and, how long does it take an extremely motivated Republican congress to confirm that appointment?
how is it a conspiracy theory? i do so hate that term.
no "conspiracy" is necessary. Renquist just happened to be knocked out of the game by cancer this week. What Bush would do if it comes down to survival is limitless; the 2000 election showed us a sample.
The possibility that Renquist will step down sometime in the remainder of Bush's term has already been rumored. He may step down to let Bush appoint a conservative justice, firstly, and secondly because he may, sadly, have no choice left in the matter.
Congress will have no problem railroading the appointment process with blinding speed. What's to stop them? Democrats? I don't know the procedures. I'd imagine they'll fight. But not win.
And, yes, de facto Bush gets to choose the man/woman who breaks the 4-4 tie in some sort of epic showdown like the very one that happened last election, the one that ended with his appointment to the office of the President of the United States through the services of four Republican justices (+ one schmuck).
Bush can elect himself thru the Supreme Court!
on
Pre-Election Discussion
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Nightmare scenario:
If the election goes into a 2000-style knock down courtroom fight later this month, and it winds up in the Supreme Court, at the moment it is a 4-4 tie with Renquist out of the picture.
I've read that a tied vote cannot overturn a lower court's ruling. Soooo they would be out of the picture.
UNLESS:
Renquist announces his retirement immediately. Bush then chooses the new justice of the Supreme Court, since he is still President.
Bush gets to CHOOSE THE MAN WHO CASTS THE DECIDING VOTE!
Bush IS demonstrably an idiot. It's not reflexive to say so. He is just so remarkably wrong, uninformed, stubborn, not-bright, and incorrect. He thought Sweden was neutral and had no army. MY GOD. He won't drop his notions even after they are shown to be dead wrong. WMD, Saddam=OBL, taxcuts make us rich, over and over....
We have a semantic problem here. Unless you know what the words "hypothesis" and "theory" means to a scientist, you can bandy this "argument" around all day and impress your friends.
To an average person, not a scientist, the words "hypothesis" and "theory" are interchangeable. They both mean "a notion", "a guess", "a unproven idea", "not a proven fact".
To a scientist, or even a person who paid attention in grade school during those boring science classes, the words mean:
hypothesis: a working explanation that covers the known facts. For example, if you discovered that the outer planets did not follow the orbits that current science says they should, you would offer up a hypothesis that another planet or planets unknown existed in other orbits even further away from the sun. Such a hypothesis predicted Pluto.
theory: a hypothesis that has been tested by fire. a theory is not a guess. Even if Pluto had not been found by Tombaugh(i think it was), the math backing up the hypothesis would have elevated the hypothesis to the level of theory. Even if Pluto was not yet found, in the absence of any other reasonable hypothesis the theory of its existence would be accepted.
the existence of elections is a theory. atoms. stars == suns is actually a theory -- have you ever been to one? maybe it IS a light held by an angel. but current theory says not.
you're free to prove the angel hypothesis. it's as valid a notion as a creator. but it's your job to prove it more valid that the star==sun theory. it's not science's job to disprove religious dogma.
I've no beef with any of what you said: I thought your points were implied. I was not trying to be thorough. And I know that the heat is caused by the reaction. I'd thought it'd be obvious. The trick, as you say, is to get the two masses (I'd heard them described as being two hemispheres once) together atjust the right time before the reaction wrecks the configuration enough to prevent the goal, runaway fission. Timing is dependent on the material used.
I don't have much time to write, so I have to be as pithy as possible. Asimov be my guide...
Nah. Armored and massive as the core would be, it would hit the ground intact. I reference the safe in Skylab, big parts on the shuttles that hit the ground, etc. Engineering a shell that could survive a measly H2 explosion no big huhu, cobber.
Actually, "aluminium" is the proper way to spell it in scientific English.
You see, when the element was identified, it was originally thought not to be a metallic element. Metals are suffixed with '-ium'. Uranium, Beryllium, etc. It was named Aluminum as a result -- I believe alumina was the ore, so therefore aluminum.
