the restrictions on who could vote (basically white landowners) wasn't there because of some inherent prejudice that suggested women, free blacks or other demographics were lesser. The restrictions where there because white landowners had a very high chance of having a solid education
You can rationalize bigotry, but it's still bigotry. "Let's focus on educating women and freedmen, so they can participate in our democracy too!" George Washington never said.
No, the only states that can split their electoral votes do it winner-take-all by district, it's not a strict population proportion.
And for good reason: any state that adopted proportional electoral votes would render itself politically irrelevant. If my state has 10 electoral votes, and we award 6 to one guy and 4 to the other, the winner of our state pulls ahead by 2 votes instead of 10. We've just given away 80% of our power to pick the president.
I'm not saying that the winner-take-all system is better -- far from it. But states have a strong disincentive to change.
The Tea Party is just continuing what appears to be a grand tradition of 20th century U.S. politics; using one of the two big parties as a host and then eating it from the inside out.
Very apt metaphor. But a parasite has to be careful not to kill its host before it's ready to emerge.
As the Republicans have moved to the social right, they've opened a gigantic hole in the American political spectrum for the ideas you describe. There's room for a Libertarian-lite party which is pragmatic about statism, or a New Republican party which has rid itself of its bigots.
It's not my own political position (I'm a proud Robin Hood liberal) but it's one that I respect.
That's not the question. The question is, how many Sami people didn't speak Swedish *before* the Swedes began their generation-long program of re-education, child indoctrination, and forced relocation.
There's no question, ethnic cleansing is highly effective in wiping out minority languages. The question is, do we want to do that in the US?
Racism isn't something only Americans do. In your case, you're being racist in describing "*the* language" of "*the* society" in the U.S. Very few large nations consist of a single society: they're composed of a complex mixture of overlapping subgroups with varying amounts of integration, shared values, and shared languages and dialects. These subcultures range from gamer nerds to juggalos to Hmong immigrants -- and if you think only the Hmong should be forced to integrate and learn English, you should try talking to some juggalos.
There are a few nations which have fairly uniform, homogeneous, monolingual cultures: almost without exception, they got this way through genocide or ethnic cleansing.
I checked my facts, and you're right, I misremembered the results of the election. Mea culpa.
But as for your suggestion to vote against the big money interests, I'm not sure the Mass beer and wine thing is a good example. You had the big-money liquor stores doing battle against the big-money supermarkets, each funneling their money through non-profit small-business groups and police groups. That ballot question was a money-flinging clusterf*ck of epic proportions all around.
Let me play devil's advocate here. While we all know that email is insecure, as a practical matter the security holes in this are roughly equal to vote-by-mail. Not that that's a good thing, but this doesn't introduce many new problems. The NJ elections directive recognizes this, and treats displaced voters as "overseas" for the purpose of election rules.
Summary of the procedure: * Your voter registration is already on fiile. * You email a request for your ballot * The elections agency marks your ballot number in the registry, sends you a ballot with a unique ID, along with a waiver of secrecy. * You fill out the ballot and the waiver, and send them back.
Can we spam the election with billions of votes? No. Well, you can send the emails, but they won't have the right ID numbers so they won't be counted. Can we hijack individuals' votes by voting for them, or by changing their vote via a man-in-the-middle attack? Yes, but you can do this by paper mail too, and it's a one-vote-at-a-time thing. Do we lose the secrecy of the ballot booth? Yes, but that's lost in vote-by-mail too, and voters choose whether they'd rather submit a non-secret ballot, or trudge through miles of floodwaters to cast their vote in person.
The practical question you've got to ask yourself is not "could someone be disenfranchised by this?" but "will more people be disenfranchised by doing this than by *not* doing it?"
In short, adding "e-" to a technology doesn't miraculously make it evil or cool. And in this case, the security holes are roughly equal to a system already in common use. As a mandatory universal voting system, email voting would be an abhorrent violation of civil rights. As a short-term, *optional* response to a major emergency, it's worth considering.
Basements are also more secure, which makes it easier to protect the mouse colony from animal rights lunatics. Yes, this is a serious concern when installing animal colonies. Yes, it means animal rights activists bear some indirect responsibility for these deaths.
Many. But the goal of the law is not to allow every terminally ill patient to end their life, it's to allow at least *some* to die with dignity, while making damned sure the law isn't abused by doctors or family members. It errs on the side of caution.
the one to allow towns to decide whether to allow specific grocery stores to sell wine, which the ads interpreted as meaning that convenience stores would sell beer to teenagers if the question passed (a blatant lie, but it kept the question from passing and protected the profits of the state liquor stores).
