"Very few Christians believe much of the Old Testament."
Huh? The OT is part of the bible and is part of the basis of Christianity. Being a Christian REQUIRES one to believe the OT.
If you mean that the fundamentalists are the only Christians that attempt to practice their religion consistent with its teachings, then yes. Most Christians are the cafeteria type.
While it is not getting destroyed, its usefulness is. Contamination is a problem. So in that sense it is "ruined".
"It's stupid easy to desalinate water and purify toxic water for drinking."
Define "easy". If you mean by a well known scalable process, sure. If you mean by a cost effective, practical one, no. Purifying water can be even worse.
"Fossil fuels--THERE is something you should be worried about."
And what do you think will be used to produce the energy to RUN the desalination and purification plants?
"Nevertheless, what American would tolerate a car that hit 60 in nearly 14 seconds? Consider that a 2010 Honda Odyssey (a minivan of all things) hits 60mph in under 8 seconds."
Most of them. Because you don't NEED it.
I drive a 1995 VW Jetta. Weighs about 2700lbs, 115hp. I routinely out accelerate most vehicles on the road because I USE the power I have. What's the point of having the power if you insist on merging on the freeway at 50mph or are driving in a congested urban area?
"Therefore, ultimately, a person is left to his own beliefs to decide which study (if any) is correct."
And you just made the science is impotent argument. Fascinating. You never, ever just cancel out studies. This isn't math.
When faced with contradictory studies you don't ignore the science but rank the studies based on quality. Ignore the poor studies and weight the rest best on quality and derive your conclusion. And one of those conclusions may be that no conclusion can be made with the existing data.
"They were only able to do this because he used his credit card to purchase it."
Do you not understand how cell phones work? They aren't magic. They are part of a network. Are you seriously telling me they could not have tracked the phone and data history to the other users? The least reliable data might be the credit card used to purchase the phone (it could be stolen).
"Many people HAVE acknowledged that this was an engineering failure."
Not really. At least it was secondary to the MANAGEMENT failure. They decided to use faulty safety equipment. They decided to use a riskier plugging method. They could have spent the time and money to fix the equipment and work at a slower pace but elected not to. That was NOT an engineering decision.
"And yes, mistakes are eventually made. Thats why we hold THAT to the same standard as a car accident. Accidents happen, they are sometimes preventable, but they will always happen."
I have a real problem with the use of the words "mistake" and "accident". They made deliberate choices with known bad consequences if something went wrong. Those words imply that they were innocent bystanders and something bad just happened to happen to them. Sorry, but just like most car accidents, this wasn't one.
They made a series of choices that led to a fatal and catastrophic safety and environmental incident that has yet to be resolved.
"How exactly does someone fucking up preclude it from being an accident? In fact, so far as I know, someone fucking up is pretty much inherent to the term, 'accident.'"
An accident implies no one was at fault. Perhaps more importantly it implies that it could not have been avoided. In simple terms, if someone screwed up, it is not an accident. It was an incident.
I would consider none of your car related examples to be an accident. They were all avoidable even if some of them were unintentional.
In simple terms, we tend to excuse accidents. We are willing to investigate and correct the causes of incidents.
"It's not the BOP. It's the Cementing job that was borked."
Wrong. Plus a really bad analogy. The BOP was designed to prevent the well from leaking. It WAS the failsafe.
The cement plugs were only a temporary seal.
If either the plugs or the BOP had worked we would never had heard of this incident. Like many disasters, this one is a chain of incidents, any one of which, if averted, would have prevented the disaster. The problem is that there should never have been ONE of these incidents much less multiple incidents. How many other similar events nearly happened that we never heard about....
"Well, it's funny, but a lot of people are *against* killing the economy and going broke."
Not many. Otherwise they might be more concerned about the 850 Billion dollar defense budget and the massive deficit spending. Much of that budget is used to defend our gas supply. So we are already paying the tax (with interest). Just not right now.
"And worst of all, a gas tax is exceptionally regressive."
