Heh, those poor dumb, ignorant idiots. Good thing you're so utterly brilliant and cool, otherwise I'm not sure what we'd do!/insufferable_patronizing_elitist_jerk mode = off
"In the ideal system, everyones vote would be treated equally (and everyone would be required to vote) and government would do what the majority wants instead of listening to minorities like sugar farmers, Cuban ex pats, Conservatives who think that Janet Jackson should be locked up for what happened on the Super-Bowl or whoever else."
You're contradicting yourself, and firstly assuming that the majority ISN'T made up of people that disagree with you. Are you sure about that?
If everyone's vote is counted equally, then your enlightened, well-informed, entirely objective and fact-based vote would count PRECISELY as much as a NASCAR fan, a reactionary religious conservative, Cuban expats, or a sugar farmer.
And if, for example, you have 20,000 (or 500,000, or 10 million...) friends who couldn't care less about a vote result on a particular farm bill (and so could be expected to split their vote roughly 50/50 on that bill), but there are 1000 sugar farmers who vote 100% in favor of it...how does the result change?
And on the other hand, considering that US electoral participation is what, 54% or as low as 39% for non-Presidential elections, are you CERTAIN that you really want the 60%+ of the populace that doesn't care, doesn't know, and doesn't want to bother to vote, to vote? Really? What enlightened result are they going to bring to the election?
On the one hand, you blast the ignoramuses (who happen coincidentally to usually be from the party opposite yours, right?) too stupid to vote the right way (or apparently to live their lives as urban, atheist Liberals?), yet on the other hand you want to FORCE INCLUSION on the (majority) of voting age people who have self-selected themselves out of the process? That seems at the least contradictory. Ironically, it seems that you're on the one hand condemning people I'm sure you'd assert were stupid, yet encouraging the participation of the least interested voters, who are MOST LIKELY to be vulnerable to demagoguery, bread & circuses, and pandering.
Personally, I'd love to see a serious implementation of poll tests (Voting Rights Act of '65 be damned) - if you can't name your current Senators, Congressman, State representatives, Governor, and heck, even 8/9 of the Supreme Court, your vote DOESN'T COUNT. If you can't name them, you aren't paying attention enough to wield your vote intelligently. Oh, and if you can't read enough english to understand those simple questions in english, you're not getting enough of our domestic conversation that you ALSO don't have enough information to vote usefully.
The "we'll have waste for 10k years!" is already nonsense.
As previous posters have pointed out, we ALREADY have the technology to turn 10,000-year waste into 100-year waste with some intelligent choices. I'm quite confident that given another 50 to 100 years of technological advancement, even these will be trivialities by then.
No, it's (again) simply the fear mongering by naive environmentalists who, unwilling to compromise on a least-worst choice instead of their impossibly utopian alternatives, have effectively prevented nuclear energy from developing in the US for 30+ years. That's the real Inconvenient Truth. Congratulations, I guess.
I think it's wonderful. That means that of all the shitty things that could be happening today, the worst, most interesting thing is that a 15yr old rich girl exaggerated on her myspace page?
(Of course the cynic in my says that in actuality, all it means is that the world news media have entirely sold out and report only this trivial fluff INSTEAD of anything that actually matters.)
So...the 9/11 BIPARTISAN commission were just 'Republican Water Carriers'?
How predictable. If they agree with you, they're "speaking truth to power" but if they don't, they're sellouts.
I'll freely say that the intel on Iraq's WMD programs was sketchy, inconsistent, and largely inaccurate due to excessive dependence on defectors who had their own agendas (Who EVER takes defector information without considering their context? What a rookie mistake....).
But this doesn't mean that Richard Wilson isn't just a partisan media whore who was given this assignment through some insider discussion within the anti-Bush bureaucrats @ Langley, as a very neat & tidy way to use someone to fling poo at Bush & co.
As far as it being a LIE? You have a little tougher slope there: Somehow, Bush managed to brainwash all of the following in the years BEFORE his presidency & before the invasion? (from http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp)
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998.
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998.
"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998.
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998.
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.
"Hussein has... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999.
"There is no doubt that . Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, Dec, 5, 2001.
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI), Sept. 19, 2002.
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.
