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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."
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...
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.
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.
For some reason this reminds me of the Onion headline: "Black Man Given Worst Job In Country".
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
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
And 3rd post is the new sixth.
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!
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.
Someone really should have warned the Romans before that battle: 'never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!'
William George
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
And she is unable to mention one magazine she reads. How they could be proud of such a moron I will never understand.
Is this true or is this like when my Italian friends insist that Saint Patrick was Italian?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
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.
If they could debunk that successfully it would be fantastic. People have been trying for a couple of years now, and still over 25% of this country is convinced he wasn't legally elected.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Why should she have to mention just one? She has made it very clear that she reads all of them.
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"
Arquimedes was indeed Sicilian, but that's considered Greek since Syracuse, capital of Sicily was a Greek nation state, part of the Hellenistic civilization.
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).
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?
Free software (and non-free software, for all that) is inextricably linked with law and politics. So, yes. Slashdot does politics.
Oddly, this is likely pretty apolitical (except that Obama is a politician, and therefore inherently political). Just repetitive. Just repetitive. Just repetitive.
I appreciate the desire to focus on solar energy, science, and all that. I just hope they can come up with an interesting angle on this that make is worth yet another remake of the same episode that wasn't all that interesting in its previous iterations.
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.
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?
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!)
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/
[citation needed]
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
She could have mentioned that too, but she did not. I highly doubt she can spell Science much less reads it.
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
About half the episodes of Mythbusters have either some sort of epic science fail in the experiment or are so obviously busted that they might as well not bother testing them (but they do anyway).
We still watch them though.
Obligatory XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/397/
No sig today...
No, he was Greek, at the time Sicily was a Greek colony.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Graecia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syracuse,_Italy#Greek_period
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.
No.
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
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."
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,
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.
Here are 3, including one which specifically cites a 27% estimate for the overall population. Thanks for playing.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0709/58_of_GOP_not_suredont_beleive_Obama_born_in_US.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/05/poll_31_percent_of_republicans.html
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/poll-27-of-americans-are-birthers----including-41-of-republicans.php
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
If they could debunk that successfully it would be fantastic. People have been trying for a couple of years now, and still over 25% of this country is convinced he wasn't legally elected.
That's better than Bush Jr's stats, where over 50% was convinced he wasn't legally elected.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
. . . 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!"?
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?
Thou shalt not in any way display even a hint of criticism of Obama lest ye be branded "troll"
For all you douche bags on /. who mark posts as troll simply because you disagree with the point of view, no matter how thoughtfully or politely made, let me break it down for you in small words that you can all understand: Bush sucked, Obama sucks, he that came before Bush sucked and he or she that will come after Obama shall also suck. Pretty much everyone in congress sucks too. See, elections are a popularity contest and are founded on money, and mostly, complete bullshit. It is very difficult if not impossible to be well informed about candidates because the media selectively tells you what they want to.
D !> R, R !> D, R == D == sucks, and if you truly believe otherwise, you've been had.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
"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
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.
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
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
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...
Believe me, I completely agree with you.
What baffles me is that I didn't even think my post was negative to Obama? I mean, I guess because I said I thought appearing on Mythbusters was stupid, it's an attack on Obama? Beats me...
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"?
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.
Insightfully and concisely put. The amazing thing is that this system still works better than anything else humanity has tried. Scary, really.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
Thunderdome.
Ann Dunham He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy!"
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
Sails have several major things going against them as an attack vector. First, they tend to be pretty light in color, so a good bit of the light reflects rather than being absorbed. Second, they tend to flap and/or move more erratically, making it simultaneously harder to focus on a specific place. Third, a sail fire is non-fatal to the ship itself, and is a lot easier to put out than a pitch fire. If you want to set a trireme on fire, aim low and aim at pitch. It's dark, it doesn't move a lot, and once you ignite it it burns like a sunovabitch.
More importantly, their initial tests were not testing the actual flammability of the material, but what temperatures could be achieved using bronze shields that had been shaped as half-decent mirrors. Their maximum temperature at 60 feet using 400 square feet of bronze was about 200 degrees (not only not enough to ignite dry material, but not enough to boil water). Even dry paper, as Ray Bradbury taught us all, ignites at around 451 degrees. The Mythbusters were shooting for 600 degrees to guarantee ignition, and even once they added a bunch of additional mirrors they only got 280.
They did revisit it, by the way. An MIT team was challenged to repeat the experiment at 100 feet, and they were actually able to ignite the boat at 75 feet. Using modern glass mirrors (not bronze) to ignite a dry boat (not damp) located on a rooftop in full sun and at optimal angle (so if you had an Eastern shore, you'd better hope the enemy was attacking in the mid-morning hours).
It wasn't just busted because they couldn't set a boat on fire at a reasonable distance, but because they could only set it on fire with non-period materials under optimal circumstances using potentially thousands of troops, where a simple flaming arrow could be fired by a single person, start a much more aggressive fire, and work over at least three times the distance (100 yards isn't a terribly long arrow shot).
Frankly, I'm with a few other people, it's a great idea getting the Mythbusters involved in getting kids into science (because, as flawed as it is, the show really does push experimentation and questioning your assumptions, which is the foundation of science). It's just that doing so by doing a THIRD take on a myth that is so obviously debunked is.. well.. a little foolish.
The Mythbusters don't always get it right the first time, but they have demonstrated that they are VERY open to disproving their own prior results, and have done so on more than one occasion. They aren't experts in anything they do, but they are good scientists, in that they make an honest effort to control for variables and don't appear to instantly dismiss theories and feedback they don't agree with. They subject it to experimentation.