Big fucking deal. I drive 15K miles a year and would have no problem with gas prices doubling. Quit feigning concern about hurting me because you don't want to pay higher taxes.
"You're trying to avoid answering the question by pretending I'm asking the wrong question."
It's pretty simple. You are using denier tactics. You ARE asking an irrelevant question. You have set up a false dichotomy. You aren't interested in facts.
"Why should I believe one over the other?"
On one hand there is data and publications from thousands of scientists. On the other side there is very.... little. Taking one person from each side is irrelevant. Feel free to ignore the data from the CRU if you like. That does not change the fact that AGW is happening.
"What incentive do I have to be worried about disastrous planetary warming, when 14 years of data shows no statistically significant warming?"
Hey, I thought I heard scraping sounds. Those were the goalposts being moved. Now it's "disasterous" warming, eh? Another denier tactic. In any case, 14 years is not a sufficient time period over which to determine the statistical significance of warming for CLIMATE. Longer periods need to be analyzed. Hey, that was another denier tactic, cherry picking!
"It doesn't really matter what the ratio of pro:anti AGW scientists is, precisely. It matters that contrary to what our political leaders want us to believe, there is not a generally accepted scientific consensus on the issue."
HUH?!? This makes no sense. First you say it doesn't matter how many scientists believe what, then you say a consensus is important. Which is it? In any case there IS a scientific consensus. More denier tactics: illogical thinking and lying.
I will resist the urge to mod you down for failing to actually READ what the poster wrote and respond instead.
You are disputing a point that the poster DID NOT MAKE. He did not say their was no connection between owning a gun and suicides. Only that if you cannot find a link between owning a gun and commiting suicide then including suicide deaths by guns in a statistic saying owning a gun makes it likelier for you to die is not useful.
"Becoming suicidal is often in part a response to a sudden crisis"
No it is not. Someone who is suicidal might commit suicide in response to a sudden crisis. Big difference.
"No one has ever smuggled a nuke in to a city yet ever so why worry more about that."
Reason(s) to smuggle a weapon into a city: prevent advance knowledge of an attack prevent identification (cause misidentification) of the source of the attack create a massive clusterfuck related to the previous point.
Any country that launches a nuke via a missile or plane is toast. And they know it. So it would only be done under similar circumstances, if at all. Aka MAD.
But what happens if a city justs goes poof? Who do you blame? What if a group takes responsibility that has no ties to a country but exists in many countries? How do you combat that? You think we went nuts over 9/11...
I'm not terribly worried about Iran or North Korea getting a nuclear weapon. After all, Israel, Pakistan, India and China all have them and have been in wars while in possession of them. I'm much more worried what we will do while trying in vain to stop them.
"This isn't exactly a problem where we can afford to spend several years debating the optimal solution."
Why can't we? At the present time the relief well has not even been completed. Until that has been drilled and allowed to work (or not) there is no reason to do something that is untested and irreversible. Yes, that means that a massive amount of oil may continue to flow into the Gulf of Mexico for a number of months.
But a massive amount has already entered the environment. There is no evidence that another few months will make conditions bad enough to try something that will PERMANENTLY PREVENT any further attempts at stopping the leak.
The choice has already been made to destroy the environment-that decision was made when offshore drilling first began in the US.
"It's a tiny investment; Nasa needs about $6 billion a year to keep Constellation going. It's literally a drop in the bucket compared to many other appropriations."
If it were a GOOD investment I would agree. But we already have other launch vehicles that can fill that need. And they WORK.
"The country needs a manned space program."
No we don't. We may WANT one. Which makes the project pork.
"$700+ billion economic stimulus"
Sound economic policy. Also a one time event.
"$125+ billion per year for new healthcare obligations."
That is paid for. And actually provides a benefit.
"We could easily cut a trillion or so dollars from our national budget and not even notice the difference."
WTF!?! Math FAIL. Eliminating a trillion dollars from our budget would require the elimination of all discretionary spending (including NASA) plus another 500 billion or so. That means elminating much of the defense budget and/or cuts to medicare and social security. I think seniors might notice the cuts to their checks. Millions of unemployed defense contractors and soldiers might be noticed. Etc.
