get re-elected by spending money in their constituencies. The aim of course is to spend tax dollars in whatever way will register with the largest group of voters.

That is true for someone in the House or Senate, but when applied to the pResident, that becomes quite chilling. Of course, that is exactly what we've got right now.

As evidenced by the Bush administration, politicians really don't give a fig about debt - they care about getting re-elected. If a few billion dollars of deficit spending will bring in the votes, that's what they'll do.


It's not a few billion dollars, it's a few hundred billion dollars of deficit spending. With devestating tax cuts for the wealthy, and pumping billions down the rathole of Cheney's old company, where is the money to pay for this administration's short-sighted goals? When you're pushing 60 and there's no Medicare or SS benefits waiting for you, what are you going to do? What's going to happen with health care? Education? What happened to the social contract? I guess that's just a liberal, left-wing, commie idea...

Of course, nobody ever got [re-]elected saying we need a tax increase, but the Republicans shout that Kerry is a "Tax and Spend Liberal" while nobody (including the Democrats) points out that Bush is a "Spend and Spend Neocon".

Just in case anyone is curious, I'm in Denver, it's 8:22pm, and we can't see anything. Either the thing isn't on yet, it's too misty here to see it at this distance, or it's not a visible light laser. Bummer, I was looking forward to the lights show.

I live in Boulder, and was interested in seeing this as well. Unfortunately, according to the Daily Camera (local Boulder newspaper) the test time was moved 4 pm MST, meaning we've already missed seeing it.

From the paper: "They originally planned to turn it on tonight but have changed the test time to 4 p.m. Sunday, Ball spokeswoman Emilia Reed said."

Just out of curiosity, does anyone think /. should have a policy regarding these kind of press releases? Sometimes they may contain useful information to be sure but here you have the Vice President of this very organization really just having the editors post a promo puff piece. Not to impinge on the credibility of an institute represented by the amazing "Father of Invention" as proclaimed by that hard hitting news source the Boulder Daily Camera, but seeing how this issue has come up recently for google it seems relevent to wonder if /. to should be considering it as well.

If your state doesn't have a list, push for one.

As a rule, a radioactive substance has to go through 10 half-lives to become harmless. The higher the radioactivity an element has the shorter its half-life. The converse is true as well. Plutonium has a half-life of 24000 years. 24000 x 10 = 240000 years before it becomes harmless. Uranium is less radioactive than plutonium (but still incredibly deadly) so it has a much greater half-life.

So really, for plutonium were looking at an additional 230000 years after the facilty might/will fail before its contents are harmless. Longer for the uranium.

Not when it's OUR brand of violence!
(which is now considered ART, BTW)

I wonder how many parents will complain about these games...
I mean killing drug dealers is ok by parents,
and killing terrorists is even better.

But if you were to say, kill a cop,
or fly a plane near a building...that's a whole different story!

Something tells me parents will not "Boo!" when these games start coming free
in cereal boxes and their kids start collecting military trading cards and wearing camo to school...

I wonder what the rating will be...
"Mom? When do you think I can get some trigger time with some real warm bodies?
Not 'till you're 18, son!"