Really? From the 9/11 commission: Senate Select Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts issued his own scathing statement noting that rather than confining his comments about what actually happened when he went, as a agent of the US government, to Niger on a fact-finding mission, Roberts observed that "...the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the intelligence community would have or should have handled the information he provided...Time and again Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the president had lied to the American people, that the vice president had lied, and that he had 'debunked' the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa...[N]ot only did he NOT 'debunk' the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe [the MI-5 story was] true." In concluding, Roberts noted that much of what Wilson had to say contained absolutely no basis of fact.
"The only thing that can affect the amount of Gallium available on Earth is nucleosynthesis or a fairly sturdy asteroid impact.
Stop treating economics like its a theory of everything. Stop treating it like it is theory at all in fact, because it has as much in common with real science as reading tea leaves does."
Actually, you prove yourself wrong there. If the price goes up past a certain point, then what's available is no longer limited to Earth - at a certain (ridiculous) point, the cost makes it feasible to mine it from asteroids or other extraterrestrial sources.
"You might also look into TOG, a multi-game guild with a minimum age of 25. This is when men's brains seem to give up completely on getting anywhere past 15 developmentally, so you get a decent group of folks there."
Well, just about ANY decision can be boiled down to binaries. Just as any seemingly-binary decision can be dissected to its component parts.
But that's the beauty of the coinflip. It forces the brain to channel and isolate questions into simpler packets which is almost ALWAYS a better way to deal with complex questions.
I still do that myself, when the answer doesn't readily present itself - flip a coin, and then go with whatever, when the coin dropped, I really hoped to see as a result.
Multi choice to binary: Which toothpaste do I buy? = Do I buy product A? Do I buy product B...etc.
Binary to multiple:
Do I marry this girl? = Do *I* marry this girl? + Do I *marry* this girl? + Do I marry *this* girl? + Do I marry this *girl*?
Good idea, my only question would be economies of scale, as well as liability. I think it's definitely worth crunching numbers on:
1) is it more efficient to install (& maintain!) 1000 acres of 'solar farm' in one bulk lot or some otherwise nonproductive land (when you consider in the labor, time, cost, infrastructure) or 10,000 0.1 acre roofs? How "nonproductive" would the land have to be to make this value equation positive? I can easily see the infrastructure, labor, and maintenance far, far exceeding the economy of this idea - esp in the southwest where nearly valueless land is rather plentiful.
2) liability: you're adding ca. $75-100,000 in 'value' to each homeowner's home? Who pays for the insurance? Does the home's value go up, and if so, does the homeowner get to keep that increased value on home sale?
I'd be very curious as to how this would influence desert areas. Would ample shade make them more habitable (for flora and fauna) or less? Could the collection panels, properly designed, serve as a solar still, adding essentially a 'drip irrigation' to the zone in which it's constructed?
One: there will always be bad people in any group of humans. Two: some of those bad people, for whatever reason, will try to prey upon the other humans. Three: these predators will/are accustomed to violence at a level that is paralyzing for most average people. Four: there's a reason the Colt pistol was called 'the equalizer'. Against (particularly) men of violence and ill disposition, few women, children, or elderly would stand a chance.
Your point would be that all women (for example) should trust that if they are attacked away from home and their obligatory shotgun, they should what, lean back and enjoy it until the cops arrive?
The point is: you can't BAN handguns any more than you can BAN criminals. And by taking away the sole possibility that a person can fight back with an equal level of violence, you pretty much make everyone victims.
And if you still disagree, there's this: how many 'mass shootings' have ever taken place in a location where guns were common (gun shows, hunting gatherings, etc.)? How many have taken place particularly in places where guns are prohibited (schools, churches, etc.)? By taking away guns from the law abiding citizens, until you can get all the guns away, you are merely increasing criminals' level of capability 100x. As they say, 'when seconds count, the police are only minutes away'.
"Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials..."
Of course, that's aside from the little fact that the entire CONSTITUTION is a limit on the tools/powers available to officials & the government.
Read more carefully, the statement is more like "of the subset of computer users who ever ACTUALLY CHOOSE AND INSTALL AN OS (as opposed to the millions who simply run what they get with their new PC), who would choose Vista now?"