LATER, it turned out to be a metal. The entire world corrected the name to 'aluminium' -- except, you guessed it, of course, how else, the Americans. We are the holdouts.
Quick note: Helium, "metal of the sun", was originally discovered in spectroscopic analysis of the sun. It was originally thought to be a metallic element, thus the name. Turned out to be in the inert group of elements. But it was too late to rename it 'helion', using the suffix of 'on', as in argon, neon, etc.
Stern probably doesn't know, or didn't have time to mention, that the biggest slam against Powell is this: His profession was lobbying for the giant communications conglomerates to eliminate Federal oversight of radio and TV station ownership. He is one of the many foxes put in charge of the regulatory henhouses by Bush's pro-business ideologues. He the LAST person that should be in charge of changing the ownership rules. It is a horrendous conflict of interest, and it shows in his work. And after his boss loses, he will once more go back to work as a lobbyist.
Ya need to know that sub-critical nuclear fuel is never going to produce a mushroom cloud. Producing a runaway nuclear reaction is extremely difficult. You'd require the right isotope of uranium, first. Then you'd need two sub-critial lumps separated enough so the radiation engendered by their proximity wouldn't simply vaporize the engine before a chain reaction could take off. The two-sub-critical masses have to be brought into close proximity quickly, usually by firing the masses into each other with two high-explosive devices; picture a tube with HE on each end, with a uranium "shell" on each charge. You'd fire both shotgun shells down the tube to meet each other. The temperature and the radiation caused by their increasing proximity tries to vaporize the assemblage, but the sheer speed at which they collide enables the neutron levels to increase to a the point where a runaway chain reaction released enough energy to raise the temp to a few million degrees. Boom.
If a nuke Challenger went down, the LH2 used as propellant would ignite with the O2 from the air, and you'd get a big boom. Not as much as the Challenger with it's perfect blend of LOX and LH2, but it'd be pretty big, as booms go. But the reactor would simply fall like a radioactive Geo Metro. No boom. Wrong isotopes, no way to go critical.
"For the Government Officials reading this and wanting a solution to this "problem," I'll save you some time: EMP*. You're welcome."
Already ahead of you by some years. Recording devices need Faraday cages built into the housing. EMP "cannons" are already in use by police cars, I've heard, at least experimentally, to shut down the highly susceptible control systems of modern cars. Along with plasma cannons and pepper spray, bet your ass that EMP generators will be hosing crowds as well before the whacking commences.
Aside: what the hell is going on with our police departments? Policeman to a peaceful demonstrator in NYC at the RNC convention: "YOU'RE the terrorists!"
Who is filling their heads with this Orwellian nonsense?
mostly, it's just the greed of the insurance companies who raised rates enormously recently to cover the loss of their investment revenue (huge part of their profits is just investing their swag) when the stock market tanked. bonus points for using the rate increases for profit and shutting down the right to sue. win-win.
of course, when the market rebounds, they won't lower the rates. they'll get the profits back, AND the 'pubs will block people from suing the insurance companies. win-win-BIG win.
Trillions in profit, doctors getting desperate to pay the premiums, and your health care goes to hell slowly. and if you ever really get hosed by a bad procedure, you are shit out of luck. die, peasant.
Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.
on
Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 1
At some point in the last three years, the law was repealed. Sometimes fascism really is noticable and should be noted.
Or just put a camera into the iPod. Or combine it all into a phone/camera/audio/video recorder/PC with 802.11XXX, Ethernet, and Firewire capabilities and be done with it.
Jobs doesn't want to fracture market lines right now, though. And there is a huge tape/camcorder industry that, although it knows the future will be hard drive cartriges rather than tape, won't appreciate Apple jumping the gun before they can phase out their old factory lines and recoup their investment.
Also, there is the good ol' we're-being-robbed! "IP industry" of the MPAA and its brethren who are terrified that the video iPod will rear up soon. Don't forget, a unit that can record a video feed from a camera could also record it from any other video source... the entire DVD industry is at stake. The DVD's make more money for the MPAA members than the theaters do.