Plus, of course, there's almost always a satisfying explosion. :)
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
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.
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.
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.
Nah. Obama is above average but below great (so far, he could still achieve greatness); Bush was in the bottom 2 or 3 (McKinley was the absolute worst); Clinton was also a bit above average; Bush Sr was an unmemorable tool; Reagan was above average; Carter was average; Nixon was in the bottom 4 or 5; JFK was great; and before that was before modern politics.
Well, I guess I don't necessarily disagree with you, depending on the threshold for sucking. Maybe all but Lincoln and FDR have sucked.
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.
Heh heh. That is funny on multiple levels.
"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.
And then it eventually turned out that, strictly speaking, he wasn't elected by Florida - more thorough recounts done later on for research purposes made it pretty clear that Florida had actually gone to Gore, but nobody publicized this result too much because it wouldn't have gotten anyone anywhere at that point.
Though of course he was legally elected, given that the Supreme Court ordered the recounts halted since they wouldn't have been done in time.
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?
Really? At least under Obama things are moving in the right direction. The economy is picking up, albeit slowly, we're retreating from wars that shouldn't have been started in the first place, civil rights are for the most part being restored and there's been actual focus on real world problems.
Sure he's not perfect, but at least he's trying to get it right. He'd be doing a lot better at this point if the Republicans were actually trying to contribute rather than find ridiculous excuses to shoot down every possible piece of legislation.
Wait just one minute. Are you saying you think Anne Coulter is hot?
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth....
That's true. I believe the majority of the country didn't believe he was fairly elected. Which is different from legally.
The electoral college is unfair, but it is legal.
That's probably because he wasn't lawfully elected. Probably because no part of the constitution as amended does it say that in cases where an election can't be called the SCOTUS gets to step in and decide. Nope, in cases where the electoral college can't pick a winner, there's a very specific protocol to be followed.
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.
"I guess because I said I thought appearing on Mythbusters was stupid, "
Why, perhaps, they'll bust his birth certificate.
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?
In case the bewilderment I believe to be perceiving is, in fact, actually honest - which I'm not saying it's not and to be honest I couldn't care less about - and assuming you are actually not able to see why the post may be considered a troll although I believe that most people could understand why it would be so, I will try to shed some light on this subject.
I'm not a subject matter expert in trolling but I have friends who tell me they are pretty good at distinguishing between genuine interest and trollish comments so what I say may not be 100% factual although I believe it to be correct.
First, I don't want to criticize your style of writing, although most people who don't want to criticize something will simply avoid the thing they don't want to criticize altogether unless they have to talk about it to demonstrate some other point. I have just noticed that you have a peculiar way of not criticizing things and as I mentioned already I, myself, think that this is just fine that some people would write like this.
Second, I HAVE seen it claimed that people who post opinions but try to hide this in the form of maybes and innuendos are often trolling.
Third, seriously, if some liberal are actually uncomfortable with some of Obama's media appearance, I'll just point out that them that they can take solace in the fact that he can pronounce the word "nuclear".
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.
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.
The economy is picking up, albeit slowly
I think this is hard to argue. That is, you can make a very strong argument either way. We'll know in a couple of years, but for now, who knows.
we're retreating from wars that shouldn't have been started in the first place,
By "wars" I assume you mean singular Iraq? Because we're certainly still engaged in Afghanistan, and those are the only two places that we went into under President Bush (right?). A family friend has hit by an IED in the last week or two...alive but his face was virtually blown off apparently. I think something like 17 dead in the last two days? That's not much of a retreat.
civil rights are for the most part being restored
?
there's been actual focus on real world problems
Because terrorism isn't a real world problem? I may not like many of Bush's actions post-9/11, but as someone who worked in Intel in the mid-2000s, a lot of very necessary changes were made. Look at it this way--numerous European (and other) countries have been hit since 9/11. Nothing so spectacular as 9/11 of course but hit nonetheless. We haven't. IMHO, that ain't peanuts.
Secondly, the obvious answer from polls is, most people don't like Obama's solutions.
Sure he's not perfect, but at least he's trying to get it right. He'd be doing a lot better at this point if the Republicans were actually trying to contribute rather than find ridiculous excuses to shoot down every possible piece of legislation.
Right. No need to be such a party loyalist. You're either with us or against us? Republicans are against Democrat bills and they're the bad guys. Ok.
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)
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?
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.
So what specifically do you have a problem with? Always easier to slander other people than make actual arguments.
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:
Spoken like someone who gets their news from CNN and Comedy Central. The real issues haven't changed under Obama. Gitmo? check, wiretaps? check, coming out against a lawsuit against a Bush AG? check, poor fiscal policies? checkerino.
It's exceptionally easy to take the party line on this. For example, that Obama inherited Bushes' economy and that the wars started under Bush were the primary economic problems. Unfortunately that's not the whole, or even half the story. Speaking of economics, you should read Times list of the 25 people responsible. It's a very objective view of what happened, and guess what? The Democrats were at fault just as much as the Republicans, of course if you listen to Jon Stewart it was all Bushes fault, and if you listen to Limbaugh it was all Clinton's fault. I can't paste into the comments go just google "Time 25 people financial crisis".
I also love you sentiment that the republicans should go along and not block things, even when it is becoming apparent that currently the majority of people want to stop a lot of the things that are currently happening. Just go to any major polling site and read the pols... I suppose that if a Democratic congress were blocking a Republican President you'd suggest that they were simply acting on principal?
