No we don't. There are plenty of organisms that live in areas which are effectively impossible to disrupt or contaminate with nuclear weapons, and which are resilient to nuclear winter.
Never mind the anaerobes. The notion that all our bombs together could wipe out mammalian life, or even Mankind itself, is laughable enviro-hysteria. Of course millions or maybe billions would die, but billions more would survive. Nuclear winter? Pooh! Our ancestors survived the Ice Ages with animal skins and wooden spears. To think that modern man in his teeming billions wouldn't do likewise is to misunderstand the very nature of life.
I believe the the prospect of a lifeless Earth and, thus, universe (if the waste somehow made it to the ocean, that is possible) is unnerving, and so these steps are taken.
If you think a few thousand tons of radioactive waste could kill all the life on Earth, when diluted in the waters of all the world's oceans, then you have left the realm of reason.
This reminds me of the debate between the Right and Left over what freedom really is. Hard right-wingers like me believe only in negative rights, in other words the freedom to be left alone: i.e rights of free speech, religion, press, assembly, bearing arms, choosing a career, etc. Leftists tend to believe in positive rights, which are more properly termed privileges.
Roosevelt started it with his "Freedom from Want" business, and now the left wing pushes for the "right" to a job, or a house, or a college education, and also for such moonbeams as the "right" not to feel offended or marginalized based on one's personal characteristics.
The common denominator in the Left's concept of liberty is that they see nothing wrong with violating someone else's ancient natural rights in order to award pseudo-"rights" (privileges) to people they feel deserve it. Speech codes violate my right to speak my mind lest someone else be offended. The "right" to a job means someone less favored gets a job taken away (affirmative action) or all of us have tax money extorted at gunpoint to subsidize jobs for people who otherwise couldn't hold one (i.e. most government workers and educrats).
When a lefty tries to tell me that someone has a "right" to a job, my response is "Fuck you, you have liberty unparalleled in human history, use it to find your own job or starve to death, I don't care which." And when I see a headline like "FOSS Is Not Free If It's Not Free From Complexity", my response is "Fuck you, it is too free, and if you're too stupid to use it that's your problem and nobody else's."
Funny you should mention that; Churchill's mother was the American Jennie Jerome. Churchill was proud to be half-American, and bragged that one remote ancestor was an Iroquois Indian, though there is no genealogical proof of this.
Chagas can only be transmitted via its vector insect, which is an assasin bug native to South and Central America. The bug does not exist in the States, therefore chagas cannot spread. Conclusion: fearmongering and xenophobia.
You don't have a clue what you are talking about. The trypanosome (a protozoan) can definitely spread in blood transfusions. There are three pages of papers about this topic on PubMed. Transfusion-associated Chagas' disease has been recognized for decades.
Seems to me that a little xenophobia and fearmongering on this particular issue is not only justifiable, but praiseworthy. Thumb-sucking multi-culti wish-mongering won't make the problem go away.
I will graciously accept your apology whenever you think you're ready to handle the truth.
Lefties should watch how casually they fling that word around. It's losing its sting, in fact I have got to the point that I'm no longer personally offended to be called a racist. To the contrary, it usually means that I am embarrassingly correct in my observations. An accusation of racism has become nothing more than playground prattle from a left-wing dimwit who is losing an argument with a conservative.
If everyone to the right of Joe Lieberman is a racist, then nobody is. I think that we need a "racism" corollary to Godwin's Law, because that is usually a sign that someone has nothing more of value to add to the discussion.
90% of them weren't vaccinated because of their stupid parents. I find it funny that science wins again.
Not just science, but evolution itself. Stupid parents tend to breed stupid children, and now there are fewer to reproduce. A pity, to be sure, but what can you do? Stupidity is its own punishment.
And droughts. And more powerful storms. And the melting of the glaciers on Greenland and Antarctica, and the resulting 10' rise in oceans heights. And the disruption of the jet stream to northern Europe. And the ensuing famines. And the flooding of coastal areas.