This is why Microsoft was so eager to get X-Boxes into every home they could, regardless of the loss. Games? Pfah. They had the Media Center coming, and the X-Box was the way to get it into houses without having to sell PC's.
Microsoft's strategy for survival is clear and it is all-encompassing. Screw the OS; they want a piece of the DRM-sweet pie for every song, every film clip, every TV program, every movie played in the world on a digital box. Even if Linux eventually supplants Windows in some fashion, they will own the DRM of media files. They've been moving behind the scenes for years now, arm-twisting the music/movie/cable people into adopting MS DRM. It's in Longhorn, sure, but they aren't just settling for that. Longhorn is just a piece that fits into all the other pieces to come.
Always with the sun. What did the sun ever do to you?
Seriously, a solar or even a high earth orbit is fine for storing waste indefintely. Don't need to waste delta vee directing it into a star. Stuff is heavy.
People have been starving for thirty years. Asia, Africa, South America, low on food, cutting down forests, killing off species, enduring droughts and the wars that they spawn. It's getting worse, and is not anywhere as bad as it will be. The population is still doubling about every thirty years. The problem is that it's doubling where they can't support the growth.
It's just raining hot dogs where you live. The starvation and war is not being covered in the U.S. And it's only been thirty years. The worst is coming.
LIQUID CO2 would be in tanks. It's very, very cold -100 F or so (not checking), and requires an insulated storage tank. Sort of the way we store and transport methane.
And Google, equal time, the relationship between Bush's grandpappy and the Nazi's. The Bush family made lots of buckage off the 3rd, just as a lot of other very wealthy U.S. citizens did. The U.S.'s financial wizards were not necessarily anti-Nazi. As a matter of reality, they were anti-communists to a psychotic degree; Hitler was a commie-crusher and well thought of for that. He also revived the German economy and provided opportunity for U.S. investment profit.
Singling out the Kennedy's for making cash from the Reich is historically true in a sense but incomplete. The Kennedy's have a lot of right-wing enemies, and this truth is essentially a smear because all the OTHER people who profited off the Nazi's, most certainly including the Bush dynasty, are studiously never remembered.
You'd have to be locked in a room pumped full enough of CO2 that there wouldn't be enough O2 in the mix to respirate. You could be killed by HELIUM in that manner!
CO2 mixes pretty quickly with other gases. And we could design chimneys at the CO2 storage farms to vent any leakage 500 feet into the sky, where it would mix completely and harmlessly with the surrounding air long before it could conceivably hurt a sparrow.
Also, isn't the CO2 in the bloodstream is caused by respiration, NOT external sources of CO2. The high concentration is caused by a buildup in the bloodstream caused by a lack of O2 in the air mix, not by an injection of CO2 into the mix. The high toxicity is caused by the massive amount created by the body, which lacks O2. I don't think a room with a couple percentage more C02 than normal will cause your repiratory system to create more CO2. A lack of O2 will cause that. I think you'd have to suck on an CO2 pipe to die from lack of O2.
Plutonium is extremely toxic. A grain of it in your bloodstream will eventually kill you by ionizing your tissues to the point where you die. It's called radiation poisoning.
I recall that the only treatment for radiation poisoning (from PL) during the Manhattan project was immediate high amputation, if possible. And the body of the dead bastard has to be sealed in lead, because IT was now dangerous.
Pounds of plutonium, rendered into a powdered form and allowed to disperse would render large parts of the earth downwind dangerous to live near for centuries. It's a bloody weapon. Heinlein's first story of a nuclear weapon was about AEROSOL delivery of this stuff; he didn't think the Bomb was scary enough.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not because of false registration at all.
No. It isn't.
But you are repeating agitprop the GOP started very recently to build a case for challenging the results.
And it is as likely for Republicans to "falsely" register as the Democrats.
And why would the Democrats bother? THEY OUTNUMBER REPUBLICANS. They just never voted in these numbers before.
Most people are not wealthy, not in good careers, don't have huge tax "cuts", don't have good schools, and are not happy at all with the GOP.