Your logic makes no sense. You complain about government wasting large sums of money yet you argue that the government should spend money on this project because it would only waste a small amount of money compared to those other projects. The project fails on technical merits. Even if it was technically sound, killing it would be justifiable from a monetary standpoint.
"SS is bankrupt. Hell, our entire nation is pretty much bankrupt."
Only if you define bankrupt as spending more money than you earn. While this could lead to bankrupty eventually, people, companies and governments can spend more than they bring in for long periods of time as long as they can service the debt. SS won't stop paying out benefits-the government will just make up the difference between the amount of taxes it collects and the amount it disburses each year either by borrowing more money, raising taxes and/or cutting benefits.
Put simply anyone who claims that the US is bankrupt, that SS is bankrupt or Medicare is bankrupt is lying.
"How do you tell to your only, female and 18 years old coworker that her armpit odor is so strong..."
Are you seriously asking people how to tell a coworker they smell bad?
Seriously?
You could pretend that you are a professional and tell them that they smell bad and are disturbing others in a direct but polite way. Or you could contact HR and have them address the issue.
"Finally, through use of price discrimination and market segmentation, the entertainment industry can, and will continue to, try to get $9 out of the person who's willing to spend it. The question is, why are they not trying to get $0.25 out of the person who's only willing to spend that? It's better to figure out a way to charge that user and get something out of them than to continue to not serve that section of the market."
The fatal flaw in your assumption is that the untapped market will make up for the loss of the current market. How do you continue getting $9 from the same amount of people while adding $0.25 people? Why would most pay the higher amount? Or it may be the case where people will pay for your product because it is bundled (TV) but not a la carte (crap, the show costs HOW MUCH?!?). In either case, why trade a known quantity for something that MIGHT work.
"Anyway, if a show only brought in $3M per episode instead of $5M, that could potentially only affect the few top named stars and the executive producer. If each of them accepted a pay cut, the other 500 people involved with the show could probably even take a modest pay increase."
Please check into your nearest reality at your earliest convenience. Why exactly would those who have the power (and as a result make the money) give it up willingly? If you haven't noticed, those at the top consider the other 500 people expendable....
"Click your remote a few times and you'll eventually hit upon MSNBC... they're about as liberal as they come."
And that's the posters point. MSNBC is liberal in the sense that they present viewpoints that are less conservative than networks such as FOX. They aren't liberal in any real way.
Perhaps you should consult a dictionary. Or maybe the Princess Bride....
Failure of blowout preventers are not "exceptionally rare". I believe the 1999 report by MMS noted over 117 failures. It is a known risk.
Furthermore, encountering a pocket of gas is not unexpected. It is something they try to avoid for precisely what happened. All the safety precautions in place cannot prevent a catastrophic explosion under all conditions. It is a known risk.
BP decided to cut corners and ignore known risks to save money.
"Big business [knowingly] employs illegals -> Illegals find plenty of opportunity here -> Other illegals are encouraged by this -> More of them flock to this country -> It continues unchecked until citizens finally get sick of it -> There is a public outcry -> Politicians address it the only way they know how, by making a law."
One major flaw. The party that is primarily responsible for the lack of progress is the Republicans. They created the conditions that led their base to want them to create this law. While still blocking progress at the national level that might resolve the problem.
"You can prevent laws like this by dealing with problems when they start small and not waiting until they become a crisis."
But a crisis helps you take back Congress or get reelected by motivating your base. Effective governing, not so much.
Slashdot Mirror
"Very few Christians believe much of the Old Testament."
Huh? The OT is part of the bible and is part of the basis of Christianity. Being a Christian REQUIRES one to believe the OT.
If you mean that the fundamentalists are the only Christians that attempt to practice their religion consistent with its teachings, then yes. Most Christians are the cafeteria type.
"It's not getting ruined."
While it is not getting destroyed, its usefulness is. Contamination is a problem. So in that sense it is "ruined".