As a side note, that ballot question eventually passed in Massachusetts, and my local convenience store put out a couple of baskets of withered vegetables for a few months, which apparently qualified it as a grocery store, and then started selling beer and wine by the truckload. The veggies are long gone, but the beer remains. I see no signs that anything's being sold to minors, I have no objection to widespread sale of beer and wine, and this doesn't say anything about "death with dignity". But the naysayers were absolutely right that the beer-and-wine law would be used in ways the voters did not intend, and we should keep that in mind for the future.
Mod parent up. I too was very worried about the possible misuse of this bill... until I took the time to read it. All the objections and complaints made here are dealt with by the fine print.
The bill requires that someone not financially connected to the patient witness his/her decision, and explicitly criminalizes coercion or deception. Yes, insurance companies and Medicare may stand to gain from it (which means we *all* stand to gain, through reduced premiums and taxes) but in the end, nobody is allowed to influence the patient's decision. The money is a side effect: death without suffering is the only goal.
Never mind whether you're wrong on ethics, you're wrong on facts. The patient must sign a written declaration in front of two witnesses, one of whom must be an outsider (not a family member, a medical professional responsible for the patient's care, or a beneficiary of inheritance.) This pretty much slams the door on the "psycho doctor" theory.
The Massachusetts law scared the crap out of me too, until I actually took the time to read it. This, and almost every other objection, is explicitly addressed in the fine print.
It all depends on what happens to the ballots after you mail them. Touchscreen voting machines are a clear assault on democracy, but it's not true that anything else would be better. There are plenty of ways to screw up any given voting system. Touchscreen machines just happen to be impossible to do right.
In other news, the Society of Aeronautical Engineers has recently announced a standardized zeppelin docking mechanism, so all hydrogen-filled dirigibles will be able to use the same berthing towers.
There's not enough energy in sunlight to push a plane. If you'll pardon some algebra:
Drag force on plane = (1/2) Cd * air density * wing area * speed^2 where Cd is the drag coefficient, which is fairly constant (about 0.03) for typical aircraft ranging from Cessnas to 747s.
Power needed to push through the air = Drag force * speed Let's suppose the wings are entirely covered with solar panels, producing power:
Solar power = wing area * solar intensity Suppose these panels are 100% efficient, and the electric engines are 100% efficient too: then solar power in = drag power out.
wing area * solar intensity = (1/2) Cd * air density * wing area * speed^3 Good news: wing area cancels out. It doesn't matter how big our plane is. Solve for speed:
speed = (2 solar intensity / (Cd * air density)^(1/3)
For a typical high-altitude airliner flying at 30,000 ft in daylight in mid-latitudes,
solar intensity = 300 W/m2
Cd = 0.03
air density = 0.4
speed = 37 m/s (or about 80 mph).
Bad news: your plane can go no faster than highway speed. You might as well drive. Worse news: at this altitude, at this speed, your airplane is sure to stall. To maintain enough lift to stay in the air, you're going to have to fly at low altitude. Where the air density is greater. And you're beneath the clouds. Crap.
Flying near sea level, let's suppose
solar intensity = 250 W/m2
air density = 1.3 our equation gives a top speed of 23 m/s, or 50 mph. Still tough to design a cargo plane that can stay aloft at that speed, and once again, you're definitely better off driving.
Keep in mind that I assumed absolutely perfect solar cells and engines, which are impossible. And you can't fly at night. Or at high latitude. And if it gets too cloudy you'll crash. And...
I missed the launch, and I haven't been able to find a recorded feed: if anyone has a link I'd love to hear the flight loop.
BUT, the mission control chatter you hear on a SpaceX launch is almost entirely people assuring themselves that the rocket is OK. They're not *controlling* much of anything: it's all in the hands of the flight computer, which decides things like "shut down this engine and recompute a launch profile for the remaining 8 engines" on its own, in real time. There's no time for humans to make a decision on this sort of thing: the decisions were made when programming the software, years ago.
I don't think they're hiding anything from the public, but what surprises me is that they seem not to have even *noticed* right away.
For the first stage, one at launch, two later on. From a strict physics perspective, you could probably have three or four out in the last few seconds of the burn, but I don't know if their software is that clever. The second stage has only one engine.
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Oh, yes, definitely, let's restart the argument about the 2000 and 2004 elections. That sounds like a very productive use of our time.
You can rationalize bigotry, but it's still bigotry. "Let's focus on educating women and freedmen, so they can participate in our democracy too!" George Washington never said.
