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President Obama To Appear On Mythbusters
Muondecay writes "President Obama will be featured in the December 8th MythBusters episode, 'Archimedes Solar Ray,' during which he will challenge Adam and Jamie to revisit an ancient and somewhat controversial myth: Did Greek scientist and polymath Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using only mirrors and the reflected rays of the sun during the Siege of Syracuse? This is part of a White House effort to highlight the importance of science education."
Does slashdot do politics?
Is it free?
I am surprised it was him myth-busting his country of birth.
*pours tea over everything and yet fails to comprehend what the Boston Tea Party was about*
Did Greek scientist and polymath Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using only mirrors and the reflected rays of the sun during the Siege of Syracuse?
- probably, but you can count on this: if UN existed at that time, they would have banned any of this 'Sun Blotting or Reflecting'.
You can't handle the truth.
They're doing Archimedes solar ray AGAIN? Aren't we up to three already (the original myth and two revisits)? Obviously I think it is fun that Obama will be on the show but frankly aside from that I really don't want to see that same tired Myth for a third time...
It's the new first.
The only people I ever hear calling him "messiah" are right-wingers. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
when Slashdot posted the non-story about the Googlers fighting over the decor of their airplane.
...was to debunk the myth that a black man can't be elected president.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
He was Sicilian.
You know, I was going to ask about whether Mythbusters had already done this. I haven't watched many episodies of MythBusters (because I don't have cable, but I've caught a few Eps. at friends and relatives homes). I could swear I saw an episode all about this that they did in the early seasons, like 5 years ago or something.
So the question is, if the myth is busted, why would Obama want to use this as a way of promoting solar energy?
Perhaps he's really trying to show that Solar Energy is safe? Although, even though Archimedes might not have set a fleet on fire with mirrors, doesn't mean that real fires at Solar Thermal plants never happen. I believe I recall reading an account of the oil at a solar thermal plant in California catching fire back 5 or 10 years ago.
Next up, a popular request myth from the Southern part of the country: Was President Obama born in Kenya? Oh I hope they make a joke about that...
I don't really have a problem with the president appearing on random TV shows a few times during their term, but I would really like Obama to spend less time being cool and more time fixing shit.
More info here. Taco should just hire me.
...go hand in hand.
I remember watching somewhere that a University somewhere in North America recreated the conditions of the archimedes solar ray and used mirrors to set fire to an imitation of the ship, which was made of the same type of wood, etc.
It was very interesting and I can't remember if it showed on television or if I watched it on a DVD from somewhere.
Still very cool though. It's definitely possible, since the university students did it.
Why are we still going after this, though? Someone needs to make a standardized test and settle it for everyone to see, so that we don't keep revisiting this.
Maybe they can prove that one actually exists!
My favorite part was how people were (rightly) criticizing him for being such a media whore, when the conservative savior of 2008 Sarah Palin has a freakin' TV show .
Living With a Nerd
Of course it's not true, but that's no reason no to try to start a big fire.
Hyperbole is supposed to be ridiculous, FYI.
And the critique goes directly to his credibility as a change agent. It was valid before he was elected as doubt, and is valid now as outright criticism. He was 'Hope', he was 'Change', but what did he really bring to the table?
So I'd grant you 'snarky', but the other two labels are only fitting if you're predisposed to disagree with the criticism.
I think this is more of a "media event" to promote sciences and education more than trying to prove anything. When the goverment wants to prove something, they dont turn to Adam and Jamie, they hire scietists with billion dollar budgets and secret labs. This is more just the president trying to get more kids involved in science/history etc.... i doubt he even thinks their orignal conclusion was wrong, just wanted a intresting "Myth" for the duo to revisit that might turn a few heads. Take this for what it is.... a attempt to revive education in the american youth.
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/
See some nice examples on the left of creepy cult of personality.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Even though the false-birther myth has been reiterated time and time again by conspiracy theorists and infortainment 'pundits', and that it's been proven false time and time again by reliable news media. It'd be nice if we could just cut/paste the URL to the mythbuster segment to anyone who might still be laboring under the false pretense..
Although, come to think of it, I suspect that the people who still believe this myth probably don't use the internet much.
The obvious answer is that Obama knows what the military knows: they have a secret technology for accomplishing this, and will reveal it as part of the episode. This probably means the technology in question was recently stolen by Chinese spies, so the value of keeping it secret has expired.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
>Is he showing up with his birth certificate?
Are you? Do you know something that the State of Hawaii does not?
And she is unable to mention one magazine she reads. How they could be proud of such a moron I will never understand.
I've sarcastically referred to him as a Messiah myself, as an exaggeration of how some others obviously perceived him, but I'm anything but a right-winger. I was making fun of this habit of investing too much expectation in people who, honestly, are in it as much for themselves and their own Inner Circle as they are for any of the rest of us, regardless which Party's flag they happen to be waving. Our criteria for choosing leaders is just FUBAR and has been for millennia.
What? Two, three seasons ago. It has descended into gross out and stupid stuff that doesn't even interest my teenagers anymore. Was once fun, now sad.
Why should she have to mention just one? She has made it very clear that she reads all of them.
I remember facepalming when I watched that episode.
If I wanted to set a ship on fire using solar reflections, I would aim at the sails, not the damp wood. The mythbusters apparently didn't think that way. I considered mailing them to ask if they would revisit the myth but never bothered to do that.
Because while they failed to do it, others have made it work to some degree. The mythbusters often retest myths and this is about getting kids into science. This has nothing to do with solar energy safety, or anything else like that. You are seeing conspiracy where there is none.
If the goal is to promote science education, Mythbusters seems like the LAST place to do it. Seriously, this is a show that will try one particular way of doing things, fail at it, and then conclude that the original "myth" is busted based on their one experiment. I would have a lot more respect for the show if their only possible conclusions were "confirmed" and "inconclusive"
Even if he was born outside the USA, as I was, he could still be president, as I could. You have to be natural born, not native born. The difference is that one can be natural born a US citizen if one parent is a US citizen no matter where one is born.
Also he was born in Hawaii, you stupid troll.
Maybe he doesn't watch Mythbusters, just knows of it's fame? Epic fail.
Alternatively, if you read the entry in wikipedia, you see someone did the test in the 1600s and it succeeded, and the mythbusters test, as described, seemed lacking. They are a bit quick to 'debunk' a myth. Just because their way of doing something doesn't work, doesn't mean there isn't a feasible way. The two flaws I'd see are (1) if the mirrors aren't required to be stationary, 10 minutes s plenty of time. (2) there could easily have been more reflective surface area than listed. They may have estimated and reduced the amount of surface area for lower quality in the myth-event.
A decent/good test: try 200 1.5 foot by 2 foot copper mirrors. Make them all be generally focused in the right direction with a bit of wobble to allow for the fact that they'd be held by humans.
Even so, I'd debunk it simply by the logic listed on Wikipedia - there were much more effective methods given the time.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
FWIW, I don't have a problem with President Obama being on Mythbusters -- I mean, I think it's kind of stupid, but I'm not going to criticize him by saying he shouldn't be on a TV show or anything like that... But, I think that most people think there are different standards for the President versus a private citizen. I don't buy into many of the ideals of the presidency, but the president is supposed to be above partisanship, be a leader of both the country and the government--not just his own party, etc. Of course that's rarely met, but it's an ideal. There are a lot of ideals, and some people view them differently. Reagan and I think Bush (for instance) always wore formal clothes (suit jacket) in the oval office, afaik. I'm not saying I care one iota about that, but people have very different ideas of what's expected of the president. I HAVE heard from even a lot of my liberal friends that at times they have been uncomfortable with some of President Obama's media appearances. ~shrug~
And the obvious follow-up:
Thank you, Life of Brian"
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/las-vegas-hotel-pool-sunlight-swimming-tourists/story?id=11739234
Frankly, I don't have a lot of respect for people who read magazines. Pulp crap frankly, unless you're talking about something like Science, which is better categorized as a journal.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Really? You've never see anything that might be construed as "Obama worship" from his supporters?
Here we have a fine example of a modified "but clinton". Notice this trolls plumage, that with his call clearly indicates he is a small brained republocrat. Sadly this creatures actually are allowed to vote.
What criteria would you suggest?
We didn't start the fire, said Obama. Mythbusters and/or Archimedes did.
So be ready to what will happen after that episode
She isn't a sitting government official, so why the fark can't she have a TV show?
If she was still the Governor of Alaska and doing a TV show, then people would have a problem with it.
Now the President, yea he is doing to many side media projects.
"This is part of a White House effort to highlight the importance of science education."
How is Myth busters in any way useful for promoting science education?
Perhaps we should start learning to drive by watching Top Gear.
They have busted it twice now, and both times it was with two guys and small mirrors. Archimedes would have used large polished shields and have each held by a man.
An experiment in 1973 used 0.75 square metre polished brass mirrors and 70 Greek sailors and had considerably more success at 50m.
Whether it actually happened or not is up for speculation, but it seems that it was at least plausible.
Wasn't totally convinced by the steam cannon either:)
-1 (flamebait) rating for articles.
She isn't a sitting government official, so why the fark can't she have a TV show?
Remind me again what happend with that? Didn't she quit, or something...?
Living With a Nerd
What conspiracy? I was just trying to see if I could 'suss-out' why they chose that particular myth, instead of any other. I mean, I'm all for any attempts to try to get more kids more interested in science and technology. I think it would work better, if the goal is to generate interest, to 'prove' something cool, than to disprove something (although, certainly, showing kids how something can be disproved has value too) which *would have been* cool IF it was true, but hey, it's not.
Although, as the other poster mentioned, it's a good point that perhaps the MythBusters failed to take something into account, like setting sails on fire instead of setting hulls on fire.
The only people I ever hear calling him "messiah" are right-wingers. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI.
Then you probably missed Oprah, while weeping, proclaiming him to be "The One" (her words, repeated many times). You have missed Obama himself describing his election as being the point at which the earth would heal and the oceans would recede (his words!). There's a reason that one of Jon Stewart's best satire videos involved a mythic/messianic send-up of Obama with the opening from The Lion King, and going even more over-the-top from there. Perhaps you missed the Greek Temple that was built for his coronation at the DNC convention?
The reason you hear his political opponents making fun of the messianic hoopla is because it exists, right down to mainstream media types talking about how they get shivers down their legs when he makes an appearance. Of course it was all a lot noisier before he was elected. Even some of his most breathless fanboys/girls are realizing that they were being completely irrational.
The people making fun of that BS aren't the ones who look ridiculous - it's the people who still cry and faint when he gives campaign speeches. Just FYI (your words).
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I think you missed the intended sarcasm of the OP.
Except Mythbusters is not scientific.
Just to bust yet another right-wing myth: shots of BOTH Reagan and Bush in shirtsleeves in the Oval Office.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/05/bush-jacketless-in-oval-o_n_164513.html
Next?
Obama is taking a page from Hugo Chavez and his personal TV show. Cult of personality. Obey!
I'd love to get to meet Kari Byron, too, but he went to all the trouble to get elected *President* just to arrange an introduction? Guy's got style and determination, no doubt.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Focusing attention on science education is a great goal, but Mythbusters has already done that myth to death. The last time a couple university teams did succeed in setting a ship on fire, but it took a much longer time to do than was plausible for a ship on the attack, bobbing up and down on waves.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Since they tried and failed to prove this myth previously they decided to call in an expert in smoke and mirrors !
Testing 1,2,3,4, Testing
Perhaps we can extrapolate from your attack to a more general form:
"The only people I ever hear calling $HATED_POLITICIAN "$STUPID_TERM" are $PEOPLE_I_HATE. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI."
Let's try a few...
"The only people I ever hear calling Bush "Chimpie" are left-wingers. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI."
"The only people I ever hear calling Tea Party members "teabaggers" are left-wingers. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI."
And so on! Guess what -- everybody who is a blind-partisan and uses such terms sounds like an ass to everybody who doesn't agree with him/her. This includes people who offer disingenuous little tidbits of snide advice that are really meant to insult others, FYI.
(wait..crap!)
Archimedes may have used mirrors, but he probably ditched that after he invented "greek fire", basically the ancient equivalent of napalm (sticky and extremely flammable... yeah that's not good).
I never said he was any brighter. Nor that I supported him, but your "...but Obama" is clearly noted.
"Despite widespread popular belief, U.S. military installations abroad and U.S. diplomatic or consular facilities are not part of the United States within the meaning of the 14th Amendment. A child born on the premises of such a facility is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and does not acquire U.S. citizenship by reason of birth."
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/86755.pdf
So McCain likely wasn't eligible to be President, or might have been
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_born_citizen_of_the_United_States#Presidential_candidates_whose_eligibility_was_questioned
If McCain had won, I suspect that a group of the same size would exist as a "birthers".
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/weird/Las-Vegas-Vdara-Hotel-Death-Ray-104041383.html http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/can-a-building-be-a-sun-death-ray/
She could have mentioned that too, but she did not. I highly doubt she can spell Science much less reads it.
...during which he will challenge Adam and Jamie to revisit an ancient and somewhat controversial myth: Did Greek scientist and polymath Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using only mirrors and the reflected rays of the sun during the Siege of Syracuse?
Oh. I thought he was going to ask them to help him find his birth certificate.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Say this battle happened. How do we know for certain? Because X number of people wrote about it or wrote about people having told them about it or having being told about people who heard it from others. If X is large enough, we accept it as fact. If not, well then it becomes myth or religion.
Now, imagine a battle. Ships are going to attack an harbor. Ships ain't easily destroyed by the weapons of the age and worse, if you can hit them, they can hit you. They might be unable to hide, but neither can you, you are on the walls of the defences and the enemy knows this.
So, how can you protect your archers from their archers? Blinding light? Pose them beside mirrors and the enemy can't see them. Simple trick if you think about it. With this blinding light, you can fire countless arrows, even heavy slow ones like fire-arrows and aim at ease.
How would such a tactic, written down by someone who didn't understand and heard it from someone else be recorded?
The mighty ships sailed at the harbour and a blinding light erupted from the walls and one by one the mighty ships were set on fire and sunk.
