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Does Redskins Loss Presage A Kerry Win?
Puny Human Nick writes "As mentioned before, the last home game the Redskins play before the election has predicted who will win since 1944. Well, the Redskins v. Green Bay game ended a few hours ago and it looks as though Kerry is going to win on Tuesday."
The Redskins suffered a bad call with 2:35 when they were about to tie the game. If Kerry does win, this must mean he does it unfairly.
Of course, Baseball is the definitive method for predicting the outcome of political elections.
(?)
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
...unless... can they tie in football?
Red Sox win 8 in a row, Patriots lose today, old sports adages are breaking all over the place when MA is involved.
As someone who watched the game it means that Bush will win the election and then it'll be overturned in favor of Kerry by the judges. That would be the exact parallel with the game.
Since the Red Sox won the Series the end of the world must be rapidly approaching.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
This is not really politically related, but I am a huge Packer fan and a Bush support (wait, do I hear hick jokes in the distance ?). What is a poor divided Elephant with a Cheesehead supposed to do ?
It was actually 1932. The washington times quoted it wrong as 1936 also.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
it doesnt matter who is elected, it will be a loser.
You would think that people with sport superstitions would have had some sense knocked into them after the World Series...
... not that I would mind Kerry winning.
http://snopes.com/sports/football/election.asp According to Snopes, Redskins have had magical powers since 1936.
I believe a better question is does collective consciousness somehow affect the outcome of certain events, and could some events be tied together?
o .com/sections/scitech/WhosCounting/whoscounting021 006.html
Remember September 11th 2002, the New York Lottery came out 9-1-1? That was very coincidental.
http://www.saliu.com/bbs/messages/911.html
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:more.abcnews.g
Yeah, but Tues/Wednesday of what week? Surely you don't think the election will actually end on the day it's supposed to...
Loves science, hates superstition... unless it agrees with their world viewpoint...
Yes, there's a limit on the number of overtime periods, and then the game is ruled a tie.
Indeed, let us hope so. Otherwise...
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
The Weekly Reader has also correctly picked the president for about the same length of time. They chose Bush.
I think I speak for at least three Slashdotters with mod points - whether they be Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, Constitution, or Guns-And-Dope Party - when I pound out the following message in Morse code using my head and the desk:
"What the fuck? What the fucking fuck fuck?!?!"
Of course, I'm continually let down. What in the heck kind of superstition makes this worthy of being posted to Slashdot in the first place? Are we trying to ignite flamewars? Are there too many mod points being used in technically sound articles and we need to draw some away? Seriously.
If not now, when?
I was at this game only a few short hours ago - the mood there was incredible. I was actually surprised at the number of packers fans who showed up - there was plenty of jeering amongst everyone in the stands (me included, being both a packer fan and a democrat).
At one point there was what seemed to be the scoring play of the game from Washington Redskins - it would have made the score 21-20, but it was called back for a very interesting foul. (NFL.com reports: " The flag apparently was thrown because Thrash was not set for a full second after going into motion on the play. He said he didn't want to comment on the call because he "didn't know for sure" if it was the right one.")
Seems to me to be the exact kind of tone of the election too - very close, with some contested calls!!
Sigh...drawing causation or correlation from 5 data points is just sad. Kerry supporters are grasping at straws.
...sure helps to demystify curses with logic, but most people don't bother.
There's been 17 elections since this 'pattern' supposedly emereged. At most, that means 9 times an incumbent was running. At most, that means 5 times the incumber lost when the Redskins did.
-R
no
But this one (and its predecessor) take the cake. How many times have I read about one of these flaky statistical prediction mechanisms? When it's a bull market year, this league will win the Super Bowl, or that league will win the World Series. When this team gets in the playoffs, that party's candidate will win.
People always trot out these stupid correlations which are roughly true in the past, and then as often as not their predicted conclusions are wrong, because the correlation is entirely spurious. If you look hard enough you'll find something like this that matches past results. The question is how long does this particular metric's 'predictive' power hold up for, and I think you'd find that in general, these statistical correlations/coincidences that people like to trot out have a very poor record of actually successfully predicting anything.
But not because it predicts anything. Interresting because it allows us to discuss critical thinking. This is a perfect example of "post hoc ergo propter hoc" - a VERY common logical fallicy, also known as a "coincidental correlation".
Basically the problem is people frequently see something happen and ASSUME that something they noticed, or known about the prior situation MUST be the cause. - It gets better with increasing numbers (if the reskins game had only predicted the winner once its cute, but after 15 elections it has got to be right!)
Now the reason this is such a good exercise to use for this important critical thinking skill is because most reasonable people would already know that the redskins game predicting an election is absurd.
Then again, yesterday on the radio, Daniel Schorr said the electorate is looking for something, anything on which to base a final decision. This is why stories that would normally not be gaining a lot of attention any other time (flu shots, 'Azzam the American') are getting so much play.
#!
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Correlation does not indicate causation.
Nonetheless, the parent article made me wax nostalgic. Economists of old have an old wives tale: as the skirt rises so goes the economy. In other words, as the economy grows faster, the average distance from the ground to the bottom of the typical woman's skirt rises, revealing more and more leg.
Anyhow, this election is still too close to call. I would bet good money that it will end up in court again. Both the Republicans and the Democrats have already hired lawyers to prepare briefs challenging the results.
Anyone remember those?
Seems Bush has a history of defying history.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
I'm glad you pointed all that out. There was me thinking there was a serious cause and effect going on here
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
They lost to (G)reen (B)ay.
http://ipod.fresh27.net/
It died in 1996 - the Redskins lost to the Bills 38-13 and Bill Clinton was reelected two days later.
I should also point out that the Red Sox broke 80+ years of losing the World Series, the Patriots just lost for the first time in 18 games, and all three major schools in Florida lost on the same day for the first time in almost 30 years.
Have the Redskins won a game since 1936?
Signed, former VA resident.
Sig it.
Maybe instead of using stupid non-related sports "predictions", people should look towards things that actually DO predict outcomes (or at least do a decent job of it). Futures. Try intrade.com for more information.
During the 2000 election, there was a story about a small town in New Hampshire (I think) who had ALWAYS voted for the winner of the presidential election. (Or at least for a very long time.) They open the polls at midnight and all the votes are cast and counted very quickly. Well, they voted for Gore in 2000. So that means this year there will be no story about them, since obviously they were wrong. At least THAT'S a story that is related. Sports and politics are unrelated and any correlation is just coincidence.
enough said.
go get it
Imagine the headline: Slashdot polls won by serious option (re: not cowboyneal). World assumed to end soon.
As an anti-Bush Redskins fan, I can't decide whether to be happy or sad. I think my head is about to explode.
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
Yes, it *is* actually hard. First-past-the-post electoral procedures almost always create a two-party system that's almost impossible for other parties to break into: Duverger's law. The science part of political science is actually pretty fascinating.
How appropriate. You fight like a cow.
Say we're talking about 15 elections. To be able to predict them accurately is a 1 in 2^15 chance or 1 in 32768. All you need to have is 32 thousand things going on and you're all but assured that one of them will be a perfect predictor.
It reminds me of a stock scam from a few years back. You mail out aprediction on some random stock to 10,000 people. Half you say it will rise, half you say it will fall. Repeat until you've been right 10 times in a row. Now contact the 10 people you were right for, and offer to sell them your method for $LOTS. How many people would turn down someone who was right ten times in a row.
Of course, like every other non-american, I'm desperately hoping Bush loses
As a slashdotter, I think we have the responsibility to hack the diebolt boxes to ensure that Kerry wins. Not an Eminem fan, but I liked this video. Eminem's antibush Video
im only going to put up with this because its halloween, and even I enjoy the occasional creepy coincidence.
its not going to top the 'curse' being broken on the night of a full eclipse though.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
If I get laid on the Saturday before, the incumbent loses.
Bush wins. Oh well....
The real reason Kerry will win is because the polls are very wrong. Just as generals always "plan to win the last war" the polls are showing methods designed to win the last election.
When they poll "likely voters" they ignore, among other considerations, people who have cellphones. AFAIK, they only poll over land lines.
Also, there's huge assumptions in the statistical breakdown of voting age. Young voters often don't care about the election and have the lowest turnout. However, many people are so worked up over this election and the results of the last one that I believe we'll see the highest percentage of young voters in a long time. Most younger voters lean more towards the left.
Thus the polls are skewed because their assumptions are totally wrong. Given that it's a dead heat in most polls right now, Kerry should come out ahead.
Unless there's some kind of cheating/manipulation of the election, but what are the odds of that?
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
'nuff said, really.
Please vote. Please encourage your friends and families to vote. Please don't vote for Bush.
-Russ
Me
Ahem. Allow me to demonstrate to you chaps my fine-tuned statisical methode for calculating the electature of the united states presidentiary - because as we all well know, a correlation implies causation, especially when we have a data set of such magnitudinous proportions ...
I personally didn't take the article as anything that was meant to be remotely serious - I figured it was just some people having fun and saying 'hey, look at this neat thing' - is that so wrong? I seriously doubt there is anyone who thinks this actually means something, but everybody's pounced on this story as if someone suggested that installing linux causes bad breath - it's obviously meant to serve as a little bit of humor to lighten to overly virtriolic political atmosohere. Let's not go crazy over it...
My blog
Yes, they're both rich white men. But aside from that there are a host of rather large differences.
For one thing, the Bush Doctrine is a serious departure from previous American foreign policy. Kerry has advocated an approach that relies on the sort of coalition-building that Bush Sr. used with such effectiveness in the first Gulf War.
Kerry believes that excessive tax cuts for those who make over $200k per year is counterproductive. Bush believes that tax cuts of any kind, particularly those that favor the wealthy, result in increased entrepreneurial activity, which pumps up the economy, resulting in more jobs for everyone. These differences definitely have an effect on economic policy.
On the environment, the candidates aren't even close. Kerry has a long history of working for the environment, and Bush doesn't even know what the word "environment" means.
Bush has to cater to his "Base" by nixing stem cell research. Kerry knows that science is not something to be feared.
The differences go on and on and on...
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Then your as bad as the people you're trying to kick out. Don't drop to the republican's level.
While the umps named the wrong player, the player on the far right side of the redskins line wasn't set when the ball was hiked, so the call was a good call. They screwed up, and paid the price. Of course, we could say the first part of that about Bush, and I hope the second as well.
Wow, I must have a magic penny. Maybe it will be worth something on ebay!
Love your comments about the polls. I think it's hilarious that people pay such close attention to them; they ask 3,000 out of millions of registered voters and claim that it has an accuracy of +/- 5%... ludicrous....
I think you're reading WAY too much in this. Get out and vote, rather than saying who's going to win based on a football game...
Holy shit .. by the looks of these replies, you'd think you folks were on his Doctoral comittee and he just submitted this as his Disertation thesis ... ... sweet jesus, it's just a funny coincidence ...
...
... hey, there is no Santa Claus either so I don't want to hear about that weird deer you saw running around on your roof on christmas eve last year, either ...
It's an 'interesting' statistic -- an urban myth. You people are busting out with Chebyshev's law this, and according to Modus Ponens that
hey, news flash, you're not going to find the meaning of life encoded in the articles of slashdot
Wow
Ah, but only a harsh demonstration of the fallability of these machines will make them get rid of them. I'm thinking a land slide victory for Homer Simpson.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Ignoring which team was better each year, the odds are 1/2^14 that the game would predict the outcome of the election (14 elections since 1944). That's .0061%, roughly.
Of course, you gotta realize that they look at all the games played over the years and look for patterns, and ANY football game of the season could possibly be a predictor of who will be elected. In the NFL, there are 32 teams, which have played about 8 games each so far this year. So total number of games played = 32 * 8 / 2 = 2^7. that brings our odds to 2^7/2^14 = 1/2^7 = .75%. Not at all negligible.
Now you can start including multiple criteria for each game. For instance, if the total points stored in the Redskins game is over 30, the incumbent wins. Or, you could change it to a certain party winning. And we're just considering football, imagine if we included games from other sports played this year. The sheer number of baseball games almost guarantees that one annual match-up will be a good predictor of any "coin-flip" event such as a presidential election.
So, the moral is, this isn't the least bit extraordinary.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I know this is light hearted... but this isn't: http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem// I believe in futures markets. If Kerry wins, I reevaluate my belief.
Until then, I'm very worried, because I think these numbers mean something very bad for my guy. We shall see.
THERE'S NO SANTA CLAUS?!?!
lameness filter... it really sucks.
Nothing wrong with this. Pick up any introductory stats book and look up confidence intervals. Assuming that your 3000 voters are an acurate random sample (which is of course the big problem, not the fact that a sample size is only 3000) you can accurately predict outcomes with some probability. I assume that they are using a 95% confidence interval which would state (assuming a random sample) that there is a 95% chance that the true scores are within +/- 5% X% for Bush and Y% for Kerry. You can increase the certainty to 99% if you want, but you then as a trade-off you increase the size of +/- percetage...
Since you brought up football and the election...
here is a scary thought...
Monday football as a terrorist target. It would be right before the election, would be very public, and would impact a large group of people.
Scary...
Davak
Policies aside, at least with Kerry the rest of the world won't be snickering so much.
I mean, ~290 million people to choose from* and George Bush was viewed as the USA's best choice for President? That really is funny on a very fundamental level.
* Yes, I'm aware that the entirety of the US population isn't eligable to be president, but anyway....
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
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Yes, but when the polls favour your POV/platform/chosen candidate/party/etc... then they're fantastically accurate and a good indication that the other side 'sucks', ad nauseam.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
IMHO Just like dealing with 'indian' violence had to be put on hold until after the Civil War. I really think the war on terror is likely going to need to be put on hold till the US solves some of it's internal problems. And I think this election will reflect that.
The biggest problem that no-one is talking about, but everyone is going to half to face is the trillion dollar question about copyrights. They simply can't survive in an age defined by the unrestricted flow of information so something is going to half to be fought out soon. The question is will the Government finally get it and back off on the copyright gestapo - or will they go full blast untill all hell breaks loose, and they fail crash and burn.
Since Bush is more accountable to the tech industries, and Kerry is more accountable to the legal and hollywood sector. I think a Kerry win will symbolize the copyright battle being fought inspite of the system, a Bush win will symbolize the battle geing fought within the system. It's a tough call.
I have also been informed by reputable sources that the tidal force of the moon affects human behavior, in spite of the fact that monitor you are looking at right now has a greater tidal interaction with you than does the moon.
English is easier said than done.
What was the final score? Packers 28 Redskins 14
What is a Touchdown worth? 6 points + PAT.
Now, the neo-cons are claiming a call on one touchdown prevented them from winning.
Looks like the neo-cons their touchdowns are worth 15 points.
We can see sequences and coincidence in anything. Give me a large enough stat base and I can probably work out the odds of Kerry winning based on the nth decimal place in pi.
A sig is placed here
To display how futile
English Haiku is
Except the poster was asking about the event that the teams tie. In a tie, the Redskins neither lose nor win. The election would then be thrown into complete chaos. One can only hope that never happens, for the sake of the country.
Every time kids/teenagers have been polled en masse about the presidency, the president they chose won. Strangely enough, Bush came out on top by about 10% in ChannelOne's massive poll of teenagers. Does this mean Bush will win? No, it means superstitions are bullshit.
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
There's also something with the world series win that says Republican in the whitehouse. I don't recall the exact way it is presented, but by the Red Sox winning it corrosponds with republican presidential win.
Try actually thinking for yourself. It's quite refreshing.
That's because Gore was foolish, and only demanded a recount in counties where he expected to do well. That's a dubious strategy anyway, and as you say, it turns out Bush would have "won" counting that way too. (Never mind that it's really a statistical tie and we all pretty much lose.) But when a _real_ recount of all state ballots was conducted by a consortium of newspapers, the results came out with Gore winning by over 20,000 votes. Too bad the Supreme Court didn't order that!
Any argument about predicting 2000 by tea leaves or NH towns can always be argued to be about the popular vote, as opposed to the winner.
One problem with this: http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem// is that they don't have an electoral college vote futures market which would be much more relevant than the popular vote in a close election.
And futures markets can't be expected to function in the event of wholly novel circumstances like a Supreme Court coup d'etat.... so whether it is New Hampshire towns, or futures markets, you can't hold them responsible for the 2000 election outcome, only, perhaps, for things like the total number of votes.
Fluky electoral college votes, and supreme court interventions come under the heading of "acts of (a particularly bloody minded) God"... beyond prediction by futures markets.
so, how is Kerry going to make things better? All I see from him is more money taken out of my paycheck.
The bigger problem that I see is that the sample size is actually more like 20,000; and only 3,000 chose to respond. Were it a more compulsory sample, I'd have a little more faith in it.
What?
The score was 28 to 14 Packers.
