Every time I hear democrats, they make sure the blame lies squarely on BP (and not on themselves). Had the republicans won the presidency, there's no way they could have avoided blame.
Well, given that the Republican party generally touts hands-off, free market approaches to things, why on earth would that surprise you? As a general rule, if you're a Republican, and there's some big business fuck-up, yeah, you're gonna see some of the blame... not because you, personally, are responsible, but because your sociopolitical philosophy often leads to these exact kinds of fuck-ups.
Does that make the Democrats immune from responsibility? No, of course not. But it's not the democrats running around telling everyone that regulations are the cause of all of society's ills, and that the free market is the solution to every problem.
Spread out over the entirety of the Gulf, and primarily lighter hydrocarbons (the heavier stuffs to be filtered out on it's way up from the deposit)... and it's *still* an order of magnitude less than the Deep Water gusher.
There really is absolutely no natural analog for this event.
I mean, if tissue is readily available (something that doesn't surprise me), tissue matches are easy, and rejection is trivially manageable, what *is* the advantage of artificial corneal implants, aside from the "whoa neat" factor?
Honestly, with this first being performed in 1905 and being the single most common transplant surgery done in the world, I expected that in any industrialized nation there was an ample supply of donor tissue.
It's not so much an issue with tissue availability as it is issues with compatibility, rejection, etc. If you can make an equally capable, synthetic cornea, you can do away with all that, and that strikes me as a substantial win (though, at least at the outset, probably not a win on cost).
I mean, I'm assuming this technology was developed for *some* reason.:)
So you'd have your cornea removed and a new one put in?
Well, given the first corneal transplant was done in *1905*, and was one of the first organ transplants ever performed, yes, that's exactly what would happen.
People who use laser eye surgery to correct their vision can only do so a limited number of times. After that, a cornea would need to be replaced. Ideally, a replacement cornea would be able to correct vision without further adjustments.
More importantly, there are a number of diseases related to the cornea that ultimately necessitate a corneal transplant. Technology like this would obviate the need for tissue donation, which is a huge step for people suffering from such illnesses.
Go with the times, will ya? Your ideal of the army's duty has been outdated since WW2. Back then, the US fought their last "real" war. And, lo and behold, they won. Why? Because they fought a war!
Correct.
Today the problem of the US isn't to unleash enough firepower to obliterate their enemies. There's hardly a country or even an alliance on this planet that could defend against the firepower the US can raise. There will never be another D-Day with thousands of US soldiers being mowed down by enemy guns.
The problem for the US today is that it gets increasingly hard to "sell" war at home.
Wrong.
The problem is that, after WW2, the vast majority of US military activity has not involved conventional warfare.
Vietnam, Korea, Iraq II, and Afghanistan are all battles of attrition where a large, monolithic force fought against guerillas. Traditional warfare simply doesn't work in that sort of scenario, and there really is no way to "win" a war like that. Worse, when fighting a guerilla force, it can be arbitrarily hard to differentiate between the opponent and civilians. The result is that it can be very difficult to keep down civilian casualities.
So, you have an enemy with no clearly defined face. That enemy is hard to distinguish from civilians. There's no clear path to victory, nor any definition for when the war is won. Oh, and to top it off, it's really tough for the monolithic force to argue there's an existential threat when the opponent is a guerrilla force, which makes it even more difficult to justify military action in the first place.
Gee, I wonder why the US has had trouble drumming up domestic (or international) support for it's military activities post-WWII...
Yeah, I have to concede that point. It's a little tough to believe that he chose to leak 250k documents because all 250k of them expose government or military abuses...
That's the entire problem, and TBH, I think it's a problem without a solution. The state secret privilege serves a very important role, as I don't think *anyone* could argue that a 100% transparent government is tenable in the face of a concerted enemy.
However, any mechanism by which the state can hide information from enemy eyes can be abused to hide information from domestic eyes, as well, and so a balance must be struck. And, unfortunately, the only way to counterbalance those who would abuse that privilege is to have whistleblowers break the law in order to expose those abuses.
So, is it "his call to make"? I think that depends. What if he exposed systemic abuses of civilians in theatre, or some other distasteful facts that the military was covering up? In that case, I'd say it *is* his call to make, and further, I'd say it's his duty as a citizen to expose that information. OTOH, if all he did was release a bunch of documents outlining military operations, then I say he gets what he deserves.
In the end, it's all about context. And I don't know about you, but I haven't read through those 250,000 documents to determine if any of them are sufficiently egregious to justify his actions.
To be classified as Top Secret, the release of that information must cause imminent, serious harm to the United States and/or its allies and assets.
Though, to be fair, whether or not something is given Top Secret classification is up to the discretion of the President (and possibly others?). I'm willing to bet there are *many* Top Secret documents that are actually intended to cover up distasteful military activity, among other things.