Death ray is born. Nothing more then smoke and mirrors.
THAT is what disappoints me about the Myth Busters. They far to often examine only part of a myth or add their own elements, the worsed of it being "well we two couldn't do it, so no-one could". Well, I doubt the myth busters could put a man on the moon. So the moon landings are a myth?
Take the pycrete "myth". Why the paper substitution? THAT is not what the myth is about. And I still don't know how such a ship could have set sail. After all I presumed WW2 admirals were smart enough to ask "won't it melt". So why wouldn't it have melted?
Or the Jaws myth. "We are going to examine wether a very large movie monster can ram a ship, but we are going to use a smaller shark because sharks ain't that large in real life..." No shit sherlock. And sharks also don't ram ships in real life.
What next, I am going to test if my cat likes tuna by feeding it dog shit. If it doesn't like that that proofs it doesn't like tuna?
As for the movie myths. Can a pen explode, kill a room of baddies but leave the hero intact... NO. If you think James Bond has myths, you REALLY need to get out more.
The program was okay but has rapidly gone in the general direction of Discovery. Here is a hint. Gay fat guys building bling-bling bikes is NOT science. Mind you, they can go lower. Cakes? Tatoo shops? Why not just relabel it Oprahs Channel and be done with it.
So cool, they are once again going to proof a couple of overweight Americans can't build something that is highly unlike to have ever existed and if it did, not have been able to destroy and entire fleet before the soldiers landed (or swam ashore) and destroyed it. That is supposed to encourage Americans back to science? Fat chance.
We know what Americans think about science. We can see it in the nose-dive the science content on Myth-busters has taken. Unless it goes boom, not intrested. Note the increasing lack of myths that do not go boom.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And she is unable to mention one magazine she reads. How they could be proud of such a moron I will never understand.
Half the population is on the left-hand side of the bell curve. She may seem unsophisticated to (us) "elite" college types, but plenty of people want their elected officials to be folksy types who they could see having a beer with and being your neighbour.
Being a brainiac is one possible criteria for being in considered suitable for office; some people would sacrifice that a bit for someone who has a bit of empathy/sympathy for the life they have to live, and who they can better related to. (Of course it's possible to simply make it appear you're a "folksy type", but that's another story.)
Although, even though Archimedes might not have set a fleet on fire with mirrors, doesn't mean that real fires at Solar Thermal plants never happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations#Operational
Fandroids hate facts.
Perhaps that's a good place to start. (unless Adam and Jamie can build a bigger mirror) :D
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/09/29/1622250/Las-Vegas-Hotel-Vdara-an-Accidental-Death-Ray
Because her appearance on television means foreigners might see her. Most people prefer not to let the village idiot represent them to the rest of the world.
She isn't holding public office. Meanwhile, the President is still a media whore and hasn't stopped campaigning since 2006.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
No.
See also: Bush reading a book called "The Pet Goat" to children while airplanes were smashing into buildings
Thanks for playing.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
She quit last summer, July 26, 2009, then she got on the talk show and TV show bandwagon.
it's a shining example. i think this country could stand to have a few more government officials quit to start tv shows.
She isn't holding public office
Remind me again why that is? Didn't she just walk away from her responsibilities or something...?
Living With a Nerd
Because those young people grow up and become voters, and have an obvious effect on Scientific research.
It'd be great if we could at least get students to the I-know-enough-to-know-I-know-nothing point.
Not a typewriter
No more so than the flag-worshipping Nationalism I saw from his predecessor's supporters, who got upset when we called him a fascist because of it.
I figured that Adam and Jamie were going to look for the shovel ready jobs, that would really be in line with calling this a real myth
So let me get this straight. It's ok for her to do the TV show thing...because she abandoned her responsibility to the people that voted for her???
I generally agree with much of what you post, Wyatt...but damn. Damn.
Living With a Nerd
Nothing worse then the Palin worshipers on the other side of the coin.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Somehow, I'd rather see politicians appear on the "Penn and Teller: Bullshit!" series than on Mythbusters. Penn and Teller often deal with issues that politicians could address, if they were so inclined. Several politicians and bureaucrats have been on the show, mostly promoting ludicrous stupidity, but occasionally being almost sensible.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
"Obamabots"; it has less weird religious cult connotations, while still being critical.
I wasn't 100% sure of that statement, thus both the "i think" and the "afaik." Again, FWIW a distant cousin of mine had a staffer job in the White House during 2-3 years of President Bush's second term and he said he had never seen the President without a jacket on in the oval office. Maybe he changed his rule, I don't know. Big surprise--there are exceptions to all rules. ;)
Mostly though, I think you totally missed the point of my post. Different people have different standards regarding the Presidency. That one example may be demonstrably not always true (and again, as I clearly stated in the original post, I don't care one iota about whether the President wears a jacket or not) nonetheless it cited as a normative rule. President Obama (afaik) has never cited an adherence to that rule. He has different standards (or if yo want to be pedantic, different stated standards). So do people! Some people think President Obama shouldn't go on talk shows...some don't care. But pretty much everybody has standards for the president that are both different from their own standards and different than the standards applied to other politicians.
Any way, in fairness to your single pictures of Presidents Reagan and Bush in the oval office without a jacket on, I will amend my statement to:
"Reagan and I think Bush (for instance) _claimed to always_ wear formal clothes (suit jacket) in the oval office, afaik."
Secret Service Agents can justify their mandatory sunglasses!
Why is science education important in public schools?
It helps some (most?) of the general population develop critical thinking skills. Lack of science education is what helps rubbish like Creationism, anti-Vaxxers and Homeopathy gain some popularity.
Trolling is a art,
Sheesh? That got modded troll?
I would have thought that was one of the least controversial or trollish things relating to politics that I've ever written on slashdot!
The way I see it, I think more presidents should dress informally while in the Oval Office.
I know I work much better if I'm comfortable. Wearing a penguin isn't my idea of comfort.
Living With a Nerd
Of course not. That was just a shortlived urban legend of 2008.
If you've ever seen the episode where they were doing washboard road driving speeds, and used deflection of the shocks as an indicator of ride smoothness, and got it completely backwards, you'd not be surprised that they get calls to redo their analyses frequently.
Personally I find it an interesting window into our culture that the most popular science-based show is based around tearing down ideas. (And I'm not above blame, here, I do the the robots destroying each other shows.)
Not that that's a bad thing, but when's the last time you saw a good science show that actually talks about the boundaries of knowledge and efforts to explore them?
Someone had to do it.
He was a blank slate that let everyone believe whatever they wanted to believe about him.
In reality, the man is weak, politically inept, arrogant, and unable to see the world outside of his own academic contextualization.
It's our own fault. That is not to say I think McCain would have been a good choice either.
We hired someone for the job that was as close to picking someone randomly off the street as we've ever done. We should have demanded credentials, experience... anything. We should have done our homework.
Even Russian magazines, which she can read from her back porch.
. . . that that is a joke site that isn't created by anyone "on the left" at all, don't you?
Look at their Sponsored Ads (which change when you reload the page). Would someone that really thinks Obama is the Messiah have sponsored links like "Obama advisor tied to 60s domestic terrorists, a must read for Americans," "Inflation Hedge - Obama’s spending is out-of-control. Protect your wealth from inflation," or "Health Care Nightmare - Why Obama is pushing ’reform’ so quickly, in shocking video testimony!"?
Can constantly shaking your head back and forth while talking cause brain damage?
She doesn't have a public sector job so who cares?
If it were up to me, Sarah Palin couldn't even hold a public sector job as a book sorter at the Wasilia library.
But now she's out shilling for a living in the private sector which is her right.
She's a serial resigner and I'll never vote for her, but that doesn't mean she can't keep a job reading from a teleprompter.
This made me chuckle: "the oil at a solar thermal plant".
The proliferation of solar thermal power plants is one of the worst-publicized success stories of the modern age. Not that there isn't tons of stuff googlable about it:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20012060-54.html
http://terrainforma.ca/2010/09/20/the-promise-of-thermal-solar-power-activist-and-educator-sheila-watt-cloutier/
http://climateprogress.org/2007/08/30/the-solar-power-you-dont-hear-about/
http://carbon-pros.com/blog1/2009/06/solar_thermal_at_utility_scale.html
http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/22/energy-dept-gives-brightsource-solar-thermal-a-1-4b-boost/
http://www.abengoasolar.es/corp/web/en/index.html
http://www.acciona-na.com/About-Us/Our-Projects/U-S-/Nevada-Solar-One.aspx
http://www.leonardo-energy.org/worlds-largest-solar-thermal-power-plant
Saying B is not worse "then" A is not a denial that A is true.
Didn't Mythbusters already do this one? Like, 2-3 times, I think.
It'd be great if they put more effort into it this time, but seriously: it's not exactly an unknown scientific history mystery. Scientists and historians have been wondering for a long time about the veracity of the Siege of Syracuse tale. It's right up there with the actual content of Greek Fire.
Almost every single example of "replication attempt" tries to do so in a closed-minded fashion. They think: what do we know the $society was capable of? How can we apply these means to the desired end?
Instead, they should be thinking: how, without very specific technological advances several inventive generations removed, might we accomplish the same ends? Instead, they're sitting there rolling copper and making guestimates about things like troop strength and the like.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Maybe they will bust the myth that he is any different from George W Bush or any of the other freedom hating Republican and Democrat politicians.
Because the teaching of science, when done well, teaches students how to think, and to question the world around them. If that isn't enough, some people think that exposing children to different fields lets them discover their interests/calling at an early age. On top of those 2, I honestly can't think of any famous inventors/scientists that were drawn to the field by money, most were drawn to it because they were, you know, interested in it. Sure money is great and all, but if you don't actually like what you are doing, there isn't much of a chance of really excelling.
Your idea sounds more along the lines of "Send everyone to vocational school, people will naturally bubble up due to drive for money."
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
No. Teaching school kids to sing Obama songs ("mmm mmm mmm, Barack Hussen Obama ... we're all equal in his sight ... mmm mmmm mmm"), and trotting out gems about how his election will mark the healing of the earth and the receding of the oceans ... that is loopy messianic crazy stuff. Not at all the same as being proud of one's country (and quite the opposite of actively, rhetorically trashing on a regular basis, or having your proxies do so). If being reflexively patriotic is a bad thing, isn't being reflexively un-patriotic just the same?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'd probably agree with that...never been a fan of dressing up either. I used to work at government office in DC and the contrast was always funny to me--some people dressed to the 9s every day, some people (ie me) had a jacket stuffed into a locker/closet somewhere if I had to put it on in an "emergency."
Presidents really don't even spend that much time in the oval office the way I hear it. I actually might be in favor of anything that makes politicians do less work!
"Why is science education important in public schools?"
Because "science education" is not about having safety lessons in the use of technology (as you suggested it should be). Science is a process by which human knowledge is tested and expanded. If you don't know how to test and evaluate what others claim to be true, then you are dependent on others to do it for you. In short, you cannot think critically and rationally for yourself. A population which is unable to do that is a population that is not properly equipped to govern itself. In other words, science education is essential to the proper functioning of democracy. If that's not important to you, the you're right: science education isn't important either, and we can go back to letting an educated priesthood or aristocracy run our governments.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
This is precisely the reason they have revisits. They take viewer input and try scenarios or ways of doing things they didn't consider -- and sometimes they are able to duplicate the result. If this episode in December is still about Archimedes, then this will be the second revisit (maybe third??) they've had for this myth. That said, I've had times when they've tested myths and came away thinking that just because they didn't do it doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Some of the myths they try to bust are based on scenarios of freak accidents, in which case there could be factors they don't know about, or it could be sheer dumb luck that a victim survived. Regardless, it's entertaining, and there are times when I learn things, but I don't take their results as gospel.
Let's compare: President Obama, Columbia political science grad, Harvard law post-grad, lecturer on Constitutional law at University of Chicago, offered a tenured position as professor but turned it down to run for office.
Or: Sarah Palin. Beauty pageant winner, BA in communications and....that's it.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
What about people who read "Make Magazine", "Nut and Volts", "Sky and Telescope", "Linux Pro"? People who reads those are just wannabes?
My only question is: Was Bush sounding out the words in "The Pet Goat"?
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Will they set Obama on fire? Or what's the point of him appearing?
"if the myth is busted, why would Obama want to use this as a way of promoting solar energy?"
Because MIT proved Mythbusters screwed it up
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I'm just saying that, in her particular case, citing the fact that she is no longer a public official doesn't make sense. She she resigned specifically to do the tv show/interview/news network dealies.
Living With a Nerd
But the anti-McCain birthers would have an entirely different type of arguments. Our current birthers simply refuse to acknowledge the proof they have been shown. Anti-McCain birthers would not be arguing facts, but interpretation of the term "natural born citizen" which is not well defined in the constitution.
And she is unable to mention one magazine she reads. How they could be proud of such a moron I will never understand.
This is the internet age. Who the hell still reads dead-tree publications? And who, likewise, considers this to be ANY kind of status symbol.
Now, she's definitely a moron, but you appear to be more so...
I agree wholeheartedly. Dressing up communicates a real seriousness about one's work -- just witness the trannies on santa monica blvd here in los angeles -- but it's HOT in DC in the summertime. Like hot and humid. I think the CIC should be able to work in his undies if he wants to.
This article is, for some unclear reason, tagged "politics". Just because a politician shows up somewhere does not make an event political; the Easter Egg Hunt every year at the whitehouse is not automatically a "democratic" or "republican" event just because the POTUS is one or the other.
Unless, of course, the people who are tagging this science event "politics" are stating that the democrats are pro-science and the republicans are anti-science, which is at least partially true.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Nice cover-up!
LOL
Got to love the O he has style unlike the guy who set the water on fire...
They don't call him the big O for nothing!
I hate that damn Katrina lady anyways...
It's TV. There are two guys on the screen covering themselves in gold paint and duct tape and gaping at ballistic water heaters. There are two dozen people behind the camera coordinating their tactics, and two hundred in scattered offices coordinating their strategies.