You might believe this, but the fact is that many of the jackasses braying the loudest about anthropogenic global warming evidently do not.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. has been piously lecturing us rubes about environmental correctness for lo these many years, but still flies around in private jets, and is doing his best to scuttle the offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound because it spoils the view from his yacht.
Laurie David and Barbara Streisand and a hundred more Hollywood dingbats are full of coercive Luddite prescriptions for us little people in flyover country, but can't seem give up their Gulfstream V jets and limousines and 20,000 sq. ft. mansions with sixteen air conditioner units.
Ariana Huffington loves to badger the common man about global warming, but is addicted to private jets and fancy cars up the wazoo. Al Gore? Ditto, plus has four children, doubling the footprint of himself and his wife on Earth's limited resources. And of course the Kennedys breed like rats in a granary too.
Listening to these people hectoring us rednecks and hicks, you'd think they actually believed there was some kind of serious problem, but their actions say otherwise, loud and clear. If these dumb shit lefties think that dismantling modern civilization to prevent warming is so important, I say let them go first, or shut the fuck up.
Unless these limousine liberal loudmouths begin walking the walk, I am going to go on believing that the whole thing is a conspiracy by the authoritarian collectivist Left to gain by subterfuge and propaganda that which has been loudly and clearly repudiated at the ballot box.
What if this technique of removing ice from wings and other surfaces were used only while they were plugged in at the terminal.
That's not practical. The plane really needs the de-icing while in flight, because one of the major causes of aviation accidents is ice accumulation changing the shape and efficiency of the airfoil. Eventually the plane can no longer maintain altitude even at full power.
And if it's not usable in flight, what does the airline get for the expense and added weight that the plane must carry for a system it can only use on the ground? We already have good ground-based de-icing systems.
People need to realise that there are many types of intelligence, and that not having a high IQ really only related to a small number of them.
True. I am living proof of this. I was quite precocious and learned to read at age 3. Took high school classes in grade school, and college classes in high school. I have an elephantine long-term memory that makes me unbeatable at trivia games. Yet I would never say I have an "agile mind". Far from it. I think slowly, talk slowly, sometimes even forgetting what I am talking about mid-sentence as I grope for a word. I'm totally devoid of musical talent or interest. I can remember each step of the Krebs cycle, but never remember to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home. I find a dozen ways to piss off my wife every week due to my own slow-witted absent-mindedness.
I do have an IQ several standard deviations above the mean, but it is clear that the computer of my mind is missing a few of the "system service" processes that most normal people take for granted. Lucky for me I have a profession that rewards obsessive one-track minds.
If someone saw that in the 70s-80s, they would of puked.
Good heavens, you must have led a sheltered life. Have you never heard of the Marquis de Sade, Fanny Hill, or Catherine the Great? More than 200 years on, there is still nothing on the Internet to compare to the catalog of perversions in 120 Days of Sodom.
I thought real female porn was to be found in the Shopping And Fucking romance novel sub-genre?
Shopping by itself is my wife's equivalent of porn. I shit you not, there is even a magazine devoted to shopping, and she subscribes to it. Its design esthetics are obviously influenced by porno mags directed at men.
Clinton's blowjob came up in the context of the hyperextended Whitewater investigation.
I won't let you flush things down the memory hole like that. It had nothing to do with Whitewater except coming under the purview of the same independent prosecutor.
Lewinsky's relationship with Clinton came under investigation because one of his former underlings (Paula Jones) accused him of violently raping her. It was only after Ms. Jones was denied her day in court, based on perjured affadavits from the Clinton camp, that the Linda Tripp tapes were turned over to Ken Starr.