Of course, that could mean: Whatever we do, if we make a black hole... A) it will grow so enormous so quickly and annihilate us all in either the emitted radiation or actual consumption of our masses, we won't even notice we're dead. or B) it will grow so slowly that it will finally reach the point where it consumes the earth in something like 10k years, so who cares anyway?
Ah well, if it's the slow one, maybe it will give a much needed boost to the idea of space travel.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Specifically you, I mean.
You make wonderful statements like "I want a just, upstanding, ethical, and prosperous country." When in fact words like "just", "upstanding", and "ethical" are nothing but vague code words for "agrees with my particular set of values". Prosperous? Take the POOREST segment of American society, and find that by just about every measure, they are far, far better off than the majority of the world. In terms of home ownership, living space, # of televisions per capita, # of cars per capita, % air-conditioned, etc. they are even better off than most Europeans. Now obviously, those aren't the sole definitions of prosperity, but if the biggest health problem your poor face is obesity, I'd say that means things aren't really that rough.
Or "If "unity" means "agreeing with people who advocate theocracy", then I'm against it. If it means "Americans working together to make their country and the world a better place", I'm for it." Really? What if "unity" means not making hyperbolic strawmen (a "theocracy"? please.) out of your opponents, and understanding that there are a significant number of people in this country for whom religion is deeply important? What if 'unity' means understanding that OTHER people have OTHER definitions of what 'a better place' MEANS? What if it means that you either have to compromise with those people, or occasionally (shock!) defer to them?
You might want to review your comments, and observe that perhaps you're being disingenuous. Forced homogeneity is not unity, except in a fascist sense; even if all of your ideas are wonderful and well-meaning, the world isn't quite so Manichean - other people can have well-meaning ideas TOO that are entirely different from yours. To deny those other people is naive at best, and to suggest that you want unity while simultaneously dismissing/mocking a goodly segment of the American populace that doesn't seem to agree with you is hypocrisy.
Again, for those not paying attention: precision has not always equaled utility.
1) the Imperial measures are far more human-friendly than metric. Metric is WONDERFUL in a computer-driven world, but for everyday measures, a number of imperial systems are much more practical:
a) Temperature: Fahrenheit based his temperatures on a likely-to-be-experienced-by-people scale. Since he was in Copenhagen, this meant typically 0-100. Humans don't really care about precise temps, so the greater precision of Fahrenheit is meaningless, it just suits human penchant for round numbers. (FWIW, Celsius *did* originally arrange his system in reverse, with water freezing at 100 and boiling at 0...)
b) linear: again, for the bulk of human history, utility has NOT been measured by decimals, but by simple calculation. The foot, divided into 12 subunits (each, conveniently for a carpenter, about a male thumb-width), is (integer) divisible by 12, 6, 4, 3, 2, and 1. The larger unit of a yard (~1m) is integer divisible by 36, 18, 12, 9, 6, 4, 3, 2, and 1. Decimals, on the other hand, are divisible by 10, 5, 2, and 1. Certainly, large maths are much more easily worked in metric measures, but again, in typical parlance, humans don't use large maths when they don't have to - we don't measure soccer fields in mm, for example.
As far as American usage is concerned, it's already been stated: US citizens have routinely and widely switched to SI units for anything that matters. I work in logistics, and am routinely converting from cubic inches to cbm, from lbs to metric tons, etc. No big deal - but for some reason the REST of the world feels entitled to complain about what units WE use? I genuinely don't get that. Do Americans get to complain that Egyptians speak Egyptian, because it makes it harder for us to do business in Egypt? I don't think so.
And for the snide comments about the unit-conversion causing the loss of a Mars probe...well, at least we're a technologically-successful-enough state that we're tossing probes at Mars, despite our "imperial units handicap".... According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Mars_Curse, there have been 43 missions to Mars, 20 by the 'benighted' Americans, and 23 by other nations presumably not hobbled by their attachment to an archaic system of measures. American success rate is running at 70%. "Other" success rate is running at just over 30%, depending on how you count it. Perhaps you guys should try Imperial measures? Maybe that might work better?
Using an open-access wireless router is like looking through an unshaded window.
How is that treated, legally?
If my sexy, 18 year old neighbor is giving herself a baby-oil rubdown in front of their uncurtained picture window, what's her obligation in terms of privacy, and what's mine?