TV is always a conspiracy you totally underestimate, and it's always about putting your eyeballs on the filmed bits of advertising that are inserted between the filmed bits you made time in your day (or, more commonly, organized your entire diurnal schedule) to watch.
They're getting more out of Obama than he is out of them.
There's in interview in the NYT with Obama where he claims that some of his work wasn't very effective because he didn't put enough of a PR focus on it. This seems like a good effort to correct a perceived shortcoming. That's the kind of person I want in office.
They're doing Archimedes solar ray AGAIN? Aren't we up to three already (the original myth and two revisits)? Obviously I think it is fun that Obama will be on the show but frankly aside from that I really don't want to see that same tired Myth for a third time...
The important thing is to have a proper test. They often redo things which viewers complain loudly about. I say they should do this one over, but use the Arthur C. Clarke approach of 50,000 well-trained fans in a stadium with tin-foil reflectors. The Stroke of the Sun (later known as "A Slight Case of Sunstroke"). It's only 6 pages long... great read.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
If McCain had won, I suspect that a group of the same size would exist as a "birthers".
It's possible, though I seriously doubt it -- some conservatives are reactionary enough to want to invalidate the Obama presidency for whatever reason whether it's fact-based or not, but who on the liberal end of things would do the same thing to a President McCain if it could leave them with President Palin? The intersection of the sets of people who are fringe liberal and people who would prefer Palin to McCain is the null set.
That being said, if it did happen, at least that "birtherism" would be based in some semblance of fact.
You can set fire to wood with a ten-centimeter reflector. Failure to accomplish the same thing with a large number of larger reflectors is just lame-assed design and sloppy implementation.
Archimedes 1
Mythbusters 0
The problem with throwing all of the money into grants for research is that you have to have scientists to perform research. If students aren't interested in science, they won't pursue degrees in the sciences. Without a good background in the science prior to attending college, the students who are inclined toward the sciences will have diminished chances of successfully completing a degree. Essentially it boils down to the fact that if there are no more eggs, there will not be any chickens (unless advanced science is involved). Additionally, most would agree that all students need to be exposed to science and technology since those are intertwined with almost everything in today's society. Financial incentives might help, but they are not a solution in and of themselves.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
This. In fact, it is likely only because Obama is black that this even offends anyone, as amazing as that is. Further if those who disagree would just ignore it, it would probably go away all on it's own. Or do you still hear people grousing about Barry Goldwater today? No?
I can think of a good pubic [sic] sector job for Mrs. Palin. SARAH PALIN vs. ANNE COULTER in ERECTION 2012. The apocalyptic ass-banging porn romp wherein the hottest useless/stupid/dangerous talk show circuit media whores get tea bagged and thoroughly rogered in the drain. Starring Shigeo Tokuda.
It's not for everyone, but I'd sure watch it. Heck I'd pay to watch it on my interwebs. But I'm dirty like that.
You missed part (2) of the very first paragraph of the first link. He was a citizen by bloodline, regardless of where physically he was born, just like Obama.
This made me chuckle: "the oil at a solar thermal plant".
Not sure why that made you chuckle? The oil I was referring to is the medium at that plant which got heated. That is, the particular plant I remember reading about had the mirrors concentrate sunlight on a pipe with some sort of oil in it that is designed to get extremely hot, then transfer that thermal energy in a heat exchanger, to convert wather to steam to drive a turbine.
They didn't burn the oil in normal operation, but some of it set on fire in a mis-hap.
That's not to say that I think solar plants are actually very dangerous - I think that an occasional oil fire like that at a solar thermal plant is probably no big deal (I mean, it's a big deal if you work at the plant, and might get burned in such an accident, so it's an occupational safety issue, but from a larger *public safety* issue, I don't think there's much risk - it would seem to be much less risk than, say, a Gas-line explosion). Unless the particular type of oil used releases a lot of toxic fumes or something. If it burns fairly cleanly, then I think it's a very reasonable risk.
"This is part of a White House effort to highlight the importance of science education"
I'm not sure how the two are related. Every time I've seen the show they've gone out of their way to hide any science content from the viewer.
When it's been unavoidable, they've shown placards reading "Warning: Science content"
From my perspective, Mythbusters seems pretty anti-science.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Not to derail this, but the first thing that came to mind when reading this was 'If you're wearing a penguin, you're doing it wrong.'
Sorry. Sometimes a pedant can't help themselves.
They have busted it twice now, and both times it was with two guys and small mirrors.
Yep: They busted it because they didn't do it right.
They should try it this way:
- "Pave" the battlements or hills with "soldiers" armed with double-sided flat mirrors with a small hole in them, as large as is convenient for each to hold for significant periods, i.e. the size of a Greek shield. (The back sides only need to be shiny around the hole.)
- Have them hold up their shields at partial arms-length in front of them, look through the hole at the target, and adjust the tilt until the bright spot on their own reflection where the sun shines through the hole is also aligned with the hole.
That lets you build an arbitrarily large solar concentrator with very good focus.
(I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who used this trick in a short story. The army of a small South American country, seated as a block in the stands at a soccer game, uses mirror-fronted program books to ignite the head referee after the first bad call against their team.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Obama did no actual work for any of that, and he doesn't apepar to have learned anything beyond gaming the system (which, as I geek, I have to respect a bit). Not trying to troll here, but he really seems to have bypassed the normal requirements for most of the "impressive" stuff he's done: the titles without the substance.
Sarah Palin put republicans in jail for fraud/corruption, IIRC. I've yet to see Obama achieve anything that compares.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The only people I ever hear calling him "messiah" are right-wingers.
Oh? What, then, do you think of when you read fluff like this?
"I am going to try to be so persuasive, so that those of you who are still wavering...will suddenly come to the conclusion -- a light beam will shine through -- will light you up -- and you will experience an epiphany -- I have to vote for Barack!" -- Barack Obama, Lebanon, New Hampshire, January 7, 2008.
If you want to indoctrinate your children into the Cult of Obama, you might start with "Son of Promise, Child of Hope" (Simon & Schuster, 2008).
They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it.
Maybe so, but only because they're rank amateurs, compared to the fanbois that do it all the time.
Just FYI.
Yeah. FYI.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
No, she resigned so she'd not be impeached for Troopergate AK. Running for Tea Bagger High Empress and reading from the palm of her hand were just pluses.
If she'd not been impeached the investigation would have kept going until Parnell was sworn in as her replacement following the '10 Election.
As it was, Parnell got an extra 16-17 months to hem and haw on the pipeline and then run. If I'd not seen how wishy washy Parnell is, I might have voted for him, I think I'm going to jump over for the Democrat. Berkowitz is much more drill-baby-drill than Parnell.
Not reading magazines makes you dumb?
(Not that I'm suggesting Sarah Palin is any smarter than...a hick town beauty queen)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You're overthinking it. I'd be shocked if President Obama put more time thinking about this into it than the amount of time it took them to record him asking the question. I'm sure that a staffer came up with the question, and probably the whole idea. Obama went along with it, and they sat him down for 5 minutes and sent in a short video of him asking the question. What's the problem here? You don't like the question he asked? About an esoteric and interesting (and completely apolitical) legend from history? You're right. Maybe he should ask them to settle the global warming debate...
I'm sure some others can flesh out this list a bit more, but here's a start.
1) Because she's an idiot.
2) Because she's already made implications that she intends to run for President in 2012, therefore making her a political candidate.
3) Because she's an idiot.
4) Because unless slated as a fictional show, it should include something resembling fact. She doesn't have a firm grasp of the difference.
5) Because she's an idiot.
6) Because if you hire someone to do a show, the production company should have some expectation that she'll actually (ummm) work through the contract. Her work history isn't exactly perfect.
6a) She did serve 6 years as mayor of Wasilla, AK. Population of 10,000. I've been there. It's not like you're going to jump ship and go work somewhere else. She could stand at the edge of town and keep the Russians out, I guess. She did it before. :)
6b) She did serve about 2.5 years as governor, but spent part of that on leave during an investigation of abuse of power and ethics violations, and another large part of that campaigning. If I were to spend a year away from a job, to try to get a different job, that should raise concerns with future employers. When that fell through, she quit the first job anyways.
6c) She's an idiot.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
You can look up all the episodes here. The first time they looked at this myth was in 2004. The second time was in 2006.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
Why is math education important in public schools?
The vast majority of students will not be mathematicians or accountants, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.
--OR--
Why is english education important in public schools?
The vast majority of students will not be writers, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.
--OR--
Why is history education important in public schools?
The vast majority of students will not be historians, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.
--OR--
Why is physical education important in public schools?
The vast majority of students will not be althletes, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.
You can apply this argument to pretty much every school subject - so your question is really "why do we send children to school"?
I'd guess the reasoning is:
1) It's a relatively interesting myth with a good pedigree i.e. it's not a stupid internet video or movie. And it's visually interesting.
2) The myth can include large numbers of people in aligning mirrors. I'm guessing there'll be a large number of school children helping to align the mirrors.
3) It doesn't involve explosions or anything else that the Secret Service would be very wary of occuring nearing the President. And nothing that teachers or parents would be afraid of kids emulating.
There's in interview in the NYT with Obama where he claims that some of his work wasn't very effective because he didn't put enough of a PR focus on it. This seems like a good effort to correct a perceived shortcoming. That's the kind of person I want in office.
While I am generally more concervative leaning, I happen to have a brain. I agree with you whole heartedly and yeah I like the idea our President went on to Mythbuster to promote scientific education.
--
Let it be known that if you believe in God, you also subscribe to the fact that God have given mankind wisdom and logic. So in that sense science discovery is God-send gift to mankind as well.
A problem with our system is that "we" don't even really get to choose our candidates. Our candidates are provided to us by the two dominant parties. We have them jump through hoops for our amusement to whittle the field down to just two, then we pick the better of the two.
American's didn't just fail to do their homework on the Obama vs. McCain election. We failed to do our homework on the 15 candidates that made credible bids for the Democrat and Republican Primaries. We can easily look at Obama and criticize him. But how many of use could realistically compare Obama to Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney? (for example). Or McCain to Kucinich?
We are waaayy to apathetic about our presidential elections. We allow ourselves to be spoon fed two candidates that were chosen on the basis that they are the least offensive available candidate. Few people really care until November, at which point all they can do is pick either...or. That's no way to elect our leadership.
So McCain likely wasn't eligible to be President, or might have been
If McCain had won, I suspect that a group of the same size would exist as a "birthers".
Maybe, and it'd be just as dumb. McCain's parents were citizens, so it doesn't matter where he was born. Obama was born in Hawaii, so it doesn't matter if his parents were citizens.
The enemies of Democracy are
They do sound pretty juvenile, I wonder who is being parodied? Oh, that's right, they're making fun of the left-wingers!
“I cried all night. I’m going to be crying for the next four years,” he said. “What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history. ... The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance.”
-- Jesse Jackson, Jr.
"Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey, I mean, as he has said, the utter improbability of it all?"
-- Daily Kos
"He communicates God-like energy..."
-- Steve Davis (Charleston, SC)
"Not just an ordinary human being but indeed an Advanced Soul"
-- Commentator Chicago Sun Times
"He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians. . . . the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century."
-- Gary Hart
"Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings . . . He's our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence."
-- Eve Konstantine
"This is bigger than Kennedy. . . . This is the New Testament." "I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event."
-- Chris Matthews
"Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind."
-- Gerald Campbell
"We're here to evolve to a higher plane . . . he is an evolved leader . . . [he] has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth."
-- Oprah Winfrey
“I would characterize the Senate race as being a race where Obama was, let’s say, blessed and highly favored. That’s not routine. There’s something else going on. I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered. . . . I know that that was God’s plan."
-- Bill Rush
Previously on the Obama campaign site - has since been removed:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3008/2619205229_cc2d84e9c6.jpg?v=0
Rabbi David Saperstein, reading from Psalms in English and Hebrew, noticed from the altar that the good men and women of the congregation that day, including the Bidens and other dignitaries, had not yet stood. Finally Bishop Vashti McKenzie of the African Methodist Church asked that everyone rise. At that moment Saperstein saw something from his angle of vision: "If I had seen it in a movie I would have groaned and said, 'Give me a break. That's so trite.'" A beam of morning light shown [sic] through the stained-glass windows and illuminated the president-elect's face. Several of the clergy and choir on the altar who also saw it marveled afterward about the presence of the Divine.
The Promise: President Obama, Year One, by Jonathan Alter.
"In a way Obama is standing above the country, above the world. He's sort of GOD. He's going to bring all different sides together."
- Newsweek editor Evan Thomas
"No one saw him coming, and Christians believe God comes at us from strange angles and places we don't expect, like Jesus being born in a manger."
Some see God's will in Obama win, by Dahleen Glanton. Chicago Tribune November 29, 2008.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Have them hold up their shields at partial arms-length in front of them, look through the hole at the target, and adjust the tilt until the bright spot on their own reflection where the sun shines through the hole is also aligned with the hole.
I did wonder about aiming. I like that idea.
As far as I remember there already was an episode about this. Using mirror or carefully aligned set of mirrors to light up/burn wood. Or maybe it was some other show, was it?
We should have demanded credentials, experience... anything. We should have done our homework.
That actually sounds a bit better than someone with the wrong credentials and experiences for the job, don't you think?
Dressing up communicates a real seriousness about one's work
Absolutely. And if I can't see you, you're not working.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
Teabaggers named themselves when News Corp first created the movement.
The army of a small South American country, seated as a block in the stands at a soccer game, uses mirror-fronted program books to ignite the head referee after the first bad call against their team.)
The South Africans deafen you with annoying trumpets, the South Americans set you on fire with a death ray. America! Fuck Yeah!
Thunderdome.
Ann Dunham He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy!"
You clearly do not read The New Yorker.
How much is the Secret Service going to flip out when they blow something up, point it in the wrong direction and give him a sunburn, or any other such silliness that is quite entertaining.... I guess this episode will involve no trips to the Alameida bomb range. No explosions, gunfire, or fire for that matter. Doesn't this show the stupidity of his people if they are going to have him challenge Adam and Jamie with a myth they have disproven twice already? Andy
She knows how to read? Thats something for myth busters to investigate.