Let me quote Camille Paglia:
"All feminists who sincerely support sexual harassment guidelines should indeed defend Paula Jones, since Bill Clinton's alleged behavior broke every rule. She was on the job at the time, and he was her ultimate boss; he illegally used state troopers for a private escapade; and he began his approach by coercively mentioning a friendship with her immediate boss. Feminist leaders would have tarred and feathered any Republican who carried on like this. As a Clinton Democrat, I think that feminism has injured itself by its shameless partisanship -- its incestuous overinvolvement with corrupt Democratic party politics."
Clinton lied about an intensely personal matter, that was really nobody's business except for the few people involved.
Please remember that this question came up as part of an official investigation into alleged sexual harrassment and violent rape committed by Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas. If he had been Republican, the feminists and Democrats would have absolutely crucified him, and would not have cared one whit about how "personal" the matter was. Plenty of Republicans have been hounded out of office for less (eg Senator Packwood.)
I would also point out that adultery is not considered a "personal" matter by government agencies that require a security clearance, because of the risk of blackmail. Clinton would not qualify to be a janitor in the CIA headquarters building, due to his sexual history.
I'm curious as to why you think this would increase corruption. Free speech is a beautiful and precious thing, and on balance prevents far more corruption than it causes. These campaign-finance "reforms" that stifle political speech are more worrisome to me than the Patriot Act.
The basis for membership in the House of Lords (ie hereditary) is what I find disturbing. It would seem that a merit-based system would at least seem justifiable.
This is in fact how things are nowadays. The power and numerical majority of the hereditary Peers has been sharply curtailed since 1999. Most of the members are now Life Peers, i.e. people of prominence and achievement in government, business, law, military, religion, culture, etc. who receive a lifetime appointment that cannot be passed on to heirs.
I find it hard to argue with the global snow melt that is going on.
Eight hundred thousand years ago, Yosemite Valley was filled with glaciers a mile thick.
They melted before Man had learned to tame fire.
So why should I care about a few tiny glaciers in Montana? Glaciers are always going to be getting either bigger or smaller. Right now they are getting smaller. Big fucking deal.
It's the people who think the Earth is a steady state system, always has been and always should be, who are the real morons in the global warming debate.
Timeless wisdom from the Native Americans states, " The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth."
Wisdom from the Native Americans, my ass. It was written by a white guy named Ted Perry in 1970.
Did you scroll down to the bottom of the page, where the author noted that "I have found that the text above is not historically accurate, nor even something that Chief Seattle said. I am not going to change the text above because of its impact"?
In other words, Ward Churchill meets Dan Rather. Who cares if it's authentic; let's just keep it out there for its "impact". Feelings and intentions always trump reality in the Red-Green cloud-cuckoo land.
Slashdot Mirror
Never mind the anaerobes. The notion that all our bombs together could wipe out mammalian life, or even Mankind itself, is laughable enviro-hysteria. Of course millions or maybe billions would die, but billions more would survive. Nuclear winter? Pooh! Our ancestors survived the Ice Ages with animal skins and wooden spears. To think that modern man in his teeming billions wouldn't do likewise is to misunderstand the very nature of life.
-ccm
That's total horse pucky. Wrong by many orders of magnitude.
-ccm
If you think a few thousand tons of radioactive waste could kill all the life on Earth, when diluted in the waters of all the world's oceans, then you have left the realm of reason.
-ccm
Undoubtedly right, and no doubt many people have discovered sexual gratification that way, but it's not for me.
Remember, the Internet is where men are men, and women are men, and 14-year-old girls are FBI men.
-ccm
Roosevelt started it with his "Freedom from Want" business, and now the left wing pushes for the "right" to a job, or a house, or a college education, and also for such moonbeams as the "right" not to feel offended or marginalized based on one's personal characteristics.
The common denominator in the Left's concept of liberty is that they see nothing wrong with violating someone else's ancient natural rights in order to award pseudo-"rights" (privileges) to people they feel deserve it. Speech codes violate my right to speak my mind lest someone else be offended. The "right" to a job means someone less favored gets a job taken away (affirmative action) or all of us have tax money extorted at gunpoint to subsidize jobs for people who otherwise couldn't hold one (i.e. most government workers and educrats).
