Got any bright ideas as to what we SHOULD be called then?
Imperialist running dogs? Got that old-school flavour.... That's a great idea, of course if you start doing that we might start acting like imperialists and conquer a few countries, instead of just defeating them and then turning them free (I'm looking at you Germany and Japan).
You have the power to choose between more than two. It's called the primaries. Pick a party, get involved, pay attention to local politics, when in doubt, vote the In's out. That is the formula to make a difference. Oh yeah, even if your guy is the greatest, vote for his opponent after at the very least his second term. No matter how good they are, legislators should be replace at least every other term. Legislators are like fruit, keep them around too long and they start to rot.
I wish i had a mod point for you. I have this view as well, I wish we limited terms as well but that'd be a much more active stance on the issue. This may not work anyways if the party leadership was too powerful - or should I have said "since the party leadership is too powerful."
But you see, if everyone who felt that the system was seriously flawed followed this rule instead of, "oh well, that's fine for the other guy, but my representative is a special case,"party leadership would not be as strong. For the most part, party leadership has the power it does because it has been in office so long. The other thing is that party leadership is not as strong as it used to be. When Teddy Roosevelt ran for President the 2nd time, he won all the primaries, but party leadership arranged for Taft to get the nomination anyway, which is why Roosevelt ran under the Bull Moose Party. Today, the primaries actually determine the nominee.
However, if you want to really make a difference get involved locally. It is very difficult to change things on a national scale. It is not nearly so hard to change things locally. The best thing about acting locally is that you can actually get to know the people you are voting for and working against. Maybe you will learn that someone who is on the other side of an issue has similar concerns to yours, but sees that particular issue differently. Maybe their perspective is right, maybe yours is. Maybe both of you are working on the wrong issue to address the problem that is most important (whatever that happens to be).
"I'm so sick of people repeatedly voting in incumbents, then whining about how things never change, and they're just all so corrupt."
Incumbents don't lose. 93% of House elections (and something like 96% of state legislative elections) were decided shortly after the 2000 census. Voting doesn't matter, with the possible exception of the party primaries (since the parties function as kingmakers). The problem is that too many people vote for the familiar when they don't know anything about either candidate. If people would follow a simple rule, "Vote the ins, out," it would change things immensely. If you don't have an overwhelmingly compelling reason to vote for the incumbent, you should vote against him/her, even if you think the other guy is a bad choice. You can always vote him out next election. He won't have the chance to do much harm in one term. The longer a person is in the legislature the more harm he/she can do.
Uhhh... I can't help but wonder what your hobbies are, that you think some "idiot policeman" is going to throw you in jail for. Bicycling? Parcheesi? Stamp Collecting? I can easily imagine a police officer under certain circumstances deciding that someone whose hobby is playing D&D (or other FRPG) is guilty of a crime. Or to take another example, I could see a policeman going: "You go to Renaissance Faires in costume (correct terminology would be garb). You wear a sword as part of that costume. One of your neighbors was killed with a sword. You must be the killer." Never mind that the sword that you wear as part of your garb is a never sharpened western style sword and the murder weapon was a sharp katana. There are many innocent hobbies that are publicly perceived as being the province of freaks and potential criminals.
People like Paris Hilton are rightfully despised because they've never accomplished anything on their own and the only reason they are famous is because of their parents.
Do you really think the rich pay the estate tax. I have a friend that I went to high school and college with. His grandfather built a poultry business into a national company. My friend's father and uncle sold the business. They took the money and set up a trust (actually, I suspect that the trust owned the business). My friend receives a regular "allowance" from the trust. This is the same sort of set up that the Dupont's, Kennedy's, Rockefeller's, and Bush's have.
The fact of the matter is that the estate tax actually increases the establishment of an aristocracy. If it wasn't for the estate tax, fewer wealthy parents would set up trust funds for their wealth. The trust fund decreases the chance that a child of wealthy parents will squander the wealth.
Yes, but the staffers who do the activities which are done by "the Committee" are of the party that has a majority membership on the Committee in question. Which is why sometimes an action "by the Committee" will sometimes be refuted by all of the minority party members on the Committee, but you will never see the majority party do the same. So in this case the addition of the Democrats to the headline is appropriate.