Republicans: build 45 new reactors. Democrats: nationalize the oil industry, price controls on gas.
I'm not going to post which I think is which, but one seems rational and reasonable, the other is pandering to the masses with a policy that is not only short sighted, but dangerous.
"Myself, if I trespass onto someone's property illegally, and a guy with a couple of guns in his truck pulls up, I'm not going to be thinking he's just a cute handsome stranger. They were *right* to be concerned when guns are involved - an overreaction would be ignoring them and doing nothing."
"I never thought I would see a John McCain who backed Bush" - then you're naive. Bush has made a lot of decisions I disagree with, but still, if the alternative was 'Back Bush' or 'Back Gore' or 'Back Kerry' it doesn't seem so unbelievable.
"...supported unprovoked preemptive wars" - Really? Which would these be? We have a war with the Taliban that was clearly, overtly, publicly supporting the destruction of the US, and, unlike so many, they were acting on this by funneling money and providing safe harbor to those who were determined to destroy the US (whether you believe that a credible threat or not). We have another war that is the result of a belligerent tinpot dictator who'd had his hand slapped once, but (despite a 'sanction' scheme which we discovered was rife with corruption and nearly meaningless) who continued to break the ceasefire agreement which had originally stopped hostilities. But let's be honest, shall we? The ceasefire thing is merely legal veneer - the point is we had a national leader who was both irredeemably belligerent, well-provided with cash, and credibly developing weapons of mass destruction.* Fortunately, he was also entirely politically isolated and I still insist that despite the soundbites, the point of Iraq War II was a geopolitical demonstration of Unipower for Libya, Iran, and North Korea. I would also agree with anyone who says that the subsequent years have been badly blundered. * if you don't believe this, you're either misremembering history or disingenuous; I could provide you with 50 quotes from DEMOCRATS during the CLINTON administration about Saddam's intent & effort to develop MWD's - if Bush could pull that off before he was even president, well, that's pretty impressive.
"...wanted to cut taxes at a time when the country is $9 *TRILLION* in debt" - You DO understand where taxes come from, right? And that already nearly 50% of middle class incomes are being paid to the US gov't. So if you increase the taxburden, more of those folks are pushed into government assistance. At least if you REDUCE the tax burden (and make sure loopholes for the wealthy are closed), then the middle class has more money to spend, which improves the health of any free market.
"...sucked up to the religious right" - After all, he IS a politician, and what's he going to do - court the LEFT? Yeah, THAT would be productive. I prefer the 'f-you-all' McCain to the ingratiating politician McCain, but I don't begrudge him trying to get votes. It's a buttload better than Huckabee or Romney.
"...I NEVER NEVER NEVER thought I would see a man who was a torture victim and POW stand up and support that very torture by HIS OWN COUNTRY." - Maybe it's because he understand better than most that it's not that simple. Maybe he understands full well that there ARE bad guys in the world, and that sometimes to deal with them you have to take the gloves off. Yes, there is a risk to this, that you might harm an innocent, but you don't hesitate to build a house because you might hit your thumb. Yes, he was tortured - don't you think that gives him a VERY STRONG INSIGHT into when it should or shouldn't be used, rather than your faux internet-outrage safe from the comfort of your home?
From a later poster: "...I'd like to believe that the John McCain of 2000 would have paid attention to a report predicting a terrorist attack on US soil" - Ah, hindsight is SO convenient for finger pointing. Ever hear of the old scam about someone predicting that a certain stock will go up or down for 3 weeks in a row? Same deal. How, pray tell, would John McCain have the superpowers needed to say that THIS report (out of the oh, 100,000 warnings issued by various government functionaries each week) is the one to believe? Of COURSE Al-Qaeda was interested in attacking the US on US soil...THEY ALREADY HAD.
"...would have gone right to work upon hearing of the attack on the Towers" - Doing...what exactly? Putting up ne
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, those poor dumb, ignorant idiots. Good thing you're so utterly brilliant and cool, otherwise I'm not sure what we'd do! /insufferable_patronizing_elitist_jerk mode = off
"In the ideal system, everyones vote would be treated equally (and everyone would be required to vote) and government would do what the majority wants instead of listening to minorities like sugar farmers, Cuban ex pats, Conservatives who think that Janet Jackson should be locked up for what happened on the Super-Bowl or whoever else."
