>I don't mean to belittle NASA's achievements, but to simply >say "The US won the space race" is disingenuous.
Well, come on now. We did it with a free society and a decent respect for life. And you have to admit, our stuff worked better (at least back then...).
The Soviets built freakin Titanium submarines too. Could go deeper (reportedly) than any of ours. That's more of a testament to a completely government-owned economy that didn't have to worry about cost and democratic politics than to fine engineering.
The principal mutation, found among Nilo-Saharan-speaking ethnic groups of Kenya and Tanzania, arose 2,700 to 6,800 years ago, according to genetic estimates
There is another where we go out there and we take the galaxy. We eliminate what is currently a single point of failure - we build those ships and we spend thousands of years sleepwalking our way to entirely new planets. Ten million years later the whole galaxy is ours. Every planet has a different kind of human on it with a different set of eyes.
Literally, in the case of one sad person I know all too closely (a relative).
Look, there may or may not have been impropriety in the way the current tax monster was created, but it's too late now. Pare it back or change it with new legislation, but "tax protesting" is just going to land you in jail or worse (after a couple years of bureaucratic slowness during which you'll exclaim "it's working! They haven't taken me away!")
>And driven with few passengers? Do you think people buy minivans >for the looks? Our minivan rarely goes anywhere with less than >four people. That's why we got a minivan.
Uh oh... you're talking reason. That won't go over well here;)
Yep, we get minivans for a reason. Of course, most of the enviro crowd doesn't *like* that reason - the model of vehicle you drive isn't all that they want to control, rest assured. Family size is also something that they feel like they should be in charge of.
>In this case, America is sexually repressed. That is why >sex appeal can sell practically anything, and why an >unclothed breast gets all the Normals so excited.
I've been poring over some musty old documents, and it looks like folks as un-American as the ancient Israelites:
1. Covered their breasts (women). 2. Found breasts erotic (men).
BTW, Solomon had lots of wives, and therefore saw lots of breasts. Yet judging from Song of Songs, he still found them exciting...
Therefore, I conclude that this periodic anti-US diatribe on/. is tad lacking in perspective.
>Contrast this situation to Europe, in which sensual >breast exposures are ubiquitous and so European men >get no thrill out of getting the same from their mates.
I must say, that's a clever scam they have going there, getting their women to believe this;) "Oh, go ahead, hang 'em out in public, no big deal, won't get us excited at all..."
>I can't help but to wonder if this is a >"things-in-the-old-days-were-better" issue
Depends on how you look at it, I guess. For what I want in a cell phone, things actually were better in the old days (OK, not battery life, but most things).
You may have different preferences, and that's fine. I do think that there's enough of us grumpy old guys that there would be a market for larger, simpler, cheaper phones that just make calls.
But I want my 1997 cellphone back. The earpiece was actually at my ear, and the mouthpiece was actually at my mouth, more or less. It had buttons that a full grown man could actually press one at a time. It made calls. It worked if you dropped it.
So given the technology and network improvements, I should be able to get the same thing now with a free phone and $5/mo service with free airtime, right? {cricket chirp... cricket chirp...}
>Comcast's TV techs kept disconnecting her because their records >didn't show her as a TV customer, their internet service techs >kept reconnecting her. Eventually they attempted to prosecute her >for theft of cable TV service.
Had to laugh... we got this to a lesser degree when we had just Comcast internet but not TV.
A tech knocked on the door, "want to subscribe to TV"? My wife says no thanks. Little while later, he comes back, knocks on the door, "want to subscribe to TV"? Um, still no, WTH? He admitted he threw some kind of TV filter on the line; they were sure that we were stealing TV, and so would be all ready to sign up on the spot if they cut us off.
Not long after they just jacked up the Internet price to just $10 less than internet+TV - now surely we would want TV for $10, right? So we dropped them altogether and got DSL...
It seems like it might be. You extract energy from differentials. Heat has a nasty tendency to equalize, spread out, come at you from all directions. It's actually not all that easy, and tends to be very lossy, to extract energy mechanically from heat differentials. And electricity usage itself generates heat.
Something just sounds fishy about this; like a scheme to power your car with it's own exhaust.