The best evidence suggests that the New Testament (except the Book of Revelation) was written within 30 years of the crucifixion. I cannot find my copy of the book that I got this information from or I would give more evidence that the documents of the New Testament were written and disseminated too early to have been legends that accumulated over time. However, you can look it up yourself. The book in question is "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel. It is his reconstruction of his attempt to debunk his wife's new found(at the time) Christianity. The earliest known existing copies of the original manuscripts date from the late second century. This is closer in time than just about any other historical document (if there are any that are closer in time to the original than that, I am not aware of them).
Bear in mind that for much of the 19th Century, Critics of the Bible used the lack of archaeological evidence of Assyria and/or the Hittites as evidence of inaccuracy of Biblical accounts.
You meant: US Democrats "Accidentally" Publish Whistleblowers' Email Addresses (Note the scare quotes) Now *that*'s a Slashdot headline. No its not you seem to have missed the key word in the headline: Democrats. If it was exactly the same article but with Republicans, than the slashdot headline would have the scare quotes you added. Remember, this is slashdot, until proven otherwise, all Democrats are good, and all Republicans are evil.
Like I said, since the people who witnessed the event believed that it was a miracle that communicated a clear message from God, they are unreliable witnesses. Now, your demand is not entirely unreasonable, however, The type of evidence you are demanding is not possible outside of your personal experience. If someone witnesses the type of miracle you are asking for, they would either become a believer, which makes them a biased source, and therefore unreliable, or they would reject the evidence they have seen and thus be an unreliable witness. So your contention that if God existed, someone would have proven his existence by now contains a logical fallacy: any witnesses to such a miracle would be unreliable for one reason or another. I do not consider this totally unreasonable, my own faith is based on my personal experience, not evidence witnessed by others. However, it is unreasonable to expect that there would be unbiased witnesses to a miracle.
Right, because the governments in Europe are so much better. "Our people voted against the EU Constitution, what will we do? Oh, I know let's just quietly put it into place anyway."
There's no money in using old medicines, this is why they drug companies are always inventing new ones. Once a drug has been copied and sold by other companies then the price comes right down.
Yeah, it has nothing to do with the fact that there are illnesses that we don't have a good treatment for. That's why nobody makes aspirin or penicillin anymore. Oh wait, lots of companies produce both.
Drug companies develop new drugs because there is a lot of money to be made from a new drug which provides a treatment for something that is significantly better than existing treatments. However, most of the cost of a drug is the initial R&D, so once that is paid off, you don't need all that high of a margin to make a decent Return on Investment.
That's easy. A visible, measured, violation of the laws of science.
In short. A miracle.
Nephilium
So, resurrection from the dead isn't good enough for you? Oh that's right all the witnesses aren't valid since they believed that such a miracle was a proof of God....so the only witness you would trust is one who didn't believe that the miracle indicated the existence of God, except that if they didn't believe that what they had witnessed was reason to believe in God why should you? So the only "proof" of a creator that you will accept is a violation of the laws of science (as you understand them) that you witness. Therefore, the only length of time that people have had to prove the existence of the creator is your lifetime.
-- which is why at minimum wage, you'ld have to work two jobs, and put your wife to work to support 1 or 2 kids. because the standard of living is higher. right.
That's right all those high school or just graduated kids have a wife and two kids to support. Get real, minimum wage jobs are held by people with no job skills or experience. Do you have any kind of idea of what kind of businesses pay minimum wage? I don't, because I've worked for companies that most people would expect to pay the minimum wage that paid significantly above the minimum wage.
and all those uninsured people, they must not want insurance - its so much more fun to get cancer and try fighting it off while working that aforementioned two jobs.
Yeah, there's no way that a family that has two properties and three cars can afford health insurance(the Frost family--the Democrats' poster family for S-CHIP). Or maybe they need to rework their priorities and take care of their kids instead of expecting the taxpayer to do it.
Call me up, when *you* wake up.
You're either severely uninformed (or a republican). Sometimes I think those two are synonomous.
And no I'm not a democrat -- but I do think that screwing 40%-60% of your population on a regular basis is a
*really* bad idea for the health of a country.
And don't even get me started on the abuse of illegals, (h1-b, l1-b, or tn-1) visa or migratory workers (e.g. non-citizens)
Stop paying attention to what the Democrat media (NYT, LAT, Alphabet Networks, etc) tell you and look in the real world around you. I don't watch or listen to any news. I get my news from several aggregation news sites on the Internet. I then compare what is reported to what I experience (don't tell me inflation is high when, aside from fuel, my costs have only gone up slightly), if it doesn't match up I do more research to see if my experience is unusual for some reason. Look at history, the world didn't begin when you were born.
