We need a new word for this, because really it isn't the people controlling government controlling corporations, no, government and corporation are now more or less the same thing.
...to wear a swastika, and try to explain you're just waving an old Christian symbol about.
I couldn't agree with you more, and I'm not bringing this or this up to be argumentative, but I thought you may find it interesting. It's someone doing essentially just what you said.
$385 water bottle. 1,000 gallons. 1 gallon per person per day (forget showers, etc. - let's just look at what is required to survive). Let's say 14 days until it wasn't an issue - either from the restoration of utilities, or from emergency assistance, or whatever.
14 gallons per person. About 71 people could use that bottle. $5.42 per person.
Even assuming a disaster of that scale once every 5 years, you're looking at about $1.08 per year per person. Going by the per capita income ($17,258) that comes to a tax hike of 0.006% (assuming my drunken math is correct - please correct me if I'm wrong - I likely am).
I highly doubt the people of New Orleans, or any other city that may have issues with drinking water, would oppose paying $1 per person per year to make sure they'd be safe. And that's given the highly improbable situation where every last person would have to rely on it for two weeks every 5 years. The real number is much, much lower.
For one thing, condoms definitely make the collection of urine easier, for obvious reasons. They are also thinner and have a wider opening, which makes it easier to collect water from a river (larger opening and less resistance to filling up and stretching to max capacity). Not only that, they come in a protective foil package which helps resist punctures while being stored, and they're sterile.
As an aside, carrying condoms in your wallet is generally a bad idea if you plan on using them for their intended goal - but since this is/. after all, I doubt anyone here has much of a use for one. An unlubricated condom in your wallet is a great way to collect urine, or transport water back to your fire. For anyone who spends time in the wild, a simple unlubricated condom or two in your survival kit is a great, and often overlooked, thing.
It may sound funny, but it's actually a really valid, and incredibly easy way to make a solar still.
You place stones in a container to weigh it down, place that in a larger container filled with water, and cover it in plastic. A stone placed on top of the plastic sheet, directly over the inner container, allows the condensate that forms on the plastic to run down and drip into the inner container. Simple, effective way to get water that is safe to drink.
Saying you need a few containers is complicating things though. I have built and tested the idea using aluminum foil, plastic wrap, twigs (for support), and some river rocks. It worked perfectly - and I carry enough foil and plastic wrap in my wallet to produce it any time I need to. You may not get a lot of water out of it - and it's generally better to build a fire and use the foil to boil water to sterilize it, but if that isn't available it's great. Folded up, it takes up about as much space as 2-3 credit cards, well worth the space in my wallet if you ask me.
I decided to wait a few days before responding... I didn't want Sifu Lee to get slashdotted;)
Anyway, this is the man I was talking about. Looking at the video, I would say that it was taken at a yearly camping trip he takes with some of his more serious students. I don't see the friend/trainer of mine in the video, but I'm sure he was around somewhere. I'll have to ask him about it next time I run into him.
Interesting you bring up this point. I have spoken with several very experienced martial artists (see my other comment, here), and one common recurring theme that came up was that a sniper was the closest thing to a ninja you could find today.
Use what's available, have the element of surprise on your side, kill without being seen, and get out safely. Sure sounds like a sniper to me. With that sentiment coming largely from someone who is highly trained in Kung Fu, has a few high caliber rifles, and sometimes carries 2.45ACP handguns on him (to help him become one with his weapons...), I wasn't about to argue.
As you touched on, one of the largest issues is that of regulated matches versus real life-or-death combat. Even with grappling - in a ring, a responsible fighter may put a lock on you that could easily destroy your joints, but only apply enough force to make you submit. The same goes for strikes.
As an example - a friend of mine is an assistant Kung Fu trainer. His Sifu has somewhere around 20 generations of Shaolin Kung Fu training behind him (as well as a style of Kung Fu that his great-great-great-great-etc. etc.-grandfather created). He started training basically as soon as he could stand, and studied under Bruce Lee for some time.