"It's stupid easy to desalinate water and purify toxic water for drinking."
Define "easy". If you mean by a well known scalable process, sure. If you mean by a cost effective, practical one, no. Purifying water can be even worse.
"Fossil fuels--THERE is something you should be worried about."
And what do you think will be used to produce the energy to RUN the desalination and purification plants?
"Nevertheless, what American would tolerate a car that hit 60 in nearly 14 seconds? Consider that a 2010 Honda Odyssey (a minivan of all things) hits 60mph in under 8 seconds."
Most of them. Because you don't NEED it.
I drive a 1995 VW Jetta. Weighs about 2700lbs, 115hp. I routinely out accelerate most vehicles on the road because I USE the power I have. What's the point of having the power if you insist on merging on the freeway at 50mph or are driving in a congested urban area?
"Therefore, ultimately, a person is left to his own beliefs to decide which study (if any) is correct."
And you just made the science is impotent argument. Fascinating. You never, ever just cancel out studies. This isn't math.
When faced with contradictory studies you don't ignore the science but rank the studies based on quality. Ignore the poor studies and weight the rest best on quality and derive your conclusion. And one of those conclusions may be that no conclusion can be made with the existing data.
"They were only able to do this because he used his credit card to purchase it."
Do you not understand how cell phones work? They aren't magic. They are part of a network. Are you seriously telling me they could not have tracked the phone and data history to the other users? The least reliable data might be the credit card used to purchase the phone (it could be stolen).
"Many people HAVE acknowledged that this was an engineering failure."
Not really. At least it was secondary to the MANAGEMENT failure. They decided to use faulty safety equipment. They decided to use a riskier plugging method. They could have spent the time and money to fix the equipment and work at a slower pace but elected not to. That was NOT an engineering decision.
"And yes, mistakes are eventually made. Thats why we hold THAT to the same standard as a car accident. Accidents happen, they are sometimes preventable, but they will always happen."
I have a real problem with the use of the words "mistake" and "accident". They made deliberate choices with known bad consequences if something went wrong. Those words imply that they were innocent bystanders and something bad just happened to happen to them. Sorry, but just like most car accidents, this wasn't one.
They made a series of choices that led to a fatal and catastrophic safety and environmental incident that has yet to be resolved.
"How exactly does someone fucking up preclude it from being an accident? In fact, so far as I know, someone fucking up is pretty much inherent to the term, 'accident.'"
An accident implies no one was at fault. Perhaps more importantly it implies that it could not have been avoided. In simple terms, if someone screwed up, it is not an accident. It was an incident.
I would consider none of your car related examples to be an accident. They were all avoidable even if some of them were unintentional.
In simple terms, we tend to excuse accidents. We are willing to investigate and correct the causes of incidents.
"It's not the BOP. It's the Cementing job that was borked."
Wrong. Plus a really bad analogy. The BOP was designed to prevent the well from leaking. It WAS the failsafe.
The cement plugs were only a temporary seal.
If either the plugs or the BOP had worked we would never had heard of this incident. Like many disasters, this one is a chain of incidents, any one of which, if averted, would have prevented the disaster. The problem is that there should never have been ONE of these incidents much less multiple incidents. How many other similar events nearly happened that we never heard about....
"But do bunnies run Linux?"
Unlikely. They seem to have a lot of sex...
"Well, it's funny, but a lot of people are *against* killing the economy and going broke."
Not many. Otherwise they might be more concerned about the 850 Billion dollar defense budget and the massive deficit spending. Much of that budget is used to defend our gas supply. So we are already paying the tax (with interest). Just not right now.
"And worst of all, a gas tax is exceptionally regressive."
Big fucking deal. I drive 15K miles a year and would have no problem with gas prices doubling. Quit feigning concern about hurting me because you don't want to pay higher taxes.
"You're trying to avoid answering the question by pretending I'm asking the wrong question."
It's pretty simple. You are using denier tactics. You ARE asking an irrelevant question. You have set up a false dichotomy. You aren't interested in facts.