On a more serious note, OCPC is actually called Send A Cow (http://www.sendacow.org.uk/, they try to aid farmers to support themselves by donating livestock. The Heifer Project http://www.heifer.org/ could also be called the OCPC. I am not familiar with Send A Cow, but it sounds similar to the Heifer Project. As of the last time I checked, the Heifer Project had an amazingly low overhead. Meaning that most of the money donated to them actually went to the cause, not to paying an expensive staff.
This assumes that the dollar will continue to fall for long enough that people will adjust long term policies. This is not the first time in my lifetime that the US dollar fell like this. The last time it happened people were saying that the Japanese Yen was going to become the new currency of choice. That really worked out.
-it means we're poorer because we transitioned from a manufacturing economy
to a service economy in the 80's (and now import everything).
-and then all those jobs were outsourced in the 90's.
and if you don't think we're poorer - don't take my word for it - when you index mean salary against inflation
(and this is without !energy! & !food!) - you see a decrease in wage rate. And that my friend, is an economic *fact*.
and incidentally a 5.5% raise, means 5.5% of *fiat* money. it means I have 5.5% more paper in my pocket - how much
paper is out in the market (or in this case ledger entries) {which have *nothing* to do with import/export), is the
real question -- and I'ld be willing to bet that more effective money has been introduced in the market through
shoddy loans, then that 5.5% increase pay indicates should exist.
Lastly, it was raised, 5.5% since what? 2006? come on now. compare it 2000 or 99 and then I might be impressed.
And give me a total number of people employed so I can judge relative wealth (e.g. area underneath the histogram)
Just last week they released a study that indicates that the "poor" in the US today have a higher standard of living then the "poor" in the US in the early '70s. By way of anecdotal evidence, I grew up the youngest in a large family. Today, I have a good friend who has a large family. My friend's career track resembles that of my father, his wife's career resembles that of my mother. His family is significantly better off than my family was when I was growing up.
You need to define what proof would be acceptable to prove the existence of an immaterial being that exists outside of the Universe that we observe. The fact of the matter is that if I choose to take the position that you are merely a figment of my imagination, there is nothing you can do to prove to me that I am wrong. So before anyone starts the process of trying to prove the existence of God to you, you need to define what constitutes proof.
The good news is I have a feeling the BS isn't working as well as it used to. More and more, people I encounter from all walks of life and all ends of the political spectrum are ignoring the talk radio goons and Fox News and can see through the crap. Despite their best efforts, the assault on the middle class in America is bringing a lot of former political enemies back together.
You do realize how incredibly short sighted that sounds? For example, 30 years ago there was no Fox News or talk radio. Fox News has only been around since 1996, two years after the Republican Party took control of Congress on a conservative agenda. As far as Fox News being "crap", I have yet to hear of a story about Fox News comparable to the NYT Jason Blair fiasco, or the CNN "we knew about Saddam Hussein's torture chambers, but if we'd reported anything he didn't like he would have kicked us out, so we didn't", or numerous other cases of where various news outlets blatantly reported falsehoods in order to make conservatives look bad.
As someone mentioned in an earlier post, tech support calls are often routinely recorded by the company. The article says that the Secret Service officer recognized the voice on the recording...seems logical that Digimark recorded the call, then passed it on to the Secret Service when they realized what they had.
I don't give a rat's ass about democracy. I care about freedom- democracy is the means to the end, and a damn poor one at that. The "benevolent dictator" model works much better, right up until the benevolent dictator dies and his jackass son takes over. You are both missing an important point. The key is rule of law. Rule of law is that the same laws apply to everyone in the same way. Rule of law invariably leads to greater wealth and more equitably distributed wealth. This generally leads to democracy. Democracy often leads to things like graduated income tax and other "sock it to the rich" taxes, which are the first step in the break down of the rule of law.
"It couldn't be related to the fact that we have more criminals than ever cooling their heels in prison?"
TFA says that _violent_ crime is down. If there are fewer violent offenders, then how does that explain why the prisons are overfilled? The prison population exploded because we're putting more _nonviolent_ offenders in jail.
Bad troll, no cookie. Try better next time.
