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Hubble Discovers Dark Spot on Uranus
TheDawgLives writes "Just as we near the end of the hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean, winds whirl and clouds churn 2 billion miles away in the atmosphere of Uranus, forming a dark vortex large enough to engulf two-thirds of the United States."
Holy Cow, Beavis and Butthead never had such a straight line.
I can't decide wether to go with an asinine comment about FEMA, or something off-color about colon cancer.
You're right. "Uranus" jokes are terribly overused.
--so--
Hey, I wonder if FEMA will fuck this one up too?
The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration still has this headline on their front page:
NOAA Continues to Predict Above-normal Hurricane Season
So what kind of hurricane season have we had?
Four named storms and 5 hurricanes. Not shabby, but way short of the (revised, even ) forecast: 12 to 15 named storms, 7-9 hurricanes, and 3-4 major hurricanes.
And thank goodness they were so wrong. Some of those hurricanes were pretty stiff, but fortunately none made landfall.
Dark Reflection
Global warming. Right?
668: Neighbour of the Beast
...the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA have announced they will be sending aid to Uranus as quickly as possible, though there are already calls for an investigation into the slow government response, since the image in question came at the end of August.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
So, I went and used them on the 10 geek wallets article.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I have been sitting here for about 20 minutes trying to come up with something serious to say about this...I give up!!!!!!!!!!!! Once you have read all the comments with the jokes, it is impossible to think of anything else...must be some kinda mind control.
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
I wouldn't want the US or any other country to dissapear, but in the hypothesis where a storm were to wipe the US from the globe, most other parts of the world would probably end up winning.
Latin America, for example, that is the reality I know the most, has as a main problem its foreign debt, and most of it is owned by the US, or at least valued in dollars.
If you have a big region that produces more than it can consume, and doesn't have much foreign debt to worry about, then you wouldn't need to care about finding good markets for your products, you could care about the inside, and sell to Asia the remains, for less money than now and still have a good balance.
Right now, all the LA countries that try to focus on Latin America, have problems with the fact that they arer trading in local money, but they need dollars to pay debt.
Hey, if you can get the people and governments all over the world to forgive U.S. debts, then maybe the U.S. can talk about forgiving yours.
How many countries aren't in debt, really? The U.S. can't even negotiate to end most of its debt, because it's privately held by parties large and small all over the world. At least we've forgiven the debts of some countries when they really needed it.
Oh, and I don't see companies in L.A. countries pouring billions of dollars in research, development, equipment, and labor into huge operations in the U.S. just to see those operations nationalized by the U.S. If you really want capitalism to work in Latin America, your countries need to honor land ownership, leases, and license rights. Nationalizing or threatening to nationalize huge foreign investments does not exactly encourage people to invest more money in your countries. Your specific country may not be doing this, but you lumped Latin America into a group and didn't make clear a specific country to debate.
The U.S. is not responsible for the entire world's economy. We do what we can for us. You need to do what you can for yourselves. That's the way trade works. Yes, we have a huge infrastructure here in the U.S., but we've built that. No other country came in and built the Roosevelt Interstate System. No other country came in and built the nationwide electric grid. No other country invented the assembly line, the microprocessor, and the airplane. Despite the fact that Hollywood studios make some really awful movies and on the whole aren't very artistic, they do invest the money into production, advertising, and distribution that makes American films the most widely watched in the world. No other country built our Atlantic to Pacific railway. No other country is the founding place and headquarters of Coca-Cola, Microsoft, or General Motors.
In order to have the economic advantages of a strong economy and solid infrastructure, you must invest in a strong economy and solid infrastructure. This is not just investment of money. It also involves laws, education, and taxes geared towards letting people make money. Our education system in the U.S. is not as good as it should be, and unfortunately doesn't show signs of improvement in the short term. However, there is still the right mix of influences to make the U.S. competitive if not to keep us in the top spot economically. Your government and the people in your country may have different priorities. In the U.S., where money is the primary tool to solve problems, a strong economy is a priority that ranks soon after national security. If your country has some other priorities that come before developing the economy that take a back seat to the economy in the U.S. and you've acheived those priorities, then you're just as successful as we are. It's about priorities.
In the U.S., socialism scares us, not because it's inherently bad but because it takes away on of the the greatest hopes we have -- that we'll be able to make enough money to take care of most of our problems. The U.S. was founded on a distrust of government to serve the needs of the people. Unfortunately, too many Americans these days don't understand that. If a socialist country really can serve the needs of its people well enough and isn't oppressive like many have been, then it wouldn't be so bad for people who could trust it to stay that way.
> No other country built our Atlantic to Pacific railway.
Actually, I believe Canada built that before the USA did. Though our methods of getting through the Rocky Mountains isn't exactly the proudest moment for this country (lots of Chinese immigrants setting of dynamite - a number of whom died doing this rather dangerous job).
>It also involves laws, education, and taxes geared towards letting people make money. Our education system in the U.S. is not as good as it should be, and unfortunately doesn't show signs of improvement in the short term.
I wonder how long it takes for the combination of bad laws and a poor education system to bring down an economic giant like the USA. Right now a lot of the important R & D still takes place in the US. But if that starts moving offshore, along with everything else that requires cheap labour, what does that leave? Will it just be MBAs and lawyers left?
Neither did the US.
It's the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
No other country invented the assembly line, the microprocessor, and the airplane.
Neither did the US.
Look up the history of the assembly line and airplanes. As to the microprocessor, it was indeed a US invention but like the other examples it was also product of an international community of research & development in microelectronics.
There's nothing wrong with nationalistic pride, but let's not imagine these achievements occured ab novo or uniquely in the US.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.