Well they just don't stop there, they then compare them to the actual votes after elections. They actually do tend to have an accuracy of +/- a few percentage points.
was when the Redskins just sort of gave up there. The Packers probably wouldn't have had the scoring opportunity if that touchdown counted, provided the defense kept its act together.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Monday football as a terrorist target. It would be right before the election, would be very public, and would impact a large group of people.
Just like every other major sporting event or human gathering has supposedly been a terrorist target for the past 3 years.
Actually, you'd get +/- 5% out of much less than 3,000 respondents, under 1000 actually. You might want to study elementary statistics before you try to discuss it, so at least you won't be talking out of your ass like this time. While there are certainly grounds to be suspicious of the poll results, the quantity of people polled isn't one of them. I'll leave it to you to figure out the real issues, after you study some stats...
Pro football has "sudden death" ovetimes. First team to score wins. If nobody scores its a tie.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Not to worry - this means Kerry will win just about as much as sampling rising temperatures over the last 80 years or so means humans are causing global warming. It's just a stupid misuse of statisitics and co-incidence.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That's why a third party will never be viable..
You silly... Everybody knows a third party candidate wins whenever the Washington Generals beat the Globetrotters.
No sig
And if I'm right then Nader will Win
...this affect is countered by the Red sox win. Bush will win!!!!
they ask 3,000 out of millions of registered voters. With 3,000 voters the standard deviation will be under 1%, so the probability that too few samples will cause an error of more than +/- 5% is less one in a million. This analysis doesn't consider biased sampling methods and voters changing their minds, but increasing the number of samples won't help with these problems anyway.
Considering the teams playing, it might be more of a mercy killing.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
In 1994, we were in a war and the incumbant won.
Well, the terrorist apparently are big Tom Clancy fans. 9-11 was just a ripoff version of "Debt Of Honor." What your describing is "Sum of All Fears."
Well, there's only one thing to do:
Let's use the PATRIOT Act to throw Clancy in the clink for abetting the enemy! That'll learn him!
We were busy in Baghdad, so the US forces kinda gave up the explosives there in Al Qaqaa. They wouldn't have stolen the explosives if we thought those explosives really counted, provided the British and Iraqi defense forces kept their act together.
Yet again, confusing correlation and causation (to misquote Carl Sagan). I'd hazard a guess that it's part of the reason why GWB is there in the first place, because it certainly has nothing to do with democracy!
Bush is not another Hitler!
...Hitler had charisma.
/so going to hell but I don't care.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
On the other hand, Monday Night Football might have saved some lives September 11, 2001. One of the New York teams was playing September 10th, and I suspect a few groggy stockbrokers and office workers got into the office late.
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
monkeys fly out of my ass?
Who does that mean will win? Because it happened to me this monring, I swear it did. While I was watching FOX news, a troop of flying monkeys burst forth from my rectum, wearing bellhop hats and carrying tin cups.. I also heard this strange organ grinder music while it was happening...
Damn, I knew I shouldn't drink Starbucks and watch FOX news at the same time..
That's so true.
...and points are taken off the scoreboard for the Packers, and the Packer were never allowed to have possession of the ball again..."
Sounds like Cheney rationalizing the lack of WoMD in Iraq.
You neo-cons rationalize ANYTHING.
You may argue with Bush's decisions, but the one thing he doesn't do is stick his finger in the wind and do whatever the public tells him to do (a la Clinton).
Just like the time he stood his ground on opposing a department of homeland security in face of public opinion?
Or the time he opposed the creation of a commission to investigate 9/11 in face of public opinion?
Or refused to allow Rice to testify in face of public opinion?
Or refused to testify before the commission in fact of public opinion?
Or stood his ground on campaign finance reform in fact of public opinion?
The Bush administration has collapsed on numerous issues when public opinion has turned against it.
What would you propose then? They had to certify somebody and Bush was ahead after 2 recounts (one was definately illegal, the other was questionable since it was not statewide) and ahead after several more recounts following the certification that were done on the whim of the various press agencies.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Head over to the National Cathedral, i'm sure some voices from the granite will be forthcoming.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
In the regular season, a game can end in a tie of no one scores during the overtime period. In the playoffs and superbowl, they just keep adding overtimes until someone scores.
Except when the connections are logical and verifiable, apparently, --particularly when the results of the observation call for decision-making and back bone.
Bush should have been impeached a couple of years ago for lying and manipulating like a bastard.
-FL
Actually the redskins won the game before they didn't.
Actually, I was surprised that the Redskins/Packers game wasn't targeted. Given bin Laden's recent videotape, I thought it was going to be a target for sure.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
The apathy of the electorate, in *not* demanding better candidates from the major parties, has gotten us into a mess. The parties have no interest in *really* fixing things, because a fixed government is one that doesn't need to give handouts. But the handouts are what buys the votes of the uneducated/ignorant/lazy.
I thought football was that game where the ball was only played with the feet. Oh that's right, you think that's called Soccer. So calling them a base ballteam doesn't seem so odd to me. :)
Let's get the future Veep school in on this.
There's got to be some sort of sign when the whole freaking state of Florida loses football games on the weekend before an election.
UNC over Miami? I'm sure that's in Revelations somewhere
As a libertarian, Bush really isn't my favorite - but I just can't see why so many people hate him that badly!
Lets face it - inspite off all the bullshit about WMD's and maby there's even some oil/cronyisim - the simple fact is that Bush moved the front lines on the war on terror out of here and over there. As commander and chief, I really thought he did his job, or atleast made more than a half ass try.
And, as for the economy and jobs, I thought he sucked as a libertarian, but considering all the bad crap that happened with the WTC, oil, corporate scandal, and the stock market that was out of his controll - I thought it could have been a lot worse and that he really softened the damage.
Finally, between sales, property, income, and other misc taxes - the avg person pays up to 40% of their life without even knowing it - does anyone really believe that we're suffering so much because we're not soaking the rich enough. Look, if a rich person does something corrupt to become rich - then lets address that, but don't be jealous or greedy just because someone else has money and you don't. Besides, whens the last time you were ever given a job by a poor person, and becises US law only allows the taxing of income, not wealth - so that means that the guy with a billion in the bank won't even notice - but the small buisness man who makes his first mil and creats 10 jobs will get his nuts ripped off and his teeth kicked in. As much as I don't love Bush, I think he's more sympathetic to the latter.
Saving the slaughter of Dolphins - does this make Osama a Green?
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
They can tie. The one football game I've ever been to, an Eagles v Ravens game back in 2000 I think was a 13-13 tie. Funny, since I had grown up in Philadelphia and then moved to Baltimore to go to high school.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
It was on James Thrash and he didn't have to be set because he wasn't moving forward. It was just plain bs. Granted the Redskins played like crap most of the game anyways, but the refs made a bad call which was unfortunately unreviewable (I think).
And in American football, they're refs not umps.
And this doesn't belong on slashdot's front page.
Umpires? Mr. Kerry, please stop playing around on slashdot and go campaign or something.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
What do you think?
I'm John Kerry, and I appove this message. I think.
The definition of a democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting on what's for dinner.
Any of you lefties care to show me any single instance of the US government being defined as a democracy in our Constitution? For bonus points, show me where the right to vote in a federal election is guaranteed.
bzzzzt. Time's up. You'll have to keep waiting for your precious Socialist Utopia, cause it ain't gonna happen on Tuesday. Not on my watch.
Love,
Thomas Jefferson
PS: Move to Canada. They have "free" healthcare there. Just remember that you get what you pay for, and TANSTAAFL.
It's mystifying because it's just so specific, but chances aren't half bad that things like this need to become specific just to maintain the pattern.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I've heard a good explanation for these "amazing coincidences".
Say you take a thousand fourtune-tellers(all fakers) and make them predict some future event.
Say five hundred of them get it right. You then ask them to predict something else. You're now down to 250. Wash rinse and repeat a few more times.
You're now down to one guy who's gotten them all right, around 9 more times. Now ask him another question. His odds? No better than the other thousand, but odds are that 1 of the thousand would make it that far.
Pile up enough events, and you'll get "amazing coincidences".
I don't read AC A human right
Lets assume that all two team/player competitions have no predictive powers, and wins half the time. Lets also assume the incumbent wins half the time. Therefore, on average a team will be 'right' half the time. The probability of a team being 'right' 15 times in a row is 0.5^15, or 1 in 32768.
So, what does all this mean? Not a whole lot. Now, I doubt there are that many major teams/players of any sport that have been around long enough to be right that many times. Also, I'm not sure when they decided to track this specific team's ability to 'predict', but if back in 1936 (or even a fair amount later) they stated that this would happen, it would be interesting.
Also, though it may be unlikely to come up with this kind of sports predictor for any specific 50/50 event, there are many important 50/50 events in the world that may happen to have such a predictor. It's pretty meaningless, but some people clearly have fun looking for them.
About the football games though, that's interesting. I honestly didn't know if they could tie or not.
Bush is cheating - and this fraud screws up the natural order of things.
This looks to be reverse cause and effect? The Redskins lost *because* Kerry wins. It makes perfect sense when coupled with Hawking's views on gravitationally depressed chronospaces.
I find this to be intriguing - yet dangerous, as it is not wise to play with local cosmic areola.
Let me be the first to say that we here at the Bush camp concede early to Kerry. It seems clear that due to this unfortunate turn of events that Kerry has won the election. As a side note, we should also point out that with the election already all but decided, you shouldn't burden yourself on election day with voting if it is an inconvenient, especially if you happen to be black, gay, poor, a college student, or a woman. So stay home. Nothing to see here.
I thought it was well known that the official predictor is the wooly bear caterpillar. It's not just for winter prediction any more.
Don't worry about it too much. Most people agree this is the skins' rebuilding decade.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
It is a funny story but I would say that the coin would more likely land on it's side than any third party win.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
You do realize that it's this kind of paranoia and fearmongering that got things like the PATRIOT act and DMCA passed?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
hey, news flash, you're not going to find the meaning of life encoded in the articles of slashdot ...
*ponders mios's uid*
7+1+5*7+3-4 = 42
Yeah, since this is regular season game, that limit is 1 OT period; it's a sudden death OT (first score wins).
Black Sunday?
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
To believe otherwise is metaphysics.
I hope this helps.
--- Ban humanity.
Umpire -- Primary responsibility to rule on players' equipment, as well as their conduct and actions on scrimmage line.
I think the real question here is, how the hell have the Redskins been rigging the election for the past 60 years?
"I think it's undeniable that letting those embryos go to waste has significant ethical considerations. Gee, we can use this tissue to advance medical science or we can incinerate it. Man, that's a hard decision."
Or a third option. Not creating them in the first place. But then we wouldn't be human if we didn't create slippery slopes every chance we got.
"President Mitnick's first official act was to pardon everyone who had anything to do with his unexpected landslide victory."
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
I was hoping for a tie...then this pattern theory could really be put to the test...
Unless, of course, we get a radically different system of voting. If you chose 50 people at random to be candidates, and 1,000 others at random to be electors, then we could see citizen presidents.
Just like Gore tried to steal the election in 2000 but failed?
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
Seriously, guys & girls. The only thing that matters on election night is (a) the number of votes cast or (b) the number of lawsuits filed within hours contesting same. Whoever wins, wins based on one of these two factors, possibly both. It's our job to make sure that the process is as fair as possible, not to further devalue the process by trying to find a random-chance way of saying it. Real life should, at some point, come into play.
(Insert segue to next argument topic here; suggestion: electronic voting.)
May I ask what money you are referring to?
* Do you earn more than $200,000 a year, if you do: welcome back to 1999. Big deal. You just helped our country. If you earn less than that, you keep your tax break.
* Are you referring to premiums for non-privatized health insurance? That's why Kerry supports a cap on insurance payout: $30,000.01 and up is covered by government. This effectively reduces how much you pay for your insurance premium each year. Privatizing health insurance leads to misinformed citizens and patchy plans - backed by companies that could go under any second in the resulting big business competition.
* Are you referring to the war in Iraq which has cost over $120,000,000,000? Are you not concerned that nearly half of your taxes go to the military and fund this war? That's what is being deducted from your paycheck. Vote with your wallet.
So 1944 to 2004 is 60 years - 15 elections (excluding this one) - so the odds of the elections going the same way as the Redskin games (if there is no connection between them) is 1 in 32768.
With the vast numbers of unrelated binary-outcome public events happening close to the elections, it should be possible to find plenty of them with seemingly better predictive power than this one...
Numbers of Florida voters pushing out the wrong cardboard chads for example.
www.sjbaker.org
"The election would then be thrown into complete chaos."
A tie might mean that Congress would decide (no ties allowed in the election). Especially interesting since I think that it is the *outgoing* Congress, so Kerry and Edwards (and possibly Cheney) might conceivably get to vote. Or there could be other tiebreakers (maybe it would go back the home game before that).
Ties are relatively rare in professional football. Maybe once every two or three seasons. We may never know.
And every college game at Michigan's "Big House" draws 110,000+ fans, but I keep going there every home game. I'm sure as hell not going to let anyone scare me away from living my life.
They did stop allowing advertising planes above/around the stadium during games though, probably to reduce the risk. This happened right after 9/11.
On a side note, the most powerful moment of silence I have ever taken part in was the Michigan football game following 9/11 when EVERY fan in the stadium was silent, not even breathing. It was the only time that every person in the stadium sung the national anthem, I think. And the only time the anthem was followed by humbled silence, instead of rowdy cheers. I don't remember who won the football game, but I remember that.
Real eh?
Florida recount study: Bush still wins
... and furthermore
There is another way of looking at this sort of thing which I have never seen the sceptic, (as opposed to the skeptic), consider. I'll try to present the idea in this highly simplified manner. .
What if. .
The universe we live in works like a fractal equation? --Think of such an equation represented graphically, like the fractal art which became popular during the nineties. Now consider that you and I, and all our world, everything there is, may all be interconnected, living parts of such an equation.
With me so far? Okay. .
Now say there is a very tiny observer and that he lives as one portion of that fractal graphic. His life and actions are all built into the essence of the graphic. This tiny observer can look across space at another portion of the same graphic, far, far on the other side of the medium in which the fractal graphic exists, (say a computer screen). The portion he is observing on the other side of the screen bears no outward resemblance to the portion he happens to be part of. Further, because he is so very small in comparison to the size of the image as a whole, the fact that the portion he is part of and the portion he is observing on the other side of the screen are in fact connected, is not obvious to him. Indeed, thinks he is looking at a completely unrelated object.
However, because both portions of the image were generated from the same fractal equation, it stands to reason that information can be derived about the portion the observer is standing on by measuring the characteristics of the portion he is looking at.
Now, I don't know anything much about baseball, but the idea outlined above does raise some interesting possibilities, doesn't it?
Also interesting, I find, is that every hard-core sceptic I have ever discussed this subject with, (astrology in particular), has judged the subject very harshly without ever having fully exploring the subject being judged. --Nothing beyond laughing at paper place-mats in Chinese resturauntes or looking at the nonsense astrology section in the lifestyles section of the daily newspaper. These are certainly not proper representatives of a very deeply annotated subject which takes rather a lot of work to properly grasp. I have NEVER met a single harsh judge who has really looked that the subject. Not a single one.
This behavior in itself, (that of making strong judgments based on little or no research), runs counter to the very tenets of the scientific analytical process which is often touted as being the reason such systems cannot exist. Indeed, this paradoxical behavior appears to me to be based on a high degree of blind faith. --Which, according to everything I have learned on the subject, is a faith very much misplaced.
But that's old news to anybody who knows about this stuff. The truly fascinating and immediate question raised by all of this, is why do so many people have such strong automatic responses to the subject, (as evidenced by the various negative responses to this very
Something to chew on. --Or reject out of hand, depending on whether you spell with a 'C' or a 'K'.
-FL
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. This idea of predicting the election is silly. About like watching those signs at the roulette table listing the past numbers and seeing 5 reds come up in a row. You just know that the next number to come up has to be black. No such thing. The last roll has nothing to do with the current roll.
:)
If you want a predictor try this out:
http://128.255.244.60/graphs/graph_Pres04_WTA.cfm
And if you want put $50.00 on number 35 for me. It is a sure winner.
I know a few people that feel that this election may result in wide spread violence in the streets. In effect a civil war. So far there has been nothing very civil about this election. Just look at the replys to this item. People are split with few people undecided.
Have to say the article is not a bad troll just before the election. The editors might want to watch that in the next couple of days. I am sure there will be more troll arcticles like this. Would be nice to be able to moderate the main article instead of just the replys.
Looks as if you are swallowing the Democrat party line of class hatred and not looking at the actual process and results of taxation and the history of how Congress votes.