But what do I know? I'd love to be proved wrong on this:)
Because it's not. Unless it's a password field (which is parsable from the HTML, which is why you see asterisks instead of characters), how the heck are they supposed to know which fields you want autocompleted, and which you don't? What about your checking account number?
It is also an interesting commentary on our society today. At the time, nobody saw this as homo-eroticism, guys were allowed to be friends and be close without being considered gay.
Interesting indeed.
In the "bad" old days, the taboo against male-male sexual relations made a safe space for male-male close friendship.
It was precisely because it was unthinkable that there be a sexual dimension to it that it was OK to show affection to a male friend.
So it's actually the newfangled "enlightened" attitudes that have led to "homophobia", by introducing so much ambiguity.
>The other posters who have pointed out that politeness is a key >to safe driving without signs are on the money too - and American's >are not noted for their politeness in general.
I guess if you only visit our enlightened teeming population centers, you might think that. Out here in Jesus-land, folks are right friendly;)
>The real solution to Middle East problem would be one >democratic state on the Palestine territory (that of >course, includes "Israel") with right of return for >all displaced persons.
Dude, that's just a fantasy. Every other middle-eastern state is a whacko dictatorship. You know darn well what would happen: mass slaughter of Jews. But apparently you don't care.
By the way, Israel is a democratic state; the only one in the region. Arabs can vote and hold office.
I worked on a state child support system project that was regularly denounced in the media as a "disaster".
I'm not going to go into all the details here, but most of the stories were just bunk. The users, who had despised the old system when it was rolled out, suddenly loved it and hated the new system. So they went to the media with their complaints. Nobody wanted to hear actual *reasons* for anything.
Ever since I take any story like this with a HUGE grain of salt.
Education is important, people know this and will pay anything they can muster to get the best education for their children. Companies know this. If you leave education to the forces of the free market, prices of education will just rise ad infinitum, as their is not a point that parents will say 'this education thing is too expensive, little Joe doesn't need any'.
This isn't borne out by experience. Private education is generally less expensive than public education. And even more essential products like food don't work the way you say (unless their markets are highly regulated/manipulated, like milk or sugar, but even those remain relatively affordable). But the more you subsidize education, the more expensive it gets.
Same basically as the American healthcare system... there's isn't a point where people say 'curing this cancer is too expensive, forget it'. So what are you left with? The most expensive system in the world with the least actual care and the highest number of uninsured citizens for any first world country.
Why don't you contact a health insurance company and ask them how "unregulated" they are... again, you're picking one of the most highly regulated (i.e. government-run) sectors, and working against your own argument.
>Rickover sounds like a complete asshole. I seriously doubt if any of the bullshit >he pulled during recruitment interviews ever enabled him to recruit smarter or >better personnel.
Well, you're wrong. I experienced the program he created (long after he personally was not there), and it worked.
He created the Navy's nuclear program basically from scratch. He decided it had to be done *right* - we couldn't just have all this egalitarian time serving mediocrity form and run the thing. A *combination* of good engineering and safety systems AND *smart, motivated people* who HAD to do EVERYTHING right was the philosophy he instilled (and still was, in the 80s and 90s when I experienced) it.
He took on this task in a Western culture that was already turning to mush, schools that were already starting to turn out I'm OK -You're OK fools, and a postwar military that was already going slack and being turned into just another massive government program. What he accomplished is nothing short of amazing.
>Really, it doesn't matter what the odds are, so long >as they are nonzero. If you roll the dice enough times >it doesn't matter. Everything that can happen eventually >will happen.
The problem with that is that another way of saying the *exact same thing* is:
"If I just postulate enough time, I can claim that otherwise unacceptably improbable events are a slam dunk to have occured."
Re:Check out the Works of Jonathan Edwards Online
on
Charles Darwin Online
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
>These sorts of activities panda to only a small
...
>clique in any organisation.
Like, say, zoo fans
>I don't mean to belittle NASA's achievements, but to simply
...).
>say "The US won the space race" is disingenuous.
Well, come on now. We did it with a free society and a decent
respect for life. And you have to admit, our stuff worked better
(at least back then
The Soviets built freakin Titanium submarines too. Could go
deeper (reportedly) than any of ours. That's more of a testament
to a completely government-owned economy that didn't have to worry
about cost and democratic politics than to fine engineering.
So, 6801 years ago is right out ...
>Testable doesn't mean you can recreate it- it means
...