And they outnumber the happy white people.
and, how long does it take an extremely motivated Republican congress to confirm that appointment?
how is it a conspiracy theory? i do so hate that term.
no "conspiracy" is necessary. Renquist just happened to be knocked out of the game by cancer this week. What Bush would do if it comes down to survival is limitless; the 2000 election showed us a sample.
The possibility that Renquist will step down sometime in the remainder of Bush's term has already been rumored. He may step down to let Bush appoint a conservative justice, firstly, and secondly because he may, sadly, have no choice left in the matter.
Congress will have no problem railroading the appointment process with blinding speed. What's to stop them? Democrats? I don't know the procedures. I'd imagine they'll fight. But not win.
And, yes, de facto Bush gets to choose the man/woman who breaks the 4-4 tie in some sort of epic showdown like the very one that happened last election, the one that ended with his appointment to the office of the President of the United States through the services of four Republican justices (+ one schmuck).
Nightmare scenario:
If the election goes into a 2000-style knock down courtroom fight later this month, and it winds up in the Supreme Court, at the moment it is a 4-4 tie with Renquist out of the picture.
I've read that a tied vote cannot overturn a lower court's ruling. Soooo they would be out of the picture.
UNLESS:
Renquist announces his retirement immediately. Bush then chooses the new justice of the Supreme Court, since he is still President.
Bush gets to CHOOSE THE MAN WHO CASTS THE DECIDING VOTE!
"the existence of elections is a theory."
Sigh. Must be on my mind, for some reason.
ELECTRONS. Sorry.
Bush IS demonstrably an idiot. It's not reflexive to say so. He is just so remarkably wrong, uninformed, stubborn, not-bright, and incorrect. He thought Sweden was neutral and had no army. MY GOD. He won't drop his notions even after they are shown to be dead wrong. WMD, Saddam=OBL, taxcuts make us rich, over and over ....
is based on these hypotheses being taken for fact
Um, here we go:
We have a semantic problem here. Unless you know what the words "hypothesis" and "theory" means to a scientist, you can bandy this "argument" around all day and impress your friends.
To an average person, not a scientist, the words "hypothesis" and "theory" are interchangeable. They both mean "a notion", "a guess", "a unproven idea", "not a proven fact".
To a scientist, or even a person who paid attention in grade school during those boring science classes, the words mean:
hypothesis: a working explanation that covers the known facts. For example, if you discovered that the outer planets did not follow the orbits that current science says they should, you would offer up a hypothesis that another planet or planets unknown existed in other orbits even further away from the sun. Such a hypothesis predicted Pluto.
theory: a hypothesis that has been tested by fire. a theory is not a guess. Even if Pluto had not been found by Tombaugh(i think it was), the math backing up the hypothesis would have elevated the hypothesis to the level of theory. Even if Pluto was not yet found, in the absence of any other reasonable hypothesis the theory of its existence would be accepted.
the existence of elections is a theory. atoms. stars == suns is actually a theory -- have you ever been to one? maybe it IS a light held by an angel. but current theory says not.
you're free to prove the angel hypothesis. it's as valid a notion as a creator. but it's your job to prove it more valid that the star==sun theory. it's not science's job to disprove religious dogma.
I've no beef with any of what you said: I thought your points were implied. I was not trying to be thorough. And I know that the heat is caused by the reaction. I'd thought it'd be obvious. The trick, as you say, is to get the two masses (I'd heard them described as being two hemispheres once) together atjust the right time before the reaction wrecks the configuration enough to prevent the goal, runaway fission. Timing is dependent on the material used.
I don't have much time to write, so I have to be as pithy as possible. Asimov be my guide...
Nah. Armored and massive as the core would be, it would hit the ground intact. I reference the safe in Skylab, big parts on the shuttles that hit the ground, etc. Engineering a shell that could survive a measly H2 explosion no big huhu, cobber.
Actually, "aluminium" is the proper way to spell it in scientific English.
You see, when the element was identified, it was originally thought not to be a metallic element. Metals are suffixed with '-ium'. Uranium, Beryllium, etc. It was named Aluminum as a result -- I believe alumina was the ore, so therefore aluminum.
