Look, I don't care about whatever point you're trying to make. I'm sure you feel very strongly about it, too, but could you please try to be less of an asshole when making your points?
Rhetoric used to be an art form. How sad that the educated are not now taught to express themselves.
If I may weigh in on the topic of your discussion, I would say that both of you need further proofs: neither having lived in a country, nor having a degree are sufficient evidence of much of anything. Since the matter being discussed is mostly a matter of historical fact, you should probably dig up some economic records of some sort. But I suspect you just want to rant and froth a bit; I'll leave you to it.
Seriously, that was like the Hindenburg. "Oh! The inanity!"
If your mail server tells a different story, now would be the time to prove your allegations. Failing that, I would go back and actually read the post you just responded to.
"Left" and "Right" are fairly vague terms in themselves. I am saying none of those things. If pressed I would say that the issue of nuclear power is not well-suited to discussing in terms of "left" and "right".
The part of my post that you quoted is otherwise complete in itself; I have nothing to add to it.
As an American and a patriot, I say that you should review our history.
Global Warming: to the degree that humans are responsible for it, the U.S. takes the lion's share.
Death: we sell it wholesale. Don't even start.
War: we've been in more wars than you've ever heard of.
Genocide: the U.S. campaign to eliminate the Native Americans was at least the equal of Hitler's genocidal efforts.
Poverty, disease, and famine are frequently natural, but where they are not, generally we find the U.S. as a proximate or ultimate cause.
That's not to say that all Americans are bad, or that everything Americans do is bad, but we have been one of the most dangerous and destructive peoples the world has ever seen.
As a "leftist", I humbly submit that your use of the term is in error. Quite obviously you're using it as nothing more than a slur, and it is possible that you do not know what it actually signifies. A motivation against nuclear power is not particularly leftist, and neither is a distaste for rationality. The term you may be looking for is Democratic, referring to the U.S. political party. Being more accurate in your statements will help you avoid looking foolish.
Your overbroad generalizations are hardly indicative of a well-reasoned position. Take care that you do not resort to irrational statements and beliefs in your noble quest to rid the world of irrationality.
If there's any part of my post that you do not understand, I'd be happy to clarify matters.
Anchorage is a bad example, but it's not really too far off during the winter months. Juneau is much closer, but you could also compare Valdez, Whittier, Cordova, possibly Kodiak, or any other town in Southeast/Southcentral Alaska.
Also compare any town of equal latitude in Canada, to demonstrate the warming effect of the Pacific current. Whitehorse, in the Yukon, is more northerly, but I can't think of any other settlement of note in that area.
I'll thank you kindly to form your links correctly in the future.
Clearly this is going to escalate: tonight McCain will start killing off all his surviving relatives (his 60-year-old great-grandchildren, one presumes).
Afterward Obama will have to retaliate by killing random people in the street, because his terrorist pals are too well armed to go after.
Where will this madness end? Will somebody think to barbecue the children?!
I'm hoping that both candidates will go for the ultimate in sympathy-vote tactics: killing themselves!
Free speech. In this case, it's also the law of the land. I don't intend any offense by saying so, but your question does not make very much sense to me. Perhaps you could clarify it somewhat.
Anonymous web sites. I presume you mean 'private' instead of 'anonymous'. I'm trying to imagine that, and it just sounds stupid.
The Web is about the most massively public medium in existence. There are ways to have private content on it, but I can't imagine a circumstance where the content was intended to be exclusively private--why host it on the Web at all?
It is a greenhouse gas. Assuming that the planet is in equilibrium, it will be warmer with higher levels of CO2. It is a physical property of the gas, not dependent on observed temperature or dubious data. The planet is not in equilibrium right now, and one of the big questions is whether that equilibrium, when it is reached, will be an acceptable environment for humans and other species to inhabit. So far, the signs point to the answer being negative. Liek alot.
So if we ignore reality, there's no reason to worry about anything!
"The only way known to science how to generate such radiation is by electrical means."