--
BMO Since most violent crime is committed by repeat offenders, if people who commit a violent crime spend more time in jail, violent crime will be down. So the OP was not being a troll. Violent crime being down doesn't necessarily mean that there are fewer violent offenders, just that violent offenders are committing fewer violent crimes.
That being said, I don't know what the incarceration rates for various crimes are, so it is distinctly possible that a larger factor in our increased prison populations is larger numbers of non-violent criminals being locked up. However, isn't this one of the places that people were calling for long sentences for everyone involved in the Enron case? None of them were violent criminals that I ever heard.
I don't know if you've noticed, but a brick and a feather are significantly different in both shape and size. The difference in the rate they fall is primarily a result of this, not the difference in weight. Unless something is falling far enough that considerations of terminal velocity come into play the difference in speed between two objects of the same size and shape, but different weights, is minimal. I am pretty sure that no matter how far they were to fall through atmosphere, the differences in aerodynamic characteristics between the Wright Brothers' plane and the helicopter in the article would be more significant than the difference in weight.
"The heavier it is, the faster it falls from the sky."
Actually, Galileo demonstrated that weight does not change the speed at which something falls. You might want to go back and take your high school physics class again.
You are a little quick to quote physics, the earlier author demonstates a better understanding than you. We are discussing aircraft here, in addition to gravity we also have lift. While gravity is equal on light and heavy aircraft lift tends not to be. Heavier aircraft are usually less efficient with respect to lift. Greater airspeed normally compensates for this. That is a primarily a function of shape, not weight. In this particular case (comparing a helicopter to the Wright Brothers' first plane), shape would be the overwhelming determining factor in the difference in the speed at which they fell.
The heavier it is, the faster it falls from the sky. Actually, Galileo demonstrated that weight does not change the speed at which something falls. You might want to go back and take your high school physics class again.
Slashdot Mirror
Imperialist running dogs? Got that old-school flavour.... That's a great idea, of course if you start doing that we might start acting like imperialists and conquer a few countries, instead of just defeating them and then turning them free (I'm looking at you Germany and Japan).
You have the power to choose between more than two. It's called the primaries. Pick a party, get involved, pay attention to local politics, when in doubt, vote the In's out. That is the formula to make a difference. Oh yeah, even if your guy is the greatest, vote for his opponent after at the very least his second term. No matter how good they are, legislators should be replace at least every other term. Legislators are like fruit, keep them around too long and they start to rot.
I wish i had a mod point for you. I have this view as well, I wish we limited terms as well but that'd be a much more active stance on the issue. This may not work anyways if the party leadership was too powerful - or should I have said "since the party leadership is too powerful."
But you see, if everyone who felt that the system was seriously flawed followed this rule instead of, "oh well, that's fine for the other guy, but my representative is a special case,"party leadership would not be as strong. For the most part, party leadership has the power it does because it has been in office so long. The other thing is that party leadership is not as strong as it used to be. When Teddy Roosevelt ran for President the 2nd time, he won all the primaries, but party leadership arranged for Taft to get the nomination anyway, which is why Roosevelt ran under the Bull Moose Party. Today, the primaries actually determine the nominee.However, if you want to really make a difference get involved locally. It is very difficult to change things on a national scale. It is not nearly so hard to change things locally. The best thing about acting locally is that you can actually get to know the people you are voting for and working against. Maybe you will learn that someone who is on the other side of an issue has similar concerns to yours, but sees that particular issue differently. Maybe their perspective is right, maybe yours is. Maybe both of you are working on the wrong issue to address the problem that is most important (whatever that happens to be).
Incumbents don't lose. 93% of House elections (and something like 96% of state legislative elections) were decided shortly after the 2000 census. Voting doesn't matter, with the possible exception of the party primaries (since the parties function as kingmakers).
The problem is that too many people vote for the familiar when they don't know anything about either candidate. If people would follow a simple rule, "Vote the ins, out," it would change things immensely. If you don't have an overwhelmingly compelling reason to vote for the incumbent, you should vote against him/her, even if you think the other guy is a bad choice. You can always vote him out next election. He won't have the chance to do much harm in one term. The longer a person is in the legislature the more harm he/she can do.
People like Paris Hilton are rightfully despised because they've never accomplished anything on their own and the only reason they are famous is because of their parents.
Do you really think the rich pay the estate tax. I have a friend that I went to high school and college with. His grandfather built a poultry business into a national company. My friend's father and uncle sold the business. They took the money and set up a trust (actually, I suspect that the trust owned the business). My friend receives a regular "allowance" from the trust. This is the same sort of set up that the Dupont's, Kennedy's, Rockefeller's, and Bush's have.