When a lefty tries to tell me that someone has a "right" to a job, my response is "Fuck you, you have liberty unparalleled in human history, use it to find your own job or starve to death, I don't care which." And when I see a headline like "FOSS Is Not Free If It's Not Free From Complexity", my response is "Fuck you, it is too free, and if you're too stupid to use it that's your problem and nobody else's."
-ccm
Funny you should mention that; Churchill's mother was the American Jennie Jerome. Churchill was proud to be half-American, and bragged that one remote ancestor was an Iroquois Indian, though there is no genealogical proof of this.
-ccm
You don't have a clue what you are talking about. The trypanosome (a protozoan) can definitely spread in blood transfusions. There are three pages of papers about this topic on PubMed. Transfusion-associated Chagas' disease has been recognized for decades.
Seems to me that a little xenophobia and fearmongering on this particular issue is not only justifiable, but praiseworthy. Thumb-sucking multi-culti wish-mongering won't make the problem go away.
I will graciously accept your apology whenever you think you're ready to handle the truth.
-ccm
Lefties should watch how casually they fling that word around. It's losing its sting, in fact I have got to the point that I'm no longer personally offended to be called a racist. To the contrary, it usually means that I am embarrassingly correct in my observations. An accusation of racism has become nothing more than playground prattle from a left-wing dimwit who is losing an argument with a conservative.
If everyone to the right of Joe Lieberman is a racist, then nobody is. I think that we need a "racism" corollary to Godwin's Law, because that is usually a sign that someone has nothing more of value to add to the discussion.
-ccm
Not just science, but evolution itself. Stupid parents tend to breed stupid children, and now there are fewer to reproduce. A pity, to be sure, but what can you do? Stupidity is its own punishment.
-ccm
Why do you think this is a Republican issue? There are plenty of statist scum in both parties who support internal passports.
All this national-ID shit started under Clinton, and Hillary still wants a national ID card encoded with biometric data.
You owe freedom-loving Republicans like Rep. Ron Paul an apology.
-ccm
You might believe this, but the fact is that many of the jackasses braying the loudest about anthropogenic global warming evidently do not.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. has been piously lecturing us rubes about environmental correctness for lo these many years, but still flies around in private jets, and is doing his best to scuttle the offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound because it spoils the view from his yacht.
Laurie David and Barbara Streisand and a hundred more Hollywood dingbats are full of coercive Luddite prescriptions for us little people in flyover country, but can't seem give up their Gulfstream V jets and limousines and 20,000 sq. ft. mansions with sixteen air conditioner units.
Ariana Huffington loves to badger the common man about global warming, but is addicted to private jets and fancy cars up the wazoo. Al Gore? Ditto, plus has four children, doubling the footprint of himself and his wife on Earth's limited resources. And of course the Kennedys breed like rats in a granary too.
Listening to these people hectoring us rednecks and hicks, you'd think they actually believed there was some kind of serious problem, but their actions say otherwise, loud and clear. If these dumb shit lefties think that dismantling modern civilization to prevent warming is so important, I say let them go first, or shut the fuck up.
Unless these limousine liberal loudmouths begin walking the walk, I am going to go on believing that the whole thing is a conspiracy by the authoritarian collectivist Left to gain by subterfuge and propaganda that which has been loudly and clearly repudiated at the ballot box.
-ccm
That's not practical. The plane really needs the de-icing while in flight, because one of the major causes of aviation accidents is ice accumulation changing the shape and efficiency of the airfoil. Eventually the plane can no longer maintain altitude even at full power.
And if it's not usable in flight, what does the airline get for the expense and added weight that the plane must carry for a system it can only use on the ground? We already have good ground-based de-icing systems.