In short, the state secret privilege is very important, but there's a balance that must be met. Unfortunately, unless there's some way to audit the process, there's no way to tell if that privilege is being abused, and so the only thing you can do is rely on whistleblowers, who are breaking the law despite doing what is morally right.
As for this guy? I don't know, I don't know the nature of the documents he released. You may be right that he may have compromised the safety of soldiers in theatre. OTOH, he may have released documents exposing coverups of military misdeeds. Whether one justifies the other, though, is, unfortunately, very much a gray area.
Why doesn't the military release ALL of the videos that it has? There's probably tons of stuff out there that makes them not look bad. The Army is not in the business of "trying to not look bad".
LOLFR! Wow, you win a gold star for dumbest comment of the day. "The Army is not in the business of 'trying to not look bad'"... are you fucking *kidding* me? The military practically *invented* propaganda, both at home and in theatre. Christ, have you never studied the world wars? Vietnam? Korea? The military spends an *enormous* amount of time trying to gain and maintain domestic support for its activities abroad.
Seriously, I don't know if you're a troll, naive, or just incredibly stupid...
Yeah, except that same helicopter (same day, before the 17min Collateral Murder vid) crew DIDN'T fire when children and other noncombatants were present, and a second time when they also couldn't get a positive ID on insurgents.
And yet no video has ever been released to back up the soldier's claims, despite the fact that this would *clearly* soften the blow for the military.
So, just so I have this straight: I'm supposed to believe the statements of these soldiers, who've already proven to have bad judgment, and to trust that the military, a military that's proven time an again to be very happy to whitewash incidents if it's in their interests, has the video to back up these claims, but has just decided to hold on to it for no good reason?
Uhuh. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense...
Re:No link between gut bacteria and autism
on
Urine Test For Autism
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
My nephew was cured after being diagnosed with autism...
I'm just saying that with ad blockers becoming more common, and a technology that is potentially harder to block
And I'm saying *it's not harder to block*. It is, quite literally, just as difficult (or easy) to block. No, not easier, not harder, *precisely* the same. Why? Because in both cases, they involve content, delivered over HTTP, displayed in the browser. The exact same mechanism of delivery is used, the exact same technologies for blocking that content apply. They are, quite literally, identical from an ad blocking standpoint. The only difference is the mechanism of playback in the browser.
And if you're curious, the reason I'm trying so hard to make this point is that you, and many others, have tried to make this absurd claim, and it's just that: absurd. There is no reason to believe HTML5 will make blocking ads any more difficult. None. It's baseless fear mongering, nothing more. So relax. Your ad blocker will work just fine.
They couldn't do that with flash, but they can with HTML5
If they couldn't with flash, why the hell would they be able to with HTML5? It's the *same damn thing*: content delivered via HTTP. The same rules apply. In both cases, the content provider has absolute no interest in hosting all that ad content, both due to bandwidth concerns as well as storage requirements. It ain't happening.
Honestly, if you need to invent, out of whole cloth, a mythical scenario to support your paranoid fears, I think it's pretty clear how solid the rhetorical ground is beneath your feet.
It speeds the heart and increases blood pressure, but does not raise mental awareness.
Utter bullshit. A number of studies have demonstrated that caffeine improves focus, alertness, and working memory (although this is likely in non-addicted subjects).
As for vitamins... all I can say is, you're deluding yourself. But, hey, enjoy your placebo. If it works for you, who am I to judge?
Caffeine is evil, it needs to immediately needs a tax increase of 2000% to keep the public from abusing it.
Why? What's other people's use of caffeine doing to *you* that you feel you should curtail other people's freedom to use it as they see fit? Are they infringing on your rights in some way? Putting a greater burden on the healthcare system? Anything at all that might justify a draconian, interventionist policy like this? Because if it's just to "protect the people", quite frankly, fuck off, the government has better things to do than institute stupid laws for harmless chemicals (like waging a pointless, destructive war on drugs).
I'm a little puzzled, though... how friggin' much coffee must you drink to get so addicted? On the high end, I drink 2 or 3 cups in the morning, tops (basically, one press of my cafetiere). And yet I've never once experienced caffeine withdrawl. So am I just not consuming enough to become addicted, or am I just incredibly lucky?
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Every time I hear democrats, they make sure the blame lies squarely on BP (and not on themselves). Had the republicans won the presidency, there's no way they could have avoided blame.
Well, given that the Republican party generally touts hands-off, free market approaches to things, why on earth would that surprise you? As a general rule, if you're a Republican, and there's some big business fuck-up, yeah, you're gonna see some of the blame... not because you, personally, are responsible, but because your sociopolitical philosophy often leads to these exact kinds of fuck-ups.
Does that make the Democrats immune from responsibility? No, of course not. But it's not the democrats running around telling everyone that regulations are the cause of all of society's ills, and that the free market is the solution to every problem.