Another Democratic platform is codifying 'workers rights' into labor laws that companies are forced to adhere to that is the same as taxation. When's the last time you bought any thing European other than a tin of biscuits, wine, or a Linux distro? They are not expensive because they are good. They are expensive because you are paying for the outrageous taxes and labor costs which many European companies have to pay.
Do the research and really think before you vote.
Too lazy to create a sig...
David Hume said it best: Cause and effect is bullshit. I'm paraphrasing, of.
Vote on the third?
?-|||-----x<*))))><
it does not matter who you vote for, we are all doomed!
photoplankton
I didn't see any planes before yesterday's game againts MSU, but I know that the advertising planes have been back for most of the games this season and I think I remember them last season as well. Of course they only fly well before the game and the wind yesterday might have had as much to do with them not flying as anything else.
I do live close enough to see parts of the "Big House" from my house and we park cars for the game in our yards.
Laugh you may, but if the US poll was held in the UK, Homer Simpson would win!
The redsox had the "curse" since 1918 it's now broken time to throw this falicy out with it.
Go responsible leadership.
Down with half stated goals.
REAL penguins build their own kernels and binaries!
Nader has been hit-and-miss, getting on only 35 state ballots, and the Libertarian Party's Michael Badnarik is on 48. On top of this, the Badnarik campaign has just launched aggressive advertising in four swing states, aimed at fiscal conservatives.
One of them is Arizona, where Nader is not on the ballot. And Libertarians, who have a tendency to attract conservatives, are polling higher all the time.
Here's a scary thought, though somewhat off-topic here, I think it needs to be addressed: What if Bush loses, but refuses to leave office? The reason wouldn't matter so much, he could have plenty. But think about it, who could actually MAKE him leave? He is technically in charge of the military, and would have the United State's entire arsenal at his disposal if need be.
Dude, the military does not listen tho Mr. Bush but the President, if Kerry wins the military follow Kerry's orders.
I wouldn't be surprised if Bush & Co. decided on a major offensive Monday:
It's certainly interesting that a huge number of fresh troops just arrived in preparation for just that.
Would it work against the administration to do this? Polls say no.
Obviously, I'm not sure if they'd be that daring, but if they are, you heard it here first (if they're not, this comment, like most conspiracy theories, will just lapse into oblivion).
If that isn't ironic enough for you, put this in your pipe and smoke it....
In their greed for power, the incumbents have passed incumbent-protection acts, under the guise of campaign finance laws. Since the principal way for challengers to beat incumbents is to outspend them (by an average of 2 to 1), and because politcal parties are often the source of this money, campaign finance laws are emasculating the political parties. Think about it: An incumbent GOP senator has more to fear from the Democratic party (who can fund a challenger) than he does from any Democrat senator, and vice versa.
Witness the rise of 527's. These are becoming politcal parties in all but name. The next step in the evolution is for 527's to print voter guides to take into the voting booth (cf. 19th century pre-preinted ballots). The next step after that is for major 527's to organize coalitions and pool endorsments (with backroom deals and campaign money being distributed). In the end, the major parties will be shell organizations, forced to nominate whomever the 527's endorse.
Tammany Hall all over again. Thanks McCain-Feingold...for nothing.
For the past 3 years? What, did terrorists come to be only three years ago?
Why, right here. And you're right. The Dems are Socialist, Bush is a Fascist. So I voted Libertarian.
As a slashdotter, I think we have the responsibility to actually listen to "Mosh" and act responsibly. The republicans can sink to their own filthy level of voter fraud and intimidation by themselves. There are two ways to stop them:
1) Get out the vote, and overwhelm any cheating the bad guys can do. That kind of cheating works great if the candidates are tied (which every wishful poll in the country would have you believe). The more people get out to vote for Kerry, the less chance cheating can throw the election. So don't go to those polls alone: bring your friends, family, and anyone else you can (without forcing, kidnapping, or bribing them, of course). Give Kerry a landslide from the people those polls don't count.
2) Join the efforts by various rights groups to help monitor and protect voting polls and voters.
Personally, I think Eminem delivered the true October surprise. He's right too, the coming of the King of Terror began in a schoolroom, it's reign should end there too, with the only real swing state that matters: the youth of America.
There is hope Kerry can win, and not only from sports omens. Leading Hindu astrologers and a noted Hindu mystic believe that Kerry is going to win, Bush will never again be president, and Kerry will end terrorism and bring world peace! The sun and the moon have even endorsed Kerry.
"The last hope is to fight by ourselves."
Belebera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
Nader isn't just a victim of the DNC. In Pennsylvania, he's off the ballot because there were names like Mickey Mouse, John Kerry, etc. on his petition. It was thrown out because something like 20,000 signatures were invalid.
dailykos has the details. The GOP doesnt like to lose.
ourvote.com has a site up and a hotline ready. See also: my earlier post on fraud and corruption in American politics.
I care who wins, but I care more about winning legally and properly. I care about every vote being counted. I wish more of my fellow countrymen felt the same way.
You mean like Milton?
-Dizzle
"I most likely AM so interested in myself."
Of course as a cheesehead I am very happy the Packers won, but I am not counting on that to hand Kerry the election. Fortunately, there is another game that will decide it... it is called the election 'ground game'. In this game, armies of volunteers knock on doors, talk to their neighbors, drop off flyers, and give rides to the polls. It is grass roots politics at its finest.
The republicans seem to be finally getting into the ground game this year. Compared to previous elections, their ground team this year is very impressive. Unfortunately for them, the democratic and Kerry supporting groups are fielding a force that is probably four or five times larger. I've been talking to campaign veterans that have been doing this for over 30 years, and they describe the current groundswell of grasroots activism in support of Kerry with words like 'unprecedented' and 'staggering'.
It is also interesting to see the differences in how to ground game is run by both sides. The republican effort is pretty much all the RNC. It is top down, hierarchical, very organized. There are great many dedicated volunteers, but their actions are very cordinated by the campaign.
On the Kerry side, however, it is much more bottom up. There is a huge swath of liberal leaning non-profits and newly created ad-hoc citizen groups all doing their own part. The DNC itself is very experienced at the ground game and just by itself can put up a good fight against the RNC effort. Add all those third party groups to the mix, like MoveOn.org, ACT, the NAACP, the Seria Club, and newcomers like The League of Pissed of Voters... and you begin to see what the Republicans are up against.
Lets put it all in perspective for a moment. Gore was trailing in the polls by up to five points but ended up winning the popular vote due to unexpectedly high democratic turnout. Kerry is now polling about even with Bush, even ahead in some polls, going into the election. All indications are that the Democratic turnout will break records this year. To me, that looks like a Kerry win.
The Bolachek Journals
It is very easy to tell if your ATM withdrawal/deposit went through, by simply calling the bank/going on-line/waiting for your monthly statement. If there was any hint of a impropriety, the bank would drop Diebold like a hot rock (banks rely on their own reputation of trustworthiness in order to be successful).
There is no way to check if your vote was recorded, let alone tallied correctly. The unelected civil servants who run the elections don't give a Tinker's Damn whether your vote went through or not; they just care about their yearly rating and doing just enough to not get written up. The cherry on top of the cupcake is the fact that the average politician is incapable of understanding the technical issues and operational risks behind e-voting, so you won't get any help from that corner.
Yeah, right.
"...The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is an international effort involving researchers from several institutions and countries, designed to explore whether the construct of interconnected consciousness can be scientifically validated through objective measurement. The project builds on excellent experiments conducted over the past 35 years at a number of laboratories, demonstrating that human consciousness interacts with random event generators (REGs), apparently "causing" them to produce non-random patterns. A description of the technical implementation is given under procedures. ..."
"...Continuous streams of data are sent over the internet to be archived and correlated with events that may evoke a world-wide consciousness. Examples that appear to have done so include both peaceful gatherings and disasters: a few minutes around midnight on any New Years Eve, the first hour of NATO bombing in Yugoslavia, the Papal visit to Israel, a variety of global meditations, several major earthquakes, and September 11 2001...."
Princeton Global Consciousness Project
Kind of freaky.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Here's the deal with the stadiums. Yeah, it was really windy on saturday here..
Here's a copy of the NOTAM (Notice to airmen) from saturday which applies to Michigan Stadium (and also other large seating stadiums).
3/1862 (PREVIOUSLY MISSING TEXT) PART 1 OF 2 SPECIAL NOTICE. THIS NOTICE MODIFIES FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS PREVIOUSLY ISSUED IN FDC NOTAM 2/0199 TO COMPLY WITH STATUTORY MANDATES DETAILED IN SECTION 352 OF PUBLIC LAW 108-7. EFFECTIVE 0303061100 UTC (0600 LOCAL 03/06/03) UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 99.7, SPECIAL SECURITY INSTRUCTIONS, COMMENCING ONE HOUR BEFORE THE SCHEDULED TIME OF THE EVENT UNTIL ONE HOUR AFTER THE END OF THE EVENT, ALL AIRCRAFT AND PARACHUTE OPERATIONS ARE PROHIBITED AT AND BELOW 3,000 FEET AGL WITHIN A THREE NAUTICAL MILE RADIUS OF ANY STADIUM HAVING A SEATING CAPACITY OF 30,000 OR MORE PEOPLE IN WHICH A MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL, NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE, NCAA DIVISION ONE FOOTBALL, OR MAJOR MOTOR SPEEDWAY EVENT IS OCCURING. ALL PREVIOUSLY ISSUED WAIVERS TO FDC NOTAM 2/0199 ARE RESCINDED. THOSE WHO MEET ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA MAY REAPPLY FOR A WAIVER TO THESE RESTRICTIONS: (A) FOR OPERATIONAL PURPOSES OF AN EVENT, STADIUM, OR OTHER VENUE, INCLUDING (IN THE CASE OF A SPORTI NG EVENT) THE TRANSPORT OF EQUIPMENT OR PARTS, TEAM MEMBERS, OFFICIALS OF THE GOVERNING BODY, THE IMMEDIATE FAMILY MEMBERS AND GUESTS OF SUCH TEAMS, AND OFFICIALS TO AND FROM THE EVENT, STADIUM, OR OTH ER VENUE, END PART 1 OF 2 WIE UNTIL UFN
PART 2 OF 2 SPECIAL NOTICE. (B) FOR BROADCAST COVERAGE FOR ANY BROADCAST RIGHTS HOLDER, (C) FOR SAFETY AND SECURITY PURPOSES OF THE EVENT, STADIUM, OR OTHER VENUE. THIS RESTRICTION DOES NOT APPLY TO; (A) THOSE AIRCRAFT AUTHORIZED BY ATC FOR OPERATIONAL OR SAFETY PURPOSES INCLUDING AIRCRAFT ARRIVING OR DEPARTING FROM AN AIRPORT USING STANDARD AIR TRAFFIC PROCEDURES; (B) DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, LAW ENFORCEMENT, OR AEROMEDICAL FLIGHT OPERATIONS THAT ARE IN CONTACT WITH ATC. STADIUM SITE LOCATIONS AND INFORMATION REGARDING WAIVER APPLICATIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 352 OF PUBLIC LAW 108-7 CAN BE OBTAINED FROM THE FAA WEBSITE AT HTTP://WWW.FAA.GOV/ATS/ATA/WAIVER OR BY CALLING 571-227-1322. PART 2 OF 2 WIE UNTIL UFN
Lesseee, what nonsense has been stepped on this year (steppers listed in parens)?
Curse of the Canadiens: Nobody who beats the Montreal Canadiens in the NHL playoffs wins the Stanley Cup. (Tampa Bay Lightning)
Curse of the Babe: The Red Sox will never win a World Series after trading Babe Ruth in 1920. (The "BoSox" win 8 straight to dispatch the two best teams in baseball to win the WS)
Curse of the Swamp: University of Georgia has lost 13 of the last 14 annual football games against rival University of Florida. (UGA wins 31-24)
Sun always shines on Sunshine State football: The "big three" Florida football programs (U. of Florida, Florida State U., U. of Miami) are too good to all lose on the same day. (all three lose for the first time since 1978, courtesy U. North Carolina, U. Maryland, U. Georgia)
So given the above silliness that has been stepped on this year, I wouldn't bank on this Redskins thing. Besides, if it doesn't hold, consider it a silver lining to have dismissed a bit of nonsense.
Boogedy, Boogedy!
So, whatever happened to that OTHER great presidential superstition, specifically the Zero Factor? Where any president whose term starts in a year ending in zero is assassinated or has an attempted assassination on them?
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
The results of this election might as well be determined based on the outcome of this football game considering the questionable integrity of the electronic voting technology involved. I mean really, the CEO of Diebold publically stating that he's committed to helping deliver electoral votes to the president should be a good sign that Bush is going to win, one way or the other. Is it really that much of a surprise that there isn't a paper trail at all? Who needs to deal with those pesky recounts? Four more wars!
Bush's regime would have you believe terrorists just came to be 3 years ago. They don't want you to think about the fact that there have been terrorist attacks before and we didn't need things like the Patriot act to make ourselves feel safe....
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
Bush is ahead in halloween mask sales. That and the Bin Laden / Putin endorsement might cancel out the game.
... that might mean the rapture.
The Red Sox, however
Too late and, temporarily, bipartisan for a slashdot post.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
> What your describing is "Sum of All Fears."
And a character in Sum of All Fears, the book, actually refers to a movie that had the same scenario - I think it was "Black Sunday".
Have you ever noticed how you never see George Bush and Clancy in the same place at the same time? It's clear to me that Clancy is really the president, being an expert on all government conspiracy kinds of things, and is only dressing up as a dufus, pretending to the president.
Is that people whine about spelling so much. Seriously folks, get off it. Every browser I've ever used does not have a spell checker. Also a great many people, even computer people (myself included), cannot type without looking at the keyboard, and thus can't see mistakes. Further, many people have a learning deficiency that makes spelling difficult for them (dyslexia would be one, but there are others). Finally, even people who have no problems otherwise, still make spelling mistakes.
This is all not to mention the numerous posters for whom English isn't their first language.
So really, shut the fuck up about spelling on an informal Internet forum already. People screw up here, and as it's quite informal, aren't going to go get it copy edited to make sure everything is correct.
The fallicy/fallacy is an easy one to make. It's not a word you type that often, so most people are guessing on spelling. Now, most American accents pronounce the second syllable as though the vowel was an i, not an a. Thus when one is guessing at the spelling, fallicy is a reasonable guess.
I mean really, the spelling and grammar nazis here need to just can it. It doesn't make you look intelligent, just petty. If the only thing you can attack is the form of someone's post, not the content, it means you have no real argument.
I was almost with you until you got to the astrology part... wtf? That sounds just as nutty as the x-ians who want us to believe the "Son" endorses bush. Sorry, but politics blows.
I have come here to chew memory and kick ass... and malloc() is returning a null pointer.
I think I'm going to be voting for Tom Clancy on Tuesday, in fact. I mean, hey, at least we know where he stands on the issues (the same place as Jack Ryan, presumably).
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
while I admit there is a possiblity that your a real japanese person and saying 'baka' was slipping into your native language.... I highly suspect your mixing up your own real life with the anime you watch.
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
Note that Boston just won the World Series in Busch stadium.
so are you saying that it's GWB's fault that we did nothing before 9/11 (like a response to the first WTC bombing, the African embassies bombings or the Cole bombing)? Or are you saying that after Bad people knocked down two huge buildings in lower Manhattan and killed a bunch people in a multi pronged assault hitting 3 out of 4 targets that it was wrong for GWB (and the congress) to try and take steps to stop it from happening again?
So ignorance _is_ bliss, innit?
So what does this lead me to believe? That it's a sign that I'll be partying come Tuesday, too! I hope Kerry pulls it out!
Dear USA,
We've decided to step in to fix a problem you seem to be having.
Unfortunately, the election of your President impacts many of us greatly. While it has been a source of considerable amusement to us in the past, recently we have become less tolerant of the outcomes it has produced.
Starting today, here is the amended process whereby a US president gets elected:
- US citizens get together to elect a US Presidential *candidate*. Your current options: Bush, Kerry, various others nobody cares about. Method: Toss a coin, spin a bottle, use the results of a sporting event nobody cares about. We don't care, so knock yourselves out
- candidate is put forward to the rest of the world to decide whether he/she/it is suitable. Their current options: winner of Bush/Kerry, "go find someone else". Method: secured regulated ballot process, as used in nearly all Western countries for many years without problems. Feel free to read up on it some time if you're interested
- results announced: "go find someone else"
- repeat approx 300 million times, or until point is made...