No, the only states that can split their electoral votes do it winner-take-all by district, it's not a strict population proportion.
And for good reason: any state that adopted proportional electoral votes would render itself politically irrelevant. If my state has 10 electoral votes, and we award 6 to one guy and 4 to the other, the winner of our state pulls ahead by 2 votes instead of 10. We've just given away 80% of our power to pick the president.
I'm not saying that the winner-take-all system is better -- far from it. But states have a strong disincentive to change.
Very apt metaphor. But a parasite has to be careful not to kill its host before it's ready to emerge.
As the Republicans have moved to the social right, they've opened a gigantic hole in the American political spectrum for the ideas you describe. There's room for a Libertarian-lite party which is pragmatic about statism, or a New Republican party which has rid itself of its bigots.
It's not my own political position (I'm a proud Robin Hood liberal) but it's one that I respect.
That's not the question. The question is, how many Sami people didn't speak Swedish *before* the Swedes began their generation-long program of re-education, child indoctrination, and forced relocation.
There's no question, ethnic cleansing is highly effective in wiping out minority languages. The question is, do we want to do that in the US?
Ah, I see. You value stability over liberty. So you're not just a racist, you're a fascist. Glad we could clear that up.
I don't know much about Iceland, but for Sweden, you might read up on the Sami people sometime. You say you've never heard of them? Exactly my point.
Racism isn't something only Americans do. In your case, you're being racist in describing "*the* language" of "*the* society" in the U.S. Very few large nations consist of a single society: they're composed of a complex mixture of overlapping subgroups with varying amounts of integration, shared values, and shared languages and dialects. These subcultures range from gamer nerds to juggalos to Hmong immigrants -- and if you think only the Hmong should be forced to integrate and learn English, you should try talking to some juggalos.
There are a few nations which have fairly uniform, homogeneous, monolingual cultures: almost without exception, they got this way through genocide or ethnic cleansing.
Oh, I dunno. Maybe by watching something like this?
http://noticias.univision.com/destino-2012/
Or reading one of these?
http://www.eldiariony.com/
http://www.mittromney.com/es
http://www.barackobama.com/es/
There's an entire media industry serving tens of millions of people which you seem to be ignorant of, you racist twit.
I checked my facts, and you're right, I misremembered the results of the election. Mea culpa.
But as for your suggestion to vote against the big money interests, I'm not sure the Mass beer and wine thing is a good example. You had the big-money liquor stores doing battle against the big-money supermarkets, each funneling their money through non-profit small-business groups and police groups. That ballot question was a money-flinging clusterf*ck of epic proportions all around.
Let me play devil's advocate here. While we all know that email is insecure, as a practical matter the security holes in this are roughly equal to vote-by-mail. Not that that's a good thing, but this doesn't introduce many new problems. The NJ elections directive recognizes this, and treats displaced voters as "overseas" for the purpose of election rules.
Summary of the procedure:
* Your voter registration is already on fiile.
* You email a request for your ballot
* The elections agency marks your ballot number in the registry, sends you a ballot with a unique ID, along with a waiver of secrecy.
* You fill out the ballot and the waiver, and send them back.
Can we spam the election with billions of votes? No. Well, you can send the emails, but they won't have the right ID numbers so they won't be counted.
Can we hijack individuals' votes by voting for them, or by changing their vote via a man-in-the-middle attack? Yes, but you can do this by paper mail too, and it's a one-vote-at-a-time thing.
Do we lose the secrecy of the ballot booth? Yes, but that's lost in vote-by-mail too, and voters choose whether they'd rather submit a non-secret ballot, or trudge through miles of floodwaters to cast their vote in person.
The practical question you've got to ask yourself is not "could someone be disenfranchised by this?" but "will more people be disenfranchised by doing this than by *not* doing it?"
In short, adding "e-" to a technology doesn't miraculously make it evil or cool. And in this case, the security holes are roughly equal to a system already in common use. As a mandatory universal voting system, email voting would be an abhorrent violation of civil rights. As a short-term, *optional* response to a major emergency, it's worth considering.
Basements are also more secure, which makes it easier to protect the mouse colony from animal rights lunatics. Yes, this is a serious concern when installing animal colonies. Yes, it means animal rights activists bear some indirect responsibility for these deaths.
Many. But the goal of the law is not to allow every terminally ill patient to end their life, it's to allow at least *some* to die with dignity, while making damned sure the law isn't abused by doctors or family members. It errs on the side of caution.