So let me get this straight. It's ok for her to do the TV show thing...because she abandoned her responsibility to the people that voted for her???
In Alaska, anyone can accuse the Governer of an ethics violation, which the governer must spend $thousands of his personal money to defend against. The governer is forbidden by law from estabishing a legeal defense fund to protect against abuse of this tactic. Sarah Palin was forced out of office by lawsuit abuse, plain and simple.
I've never understood the Palin hatedom. She seems fairly representative of the mainstream of the American right - do people really hate their neighbors so much?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
uh no, it actually happened. (newspapers, not magazines)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRkWebP2Q0Y
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Obama: You are all individuals.
Crowd: We are all individuals.
Lone Voice: Well.... I'm not.
No, she *did* say it, and SNL mocked it.
More specifically, she said it in an interview with Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/25/palin-talks-russia-with-k_n_129318.html
It was in response to a question asking why Palin was convinced that her proximity to Russia gave her foreign policy experience.
My bad, she did say it in her interview with Charlie Gibson, and the Huffington Post was referring to that, which caused my confusion.
http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_Mythbusters.html
Obama did no actual work for any of that...he doesn't apepar to have learned anything beyond gaming the system
And you would know this because? Are you a lawyer? Did you graduate from Columbia or Harvard? Were you editor of the Harvard law review?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
It's not enforced at the federal level, but AFAIK, everyone who wishes to own a motor vehicle in the States is required by (state) law to buy auto insurance or face a fine.
(The only defense against this counter-example I've ever heard is that "driving is a luxury". This argument does not hold up for those of us who must commute to work.)
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
I understand that elitism can divide people and make someone seem "removed", but that doesn't mean us "elite college types" can't have a beer and be a neighbor.* Nor does it mean that social skills make for the best leaders. I mean, a big part of the job is talking to the masses, meeting other figureheads, and all the jazz, but that's the fluff. The important part of the presidency is making big plans about fixing the problems that plague the land and setting the course so such problems don't arise. "I know how it feels to be poor and wretched" doesn't make anyone less poor or less wretched. And then there's probably a reason they were poor and wretched to start with. I'm just saying that electing someone from the "bottom half" and putting them in charge isn't the best idea.
*hmmm, upon reflection though, I can't really say much about this topic. I hardly know any of my neighbors and meeting people is mostly a sham of acting "normal". But I think most people try to put on a good face when meeting others. I only really relax around my friends, because they've accepted my weirdness and I put up with their shit.
What criteria would you suggest?
Random chance. Essentially, you start by having everyone in America take a test, to see if they're breathing and graduated high school and the like, then you choose say seven people at random and they get to be President for the next four years.
The difference is that one can be natural born a US citizen if one parent is a US citizen no matter where one is born.
The rules have changed over time, but it's never been that simple. There's a minimum amount of time that the parent must have spent in the U.S. Here's Wikipedia's take: US Nationality Law.
In particular, for someone born at the time that President Obama was born, the citizen parent would have to have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years prior to the child's birth, and 5 of those 10 years had to be after the parent's 14th birthday. It's impossible for someone to satisfy those requirements before their 19th birthday, and President Obama's mother was only 18 when she gave birth.
So the location of President Obama's birth is the key to him being a natural born citizen.
Don't watch Oprah, don't care.
As for what Obama himself said.
You don't quite quote him correctly, but so what, I guess. You do misstate where the quote came from. It came from the end of the speech he gave when accepting the democratic nomination. Again, so what, I guess.
However, you seem to imply that that he was calling himself some kind of savior, and that I don't believe, and I think that it's certainly worth pointing out that he said a bunch of other things as well:
America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.
The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when [...]
Right or wrong I think he made it clear that these things weren't things that he, alone, could do. These are issues that take many people working for them. And that makes him believe himself to be a leader, *not* a messiah.
I laugh when I hear conservatives complain that Obama is an elitist, then turn around and say that he doesn't do things like wear a jacket in the Oval Office. Shouldn't they want him to wear Carharts and flannel or something? If he wore French cuffs the way Bush did, surely Fox News would have a meme about him being an America-hating francophile.
But that's the nature of criticism in politics, almost all of it is just hollow criticism. Some of it is legit, a very small minority. It was the same with criticism of Bush: there was plenty to legitimately criticize, but on top of all that was another order of magnitude of illegitimate criticism.
I must have missed it during the election, when serious, accredited mainstream journalists were weeping on camera with ecstasy. Hmm, must have never happened. Two legs good, four legs better.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
She put who in jail, when?
One usually publishes a lot in that job. Obama published, what, one paper ever? Compare his output in the jobs he's had against what one would usually see - there is an objective measure here. But then, all criticism however slight of the One Great True Messiah shalt be punished with downmods on /.. Man, November's really gonna sting.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Jokes revolving around someone else's stupidity are much funnier when your capitalization and spelling are correct, your use of punctuation appropriate, and your syntax isn't mangled. You'll need to try harder in order to troll better.
That's why the summary says "revisit".
In C++, your friends can see your privates.
Obama is a terrible president, but at least he's getting this right. Credit where credit is due.
Oops. Botched the link.
US Nationality Law
Their original conclusion is wrong. Theres even a building to prove it http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/las-vegas-hotel-knew-pool-death-ray-back/story?id=11760093
The building is massive of course, and the phenomena is described as a minor inconvenience but a dedicated building team could have made something at least 1/2 the size back in those days and many times as powerful since this is just accidental and not on purpose, and also not using windows. Something purpose made for it could be a lot smaller with a lot more punch.
LOL Communications degree XD
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I don't know if it's possible to burn nearly 10 years of positive karma in one post, but this appears to be the thread to attempt it on, so here goes...
I have never before seen such a complete orgasmic crap-fest of bashing a single person in one place as I have with Palin in this comment thread.
I get that people believe she is stupid (arguable). I get that people loathe her because she's conservative (fine). I get that people believe that not being fully-credentialed with a degree means that you have no intelligence (patently untrue).
What I don't get is how this circle-jerk of "dude, I hate her TOO!" is not as evidently moronic to the people participating in it as it should be.
Don't like stupid people? Cool...fine. Think Palin's stupid? Okie-dokie. Feel the need to be the 12,000th slashdotter to note her perceived ignorance in the same frigging thread? You fail it.
Let me be clear, I don't expect people to rally around me, here, but I caught myself saying "seriously?" so many times while looking for actual discussion of the president appearing on Mythbusters that I had to share my irritation.
As a side-note, "Flamebait" is the appropriate down-mod for a statement that you feel will draw a largely negative response because of its content. "Troll" is for when someone says something unkind or untrue in order to drum up a disagreement.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
I know this is a foreign site and only one sample but there were (and are) left-wingers who believe Obama is the Messiah, or ever better: http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/article868683.ece
Also, check out the first photo here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Photostream-Business-and-Pleasure-in-August/ - that's from the White House's official photostream.
Also, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL
There are many more. Yes, there are some conservatives that are calling Obama Messiah (or at least implying that liberals think he is) but there are plenty of liberals who actually believe it.
I'd go for random selection like jury duty. Those who desire power are often unfit to wield it. Could we do worse than the bunch from the last 20 years?
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Amusingly most of the SNL skit stuff that was said were just exaggerations of things she had actually said, no different than when politicians turn generally reasonable statements about a topic into extremes to make an opponent sound bad, like "X sometimes agrees with Obama" into "X is just a rubber stamp for Obama, let me list every time he's agreed with Obama and pretend there are no counterexamples!"
Honestly she turned me off of her in one interview where she couldn't answer the question of what the actual duties of the office she was running for were -- seriously, shouldn't that be the most basic thing you know and can answer on the spot? Especially for the office of vice president, which has an amazingly short list of actual duties?
Actually, you raise an interesting point.
There has already been a remake (season 3) where they addressed a bunch of additional issues, but in both of their original attempts they failed to do what they usually like to do in more recent shows - keep scaling up until you get the result stated in the myth.
That gives them some of the coolest moments of the show, like firing a car on a huge rocket sled to try and cut it in half on a reinforced blade on the plow myth, for example. And the show is about entertainment as well as (sometimes questionable) science.
Back to the choice of this particular myth for yet another revisit, which on the surface seems stupid.. I mean, why remake an already-twice-debunked myth?
Oh, wait, they have to scale up now to demonstrate the result.
What could possibly scale up to the kinds of solar focus you'd need to ignite a trireme?
Why, an existing solar conversion plant, of course! They have acres and acres of modern mirrors and can melt, well, anything you want to melt.
Highlight the power of harnessing solar energy by burning the shit out of a full-scale trireme, and show off a modern solar conversion plant at the same time, and give you a real idea of the amount of power available at one. Entertainment AND green energy win!
Now that you mention a possible political agenda, the choice of the Archimedes Mirror is a perfect one. Not to show the safety of solar power (though I'm sure the whole "this is safer because if it has a problem you shutter the mirrors and it burns itself out quickly" point will be driven home), but the amount of power available to harness out of it. By making a trireme explode into flame over a few dozen points simultaneously, perhaps?
I'm probably wrong, but I'm really looking forward to what they plan to do with their Presidential bully pulpit.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Never hear of the Corrupt Bastard's Club? That's what they called themselves, they had hats made and everything. Politics-as-usual would have had all these bastards go free after the new GOP governer took over, much like Ted Stevens walked to to "gross prosecutorial misconduct". Surprisingly, it didn't go down that way.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yet, somehow, granted his stay in Congress was short, he had the audacity to believe that a President rules. He came in; this is also the fault of his people; with the idea they could run the show. Somehow they perceived that Bush "ruled" and thereby they could too. How his Administration; I am looking at Rahm; and such could have such an upside down view of the current state of politics is beyond me. He blew it right off the bat by handing off all the big bills to Congress to craft and they crafted bills only committees could craft, hulking messes full of graft and crap. When he gave up his leadership role that early he lost any chance of getting it back. Pelosi and Reid run the show, he is just there to put a face on it and also deflect blame, be the lightning rod, be the one they can claim opponents to their legislative crap are really his opponents and only because of his race.
Carter tried and failed by confronting his party and as such became a single term President because he could do nothing. Reagan succeeded by personality as did Clinton. Bush #1 meandered and was relegated to a single term. Bush #2 stepped up after 9/11, frankly I figured he would be a single term, but he provided leadership when it was needed before falling off nearly completely in 08. Obama best hope he can find a good Republican foil in the House to let him step up, Clinton had Gingrinch but honestly I don't even think a Gingrinch can save Obama. He first needs to rule himself before he can lead the US. He comes off as too quick to castigate, he looks for the bad guy across the isle all the while ignoring the fact his own party minimizes him more, hell he had majorities that were proof against the minority party and he still could not get his party in line.
No, inspire comes after you have shown you can lead, he cannot. He got handed accolades before he tried and apparently that set him back further than even his most ardent foes could have hoped.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Wow those are awesome. Some of them are unremarkable (it's easy to find pictures of any public person with a light behind their head) but many of them are totally creepy! It's wise to watch any President carefully, but so far this one has done most things right. It's too soon to say whether he's done enough to not deserve re-election.
Precisely.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Interesting. You're the second person in as many weeks trying that "she didn't say that, it's from an SNL skit." That particular piece of obfuscation's not quite taking off the way you guys wanted, eh?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
You say that as if they called themselves that in a serious way before they were publicly accused of being corrupt, and the Wikipedia article you cite credits the investigations and prosecutions to a bunch of federal bodies, with no link to the governor of Alaska.
Maybe he'll also give the signal to start the experiment.
He could stand in the dark and say, "Let there be light!"
P.S. I recall the did that same experiment previously and failed.
Really? You've never see anything that might be construed as "Obama worship" from his supporters?
Construed as? is that the bar you've set? I believe you could find behavior that can be "construed as" worship for almost any popular public figure.
Way to set the bar below ground.
Sarah Palin put republicans in jail for fraud/corruption, IIRC. I've yet to see Obama achieve anything that compares.
Damn, you've got a skewed sense of reality. I would have thought for sure that killing Jihadis with remote-controlled drones would have been way higher on the badass scale than putting some useful idiots in jail.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Yeah, and I guess if I also read Empire and Q, I'm just dabbling in this soon-to-be outdated fad we call "pop-culture".
I'm guessing GP's one of those cranks who doesn't watch TV either.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
"anti-Vaxxers", because obviously believing that the Big Pharma companies are always acting in your best interests shows true critical thinking.
"Roll up! Roll up! Get your vaccination here, only $10 a shot! Guaranteed not to have any harmful side effects, well, we're pretty sure..."
First off, you see these two parts:
I think it's kind of stupid, but I'm not going to criticize him by saying he shouldn't be on a TV show or anything like that... But, I think that most people think there are different standards for the President versus a private citizen.
And:
Reagan and I think Bush (for instance) always wore formal clothes (suit jacket) in the oval office, afaik. I'm not saying I care one iota about that, but people have very different ideas of what's expected of the president.
I don't think you raped and murdered a girl in 1990, in fact I don't think you did, and I wouldn't care one itoa if you did. But OTHER people might care and think you shouldn't be hanging around their children.
You see, it's the act of mentioning something by mentioning how you're not mentioning it. It's classic weaselese, and that'll get you a troll point right there.
Secondly:
but the president is supposed to be above partisanship,
AHAHAHAHAaaaah. Yeah, you must have been crying your ass off since, oh, George Washington left office.
And while Regan and Bush (both of them maybe?) somehow get a free-ride for appealing to, ah, wait, not YOU of course, but to YOUR FRIENDS views of the presidency for "always wearing formal clothes (suit jacket) in the oval office", your OTHER friends (see, I've got liberal friends, I'm not partisan as I'm accusing other of being) have had an issue with it.
Let me be clear about this: He could dance naked in whatever room he wants and broadcast it live as long as he doesn't preemptively invade any more nations. And if he can avert a econopocalypse and manage to turn it around, I'll even let him have a smoke break now and then.