I stand by my original statement: they all suck, and that includes Obama
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
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
The economy is largely stagnant. We are pulling down troop levels in Iraq, yes, but that has been the goal all along. We have no announced plans to leave Afghanistan in the near future.
What has he done for civil rights? He has not challenged Don't Ask Don't Tell, he hasn't pushed for a repeal of the PATRIOT Act, he has asked for a renewal of the warrantless wiretapping program, and there are confirmed cases of the FBI planting GPS tracking devices on the cars of foreign-born US students.
Obama has for the most part continued down the path of Bush. Tell me again - why are there still detainees at Gitmo?
Learn about Photography Basics.
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.
Seriously? You have much more faith in the average intelligence of people than I do.
The biggest problem with terrorism is the people who think that you can fight it. Fighting terrorism = win for terrorism. How much money have we spent in the last 8 years in the aftermath of 9/11, and what have we accomplished beyond eroding personal freedoms, killing some of our own soldiers, and devastating our own economy? Personally I say to the terrorists, bring it on, and I challenge all of us as patriots to ignore it for what it is, childish antics, rather than joining in on it (keep in mind that our domestic security programs, long in place, will continue to work). But we are far to fearful, and the politicians are far to corrupt to let the opportunities to grab power go . . . I too worked in intel (in the 1990s) and saw enough of that going on then to realize just where we were headed. Sorry about your friend, but realize that his getting hurt over there has nothing to do with the current administration, and everything to do with the corruptness of Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld, the ineptness of congress to read and understand the intel reports, and the impotence of the press to present any kind of realistic summary to the american people . . . I mean consumers.
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.
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.
You seem to have this all figured out. And your solution to "everything sucks" is?
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
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
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.
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?
"as Ray Bradbury taught us all, ignites at around 451 degrees
Unfortunately Ray stated his own myth, paper actually ignites at 451 Celcius.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
As I recall they addressed aiming at the sails during the first revisit. They couldn't focus the beam on the fabric as it fluttered in the air, so stated it wasn't a viable approach - I'm sure there's a clip on Youtube if you car to check.
Already did a bit elsewhere.
Well, of course. Succeed or fail, no Mythbusters segment is complete until they BLOW SOMETHING UP!! That is always a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
Especially that cement truck. WOO HOO!!
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 real issues haven't changed under Obama
I would agree with that, except they were all scaled down. Pretty much all of those issues existed before Bush, and have all been returned to pre-Bush levels. (IE GP is still correct on all of them)
currently the majority of people want to stop a lot of the things that are currently happening.
yes but the reason is generally because they have only heard put of the truth. I think it you break down most of the unpopular changes to what they really, are a majority of people support the changes.
Basically the republican admin did a much better PR job of convincing us that bills like "the patriot bill" were good, the democrats haven't sold their changes into the media. That is mostly Obama's fault. Also I do expect the Republican's to propose at least one meaningful piece of legislation; because it is always possible to find a fault, everything useful has some down side or a possible negative side affect. Until republicans propose something with fewer down sides, they have done nothing but create noise. By saying over and over "just start over", 6 months into the process, without ever doing anything wasn't going to help. I think very few people who have honestly looked at things like the Health-care bill believe it is going to drive costs up faster than they were going to go up without the bill... Sure it will drive costs up, you can't honestly deny that claim, but it will still cost less than the republicans plan of doing nothing but talking about it.
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'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.
The economy is still growing at a rate of 2-3% a year which is not stagnant...
more thorough recounts done later on for research purposes made it pretty clear that Florida had actually gone to Gore
Which is a strange conclusion to come to based on your wiki link.
Straight from the WashPost article which is the cite for the Wiki article:
But there are too many variables in any effort to reexamine the ballots -- from varying standards in judging ballots in the counties to problems of getting an exact replication of the overvote and undervote ballots -- to be able to say with absolute certainty what might have happened in Florida.
"In my opinion, it's too close to call," said Kirk Wolter, senior vice president of NORC. "If we take it as given that two major candidates were separated by perhaps a few hundred or fewer ballots, it may be that we'll never know the exact vote total."
Freaking Birthers...
Stop! Dremel time!
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.
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.
I think that quote referred to democracy. You know, the one where governing power is derived from the people.
A two party system with whole-state voting that renders 90% of votes irrelevant doesn't bear much resemblance to democracy to me.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
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.
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 ----
Adam and Jamie with a 2000 year old death-ray and a Secret Service Limo, means something is going to either catch on fire or blow up and I'll be waiting with bated breath.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
How does analyzing James Joyce help people with basic communication?
Google says the US GDP is 14.6 Trillion USD. CNN says that we have spent 11 Trillion USD on various bailout initiatives, of which 3 Trillion USD has been paid back. (as of 11/09: http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/economy/bailouttracker/)
It's easy to "grow" the economy at 2-3% when you inject over half the yearly GDP over 4 years.
Learn about Photography Basics.
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?
It wouldn't have done much good. The Sicilians you are talking about didn't arrive until after they threw the Greeks out of what is now Sicily.
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.
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.
> but that's considered Greek since Syracuse, capital of Sicily was a Greek nation state, part of the Hellenistic civilization.
City-state, not nation-state. At that time, Egypt was probably the only nation-state that side of China, with the possible exception of Armenia. Most of the remainig states were empires, provinces of empires, other independent poli, or independent tribal states (like in Gaul).