Get in a ring with him, and he'll destroy you - but you'll still walk away. Bruised, battered, and damn near ripped limb from limb, most likely wishing you had never even considered the fight, but you'll walk away in one piece. Someone who didn't know of his training tried mugging him - pulling a knife on him. By the time his attacker hit the ground he had 3 broken ribs, a fractured skull, a broken jaw, a broken leg, and an arm broken in three places (if I'm recalling correctly. I may have mixed up an arm broken in 3 places for a leg broken in 3, but the injuries are in general accurate). That was his measured response to assure that he was no longer in any sort of danger, the man could have been dead before his body dropped.
It's very hard to judge the effectiveness of one fighting style versus another unless you're looking at two people who are really out for blood.
For a VFR pilot's ticket, you need around 40 hrs of training. In most states, you're supposed to have 50+ hrs of behind the wheel time under a permit before you get your car license. In highschool, I knew someone who had their pilot's license while they were going through driver's ed classes with me. I know nothing of the different levels of licensing - but I do know he was able to fly solo while he was still required to have someone over 21 sitting in the passenger seat of a car.
Unfortunately, he went to be a Mormon missionary somewhere in South America, and I lost touch with him... I believe he is now a pilot for United though.
Damn it. Sorry for responding to myself. I just wanted to appologize for the wall of text. Too much time on other forums where I don't need to put in the line break tags has me slacking today
I blame the 11 beers prior to my post, and my lack of the ability to use the preview button:(
In the past, I've worked in group homes for those with developmental and other disabilities. Our clients had ailments ranging from muscular dystrophy, to Tourette's, to Down's Syndrome, to echolalia, to schizophrenia, to Alzheimer's, to a huge range of other things (typically a combination of some of the above). I worked with them 40 hours a week, day in and day out. My duties included the basic day to day care of these folks. Bathing them. Giving them showers. Dressing them. Cooking for them, or connecting their feeding tubes if they were unable to eat solid foods. Making sure they took their meds. And being there for them when they were confused or upset, and needed someone.
To put a personal touch on my comments - my parents were basically too busy to care for me. and my grandmother essentially raised me. In recent years, she has had several small strokes, and is now dealing with Alzhiemer's.
My experience is limited, I will admit that. But I have seen more than most.
Alzhiemer's is a horrible condition. But I have never seen anyone feel depressed from it for more than a few hours at a time. Paranoid? Upset? Certainly. Confused? Almost always. Even hostile at times. But depression seems to be limited to very brief amounts of time... And once it passes, the people I've had contact with have never had any memories of feeling bad.
I don't mean to belittle the feelings of those who suffer from what is, by all accounts, a horrible disease. But in all honesty, depression is something that seems to be much more common in those close to the people who are actually suffering the disease itself. Most people I have known who have had Alzhiemer's could be best described as ambivalent. Of course, your mileage my vary.
I was trying to make an ass of myself. I would have thought the "09F9...." thing, my comments on litigiousness, and the general sarcastic tone throughout would have implied that.
Self deprecating humor is just my style, I suppose. Sorry if you missed that.
My comment to them:
Hello, I was looking at your site, and I noticed an error on the page found at http://www.sco.com/company/profile.html
According to that page, "SCO owns the core UNIX operating system, originally developed by AT&T/Bell Labs and is the exclusive licensor to Unix-based system software providers."
I understand that this oversight, and your general stupidity over the past few years is likely a result of the rampant inbreeding in Utah, but I would strongly suggest you remove this section of text - especially considering the bitchslap you oh so dearly deserved, and received from the courts.
Thank you for your time, and suck my balls.
This message brought to you by the letter Q, the number 09F911029D74E35BD84156C563568C? (ha, bet you thought you could get me on DMCA charges, you litigious bastards. One character unknown, oh noes, it's not a violation!), and everyone who doesn't have their head stuck up their ass.
Cops divide the world into three groups -- cops, friends of cops (including families of cops, possibly EMTs and such), and enemies (everyone else). I'm the son of a cop. Most of my family's friends when I was growing up were cops, and you couldn't be more wrong.