But hey, maybe you were just trying to be polite. But inserting your complaints within layers of bullshit doesn't really make it any more polite. It adds a veneer of political correctness, but that in turn just pisses some people off even more. And if you truly, honestly, just don't care about it... then why did you post anything at all?
Wait just one minute. Are you saying you think Anne Coulter is hot?
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth....
I would like my government to be smart economists so that they can solve problems. Why would anyone want anything else?
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException at Sig.setCleverSig(Sig.java:42)
- What a "bill of attainder" actually is
- The government's power to tax
Everywhere you go, there's always one retard every time this subject gets brought up.
Maybe it's a rebranding from Mythbusters to Mythsuckers. When a foreign born communist spawn of islam is your "special" guest, you are screwed.
That's right. And the same goes for President Obama.
Using modern materials in a extremely complicated setup that made it ineffective as any kind of weapon, only in ideal conditions. Yes, they so "proved" it.
Well, maybe he's bringing along one of our prototype military lasers! There are solid-state 100Kw lasers in test that I'm sure will sink a wooden ship just fine...!
"Kids, remember to study math and science. Because math and science will let you build LASER CANNONS to BLOW #$% UP!"
Well, definite props to Obama if he's personally flying the death-drones! Is that controlled from the same room in the Whitehouse where Karl Rove kept his hurricane machine? That would certainly explain the relative lack of hurricane activity since the election - hmmmm.....
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This legal statement makes no mention of parentage.
the only people I hear using the term "teabaggers" to describe the Tea Party are people on the left. Big surprise, people use insults, personal attacks and hyperbole to assert their entrenched position.
I'm waiting for some sort of Science Party or Rational Thought Party to come along and crush these idiots. I'd jump on their bandwagon, but only if there is evidence to support such an action.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Uh, references for that?
This is not my first language and making a joke at a troll's expense is not trolling. Not sure if news like this makes it under the bridge where you live though.
If you've ever seen the episode where they were doing washboard road driving speeds, and used deflection of the shocks as an indicator of ride smoothness, and got it completely backwards, you'd not be surprised that they get calls to redo their analyses frequently.
Actually, I'm not surprised that they "get calls to redo their analyses [sic] frequently" because there are plenty of stupid people out there who are more than happy to insist that their pet theory is correct, regardless of how thoroughly it's demolished. The fact that the mythbusters are non-experts, and therefore tend to make the occasional mistake, is irrelevant in comparison.
Personally I find it an interesting window into our culture that the most popular science-based show is based around tearing down ideas.
Given that 90% of what you hear on any given day is either outright wrong or flawed in some way, I'd expect nothing less. Educating people about new discoveries is all well and good, but it sure would be nice if we could get them to stop believing crap that was disproved 200 years ago.
The Mythbusters crew have already done this. Twice, if memory serves. The answer as I recall was: Busted.
Why are we revisiting the failed... oh never mind.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
... validate the Myth of all of those "Shovel ready jobs" he touted to get his Trillion dollar stimulus spending bill through Congress.
That myth is obviously busted. Too bad the NYTimes reporter didn't care to report on it at the time. Gotta look out for your comrades at the DNC, right MSM "reporters"?
In reality, the man is weak, politically inept, arrogant, and unable to see the world outside of his own academic contextualization.
That exactly describes my perception of George W. Bush -- except I would hesitate to use the word "academic". I guess it's all a matter of perspective.
I, for one, did not randomly pick someone off the street. I watched campaign coverage and the debates. I attended rallies. I listened to the plans presented by the candidates and I made an educated selection which I do not regret.
Hey, don't try so hard to burn up your 10 years of karma. I've been here longer, and I was replying to someone who's been here much longer than either of us. Check the uids. I can't say when I signed up, because it was long enough ago where I don't remember. Before that, I was posting AC, but it was suggested that I sign up, because most people are interested in what I write.
Now for the text. I wrote my opinion, like it or not. It may not fall in with Fox News and the fanboys, but you'll find that everything I said was factual. Well, except for the obvious opinion lines. If I were ever to sit down with her, I strongly suspect I'd leave her head spinning until she started chanting "Drill Baby Drill!", or pulled a complete Howard Dean.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Thunderdome is sexist. "Two MEN enter. One MAN leaves."
helps rubbish like Creationism, anti-Vaxxers and Homeopathy gain some popularity.
Hey, don't put anti-Vaxxers in with those nutjobs... its terrible usability and the lack of software portability very good reasons to dislike VAX!
(FD: I really don't know if that's true, I was just going for a joke based on my few-hours experience with it)
Additional considerations:
MIT is a good bit norther than Syracuse, Sicily (42 22 25 N for Cambridge, MA versus 37 05 N for Syracuse). It sounds like Mythbusters also tried this in San Francisco, which is at least much closer in latitude (37 46 45.48 N).
NB: Slashdot appears to be eating the degree symbol and minute/second quotes in the latitudes given here.
This is purely a guess, but I have a hunch that the air around Syracuse in Archimedes's time was a mite bit cleaner than the air around MIT in the modern era, and quite possibly also cleaner than the air around the San Francisco Bay (the area of the bay where Mythbusters routinely works is east, i.e. downwind, of highway 101 and of a light industrial zone).
The main ships used in the naval portion of the Siege of Syracuse were probably the Romans' heavy ships, the quinqueremes, five-decker galleys. While they could be set with sails, they were much more commonly rowed, especially in battle, as then the captains often couldn't afford to be at the mercy of the winds -- no cannon means close-range combat, requiring greater maneuverability.
Considering that the Siege of Syracuse was in fact a siege, it's most likely that the Roman ships were either parked in the harbor mouth, or on a blockade, making regular sweeps past the harbor mouth.
The Syracusan harbor does indeed open to the east. I cannot find it at the moment, but I recall reading that air quality tends to be clearer in the morning than the evening due in part to the number of diurnally pollinating plants, making any ante meridian solar furnace attempt perforce more effective than any post meridian efforts.
I am in no way arguing that these various factors somehow "prove" that Archimedes did indeed use a solar furnace weapon. Rather, I am trying to point out ways in which Mythbusters has failed to construct a wholly compelling argument.
Cheers,
Look, there are idiots on both sides. There are unreasonable people who think that Obama is supernatural, and there are unreasonable people who have pictures of GWB up on their mantle next to pictures of their family.
Unfortunately, the media mainly likes to give airtime to idiots from both sides.
When you choose to spend your time arguing with the idiots instead of debating the people with real ideas, you do everyone a disservice. I can understand arguing with the idiots though, because it's so easy to look smart.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Here is a challenge for you:
Write a defense of creationism or homeopathy. Or, if you sympathize with those, write a paper that criticizes it.
In each instance, cite the scientific research, and use the chain of logic and reason that supports whichever stance you take, on whichever position you select. Take a long hard, critical look at the citations, research, and evidence you utilize.
You get a pass on the paper, only if nobody realizes that it advocates and supports a position that you neither hold, nor accept.
Until you can do that, you are utterly clueless about the position you allegedly hold, and even more clueless about the position that you allegedly reject.
Amber
Wind Beneath Thy Wings
We in the US do not have a 2 party system. When you believe we do, you are falling for the D/R propaganda. There were many choices on the ballot, and in case you missed them, you can Google for the list of candidates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008
In the 2008 election, there were 6 parties.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
And she is unable to mention one magazine she reads. How they could be proud of such a moron I will never understand.
Wait! Hold the press! Sarah Palin can read????
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
As is mentioned in your second link, the only party with the standing to challenge a President Elect's eligibility is Congress, who get to decide what makes a natural born citizen in the first place, so the whole issue is basically moot. The clause was originally intended to prevent roving cadet branches of European royal families from trying to set up shop in the US (see eg: the Second Mexican Empire). Given the minuscule chance of that type of situation arising in the present day, I'm personally in favor of replacing the natural born citizen requirement with 20 years of citizenship and let the people decide if native birth matters.
I think it's just as important for them to understand what can be done, personally. I'd like to see more of a balance, so I don't have to run into so many people so completely convinced that nothing can ever improve and we've already explored every option available.
Anyway, analyses is the plural of analysis, FWIW.
Someone had to do it.
I've never understood the Palin hatedom. She seems fairly representative of the mainstream of the American right - do people really hate their neighbors so much?
Two points:
Or: Sarah Palin. Beauty pageant winner, BA in communications and....that's it.
I'm a huge fan of Palin bashing myself, but how did this get modded insightful? She's done a lot more than just that--she was mayor of a city and governor of Alaska, just to name a few things.
Unfortunatley, I always get modded down when I say this, despite the fact that it's true.
They are trained in special effects, not science. They like to make things go boom in a spectacular way. Science is just the excuse.
That is why you see weak hypotheses, flimsy controls, and wild generalisations. I don't know how many times I've looked at one of their "experiments" and thought "How the fuck can you conclude anything based on that sloppy bullshit" or "What if they'd tried this? There's a good chance it would have gone differently"
There is nothing wrong with a show about things exploding or about testing myths redneck style. But the issue I have with them is that they present things as science and make huge leaps of generalisation, which basically defecates on the scientific method. It goes completely against the scientific method. So idiots then turn around and mimic their sloppiness and think they are doing real science. It's very detrimental.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
For the record, I did not say that. Watching her get 'punished' by some grim copulator might be.
No. Not reading magazines does not make you dumb. Pretending that you read magazines (or newspapers in SP's case) makes you dumb.
I think it's just as important for them to understand what can be done, personally. I'd like to see more of a balance, so I don't have to run into so many people so completely convinced that nothing can ever improve and we've already explored every option available.
I dunno, I get the opposite - constantly running into people who insist that there must be purple leprechauns riding unicorns in heaven because "we don't know everything". I find it hard to believe that you've found a large number of people who are convinced that we've discovered everything there is to know about absolutely everything.
Anyway, analyses is the plural of analysis, FWIW.
Hah. That'll teach me to trust the firefox spellchecker. Stupid mozilla.
The problem is not necessarily Palin herself. The problem many see is how rapidly her fans showed up and how solidly they follow her every word. There are a ton of people out there who are just rapturous about her despite lack of solid credentials. It's not liberals who don't like her, a lot of conservatives are baffled by her too.
The real worry is about all these people who are her fans, who have plenty of political clout but very little in the way of definable political viewpoints, and those that are definable don't necessarily make sense ("vote the bastards out" isn't a good political movement because you have to vote other bastards in to replace them, and then you're back where you started). She's a symbol in other words.
The other big problem is that from quite a lot of angles, there's a lot of demagoguery going on with her.
I find that "elitism" is a word with a different meaning, depending on who's speaking and who they're speaking about.
A lot of the criticism of Obama during the 2008 campaign had to be manufactured FUD (there really wasn't any dirt on him), so the "elitist" cries were basically misguided twistings of "I hate this guy because he's smarter than me". It was surreal. I mean, what the fuck, shouldn't we WANT the people setting national policy to be smarter than average, so we get better policies than we would otherwise? They needed a politically correct way to say "he's, uh, different", and resorted to trying to bend a compliment into an insult; I don't think many people bought into it that interpretation, considering he won. And of course, it reminded me a lot of earlier Bush campaigns that basically tried to spin stupidity as a friendly just-like-us thing rather than a gigantic liability.
On the flip side, a different version of "elitism" is the classist version. I don't recall the actual word being flung at McCain, but he met the definition in ways that really hurt his campaign. It's not that we require our leaders to be poor or something, but they do need to be in touch with the reality of the lives of the average citizen, otherwise they'll never even see or understand when there are problems that need fixing. McCain made some stumbles that made him look ridiculously out of touch, right at a time when he was pushing a tax plan based on his worldview. IMO, more than anything else, this is what crippled his campaign. He was pushing tax cuts for the wealthy, but fumbled every question when people asked him what he thought wealthy was, how many houses and cars he owned, how much a loaf of bread costs, and so on. To a lesser extent, he was like that on a lot of issues... like when he tried to say we should be in Iraq and Afghanistan in large numbers for at least another decade and then tried to spin it as if it was a good thing.
I don't mean to use this in a special partisan way, but those examples were so extreme, happened on a national scale, and were so recent that a lot of people remember. (I could use some local guy in my example but no one would care except the other locals.) There are definitely some wealthy democrats that could be splashed with the classist-elitist paint, and there are definitely some good-kind-of-elite highly intelligent republicans.
Should be pretty easy for Adam and Jamie to debunk the "Hope and Change" myth of Obama's candidacy...
Seriously? You have much more faith in the average intelligence of people than I do.
You can also add the 10th Amendment to your argument:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Where the hell does it say in the Constitution that the US government can FORCE someone to engage in any specific economic activity?
And let's not forget the right to privacy. If medical privacy can be the foundation of a "right" to abortion, how can the government get even MORE involved in health care? If a woman has a privacy-based right to an abortion, than EVERYONE has a privacy-based right to pay for the health care THEY desire, not that MANDATED by the government.
I've never understood the Palin hatedom. She seems fairly representative of the mainstream of the American right - do people really hate their neighbors so much?
yes, because they're morons -- I'm convinced 50+% of Americans are not just morons but PROUD to be morons (see 2004). They can fuck off and die.
Politics aside, this is called "drawing a blank". Nobody's on their A-game all the time. There are many other things which arguably show her lack of fitness to lead; this is not really one of them.
Last time they failed. Why would they revisit this unless they believed it would be a different outcome?
We are running outta oil/fuel (at least to meet demand). The world is pushing for alternate energy. Solar is an option. US has some of the most advanced experiments on concentrated solar power.
So... in order to ensure victory for the president one could:
1) get a mock ship in a pool near the
2) align the mirrors to focus on the pool/ship
3) voila: fire.
Everyone is happy. Only in America! and hey the president is working on Solar. Great show! - cue commercials.
Here is wikipedia on concentrated solar power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power (notice the mention of Archimedes in its history)
She seems fairly representative of the mainstream of the American right - do people really hate their neighbors so much?
Wow, strawman much?
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I'll skip this Mythbusters for sure. It is a repeat anyway and O'Bozo is a waste of time.