"Why should I believe one over the other?"
On one hand there is data and publications from thousands of scientists. On the other side there is very .... little. Taking one person from each side is irrelevant. Feel free to ignore the data from the CRU if you like. That does not change the fact that AGW is happening.
"What incentive do I have to be worried about disastrous planetary warming, when 14 years of data shows no statistically significant warming?"
Hey, I thought I heard scraping sounds. Those were the goalposts being moved. Now it's "disasterous" warming, eh? Another denier tactic. In any case, 14 years is not a sufficient time period over which to determine the statistical significance of warming for CLIMATE. Longer periods need to be analyzed. Hey, that was another denier tactic, cherry picking!
"It doesn't really matter what the ratio of pro:anti AGW scientists is, precisely. It matters that contrary to what our political leaders want us to believe, there is not a generally accepted scientific consensus on the issue."
HUH?!? This makes no sense. First you say it doesn't matter how many scientists believe what, then you say a consensus is important. Which is it? In any case there IS a scientific consensus. More denier tactics: illogical thinking and lying.
What you call "the way we do business today", I prefer to call "crappy management". A bit shorter and more to the point.
I will resist the urge to mod you down for failing to actually READ what the poster wrote and respond instead.
You are disputing a point that the poster DID NOT MAKE. He did not say their was no connection between owning a gun and suicides. Only that if you cannot find a link between owning a gun and commiting suicide then including suicide deaths by guns in a statistic saying owning a gun makes it likelier for you to die is not useful.
"Becoming suicidal is often in part a response to a sudden crisis"
No it is not. Someone who is suicidal might commit suicide in response to a sudden crisis. Big difference.
"No one has ever smuggled a nuke in to a city yet ever so why worry more about that."
Reason(s) to smuggle a weapon into a city:
prevent advance knowledge of an attack
prevent identification (cause misidentification) of the source of the attack
create a massive clusterfuck related to the previous point.
Any country that launches a nuke via a missile or plane is toast. And they know it. So it would only be done under similar circumstances, if at all. Aka MAD.
But what happens if a city justs goes poof? Who do you blame? What if a group takes responsibility that has no ties to a country but exists in many countries? How do you combat that? You think we went nuts over 9/11...
I'm not terribly worried about Iran or North Korea getting a nuclear weapon. After all, Israel, Pakistan, India and China all have them and have been in wars while in possession of them. I'm much more worried what we will do while trying in vain to stop them.
"This isn't exactly a problem where we can afford to spend several years debating the optimal solution."
Why can't we? At the present time the relief well has not even been completed. Until that has been drilled and allowed to work (or not) there is no reason to do something that is untested and irreversible. Yes, that means that a massive amount of oil may continue to flow into the Gulf of Mexico for a number of months.
But a massive amount has already entered the environment. There is no evidence that another few months will make conditions bad enough to try something that will PERMANENTLY PREVENT any further attempts at stopping the leak.
The choice has already been made to destroy the environment-that decision was made when offshore drilling first began in the US.
"Actually, there is, the soviets have used this method five times. Next objection?"
Aside from the fact that it failed one out of the five times?
How about that they never used it under conditions similar to the present case? The article implies that it was used ON LAND rather than under water.
"It's a tiny investment; Nasa needs about $6 billion a year to keep Constellation going. It's literally a drop in the bucket compared to many other appropriations."
If it were a GOOD investment I would agree. But we already have other launch vehicles that can fill that need. And they WORK.
"The country needs a manned space program."
No we don't. We may WANT one. Which makes the project pork.
"$700+ billion economic stimulus"
Sound economic policy. Also a one time event.
"$125+ billion per year for new healthcare obligations."
That is paid for. And actually provides a benefit.
"We could easily cut a trillion or so dollars from our national budget and not even notice the difference."