Just like until you can successfully run a nuclear plant without leaks you don't get to fucking run a nuclear plant?
No, just like, until you demonstrate you can successfully contain and clean up a leak, you don't get to fucking run a nuclear plant.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Spread out over the entirety of the Gulf, and primarily lighter hydrocarbons (the heavier stuffs to be filtered out on it's way up from the deposit)... and it's *still* an order of magnitude less than the Deep Water gusher.
There really is absolutely no natural analog for this event.
Maybe that's reason enough, then? *shrug*
I mean, if tissue is readily available (something that doesn't surprise me), tissue matches are easy, and rejection is trivially manageable, what *is* the advantage of artificial corneal implants, aside from the "whoa neat" factor?
Honestly, with this first being performed in 1905 and being the single most common transplant surgery done in the world, I expected that in any industrialized nation there was an ample supply of donor tissue.
It's not so much an issue with tissue availability as it is issues with compatibility, rejection, etc. If you can make an equally capable, synthetic cornea, you can do away with all that, and that strikes me as a substantial win (though, at least at the outset, probably not a win on cost).
I mean, I'm assuming this technology was developed for *some* reason. :)
So you'd have your cornea removed and a new one put in?
Well, given the first corneal transplant was done in *1905*, and was one of the first organ transplants ever performed, yes, that's exactly what would happen.
People who use laser eye surgery to correct their vision can only do so a limited number of times. After that, a cornea would need to be replaced. Ideally, a replacement cornea would be able to correct vision without further adjustments.
More importantly, there are a number of diseases related to the cornea that ultimately necessitate a corneal transplant. Technology like this would obviate the need for tissue donation, which is a huge step for people suffering from such illnesses.
We're still teetering on the brink,
Err, the brink of what, exactly? No, really... what, domestic apocalypse? Dirty-30's style depression? What?
Go with the times, will ya? Your ideal of the army's duty has been outdated since WW2. Back then, the US fought their last "real" war. And, lo and behold, they won. Why? Because they fought a war!
Correct.
Today the problem of the US isn't to unleash enough firepower to obliterate their enemies. There's hardly a country or even an alliance on this planet that could defend against the firepower the US can raise. There will never be another D-Day with thousands of US soldiers being mowed down by enemy guns.
The problem for the US today is that it gets increasingly hard to "sell" war at home.
Wrong.
The problem is that, after WW2, the vast majority of US military activity has not involved conventional warfare.
Vietnam, Korea, Iraq II, and Afghanistan are all battles of attrition where a large, monolithic force fought against guerillas. Traditional warfare simply doesn't work in that sort of scenario, and there really is no way to "win" a war like that. Worse, when fighting a guerilla force, it can be arbitrarily hard to differentiate between the opponent and civilians. The result is that it can be very difficult to keep down civilian casualities.
So, you have an enemy with no clearly defined face. That enemy is hard to distinguish from civilians. There's no clear path to victory, nor any definition for when the war is won. Oh, and to top it off, it's really tough for the monolithic force to argue there's an existential threat when the opponent is a guerrilla force, which makes it even more difficult to justify military action in the first place.
Gee, I wonder why the US has had trouble drumming up domestic (or international) support for it's military activities post-WWII...
Yeah, I have to concede that point. It's a little tough to believe that he chose to leak 250k documents because all 250k of them expose government or military abuses...
But who's call is it, then?
That's the entire problem, and TBH, I think it's a problem without a solution. The state secret privilege serves a very important role, as I don't think *anyone* could argue that a 100% transparent government is tenable in the face of a concerted enemy.
However, any mechanism by which the state can hide information from enemy eyes can be abused to hide information from domestic eyes, as well, and so a balance must be struck. And, unfortunately, the only way to counterbalance those who would abuse that privilege is to have whistleblowers break the law in order to expose those abuses.
So, is it "his call to make"? I think that depends. What if he exposed systemic abuses of civilians in theatre, or some other distasteful facts that the military was covering up? In that case, I'd say it *is* his call to make, and further, I'd say it's his duty as a citizen to expose that information. OTOH, if all he did was release a bunch of documents outlining military operations, then I say he gets what he deserves.
In the end, it's all about context. And I don't know about you, but I haven't read through those 250,000 documents to determine if any of them are sufficiently egregious to justify his actions.
To be classified as Top Secret, the release of that information must cause imminent, serious harm to the United States and/or its allies and assets.
Though, to be fair, whether or not something is given Top Secret classification is up to the discretion of the President (and possibly others?). I'm willing to bet there are *many* Top Secret documents that are actually intended to cover up distasteful military activity, among other things.
In short, the state secret privilege is very important, but there's a balance that must be met. Unfortunately, unless there's some way to audit the process, there's no way to tell if that privilege is being abused, and so the only thing you can do is rely on whistleblowers, who are breaking the law despite doing what is morally right.