WE REALLY LIKE YOU AMERICANS, BOTH INDIVIDUALLY AND COLLECTIVELY. SURE, YOU DRESS FUNNY AND MAKE US LAUGH WHEN YOU'RE IN INTERNATIONAL VENUES, BUT YOU'RE REALLY NICE PEOPLE REGARDLESS AND WE LOVE HAVING YOU ALONG FOR THE RIDE. ON TOP OF THAT, YOU'VE GOT SOME OF THE REALLY SMART PEOPLE IN THE WORLD LIVING IN YOUR COUNTRY. HOWEVER, WHAT CRAZY SYSTEM LETS YOU IGNORE THE REALLY GOOD PEOPLE AND SPIN OUT SUCH LEADERSHIP CANDIDATES AS YOU MANAGE TO COME UP WITH?
Ahem, sorry about that. Anyway, please understand that these changes take place immediately, no correspondence will be entered into, yada, yada, yada.
Yours truly,
God (no, NOT yours, and not yours either. In fact you were all wrong, and what the hell made you think I'd give a stuff about you tiny little humans anyway?)
Remember to get out and vote for Dubya on Nov. 3rd.
All of these polls (and especially the superstitions) are a crock of shit.
I hadn't realized that detail. But this of course would fit in nicely with my statement that the problem isn't the sample size but that its a non-random sample
When's the last time you bought any thing European other than a tin of biscuits, wine, or a Linux distro? They are not expensive because they are good. They are expensive because you are paying for the outrageous taxes and labor costs which many European companies have to pay.
My cars were made in Germany and England. My best suit was made in Italy, and my spectacles have Italian frames. My coffee grinder is from Germany, and the best shoes I have were made in Spain. My favorite beers are made in England, Germany, Denmark and Belgium (Ok, I admit I like beer a lot...), while my girlfriend is addicted to Swiss and Belgian chocolates. My phone is Finnish and the engine in my boat was made in Sweden.
I do the research when I buy and, while all of these item are good quality, they are not the most expensive by any means. I don't think your argument against European products is is true at all.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Isn't Bush supposed to be done in by an assasins bullet?
I mean, the 0 year "curse" has been responsible for the deaths of US Presidents longer than the Redskin election "prophecy" has been around.
So I'd say the 0 year curse trumps the Redskin Prophecy and I see you one war before 2006.
One can hope we can inspire enough counter spin to get a sea of blue, the likes of which will counter a lot of the spin (read:LIES) out there in the final week.
Kerry's gonna win 28-14?
The vote would go to the House of Representatives, and Kerry and Edwards are both senators, and Cheney's vote would be in the Senate if it were to be necessary. None of those three would get to vote.
Yes, but it won't happen. After all, it would look very bad for President Bush. I'm sure with the election this close Al Qaida won't chance throwing the election to Kerry.
Does this imply more people voting for Bush/against Kerry won't have the same effect?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Cowboy Neal for president!
Now's your chance. Come up with some weird prediction method, the more looney the better.
If you are wrong, no-one will care.
If you are right, you can get a spot on a talk show and be feted as the next market statistics guru!
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
oh, and didn't notice till after I posted, but Get your own sig!, I don't wanna have too call shenigens on you.
To get our congressmen and senators to get rid of the stupid electoral college so everyone's vote counts for something - instead of just counting for something in the states their candidate wins in =/
wtf? Why are seemingly all the pro-Bush, or at least not pro-Kerry comments being modded down? I don't necessarily agree with all of his points but this fellow's posting seemed reasonable enough. I hope a few people take the trouble to metamoderate some of these questionable ratings.
What has turned me off of John Kerry is not so much his liberal ideas about raising taxes and increasing social spending as his rather transparent and hypocritical attacks on Bush. To hear Kerry talk, he seems to believe that Bush is dishonest and incompetent and has accomplished nothing of note either domestically or in his foreign policy. He blames Bush for everything but the weather. Heck, he blames him for global warming. He's got some pie-in-the-sky health care reform plan and he's got a malpractice lawyer for a running mate.
If the Dems presented a candidate with credible foreign policy credentials and some concept of how to spur economic growth, I'd be all over him. As it is, I'm worried Kerry will become a 2nd term Clinton with a hostile Congress and no real mandate to govern other than "Whew at least I'm not George W. Bush!!"
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
hmmm i guess imitation is the finest form of flatery though, so i'll hold back on calling shenANigans on you for now for now.
And it looked exactly like the number "7". When that happens it means a few things:
1) Democrats become president
2) My penis grows 48 inches (cool, eh?)
3) I meet a girl with an 8 foot deep vagina (and this time she doesn't moo)
4) My ferrari needs new brake pads
5) I've been looking at my own poop again
So please, everyone look at the poop that makes you think happy thoughts. We'll get together and compare notes REAL SOON.
PS: "The Sky Is Fallin'" by Queens Of The Stoneage is a really great song after hearing it 10 times for some reason.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
I've had this sig for years. Judging by your UID, for longer than you've had a /. account. But hey, it's a good sig. :)
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So would you ban fertility clinics? 'Cos they create lots of embryos, most of which don't end up implanted in a woman's uterus.
mmmmm ketchup. although I prefer del monte
What you describe is a break against religious moral and not an ETHICAL decision. Using stem cell for something other than what the "great plan of God" is against religious moral. On the other hand, ethic does not burden itself with "religious moral" but about what is right to do within a society. Proof : if you erase the religious moral from the debat, by going in a more religious relaxed society (and do not mistake it US society at large is really religious strict, just look at how easily have people censor some book or other stuff but that is another debat) then the religious moral argument DISAPPEAR and stem cell research becomes "authorised" or ethical for the purpose of curing illness. If it was only a question of ethic then every western society would in mass have blocked stem cell research. But it is not the fact, even western traditional catholic countries have authorised it (France / Italy ?). Now those country have imposed a ban on stem cell research for OTHER purpose (reproduction, Cosmetic etc...).
Now about the real ethical question : Is it ethic to let go a mass of cell go to waste , and be incinerated, when it could be used to search for cures against illness that would heal people with sever neural injury ? No it is not have already decided many country the other side of the pond.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
touche
[What's even more fascinating] Is that people whine about spelling so much.
Maybe because not making the effort to use proper spelling and grammar demonstrates a lack of respect for the reader? Nobody's perfect, but even without a spell checker you can catch the vast majority of your errors by just re-reading your post, and if you don't know the spelling of a word, there's a handy thing called a dictionary (there are even online dictionaries) to help you out. I'll agree that criticizing another's errors is generally uncalled for, but the nature of Slashdot (an "informal Internet forum", as you put it) doesn't mitigate the impression your post makes on readers--especially given the emphasis many people here seem to put on proper spelling and grammar.
Just a thought . . .
And about the rejected black and hispanic voters? Most of them don't tend to vote republican...
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If you search hard enough, perhaps even with a search engine, you can always find some oddball coincidence that coincides with which party wins the presidential election. So what?
It reminds me of all those great psychics who predicted the last 18 earthquakes. Ya, but they forgot to tell you that they also predicted the last 1800 that never happened.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
It's that "not pro-Kerry" factor that is so annoying, and it has been going on here for weeks. I while back I took the time explain what motivated the Swifties to oppose Kerry, why his actions appeared so baleful to that group, but never saying I agreed with any of it. The original poster actually thanked me for my rational response, but some hot-head moderator modded it down along with (apparently) every other non-pro-Kerry post in the vicinity.
Sure is hard to have a rational conversation when you can't even explain what you disagree with. Anything outside of regurgitated Kerry propoganda is a mod-down target.
I do have a seemingly perpetual invite to meta-mod. So I suppose I am partly to blame for these abuses.
No. He didn't. In the scenario that the Florida supreme court ordered (incl. overvotes), Gore won:
, 36 04,430276,00.html
:P
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0
Gotta stop this myth at its source
Besides, forget not that the largest amount of contested votes, by far, was from the "felon list". You know, the list that contained around 20,000 black voters and around 50 hispanic voters?
POTUS Witch Hunt tracker: 75 charges filed against 19 witches, 4 witches cooperating and 5 witches have pled guilty.
Nope. Overvotes weren't ever counted in most places, nor were dimpled ballots. And your excuse for the US Supreme Court's ruling is not the reasoning they stated in Bush v. Gore (which was an "equal protection" argument - since each county has its own way to count votes, there's no way equal protection can be guaranteed in a recount; kind of an insane argument if you ask me, but it was their ruling).
POTUS Witch Hunt tracker: 75 charges filed against 19 witches, 4 witches cooperating and 5 witches have pled guilty.
Well, MOST people who follow the situation in Iraq closely believe that the Bush administration is incompetent. Where do we begin? Letting looters run wild? Not securing the arms depots (not just the high explosives, all kinds of stuff was left unguarded- hell they stood by and watched as insurgents carried weapons off)? Disbanding the army? Going into Fallujah? "Flip-flopping" and getting out of Fallujah when it got a little too messy? Total cockup start to finish.
Afghanistan has been done better but there is still more of the country under the control of the Taliban and warlords than Karzai. Half-assed, but not a total cockup.
Bush on the economy has been something of a failure. Sure, we're coming out a recession, and I'm sure the tax cuts helped that- they could hardly hurt. But instead of directing the money where it would do the most good (the middle class) it went to where it did much less good (the wealthiest people in America) and created a massive budget deficit that will take years to pay off. This didn't help the economy so much as it helped the rich. The recovery has been far from amazing.
Socially? Most people feel he did a good job post 9-11. But it's amazing to see how much that has been messed up. He said he'd be a uniter, and he hasn't been- he's divided this nation. America is now more divided than it has been since the Viet Nam War. For some people he's been a good leader. If you're rich, right wing, and/or Christian he's great. But he seems to think that everyone else can go fuck themselves.
Finally, how about those American values like freedom and our rights that he is supposed to be protecting? Under the Bush administration we have seen people locked up without trial for years at a time. Four years ago if you said that America would do that I'd never have believed it. Sure, governments do that. But just the bad guys- the USSR, China, Nazi Germany- right? Those kinds of governments lock up people without trial. Not the good old freedom-loving USA.
I could go on forever. As for mandates, let's not get started on that. Bush lost the popular vote, so he has no mandate.
Nobody is trying to sneak into Sweden.
I realize this is just a mud slinging match at this point, but as a matter of fact, Sweden has quite high immigration, including plenty who try (and succeed) sneaking into the country.
I personally went the other direction and left Sweden for California. Long story...
= 9J =
Actually, you're incorrect.
The Bush administration nixed federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Adult stem cell research is still fully sponsored by the federal government and the Bush administration.
Private funding for embryonic stem cell research is still legal as well.
Actually, this makes sense. If you needed stem cell therapy in the future, wouldn't you want to use adult stem cells harvested from yourself, rather than stem cells harvested from an embryo that has a stranger's DNA?
Hmmm, Gore won the popular vote. The Florida Secretary of State(head of the Bush campaign in Florida, talk about a fucking conflict of interest that makes me lose faith in our system) made some seriously questionable moves with regards to the election and I'm pretty convinced that some serious shenanigans put Bush in office. Personally I wish McCain had one the nomination, I would've voted for him. The fact that the Republican party can't admit that Bush is an asshole that should be replaced places even more doubt in the future of politics in this country imho.
Admittedly though, being from the rest of the world, I'm eager to find out who the "leader of the free world" would chose to bomb next. With Kerry it might not happen. At least dubya will keep things interesting.
:)
Signed: A Canadian who can't wait for the Canadian Dollar to surpass the US dollar so I can go do some serious shopping for a digital camera
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I think Richard Stallman or Kevin Mitnick would be better (more ironic) choices.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
BTW, everyone gives Bush shit about the patriot act (I'm not for it myself) but FDR locked up thousands of US citizens after 12/7/1941 without due process or a trial of any kind.
And that makes the Patriot Act less evil?
Well, Gore would have lost had the partial recount continued (the keyword being "partial"), however he would have won if he had pushed for a total recount.
But, Gore did not push for a total recount, and he lost.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I dont know what scares me more.. that people think of this stuff, or that the people that think of this stuff don't always work for the US government...
Dude! Bush IS dishonest and incompetent and has accomplished nothing worthy of note either domestically or in his foreign policy. He HAS accomplished some seriously unworthy things domestically and in his foreign policy. The things he's done would have gotten a democratic president impeached and investigated ten times over. He is the first republican presidential candidate who couldn't get an endorsement from The American Conservative, for pete's sake. Kerry has been endorsed by officials from every Republican administration since Eisenhower's. Nancy Reagan could even be voting for Kerry.
C'mon, turn off Fox news sometime and read a newspaper.
These?s /15BALL. html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/politic
ehhh
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Some of the objectionable actions they made note of include:
- Ordered massive changes to a section on global warming in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2003 Report on the Environment. Eventually, the entire section was dropped.
- Replaced a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet on proper condom use with a warning emphasizing condom failure rates.
- Ignored advice from top Department of Energy nuclear materials experts who cautioned that aluminum tubes being imported by Iraq weren't suitable for use to make nuclear weapons.
- Established political litmus tests for scientific advisory boards. In one case, public health experts were removed from a CDC lead paint advisory panel and replaced with researchers who had financial ties to the lead industry.
- Suppressed a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist's finding that potentially harmful bacteria float in the air surrounding large hog farms.
- Excluded scientists who've received federal grants from regulatory advisory panels while permitting the appointment of scientists from regulated industries.
To me this is fear of science - fear that scientific inquiry will derail Bush's political agenda, which is largely driven by religious fundamentalists and big business interests.Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I made the mistake of purchasing a copy of his Net-Force series after playing lots of xbox clancy (splinter cell/s.c.p.t./ghost recon/rainbow six 3/r.s.3.b.a) and thinking it might be interesting..
the encryption/technological stuff was so wrong i threw the book away after 20 pages.. It may be a good book, but the incorrectness of it bothered me too much to read. Back to Koontz- at least you know its going to be weird but interesting, and very little technology to be pissed about its incorrectness.
Neal Stephenson? (sp?)
but all their chads were dimpled.. and they were 'clear gore votes'...
I remember watching those schmucks on tv staring at the cards.. the man would say 'clear bush vote' and the lady would scowl and say 'clear gore vote'.. repeat the process ad infinitum.
Really now how many omens do you need?
Four, or my name isn't Damian.
I predict Bush will beat the odds.
agreed..
now for everyone else: you know what- even if you can somehow account for the real intention of every voter and gore should have won for some reason.. bush is in office, his term's days from being over, the country hasn't melted, people need to let it go.
http://spellchecker.mozdev.org/
It has been around for a while and was recently accepted into the Mozilla trunk. Don't think it's just a cheap hack.
Alternatively, quick search turned this up for IE. With the right design, something as simple as a spell check should be quick and painless. Some IM clients even have a live spell check built in which can be of great use. Nothing can beat the live spell checker for helping you pick up on your own problem words. Or do what I recently did and parse through the last five years of IRC chat logs to find your most common mistakes. That was ugly, let me tell you! I can't make the rest of the world love my crappy spelling so fixing it is all I've got. But at least after doing that I felt a little better about myself.
But seriously, learn how to type ;)
In other words, as the economy grows faster, the average distance from the ground to the bottom of the typical woman's skirt rises, revealing more and more leg.
Then what explains the full-length black dresses worn by women living in major petroleum exporting countries?
The rest of the World doesn't give a fsck about baseball (except a few Americanophiles in Japan and Cuba).
But I can assure you the rest of the World gives a fsck about the US presidential election, because their life is affected by it even though they don't have any influence on it.
And they sure as hell root for Kerry.
Let us not forget that the Boston Red Sox actually won the world series in a sweep and everyone said they would never ever win a world series again.
Yes, but only because the Swedish border with Mexico is so heavily guarded.
FWIW other developed nations have a problem with illegal immigrants, in Australia it's even an election issue - and they're an island continent!
The US is one of the few (only?) developed nations to directly share a border with a 3rd world nation, that is the reason there are so many people trying to sneak in.
A tie might mean that Congress would decide (no ties allowed in the election). Especially interesting since I think that it is the *outgoing* Congress, so Kerry and Edwards (and possibly Cheney) might conceivably get to vote. Or there could be other tiebreakers (maybe it would go back the home game before that).
RTFC (Read the F Constitution). In the case of no candidate winning a mayority of the votes (and a plurality doesn't count) the NEW house gets to choose the president and the NEW senate gets to choose the VP. I'm not sure if Kerry or Edwards get a vote, or what would happen if the vote gets tied in the senate again (since normally the VP casts the deciding votes). But it is possible that we could end up with a Bush/Edwards presidency.
Corporations never pay taxes, they are just a collector. Taxes for any company are a Right Hand side of the ledger entry.
Berkshire Hathaway paid $1.75 billion in federal taxes last year or 2.5% of ALL taxes paid by corporations. Read about it here. Or, as Buffett writes in his Annual Report:
In 1985, Berkshire paid $132 million in federal income taxes, and all corporations paid $61 billion. The comparable amounts in 1995 were $286 million and $157 billion respectively. And, as mentioned, we will pay about $3.3 billion for 2003, a year when all corporations paid $132 billion. We hope our taxes continue to rise in the future - it will mean we are prospering - but we also hope that the rest of Corporate America antes up along with us.