False. In fact, the mechanism for doing so by gravitational means is what is described in this fine article.
"Again, the only way we know of to generate a magnetic field is by the movement of electrical charges."
Non sequitur. Are you suggesting that it is magnetism that keeps the planets in their orbits? They don't seem to be particularly perturbed by this insistence of yours that electricity be factored into this equation.
"In most currently accepted mainstream cosmological interpretations, the electrical force is largely ignored."
Only when it is not necessary. The principle of parsimony indicates that we should exclude other factors when they are not necessary or sufficient to explain observations.
Black holes were not actually proposed to explain observations. They were first theorized a century before Relativity, and should not be terribly difficult to understand. It is observed that light is affected by gravity--this is indisputable. It is not outrageous to consider that an object may be massive enough so that light cannot escape it. Relativity at this point is one of the most well-tested theories in the history of science; it does not completely describe black holes, but it is sufficient to show that if an object is massive enough, it will 'absorb' light.
Many people have attempted to disprove Relativity---if and when that happens, we may reconsider whether black holes exist. One would most likely have to assume that light is not affected by gravity in order to postulate the non-existence of black holes; I presume you have an alternate mechanism for gravitational lensing handy.
"The most common form of matter in the universe is not gas, liquid or solid such as we are familiar with, but a highly charged, electrically active plasma..."
You keep linking these factoids together as if they mean something. Perhaps you are just a great genius, to see these things where wise and learned men have not. Also, what you are describing aids rather than contradicts the idea that the large-scale universe is electrically neutral, the same way that plasma is. Additionally, the magnetic fields from this ubiquitous plasma are have been determined. In the case of the intergalactic medium, for example, this is about 10^-12 T. That's one hell of a substitute for Relativity there. I can see why you're excited.
"...gravity is actually the least understood, whereas we know and experience the electrical interaction every day."
I for one experience gravity on a daily basis...unless that's just magnetic forces in action? Right, because people in Faraday cages are weightless. Gotcha.
In short, non sequiturs won't cut it. Stop this handwaving and prove your statements. Start with disproving relativity, then explaining why the plasmas we measure are not of sufficient strength to explain any phenomenae explained by relativity (and do so without postulating exotic forms of matter). Hopefully this will also explain what we observe as gravitational lensing, which will dispel this idea that we can measure the masses of anything, which will discredit the observational evidence for black holes, and then you can work out the mechanism for particle acceleration (as observed). From then on, solving the mystery of dark matter and attaining the Lucasian Professorship should be a piece of cake.
Unless that damn global conspiracy of scientists gets in the way, I suppose. Parsimony and observations---they're a bitch, I tell you...
Florida mattered because of the way that elections are determined in the United States; we have an electoral system for reasons that are somewhat disputed. Electoral votes are not directly related to population of a state, thus a candidate can win the election if he wins enough of the right states even if he does not actually capture a majority of the popular vote. This is what happened in 2000. Gore won the popular vote, but failed to win the majority of the electoral votes. The way that things turned out meant that whoever won Florida, won the election, and the vote was extremely close in Florida. It was close enough that there was not a clear winner, and thus a recount was initiated in accordance with state law.
In accordance with Florida law, this put the deciding vote as to who would determine the Presidency in the hands of one Katherine Harris, who had been appointed to the position of Florida Secretary of State by Jeb Bush, (Florida governor, Bush's brother), and had been appointed George Bush's campaign manager in Florida by George Bush. She was granted fairly broad powers in her role as Secretary of State, which she basically used to rig the election, determining that Bush had won the election. At this point, a lawsuit was filed which reached the Supreme Court in record time. The Supreme Court halted the recount, on the grounds that having a democracy was unfair to G. Bush. You'll note my editorial opinion there, but I am outraged to this day that our President of the last eight years was installed not by vote, but by corruption and judicial fiat. Is it any wonder that the usurper ruled unjustly?
Bad licensing and/or evidence of a problem with the patent system, possibly. Digital Rights Management, it is not. Sorry, you'll have to save that link for a relevant discussion.