You're contradicting yourself, and firstly assuming that the majority ISN'T made up of people that disagree with you. Are you sure about that?
If everyone's vote is counted equally, then your enlightened, well-informed, entirely objective and fact-based vote would count PRECISELY as much as a NASCAR fan, a reactionary religious conservative, Cuban expats, or a sugar farmer.
And if, for example, you have 20,000 (or 500,000, or 10 million...) friends who couldn't care less about a vote result on a particular farm bill (and so could be expected to split their vote roughly 50/50 on that bill), but there are 1000 sugar farmers who vote 100% in favor of it...how does the result change?
And on the other hand, considering that US electoral participation is what, 54% or as low as 39% for non-Presidential elections, are you CERTAIN that you really want the 60%+ of the populace that doesn't care, doesn't know, and doesn't want to bother to vote, to vote? Really? What enlightened result are they going to bring to the election?
On the one hand, you blast the ignoramuses (who happen coincidentally to usually be from the party opposite yours, right?) too stupid to vote the right way (or apparently to live their lives as urban, atheist Liberals?), yet on the other hand you want to FORCE INCLUSION on the (majority) of voting age people who have self-selected themselves out of the process? That seems at the least contradictory. Ironically, it seems that you're on the one hand condemning people I'm sure you'd assert were stupid, yet encouraging the participation of the least interested voters, who are MOST LIKELY to be vulnerable to demagoguery, bread & circuses, and pandering.
Personally, I'd love to see a serious implementation of poll tests (Voting Rights Act of '65 be damned) - if you can't name your current Senators, Congressman, State representatives, Governor, and heck, even 8/9 of the Supreme Court, your vote DOESN'T COUNT. If you can't name them, you aren't paying attention enough to wield your vote intelligently. Oh, and if you can't read enough english to understand those simple questions in english, you're not getting enough of our domestic conversation that you ALSO don't have enough information to vote usefully.
The "we'll have waste for 10k years!" is already nonsense.
As previous posters have pointed out, we ALREADY have the technology to turn 10,000-year waste into 100-year waste with some intelligent choices. I'm quite confident that given another 50 to 100 years of technological advancement, even these will be trivialities by then.
No, it's (again) simply the fear mongering by naive environmentalists who, unwilling to compromise on a least-worst choice instead of their impossibly utopian alternatives, have effectively prevented nuclear energy from developing in the US for 30+ years. That's the real Inconvenient Truth. Congratulations, I guess.
"And because the system in the US is so screwed, those votes are enough to change the outcome of elections*."
* (implied): ...away from something that I preferred.
You call it broken, I prefer to call it Democracy. Funny, isn't it?
I think it's wonderful. That means that of all the shitty things that could be happening today, the worst, most interesting thing is that a 15yr old rich girl exaggerated on her myspace page?
(Of course the cynic in my says that in actuality, all it means is that the world news media have entirely sold out and report only this trivial fluff INSTEAD of anything that actually matters.)
"Poison someone, dump them in the ocean with a rock tied to their ankle, and poof. No murder, right?"
It doesn't work as well as you'd think.
-Scott Peterson
So...the 9/11 BIPARTISAN commission were just 'Republican Water Carriers'?
How predictable. If they agree with you, they're "speaking truth to power" but if they don't, they're sellouts.
I'll freely say that the intel on Iraq's WMD programs was sketchy, inconsistent, and largely inaccurate due to excessive dependence on defectors who had their own agendas (Who EVER takes defector information without considering their context? What a rookie mistake....).
But this doesn't mean that Richard Wilson isn't just a partisan media whore who was given this assignment through some insider discussion within the anti-Bush bureaucrats @ Langley, as a very neat & tidy way to use someone to fling poo at Bush & co.
As far as it being a LIE? You have a little tougher slope there:
Somehow, Bush managed to brainwash all of the following in the years BEFORE his presidency & before the invasion?