I don't know if it's possible to burn nearly 10 years of positive karma in one post, but this appears to be the thread to attempt it on, so here goes...
Ah kids these days. People of my Slashdot generation know that starting a reply like that is the best way to get a quick karma bump.
(And, moderators, replies to threads from the old guard pointing that out should be moderated "insightful" or "funny")
Back in my day we didn't have quote tags, either.
Can never get these newfangled whiz-bang widgets to work ... now get off my lawn.
LOL, in that case I'd love to see the pics of Palin miranda-izing and cuffing those pols herself, eh?
Nice double fail.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Interesting. You're the second person in as many weeks trying that "she didn't say that, it's from an SNL skit." That particular piece of obfuscation's not quite taking off the way you guys wanted, eh?
Hey, give him a break, he watched all her interviews as well as the skit, so he blended it.
Fandroids hate facts.
This is a site for geeks. What is the geek's arch nemesis (if we're to stereotype)? Jocks and people perceived to be idiots. We don't talk about it too much, but there's usually at least a latent dislike towards people who perceive themselves as intelligent but are pretty obviously not well educated and seem to not be the sharpest tool in the toolbox.
Not only does Palin have those qualities in spades, she's even quite outspoken about her disdain towards the elite, educated types (us). If there were ever to be a person who would be mocked more on slashdot hypothetically I can't imagine what quality they would need in order to exceed Palin's natural ability to attract our ire.
She seems fairly representative of the mainstream of the American right - do people really hate their neighbors so much?
Yes, yes they do.
But not in a mean way, they hate in a similar fashion a Mets fan hates a Yankees fan.
I guess people missed the news about MIT's solar mirror that could melt steel. I know this is using materials and techniques that weren't around during the time of Archimedes, but it does prove it's possible; though that doesn't mean it was probable.
Here's a link to an article on MIT's mirror: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/30/solar-energy-mirror.html
Says the guy trolling around with a 'Jesus is a liberal.' sig. :)
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
"Why is science education important in public schools?"
Because "science education" is not about having safety lessons in the use of technology (as you suggested it should be). Science is a process by which human knowledge is tested and expanded. If you don't know how to test and evaluate what others claim to be true, then you are dependent on others to do it for you. In short, you cannot think critically and rationally for yourself. A population which is unable to do that is a population that is not properly equipped to govern itself. In other words, science education is essential to the proper functioning of democracy. If that's not important to you, the you're right: science education isn't important either, and we can go back to letting an educated priesthood or aristocracy run our governments.
Mod parent up please.
I'm not the biggest fan of Sarah Palin, but your post is incredibly one-sided. Before the presidential election she was the governor with the highest approval ratings in the nation. Again, I'm not the biggest fan of hers, but do try to be a little less biased.
Arrgggghhh. As a conservative Republican, and I'm sure I'm not alone, I find Palin reprehensible as I find a lot of the Tea Party. In my opinion, what should happen is ALL the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to go bye-bye. The impact on the budget should be ascertained. If we are still short, we should increase taxes across the board to cover it. Then the American people should decide which government programs they are willing to do without for what amount of tax relief they desire.
The American people are not blameless when it comes to the current economic condition. They voted for people promising tax reduction and they voted for people promising new social programs. Not only that, they are the root of the current economic meltdown, they had help but they were ones who flipped houses, bought houses they couldn't afford, took the equity out of their properties to spend on whatever, bought second houses on flimsy loans, etc. They deserve the pain they are now feeling.
All of this is generalities, real people who did nothing wrong got hurt. But unless the American people take responsibility as a collective, the problems will only fester as special interest groups will take them to cleaners...once again.
Wow... Nice moderating guys. Disagree != troll.
He was the first non-white man elected president in the US. There were some strong, emotional reactions to that.
When a woman is first elected president I bet there will be a very similar reaction.
Heck, I bet there was a similar reaction when Reagan was elected, but it would take some research to determine this. He had a rather remarkable comeback to win his first presidential election and had the strong support of evangelicals.
I'm a little confused. Reading archaic print journalism is a sign of intelligence and being well educated?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I began proposing such a system in all sincerity myself about 10 years ago. Later I saw an article in the national Mensa bulletin that proposed essentially the same idea. It has validity because of this equation:
those with the greatest ambition == those with the least ethics
Random chance in the process, at least as a first or second step, actually has better odds of producing ethical leaders than any of the electoral systems in use for the last two thousand years. Those electoral systems have actually favored those who most desire power and control of others; what a surprise, huh?
Exactly, but with clarification: random chance would be the first or second step of the process, selecting a "pool" of candidates as for juries, to be followed by steps that would narrow the choices based on objective qualifications, and then perhaps finally an electoral run-off vote between the final two. But yeah, the idea is valid, and you're not the first to propose it!
Agreed. I think the more proper statement is that "tabloids" are useless crap. "Nuts and Volts", "Circuit Cellar", "Linux Journal", "Make", "2600", they all contain useful information.
No, he doesn't. He just seems to understand the dynamics of human psychology a bit better.
Read below.
And Barack Obama was a State Legislator and a member of the United States Senate before becoming President, yet everyone just seems to focus on the idea of being a "community organizer."
No, she *did* say it, and SNL mocked it.
What Palin said was: "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." This is a demonstrable fact. It might be irrelevant, but it's not incorrect.
SNL mocked her on SNL by saying: "I can see Russia from my house". It's funny, but not an accurate quote. However, the SNL clip was replayed so many times, the average person on the street thinks that Palin actually said it.
Personally, I wish that Palin would get out of politics and go back to the Wasilla PTA. But, this wasn't fair to her, and anyone that repeats the mocking quote and attributes it to her should be ashamed.
That's a bit vague. Care to elaborate?
Already did a bit elsewhere.
Nah, I don't think naming random citizens to power would be a good idea. Something like a third of the population of the United States can't even name the three branches of the United States government. Even with whatever additional steps you've imposed on the pooling process, I still doubt picking random citizens would really be a practical approach. As much as I hate politicians, at least they're tasked to know something about how this country works and what the issues are (which isn't to say we haven't elected idiots in the past, but whatever).
If any reforms should be made, I think they should simply be made to lower the financial requirement necessary to run for office. Right now, being rich gives you a huge advantage, and that's probably my least favorite aspect of how politicians are elected here in the United States. On the other hand, I wouldn't know how to suppress such an advantage without trouncing explicitly on the rights of a private citizen or a private organization to do what they want with the money they've earned. Something like that is a delicate matter.
The 0racle has received his blood money from the invading army(corporate funded tea partiers). Please gather your 300 best warriors and head them off.
And yet he seems to know almost nothing about Constitutional Law. Interesting, huh? In addition the fact that he's never held a private sector job and yet preaches that the private sector is flawed that government needs to hold up companies that "are too big to fail".
While Sarah Palin may not have the same number of degrees as Obama, she does have more experience in the executive offices than Obama, even with his 1.5 years in the presidency.
That quote is as exaggerated as Al Gore supposedly claiming to have invented the internet. Palin said there was an island in Alaska from which you could see Russian land, which is true.
Sarah Palin put republicans in jail for fraud/corruption, IIRC. I've yet to see Obama achieve anything that compares. Damn, you've got a skewed sense of reality. I would have thought for sure that killing Jihadis with remote-controlled drones would have been way higher on the badass scale than putting some useful idiots in jail.
Wait, I thought we were against the war on terror?
Stop! Dremel time!
I remember in 2008 when multiple major newspapers referred to Obama as a "Democratic rock star" or a "rising rock star of the Democratic Party." It was all in the span of a month, and all equally embarrassing. You may not have heard his followers call him a messiah, but they most certainly treated him like one. Hope and change!
I'm pretty sure Obama has her beat after buying two television channels to campaign on.
You've oversimplified its actual implementation. The process would not be PURELY random. Jury selection isn't purely random; only the initial step is random. See my comment even further down.
Also, there are other factors beside mere material wealth that identify excessive ambition and can give certain people unfair advantages: fame/celebrity, supreme ability to manipulate others, etc. Again, claiming that mere finance reform would solve the problem and result in ethical leaders is a gross oversimplification and attacks a symptom rather than the root problem... kinda like we run around trying to solve species extinction, global warming, and pollution instead of dealing with the 800-pound gorilla: human overpopulation. If more ethical leaders are what is desired - we we SAY that is what we want - then the root problem of excessive ambition is what needs to be solved. Monetary greed is merely ONE expression of excessive ambition.
It's not necessarily the lack of education that makes people dumb, it's not questioning one's own stand on things.
In my experience people with some college education but no brain are much worse than someone without college who goes through life with their eyes open instead.
Some people outside college I talked to would preface their opinion with "not that I know much about it" and also question my assumptions. Some students on the other hand -especially those who'd never seen anything else but school and college- just know everything.
My ideal politician of course would be someone well educated who also experienced what she is talking about.
It's clearly Obama's fault that a bunch of people projected their desire for competent leadership onto a candidate because of the obvious inadequacy of the previous administration.
They did it with bush, too.
Granted, the day after obama became prez many similar types of invective were heaped on his feet. But the hate the left has for all things not left is absolutely mesmerizing.
I am so glad I had the courage to study the world without the blinders of liberalism. Liberalism as defined by pro-pelosi, not liberalism like civil rights and free trade.
Also, Bush had higher grades than Gore in college.
Well, I didn't say that would solve ALL of the problems, my friend. I just think that happens to be one unfortunate prerequisite to running for election in this country, and I think a lot of smart individuals are doomed to political anonymity because of it. But I certainly never said it would solve every problem in our government, so lets not get hyperbolic.
On the other hand, why is excessive ambition such a bad thing again? I mean, I'm certainly no libertarian, but I don't equate greed to evil in every circumstance. Greed can often be a good thing. Greed can often be a very good motivator for an individual to contribute positively to society. Not every corporation is evil. Not every man with money seeks to do others great harm. I think "excessive ambition" has been the cause of many great advancements in society, and I think highly of people with great ambitions. The trick is to motivate these people to contribute positively to society by setting up a system that rewards ambition that leads to positive societal advancement and punishes ambition that contributes negatively.
I think having people with great ambition in power isn't a bad thing. I like that my leaders aren't apathetic, and I think the electorate system works because it is a system set up so that those in power have a constant need and drive to please the people who have put them into power. Their "excessive ambition," namely that which motivates them to ascend the ladder of political power, is only accomplished by pleasing their constituents.
Is it a perfect system? Of course not. I doubt there is such a thing. But it's actually quite effective. So effective it's been adopted (and at times imposed) by many other countries around to world to generally positive results. While I agree the system is not perfect, I wouldn't go so far as to suggest we scrap the system altogether and implement a new, considerably untested system in it's place. Why throw the baby out with the bath water. Especially since, for all it's flaws, The United States is still a relatively free, pleasant place to live.
But hey. I'm an optimist. We're not as fun as pessimists. Complaining is much more fun.
The saying that "its what you learn, after you know it all that counts", seems to have fallen on deaf ears in America these days, where arrogance and has replaced wisdom and reason as the most sought after cultural commodity.
It certainly is true that once you get into science you discover that you know so very, very little about how things really are, even though you know far more than those who find math and science uninteresting or irrelevant to their lives.
Sadly, for America, the ignorance that comes with bliss is more highly prized by corporate America. Scientists these days are finding their talents and knowledge disrepected and too often mocked for being honest enough to admit that the current state of science doesn't have all the answers, just very good approximations to most answers. These days, when scientists say they don't have all the answers, the religious and ideologically driven scoff that they have no need for science, since they are convinced they have all the answers already.
Neuroscientists really need to answer why this is, before it is too late and what little that is left of the biodiversity on this planet that sustains humanity permanently disappears.
She makes a living bashing the left while winking at the same time, people feel the need to bite back.
"non-white man'? - Are you serious or just ignorant? He's 50% white and 50% black. He's NOT THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT. Bill Clinton is.
So we can have civilization. When you get down to it, its really that simple.
Its just the politics of anarchy are far more popular these days, as people seek ways to get away with what they can amid the chaos of a collapsing biosphere.
Mythbusters set fire to wood with a sphere of ice. Does refraction make up for their lack of reflective know-how?
Greed and ambition aren't binary mental switches; there is a spectrum of ambition and greed. It's that least-ethical extreme of the Bell Curve on that spectrum that we need to lock up.
I don't want to complain! It's NOT fun. It's tiring, depressing, and is only a precursor to something constructive. Unfortunately, like other forms of de-struction, sometimes it is necessary before the best con-struction can proceed.
2) The myth can include large numbers of people in aligning mirrors. I'm guessing there'll be a large number of school children helping to align the mirrors.
Because if politicians love combining anything, it's schoolchildren and fire.
"but this feels like a really weak excuse to have the President on TV"
Your attitude precisely expresses why America is faltering and why other societies are moving into the lead in so many areas of science and technology. Rather than recognizing the importance of any and all efforts to promote science and technology as interesting to kids and our citizenry in its own right, you would rather see the president fail and his appearance in support of such an effort become a political football.
What is truly sad is that the average American kid's education in math and science has fallen so far, that it now takes the President going on an entertainment-based "science" program to even get their interest. Its gotten to the point that one no longer knows which is falling faster in America, its standing in math and science education, its standard of living, or life expectancy, all of which are highly correlated.
I don't know if you have children, but frankly I feel sorry for them if you do. I also feel sorry for the countless other American kids who will grow up in a world where the finest universities will no longer be in the US, where the level of innumeracy and even simple knowledge of basic scientific concepts, such as what constitutes a theory, are beyond the vast majority to comprehend and who foolishly think that their lives won't be affected by the consequences and thus don't bother to promote it, want to pay taxes to support it, nor have the sense to encourage it at every opportunity.
My own sense is that if the President does go on the show and this leads to just one kid growing up to make an important scientific discovery, it will be a far greater accomplishment than anything republicans have done in the past 20 years combined. However, that is just my own opinion and I'll let other scientists stand up and defend all the great work republicans are doing on behalf of science.
It could be worse. Remember when Bush appeared on Deal or No Deal? It just was so unnecessary
ha ha! Money well spent, eh?