The fact of the matter is that the estate tax actually increases the establishment of an aristocracy. If it wasn't for the estate tax, fewer wealthy parents would set up trust funds for their wealth. The trust fund decreases the chance that a child of wealthy parents will squander the wealth.
Yes, but the staffers who do the activities which are done by "the Committee" are of the party that has a majority membership on the Committee in question. Which is why sometimes an action "by the Committee" will sometimes be refuted by all of the minority party members on the Committee, but you will never see the majority party do the same. So in this case the addition of the Democrats to the headline is appropriate.
The best evidence suggests that the New Testament (except the Book of Revelation) was written within 30 years of the crucifixion. I cannot find my copy of the book that I got this information from or I would give more evidence that the documents of the New Testament were written and disseminated too early to have been legends that accumulated over time. However, you can look it up yourself. The book in question is "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel. It is his reconstruction of his attempt to debunk his wife's new found(at the time) Christianity. The earliest known existing copies of the original manuscripts date from the late second century. This is closer in time than just about any other historical document (if there are any that are closer in time to the original than that, I am not aware of them).
Bear in mind that for much of the 19th Century, Critics of the Bible used the lack of archaeological evidence of Assyria and/or the Hittites as evidence of inaccuracy of Biblical accounts.
No its not you seem to have missed the key word in the headline: Democrats. If it was exactly the same article but with Republicans, than the slashdot headline would have the scare quotes you added. Remember, this is slashdot, until proven otherwise, all Democrats are good, and all Republicans are evil.
Like I said, since the people who witnessed the event believed that it was a miracle that communicated a clear message from God, they are unreliable witnesses. Now, your demand is not entirely unreasonable, however, The type of evidence you are demanding is not possible outside of your personal experience. If someone witnesses the type of miracle you are asking for, they would either become a believer, which makes them a biased source, and therefore unreliable, or they would reject the evidence they have seen and thus be an unreliable witness. So your contention that if God existed, someone would have proven his existence by now contains a logical fallacy: any witnesses to such a miracle would be unreliable for one reason or another. I do not consider this totally unreasonable, my own faith is based on my personal experience, not evidence witnessed by others. However, it is unreasonable to expect that there would be unbiased witnesses to a miracle.
Right, because the governments in Europe are so much better. "Our people voted against the EU Constitution, what will we do? Oh, I know let's just quietly put it into place anyway."
Yeah, it has nothing to do with the fact that there are illnesses that we don't have a good treatment for. That's why nobody makes aspirin or penicillin anymore. Oh wait, lots of companies produce both.
Drug companies develop new drugs because there is a lot of money to be made from a new drug which provides a treatment for something that is significantly better than existing treatments. However, most of the cost of a drug is the initial R&D, so once that is paid off, you don't need all that high of a margin to make a decent Return on Investment.
That's easy. A visible, measured, violation of the laws of science.
In short. A miracle.
Nephilium
So, resurrection from the dead isn't good enough for you? Oh that's right all the witnesses aren't valid since they believed that such a miracle was a proof of God....so the only witness you would trust is one who didn't believe that the miracle indicated the existence of God, except that if they didn't believe that what they had witnessed was reason to believe in God why should you? So the only "proof" of a creator that you will accept is a violation of the laws of science (as you understand them) that you witness. Therefore, the only length of time that people have had to prove the existence of the creator is your lifetime.That's right all those high school or just graduated kids have a wife and two kids to support. Get real, minimum wage jobs are held by people with no job skills or experience. Do you have any kind of idea of what kind of businesses pay minimum wage? I don't, because I've worked for companies that most people would expect to pay the minimum wage that paid significantly above the minimum wage.
and all those uninsured people, they must not want insurance - its so much more fun to get cancer and try fighting it off while working that aforementioned two jobs.
Yeah, there's no way that a family that has two properties and three cars can afford health insurance(the Frost family--the Democrats' poster family for S-CHIP). Or maybe they need to rework their priorities and take care of their kids instead of expecting the taxpayer to do it.
Call me up, when *you* wake up.
You're either severely uninformed (or a republican). Sometimes I think those two are synonomous.
And no I'm not a democrat -- but I do think that screwing 40%-60% of your population on a regular basis is a
*really* bad idea for the health of a country.