There actually are some honest companies out there. If we can get rid of the corrupt CEO's and cut down on executive salaries, then we would be moving in the right direction. While I am liberal, I miss the days of the fiscal conservative... at least I can understand where they're coming from.
the country hasn't melted
But it's about as close as possible.
Budget: fail
Foreign Policy: fail
Education: fail
Healthcare: fail
Jobs: fail
What else? Oh yeah, we were attacked, and we started a war that we are losing with people totally unrelated to our attackers.
What else can go wrong?
I know more than you drink.
I find it highly amusing, but at the same time disturbing, that the Americans since 9/11 have been shouting for terrorists heads on a plate while for many years before 9/11, and quite likely after 9/11 as well, collections has been and are being made in support of the IRA.
Do tell me that you actually realise the double morale in that...
Swedish, but resident in the UK since 1996.
Well, truth be told, it has been done elsewhere. Putin in Russia seems unlikely to give up power, though he is not in danger of losing any elections. The opposition parties are finding it curiously hard to gain any ground against him. It helps to have all the TV stations on your side. He has a vast majority in their congress and he can legislate more terms for himself as he sees fit.
But we're not Russia. Truth be told, I really think it's just not worth it in a truely robust, though obviously imperfect, democracy like ours. Even if the election goes horribly for the Republicans they'll still hold nearly half the congress and in just four short years they'll get another shot at the White House.
What you are talking about isn't an impossible scenario, given extremly dire circumstances, but it's very difficult to imagine it now. We did have a civil war once upon a time, but we were a different country then, and people's allegences were much more local. I think that anything like that happening now would never work because people, despite their differnces, would rightly see it as an attack on democracy on a very fundamental level. In other places in the world were democracy is a relatively new thing this might not be as huge of a concern. Many peoples have known only periods of disorder and periods of tyrany. Look at Russia or Iraq, many people there still believe that however scary it may seem, one all powerful man may be the only force that can actually keep order. Saddam was a brutal tyrant, but he kept the many fractured, tribal elements in his country from endless bloodshed.
America, fortunately has no such history. We have seen democracy work. We have a peaceful country and we are not concerned about internal strife like this. The Republicans, or the Democrats for that matter, have lost many presidential elections but have always been able to get power back down the road. Our political warfare has so far served both sides relatively well. If Bush loses, a war will certainly begin to restore power, but it will, thankfully, be a peaceful one.
Geez, chill out, it was an idea, and I even implied in my post that it was to be taken with a grain of salt.
Sometimes, the outrageous can happen, and there's no harm in wondering "What if?"
vi ~/.emacs
Wow, an actual serious response to my proposition, and not more of "DuDE, YOU ARE THE NUTZOR" or liberal v. conservative flaming. Kudos to you.
And I understand that my suggestion was a bit outlandish, but look at what's been happening for the past four years! Things have gotten so weird that some on here have started to really wonder if the John Titor story is true.
In any case, the next couple of days are going to be interesting indeed. Must be a Chinese curse.
vi ~/.emacs
This behavior in itself, (that of making strong judgments based on little or no research), runs counter to the very tenets of the scientific analytical process which is often touted as being the reason such systems cannot exist. Indeed, this paradoxical behavior appears to me to be based on a high degree of blind faith. --Which, according to everything I have learned on the subject, is a faith very much misplaced.
The reason why scientific people respond in such a manner is because such thinking undermines the very point and thesis of science itself. For instance, if my experiment can be tangentially connected to/affected by the arbitrary pattern of lights formed in the sky above a particular location on a particular planet hurtling through space (which is what astrology, for instance, is), why even bother experimenting?
Furthermore, even if the universe were constructed in such a way, how could we even begin to understand it or prove that it does? It would be similar to trying to experiment for the existence of God. Science is limited to the physical world, and most mindful scientists are very careful not to interject scientific theories on what are really meta-physical questions.
-Grym
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
As the parent said, think before you vote.
Time to go vote yourself into another war, america?
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
You know, it's interesting that people (even Republicans, i find) totally ignore Democratic cases of voter fraud. Republicans are not the only ones responsible for it -- in fact, they seem to me like they're less likely to do it than Democrats, on the whole.
Some of these are really biassed, but here are some examples:
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article385 5.html
http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/004765.html (LOTS of articles about it here)
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/007968.php
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1250035/p osts (admittedly, Free Republic is a pretty bad place to go for potentially reputation-harming information about Democrats, but there it is anyway <_<)
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/fund20040913 0633.asp
Even The New York Times had a story about Democratic voter fraud.
This isn't to say that the Las Vegas thing and Chuck Hagel's involvement with that voting-machine company and the convenient Diebold incident in Georgia aren't troubling, because they are, very much. But so many people mysteriously forget that the other party isn't the only one that can be 'filthy'.
Once again, we the people of the world, are confusing the law of probability and the law of averages. What we have here is a string of 1s on the 0 or 1 random binary generator. Just because the average is .5 doesn't mean long strings of 1's don't happen.
The fact that the redskins have "predicted" the presidential election for the last 60 years is nothing more then an interesting coincidence and has no more basis in reality then saying it raining on election day somewhere had the same effect (And if you look you'll find such a place I'm sure).
I was once told that if there are 30 million license plates in a state, the odds of seeing a certain license plate are one in 30 million. Since the license plate I was looking at on the car ahead of me was distinct I was experiencing a one in 30 million event, just like everyone else driving down the road with a car ahead of them.
Its not hard to bend statistics people.
What exactly *is* a dimpled chad? I mean, I can grasp the idea that it's a hole in a card not properly punched through, but why would that mean there is any question as to who that vote was cast for?
Spell checker for Firefox (open source)
Spell checker for Opera (open source)
Spell checker for Internet Explorer ($15)
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
Nice that you have the courage of your convictions and post anonymously. Typical neo-con posturing. If you're so hardcore in your beliefs, have the balls to attach your name, even a pseudonym, to them.
Elder Bush wins the election of 2004 either way.
Everyone repeat after me... Correlation does not prove causality... correlation does not prove causality.
Unless you earn > $200,000 a year, you should be safe. In fact, according to Kerry, you could be getting even more tax breaks under his administration. From the second debate--
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
People seem to forget that Clinton had NATO bomb Serbia and Kosovo.
All the ballots were later counted by several (liberal) mainstream newspapers and Bush won in every scenario.
Wrong.
1. The Wall Street Journal was amoung those newspapers. (It isn't liberal)
2. Out of the 24 scenarios they considered, Gore won most of them.
3. The scenarios that counted the most votes Gore won. Bush only won if (a) recounting stopped after just a few counties, or (b) a large number of votes were disgarded as spoiled.
So in the final consideration, although the recounts Gore asked for wouldn't have made him the winner, a full, correct counting of the whole state would've. The only reason nobody's made a big deal about this result is that it was released on September 13, 2001.
so are you saying that it's GWB's fault that we did nothing before 9/11 (like a response to the first WTC bombing, the African embassies bombings or the Cole bombing)?
Nah, but what I'm saying is that you're full of shit.
Looks as if you are swallowing the Democrat party line of class hatred and not looking at the actual process and results of taxation and the history of how Congress votes.
I know you're probably trolling, but lots of people really believe (and spread) this kind of BS, so I'll pretend you really think what you say.
In short, you get economy 101 but apparently you didn't make it to 102.
Sweden (yes, 50%+ income tax Sweden) has a massively positive trade balance with the USA. When I say massively positive I mean they sell you almost three times as much as they buy from you ! And no, it's not biscuits or linux distros. It's high tech industry-oriented goods. Except for Ikea, Ericsson and Volvo, most Swedish exports are from small specialised companies that employ ridiculously educated workers to desing and produce high value-added goods.
France and Germany are a mess, but that's not because of taxes or social security. It's just that they dug themselves into a bureaucratic hole. Saying that a strong state with highly developed social services entails sprawling, Franco-German like bureaucracies is a lie ! Hell, you Americans share a border thousands of miles long with Canada, don't you ever look at what's going on up north ?
Your whole argument about labor costs and massive offshoring is dumb. The same BS that politicians serve us daily. Read any book by Paul Krugman as an introduction (looks like you'll need it), then hit a real economy manual. In short, wages in any given national industry tend to equal the average productivity of this industry in this country. Do you really think that wages in India and China have not risen in the last decade ? See South Korea or Taiwan for other recent examples.
Do the research and really think before you vote.
Yup, good idea.
Thomas-
When's the last time you bought any thing European other than a tin of biscuits, wine, or a Linux distro?
Oh, let me try! AMD processors from Dresde, Germany?
The quickest way to become an atheist is to study the Bible thoroughly.
You know, I've never liked a rap song in my life, save for a few Run DMC songs, and Eminem was one of my least favorite artists ever, but, dayum, I liked that video (And not just because it was anti-Bush, but because it actually did give some good moral points). Not really what I expected from him.
My favorite beers are made in England, Germany, Denmark and Belgium (Ok, I admit I like beer a lot...), while my girlfriend is addicted to Swiss and Belgian chocolates.
What, no Ireland (Kilkenny, Guinness) nor Czech Republic (Staropramen, Pilsner Urquell, Kozel) on the favorite beer list!?
As to chocolates... Any chocolate connoisseur owes it to herself to check out Finnish Fazer Blue chocolate. It's legendary.
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
Also: Norway and pretty much anything nautical.
From a purely economic standpoint, anyone who works for a living and votes republican is an idiot. They've been duped into voting "what's good for the country" instead voting based on their own situation.
For 2003 a single man making 28,400 dollars, and living in WA state (8% sales tax) he will pay 27% of his wages in tax. This assumes that 50% of what he makes will be spent on taxable goods, and that he takes the standard deduction. It should be noted that this same table gives the U.S. tax rate at 35% because it only displays the highest rate for countries with a variable tax.
According to www.worldwide-tax.com, if the same man lived in Germany he would pay 25% of his wages in tax. In Norway, 28%, in the UK, 30%.
The way I see it, the big difference here is not how much we pay vs. European countries, but what we get for those taxes vs. what people in European countries get for thos taxes. Free medical, free University level education, real Social Security. We get give two billion dollars to Halliburton.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
As slashdotters I think we have a responsibility to respect the vote of the people.
That said, I'm not a fan of Bush either.
Shick's Law: There is no problem a good miracle can't solve.
more in my journal
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
...On one of the last plays of the game the Redskins scored to take the lead. AFTER the play had been completed a flag was quietly tossed in the backfield. A flag that was thrown for absolutely no visible reason - look for yourself. That flag effectively ended the game for Washington. We're not talking about a "bad call" we're talking about a call on a game winning play after the fact that was fabricated. Could it be that professional football has lowered itself to the level of the media at large and indeed the frenzied and violently vocal anti-bush lemmings? You decide...
I used to fear clowns...but I'm discovering that chimps are far, far, worse.
If I had a million mod points, I'd mod all the "Kerry will raise taxes on small businesses" and "Bush is an imperialist" posts as off topic. It seems I'm in the minority so mod me to the bucket if you must. Yeah, I know, I must be new here and welcome to /. but doesn't the nerd-atrons, pulsing through your veins, find the /actual/ article at all interesting to comment on?
Let me save the submitters to the Politics topic some time. We can enumerate all the off topic responses and save reading time to thouse that want to read about the actual submission:
Dibold
Bush is an imperialist
Bush administration is incompetent
PATRIOT act
Bush stole the 2000 election
Counter: all recounts had a Bush win
Kerry flip-flops
Kerry has been consistant
Edwards is way under qualified
Kerry has his secret plans for everything
It appears that many of the /. readers still think Gore "won" the 2000 election by winning the popular vote. If Bush wins this election but loses the Electoral College, will you be crying and whining just as loudly for the next 4 years? I didn't think so.
PS. I'm not voting for Bush and didn't in 2000.
when 85% of the population voted for Gore
The actual results were:
Hiding their heads in shame.
If you want a good read that's similar to (but far better than) "Sum Of All Fears" then you should read Arc Light by Eric L Harry. Not sure if "SOAF" came first, but it felt like a rip off - When I saw the movie I initially thought I was watching an adaptation of Arc Light.
:)
It's One of my favourite reads ever. Was recently given a first edition hardback as a present too.
Gotta love it when the missus knows what I like!
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
Criminy, its almost as if the Supreme Court were voting on party allegiance rather than the facts! Inconceivable!
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
It's a statistical tie right now, right? Undecided voters (about 5% of the population right now) tend to vote against the incumbent. Newly registered voters, who aren't being polled very much for some reason, are overwhemingly Kerry supporters. I'd be surprised if Shrub breaks 220 electoral votes.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Screw that!!! Either we get Sleazy, or we get Sleazed...
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Admittedly not of the same size, but what has happened recently in Belarus and Georgia are good examples of what you say.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If the Dems presented a candidate with credible foreign policy credentials And Bush has Foreign Policy credentials? Please, alienating the world hardly seems like something to boast.
Interesting point here is that the Constitution specifies that treaties we sign and get ratified by Congress BECOME the law of the land. ;)
Self-referential sigs are rarely entertaining.
Jerry Rice's Catches and the Niners' games where they scored at least once among many others.. I think this could be another one of those streaks coming to an end very soon..
"Make it idiot proof, and someone will make a better idiot."
I certainly don't recall anywhere near the amount of derision coming from the rest of the world during Clinton's stint as president. Even during the sex scandal the rest of the world was at most a mildly amused spectator.
George Bush as president is such a mind bogglingly funny idea it almost defies parody.
While it may be easier to "tear down than build up" it seems it only takes money and connections to build a cretin into a president.
You are right in a way though, while the US talks to the world as if it is God's gift to the planet the rest of the world will certainly enjoy poking fun at it. Disdain and disrespect for those who hold themselves as better than you is not just natural, it's probably healthy too.
That doesn't just go for the US. In most western democracies I've been to there has been a healthy lack of respect for those in power. It's part of keeping the bastards honest. Sadly it seems, at least from afar, that too many Americans take criticism of their president as an affront to the country itself rather than an indication he might not be doing a good enough job for your country.
At the end of the day though those that are pointing out that your emporer has no clothes are right, he's a moron plain and simple.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The "pickup-truck" Republicans "are nearly a laugh; they're nearly a laugh, but they're really a cry": - It's like watching Clarence Thomas sit on the bench and rule against Affirmative Action after that's what got him through college, graduate and law school.
That's the great draw of the Republicans: people's belief in the American Dream- that they'll actually one day make it and benifit from Republican policies.
Either that, or the Blind Religeous Right: It's GREAT to be RIGHTEOUS - I'm one of the people who has to RISE UP and PROTECT YOU FROM YOURSELF - and I'll get a shitload of virgins (or is it raisins??) when I die for the Cause...
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Making a cogent point without the "word of the day" printed on a big screen behind him is a challenge.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
For 2003 a single man making 28,400 dollars, and living in WA state (8% sales tax) he will pay 27% of his wages in tax.
l
Where are you getting those numbers? Spending half of his earnings on taxable goods yields about $1100 in sales tax, or about 4% of the income. Are you implying that he would have a 23% income tax rate? Think again...
At the other end of the income spectrum, the bottom 50 percent of the nation's taxpayers (everyone whose adjusted gross income was under $28,654) earned more and paid less. Total income for this group rose from $861 billion to $870 billion. That was up from 13.8 percent of all income in 2001 to 14.23 percent in 2002. Despite growth in the percentage of total income earned by the bottom half of earners, their average tax rate fell from 4.1 percent to 3.2 percent.
(http://www.taxfoundation.org/prtopincome.html)
What a lot of people are confused about when it comes to income taxes is that just because you get a certain amount of money taken out of your paycheck (in the neighborhood of >20%) doesn't mean that that's your actual tax rate. When tax return time comes around, you get a lot of it back (depending on how much you make), making your effective tax rate far lower than what it APPEARS to be on your paychecks. If you make a decent amount of money, you OWE additional money come tax time, making your effective income tax rate even HIGHER.
You know why low income earners don't get many tax breaks? Because they hardly pay any taxes to begin with!
Here's a good table: http://www.taxfoundation.org/prtopincometable.htm
Oh come now. The democrats pass out literature in illegal alien drenched areas informing them that, EVEN THOUGH IT IS AGAINST THE LAW, they can work around it and go to polling stations to get their democratic vote in.
They're doing this in lots of states - but perticularly in Arizon, a state on the border which is being overwhelmed with illegals, where they have to pass a proposition (prop 200) which will force them to show some kind of I.D. to prove their citizenship before voting.
Knowing this, you really aught to stop the finger pointing at the Republicans, because it's being done by both sides.