In fact, there's 6 groups. In order of the respect given, it basically goes: cops, friends of cops (including families of cops, EMTs and paramedics), the wealthy and/or powerful (as long as they don't question the status quo), the people who bribe them, firefighters, and enemies (everyone else).
SWAT teams already do this, successfully, with "flash-bang" grenades. Absolutely - and flash-bang grenades do a hell of a job disorienting you, at least for a short period of time. Certainly long enough for a SWAT entry team to get to you and have a tactical shotgun in your face by the time you're aware of what is going on.
Ahhh, the benefits of having a corrupt cop, who happened to be the Sargent in charge of the local SWAT team as a father... Being able to look at catalogues from companies that sold to "official police and peacekeeping organizations only", tell my dad what I wanted, and having him skim off the local police budget to pick stuff up for me (for "training" purposes, of course)? How could you not like that?
I had the best toys of any kid on the block. "Oh, you got a new action figure? Good for you. I just got a CS grenade."
Good times. Although the tinnitus from one to many flash-bangs kind of sucks.
That may be true - I was in a low level position and not really paying attention to the specifics of the "merger" (as everyone in my office spoke of it). I was simply speaking to the changes in policy that I saw when that happened. Sorry for the mix up.
I worked for Cingular for quite a while before they merged with AT&T - and for a while afterwards.
My jobs ranged from fraud prevention to customer service. My position in fraud prevention was the most interesting, as a large part of the fraud we saw was from cell phone dealers themselves. They'd steal credit card information from one customer, tell the rest of their customers that they could come pay their bills at the store with cash (when they weren't authorized to do that), pocket the cash, and then use the stolen card to pay the bills. When you see 100+ accounts paid with the same credit card, you know something is up.
That said, before AT&T moved in, my job was basically to help people. I was in a position where I called people who were using a lot more minutes than their plan offered, and instead of charging them the insane amount they would have paid for going over, I offered to switch them to a plan that would cover their usage. The most extreme example that comes to mind is someone who had used so many minutes over their plan that their next bill would have been well over $2,000 - they were flagged, I called them, and convinced them to switch from the lowest priced plan to the highest priced one, because that meant they would save about $1,800 a month.
How's that for customer service? Sure, we could have just stuck that guy with a $2,000 bill, and put his nuts in a vice. But we did the right thing - we looked for customers who would be hurt and spent our time, money, and resources to help them out.
Guess what one of the first programs that got cut was when AT&T took over?
Slashdot Mirror
$385 water bottle. 1,000 gallons. 1 gallon per person per day (forget showers, etc. - let's just look at what is required to survive). Let's say 14 days until it wasn't an issue - either from the restoration of utilities, or from emergency assistance, or whatever.
14 gallons per person. About 71 people could use that bottle. $5.42 per person.
Even assuming a disaster of that scale once every 5 years, you're looking at about $1.08 per year per person. Going by the per capita income ($17,258) that comes to a tax hike of 0.006% (assuming my drunken math is correct - please correct me if I'm wrong - I likely am).
I highly doubt the people of New Orleans, or any other city that may have issues with drinking water, would oppose paying $1 per person per year to make sure they'd be safe. And that's given the highly improbable situation where every last person would have to rely on it for two weeks every 5 years. The real number is much, much lower.
For one thing, condoms definitely make the collection of urine easier, for obvious reasons. They are also thinner and have a wider opening, which makes it easier to collect water from a river (larger opening and less resistance to filling up and stretching to max capacity). Not only that, they come in a protective foil package which helps resist punctures while being stored, and they're sterile.
As an aside, carrying condoms in your wallet is generally a bad idea if you plan on using them for their intended goal - but since this is /. after all, I doubt anyone here has much of a use for one. An unlubricated condom in your wallet is a great way to collect urine, or transport water back to your fire. For anyone who spends time in the wild, a simple unlubricated condom or two in your survival kit is a great, and often overlooked, thing.
It may sound funny, but it's actually a really valid, and incredibly easy way to make a solar still.