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.
and they'll show you that the constitution was made out of pizza crust...
god, some people can get stupid at times...
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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
How much money have we spent in the last 8 years in the aftermath of 9/11, and what have we accomplished beyond eroding personal freedoms, killing some of our own soldiers, and devastating our own economy?
So you think the Muslim extremists goals are to erode American's personal freedoms? Kill some soldiers, yes. Devastate that economy? I think, again, that's a very hard point to argue. The rest of the world economy took large hits too. Are they because of Bushco?
but realize that his getting hurt over there has nothing to do with the current administration
I don't blame President Obama nor do I blame President Bush. After 9/11 American had no choice but to go into Afghanistan. I think even Jimmy Carter would have done that. How long we've stayed is perhaps up in the air, but notice that Democrats since 2006 and President Obama since 2008 have only increased our presence there. I see no indication that had Bush not been president in 2001 that things in Afghanistan would have gone any differently. Iraq, perhaps.
You realize that roughly half of the entire time our troops have been in Afghanistan has been while Democrats controlled Congress by large margins? In fact Democrats in 2006 and 2008 were propelled into power largely on anti-war sentiment.
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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First of all I'm referring to Iraq. Secondly why are you so intent on framing this as a d vs r problem? And yes Muslim extremists are out to destablize the western world, specifically the us, from economic and personal freedom standpoints. And they are winning. The second we invaded Iraq they had their biggest victory.
On that chart, only the recounts that didn't actually take place seem to have gone for Gore. All of the real recounts, in which Gore's people were somehow allowed to cherry pick the counties recounted, had Bush winning.
Why if only they'd done the constitutionally mandated full recount instead of the gore-friendly cherry-picked recount, maybe gore would've won....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
First of all I'm referring to Iraq
Oh ok, because your post didn't say the word Iraq once, while mine explicitly discussed Afghanistan.
Secondly why are you so intent on framing this as a d vs r problem?
Reread my post, I think it's pretty clear what I said. The problem is clearly both parties. Republicans took us in, Democrats have kept us there.
And yes Muslim extremists are out to destablize the western world,
I think that's an extremely simplistic, and by-and-by, wrong view.
Muslim extremists worldwide were not produced in a vacuum nor were they created solely by the West. Look at what countries supplied the 9/11 terrorists and those countries' political systems, etc. The extremists have ridden on a wave of internal discontent that through religion has been channeled in other directions. True many extremists view the West as decadent and sinful and an enemy of the Muslim word (and thus deserving attacking). They're "out" to do a lot of things. You know Hezbollah builds hospitals?
specifically the us
Absolutely false.
from economic and personal freedom standpoints
Citation needed. Where does UBL or anyone else talk about wanting to deny Westerners (or anybody--ignore Muslims as the extremists DO want to limit their civil rights) their civil liberties? Obviously those terrorists who view the situation as a war want to attack and hurt the West, but what evidence do you have that this includes reducing civil liberties?
And they are winning
Disagree. By what metric are they winning? A fantasy metric like "they want us to lose our civil liberties" doesn't count without proof. That statement is just as ignorant as someone I knew after 9/11 who proclaimed that "they hate us for our freedoms."
The second we invaded Iraq they had their biggest victory.
This is perhaps an arguable point because Iraq was able to act as a rallying point for potential jihadists worldwide. Thus from that perspective, you can view Iraq as a a advertising campaign for extremists. From the Western point of view, even if terrorists are being recruited, they're dying in IRAQ, not on the streets of Madrid, London, NYC, wherever else. A huge win for the those the terrorists target. It's happened several times now--Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, etc. Some conflict begins, the jihadists worldwide are drawn in, and the other conflicts dim down. Meanwhile once a certain number of jihadists are done dying, the new conflict tends to calm down.
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
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.
And what rock have you been hiding under to think he has been trying to get it right? We are worse off now than we ever have been under any other president.....
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.
Really? At least under Obama things are moving in the right direction. The economy is picking up, albeit slowly, we're retreating from wars that shouldn't have been started in the first place, civil rights are for the most part being restored and there's been actual focus on real world problems. Sure he's not perfect, but at least he's trying to get it right. He'd be doing a lot better at this point if the Republicans were actually trying to contribute rather than find ridiculous excuses to shoot down every possible piece of legislation.
Really to your really? Precisely how are things moving in the right direction due to Obama's direct actions? Hell, even indirect actions. Would it be the earth shattering debt? Or perhaps the greatest deficits in US history? Oh, I know, it's the zillions of jobs and the health care bill that most people didn't want. That's what it is, right?
Trying to get it right counts for exactly nothing. Bare in mind that I didn't honestly want McCain and neither do I think the vast majority of so-called Republicans are hot stuff either. With that said, do you really see the direction we're heading as being a vast improvement in the way things were before?
Getting more specific, which civil rights do you see as having been restored? Was PATRIOT repealed? DADT? Warrantless wiretaps? Seriously, anything? The only civil rights that I'm aware of that have been restored or improved while he was President as Second Amendment rights. He damned sure wasn't in favor of that and I'm sure the only reason the administration didn't fight harder against that was the fact that they would have lost, and it would have made the upcoming elections more of a disaster for them than it already will be.
So, no civil rights have been restored, the economy picking up is a sham based only on after effects of dumping billions of dollars into it (running the debt even higher), the withdrawing from the wars that you trumpet was only possible because of strategies that Bush put in place and Obama thought were a terrible idea, and the health bill is a travesty that no one wants, no one knows how to pay for, and will end up being a super economic drag on the economy as the costs balloon to levels that dwarf medicaid/medicare.