As a side note, that ballot question eventually passed in Massachusetts, and my local convenience store put out a couple of baskets of withered vegetables for a few months, which apparently qualified it as a grocery store, and then started selling beer and wine by the truckload. The veggies are long gone, but the beer remains. I see no signs that anything's being sold to minors, I have no objection to widespread sale of beer and wine, and this doesn't say anything about "death with dignity". But the naysayers were absolutely right that the beer-and-wine law would be used in ways the voters did not intend, and we should keep that in mind for the future.
Actually, that's the very next question on the ballot. No joke.
Mod parent up. I too was very worried about the possible misuse of this bill... until I took the time to read it. All the objections and complaints made here are dealt with by the fine print.
The bill requires that someone not financially connected to the patient witness his/her decision, and explicitly criminalizes coercion or deception. Yes, insurance companies and Medicare may stand to gain from it (which means we *all* stand to gain, through reduced premiums and taxes) but in the end, nobody is allowed to influence the patient's decision. The money is a side effect: death without suffering is the only goal.
Never mind whether you're wrong on ethics, you're wrong on facts. The patient must sign a written declaration in front of two witnesses, one of whom must be an outsider (not a family member, a medical professional responsible for the patient's care, or a beneficiary of inheritance.) This pretty much slams the door on the "psycho doctor" theory.
The Massachusetts law scared the crap out of me too, until I actually took the time to read it. This, and almost every other objection, is explicitly addressed in the fine print.
It all depends on what happens to the ballots after you mail them. Touchscreen voting machines are a clear assault on democracy, but it's not true that anything else would be better. There are plenty of ways to screw up any given voting system. Touchscreen machines just happen to be impossible to do right.
In other news, the Society of Aeronautical Engineers has recently announced a standardized zeppelin docking mechanism, so all hydrogen-filled dirigibles will be able to use the same berthing towers.
There's not enough energy in sunlight to push a plane. If you'll pardon some algebra:
Drag force on plane = (1/2) Cd * air density * wing area * speed^2
where Cd is the drag coefficient, which is fairly constant (about 0.03) for typical aircraft ranging from Cessnas to 747s.
Power needed to push through the air = Drag force * speed
Let's suppose the wings are entirely covered with solar panels, producing power:
Solar power = wing area * solar intensity
Suppose these panels are 100% efficient, and the electric engines are 100% efficient too: then solar power in = drag power out.
wing area * solar intensity = (1/2) Cd * air density * wing area * speed^3
Good news: wing area cancels out. It doesn't matter how big our plane is. Solve for speed:
speed = (2 solar intensity / (Cd * air density)^(1/3)
For a typical high-altitude airliner flying at 30,000 ft in daylight in mid-latitudes,
solar intensity = 300 W/m2
Cd = 0.03
air density = 0.4
speed = 37 m/s (or about 80 mph).
Bad news: your plane can go no faster than highway speed. You might as well drive. Worse news: at this altitude, at this speed, your airplane is sure to stall. To maintain enough lift to stay in the air, you're going to have to fly at low altitude. Where the air density is greater. And you're beneath the clouds. Crap.
Flying near sea level, let's suppose
solar intensity = 250 W/m2
air density = 1.3
our equation gives a top speed of 23 m/s, or 50 mph. Still tough to design a cargo plane that can stay aloft at that speed, and once again, you're definitely better off driving.
Keep in mind that I assumed absolutely perfect solar cells and engines, which are impossible. And you can't fly at night. Or at high latitude. And if it gets too cloudy you'll crash. And...
Apollo 6 (unmanned test, uncontrolled pogo oscillation during first stage, multiple engine failures on 2nd)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_6
Apollo 13 (manned launch, pogo oscillations again, shutdown of center first-stage engine.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13#Launch_incident
I missed the launch, and I haven't been able to find a recorded feed: if anyone has a link I'd love to hear the flight loop.
BUT, the mission control chatter you hear on a SpaceX launch is almost entirely people assuring themselves that the rocket is OK. They're not *controlling* much of anything: it's all in the hands of the flight computer, which decides things like "shut down this engine and recompute a launch profile for the remaining 8 engines" on its own, in real time. There's no time for humans to make a decision on this sort of thing: the decisions were made when programming the software, years ago.
I don't think they're hiding anything from the public, but what surprises me is that they seem not to have even *noticed* right away.
As for "well dressed and professional", even *NASA* doesn't play by your old fart rules any more. (Your words not mine...) http://www.businessinsider.com/bobak-ferdowsi-nasa-curiosity-landing-mars-mohawk2012-8
For the first stage, one at launch, two later on. From a strict physics perspective, you could probably have three or four out in the last few seconds of the burn, but I don't know if their software is that clever. The second stage has only one engine.