(from http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp)
Really? From the 9/11 commission: Senate Select Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts issued his own scathing statement noting that rather than confining his comments about what actually happened when he went, as a agent of the US government, to Niger on a fact-finding mission, Roberts observed that "...the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the intelligence community would have or should have handled the information he provided...Time and again Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the president had lied to the American people, that the vice president had lied, and that he had 'debunked' the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa...[N]ot only did he NOT 'debunk' the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe [the MI-5 story was] true." In concluding, Roberts noted that much of what Wilson had to say contained absolutely no basis of fact.
"The only thing that can affect the amount of Gallium available on Earth is nucleosynthesis or a fairly sturdy asteroid impact.
Stop treating economics like its a theory of everything. Stop treating it like it is theory at all in fact, because it has as much in common with real science as reading tea leaves does."
Actually, you prove yourself wrong there.
If the price goes up past a certain point, then what's available is no longer limited to Earth - at a certain (ridiculous) point, the cost makes it feasible to mine it from asteroids or other extraterrestrial sources.
So really, it IS just about economics.
I don't believe in marriage, so you won't mind if your wife and I get together then?
"You might also look into TOG, a multi-game guild with a minimum age of 25. This is when men's brains seem to give up completely on getting anywhere past 15 developmentally, so you get a decent group of folks there."
Fixed that for you.
-My Wife
Well, just about ANY decision can be boiled down to binaries. Just as any seemingly-binary decision can be dissected to its component parts.
But that's the beauty of the coinflip. It forces the brain to channel and isolate questions into simpler packets which is almost ALWAYS a better way to deal with complex questions.
I still do that myself, when the answer doesn't readily present itself - flip a coin, and then go with whatever, when the coin dropped, I really hoped to see as a result.
Multi choice to binary: Which toothpaste do I buy? = Do I buy product A? Do I buy product B...etc.
Binary to multiple:
Do I marry this girl?
=
Do *I* marry this girl?
+
Do I *marry* this girl?
+
Do I marry *this* girl?
+
Do I marry this *girl*?
....sure there are some naive fantasies about wonderful things happening, but all you get is 2x the cost, and 4x the headaches.
Good idea, my only question would be economies of scale, as well as liability. I think it's definitely worth crunching numbers on:
1) is it more efficient to install (& maintain!) 1000 acres of 'solar farm' in one bulk lot or some otherwise nonproductive land (when you consider in the labor, time, cost, infrastructure) or 10,000 0.1 acre roofs? How "nonproductive" would the land have to be to make this value equation positive? I can easily see the infrastructure, labor, and maintenance far, far exceeding the economy of this idea - esp in the southwest where nearly valueless land is rather plentiful.
2) liability: you're adding ca. $75-100,000 in 'value' to each homeowner's home? Who pays for the insurance? Does the home's value go up, and if so, does the homeowner get to keep that increased value on home sale?
I'd be very curious as to how this would influence desert areas. Would ample shade make them more habitable (for flora and fauna) or less? Could the collection panels, properly designed, serve as a solar still, adding essentially a 'drip irrigation' to the zone in which it's constructed?
One: there will always be bad people in any group of humans.
Two: some of those bad people, for whatever reason, will try to prey upon the other humans.
Three: these predators will/are accustomed to violence at a level that is paralyzing for most average people.
Four: there's a reason the Colt pistol was called 'the equalizer'. Against (particularly) men of violence and ill disposition, few women, children, or elderly would stand a chance.
Your point would be that all women (for example) should trust that if they are attacked away from home and their obligatory shotgun, they should what, lean back and enjoy it until the cops arrive?
The point is: you can't BAN handguns any more than you can BAN criminals. And by taking away the sole possibility that a person can fight back with an equal level of violence, you pretty much make everyone victims.
And if you still disagree, there's this: how many 'mass shootings' have ever taken place in a location where guns were common (gun shows, hunting gatherings, etc.)? How many have taken place particularly in places where guns are prohibited (schools, churches, etc.)? By taking away guns from the law abiding citizens, until you can get all the guns away, you are merely increasing criminals' level of capability 100x.
As they say, 'when seconds count, the police are only minutes away'.
"Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials..."
Of course, that's aside from the little fact that the entire CONSTITUTION is a limit on the tools/powers available to officials & the government.
So really, you're saying his comment was spot-on.
Read more carefully, the statement is more like "of the subset of computer users who ever ACTUALLY CHOOSE AND INSTALL AN OS (as opposed to the millions who simply run what they get with their new PC), who would choose Vista now?"