The Virgina Republican Party has filed a lawsuit contesting the final score of the Washington Redskins game, stating that several of the Green Bay players were illegally enrolled in the NFL
On War: Its funny you criticize Bush's war policies when Jimmy Carter and President Clinton refused to confront terrorism repeatedly throughout their administrations creating the debacle George W. Bush had the courage to face. Jimmy Carter's reckless pacifist idealistic foreign policy cost us our relationship with Iran, when he pressured the Shah to change policy based on U.S. will, and when this looked like a weakness to Iraq and Sudan, he refused to send help to the Iranians. The result? The government overthrown and replaced by a despotic terrorist regime - Iran - once our closest ally in the middle east now one of our worst enemies - and this still has to be cleared up. Clinton witnessed numerous, indisputable terrorist declarations of war ON US SOIL, and averted an eye in every, single instance. When our embassies were bombed in 1992, 1997, and 1998 - these are attacks on US SOIL. And the WTC bombing of 1993. Liberals consistently pursue a policy of appeasement, thinking idealistically that peace begets peace. No. Peace and appeasement historicaly has created a worse situation than confrontation, Neville Chamberlin leaving Germany telling his people in Britain that all is well, we've reached peace with the Germans allowed Nazi Germany to further develop into a breeding ground for terror. Evil/Terrorism/Despotism must be confronted wherever, not appeased and accomodated. On Economy: If you remember, Reagan lowered the HIGHEST tax bracket in his administration from the high 70's to 28%, and government revenue increased 99.5%. The top income earners in this country have demonstrated that they are the most efficient at investing income. Middle class and low class earners especially (or people who just live off the government) are inefficient in investing. Its not good or bad, it just doesn't make sense to give more money to people who can't spend it effectively. I didn't think I'd see the hideous specter of socialist thinking on this bored but its been getting to that in this thread. People please, recognize what's going on for what it is - a policy of appeasement versus a policy of confrontation, a man bent on creating a socialized health care and expanded social security system that doesn't even beat inflation, to a man concerned with setting competitive blocs to earn your dollar in health care, and allowing you the option of investing your own social security accounts, beating the 1-2% you're getting with the government investing your payroll taxes.
You seem to having the whole CO2 thing backwards. We first had a causal explanation how CO2 could lead to global warming (i.e., the greenhouse effect). I hope you're not questioning that this causal effect actually works in small scale -- an actual greenhouse -- as there seems to be quite a few greenhouses that use it to keep warm. Note that this is quite different from the game in question here, where the causative link still needs to be established.
The causal explanation on a global scale was first forwarded in in the late 19th century by Swedish chemist and 1903 Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius, largely as an attempt to explain ice ages. At the time his peers largely rejected his theory. So the hypothesis is about a century old, and the data on which the correlations are based is also a century old. You might want to try another example to make your point, because although there is still ground to question the validity of the greenhouse effect on a global scale (does the effect scale up?), there is currently more evidence (both statistical and causative) that points to the existence than to the non-existence of the effect. It's definitely not absolutely certain that it is the case, but probable enough to try to reduce CO2 emissions.
For a minute there I didn't believe a single word of your post and I tried to form a counter-argument, but your "truth be tolds" made the whole thing impenetrable.
As a slashdotter, I think we have the responsibility to actually listen to "Mosh" and act responsibly.
Damn, when I signed up for slashdot I guess I didn't read the part about a responsibility to listen to a crappy gay-bashing white rapper.
He's right too, the coming of the King of Terror began in a schoolroom, it's reign should end there too,
Along with the teaching of proper punctuation?
Leading Hindu astrologers and a noted Hindu mystic believe that Kerry is going to win, Bush will never again be president, and Kerry will end terrorism and bring world peace! The sun and the moon have even endorsed Kerry.
So let me get this straight-- if the sun and the moon had wanted Bush (or Nader or Cobb or Badanarik) to win, they would have given both Newtonian physics and general and special relativity a miss and altered their trajectories to spell out defeat for Kerry? I, for one, am outraged. These celestial bodies are neither U.S. citizens nor registered voters, and I resent their attempts to use their outside influence on this election.
Then again, maybe you and your Hindu astrologers just pulled it out Uranus.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
You are absolutely right... and it's not just voting fraud, either, they like to blame republicans for a lot of things THEY are guilty of. And we give them a pass. I do not know why.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
This is an extremely concise summary of events - perfectly accurate in less than 20 words.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Nobody glorified the war before it happened. It was the Bush administration who envisioned the Iraq war as planting democracy in the middle east, among other great pictures. In fact, the majority people around the world always knew this was going to be messy, costy, fruitless and backfiring. However, in spite of waves of anti-war protests, Bush lead the world to war. Now it turned out to be ugly, you say it's meant to be this way. This is either naive or dishonest. Neither is suitable for the US president.
Democrats only like voting rights when it's in their favor....
You think you are so superior, that if your candidate loses, it's not because the other candidate won more electoral votes, it's because other people are so much stupider than you, you know it all, and you know better than everyone else what is best for them. Even if Kerry were to make a better president than Bush, you think making it so by doing something illegal.
I know your post was tongue in cheek, but I also know that humor comes from reality, and that that thought was in your mind, and I also know that many liberals actually do feel that way. The worst part is they don't understand why it's wrong.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Any other year I'd say this is true but looks like Bush will win, The RedSox fouled up everything this year.
America is now more divided than it has been since the Viet Nam War. For some people he's been a good leader. If you're rich, right wing, and/or Christian he's great. But he seems to think that everyone else can go fuck themselves.
I agree with most of what you said. However I know some die hard Christians who will not be republican tomorrow, myself and my mom being two of them. I think Bush is insulting to Christians, but thats just my 1.5 cents. Vote how you wish, but I have yet to see something Bush did in the past 3+ years that I agreed with.yeah but the red sox won the world series...
all bets are off this year.
ôó
I find it highly amusing, but at the same time disturbing, that the Americans since 9/11 have been shouting for terrorists heads on a plate while for many years before 9/11, and quite likely after 9/11 as well, collections has been and are being made in support of the IRA.
Do tell me that you actually realise the double morale in that...
Hmmmm.... could it be - and I know I'm reaching here - that those are different groups of Americans? I mean I know it's a wild theory to think that not all 290,000,000 Americans think and behave alike... but it's worth considering.
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
What is this... "football" you speak of? Perhaps a new distro?
Was an interesting book... don't know that I got a lot of useful information out of it, but it basically says what you are saying.
Millionaires (those with a net worth of $1 million or more) tend not to waste money. People driving BMWs and Mercedes actually, typically, make much less.
There are anecdotal cases either way (my wife used to ask if she could have a Mercedes... I said "yes, buy we'd have to live in it"), but most marginally wealthy people got that way from being thrifty.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Actually, it means that if you are going to vote for Bush, then you are voting for a loser. (which goes without saying) So you had better change your vote to Kerry, so you can say that you voted for a winner.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The U.S. military forces in fact were shockingly successful.
I suppose that depends on your definition of success. If you consider barging in there with size 12s, blowing up innocent civilians left, right and centre thus alienating the entire population to be success, then yes.
Iraqis weren't ready to be liberated.
Correction, they weren't ready to be liberated by fuckwits barging in there with size 12s, killing innocent civilians left, right and centre, then setting up shop capitalising from the nations rich natural resources.
Not a troll - this is my opionion. You have yours, and this is mine.
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
Neither candidate is perfect though-- it's honestly best to think of it as "picking the lesser of two evils".
Or you can think of it in a more positive manner. I prefer to think of it like I have two choices and I need to choose the one who will be the best for the needs of the country and myself.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Actually, my wife will be working her first election, tomorrow. She's VITALLY interested in the process, and cares that it work correctly. Her father worked the elections, years ago. (In this light, the question we asked ourselves yesterday was, "Why did it take her this long to sign up to work an election?") For that matter, my mother used to work the elections, too. As far as I can tell, most of the election workers are locals, ordinary people, hired for the day, and share that motivation with my wife.
Aside from the part of your post denigrating the poll workers, I have to agree with you. Fortunately in our precinct, we have optical readers and use 'fill in the circle' ballots. I didn't realize how lucky we were until the Diebold fiasco started brewing in the past year or two.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I do think you are right there. Interestingly enough, the american friends I have tends to agree with me on the hypocrisy point.
The point I was trying to raise, and I know it was clumsy of me not to point out that not all the US people think alike as that is rather obvious, was that it seems socially acceptable to fundraise for the IRA, while fundraising for Al Queda would be aiding and abetting terrorists.
I am sure, and I know some of them, there are Americans that realise the double-morale and are against the fundraising for the IRA. However, the US administration seemingly find nothing wrong with soliciting the support of the nation that is targeted by the very organisation some Americans are fundraising for.
Swedish, but resident in the UK since 1996.
The whole problem with stupidly (or evilly) designed e-voting machines is that there is no possibility of a recount. There is no audit trail (e.g. printed ballots in addition to electronic counts). There are no physically stable counters. For example, Viriginia used pinball counters before going to WinVote. India uses battery backed counters in sealed tamper proof enclosures controlled by a few hundred lines of public assembly code.
you do not get rich by spending money foolishly. and you spend it very foolishly.
I don't want to get rich, and I don't want to seem rich. I want to live well. You seem to think the wealth is what matters. It doesn't, and there's little point in accumulating huge amounts of money if you don't spend it on things you enjoy. Believe me, I spend my money very wisely.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
hmmm... No I've considered it and discarded it as outright fantasy. You've all been brainwashed by Fox.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Well, my post was simply meant to be anecdotal, I wasn't trying to solve a mathematical equation exactly. I only meant to make a statement about the horrible inaccuracy of the polling process, and the fact that people treat the reported numbers as gospel.
What, no Ireland (Kilkenny, Guinness) nor Czech Republic (Staropramen, Pilsner Urquell, Kozel) on the favorite beer list!?
Well, they were just the first that sprung to mind, and to paraphrase someone sensible, I've rarely met a beer I didn't like.
As far as your faves there. I don't mind the odd pint of Guinness, but if I had to make a choice between it and Theakston's Old Peculiar or even Newky Brown, I'd be leaving the Guinness in the tap.
I must admit to neglecting the Czech beers though - I've had (and liked) a few Urquells, but missed on the others in your list. I'll give them a go on the weekend, and if they're as good as you say, I might owe you one...
PS, I might keep quiet about the chocolate for now, but it'll come in handy next time I need a bribe - cheers.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
In this case the win isn't foretelling, it's the fact that the win was controversial.
I think it's nearer "The Watchmen" in reverse. For those not au fait, the alien being that materialised in NY was meant to bring peace.
h
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Well the point of that paragraph was, don't be indifferent this year (or any year) you're able to participate in an election-- bite the bullet and find the candidate that most matches your vision of where this country should go.
;) I'd just hate to think someone out there isn't voting, at all, because neither candidate fits their ideals/vision perfectly.
I know that a lot of complaints I've seen and heard have been that neither candidate is what someone wants: well set aside those ideals because whether you like it or not, we're getting one of those two November 2nd. Being indifferent isn't counted (or recounted).
FTR, I am a bit more positive about my choice than the "lesser of two evils" quote lets on.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
I also am skeptical of meta-moderation because I haven't gotten any mod points in like 6 months, despite having excellent karma and never having an Unfair metamod to any of my moderations. Clearly the system is broken :-P
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Monday football as a terrorist target. It would be right before the election, would be very public, and would impact a large group of people.
You've not seen Black Sunday, have you.
If tied at the end of regulation and no one scores in overtime, then a regular season NFL game is declared tied. In the playoffs they keep going until someone scores.
They have not been national collections by any means. They have been donations made by Irish Americans who do not understand the simple fact that solving violent problems with violence is not a viable or sustainable solution. That's like saying that all Muslims seek the destruction of the United States. I have been fortunate to know many kind and devout Muslims who believe in their faith, but also believe in the value to human life and do not see violence as an end to justify their goals. Do all Muslims want to kill Christians or Americans? Not by any means. I believe that northern Ireland should be part of the free state of Ireland, but have never given a dime to the IRA to forward this cause (BTW, my father is an Irish Citizen). Your narrowminded observation is like me saying that all Brits support the notions of Cromwell and the Irish should hate the people of GB for that. You can dislike (hate) a government for it's stance, but to condem the people under that leadership is foolish and shows your unwillingness to seperate people from the political climate that they happen to live in.
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
Many of my family is of Irish American descent, and many of them fund the IRA. They call them patriots, I say they stopped being patriots when they started using terrorist style activities to try and win their way. Bombs being placed in subways are not patriotic acts. A patriot fights for freedom in a country he loves, not attack the innocent people who is trying to free from oppression. OTOH, America, strangely enough, is founded on terrorism. We celebrate our proud heritage of performing terrorist attacks on English soldiers. It all depends on who wins the way which side ends up being "evil" to history. George Orwell would be proud.
I'm not saying the terrorist attacks are right, hell no. No one can say that. But Americans tend to believe what they want to. They tend to see everything with blinders on. We tend to act like we are the only people who have ever gotten terrorized, and that we are the great glowing good that will save the world from evil. But really, we are just scared little children, looking for someone to blame so we can beat them up and feel better when the world is safe again. I guess this sort of thing was easier when we had one big evil to blame all of our ills on. But after communist Russia fell, we had no one to blame anymore about the state of the world but ourselves. And Americans hate to look in the mirror, for we are fat and greedy, and it shines through like a beacon of pain.
click me
You know what? Sometimes people just want to have fun. Party pooper.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Oh come now. The democrats pass out literature in illegal alien drenched areas informing them that, EVEN THOUGH IT IS AGAINST THE LAW, they can work around it and go to polling stations to get their democratic vote in.
Do you have any references for this? If so, please share and I'll gladly do the same for all of the Republican voting shenanigans going on.
But it could got three ways: People vote for Kerry because they're pissed off and Eminem tells them to, and Kerry wins. Or Bush wins and people take Em's call for an army seriously and we have an insurrection, or they realize it doesn't matter and go back to slaving for minimum wage.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
"Wars are a disruptive societal force. That's why they are generally bad. Unfortunately, at times they are necessary" - this is true in the general case, but it certainly wasn't "necessary" by any means for Iraq. You seem to believe the propaganda that this war was for the benefit of the "Iraqi people" - it was not. I suggest you read this link, which along with Paul O'Neill's (former Bush cabinet member)testimony provides sufficient evidence that Bush Jr. planned to invade Iraq as early as 1999. 9/11 merely provided camouflage and a cassus belli to deceive the sadly trusting public.
And no, despite what you may have heard from Cheney, Iraq is not linked to 9/11.
"The slave who knows his master's will and does not get ready...will be be beaten with many blows."Luke 12:47-48
man: "well, i believe i'll vote for a third party candidate"
kang: "ha ha ha, go ahead, throw your vote away!"
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
In the Florida case (and New Mexico and a few others), it was clear that given the level of inaccuracy (dimpled chads, confusing ballots, people turned down at the voting booth, people too stupid to vote according to their intentions, machine trouble, counting troubles), the votes themselves were not reliable enough to use as a decision. In such a situation recounting does not solve the issue, only another election round can.
A) No (large American) war in 1994 B) No (large American) election in 1994 Perhaps you meant... Heck, I have no idea what you meant.
Hmmm, the most active article on Slashdot is about football and politics. It doesn't seem like "news for nerds" anymore, it seems more like "news for dorks".
A real nerd doesn't care about politics, since its run by all the popular rich guys that made fun of us all through school.
Sleep is for the Weak
If Bush won it would be a bad omen for his last 4 years, if Kerry won it would mean next election would be even more dumbed down - millions of people would be watching the Redskins to see the result, and political journalists and news stations would actually be basing their predictions on it. Then there would be some kind of scandel over who got paid to take a fall. All I can say is GO GREENBAY! DOWN WITH BOOSH W00T!
However, this really doesnt fill me with confidence:
"Oh, yeah, he's going to win. It's guaranteed," said Packers safety Darren Sharper, a Kerry supporter. "I don't have to vote now. Don't even have to go to the polls. Saved me a trip."
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
In the last frou years of Clinton the average salary in the nation went up 3 thousand dollars, during the frist three years of the Bush administration the average wage went up three thousand dollars. Unemployemnt is almost exactly where it was in 1996 when Clinton got reelected. Finally lets look at the median which is a better measure (in 2003 Dollars, from the US census):
1997-2000: Up 4,000 Dollars 2000-2003: Up 3,300 Dollars
So no wages have not stagnated, and given that Clinton did not have to deal with 9/11 and a Nasdaq crash (which *did* happen very late under Clinton) Bush has not done an aweful job on the economy. The median and Mean incomes in the US are higher. You can tout the John Kerry mantra all you want but the facts dont agree.