And don't even get me started on the abuse of illegals, (h1-b, l1-b, or tn-1) visa or migratory workers (e.g. non-citizens)
Stop paying attention to what the Democrat media (NYT, LAT, Alphabet Networks, etc) tell you and look in the real world around you. I don't watch or listen to any news. I get my news from several aggregation news sites on the Internet. I then compare what is reported to what I experience (don't tell me inflation is high when, aside from fuel, my costs have only gone up slightly), if it doesn't match up I do more research to see if my experience is unusual for some reason. Look at history, the world didn't begin when you were born.
This assumes that the dollar will continue to fall for long enough that people will adjust long term policies. This is not the first time in my lifetime that the US dollar fell like this. The last time it happened people were saying that the Japanese Yen was going to become the new currency of choice. That really worked out.
to a service economy in the 80's (and now import everything).
-and then all those jobs were outsourced in the 90's.
and if you don't think we're poorer - don't take my word for it - when you index mean salary against inflation
(and this is without !energy! & !food!) - you see a decrease in wage rate. And that my friend, is an economic *fact*.
and incidentally a 5.5% raise, means 5.5% of *fiat* money. it means I have 5.5% more paper in my pocket - how much
paper is out in the market (or in this case ledger entries) {which have *nothing* to do with import/export), is the
real question -- and I'ld be willing to bet that more effective money has been introduced in the market through
shoddy loans, then that 5.5% increase pay indicates should exist.
Lastly, it was raised, 5.5% since what? 2006? come on now. compare it 2000 or 99 and then I might be impressed.
And give me a total number of people employed so I can judge relative wealth (e.g. area underneath the histogram)
Just last week they released a study that indicates that the "poor" in the US today have a higher standard of living then the "poor" in the US in the early '70s. By way of anecdotal evidence, I grew up the youngest in a large family. Today, I have a good friend who has a large family. My friend's career track resembles that of my father, his wife's career resembles that of my mother. His family is significantly better off than my family was when I was growing up.
You need to define what proof would be acceptable to prove the existence of an immaterial being that exists outside of the Universe that we observe. The fact of the matter is that if I choose to take the position that you are merely a figment of my imagination, there is nothing you can do to prove to me that I am wrong. So before anyone starts the process of trying to prove the existence of God to you, you need to define what constitutes proof.
As someone mentioned in an earlier post, tech support calls are often routinely recorded by the company. The article says that the Secret Service officer recognized the voice on the recording...seems logical that Digimark recorded the call, then passed it on to the Secret Service when they realized what they had.
TFA says that _violent_ crime is down. If there are fewer violent offenders, then how does that explain why the prisons are overfilled? The prison population exploded because we're putting more _nonviolent_ offenders in jail.
Bad troll, no cookie. Try better next time.
--
BMO Since most violent crime is committed by repeat offenders, if people who commit a violent crime spend more time in jail, violent crime will be down. So the OP was not being a troll. Violent crime being down doesn't necessarily mean that there are fewer violent offenders, just that violent offenders are committing fewer violent crimes.
That being said, I don't know what the incarceration rates for various crimes are, so it is distinctly possible that a larger factor in our increased prison populations is larger numbers of non-violent criminals being locked up. However, isn't this one of the places that people were calling for long sentences for everyone involved in the Enron case? None of them were violent criminals that I ever heard.
I don't know if you've noticed, but a brick and a feather are significantly different in both shape and size. The difference in the rate they fall is primarily a result of this, not the difference in weight. Unless something is falling far enough that considerations of terminal velocity come into play the difference in speed between two objects of the same size and shape, but different weights, is minimal. I am pretty sure that no matter how far they were to fall through atmosphere, the differences in aerodynamic characteristics between the Wright Brothers' plane and the helicopter in the article would be more significant than the difference in weight.
Actually, Galileo demonstrated that weight does not change the speed at which something falls. You might want to go back and take your high school physics class again.
You are a little quick to quote physics, the earlier author demonstates a better understanding than you. We are discussing aircraft here, in addition to gravity we also have lift. While gravity is equal on light and heavy aircraft lift tends not to be. Heavier aircraft are usually less efficient with respect to lift. Greater airspeed normally compensates for this. That is a primarily a function of shape, not weight. In this particular case (comparing a helicopter to the Wright Brothers' first plane), shape would be the overwhelming determining factor in the difference in the speed at which they fell.