WTF!?! Math FAIL. Eliminating a trillion dollars from our budget would require the elimination of all discretionary spending (including NASA) plus another 500 billion or so. That means elminating much of the defense budget and/or cuts to medicare and social security. I think seniors might notice the cuts to their checks. Millions of unemployed defense contractors and soldiers might be noticed. Etc.
http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/
Your logic makes no sense. You complain about government wasting large sums of money yet you argue that the government should spend money on this project because it would only waste a small amount of money compared to those other projects. The project fails on technical merits. Even if it was technically sound, killing it would be justifiable from a monetary standpoint.
"SS is bankrupt. Hell, our entire nation is pretty much bankrupt."
Only if you define bankrupt as spending more money than you earn. While this could lead to bankrupty eventually, people, companies and governments can spend more than they bring in for long periods of time as long as they can service the debt. SS won't stop paying out benefits-the government will just make up the difference between the amount of taxes it collects and the amount it disburses each year either by borrowing more money, raising taxes and/or cutting benefits.
Put simply anyone who claims that the US is bankrupt, that SS is bankrupt or Medicare is bankrupt is lying.
"How do you tell to your only, female and 18 years old coworker that her armpit odor is so strong..."
Are you seriously asking people how to tell a coworker they smell bad?
Seriously?
You could pretend that you are a professional and tell them that they smell bad and are disturbing others in a direct but polite way. Or you could contact HR and have them address the issue.
"Finally, through use of price discrimination and market segmentation, the entertainment industry can, and will continue to, try to get $9 out of the person who's willing to spend it. The question is, why are they not trying to get $0.25 out of the person who's only willing to spend that? It's better to figure out a way to charge that user and get something out of them than to continue to not serve that section of the market."
The fatal flaw in your assumption is that the untapped market will make up for the loss of the current market. How do you continue getting $9 from the same amount of people while adding $0.25 people? Why would most pay the higher amount? Or it may be the case where people will pay for your product because it is bundled (TV) but not a la carte (crap, the show costs HOW MUCH?!?). In either case, why trade a known quantity for something that MIGHT work.
"Anyway, if a show only brought in $3M per episode instead of $5M, that could potentially only affect the few top named stars and the executive producer. If each of them accepted a pay cut, the other 500 people involved with the show could probably even take a modest pay increase."
Please check into your nearest reality at your earliest convenience. Why exactly would those who have the power (and as a result make the money) give it up willingly? If you haven't noticed, those at the top consider the other 500 people expendable....
"Click your remote a few times and you'll eventually hit upon MSNBC... they're about as liberal as they come."
And that's the posters point. MSNBC is liberal in the sense that they present viewpoints that are less conservative than networks such as FOX. They aren't liberal in any real way.
"...this failure is exceptionally rare."
Perhaps you should consult a dictionary. Or maybe the Princess Bride....
Failure of blowout preventers are not "exceptionally rare". I believe the 1999 report by MMS noted over 117 failures. It is a known risk.
Furthermore, encountering a pocket of gas is not unexpected. It is something they try to avoid for precisely what happened. All the safety precautions in place cannot prevent a catastrophic explosion under all conditions. It is a known risk.
BP decided to cut corners and ignore known risks to save money.
"The blowout preventer failing is unheard of in the oil industry."
A 1999 government report found at least 117 failures. Amazing what you can do with a simple google search.
http://www.mms.gov/tarprojects/319/319AA.pdf
Anyone who says otherwise is clueless or lying or both.
"Big business [knowingly] employs illegals -> Illegals find plenty of opportunity here -> Other illegals are encouraged by this -> More of them flock to this country -> It continues unchecked until citizens finally get sick of it -> There is a public outcry -> Politicians address it the only way they know how, by making a law."
One major flaw. The party that is primarily responsible for the lack of progress is the Republicans. They created the conditions that led their base to want them to create this law. While still blocking progress at the national level that might resolve the problem.
"You can prevent laws like this by dealing with problems when they start small and not waiting until they become a crisis."
But a crisis helps you take back Congress or get reelected by motivating your base. Effective governing, not so much.
"In fact, when first getting a drivers license (in Texas so your state may be different,) we are required to present a Birth Certificate."
It's a good thing that none of those documents are ever forged. Or identities are ever "borrowed".