As an aside I am not voting for Bush or Kerry. Bush did not get a specific declaration of War for Iraq and Kerry used the used of force crap to save his bacon from Dean (make himslef look centrist) and then after he won the promary is trying to be the anti-war candidate.
Either way, it's a Halloween election. Are you voting for John SKERRY or George BOOOOsh?
-- Boycott Shell
no doubt many americans are superstitious and the redskins election game statistic has received a decent amount of news exposure. so will the republicans give up and skip the polls in lieu of an imminent loss? or will this invoke a rally to lead them to victory?
In the case of no candidate winning a mayority of the votes (and a plurality doesn't count) the NEW house gets to choose the president and the NEW senate gets to choose the VP. I'm not sure if Kerry or Edwards get a vote, or what would happen if the vote gets tied in the senate again (since normally the VP casts the deciding votes). But it is possible that we could end up with a Bush/Edwards presidency.
New Senate means new Senate. Neither Kerry nor Edwards are running for Senate this time so neither would vote. Another interesting thing is that in the House each state gets only one vote, e.g. all 53 Californian representatives vote among themselves and submit that as their vote, etc. That means some states (with split delegations) might have to abstain. According to CNN (sorry, no link) this could result in the Vice President chosen by the Senate becoming 'Acting President' if the House is tied. President Cheney? President Edwards? It's possible!!
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
When you consider how the Skins game ended (with a questionable call taking away a Portis TD that would have won it for the skins), that would translate to a questionable legal decision deciding the election. That part is almost sure to happen, given all the shysters, I mean lawyers both sides have hired.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
That thing flying over your head, that was the point you missed....
Where do you think the company got 1.75 Billion? Thats right they got it frmo teh comsumers. When you tax business they pass that on to the people who buy their products..
Football teams are the surest predicter of everything. So if you believe in Kerry just stay home, it is in the bag. Kerry/Edwards so much crap it takes two Johns.
...the Redsox won the World Series, breaking the "curse of the Bambino" so maybe this is a year of things not happening like they always do.
-- Liberals consistently pursue a policy of appeasement, thinking idealistically that peace begets peace.--
:
Because Bush's policy of "Let's be *EVERYONE'S* big brother has helped world opinion of the US SOOO much!
Clue-bat
For the first time since it's creation, the US has been THROWN OFF the human rights committee in the UN. **FOR RIGHTS VIOLATIONS**, we've been on that committee since it was *created.* That, along with refusal to budge on the Kyoto accord, the tax cut for the rich, the lies and the misdirection are why I'm voting for the ABB party (Anyone But Bush).
Better the Devil I don't know than the Devil I do in this case.
Would now be a good time to mention that we need MORE poltical parties in this system? Two of them simply doesn't cut it anymore. Hey, I'll vote Democrat...wait they pretty much do the same thing the Republicans do...and vice-versa.
My 2 cents, nothing more and nothing less.
A.A.
Your mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's been opened.
but it is also a ridiculous means of
acertaining the outcome of an election.
Jeb Bush guaranteed W would win Florida
in 2000 (and now again in 2004). Diebold's
CEO has guaranteed that W will win Ohio
in 2004. Between these assertions, and
the VOA-RNC voter registration fiascos
that have been playing out in multiple
states, I would put my money on a Bush
"win" (by any means necessary). It isn't
for nothing that the TX GOP (and Hassert)
made a complete mockery of redistricting.
I suspect, however, that a Bush "win" will
have some serious political and legal
blowback, not unlike RM Nixon's troubles.
I will look forward to seeing the whole
GOP neo-con band of thugs tried before
the ICC for war crimes, and tried in the
USA for derelection of duty and treason.
The 2004 election will not be over until
the last bullet isi recounted ad nauseum.
I, for one, welcome our new UN election
monitor overlords.
Just as scary, but somewhat more plausible: what if Bush today or tomorrow "slips" and claims very publicly that Bin Laden has been captured. Many Kerry voters instead go for Bush, and he wins. Then, after the election, he admits his mistake.
What would happen? He couldn't be impeached because he didn't break the law. It's not like the US has a California "recall" option, after all.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
See Piers Anthony's horrible drek^W^Wscience fiction novel Politician, the third book in the "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series.
And I can imagine your reaction had our soldiers shot them in order to prevent looting instead of letting them run wild.
The choice of letting them vent by looting government offices or clamping down hard to prevent it was no easy choice. And answer honestly -- if the soldiers had shot a few dirt-poor Iraqis who were looting golden faucet heads out of Uday and Qusay's mansions would you now claim that was a mistake -- that it would have been better to allow them to seek retribution by taking back some of their wealth from the Hussain palaces?
Now, are you trying to tell me that you can predict that because "people" are the causative agent here, that the world would be better off in terms of the temperature curve of the last 80 years? If so, how did you arrive at that conclusion?
The facts are, some scientists interpret the very small (about 80 years) warming baseline that has been measured as global warming, and a large number of others do not interpret it as human caused global warming. When scientists are split on an issue like this, it is not time to jump up and down and point with certainty at any numbers. Scientists are not, generally speaking, political animals.
The facts are that within well documented written history, the earth has gone through climate swings that make the measured changes over the last 80 years look like nothing. Both hot and cold, dustbowls, deserts and clement times that grew many veggies and supported many critters. Glaciers that covered huge sections of continents. Those same glaciers melted, in a frenzy of "global warming" that utterly dwarfs anything seen or even hinted at in the last 80 years, and it was entirely natural and not caused by humans. The facts are that the sun is going through the strongest phase of sunspot generation since we've been paying attention, and that is a whole lot longer - we're talking centuries here - than we've been watching global temperature averages and swings.
Now, we may indeed be experiencing human caused global warming to any degree at all. What I am saying, and many scientists are saying, is that the small baseline of measurements taken do not justify the conclusion that human caused global warming is real. There is not enough data taken previously to justify saying if the current global temperature trends are human-caused.
I am also not saying that we should be careless about various gas emissions into the atmosphere, with particular regard to gasses known to chemically change the atmosphere in major ways, for instance, certain refrigerants. This is often taken as the underlying meaning when someone shoots at the "global warming" movement, but it is not the same thing at all.
What I am saying is that the use of 80 years of measurements to justify the conclusion of global warming is very poor science, specifically gross misuse of statistics, definitely comparable to definitively predicting the outcome of a political race based upon a completely unrelated sports match. The 80 years of data we have support no such conclusions. They show a short term trend that we cannot correlate with human behaviour using anything more sophisticated than guesswork. That means that when someone points at the data and then declares with certainty that "humans are causing this", they are being fools. If they change that to "humans may be causing this", they are being prudent and reasonable. If they look at the environment with or without this in mind, and act to reduce emissions from industrial, power and consumer gas and particulate producing methdologies, they are also being prudent. And that is being done, including in the much-maligned USA, which has forbidden the use of many of the culprit refrigerants I mentioned earlier, made gas pumps that release less evaporative crud, put into place filtering requirements for industry, enormously reduced emissions from internal combustion engines and so fort
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
you know what... if everyone has to read the whole freaking thread before voting nobody would turn up... But I am going to vote for Bush if I pee blood on Nov 2.
oops! I forgot I am not American! Stupid Bush! Boring Kerry!
I've seen some of it personally and heard of poll workers who, when trying to push away illegals who didn't even speak english, were shown the pamphlets and laughed at them while they went in to vote. Also, www.google.com
I'm just sure as hell glad the Republicans are doing what they are, and even more glad, almost giddy, that they get away with it. Fire with fire is the only way to play this game, and if you bother to trouble yourself and get together a list of "shenanigans" going on, It'll only bolster my confidence.
Also, have you not the critical skills to realize that proposition 200 would not exist had illegals not been voting illegally? And are you somehow implying that they would (laughable) be voting Republican?
As a scientist, I must say "no", on the grounds that this is the poster child of a Clustering Illusion(driven by Wishful Thinking). Mathematically speaking, that is the statistical problem that occours when you plot a small dataset against another small dataset and try to regress a line out of it.
-- Just another unsolicited opinion... from the Peanut Gallery.
John Titor is a prophet!
Personally, I'd be happy if Kerry would just release his record, which he still hasn't, and even admits to not releasing:
"Brokaw: Someone has analyzed the President's military aptitude tests and yours, and concluded that he has a higher IQ than you do.
Kerry: That's great. More power. I don't know how they've done it, because my record is not public. So I don't know where you're getting that from."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6354942/
And the reason for that appears to be that he didn't get an honorable discharge from the military:
http://www.nysun.com/article/4040
He could clear all this up by signing that form 180, which is has never done.
And why? Because he has everything to hide.
Thats the sad part of Affirmative action, rich white liberals dont think Black people can make it unless they are given in's.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
Oh I agree with the main thrust of your point, I just wanted to emphasize that you can't lump them together. I suspect there are some hypocrites of the kind you describe, but I have trouble believing that they are anything but a niche group. I admit I could be mistaken, especially since I've never personally met anyone who admitted supporting the IRA (even morally), so I can't say where they stand on other issues.
One of my personal beefs has been how the Catholic church will excommunicate priests for ordaining a woman as a priest (sorry, no link, maybe you can google it) but they won't excommunicate so-called Catholics who engage in terrorism.
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
I'm not sure that anyone will read this, as I'm late to the party and replying to something way, way deep in the comment tree, but I feel like I need to respond.
I'm a Christian (Presbyterian to be exact) and Bush is hardly a "great leader" for me. Christianity at its roots values love and tolerance, two ideals which I'd hardly associate with the current administration. The Christians whose values coincide best with Bush's are evangelical and fundamentalist. I and many other Christians I'm sure, think that those particular sects give the rest of us a bad name.
It really saddens me to see that "Christian" is almost becoming derogatory because of a vocal minority. I just wish people would remember that most of us also value things like science and the right of everyone to determine their own way of life.
"Thank you for proving my point; parent post reads like a commentary right out of The Nation--it's pure opinion with almost no facts cited and is considered "insightful" at the moment. But people who follow The Nation (or The New Republic, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, Boston Globe, CBS, and other mainstream left-leaning editorial vehicles and broadcasters) don't have a need for facts, especially inconvenient ones, in this emotion-driven election year."
This also pure opinion with almost no facts cited and it's still rated as "informative" when I'm reading it.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
"You"? Who is this 'you' you are talking about? Okay, to be fair, I do actually come from the States, but I haven't lived there since before Fox even had a news program (at least, I don't remember it). Either way, only about half the Americans have been brainwashed by Fox, otherwise this election wouldn't even be close.
In any case, what led you to the assumption that I'm American? Just because you happened to be right, doesn't mean it wasn't a huge leap.
-Chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
and the yankee's lost while up 3-0 in a 7 game championchip series. never in the history of basebal has a team come back down 3-0, but the Sox did. Those are just facts from histories and not predictors.
While I wouldn't fall of my chair if Bush wins, I do think synchronity and other magickal phenomena are interesting and can sometimes be useful.
(My personal epistemology has a feyerabendian slant.)
> Does this imply more people voting for Bush/against Kerry won't have the same effect?
His statement is dead on, and works both sides of the aisle. The more people get out and vote, the less likely either side is to be able to game the results. Fraud is easy when half of your electorate stays home on election day. The bigger the numbers, the harder it is to fudge "just enough" to change the result in either direction.
So, the more people that get out and vote for any candidate, the less likely cheating can affect the election. So get off your butt (if you're an American voter) tomorrow.
Virg
I was _at_ the game.
The defense seemed to be really feeding off the crowd energy.
It's just an observation as a fan, not some sort of twisted allegory about the Bush administration or the DoD or some stupid shit like that. Yes, I know what article this thread is attached to... but if I was going to make some sort joke or political tie in I would have come right out and said it.
Get a clue.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Wrong. More neo-con spin. There is only one scenario that the Florida State Supreme Court considered. Counting all the votes statewide.
Gore also won Florida when all the votes in Florida were counted by the newspapers after the election by the standards the FLA Sup Ct. had ordered and the US Supreme Ct. ordered stopped.
Pointing to various Bush/Gore campaign strategies is pointless, becasue the FLA Sup Ct. never ordered any of the campaign strategies. The FLA Sup Ct. ordered all the votes in FLA counted. The US Supreme Ct. stopped that and prevented the votes from being counted and appointed Bush President.
All the ballots were later counted by several (liberal) mainstream newspapers and Bush won in every scenario. Look it up. The right outcome happened.
... that it was too close to call. The result you would get depended on judgement issues: not just chads, but when to disqualify improperly filled-out overseas and absentee ballots, votes in the wrong polling station, etc. Their best guess numbers had a different winner for different scenarios and standards. In general, the larger the recount, the more Gore was helped.
Simply not true.
The real result of the recounting was
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
While it is amusing that the redskins win/losses have mirrored the presidential election, I think this year will prove it for what it is... BS.
Much like the 'curse' was lifted from the RedSox, this year the redskins presidential election parallel will be broken.
So what will be the next Redskin presidential parallel... The Redskins will predict the presidential election except if the redsox win?
JD
Would you stand in the way of using Joseph Mengele's research if you knew it was the only way you'd stay alive?
Given that we have used Mengele's research to advance medical science (think artificial limbs among other things), I'm not sure what your point actually is or if you even have one.
This just goes to show the neo-cons cannot handle the truth. When presented the truth, neo-cons sream and stick their fingers in their ears and pretend the truth doesn't exist.
The videotapes exist and show the explosives were there in the bunkers at Al QaQWaa when the 101st Airfborne Division went there. The seals from the international inspection agency were intact.
Modding me down for stating the truth will not change the fact that Bush allowed those explosives to be looted after the invasion of Iraq.
Repeat after me: THE FLORIDA SUPREME COURT DID NOT ORDER A PARTIAL RECOUNT. The FLORIDA SUPREME COURT ordered the entire state be recounted. The US Supreme Court order the recount of THE ENTIRE STATE OF FLORIDA stopped.
Too bad little details like the actual facts involved get in your way.
...because the news media has already announced that the entire election will be decided in Ohio and Florida, so the rest of us might as well stay home.
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Sorry, I misplaced my tags off that last comment.
You are correct of course and I must say that I have many American friends (or clan buddies, which is mostly as close to friends as a poor slashdotter gets). They're nice guys and mostly thoughtful but sometimes you'll get some who are simply not aware of many things which go on in the world, things that are done either to them by their government, or done in their name abroad. Mostly I don't understand the refusal to question the leadership in the name of patriotism. When you nation is founded on principles, what can be more patriotic than asking hard questions about whether or not those principles are being followed?
Anyway, no (serious) offence intended.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Because once the cards are run through a machine, the pins must apply some pressure to the holes in order to read them, so even the unpunched holes are "dimpled". This is why they should never have counted any votes that were not properly punched, and more important is that punch cards really should be punched by machine and not with hand tools!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Budget: The Democrats tried to force some fiscal restraint on Bush on the famous 87 billion vote. Dems were ready to support the money spent if Bush had removed the tax cut to the top 1% of the most wealthy to pay for it. Bush refused and threated to veto that 87 billion in defense spending funding if any of the tax cuts that were only going to the top tax bracket were removed
Foreign Policy: Do some reading. Libya happened becasue Khadafi had a ludicrous fantasy about Libya hosting the World Cup that was scheduled to be held in Africa, and was awarded to South Africa. Khadafi's son plays pro soccer in Europe, and Khadafi had strange visions of his son returning home to play the World Cup in Libya. anyway, to have his bid have a remote chance in hell, Khadafi had to get in compliance regarding international law.
Case of truth being stranger than fiction.
Education: Bush signed the No Child Left Behind bill with Kennedy, then refused to spend the money budgeted the bill by Congress. The money is still sitting there and the bill's provisions are not being followed by Bush.
Jobs: Nice try. Clinton created 23 million jobs during his presidency, and Clinton had the lowest unemployment rate since WW2. Bush has lost more jobs than any President since Hoover.
than the fact that the 19 of the 20 counties with voting irregularities were run by Democrats and the 20th by an independant.
No more factual of an issue than using a football game to predict an election.
The only difference is that certain people needed something to blame and a conspiracy makes them feel better about it.
Besides, Florida's voting actually was less problemsome than Georgia's. Yup, the rate of issues was lower in Florida than many other states. However Florida was easier to tip using the courts. I fully expect this election to be no different, if a state has a difference low enough to affect the overall election I fully expect certain parties to be out in force in an attempt to claim voter fraud or similar.
Voter fraud only became an issue when it no longer worked.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Given that the Red Sox won the world series, I think this might be the year to break such trends....If only the Cubs could have won too...
Budget: This is a mess, but we're spending a lot on military right now to make up for what should have been spent on arms and intelligence during the 90s.