As for this guy? I don't know, I don't know the nature of the documents he released. You may be right that he may have compromised the safety of soldiers in theatre. OTOH, he may have released documents exposing coverups of military misdeeds. Whether one justifies the other, though, is, unfortunately, very much a gray area.
Why doesn't the military release ALL of the videos that it has? There's probably tons of stuff out there that makes them not look bad. The Army is not in the business of "trying to not look bad".
LOLFR! Wow, you win a gold star for dumbest comment of the day. "The Army is not in the business of 'trying to not look bad'"... are you fucking *kidding* me? The military practically *invented* propaganda, both at home and in theatre. Christ, have you never studied the world wars? Vietnam? Korea? The military spends an *enormous* amount of time trying to gain and maintain domestic support for its activities abroad.
Seriously, I don't know if you're a troll, naive, or just incredibly stupid...
Yeah, except that same helicopter (same day, before the 17min Collateral Murder vid) crew DIDN'T fire when children and other noncombatants were present, and a second time when they also couldn't get a positive ID on insurgents.
And yet no video has ever been released to back up the soldier's claims, despite the fact that this would *clearly* soften the blow for the military.
So, just so I have this straight: I'm supposed to believe the statements of these soldiers, who've already proven to have bad judgment, and to trust that the military, a military that's proven time an again to be very happy to whitewash incidents if it's in their interests, has the video to back up these claims, but has just decided to hold on to it for no good reason?
Uhuh. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense...
My nephew was cured after being diagnosed with autism...
Then he never had autism to begin with.
Man, you just live to pimp that blog of yours whenever this topic comes up, don't you?
They patented a wardriving mechanism, not the act of capturing *and storing* sniffed packet streams.
Christ, get a grip, and while you're at it, learn to read.
I'm just saying that with ad blockers becoming more common, and a technology that is potentially harder to block
And I'm saying *it's not harder to block*. It is, quite literally, just as difficult (or easy) to block. No, not easier, not harder, *precisely* the same. Why? Because in both cases, they involve content, delivered over HTTP, displayed in the browser. The exact same mechanism of delivery is used, the exact same technologies for blocking that content apply. They are, quite literally, identical from an ad blocking standpoint. The only difference is the mechanism of playback in the browser.
And if you're curious, the reason I'm trying so hard to make this point is that you, and many others, have tried to make this absurd claim, and it's just that: absurd. There is no reason to believe HTML5 will make blocking ads any more difficult. None. It's baseless fear mongering, nothing more. So relax. Your ad blocker will work just fine.
They couldn't do that with flash, but they can with HTML5
If they couldn't with flash, why the hell would they be able to with HTML5? It's the *same damn thing*: content delivered via HTTP. The same rules apply. In both cases, the content provider has absolute no interest in hosting all that ad content, both due to bandwidth concerns as well as storage requirements. It ain't happening.
Honestly, if you need to invent, out of whole cloth, a mythical scenario to support your paranoid fears, I think it's pretty clear how solid the rhetorical ground is beneath your feet.
So you would deliberately try to run someone into the cones and you are calling *him* an asshole???
Err, unless he's driving the other guys' car, he isn't running him into anything...
Not if it's done as embedded javascript and canvas within the page.
The javascript came from an ad delivery server somewhere, as did all the content being displayed. Block it. Problem solved.
It speeds the heart and increases blood pressure, but does not raise mental awareness.
Utter bullshit. A number of studies have demonstrated that caffeine improves focus, alertness, and working memory (although this is likely in non-addicted subjects).
As for vitamins... all I can say is, you're deluding yourself. But, hey, enjoy your placebo. If it works for you, who am I to judge?
Caffeine is evil, it needs to immediately needs a tax increase of 2000% to keep the public from abusing it.
Why? What's other people's use of caffeine doing to *you* that you feel you should curtail other people's freedom to use it as they see fit? Are they infringing on your rights in some way? Putting a greater burden on the healthcare system? Anything at all that might justify a draconian, interventionist policy like this? Because if it's just to "protect the people", quite frankly, fuck off, the government has better things to do than institute stupid laws for harmless chemicals (like waging a pointless, destructive war on drugs).
I'm a little puzzled, though... how friggin' much coffee must you drink to get so addicted? On the high end, I drink 2 or 3 cups in the morning, tops (basically, one press of my cafetiere). And yet I've never once experienced caffeine withdrawl. So am I just not consuming enough to become addicted, or am I just incredibly lucky?
There are a few ways in which it can be improved, which I will leave to your imagination.
Ooh, ooh, I know! Bacon and eggs! Oh man, I *love* bacon and eggs and a top-notch cup of coffee (though my heart sure doesn't, but screw that whiner).
That's what you meant, right? Right?? :)