>it makes some predictions about how the world is now
>that can be tested.
Great! Then I can *scientifically prove* that OJ is innocent.
My theory (which involves LAPD officers driving around with
spare vials of OJ blood) explains all the observations
There is another where we go out there and we take the galaxy. We eliminate what is currently a single point of failure - we build those ships and we spend thousands of years sleepwalking our way to entirely new planets. Ten million years later the whole galaxy is ours. Every planet has a different kind of human on it with a different set of eyes.
Weston? Is that you?
>Same goes for VB. You make something that works the way
:)
>you expect, then you make it work in a real language.
Or, if it actually works, you could just, like, use it
Literally, in the case of one sad person I know all too closely (a relative).
Look, there may or may not have been impropriety in the way the current tax monster was created, but it's too late now. Pare it back or change it with new legislation, but "tax protesting" is just going to land you in jail or worse (after a couple years of bureaucratic slowness during which you'll exclaim "it's working! They haven't taken me away!")
>Take away the massive tax concessions that make these vehicles
...
>economical
What on earth does that even mean? Do you really think of taxing
something less as being a *gift*?
Maybe we should provide the *same* "tax concessions" on *all other*
vehicles, if you think it's such an important factor
>And driven with few passengers? Do you think people buy minivans
... you're talking reason. That won't go over well here ;)
>for the looks? Our minivan rarely goes anywhere with less than
>four people. That's why we got a minivan.
Uh oh
Yep, we get minivans for a reason. Of course, most of the
enviro crowd doesn't *like* that reason - the model of vehicle you
drive isn't all that they want to control, rest assured. Family
size is also something that they feel like they should be in
charge of.
>In this case, America is sexually repressed. That is why
...
/. is tad lacking in perspective.
;) "Oh, go ahead, hang 'em out in public, no big deal, won't get us excited at all ..."
>sex appeal can sell practically anything, and why an
>unclothed breast gets all the Normals so excited.
I've been poring over some musty old documents, and it looks like folks as un-American as the ancient Israelites:
1. Covered their breasts (women).
2. Found breasts erotic (men).
BTW, Solomon had lots of wives, and therefore saw lots of breasts. Yet judging from Song of Songs, he still found them exciting
Therefore, I conclude that this periodic anti-US diatribe on
>Contrast this situation to Europe, in which sensual
>breast exposures are ubiquitous and so European men
>get no thrill out of getting the same from their mates.
I must say, that's a clever scam they have going there, getting their women to believe this
>I can't help but to wonder if this is a
>"things-in-the-old-days-were-better" issue
Depends on how you look at it, I guess. For what I want in a cell phone, things actually were better in the old days (OK, not battery life, but most things).
You may have different preferences, and that's fine. I do think that there's enough of us grumpy old guys that there would be a market for larger, simpler, cheaper phones that just make calls.
But I want my 1997 cellphone back. The earpiece was actually at my ear, and the mouthpiece was actually at my mouth, more or less. It had buttons that a full grown man could actually press one at a time. It made calls. It worked if you dropped it.
... cricket chirp ...}
So given the technology and network improvements, I should be able to get the same thing now with a free phone and $5/mo service with free airtime, right? {cricket chirp
>Comcast's TV techs kept disconnecting her because their records
... we got this to a lesser degree when we had just Comcast internet but not TV.
...
>didn't show her as a TV customer, their internet service techs
>kept reconnecting her. Eventually they attempted to prosecute her
>for theft of cable TV service.
Had to laugh
A tech knocked on the door, "want to subscribe to TV"? My wife says no thanks. Little while later, he comes back, knocks on the door, "want to subscribe to TV"? Um, still no, WTH? He admitted he threw some kind of TV filter on the line; they were sure that we were stealing TV, and so would be all ready to sign up on the spot if they cut us off.
Not long after they just jacked up the Internet price to just $10 less than internet+TV - now surely we would want TV for $10, right? So we dropped them altogether and got DSL
>The notion of using heat is so different?
:)
It seems like it might be. You extract energy from differentials. Heat has a nasty tendency to equalize, spread out, come at you from all directions. It's actually not all that easy, and tends to be very lossy, to extract energy mechanically from heat differentials. And electricity usage itself generates heat.
Something just sounds fishy about this; like a scheme to power your car with it's own exhaust.