LATER, it turned out to be a metal. The entire world corrected the name to 'aluminium' -- except, you guessed it, of course, how else, the Americans. We are the holdouts.
Quick note: Helium, "metal of the sun", was originally discovered in spectroscopic analysis of the sun. It was originally thought to be a metallic element, thus the name. Turned out to be in the inert group of elements. But it was too late to rename it 'helion', using the suffix of 'on', as in argon, neon, etc.
Science ain't necessarily logical.
Stern probably doesn't know, or didn't have time to mention, that the biggest slam against Powell is this: His profession was lobbying for the giant communications conglomerates to eliminate Federal oversight of radio and TV station ownership. He is one of the many foxes put in charge of the regulatory henhouses by Bush's pro-business ideologues. He the LAST person that should be in charge of changing the ownership rules. It is a horrendous conflict of interest, and it shows in his work. And after his boss loses, he will once more go back to work as a lobbyist.
Ya need to know that sub-critical nuclear fuel is never going to produce a mushroom cloud. Producing a runaway nuclear reaction is extremely difficult. You'd require the right isotope of uranium, first. Then you'd need two sub-critial lumps separated enough so the radiation engendered by their proximity wouldn't simply vaporize the engine before a chain reaction could take off. The two-sub-critical masses have to be brought into close proximity quickly, usually by firing the masses into each other with two high-explosive devices; picture a tube with HE on each end, with a uranium "shell" on each charge. You'd fire both shotgun shells down the tube to meet each other. The temperature and the radiation caused by their increasing proximity tries to vaporize the assemblage, but the sheer speed at which they collide enables the neutron levels to increase to a the point where a runaway chain reaction released enough energy to raise the temp to a few million degrees. Boom.
If a nuke Challenger went down, the LH2 used as propellant would ignite with the O2 from the air, and you'd get a big boom. Not as much as the Challenger with it's perfect blend of LOX and LH2, but it'd be pretty big, as booms go. But the reactor would simply fall like a radioactive Geo Metro. No boom. Wrong isotopes, no way to go critical.
"For the Government Officials reading this and wanting a solution to this "problem," I'll save you some time: EMP*. You're welcome."
Already ahead of you by some years. Recording devices need Faraday cages built into the housing. EMP "cannons" are already in use by police cars, I've heard, at least experimentally, to shut down the highly susceptible control systems of modern cars. Along with plasma cannons and pepper spray, bet your ass that EMP generators will be hosing crowds as well before the whacking commences.
Aside: what the hell is going on with our police departments? Policeman to a peaceful demonstrator in NYC at the RNC convention: "YOU'RE the terrorists!"
Who is filling their heads with this Orwellian nonsense?
"but get the hell over it."
No. "Get over it" is the derisive battle cry of bullying thugs everywhere, anytime. No, we won't get over it.
mostly, it's just the greed of the insurance companies who raised rates enormously recently to cover the loss of their investment revenue (huge part of their profits is just investing their swag) when the stock market tanked. bonus points for using the rate increases for profit and shutting down the right to sue. win-win.
of course, when the market rebounds, they won't lower the rates. they'll get the profits back, AND the 'pubs will block people from suing the insurance companies. win-win-BIG win.
Trillions in profit, doctors getting desperate to pay the premiums, and your health care goes to hell slowly. and if you ever really get hosed by a bad procedure, you are shit out of luck. die, peasant.
At some point in the last three years, the law was repealed. Sometimes fascism really is noticable and should be noted.
Or just put a camera into the iPod. Or combine it all into a phone/camera/audio/video recorder/PC with 802.11XXX, Ethernet, and Firewire capabilities and be done with it.
Jobs doesn't want to fracture market lines right now, though. And there is a huge tape/camcorder industry that, although it knows the future will be hard drive cartriges rather than tape, won't appreciate Apple jumping the gun before they can phase out their old factory lines and recoup their investment.