I believe Japan's laws would only make him thin, not stop him from being such a pussy.
"...on any meaningful timescale."
Really?
Of course, that could mean:
Whatever we do, if we make a black hole...
A) it will grow so enormous so quickly and annihilate us all in either the emitted radiation or actual consumption of our masses, we won't even notice we're dead.
or
B) it will grow so slowly that it will finally reach the point where it consumes the earth in something like 10k years, so who cares anyway?
Ah well, if it's the slow one, maybe it will give a much needed boost to the idea of space travel.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Specifically you, I mean.
You make wonderful statements like "I want a just, upstanding, ethical, and prosperous country."
When in fact words like "just", "upstanding", and "ethical" are nothing but vague code words for "agrees with my particular set of values". Prosperous? Take the POOREST segment of American society, and find that by just about every measure, they are far, far better off than the majority of the world. In terms of home ownership, living space, # of televisions per capita, # of cars per capita, % air-conditioned, etc. they are even better off than most Europeans. Now obviously, those aren't the sole definitions of prosperity, but if the biggest health problem your poor face is obesity, I'd say that means things aren't really that rough.
Or "If "unity" means "agreeing with people who advocate theocracy", then I'm against it. If it means "Americans working together to make their country and the world a better place", I'm for it." Really? What if "unity" means not making hyperbolic strawmen (a "theocracy"? please.) out of your opponents, and understanding that there are a significant number of people in this country for whom religion is deeply important? What if 'unity' means understanding that OTHER people have OTHER definitions of what 'a better place' MEANS? What if it means that you either have to compromise with those people, or occasionally (shock!) defer to them?
You might want to review your comments, and observe that perhaps you're being disingenuous. Forced homogeneity is not unity, except in a fascist sense; even if all of your ideas are wonderful and well-meaning, the world isn't quite so Manichean - other people can have well-meaning ideas TOO that are entirely different from yours. To deny those other people is naive at best, and to suggest that you want unity while simultaneously dismissing/mocking a goodly segment of the American populace that doesn't seem to agree with you is hypocrisy.
Again, for those not paying attention: precision has not always equaled utility.
1) the Imperial measures are far more human-friendly than metric. Metric is WONDERFUL in a computer-driven world, but for everyday measures, a number of imperial systems are much more practical:
a) Temperature: Fahrenheit based his temperatures on a likely-to-be-experienced-by-people scale. Since he was in Copenhagen, this meant typically 0-100. Humans don't really care about precise temps, so the greater precision of Fahrenheit is meaningless, it just suits human penchant for round numbers. (FWIW, Celsius *did* originally arrange his system in reverse, with water freezing at 100 and boiling at 0...)
b) linear: again, for the bulk of human history, utility has NOT been measured by decimals, but by simple calculation. The foot, divided into 12 subunits (each, conveniently for a carpenter, about a male thumb-width), is (integer) divisible by 12, 6, 4, 3, 2, and 1. The larger unit of a yard (~1m) is integer divisible by 36, 18, 12, 9, 6, 4, 3, 2, and 1. Decimals, on the other hand, are divisible by 10, 5, 2, and 1. Certainly, large maths are much more easily worked in metric measures, but again, in typical parlance, humans don't use large maths when they don't have to - we don't measure soccer fields in mm, for example.
As far as American usage is concerned, it's already been stated: US citizens have routinely and widely switched to SI units for anything that matters. I work in logistics, and am routinely converting from cubic inches to cbm, from lbs to metric tons, etc. No big deal - but for some reason the REST of the world feels entitled to complain about what units WE use? I genuinely don't get that. Do Americans get to complain that Egyptians speak Egyptian, because it makes it harder for us to do business in Egypt? I don't think so.
And for the snide comments about the unit-conversion causing the loss of a Mars probe...well, at least we're a technologically-successful-enough state that we're tossing probes at Mars, despite our "imperial units handicap"....
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Mars_Curse, there have been 43 missions to Mars, 20 by the 'benighted' Americans, and 23 by other nations presumably not hobbled by their attachment to an archaic system of measures.
American success rate is running at 70%.
"Other" success rate is running at just over 30%, depending on how you count it.