I am living in a very small, very isolated town where the hospital is just now switching to a computerized system. The concerns you mention about hospitals also occurred to me, and I asked a few questions, being wary of any proprietary solution. It's extremely critical here that the system be as failproof as possible; there is no other option for medical treatment save being medevac'd a couple hundred miles.
I have been informed that, among the software choices they are looking at, while the software is proprietary, the data formats used are not. None of these pieces of software have anything resembling DRM; obviously not having access to their medical records would be a big problem in any number of ways, both for the vendor and the hospital. Can you imagine the resulting lawsuits? Also, you're not going to die in the waiting room; there are things called emergency rooms where, if you have a life-threatening condition, they will treat you enough to stabilize you.
In other words, DRM will not actually kill you. It's a Bad Thing, but it means -at most- you will not have access to your data. We get enough FUD from the RIAA without this sort of...uninformed hyperbole.
Insults in this case are a concise conveyance of my contempt for you and your ideas, and especially your arguments, which are both puerile and insipid.
Patriotism is not an antonym for evil, and as for George Washington, he quite clearly committed treason, and would have met the noose if he had not been successful. It's easy to dispel the notion that there was any moral element to A. Lincoln's Emancipation besides preserving the Union. However, I don't seem to recall making any argument otherwise. In fact, I wonder what it is that you read of my post, for you seem to be contradicting me by method of agreement. Review my history, you say? Review my post, sir!
The first step in discouraging corruption would be to draft a government with an emphasis on rule of law and a well-thought-out system of checks and balances of powers.
The second step is to ensure that the would-be rulers respect that document.
The third step is to educate the people, so that they may keep true to the values of good governance, act to preserve liberty by breath and by blood, and at extreme need depose the corrupt and reestablish those values.
Your pointing out the flaws and corruption in the system is not something that absolves you from responsibility in these matters. If you recognize the need for government as you say you do, then to say that it is corrupt is to shoulder a heavy burden---either of a noble but thankless cause, or one of cowardice. I challenge you, sir, to be a man, to have the courage of your convictions, and respect enough for the land and its citizens, to right the wrongs of this nation as you see them.
To 'secure the blessings of liberty' is a Sisyphean task, by all accounts. Yet we must strive to achieve it, or be damned as cowards, hypocrites, and fools, not least in our own eyes. I implore you to act, to seek redress for these outrages against morality. If you take up the banner of freedom, you shall not find yourself standing alone.
We the English-speaking world have no second person plural pronoun anymore. "Thou" used to be singular and "You" used to be plural. The American South is simply trying to fill in a gap in the language. It may be indicative that the person is an ignorant hick (though I hope not) but it is equivalent to the much more common 'you guys'.
You are off-topic, and you sound more like a disillusioned imbicile than an anarchist. Nevertheless, you should read Plato so you can quote him on this subject and spare us your own ramblings.
You're stuck at stage one, realizing that all governments are corrupt or tend towards corruption. Stage two is growing up, discarding the label of 'anarchist' in favor of 'patriot' and doing what you can to amend matters, whether that be with sword, pen or ballot.
Yes, but contrast this with any oppressive regime, including Nazi Germany and the actions of the United States during any of its wars. There are no natural, inherent limits to human depravity, especially in a military scenario where your job is to do whatever someone orders you to do. Any individual can always justify a crime by saying they were 'ordered to do it'.
I think that many citizens should have assault weapons, so that at final need the government can be overthrown.
I'd like to disband the National Guard if not the regular army, and replace it with a well-trained local militia.
This would discourage the 'culture of fear' from spreading, probably enhance security, possibly lower crime rates, and hopefully get citizens actively involved in the defense of their liberties.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, I don't care about whatever point you're trying to make. I'm sure you feel very strongly about it, too, but could you please try to be less of an asshole when making your points?
Rhetoric used to be an art form. How sad that the educated are not now taught to express themselves.