Foreign policy: What is your yardstick? Afghanistan just had their first democratic elections in, er, EVER, and Iraq will have theirs in January. Oh, so France and Germany don't like us anymore. When did they ever place their alliance with us over the almighty Euro? Oil for Food is the proof.
Education: No Child Left Behind was passed and is a success. It's moving more slowly than expected, but it's moving. Is this the President's fault? Must the Fed micromanage every local school? This is the responsibility of the inept governors, mayors, and city councils that let them go to waste.
Healthcare: A new prescription drug benefit for seniors. Clinton didn't do ANYTHING in eight years for health care because he insisted on an all-or-nothing Canada-like plan that likely wouldn't work for the US because we are NOT Canada. Meanwhile, Democrats keep blasting the plan even though they haven't done anything themselves to help.
Jobs: Bush inheirited a recession, and this caused a lot of lost jobs between October 2000 ad January 2002. Most of those have come back due to boosts for small business and tax cuts for all but the wealthiest individuals. What's Kerry's plan? Heavily tax everyone making over $200,000, even though most of them are actually small business like partnerships and sole proprietors that are taxed like individuals.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
at this point, i think Nader would be the most ironic choice.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You forgot Poland.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Look Enjoy the kool-aid and have a safe election day..
Low earners pay plenty of taxes. FICA and the like take up a substantial percentage of most working folks' paychecks. The scam is that social security fund is then raided by politicians who dip into these revenues for general funds--it's an income tax in all but name for those who draw a paycheck from an employer and have that as their only income.
The working poor have it bad enough, they don't need be looked down as "lucky duckies" for not paying in their fair share of taxes. I'd much rather be where I am than in the position of not having to pay federal income tax.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
Education: Bush signed the No Child Left Behind bill with Kennedy, then refused to spend the money budgeted the bill by Congress. The money is still sitting there and the bill's provisions are not being followed by Bush.
Wrong --- the money is there, it's up to the school districts to apply for it and use it. nobody in the administration or in Congress can force the school districts to do that. They have to take responsibility and do the application work themselves. Oh wait we already know they don't want to do anything themselves, after all they simply want someone else to do the friggin work for them.
That was a BS claim.
When in doubt.. do it on someone else's machine
(a) is irrelevant. Most people don't make a rational decision during elections, because most people are incapable of one if their life depended on it. And if you take only intelligent, educated and rational people, spent a week with them, presenting raw facts about Bush and the same about random decent people (that is intelligent, with some experience in any managerial job, with good education, etc.), I don't think Bush would get more than a few percent of votes. However, it turns out that almost everyone has a right to vote and politicians can easily dupe most people into thinking they are excellent.
The situation is worsened by the whole election system (from the electoral college to the traditional 50/50 split, to candidates being nominated by the Party) - like cocks are selected for having the largest and the reddest crest, so are candidates selected for having whatever characteristics are important for winning. And, since, as I said before, most people don't care about real facts about how good the candidates are, these characteristics have nothing to do with being a good president.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
The internet business explosion was STARTED by Clinton tax policy and the tax breaks he gave to high tech start up and high tech capital improvements.
Who gives a fuck what the unemployment rate was in 1996. It's one of those neo-con, look-over-here-not at the facts CrapPoints (Trademark - Republican National Committee) that neo-cons throw up to distract from the truth.
TRUTH: Clinton policies created 23 million jobs. Bush policies lost more jobs than any president since Hoover.
Fact: THE PRESIDENT HAS MUCH LESS TO DO WITH THE ECONOMY THAN PEOPLE THINK..
Wrong. There's lists and lists and lists of school districts that have tried to properly apply for that money that were refused by the Bush administation.
Your claim is a lie.
Anyone lacking his connections who had the same discipline and academic record as The Shrub would likely have been expelled from Yale.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
The NASDAQ had it's total value go up 20 times in the bubble, then sanity took hold and the NASDAQ gave a little more than half that 20 fold increase in value back. What's left. Clinton policies that directly lead to massive total increases in NASDAQ stock valuation.
Clinton tax policy supporting high tech innovation caused the tech boom. some people took the tech boom too far and thought the tech party would never end. That's silliness. I remember Lou Dobbs saying on his show that the tech boom would last forever. He really said that. Booms don't last forever. However, it sure created a lot of permanent increases capital value in the US economy.
One Nation, indivisible,
with Liberty, and Justice, for All.
Yea cause the technology actualyl maturing over the past 20 years had little to do with it. Nor did the Republicans who held both houses of congress and thus were the only ones who could set tax policy...
The nature of reality is only worth examining if it happens to agree with pre-defined models? --And studiously ignored if it does not? That's not science.
There is nothing arbitrary about the lights in the sky. There is nothing arbitrary at all in the universe. All events happen as a result of other events which are subect to the rules of nature, which in turn means that all events can be understood and with sufficient data and study, predicted. This is one of the prime tenets of science.
The truth of the matter is that astrology works. The study of patterns which seem unrelated to a subject can in fact provide information about that subject. When the evidence is examined, (as it so very rarely is by those who claim to be scientists), this truth cannot be realistically denied or negated through conventional rationalizations.
This is not something to be scared of. It simply means that the universe is complex and that we do not understand it fully. I don't think anybody here would disagree with that.
Magic does not exist. All things can be measured and understood. Magic only exists for those who choose not to look under rocks.
I disagree. After all, what is the 'physical world'? Particle science is all about pulling the physical world apart to see how it works. When pulled apart far enough, physicality -very literally- ceases altogether so that further study must rely heavily on mathematics. Indeed, Mathematics is a science which exists independent of all physicality.
Many scientists come and go, but those who have left their mark on humanity and whose names we remember and revere were those who drew their inspiration from meta-physical questions, who allowed their minds to explore beyond the limits of the purely physical.
Fear creates limitation.
-FL
You're absolutely right, he did graduate from Ivy League universities given the chances that apparently neither you or I deserve. Did he get that chance fairly? No. Is he a hypocrite? Yes.
First Andover, then Yale, then Harvard, then the Whitehouse. Anyone who doesn't believe that the aristocratic power of Legacy exists has his head in the sand.
= 9J =
The "right to vote" isn't guaranteed by the Constitution. And no the 15th Amendment doesn't guarantee a person the right to vote. It states that if the state chooses to hold an election then the people have a right to vote in that election. States are not obligated by the Constitution to hold Presidential elections and if no election is held then there is no right to vote. If a state wants to change it's constitution to say that there will be a coin flip instead of an election to decide who gets that state's electoral votes then they can.
You have a powerful imagination.
My own explorations suggest, however, that the opposite is true.
Simple logic tells us. .
All events happening now are the result of previous events, and those previous events are the result of events before them. The nature of Cause and Effect suggest that everything in existence can be mapped backwards like this.
If one accepts a 'Big Bang' theory, wherein all matter in the universe is derived from a single, infinitely small point, then all matter and all patterns share an ultimate, common beginning. --Which means that all matter, energy and motion is through Cause and Effect, fundamentally and irrevocably linked.
The stars above your head are of the same system of which you are also a part. This means that it must logically be possible to derive information about you by looking at the stars. --Because, in a very real sense, looking at the stars is the SAME as looking at you. The fact that our limited perspective does not make this connection obvious does not also make it untrue.
-FL
For an election, we still have to vote.. so Kerry supporters all still have to go to the polls. What it REALLY means is that the Repubs have no chance, and should make their time (don't bother voting, Texas... you have no chance to survive :)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Sweet.. I can't wait to yell "Get over it!" to some republicans. :)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
The Clinton tech and tax policy was set in 1993. Not one Republican supported the economic and tax package that created the tech boom. It passed completely on votes in Congress by Democrats.
Yes, the technology was maturing in university labs, but all that research needed capital to be implimented industry-wide. The Clinton high tech tax cuts got the money out there to have all that fiber optic cable installed nationwide that the internet now runs on, and all those servers and equipment to high tech start ups through tax breaks to venture capital for high tech.
We wouldn't associate Mengele's name with devil's incarnate if his research was useful for saving lifes. Turns out most of it was just sadism masqueraded as amateurish medicine.
However, the doctors and researchers all around the world has used some of his results for decades, because noone could reproduce them. The results concern people freezing to death and being warmed up using different methods.
After much deliberation the medical community has decided that it is ethical to use results that Mengele obtained while torturing concentration camp prisoners if that allows you to help people. Think about it.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I doubt any Kerry voters would vote for Bush at this point regardless of any proclamations, true or otherwise.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
That's a lie. When all the ballots in FLA were tabulated by newspapers, Gore wone by 20,000 votes.
You're trying to pick and choose from a couple of the partial recounts. Sorry. That's crap, and you know it's crap.
You Republicans invented that bullshit. Sorry. Try again.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It's not that we did nothing, it's that what was done was more appropriate than making laws that make it legal to have undocumented warrants and unwarranted wiretaps, even on non-terrorists. They need to prove nothing really for these, as well as the fact that when they do prove things, it doesn't have to have anything to do with terrorism. Maybe I'm wrong, but the Patriot act was *supposed* to be to protect against terrorists...
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
I misspoke; it wasn't the Florida Supreme court, but Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis, who was supervising the recount. Lewis told the Sentinel that he would not have them reject overvotes.
POTUS Witch Hunt tracker: 75 charges filed against 19 witches, 4 witches cooperating and 5 witches have pled guilty.
Completely untrue. There were over 22,000 who *identify themselves as black*, but only 61 who *identify themselves as hispanic*. The official reason for the error was a merge problem; they merged a system with hispanic as a possibility with one that didn't have it, and the system simply dropped hispanics unless their race was listed as "unknown" during the merge.
l es /29475.php
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/relatedartic
Some choice quotes:
"Florida election officials used a flawed method to come up with a listing of people believed to be convicted felons, a list that they are recommending be used to purge voter registration rolls, state officials acknowledged Friday. As a result, voters identifying themselves as Hispanic are almost completely absent from that list."
"This was absolutely unintentional," said Nicole de Lara, spokeswoman for the Florida secretary of state, Glenda E. Hood, an appointee of Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother. "The matching criteria were approved by several interested parties in the lawsuit and the court. I don't know how it got by all those people without anyone noticing."
"But the database of felons has only five variables for race: white, black, Asian, Indian and unknown. And a voter registered as Hispanic whose name and birth date matched a felon's would be left off the purge list unless his race was listed as unknown."
POTUS Witch Hunt tracker: 75 charges filed against 19 witches, 4 witches cooperating and 5 witches have pled guilty.
Typical Republican response, "It's all Clinton's fault!"
Guess you have to use some excuse to calm the guilt you feel for voting for such a morally corrupt leader as we have now.
Mostly I don't understand the refusal to question the leadership in the name of patriotism. When you nation is founded on principles, what can be more patriotic than asking hard questions about whether or not those principles are being followed?
Exactly!!!! I can't understand it either. I wish I could express clearly in written words how very much I don't understand it. But it does fit well with that old Göring quote about war. (or the original German if you can read that)
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
So you are saying in 1994, 1995, and 1996 that there was not one tax measure passed?
Don't forget that many people don't bother to vote in states where the outcome is already known (Before you flame me, yes, I still vote though my state always votes the same as I do). If we did not have an electoral vote system then you can't assume the number of votes would be the same.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
It means 6 more years of terrorist fear mongering, all without attacks on the mainland U.S.
ESPN also show the replays of the call in question and the replays proved the ref was right and the player had not set properly in the formation and was properly penalized for it. That's what ESPN's NFL analysts said.
Looks like you're the one missing obvious clues... like the replays.
You silly... Everybody knows a third party candidate wins whenever the Washington Generals beat the Globetrotters.
Actually, the Globetrotters now play most of their games against a team called the New York Nationals. So the Washington Generals are never going to...
Oh.
I see what you're saying.
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
Once the Redskins stop working as a predictor, we can analyze TV snow until we find the precise time & location for God's voice to emanate across the ether. Maybe it'll come on the Red channel. Curve fit until it works.
Do you have ANY idea what's in the No Child Left Behind Act?
Basically, they force the schools to administer standardized tests. If the students do not meet the "standards", they LOSE FUNDING. If a school isn't doing well for whatever reason, their funding will be CUT? Not to mention that this includes ALL children in the schools, INCLUDING learning disorders, mentally handicapped, etc, etc. YES, these kids ARE included in the test averages.
These tests also lead to teachers to only cover material that is on the exams, to be sure that the kids can pass so they can recieve funding.
Also, the people who write the standards test write them to collect data about what is and isn't being taught, and they are constantly being updated. If the majority of children are answering a specific question correctly, then it becomes useless for data collection and that question will be changed. This means that the tests get harder and harder, while funding gets lower and lower.
I know more than you drink.
Well, the guys running the show at the game didn't show the replay. I missed that coverage. ::shrugs::
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I heard that kids usually vote for the incubant in a presidential race because they like familiarity. They are already familiar with Bush as president, so they want to vote for him. It wouldn't surprise me if children mostly wanted Clinton to win in 1996.
I'm curious about which candidates children supported during the 2000 election. Gore was well-known as the Vice-President, but Bush was a fairly well-known name, due to the previous president Bush.
I arrived at my figure by filling out the irs form for that amount of income and taking the standard deduction. It is accurate. It also does not include FICA making the entire tax scheme of the U.S. misleading in that international comparisons of tax rates often do not include FICA when refering to U.S. tax rates.
In any case, no matter whether you agree or disagree with my figures, my intent with the post was to point out that in Europe people actually get something useful back for their taxes. We literally get the minimum required to keep commerce flowing.
As far as Defense goes, if we weren't such assholes to other countries we wouldn't need the biggest military in the history of Earth.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Shame on you people!
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
Too plausible. A third party candidate will win whenever the Detroit Lions win the Superbowl.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
Whats the other quote? The price of freedom is eternal vigilance?
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Sorry, we are nerds. Nerds don't believe in fortune telling. Junk this news!
It never ceases to crack me up when the same people who get all squirmy over Bush being a Christian (despite all of Kerry's speeches about how vital one's faith is to how one governs) will say "see? SEE? The Redskins! The Redskins!"
Well, you can't argue with consistency
I don't think the parent was all that ignorant. However, it's not the president who is guilty of citizen payola...it's the senators and representatives. You need to look no further than how popular the ones that bring a lot of pork barrel projects back to their districts are.
Us liberals don't want affirmative action because we don't think a particular group can't make it without help, its that it is in the nation's best interest to accelerate the assimilation of a group previously marginalized into all classes of society.
Affirmative Action helps create a wealthier, more educated, diverse nation.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Yes, the previous post was a 3 in the morning troll construction...
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Here I thought it was in the nations best interest to promote equality. Being married into an immigrant family I know too well the lie of 'they need help'. In one generation they go from not speaking English and not having a penny to their name to their kids in grad school.
Thats why the new rediculous push to exclude African Immigrants from receiving AA benefits, they were taking too many of them because like immigrants they had their crap together..
Not at all- as I (thought) I stated previously, the country becomes more prosperous and we spend LESS on public health and assistance programs when we use AA - in the long run, everybody benefits.
We're not talking about things that happened long ago - we're talking about prejudices and discrimination, which, whether you see it or not where you are, has before, is now, and in the future will occur.
AA was not created out of pity, or for compensation of past inequities, it was created, and is still used now, because it's good for the economy, good for scientific & technological development, good for many reasons- the list is long. It improves this country and our society in both tangible and intangible ways....
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Err. You're weird. I was accusing the Republicans... Eejit.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
By the way, I've never voted for a presidential candidate that didn't win. I'm ashamed to admit that I voted for Clinton once.
FOUR MORE YEARS
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
I said this last year, after the game sixes in the LCS. if the cubs and the sox had made it to the world series, the world would have to end just prior to the last out, because both teams couldn't lose.
However with just the sox getting there, all you have to worry about now is a chicago-chicago world series. 1907 vs.1917
(go cubbies!)
of course this year, after game three, I was pretty certain that the sox would collapse and lose the series in seven because that would have been the most painful way to go about it. After all they had just done it to the yankees.
[recovering red-sox-fan]
has anyone figured out a correlation between strike years in pro sports and the elections?
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
The results are in, Bush won, 4 more years.
That's all you have to say? You're a waste of my time, anonymous coward.
Your fears are realized, obviously, IT WORKED! Old joke, new joke... anything better then that joke of a candidate.
I think it is better to vote FOR someone you like, then AGAINST someone you don't. Exit polls showed most votes for Kerry were actually votes against Bush. When you make such a choice, you may end up in a situation that is even worse.
The joke is on you, sorry... the people have spoken.
(mod +5, justified)
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
Perhaps you could use the time you saved by not registering to read a little Kenneth Arrow or Paul Samuelson. A liberal education isn't necessarily a bad thing nor is a conservative one necessarily good.
Of course, that is if you're not feeling too lazy.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body