You place stones in a container to weigh it down, place that in a larger container filled with water, and cover it in plastic. A stone placed on top of the plastic sheet, directly over the inner container, allows the condensate that forms on the plastic to run down and drip into the inner container. Simple, effective way to get water that is safe to drink.
Saying you need a few containers is complicating things though. I have built and tested the idea using aluminum foil, plastic wrap, twigs (for support), and some river rocks. It worked perfectly - and I carry enough foil and plastic wrap in my wallet to produce it any time I need to. You may not get a lot of water out of it - and it's generally better to build a fire and use the foil to boil water to sterilize it, but if that isn't available it's great. Folded up, it takes up about as much space as 2-3 credit cards, well worth the space in my wallet if you ask me.
You know, the great thing is... This story comes from while he was on shore leave in the Navy ;) I don't think he was a SEAL, but still found it funny.
I decided to wait a few days before responding... I didn't want Sifu Lee to get slashdotted ;)
Anyway, this is the man I was talking about. Looking at the video, I would say that it was taken at a yearly camping trip he takes with some of his more serious students. I don't see the friend/trainer of mine in the video, but I'm sure he was around somewhere. I'll have to ask him about it next time I run into him.
Interesting you bring up this point. I have spoken with several very experienced martial artists (see my other comment, here), and one common recurring theme that came up was that a sniper was the closest thing to a ninja you could find today.
.45ACP handguns on him (to help him become one with his weapons...), I wasn't about to argue.
Use what's available, have the element of surprise on your side, kill without being seen, and get out safely. Sure sounds like a sniper to me. With that sentiment coming largely from someone who is highly trained in Kung Fu, has a few high caliber rifles, and sometimes carries 2
As you touched on, one of the largest issues is that of regulated matches versus real life-or-death combat. Even with grappling - in a ring, a responsible fighter may put a lock on you that could easily destroy your joints, but only apply enough force to make you submit. The same goes for strikes.
As an example - a friend of mine is an assistant Kung Fu trainer. His Sifu has somewhere around 20 generations of Shaolin Kung Fu training behind him (as well as a style of Kung Fu that his great-great-great-great-etc. etc.-grandfather created). He started training basically as soon as he could stand, and studied under Bruce Lee for some time.
Get in a ring with him, and he'll destroy you - but you'll still walk away. Bruised, battered, and damn near ripped limb from limb, most likely wishing you had never even considered the fight, but you'll walk away in one piece. Someone who didn't know of his training tried mugging him - pulling a knife on him. By the time his attacker hit the ground he had 3 broken ribs, a fractured skull, a broken jaw, a broken leg, and an arm broken in three places (if I'm recalling correctly. I may have mixed up an arm broken in 3 places for a leg broken in 3, but the injuries are in general accurate). That was his measured response to assure that he was no longer in any sort of danger, the man could have been dead before his body dropped.
It's very hard to judge the effectiveness of one fighting style versus another unless you're looking at two people who are really out for blood.
Unfortunately, he went to be a Mormon missionary somewhere in South America, and I lost touch with him... I believe he is now a pilot for United though.
Damn it. Sorry for responding to myself. I just wanted to appologize for the wall of text. Too much time on other forums where I don't need to put in the line break tags has me slacking today
:(
I blame the 11 beers prior to my post, and my lack of the ability to use the preview button
Mod parent -1 sucks at formatting.
In the past, I've worked in group homes for those with developmental and other disabilities. Our clients had ailments ranging from muscular dystrophy, to Tourette's, to Down's Syndrome, to echolalia, to schizophrenia, to Alzheimer's, to a huge range of other things (typically a combination of some of the above). I worked with them 40 hours a week, day in and day out. My duties included the basic day to day care of these folks. Bathing them. Giving them showers. Dressing them. Cooking for them, or connecting their feeding tubes if they were unable to eat solid foods. Making sure they took their meds. And being there for them when they were confused or upset, and needed someone. To put a personal touch on my comments - my parents were basically too busy to care for me. and my grandmother essentially raised me. In recent years, she has had several small strokes, and is now dealing with Alzhiemer's. My experience is limited, I will admit that. But I have seen more than most. Alzhiemer's is a horrible condition. But I have never seen anyone feel depressed from it for more than a few hours at a time. Paranoid? Upset? Certainly. Confused? Almost always. Even hostile at times. But depression seems to be limited to very brief amounts of time... And once it passes, the people I've had contact with have never had any memories of feeling bad. I don't mean to belittle the feelings of those who suffer from what is, by all accounts, a horrible disease. But in all honesty, depression is something that seems to be much more common in those close to the people who are actually suffering the disease itself. Most people I have known who have had Alzhiemer's could be best described as ambivalent. Of course, your mileage my vary.