If I may weigh in on the topic of your discussion, I would say that both of you need further proofs: neither having lived in a country, nor having a degree are sufficient evidence of much of anything. Since the matter being discussed is mostly a matter of historical fact, you should probably dig up some economic records of some sort. But I suspect you just want to rant and froth a bit; I'll leave you to it.
Fail.
Seriously, that was like the Hindenburg. "Oh! The inanity!"
If your mail server tells a different story, now would be the time to prove your allegations. Failing that, I would go back and actually read the post you just responded to.
I've heard that one before.
Trying to incite fear by linking a terrorist group to a possible source for WMD's, with the implication that the war in Iraq is necessary.
It's a good troll, but rather 2003, don't you think?
"Left" and "Right" are fairly vague terms in themselves. I am saying none of those things. If pressed I would say that the issue of nuclear power is not well-suited to discussing in terms of "left" and "right".
The part of my post that you quoted is otherwise complete in itself; I have nothing to add to it.
Sorry you got modded off-topic, it seems undeserved. Some mod must have disagreed with you. I metamodded this comment positively.
If you want to talk about particle physics and how it might affect the planet, don't talk about Hawking Radiation. You will look foolish.
As an American and a patriot, I say that you should review our history.
Global Warming: to the degree that humans are responsible for it, the U.S. takes the lion's share.
Death: we sell it wholesale. Don't even start.
War: we've been in more wars than you've ever heard of.
Genocide: the U.S. campaign to eliminate the Native Americans was at least the equal of Hitler's genocidal efforts.
Poverty, disease, and famine are frequently natural, but where they are not, generally we find the U.S. as a proximate or ultimate cause.
That's not to say that all Americans are bad, or that everything Americans do is bad, but we have been one of the most dangerous and destructive peoples the world has ever seen.
As a "leftist", I humbly submit that your use of the term is in error. Quite obviously you're using it as nothing more than a slur, and it is possible that you do not know what it actually signifies. A motivation against nuclear power is not particularly leftist, and neither is a distaste for rationality. The term you may be looking for is Democratic, referring to the U.S. political party. Being more accurate in your statements will help you avoid looking foolish.
Your overbroad generalizations are hardly indicative of a well-reasoned position. Take care that you do not resort to irrational statements and beliefs in your noble quest to rid the world of irrationality.
If there's any part of my post that you do not understand, I'd be happy to clarify matters.
Anchorage is a bad example, but it's not really too far off during the winter months. Juneau is much closer, but you could also compare Valdez, Whittier, Cordova, possibly Kodiak, or any other town in Southeast/Southcentral Alaska.
Also compare any town of equal latitude in Canada, to demonstrate the warming effect of the Pacific current. Whitehorse, in the Yukon, is more northerly, but I can't think of any other settlement of note in that area.
I'll thank you kindly to form your links correctly in the future.
Troll or not, that's pretty funny.
Clearly this is going to escalate: tonight McCain will start killing off all his surviving relatives (his 60-year-old great-grandchildren, one presumes).
Afterward Obama will have to retaliate by killing random people in the street, because his terrorist pals are too well armed to go after.
Where will this madness end? Will somebody think to barbecue the children?!
I'm hoping that both candidates will go for the ultimate in sympathy-vote tactics: killing themselves!
Maybe these new particles are all moving at nearly c?
You're right, probably the dark matter implications won't hold up.
Free speech. In this case, it's also the law of the land. I don't intend any offense by saying so, but your question does not make very much sense to me. Perhaps you could clarify it somewhat.
My apologies, then. I shall strive to read more carefully in the future.
Anonymous web sites. I presume you mean 'private' instead of 'anonymous'. I'm trying to imagine that, and it just sounds stupid.
The Web is about the most massively public medium in existence. There are ways to have private content on it, but I can't imagine a circumstance where the content was intended to be exclusively private--why host it on the Web at all?
It is a greenhouse gas. Assuming that the planet is in equilibrium, it will be warmer with higher levels of CO2. It is a physical property of the gas, not dependent on observed temperature or dubious data. The planet is not in equilibrium right now, and one of the big questions is whether that equilibrium, when it is reached, will be an acceptable environment for humans and other species to inhabit. So far, the signs point to the answer being negative. Liek alot.