You were saying?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
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.
There is a difference between "folksy" and ignorant.
From your post above "by war I'm assuming you mean Iraq" which is the post I responded to. The rest of your post displays similar confusion. In point the Muslim extremists have for decades claimed a goal of destablization of the western world and specifically the us (as the chief fiancial and military backer of Israel).
"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.
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!
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.
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?
they were all scaled down.
We went from "Can the executive branch wiretap US citizens without a warrant?" (regarding which Obama broke his promise and voted for amnesty instead of filibustering it, by the way) to "Can the executive branch assassinate US citizens without a trial?". This is only "scaling down" in the sense that a bullet is smaller than a phone.
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.
Yeah, the episodes regarding things exploding in a car (Soda Cans and Lighters) pissed me off quite a bit. Problem with the science in the lighter episode was that they chose one brand (a bic) and did all experiments with that lighter. I have never seen a bic malfunction, explode in a car, or have the wheel and spring come flying off, while cheaper lighters have those problems often. I have had more than a few soft drinks explode in a hot (or cold) car, and had lighters explode in my car. (Working with wax, you keep them around a lot) Mythbusters never replied to my criticism of either.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
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.
So what specifically do you have a problem with? Always easier to slander other people than make actual arguments.
I thought I was being clear but I'll try again. You say:
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...
So, you don't have a problem with it and you're not going to criticize... but, you think it's stupid. But you're not going to criticize and you don't have a problem with it.
Criticize: to consider the merits and demerits of and judge accordingly
According to Merriam Webster you are criticizing. So which is it? Did you honestly not know what the word meant? Were you trying to be funny? Were you trolling?
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
You don't buy into these ideal yet, you mention them as if they were valid for the argument you are about to make. So which is it? Do you buy into these ideals? Are you making a simple logical fallacy? Are you saying that there are some ideals you adhere to but simply forgot to mention them and we have to guess? Are you trolling?
, 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.
So, those are the ideals you adhere to? Let's see.
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.
So how does that meet your ideals? Are you trolling by any chance?
I'm not saying I care one iota about that, but people have very different ideas of what's expected of the president.
You don't care one iota yet, it's not one of your ideals, but are going to mention it. Are you trolling again?
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~
Since we've established that you don't care one iota about that, who would care except a troll?
Since you haven't shown that Obama doesn't adhere to your ideals, what point were you trying to make?
Now, if you weren't trolling - I honestly doubt it but one never knows for sure - then please take the time to read your post again from my perspective and, I'll assume, the perspective of the moderator as well then tell me again why you think your post shouldn't have been modded as such.
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!
Devastate that economy? I think, again, that's a very hard point to argue.
Actually, I've seen quite a few sources talk about al qaeda's goal of destroying our economy. They know they don't have the means to destroy our army, or our people, or our institutions directly, but they can convince us to waste our own money. And if that forces us to retreat from the areas they want to control, then that's good enough for them. For the most part, they just want us out of the way so they can wage their real war, with their neighbors: secular-muslim states.
One sample: al Qaeda and other jihadists increasingly wage econo-jihad, study finds
Another, from Al Qaeda's grand strategy (summary of a lecture given by Michael Doran, Asst. Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton):
So where does the war stand now, according to al Qaeda? A leading al Qaeda operative has written a book, the title of which translates loosely to “The Management of Chaos.” According to al Qaeda, the current stage of revolution is the stage of “vexation and exhaustion” of the enemy. They have a notion of how to do this to the Americans and to their 'puppets'.
You vex and exhaust the Americans, according to al Qaeda, by making them spend a lot of money. The United States is a materialist society, and if forced to spend too much money it will “cut and run.”
The means to this end is to force the Americans to spread themselves thinly. Al Qaeda wants to strike everywhere, not just spectacular high value attacks. This will cause the Americans to defend a lot of places at high cost.
JFK was great? JFK invaded Cuba badly went storming into Vietnam had sex in the oval office and died young.
LBJ then passed did every thing you think JFK did.
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".
If you don't want to acknowledge standard measures of economic growth, it's your prerogative.
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
I agree about Obama. But as I wasn't alive when McKinley was President I can't say, but my grandmother (who voted against Roosevelt 4 times) says Coolige was responsible for the Great Depression, and this history book agrees with her. People called it the "Hoover Depression" but Hoover had only been in office 2 years when the stock market crashed and the banks all failed. Far from average, I never thought I'd ever see a worse president than Carter until Bush II was elected.
Reagan was a wonderful President if you "earned" your money gambling the stock market or even better if you were a banker or lawyer, a very VERY bad president if you worked for a paycheck. His capital gains tax cut put businesses out of business (more lucrative to sell than stay open), put people out of work, got others' hours cut because of the orgy of buyouts and leveraged buyouts.
Clinton was a good President from what I could tell by being a working man living in America.
Nixon was a mix of extremly good and extremely bad. We landed on the moon on his watch, and although Kennedy started us on our journey there, it was the ONLY thing he did worthwhile. He could have been a great President, but just wasn't in office long enough (I was in 6th grade when he was shot).
Free Martian Whores!
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".
You got context wrong I believe--the op said the us war on terror devastated our economy. That's what I disagree with n
Whether the economy is getting better or worse depends on if you're in the boardroom or on the factory floor. It's growing by leaps and bounds if you're a stockbroker, it's in the toilet if you depend on a paycheck. The unemployment rate is worse than it's been in decades, last quarter saw a record number of home forclosures, but the stock market is doing well.