Codorcet Method, privacy assured, open source vote counting methods, and no way to track a single vote to a single person.
That's all the US needs.
I personally like Schulze Sequential Dropping, but that's just me.
I was trying to make an ass of myself. I would have thought the "09F9...." thing, my comments on litigiousness, and the general sarcastic tone throughout would have implied that.
Self deprecating humor is just my style, I suppose. Sorry if you missed that.
Just don't forget the quiet shoes.
My comment to them: Hello, I was looking at your site, and I noticed an error on the page found at http://www.sco.com/company/profile.html According to that page, "SCO owns the core UNIX operating system, originally developed by AT&T/Bell Labs and is the exclusive licensor to Unix-based system software providers." I understand that this oversight, and your general stupidity over the past few years is likely a result of the rampant inbreeding in Utah, but I would strongly suggest you remove this section of text - especially considering the bitchslap you oh so dearly deserved, and received from the courts. Thank you for your time, and suck my balls. This message brought to you by the letter Q, the number 09F911029D74E35BD84156C563568C? (ha, bet you thought you could get me on DMCA charges, you litigious bastards. One character unknown, oh noes, it's not a violation!), and everyone who doesn't have their head stuck up their ass.
In fact, there's 6 groups. In order of the respect given, it basically goes: cops, friends of cops (including families of cops, EMTs and paramedics), the wealthy and/or powerful (as long as they don't question the status quo), the people who bribe them, firefighters, and enemies (everyone else).
Ahhh, the benefits of having a corrupt cop, who happened to be the Sargent in charge of the local SWAT team as a father... Being able to look at catalogues from companies that sold to "official police and peacekeeping organizations only", tell my dad what I wanted, and having him skim off the local police budget to pick stuff up for me (for "training" purposes, of course)? How could you not like that?
I had the best toys of any kid on the block. "Oh, you got a new action figure? Good for you. I just got a CS grenade."
Good times. Although the tinnitus from one to many flash-bangs kind of sucks.
That may be true - I was in a low level position and not really paying attention to the specifics of the "merger" (as everyone in my office spoke of it). I was simply speaking to the changes in policy that I saw when that happened. Sorry for the mix up.
I worked for Cingular for quite a while before they merged with AT&T - and for a while afterwards. My jobs ranged from fraud prevention to customer service. My position in fraud prevention was the most interesting, as a large part of the fraud we saw was from cell phone dealers themselves. They'd steal credit card information from one customer, tell the rest of their customers that they could come pay their bills at the store with cash (when they weren't authorized to do that), pocket the cash, and then use the stolen card to pay the bills. When you see 100+ accounts paid with the same credit card, you know something is up. That said, before AT&T moved in, my job was basically to help people. I was in a position where I called people who were using a lot more minutes than their plan offered, and instead of charging them the insane amount they would have paid for going over, I offered to switch them to a plan that would cover their usage. The most extreme example that comes to mind is someone who had used so many minutes over their plan that their next bill would have been well over $2,000 - they were flagged, I called them, and convinced them to switch from the lowest priced plan to the highest priced one, because that meant they would save about $1,800 a month. How's that for customer service? Sure, we could have just stuck that guy with a $2,000 bill, and put his nuts in a vice. But we did the right thing - we looked for customers who would be hurt and spent our time, money, and resources to help them out. Guess what one of the first programs that got cut was when AT&T took over?