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
It would truly be a fool's errand for Obama's time to try to go around "fix shit", when republicans are far too good and far to fast at plaster the place with it faster than any President could ever possibly clean it up.
It would be better if he could get even one kid to become a scientist and make an important discovery that really would help to "clean up the shit" as you so elegantly phrase it.
Actually the Presidents name is almost, in Hebrew "Lightning from above" which is how Lucifer is described in the Bible; so the real hard-core right-wing whack-jobs are calling him the Antichrist not the messiah.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
And she seems to know almost nothing about communication. So, there you go.
But seriously, just because you don't like his policies doesn't mean he's stupid. And even if you may like Sarah Palin's statements, that doesn't make her smart either.
Also, as a side note, her experience in executive positions put the town of Wasilla from a debt of $1 million to about $25 million. And as for being governor, I don't know if quitting to the job she promised to voters she would fulfill so she could do lectures and TV shows really gives her "executive experience" points. But that's a rather separate discussion.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Yeah right. Like anyone would read those for the articles . Nice try, but we know it's all about the centerfolds, buddy.
You oughta see the converse: right-wingers saying how Bush was ordained by God to be in the White House; how he beat all the odds in the first and second elections and pulled it all off because of prayer
I'm not being biased at all. If you look up in the thread, I'm responding to a comment (now marked as troll) that said Obama and Sarah Palin were equally smart. Which, whatever you think of either of their policies or platforms, is absolutely ridiculous.
I mean, even putting the degrees aside as evidence. Obama can go before an entire roomful of the best politicians in America who are arrayed against them, live, with no prepared questions, and defeat them in debate. Palin can't even handle unscripted softball questions from Katie freakin' Couric. That legendary "What newspapers do you read?" question was a **gift**, and Palin still freaked and blew it.
Conservatives don't want to think Sarah Palin is dumb. But she is. Sorry.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
The oddest thing is, the whole 'russia from my house' thing is an ultra-light nudge of a joke compared to everything else she actually did do.
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I understand and agree with your main point, but I think English is arguably more important than the others, since it deals with basic communication between people. (Even PE has arguments for it, for general health reasons.)
I say this as someone who is annoyed at how innumerate most people are.
"Sharks don't ram ships in real life".
The ampullae of Lorenzini are used by sharks for orientation. These electroreceptors can be influenced by ships hulls, which often have much metal. Reports of sharks and whales bumping into ships are not as uncommon as you may think.
No scientific experiment tests "ALL" aspects of a theory. Each test, regardless of how well designed, makes some assumptions that are presumed to be true.
Sure, it was unique at first but has since then worn real thin.. this will just cement it for me that its not worth watching.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Mythbusters need to investigate the myth that among all the teajhadists combined they have more functional brain-cells as our Honolulu born US president.
After all, the guy was smart enough to post the announcement of his own birth in the Honolulu newspaper so he could go on to become President of the United States. Teajhadists are simply jealous. Just like Jerry Brown who planted the illegal immigrant maid in Meg Whitman's house 10 years ago and convince the SSA to send her a letter notifying her of the fact 7 years ago so he could beat her in the 2010 election. Compared to teajhadists, democrats look like geniuses.
No wonder America's interest in science withers, the left side of its brain seems to be working but the right side seems to have died.
How does analyzing James Joyce help people with basic communication?
Its because many, for very good reason, see the possibility of her becoming President of the United States as potentially catastrophic for our nation, given her lack of education, insufficient knowledge, or adequate intelligence to be anywhere within a zillion miles of the presidency, not to mention her incredibly divisive politics where she goes around the country to proclaim how happy to be "in the pro-American part of the country" as she did in a recent speech in North Carolina.
If you can't see that, presumably you are stupid enough to be one of her supporters.
republicans are pushing very hard right now to rebuild the failed Star-wars defense system and he's trying to show the country the futility of the program?
Real myth to burst on Dec 18 would be Immaculate Conception (and Resurrection too while at it). But that would be too politically incorrect.
The post I replied to said "english education" [sic], it did not specifically refer to analyzing literature. I interpreted that as (also) including things like learning grammar, punctuation, and etymology of words.
Seems like a great myth for MythBusters to tackle, especially since when you look at the evidence Jesus was probably the most ardent advocate of welfare for the poor the world has ever known.
I've tried to investigate this, but the copy of My Pet Goat given to Bush after the incident has been locked away in a vault in his presidential library and they refuse allow anyone to see what he may have written in the margins.
Whatever he may have wrote, one things for sure, it very unlikely it wasthe proof of Fermat's last theorem.
He is a Lawyer, the most hated group of professionals known for overcharging and gaming the system, not caring about their client, and being the pus that infects the mucus that cruds up the fungus that feeds on the pond scum. She is a Milf with a degree in Talking I pity the choices americans had
What criteria would you suggest?
I would start with:
Rule #1: NO MORE LAWYERS OR ACTORS. EVER.
here's a thought.. if you want someone resembling that mythical character, an "honest politician".. Dont vote for someone whose job is being A PROFESSIONAL LIAR!
I would have thought that would be just common sense. Apparently not so common. SHeeesh.
Oh, I knew exactly what it was. It's just ironic.
Although, in reality, since it is oil, if something ever stops the plant from functioning again, they can always burn it.
No, it throws it into stark, shameful relief.
The sphere of ice is a hard-to-fuck-up design. Harder, apparently, than their design for how to do concave reflection, which, come on, isn't that easy to fuck up.
Meanwhile, the President is still a media whore and hasn't stopped campaigning since 2006.
There are a lot of legitimate reasons to dislike Obama, but every President since Adams has done that of which you accuse him.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
I really despise Palin. Therefore I agree with you.
The way I treat people I really despise is with scrupulous fairness. I do this for three reasons.
(1) I despise "bandwagon" thinking even more than any individual I've ever considered.
(2) To enjoy the incomparable satisfaction of being superior *even to people who agree with me*.
(3) When I despise someone, I don't want to give them the satisfaction of believing my contempt for them is the product of commonplace animosity. By extending kindness and consideration to the object of my disdain, I hold up a mirror in which they must on some level confront their own wretched, ineluctable odiousness.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No, but I know a lot of women (and a few men) who would happily sleep with him at the drop of a hat. But fuckability is not generally considered one of the defining characteristics of deityhood. I can easily see comparing him to rock stars or film idols, but to jump from that to calling him the messiah is as misguided and disingenous, IMO, as trying to read blasphemy into John Lennon's innocent claim (which probably wasn't true) that the Beatles were bigger (had more fans than) Jesus.
I did wonder about aiming. I like that idea.
I didn't get that part from the Clarke(?) story: It's used for signaling mirrors, so you can reliably flash sunlight at a viewer in an airplane or a neighboring mountaintop. That's why camping/hiking emergency signaling mirrors - and often the mirrors in camping shaving kits - are double-sided and have a hole in the middle. B-)
Archimedes could have figured out the geometry of that - or one of several related methods of aiming. He was quite the geometer. Or he could have just used about three times as many soldiers. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It is racist not to support Obama.
Someone tought my buthsufferticket comment was flamebait? Man! Honkey got to buy his ass some sense o' humour!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Because if we don't send them to school we lose a good portion of the working populace. One or the other parent would have to stay at home with the kids.
Dude, the world is more than "conservative" and "liberal".
Try acting like a normal human and realize that you don't categorize into such broad strokes, then choose your enemies.
True patriotism is choosing the person that will help your country achieve what it truely was designed for. It's not about picking conservative, nor liberal. I know there's going to be a billion people frothing at the mouth, and attempting to call me a democrat. I'm American, and damned proud of it. I'm neither republican, nor democrat.
It's fun to watch people walk away grumbling when you don't choose a side. Try it sometime, and life will get better for you.
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Welfare, or charity?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
There was no battle. As soon as Sarah Palin became the vice-president elect with John McCain, poor McCain had an anchor on his leg that was like an angry pitbull in a china store.
Pretty much, all President Obama had to do was not fall into her snide tirade fest, and all would go fine. The whole "angry PTA member" facade doesn't help, either.
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Throughout history, when kids don't go to school they ended up working, usually to help out the parents or other family. So it is ridiculous to claim that keeping kids out of school removes people from the work force. It actually adds people to the work force.
Maybe you could argue that in the long run it reduces the level of education required to do more sophisticated jobs; but that isn't the case you made.
When a majority believe something, it becomes real. As you said.
So... it is real until Morpheus pops in to give us a pill, or something.
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Yeah, so?
I saw no President-Elects that were female.
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Bill Clinton is about as African American (black) as most people in America are Cherokee...
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Well, since the president is just a figurehead, a spokes-model like Palin should suffice. Obama is wasted in that office.
Anyone notice the card at the president's feet that says "POTUS" with what looks like an arrow? Heh.
Since God is just a figurehead anyway, a spokes-model like Palin should be sufficient. Obama is wasted as God.
It's easy to see why McCain was chosen to be Obama's runner-up, then. At the top, both parties are the same, and they have a narrative that they want to get out there in order to control you.
It's a subtle enslavement, but it's quite clear: they control the questions, and tell you what the choices are, If you accept that those are the choices, they've already got you before you even make a decision.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
But since the President is not a figurehead, it's very important that a learned, capable and intellectually curious person is in that position. As shown by the previous President GWB, who horribly damaged the country and the world by being none of the above.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Lawyers are, of course, that group that no one likes until they need one.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
The most hilarious thing about that entire debate, in my opinion, McCain wasn't born in the US! He was born in Panama! Haha it makes me laugh every time I think about it. OK, It's stupid, but all those idiotic birthers don't realize that there really WAS someone born outside the US in the campaign, and it wasn't Obama.
Qxe4
Considering the frightening amount of people who couldn't solve a simple polynomial of 2nd degree, this may be closer to the truth than you would think.
Now that's an interesting question: will Sarah Palin blend?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
The myth is not just about setting wood on fire with the sun. As you say, nobody would consider that to be a potential myth. It's about setting a boat on fire while it's floating in the water, at long range, using technology equivalent to what could be found in ancient Greece. I would love to see you try to ignite damp wood at 50 yards with a hand-shaped 10-centimeter polished bronze reflector.
Come on now, Archimedes had his entire life to work on this and get it right, and MythBusters tried it in one afternoon. They obviously have a solid grip on it, and their findings should be taken as fact. I mean, would a man with that kind of facial hair lie to you?
Yes, but the 10% or so that are capable will rule you.
it is the beloved acceptance of ignorance and mediocrity that society depends on to function as it does now.
Your post is reasonable; people calling Palin dumb are kind of beating a dead horse, but put it in context. She could have been vice president, with no small chance of being promoted. A lot of folks don't want someone who is 'stupid (arguably)' in that position. Part of it is that if ask her supporters why they like her it's because "She's just like me, a normal American." I don't want the president to be just like me (residents of Redmond WA would probably also object, due to the fallout.)
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
This might be pretty warped humor... which is OK... but it sure isn't flamebait.
Since all the children in Lake Wobegon are above average, Palin's neighbourhood must be the one balancing this out.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
mirrors. At least from what I remember the big problem was aiming them but if they used big signal mirrors you could actually aim them fairly quickly.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
MythBuster: Lets mez sees diis nowz.
Usiz Barak Obama Hussain ... Isz usz a Cracker or Nigro? Answerz Mez.
Well ... in all do respect ... I can't understand what your saying.
Well nosziz ... wehz just got the answerz ... now dontin wehzusz.
Dem ragity assuz whityz got soz many deseasuz that theyz goug to diz out ... leaven usz dem goodiez.
Burn Whity Burz ... Yall.
There is a difference between "folksy" and ignorant.
"As a *Republican who does not believe that cutting confiscatory taxes actually raises tax revenue from those same taxes despite all evidence to the contrary*" - fixed that for ya.
From the Hillary v. Obama debate, Charlie Gibson actually asks a tough question:
GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.
Transcript taken from http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23137.html
which was the first link after searching google for gibson obama "purposes of fairness"
I recommend reading the entire exchange so that proper context may be established. Too bad that the context shows that Obama is just another Class Warfare type.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
..Go on Myth-busters and pursue anything that won't fix anything else...
Yet only two viable ones, and I say this as a guy who voted for neither of them in the last two elections.
Personally, I think the early Tea Party movement was aimed to pick up a lot of libertarians and split the Republican Party. I think it still could split the party if it got its act together, but it is in the process of being de-fanged by Fox. The reason for this is that if GOP split, it would open the floodgates for other parties--all of a sudden their calls to be in national debates would look reasonable, and people would be exposed to something more useful than complete polarization.
I coulda sworn they had already done this one already with a ship.
I don't think anyone is disputing that curved mirror can focus light to the point of ignition. What was busted was the fact that hundreds of people holding a mirror can provide a focused enough beam to light a moving target. A series of fixed window on a particular spot is not exactly what this myth was calling for.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
"anti-Vaxxers", because obviously believing that the Big Pharma companies are always acting in your best interests shows true critical thinking.
Actually, that's the really interesting thing - so many of the anti-Vaxxers actually put their trust in organisations that have their best interests much less at heart than the big pharmaceutical companies. For example, have you taken a look at how many mothers and fathers of kids with autism who're anti-Vaxxers are feeding their kids industrial chemicals not approved for use on humans at the behest of someone making a vast fortune from selling said chemicals to them? Or the number giving them Lupron, a chemical castrating agent, again on the instruction of some crackpot making a vast fortune from selling it on to parents of autistic kids?
Wearing a penguin isn't my idea of comfort.
It's not penguin's idea of comfort either!
Why the hell does this guy always try to shove his face into pop culture when he's suffering poor ratings. That's an episode I won't be watching. I do enjoy the show, but I don't want to see that guy doing glorified re-election stunts to attempt to "make himself cool again". He had his shot and he failed. . . big time. NEXT!