So if we ignore reality, there's no reason to worry about anything!
IANAP
"The only way known to science how to generate such radiation is by electrical means."
False. In fact, the mechanism for doing so by gravitational means is what is described in this fine article.
"Again, the only way we know of to generate a magnetic field is by the movement of electrical charges."
Non sequitur. Are you suggesting that it is magnetism that keeps the planets in their orbits? They don't seem to be particularly perturbed by this insistence of yours that electricity be factored into this equation.
"In most currently accepted mainstream cosmological interpretations, the electrical force is largely ignored."
Only when it is not necessary. The principle of parsimony indicates that we should exclude other factors when they are not necessary or sufficient to explain observations.
Black holes were not actually proposed to explain observations. They were first theorized a century before Relativity, and should not be terribly difficult to understand. It is observed that light is affected by gravity--this is indisputable. It is not outrageous to consider that an object may be massive enough so that light cannot escape it. Relativity at this point is one of the most well-tested theories in the history of science; it does not completely describe black holes, but it is sufficient to show that if an object is massive enough, it will 'absorb' light.
Many people have attempted to disprove Relativity---if and when that happens, we may reconsider whether black holes exist. One would most likely have to assume that light is not affected by gravity in order to postulate the non-existence of black holes; I presume you have an alternate mechanism for gravitational lensing handy.
"The most common form of matter in the universe is not gas, liquid or solid such as we are familiar with, but a highly charged, electrically active plasma..."
You keep linking these factoids together as if they mean something. Perhaps you are just a great genius, to see these things where wise and learned men have not. Also, what you are describing aids rather than contradicts the idea that the large-scale universe is electrically neutral, the same way that plasma is. Additionally, the magnetic fields from this ubiquitous plasma are have been determined. In the case of the intergalactic medium, for example, this is about 10^-12 T. That's one hell of a substitute for Relativity there. I can see why you're excited.
"...gravity is actually the least understood, whereas we know and experience the electrical interaction every day."
I for one experience gravity on a daily basis...unless that's just magnetic forces in action? Right, because people in Faraday cages are weightless. Gotcha.
In short, non sequiturs won't cut it. Stop this handwaving and prove your statements. Start with disproving relativity, then explaining why the plasmas we measure are not of sufficient strength to explain any phenomenae explained by relativity (and do so without postulating exotic forms of matter). Hopefully this will also explain what we observe as gravitational lensing, which will dispel this idea that we can measure the masses of anything, which will discredit the observational evidence for black holes, and then you can work out the mechanism for particle acceleration (as observed). From then on, solving the mystery of dark matter and attaining the Lucasian Professorship should be a piece of cake.
Unless that damn global conspiracy of scientists gets in the way, I suppose. Parsimony and observations---they're a bitch, I tell you...
And your alternate explanation is...?
Florida mattered because of the way that elections are determined in the United States; we have an electoral system for reasons that are somewhat disputed. Electoral votes are not directly related to population of a state, thus a candidate can win the election if he wins enough of the right states even if he does not actually capture a majority of the popular vote. This is what happened in 2000. Gore won the popular vote, but failed to win the majority of the electoral votes. The way that things turned out meant that whoever won Florida, won the election, and the vote was extremely close in Florida. It was close enough that there was not a clear winner, and thus a recount was initiated in accordance with state law.
In accordance with Florida law, this put the deciding vote as to who would determine the Presidency in the hands of one Katherine Harris, who had been appointed to the position of Florida Secretary of State by Jeb Bush, (Florida governor, Bush's brother), and had been appointed George Bush's campaign manager in Florida by George Bush. She was granted fairly broad powers in her role as Secretary of State, which she basically used to rig the election, determining that Bush had won the election. At this point, a lawsuit was filed which reached the Supreme Court in record time. The Supreme Court halted the recount, on the grounds that having a democracy was unfair to G. Bush. You'll note my editorial opinion there, but I am outraged to this day that our President of the last eight years was installed not by vote, but by corruption and judicial fiat. Is it any wonder that the usurper ruled unjustly?