Perhaps you guys should try Imperial measures? Maybe that might work better?
Using an open-access wireless router is like looking through an unshaded window.
How is that treated, legally?
If my sexy, 18 year old neighbor is giving herself a baby-oil rubdown in front of their uncurtained picture window, what's her obligation in terms of privacy, and what's mine?
Republicans: build 45 new reactors.
Democrats: nationalize the oil industry, price controls on gas.
I'm not going to post which I think is which, but one seems rational and reasonable, the other is pandering to the masses with a policy that is not only short sighted, but dangerous.
"Myself, if I trespass onto someone's property illegally, and a guy with a couple of guns in his truck pulls up, I'm not going to be thinking he's just a cute handsome stranger. They were *right* to be concerned when guns are involved - an overreaction would be ignoring them and doing nothing."
Corrected that for you.
Whine whine cry whine.
"I never thought I would see a John McCain who backed Bush"
- then you're naive. Bush has made a lot of decisions I disagree with, but still, if the alternative was 'Back Bush' or 'Back Gore' or 'Back Kerry' it doesn't seem so unbelievable.
"...supported unprovoked preemptive wars"
- Really? Which would these be? We have a war with the Taliban that was clearly, overtly, publicly supporting the destruction of the US, and, unlike so many, they were acting on this by funneling money and providing safe harbor to those who were determined to destroy the US (whether you believe that a credible threat or not). We have another war that is the result of a belligerent tinpot dictator who'd had his hand slapped once, but (despite a 'sanction' scheme which we discovered was rife with corruption and nearly meaningless) who continued to break the ceasefire agreement which had originally stopped hostilities. But let's be honest, shall we? The ceasefire thing is merely legal veneer - the point is we had a national leader who was both irredeemably belligerent, well-provided with cash, and credibly developing weapons of mass destruction.* Fortunately, he was also entirely politically isolated and I still insist that despite the soundbites, the point of Iraq War II was a geopolitical demonstration of Unipower for Libya, Iran, and North Korea. I would also agree with anyone who says that the subsequent years have been badly blundered.
* if you don't believe this, you're either misremembering history or disingenuous; I could provide you with 50 quotes from DEMOCRATS during the CLINTON administration about Saddam's intent & effort to develop MWD's - if Bush could pull that off before he was even president, well, that's pretty impressive.
"...wanted to cut taxes at a time when the country is $9 *TRILLION* in debt"
- You DO understand where taxes come from, right? And that already nearly 50% of middle class incomes are being paid to the US gov't. So if you increase the taxburden, more of those folks are pushed into government assistance. At least if you REDUCE the tax burden (and make sure loopholes for the wealthy are closed), then the middle class has more money to spend, which improves the health of any free market.
"...sucked up to the religious right"
- After all, he IS a politician, and what's he going to do - court the LEFT? Yeah, THAT would be productive. I prefer the 'f-you-all' McCain to the ingratiating politician McCain, but I don't begrudge him trying to get votes. It's a buttload better than Huckabee or Romney.
"...I NEVER NEVER NEVER thought I would see a man who was a torture victim and POW stand up and support that very torture by HIS OWN COUNTRY."
- Maybe it's because he understand better than most that it's not that simple. Maybe he understands full well that there ARE bad guys in the world, and that sometimes to deal with them you have to take the gloves off. Yes, there is a risk to this, that you might harm an innocent, but you don't hesitate to build a house because you might hit your thumb. Yes, he was tortured - don't you think that gives him a VERY STRONG INSIGHT into when it should or shouldn't be used, rather than your faux internet-outrage safe from the comfort of your home?
From a later poster:
"...I'd like to believe that the John McCain of 2000 would have paid attention to a report predicting a terrorist attack on US soil"
- Ah, hindsight is SO convenient for finger pointing. Ever hear of the old scam about someone predicting that a certain stock will go up or down for 3 weeks in a row? Same deal. How, pray tell, would John McCain have the superpowers needed to say that THIS report (out of the oh, 100,000 warnings issued by various government functionaries each week) is the one to believe? Of COURSE Al-Qaeda was interested in attacking the US on US soil...THEY ALREADY HAD.
"...would have gone right to work upon hearing of the attack on the Towers"
- Doing...what exactly? Putting up ne