If you're a CEO the economy's great. If you're flipping burgers or programming or building houses or anything else that actually creates the wealth the wealthy aggregate and control, it isn't so damned great.
Free Martian Whores!
You said "but realize that his getting hurt over there has nothing to do with the current administration."
Afghanistan is explicitly what I was referred to and what i was talking about. your taking things out of order and out of context.
If you're not going to dispute a single one of my points, that's fine, but it's silly to pull things out of order to try to make your point.
This is true, but it's still growing.
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 should read a little history. The 1930s were far worse than now. You'ld be hard pressed to have a worse time than in the dust bowl, or living through the Civil War. My late grandmother told me the "roarong twenties" didn't roar for many, only for the rich. It was the terrible twenties for normal people. Listening to her talk it must have been a lot like the seventies, only worse.
If you mean "worse than in Spotlight2k3's lifetime" then maybe. How old are you, kid? The seventies were pretty bad economically, although it was far better culturally than now, but my grandpa (born 1896) had it far worse than you or me ever dreamed of (raised 4 kids during the depression).
Free Martian Whores!
By "wars" I assume you mean singular Iraq? Because we're certainly still engaged in Afghanistan, and those are the only two places that we went into under President Bush (right?). A family friend has hit by an IED in the last week or two...alive but his face was virtually blown off apparently. I think something like 17 dead in the last two days? That's not much of a retreat.
Actually you are not explicit here in where your friend was. The implication is that he is in one of the two places, but nothing is explicit. Perhaps you should look it up because you have misused it twice now.
The housing market collapsed because people lost faith in the loans. China and Japan might decide one day that US debt is worthless, and in doing so would wreck not just our economy, but theirs, and probably the world economy as a whole. So it is a dangerous game, and at some point we do have to pay it down, but comparing it to the housing market is like comparing the US to a nation like Ecuador, or some other nation that needs debt relief. Also, as a percentage of GDP, we are only now approaching WW2 levels. The debt decreased as a proportion of GDP during every presidency until Reagen, and has been rising ever since. The original 'Keynesians' did pay it down after it got us out of the great depression, all the way down to 30%. Take that for what you will.
Actual debt hasn't decreased in the lifetime of any American alive today, it has continually increased (and yes, that includes the Enron-style accounting that produced a "surplus" at the end of Clinton's term, but you'll notice national debt continued to increase, proving there wasn't really a surplus). Your claim that it decreased relative to GDP is true, however, the Keynesians never paid it down, they simply ignored it while the American economy took off due to the collapse of European manufacturing post-WWII.
Further, in 1967, the Democrats made a modification to the Social Security Act which allowed them to take the surpluses generated by Social Security to pay off the increasing debts that proved we already couldn't afford from the 4 year old welfare state as well as the increased spending from the escalation in Vietnam. Now we're left with a massive national debt as well as a further $111 trillion in unfunded social program liabilities ($15 trillion SSI, $19 trillion Medicare D, $77 trillion Medicare) that are already starting to come due. Social Security is already in the red this year and the only place to make up that money is through the general fund, which doesn't have the money to pay back what it started taking 43 years ago. So, take the $14 trillion, add in a further $111 trillion and we're suddenly in the neighborhood of debt+liabilities exceeding GDP by almost tenfold. Interest alone on already accrued debt will gain parity with defense spending before the decade is out.
In short, we're screwed... most people just don't realize it yet because the numbers are mindbogglingly huge, people think that "it can't happen to us" and the feds (almost all of them regardless of party) have done their best to hide the reality of the situation because it keeps them in office. Spoil the people today at the expense of the people tomorrow and by the time it has to be dealt with, you'll likely at least be out of office, if not already six feet under.
Stop Koolaid Politics
Actually you are not explicit here in where your friend was. The implication is that he is in one of the two places, but nothing is explicit
I don't see how you can say that. Here's exactly what was said:
we're retreating from wars that shouldn't have been started in the first place,
By "wars" I assume you mean singular Iraq? Because we're certainly still engaged in Afghanistan, and those are the only two places that we went into under President Bush (right?). A family friend has hit by an IED in the last week or two...alive but his face was virtually blown off apparently. I think something like 17 dead in the last two days? That's not much of a retreat.
Parse that again. I agree with the OP that we've "retreated in Iraq." I then say (present tense) "Because we're certainly still engaged in Afghanistan" (you'll note the following clause is past tense) ... "A family friend has [sic] hit by an IED in the last week or two" ... "I think something like 17 dead in the last two days"
So, I agree we're done in Iraq. I say we're still engaged in Afghanistan. I add that a family friend was hurt in the last week or two. I say there have been 17 dead in the last two days.
Even if you really couldn't follow from the OP to my sentence 1 to sentence 2, there's only one place where we are still engaged in combat and there's only one place where 17 American solders died in two days.
So, even _if_ it wasn't explicitly clear--which I think it was--it was perfectly clear from the rest of the context.
This is an even more pedantic conversation than the other one I am currently in. And none of my points have been addressed at all.
I see this as overly pessimistic. Unless our economy is fundamentally unable to produce any wealth, and people decide all taxes are for suckers, the debt is still at a payable level. It's been higher, historically and has declined (as a percentage of GDP) as recently as the 90s.