But what do I know? I'd love to be proved wrong on this
>They refuse to fix it, they say it's not a bug.
Because it's not. Unless it's a password field (which is parsable from the HTML, which is why you see asterisks instead of characters), how the heck are they supposed to know which fields you want autocompleted, and which you don't? What about your checking account number?
It is also an interesting commentary on our society today. At the time, nobody saw this as homo-eroticism, guys were allowed to be friends and be close without being considered gay.
Interesting indeed.
In the "bad" old days, the taboo against male-male sexual relations made a safe space for male-male close friendship.
It was precisely because it was unthinkable that there be a sexual dimension to it that it was OK to show affection to a male friend.
So it's actually the newfangled "enlightened" attitudes that have led to "homophobia", by introducing so much ambiguity.
>The other posters who have pointed out that politeness is a key
;)
>to safe driving without signs are on the money too - and American's
>are not noted for their politeness in general.
I guess if you only visit our enlightened teeming population centers, you might think that. Out here in Jesus-land, folks are right friendly
>The real solution to Middle East problem would be one
>democratic state on the Palestine territory (that of
>course, includes "Israel") with right of return for
>all displaced persons.
Dude, that's just a fantasy. Every other middle-eastern
state is a whacko dictatorship. You know darn well what
would happen: mass slaughter of Jews. But apparently you
don't care.
By the way, Israel is a democratic state; the only one in
the region. Arabs can vote and hold office.
I worked on a state child support system project that was regularly denounced in the media as a "disaster".
I'm not going to go into all the details here, but most of the stories were just bunk. The users, who had despised the old system when it was rolled out, suddenly loved it and hated the new system. So they went to the media with their complaints. Nobody wanted to hear actual *reasons* for anything.
Ever since I take any story like this with a HUGE grain of salt.
Education is important, people know this and will pay anything they can muster to get the best education for their children. Companies know this. If you leave education to the forces of the free market, prices of education will just rise ad infinitum, as their is not a point that parents will say 'this education thing is too expensive, little Joe doesn't need any'.
This isn't borne out by experience. Private education is generally less expensive than public education. And even more essential products like food don't work the way you say (unless their markets are highly regulated/manipulated, like milk or sugar, but even those remain relatively affordable). But the more you subsidize education, the more expensive it gets.
Same basically as the American healthcare system ... there's isn't a point where people say 'curing this cancer is too expensive, forget it'. So what are you left with? The most expensive system in the world with the least actual care and the highest number of uninsured citizens for any first world country.
Why don't you contact a health insurance company and ask them how "unregulated" they are ... again, you're picking one of the most highly regulated (i.e. government-run) sectors, and working against your own argument.
Mentioning youtube makes the contents of the DNC daily fax a technology story?
>can you imagine the actual number of votes cast?
;)
By dead people in Chicago? And folks, er, without all their papers in order?
Yes, I can!
>Rickover sounds like a complete asshole. I seriously doubt if any of the bullshit
>he pulled during recruitment interviews ever enabled him to recruit smarter or
>better personnel.
Well, you're wrong. I experienced the program he created (long after he personally was not there), and it worked.
He created the Navy's nuclear program basically from scratch. He decided it had to be done *right* - we couldn't just have all this egalitarian time serving mediocrity form and run the thing. A *combination* of good engineering and safety systems AND *smart, motivated people* who HAD to do EVERYTHING right was the philosophy he instilled (and still was, in the 80s and 90s when I experienced) it.
He took on this task in a Western culture that was already turning to mush, schools that were already starting to turn out I'm OK -You're OK fools, and a postwar military that was already going slack and being turned into just another massive government program. What he accomplished is nothing short of amazing.
>Really, it doesn't matter what the odds are, so long
>as they are nonzero. If you roll the dice enough times
>it doesn't matter. Everything that can happen eventually
>will happen.
The problem with that is that another way of saying the *exact
same thing* is:
"If I just postulate enough time, I can claim that otherwise
unacceptably improbable events are a slam dunk to have occured."
>The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale has just launched the public
;) )
>beta of The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online.
Dude, I was literally just coming in to post this! (OK, with just a bit of unrighteous desire to tweak Darwin fans
This is excellent, especially as most publications of his work of any size are *extremely* pricey. Thanks!