Also, there is the good ol' we're-being-robbed! "IP industry" of the MPAA and its brethren who are terrified that the video iPod will rear up soon. Don't forget, a unit that can record a video feed from a camera could also record it from any other video source... the entire DVD industry is at stake. The DVD's make more money for the MPAA members than the theaters do.
Seriously. It is.
This is why Microsoft was so eager to get X-Boxes into every home they could, regardless of the loss. Games? Pfah. They had the Media Center coming, and the X-Box was the way to get it into houses without having to sell PC's.
Microsoft's strategy for survival is clear and it is all-encompassing. Screw the OS; they want a piece of the DRM-sweet pie for every song, every film clip, every TV program, every movie played in the world on a digital box. Even if Linux eventually supplants Windows in some fashion, they will own the DRM of media files. They've been moving behind the scenes for years now, arm-twisting the music/movie/cable people into adopting MS DRM. It's in Longhorn, sure, but they aren't just settling for that. Longhorn is just a piece that fits into all the other pieces to come.
Yup. They just beat the protestors half to death. Only one was killed, tho.
Always with the sun. What did the sun ever do to you?
Seriously, a solar or even a high earth orbit is fine for storing waste indefintely. Don't need to waste delta vee directing it into a star. Stuff is heavy.
People have been starving for thirty years. Asia, Africa, South America, low on food, cutting down forests, killing off species, enduring droughts and the wars that they spawn. It's getting worse, and is not anywhere as bad as it will be. The population is still doubling about every thirty years. The problem is that it's doubling where they can't support the growth.
It's just raining hot dogs where you live. The starvation and war is not being covered in the U.S. And it's only been thirty years. The worst is coming.
LIQUID CO2 would be in tanks. It's very, very cold -100 F or so (not checking), and requires an insulated storage tank. Sort of the way we store and transport methane.
And Google, equal time, the relationship between Bush's grandpappy and the Nazi's. The Bush family made lots of buckage off the 3rd, just as a lot of other very wealthy U.S. citizens did. The U.S.'s financial wizards were not necessarily anti-Nazi. As a matter of reality, they were anti-communists to a psychotic degree; Hitler was a commie-crusher and well thought of for that. He also revived the German economy and provided opportunity for U.S. investment profit.
Singling out the Kennedy's for making cash from the Reich is historically true in a sense but incomplete. The Kennedy's have a lot of right-wing enemies, and this truth is essentially a smear because all the OTHER people who profited off the Nazi's, most certainly including the Bush dynasty, are studiously never remembered.
You'd have to be locked in a room pumped full enough of CO2 that there wouldn't be enough O2 in the mix to respirate. You could be killed by HELIUM in that manner!
CO2 mixes pretty quickly with other gases. And we could design chimneys at the CO2 storage farms to vent any leakage 500 feet into the sky, where it would mix completely and harmlessly with the surrounding air long before it could conceivably hurt a sparrow.
Also, isn't the CO2 in the bloodstream is caused by respiration, NOT external sources of CO2. The high concentration is caused by a buildup in the bloodstream caused by a lack of O2 in the air mix, not by an injection of CO2 into the mix. The high toxicity is caused by the massive amount created by the body, which lacks O2. I don't think a room with a couple percentage more C02 than normal will cause your repiratory system to create more CO2. A lack of O2 will cause that. I think you'd have to suck on an CO2 pipe to die from lack of O2.
Bullshit warning on the bullshit warning.
Plutonium is extremely toxic. A grain of it in your bloodstream will eventually kill you by ionizing your tissues to the point where you die. It's called radiation poisoning.
I recall that the only treatment for radiation poisoning (from PL) during the Manhattan project was immediate high amputation, if possible. And the body of the dead bastard has to be sealed in lead, because IT was now dangerous.
Pounds of plutonium, rendered into a powdered form and allowed to disperse would render large parts of the earth downwind dangerous to live near for centuries. It's a bloody weapon. Heinlein's first story of a nuclear weapon was about AEROSOL delivery of this stuff; he didn't think the Bomb was scary enough.
Actually, I think they did find it leaking on the surface.