You're missing the problem of the unfunded entitlements. Boomers have officially started retiring and over the next decade, the costs associated that will quickly escalate. Current 2015 estimates project costs exceeding $2 trillion annually just for Social Security and Medicare compared to a little over $1 trillion back in 2005.
On top of that, we continue to spend money we don't have. GWB's $450ish billion deficit was bad, Obama's is 3 times that. If the government spending money actually produced growth, it should spend like there's no tomorrow (of course, that is the economic version of perpetual motion and it is just as false)... but it doesn't produce growth and it doesn't spend money efficiently, it tries to force the market into doing things that don't make sense (or private investment would already be in that market), which always results in waste. And yes, we do overspend on roads (bridges to nowhere anyone?), police (why do we have state troopers, sheriff deputies, town cops and university police all in my neighboring small college town of about 9000 people (college kids included) when the big crimes are vandalism, underage drinking and minor domestic disputes?), etc.
Further, you haven't disputed my claim that we've never, EVER reduced the debt in more than a century, we just pay the interest, and frequently, we have to borrow to pay that. Existing debt to GDP isn't all that meaningful of a statistic since it ignores things like the unfunded entitlements that are coming due, inflation, etc.
We ARE in the same type of deep shit as the morons that bought the $1 million house despite an income of $28k a year... For the first 5 years, all we had to pay was $800 a month on our interest only loan, a mere fraction of our GDP, er, income, but now, our first balloon payment is coming due and our interest rates are about to reset higher. Just like the house buyer that didn't understand the terms of his mortgage, don't forget about the bigger picture of unfunded entitlements nor that fact that our debts are being sold around the world and sooner or later, someone is going to want to cash in...
The solution is to cut our losses and stop spending on things that aren't absolutely vital. Instead, Obama doubled down on Bush's mistakes just like FDR did with Hoover's, and we're being setup for at least a decade of misery... only this time, I don't see the military collapse of Europe or China on the horizon as a means to us jumpstarting our domestic economy again. In fact, thanks to the mistakes of nearly every President and Congress over the last century+, we may already be too sick to recover even if we were to somehow suddenly become the world's virtual sole manufacturer again.
The debt simply is not payable. You could confiscate 100% of the wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans and you'd still only get $1.27 trillion, or roughly enough to pay off just this year's deficit. And that means they have no assets for you to tax in the future... If we were to cut the entire military budget to $0, ignoring that we'd immediately be attacked, it would take decades just to pay off the principle of the existing debt, ignoring the rapidly oncoming entitlement spending owed to the boomers (which will grow from about $1 trillion to $2 trillion over the period of 2005-2015). Seriously, we're screwed... the only thing that might help is deep, deep cuts. But good luck getting any of that through with the political environment we have today where people, corporations and special interests demand "their" share of your money that the government took for them. Really, I don't understand how you can't see that we really are screwed, especially if you're as into statistics as your moniker would suggest.
Stop Koolaid Politics
DC sniper? Anthrax attacks? Shoe bomber? Pants bomber? Times square bomber? Fort Hood shooter? Granted, some of these attacks weren't very successful, but it was more a matter of the attackers stupidity than anything the Feds did about it.
The reason I don't see it is that your argument is, essentially, everything that happened which was viewed as positive over the last century was actually a huge negative in disguise. I don't buy your premise that the debt is fundamentally beyond payment nor that the only way to balance the economy is to confiscate massive amounts of money or disband the entire military. Cuts need to be made, the entire economy is not a total loss. I find it hard to believe that you actually believe this considering your ' Stop Koolaid Politics' moniker. It's straight from Glenn Beck.
Kid? Really? I didn't serve my country and put my life on the line to just watch our freedoms be slowly taken away as our current administration is doing.
Social security is a great example. Before social security, a large proportion of seniors were living in poverty. This proportion was lowered greatly. Now-a-days, people are living longer so it makes sense to increase the age of payment for social security. People should be working longer and should plan for it. This fact alone suggests that there is a growing well of productivity in the economy that is yet untapped. In other words, no we can't maintain the status quo for social security. But if we abandon it entirely, a bunch of people will be pushed into poverty (a result that may end up hurting the economy a lot more in the long wrong). The solution is to raise the age of first payment and convince the boomers they need to work longer because they are getting the benefits of advanced medical care. Cutting all social programs doesn't make any sense. It will just make the lower income earners suffer and inevitably lead to less growth because of the downward cycle of poverty (no money, no education, no opportunity).
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?
I'm with you, kid. Agree completely.
Free Martian Whores!
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...
I'm posting this a day late, so its likely that no one will read this, but oh well:)
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/rulings/promise-kept/
It has only been two years, and he started with a metric ton of shit to deal with. Yes, you listed a a handful of things he hasn't done, but look at the list of things he has done. He's done more good for the average person than anything the republicans have done, or proposed, in 10 years.
I agree that both parties were to blame for the economic recession (although I'd weight the republican guilt higher than the dems), but you must have had your eyes and ears shut the last two years if you don't think Obama is moving the country in a better direction than the other party did.
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.
The solution is to raise the age of first payment and convince the boomers they need to work longer because they are getting the benefits of advanced medical care.
Good luck with the me generation being forced to work for a couple more years and delay their benefits... they "worked their whole lives on the promise that they're entitled to it!" Look at the current riots in France over the idea of raising retirement from 60 to 62 after it was reduced from 65 a couple decades ago. People get so wrapped up in their entitlement mentality, that they won't except any change in the concept that they bought into decades ago.