Bad licensing and/or evidence of a problem with the patent system, possibly. Digital Rights Management, it is not. Sorry, you'll have to save that link for a relevant discussion.
I am living in a very small, very isolated town where the hospital is just now switching to a computerized system. The concerns you mention about hospitals also occurred to me, and I asked a few questions, being wary of any proprietary solution. It's extremely critical here that the system be as failproof as possible; there is no other option for medical treatment save being medevac'd a couple hundred miles.
I have been informed that, among the software choices they are looking at, while the software is proprietary, the data formats used are not. None of these pieces of software have anything resembling DRM; obviously not having access to their medical records would be a big problem in any number of ways, both for the vendor and the hospital. Can you imagine the resulting lawsuits? Also, you're not going to die in the waiting room; there are things called emergency rooms where, if you have a life-threatening condition, they will treat you enough to stabilize you.
In other words, DRM will not actually kill you. It's a Bad Thing, but it means -at most- you will not have access to your data. We get enough FUD from the RIAA without this sort of...uninformed hyperbole.
Insults in this case are a concise conveyance of my contempt for you and your ideas, and especially your arguments, which are both puerile and insipid.
Patriotism is not an antonym for evil, and as for George Washington, he quite clearly committed treason, and would have met the noose if he had not been successful. It's easy to dispel the notion that there was any moral element to A. Lincoln's Emancipation besides preserving the Union. However, I don't seem to recall making any argument otherwise. In fact, I wonder what it is that you read of my post, for you seem to be contradicting me by method of agreement. Review my history, you say? Review my post, sir!
The first step in discouraging corruption would be to draft a government with an emphasis on rule of law and a well-thought-out system of checks and balances of powers.
The second step is to ensure that the would-be rulers respect that document.
The third step is to educate the people, so that they may keep true to the values of good governance, act to preserve liberty by breath and by blood, and at extreme need depose the corrupt and reestablish those values.
Your pointing out the flaws and corruption in the system is not something that absolves you from responsibility in these matters. If you recognize the need for government as you say you do, then to say that it is corrupt is to shoulder a heavy burden---either of a noble but thankless cause, or one of cowardice. I challenge you, sir, to be a man, to have the courage of your convictions, and respect enough for the land and its citizens, to right the wrongs of this nation as you see them.
To 'secure the blessings of liberty' is a Sisyphean task, by all accounts. Yet we must strive to achieve it, or be damned as cowards, hypocrites, and fools, not least in our own eyes. I implore you to act, to seek redress for these outrages against morality. If you take up the banner of freedom, you shall not find yourself standing alone.
We the English-speaking world have no second person plural pronoun anymore. "Thou" used to be singular and "You" used to be plural. The American South is simply trying to fill in a gap in the language. It may be indicative that the person is an ignorant hick (though I hope not) but it is equivalent to the much more common 'you guys'.
You are off-topic, and you sound more like a disillusioned imbicile than an anarchist. Nevertheless, you should read Plato so you can quote him on this subject and spare us your own ramblings.
You're stuck at stage one, realizing that all governments are corrupt or tend towards corruption. Stage two is growing up, discarding the label of 'anarchist' in favor of 'patriot' and doing what you can to amend matters, whether that be with sword, pen or ballot.
Yes, but contrast this with any oppressive regime, including Nazi Germany and the actions of the United States during any of its wars. There are no natural, inherent limits to human depravity, especially in a military scenario where your job is to do whatever someone orders you to do. Any individual can always justify a crime by saying they were 'ordered to do it'.
I think that many citizens should have assault weapons, so that at final need the government can be overthrown.
I'd like to disband the National Guard if not the regular army, and replace it with a well-trained local militia.
This would discourage the 'culture of fear' from spreading, probably enhance security, possibly lower crime rates, and hopefully get citizens actively involved in the defense of their liberties.