-ccm
-ccm
-ccm
True. I am living proof of this. I was quite precocious and learned to read at age 3. Took high school classes in grade school, and college classes in high school. I have an elephantine long-term memory that makes me unbeatable at trivia games. Yet I would never say I have an "agile mind". Far from it. I think slowly, talk slowly, sometimes even forgetting what I am talking about mid-sentence as I grope for a word. I'm totally devoid of musical talent or interest. I can remember each step of the Krebs cycle, but never remember to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home. I find a dozen ways to piss off my wife every week due to my own slow-witted absent-mindedness.
I do have an IQ several standard deviations above the mean, but it is clear that the computer of my mind is missing a few of the "system service" processes that most normal people take for granted. Lucky for me I have a profession that rewards obsessive one-track minds.
-ccm
Or better yet, a lawyer.
-ccm
Good heavens, you must have led a sheltered life. Have you never heard of the Marquis de Sade, Fanny Hill, or Catherine the Great? More than 200 years on, there is still nothing on the Internet to compare to the catalog of perversions in 120 Days of Sodom .
--ccm
Shopping by itself is my wife's equivalent of porn. I shit you not, there is even a magazine devoted to shopping, and she subscribes to it. Its design esthetics are obviously influenced by porno mags directed at men.
-ccm
I won't let you flush things down the memory hole like that. It had nothing to do with Whitewater except coming under the purview of the same independent prosecutor.
Lewinsky's relationship with Clinton came under investigation because one of his former underlings (Paula Jones) accused him of violently raping her. It was only after Ms. Jones was denied her day in court, based on perjured affadavits from the Clinton camp, that the Linda Tripp tapes were turned over to Ken Starr.
Let me quote Camille Paglia:
"All feminists who sincerely support sexual harassment guidelines should indeed defend Paula Jones, since Bill Clinton's alleged behavior broke every rule. She was on the job at the time, and he was her ultimate boss; he illegally used state troopers for a private escapade; and he began his approach by coercively mentioning a friendship with her immediate boss. Feminist leaders would have tarred and feathered any Republican who carried on like this. As a Clinton Democrat, I think that feminism has injured itself by its shameless partisanship -- its incestuous overinvolvement with corrupt Democratic party politics."
-ccm
Please remember that this question came up as part of an official investigation into alleged sexual harrassment and violent rape committed by Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas. If he had been Republican, the feminists and Democrats would have absolutely crucified him, and would not have cared one whit about how "personal" the matter was. Plenty of Republicans have been hounded out of office for less (eg Senator Packwood.)
I would also point out that adultery is not considered a "personal" matter by government agencies that require a security clearance, because of the risk of blackmail. Clinton would not qualify to be a janitor in the CIA headquarters building, due to his sexual history.
-ccm
-ccm
Bullshit. You need to take a logic course and learn a little about something called Occam's Razor. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
-ccm
This is in fact how things are nowadays. The power and numerical majority of the hereditary Peers has been sharply curtailed since 1999. Most of the members are now Life Peers, i.e. people of prominence and achievement in government, business, law, military, religion, culture, etc. who receive a lifetime appointment that cannot be passed on to heirs.
-ccm
Eight hundred thousand years ago, Yosemite Valley was filled with glaciers a mile thick.
They melted before Man had learned to tame fire.
So why should I care about a few tiny glaciers in Montana? Glaciers are always going to be getting either bigger or smaller. Right now they are getting smaller. Big fucking deal.
It's the people who think the Earth is a steady state system, always has been and always should be, who are the real morons in the global warming debate.
-ccm
Wisdom from the Native Americans, my ass. It was written by a white guy named Ted Perry in 1970.
Did you scroll down to the bottom of the page, where the author noted that "I have found that the text above is not historically accurate, nor even something that Chief Seattle said. I am not going to change the text above because of its impact"?
In other words, Ward Churchill meets Dan Rather. Who cares if it's authentic; let's just keep it out there for its "impact". Feelings and intentions always trump reality in the Red-Green cloud-cuckoo land.
-ccm