Further, that advanced medical care presents a problem if the government is going to have boards to decide how much things cost and whether or not someone qualifies for them (yes, both policies are in the monstrosity that was passed earlier this year). The government has a conflict of interest since letting you die early also means they get to keep all that Social Security money that you paid in.
Cutting all social programs doesn't make any sense.
First, I don't support a cut off date where, at such and such time, all social programs stop. The first thing I'd do, is transition them from the federal level (which the federal government actually has no power to manage to begin with) to the state level, so states can determine what is beneficial for their citizens. Then I'd begin to pare out the graft that encourages able bodied people to continue to leech off the government (and yes, there is lots of it... $60 billion annually in just Medicare if you believe the current administration's numbers). I'd setup maximum lifetime benefit allowances for any people that aren't permanently disabled.
The closer we are to the government, the better we can keep an eye on it and the more efficient it is. You're one of about 685,000 other voices your US Rep "listens" to and one of maybe 34 million people your US Senator listens to. On the other hand, your state representation has far fewer voices per representative, even moreso for your county and greatly moreso for your city or town. Again, looking at the healthcare bill, the federal system either has to grant exceptions at the cost of all other states (Nebraska) or has to force states to accept programs they don't want (say, a national speed limit or else you don't get any of your highway funds returned to you).
It will just make the lower income earners suffer and inevitably lead to less growth because of the downward cycle of poverty (no money, no education, no opportunity).
The problem aren't the permanently disabled... I believe we need to help the people that are truly incapable of taking care of themselves (though I believe it should be done more through charity and true caring than tax money since going the government route causes us to lose our humanity... and yes, I've sacrificed my own BS in computer engineering as well as career to take care of my disabled father over the last decade+, so I do put my money where my mouth is... and despite qualifying, neither of us takes welfare, though he does collect his SSI and Medicare benefits, which he paid into for 30+ years prior to becoming disabled).
The problem are the people who are satisfied with living on the dole and pass that onto their children. I have an aunt who has 7 kids, who has never had to get a job in her life and never will. When she was 51, her youngest was about to turn 18, kicking her off the welfare gravy train, so she popped out kid #7, which will take her to the age of 69, at which point she'll collect anyway. Of her 7 kids, 1 is dead (killed for trying to sell drugs on gang territory), 3 are in jail in connection with a driveby murder, 1 (the only female) has joined the dole herself with her own set of kids, 1 is still only 11 and can't support himself and 1 actually made a bit of a life providing for himself.
The problem is, the females are si
Stop Koolaid Politics
The reason I don't see it is that your argument is, essentially, everything that happened which was viewed as positive over the last century was actually a huge negative in disguise.
I think the results of the Civil Rights Movement were almost entirely good things (I have issues with things like Affirmative Action whereby racism is encouraged and even forced). I think the creation of work safety laws were a good thing (though I will disagree with many other labor laws like the minimum wage).
On the other hand, I think the entire concepts of Social and Economic Justice were horrible for the notion of freedom. I think Woodrow Wilson (federal reserve, segregating the US government, luring us into WWI so he could try to force his ideas of global government on the world), Franklin Roosevelt (New Deal, Judiciary Reorganization Bill) and Lyndon Johnson (Great Society) were some of the most evil people to ever occupy the Oval Office since they were the primary advocates in the last century of a government which controls the people, rather than a government beholden to the people (and to make it far, I'll add Hoover, Nixon and GWB in there too, though I think the previous 3 were more evil than these 3). Their ideas were wrapped up in feel good emotions, but there were deeply nefarious motives behind all of them if you read the writings of their closest advisers, especially with Wilson and FDR.
I don't buy your premise that the debt is fundamentally beyond payment nor that the only way to balance the economy is to confiscate massive amounts of money or disband the entire military.
I don't agree with eliminating the military, I was just throwing it out there as an example of the first strike many wealth redistributionists call for. Granted, I think we could probably lose $100 billion out of the defense budget without a negative impact by getting rid of the waste, but I support a strong military since it is one of the few actual purposes of the federal government.
That said, we need very deep cuts in federal spending and, frankly, the fattest area to cut are the entitlements. We spend 3x as much on entitlements as we do on the military. People will cry that it isn't fair because they're entitled to it, but we all need to make sacrifices and we have to stop forcing our unborn great grandkids to make sacrifices for our benefit.
Cuts need to be made, the entire economy is not a total loss.
I actually started writing a book about the impending collapse of America about a decade ago. We're balkanized on too many fronts to remain a unified country and we're at the point where most people can't even talk to each other anymore, they just shout passed each other. We're at a crossroads where we need to decide where we're going to go as a nation because both sides are generally incompatible with the other side (you can't have a small near powerless government and a large government which controls large things like the economy at the same time).
I always thought it was going to be Social Security that would collapse us (my book had it projected at 2043, but I've revised it up to sometime late this decade or early next given that we've already moved into the red). And again, it comes down to the government, because of its interference, having to pick a winner and a loser - either the retirees benefit at the expense of the youth, or the retirees will be forced to do with less than they were promised so the youth can have opportunities of their own. Neither side will agree.
See, the problem is, our parents and grandparents already tapped out our rainy day funds so they could enjoy the good life. Now that its raining, we don't have those funds to rely on, so eventually panic will set in unless we begin to massively correct things now and those corrections WILL hurt. Nobody is really willing to take the pain, so we're screwed. In fact, we're doing the exact opposite with the stimulus, bailouts,
Stop Koolaid Politics
"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