That does seem a bit odd. The reason I wouldn't inflict the MMR jab on my children is far simpler - the numbers don't add up. I don't know anyone who died of measles. Everyone I know has had measles, so presumably *someone* I knew would have actually died, if the statistics pushed by doctors and pharmaceutical companies are correct. Let's be clear that I'm talking about people I went to school with, since the statistics are all about how many children would die if they weren't given the MMR vaccine. I know a couple of people who died in car accidents, two who committed suicide, one who died of cancer and one who died of meningitis - but no measles. I'm old enough that BCG (tuberculosis) and polio vaccines were routine (and rubella, for girls - not so nasty if boys get it but it's particularly horrible for pregnant women).
Citations?
I provided them for my argument.
Your turn.
"Lame" - Galaxar
If you read some of the other comments on the story(I don't have time to dig it up right now) MIT proved that what you describe can happen already. 127 Mirrors and 10 minutes of clear sky, even with 3 of the mirrors still out of position. Plus they were all sitting on stands and manually adjusted by about 10 people rather than an army holding 127 of these, who would adjust it much faster. They lit the partial boat hull on fire. Apparently between the time it ignited and the time they put it out it had burned a hole in the plank already.
Mr Obama:
Don't Bring your birth certificate!
They'll just blow it up.
You're kinda making the GP's point. One who has developed critical thinking skills isn't going to blindly believe that Big Pharma companies are always acting in your best interests.
Actually, in the 1st revisit to the myth they did in 2006, the Mythbusters invited those MIT students to replicate it in a real world situation. They failed. Made for a very entertaining episode, though.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Okay I believe at this point there is only one thing that holds true, and it isn't whether they're democrat or republican, it's if they're religious. You may make your own conclusions.
But saying that you don't watch Oprah and you don't care when the argument is about democrats proclaiming he is the messiah is pretty dumb, and is effectively saying lalalalala, considering that she unfortunately controls a cult of personality that is obscenely influential and that she is also a good example. There may be absolute statements and hyperbole here and there (as there always is), but none of it is important when you consider my first statement. If you're like me you'll just write off anything ridiculous said by that certain faction.
I appreciate that response a lot.
I'm somewhat aggravated that rather than inspire some omphaloskepsis, I actually reaped a few further comments exactly like the ones that were driving me bonkers.
By the way, did you guys hear that the president is going to be on MythBusters? ;)
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
I'm not sure if you were exaggerating to make a point. But even if you ignore all the benefits of the actual facts and systems which school teaches (regardless of the premise you put out that apparently once people hit 20 they forget anything and everything they've ever learned in their life), you cannot discount the social and cultural benefits of regular schooling.
It teaches kids that they aren't the center of the universe, that sometimes life isn't fair, and that the easiest ways to be accepted among your peers is to be relatively kind and helpful.
Of course there are outliers who are bullies, narcissists and sociopaths. But the vast majority of kids come out of school as decent and eager individuals. Of course things were better back in whatever day you come from, they always were (though after several decades/centuries of this feeling how the hell we haven't reverted to cro-magnons I have no idea) but still, the vast majority of kids do gain immense benefits from school that even home-schooling can't always compete with.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but its a damn sight better than letting your kids stay home and play video games while taking out the trash and mowing grass for an allowance until their 18, then letting them fend for themselves with no idea of how to live outside of their family home. In my opinion of course.
I agree. I think having rubeola and tuberculosis is so much safer than taking shots that have been tested intensively for years under the supervision of scientists and health authorities of the entire world. What do those guys know?
Back in college there were two kinds of students: The geeks, who were really interested about computers and electronics, and the greedy, who used to say "I'm in this for the money, computer engineer is a good career choice". None of the latter finished their degrees. And, in general, the former are better, professionally speaking, now.
Republicans like their women dumb and controllable. Smart women scare the breath out of them.
Yes, but it's still embroiled in controversy; some MIT students busted the myth that it was impossible by actually doing it.
Free Martian Whores!
So despite your best research, you couldn't find anyone other than right-winger calling him "messiah?" Thank you for making my point.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
They've done it twice I believe. Once where they failed to build it, then they did it again with a viewer submission attempt.
With that hotel in Vegas adding legitimacy back to the claim that you can build a mirror based death ray by nuking deck chairs and delivering some serious injuries to customers by the pool.
Why the President needs to be involved is beyond me.
Why do we send children to school?
The vast majority of students do not really know what they want to do with their lives concerning their job/career and this gives them all an equal opportunity to explore the basics of knowledge and will lead them to discover what they truly want out of life, whether it is serving customers at a restaurant to an engineer.
The thing about diseases like the measles is that they tend to have fairly low fatality levels in kids, but much higher fatality levels in adults who have never had them. Of those people you know who have had measles, how many had it after they got out of school? It's basically a numbers game. Enough people are vaccinated or immune that you don't really get measles epidemics as there just aren't enough carriers. If vaccination levels drop too low, you have the potential for an eventual epidemic, where lots of adults and some children who are not immune will actually die.
How many people will die is an interesting question. Since the vaccines were invented, medicine has gotten better all around. With proper treatment with fever reducers, staying properly hydrated, vitamins, etc., diseases that might be fatal can actually be kept within the threshold of merely uncomfortable. The flu is a great example. 90% of people who actually die from various strains of the flu could have been saved with proper hydration and management of fluid build-up in their lungs using simple techniques that basically just require tapping on their chest and back at regular intervals. A lot of these diseases that have really nasty reputations gained those reputations back in the days when most people had far worse nutrition than we have these days (a. I'm talking about the developed world and b. yes I know nutrition stinks these days too with all the crap we eat, but nevertheless even people eating todays crap and overeat, etc. tend to get a more varied diet without serious vitamin and mineral deficiencies) and when conventional wisdom for treating the sick was just stupid (ever hear of "feed a cold, starve a fever"?) and doctors treated sick people by draining out half their precious bodily fluids. On the other hand, those sort of deaths from disease due to human stupidity aren't necessarily obsolete. While the anti-vaccine crowd does include some "reasonable caution" types, it seems to me that it mostly consists of paranoids who are too stupid to evaluate the odds and issues involved on their own who are essentially choosing inaction over action because, even if inaction has 1000 times the death rate of action, they feel they could never forgive themselves if taking action caused inadvertent harm to their child whereas they would feel blameless if they took no action.
gaming the system (which, as I geek, I have to respect a bit
We geeks don't respect dishonesty, and gaming the sytem is dishonest.
Sarah Palin put republicans in jail for fraud/corruption, IIRC. I've yet to see Obama achieve anything that compares.
How about the Justice Department (that reports to the President) arresting the now impeached Illinois Governor for trying to sell Obama's old Senate seat?
Free Martian Whores!
Not my best research, only what I could find in 2 minutes and 1 Google search. I'm just pointing out who gave them the idea.
The Left Wing says:
Our candidate was appointed by God
and the Right Wing responds:
So, he's the messiah
Personally, I think it's funny.
It's much funnier than the left-wingers habit of calling people 'teabaggers'
"Lame" - Galaxar
I don't see a huge distinction, "Troll is for when someone says something (a statement) unkind or untrue in order to drum up (to draw) a disagreement (a negative response)." Troll seems a lot like flamebait from where I'm sitting.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Aside from the previously posted screenshot link of the Obama campaign website that shows an image of graffiti "Obama is God", this would be an short example of my best:
A messiah in our midst?
By Jonah Goldberg
Obama's Satyagraha: Or, Did Obama Swallow the Mahatma?
June 27, 2008. (Dinesh Sharma is a marketing science consultant with a PhD in Psychology from Harvard).
Miami Herald March 28, 2006.
Okello Oculi, Daily Monitor
AllAfrica.com. February 20, 2008.
Obama Draws Throngs To Target Center
WCCO.com. February 2, 2008
There you go, 5 non-right-wing articles.
"Lame" - Galaxar
If a science education is so important to Obama, why did he essentially cancel NASA's manned space program, which along with the premature cancellation of the Shuttle has resulted in over 1500 NASA lay-offs so far, with many 1000's more coming in the future for NASA and its contractors? Aside from stunts on TV, Obama is doing nothing to encourage a career in science and is instead sending a concrete message that ones efforts would be better spent in areas of "public service".
For the millionth time, that was Tina Fey.
Anyone who cites that schtick looks like the moron, not Palin.
BTW, love how any discussion of Obama has to suddenly turn to Sarah Palin bashing, as if that's relevant. Same ol' tired crap rehashed over and over. And oh yeah, it was "Bush's fault".. there, now we're complete.
Fair enough. Some of the person-on-the-street interviews in 2004 I can no longer find, but there was more during his re-election.
"Why is this man in the White House? The majority of America did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." General Jerry Boykin
"He is one of those men God and fate somehow lead to the fore in times of challenge," Governor George Pataki
"I think President Bush is God's man at this hour, and I say this with a great sense of humility." White House official Tim Goeglein
Palin is now going the same direction: Bush, Palin Both Think They're Chosen By God
Flamebait is for people who make controversial statements without the motive behind what would otherwise be a Troll. You're correct, the distinction is a minor one, and motive is key, I suppose.
One example of a troll would be a GNAA post. A vaguely corresponding flamebait post (race being a factor) would be something about Bill Cosby having it right when he said that black Americans need to take more responsibility. It's a fine line, and different people see the line in different places.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Why is math education important in public schools?
The vast majority of students will not be mathematicians or accountants, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.
--OR--
Why is english education important in public schools?
The vast majority of students will not be writers, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.
--OR--
Why is history education important in public schools?
The vast majority of students will not be historians, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.
--OR--
Why is physical education important in public schools?
The vast majority of students will not be althletes, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.
You can apply this argument to pretty much every school subject - so your question is really "why do we send children to school"?
And the simple answer is "to keep them out of the job market".
The vast majority of students WILL live life, and WILL have the opportunity to reinforce the information they learn about living life.
If education is important to live life then then the real question is, "Why do we continue to let public education graduate students who are content learning, remembering and caring about nothing?"
You can apply this argument to pretty much every school subject - so your question is really "why do we send children to school"?
I thought the question: is our children learning?
No, you are doing it wrong.
The vast majority of students will not be mathematicians or accountants
But the vast majority WILL need to balance a checkbook, calculate a tip, and do their taxes.
The vast majority of students will not be writers
But the vast majority WILL need to write letters, emails, and so on. Also, they will all need to read.
The vast majority of students will not be historians
But the vast majority will be curious about the major world events, such as the world wars, the founding of the country lived in, etc.
The vast majority of students will not be althletes
But they will all need to maintain basic health over the course of their lives, and exercise is necessary for that.
So, in every case, you give a bad example that is similar in form only to the parent post. The parent advocated a basic, general, and practical science education only...the type that doesn't need a lot of funding and will be useful to the vast majority of students. This applies to all of your examples as well.
why do we send children to school
To give them a general education focusing on basics and pragmatics. Anything specialized should be handled in private schools or, at best, special public schools for qualifying advanced students only.
overstating one and oversimplifying another.
You forgot: President Obama highest GPA of any prez... oh wait we don't know that. Successful private sector attorney... oh wait. Job creator in the private sector... oh wait. Business (successful or otherwise) owner... oh wait. Successful executive public or private... oh wait.
By the by, we all hate lawyers in our everyday lives, but we want one for prez? It's almost as bad as complaining about every interaction we have with government in our lives, then wanting more of it to solve all of our problems.
I don't really care if he's on the program, though the last thing I want is for some bloviating politician (any party) to ruin a show I would otherwise have watched.
I disagree that (elite==educated) in the context of TEA party type discourse. (Elite=the political ruling class). They are the people that THINK they are better and know better than everyone else, even if they've never done anything other than thought experiments.
I didn't forget any of that. It's just all besides the main point: President Obama is clearly far smarter than Sarah Palin.
And by the way, I *do* want a lawyer for my president. For the same reason I want a mechanic who knows how to drive. This "all lawyers are evil" notion is just as silly as "all corporations are good".
Thinking that knowing something about the law makes someone a bad president, is just as bad as thinking the Free Market will somehow run itself with no regulation or oversight - because no other human endeavor has EVER done that in the history of mankind.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Yeah, well if cutting taxes would increase tax receipts, how come after Bush's tax cuts deficits are higher than ever?
Uh, references for that?
Well, you can look here, among the hundreds of other places you can find such nauseating stuff:
http://fr.sevenload.com/videos/7yvebuv-School-kids-taught-to-praise-Obama
And you can simply read the text of his nomination acceptance speech for his own reference to his election being the mark of world-healing and ocean-receding. Of course, you already knew that, and you're just playing dumb to cast some doubt should someone else come along.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
She doesn't say anything about Russia in what you linked.
More importantly, how hard would it be to get all the politicians and lawyers in the country to volunteer to be blended. Ahh, demonic smoothie...
There are other factors that go into a deficit. One is spending more than you take in. If you increase spending more than you increase receipts, the deficit will become larger.
Also, recession can reduce receipts. In current dollar values, from 2000 to 2008, receipts increased by 25 percent. That's after GWB "inherited" a "tech bubble burst" and an attack on US soil right after taking office.
During that same period, spending increased by 66%. Now, I know these concepts are difficult, so let me break it down. If you spend so much more money every year that you overtake an increase of 25% over 8 years (which is what our "leaders" were doing), you will have a bigger deficit when it's all said and done.
With this current recession, receipts are down to what they were in 2005. But instead of cutting spending, we are spending more. 50% more. Not exactly smart ones, these people.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
Better yet, Bush claimed that he was on a God-given mission in Iraq.
Clever signature text goes here.
Now dig up the same kind of quotes for Bushie. What was that, it's only wrong when some random guy mentions Obama in a setting that might be interpreted as having a connection with superstitious beliefs? I see. At least Obama didn't claim to be on a God-given mission to "save Iraq".
Clever signature text goes here.
"Bushie" isn't the sitting president. You can't continue to blame everything on Bush. For a little while it's cute, but after enough time it becomes pathetic.
God-given mission? No, he claimed to be god....at least his campaign site did.
Since you obviously didn't follow the link:
Previously on the Obama campaign site - has since been removed:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3008/2619205229_cc2d84e9c6.jpg?v=0 [flickr.com]
"Lame" - Galaxar