We're actually pretty good at emergency response to things like hurricanes. Where we fail is at solving vast existential problems with no quick fix solution. Like "a major city is 20 feet below sea level".
The Katrina disaster occured decades before the levees failed.
It's not exactly a coincidence or a lack of give-a-damn on our part. You don't plan for things that don't happen. If the continental U.S. lay on a major subduction zone, we'd be better prepared for this. Maybe not as prepared as the Japanese...
the fatalities will probably not be as high as the Awaji/Kobe earthquake of 1995 (
the Kobe earthquake didn't generate a tsunami. Christ, I think I saw 22 people get killed in just the videos they're showing on CNN. Nothing graphic, just cars frantically trying to turn around as the tsunami wave bears down on them. I'd be surprised if the final death toll wasn't in the thousands+.
Oh, you've decided it's "use the tsunami to score political points" time, now, is it? Okay, game on. How about the House appropriations committee's current plans to cut 10% from the NOAA budget, 5% from USGS, and (I think) 100% of Corps of Engineers funding for flood control and coastal emergencies?
In all seriousness, microwaves are quite possibly the worst commonly available appliances to play junior tinkerer with.
Quoted for truth. Do. Not. Fuck. With. Microwaves.
The fact that the magnetron circuit requires a capacitor that stands a very good chance of killing your punk ass if disrespected is just icing on the cake...)
If I was designing a microwave oven, I'd probably stick a big capacitor on top of the magnetron even if it wasn't necessary. Nothing says "you're too ignorant to be playing with this thing" like getting thrown across the room by a couple thousand volts. All things considered, a really nasty electrical shock is far safer for everyone involved -- tinkerer, bystanders, and EMTs -- than letting a kilowatt of microwaves loose in the world.
I'm as critical of the war on terror as you are, but you have to remember the military's role in a democracy. It's not their job to decide when to go to war, with whom, for what reason. It is their job to *assume* the country's elected representatives have good reasons to go to war, and to prosecute that war as efficiently (in terms of lives and dollars) as possible.
Exceptions can be made for individual soldiers' conscientious objection, but that cannot apply to the military as an institution. If all it takes to start or stop a war is a hefty bribe to the Chiefs of Staff, we're screwed.
So from a perspective that assumes the war must be fought -- a perspective I totally disagree with, but which the military *must* adopt -- $400,000 to avoid the death of a platoon of highly-trained soldiers *is* money well spent, even from a pure dollars-invested perspective. Adding in some measure of the innate value of human life makes it even more so.
If you don't want that $400,000 to be spent, your beef is with your congressmen, not the generals.
Your point is absolutely correct, but I just wanted to nitpick: since GPS isn't a 2-way general-purpose communications network, it's not really described by the OSI system. Or if you insist, GPS doesn't really have layers 3 through 5, and layer 2 (physical addressing, aka satellite identity) is folded into the application datastream.
Me, I just go for a simple analogy: you don't have to be able to read a book to be able to burn it.
Trolling and trawling are two different fishing terms. (Trawling is dragging a net behind a boat, trolling is dragging a baited hook behind a boat.) Your instinct was dead on.
The summary is talking about the evils of postmodernism, cultural relativism, and deconstructivism.
The New York Times article linked is about head-in-the-sand data denial.
These two things have nothing to do with each other. The Republican congressmen in question don't give a damn about postmodernistm or cultural relativism. They don't believe that the truth depends on your perspective, or that morals and ethics are culturally informed. They believe that their ideal of the traditional American way of life is the only truth, and that anything that contradicts that must not be true.
TFS author is trying to shove a square peg down his favorite round hole.
You're either the least original troll ever, or just as wrong as the other three people who posted here. Some of us both know how to fish and were on Usenet when the term was invented.
You've pretty much summarized the reason for the "(mostly)" in my post. It's certainly possible to troll in real life, but as a practical matter, the loss of reputation and trust are severe enough that very few people do it.
The definition of "troll" has changed. It used to be, back in the good old USENET days, a troll was someone who intentionally took an outrageous viewpoint, purely to generate responses and enjoy the excitement of being in the center of attention.
Can we go back to the Usenet definition? Please? It referred to a specific new phenomenon (mostly) unique to online conversation, which was desperately in need of a name. And the name made sense: when you're trolling you're dragging bait through the water hoping some sucker will take a bite.
The word "troll" doesn't make sense when applied to hostile posters, and we already have lots of good words for people who are overly confrontational in conversation. "Asshole" and "dick", for a start.
Looks like some stockbroker who never took a science class overheard their buddy talking about "milliseconds" in a bar, and decided to find a cool sounding word to one-up them with.
Somebody should just teach these dudes about the Planck Time and be done with it.
It created our central banking system. The fact that every other civilized country on Earth has a similar system only makes it more sinister in the eyes of our lunatic fringe.
Anytime someone utters the words "Federal Reserve Act of 1913", it's 50-50 odds what happens next. Half the time they'll follow it up by declaring that income taxes are invalid, money is only money if it's backed by gold, and fluoride treated water is a government mind control tool. The other half of the time they'll just hole up in their fortified compound and start shooting.
Way to go, ANONYMOUS, way to pick the tough battle, to go against the grain and stand up against the weight of public opinion.
Almost everyone hates the Westboro Baptist Church. It's easy, and also cowardly, to attack people whose beliefs are repugnant to the majority. But it takes true bravery to stand by and respect their right to say repugnant things.
Yes, the athletics team isn't perfect, it's more for humor value. But the LGBT society is the meat of my argument:
"We're glad you've come out as gay and joined our group, but your family does not approve of the gay lifestyle, and is being abusive toward you and your new friends. If you can't convince them to accept you as gay, you should get out of the house, live your own life with your new gay friends, and don't let your asshole parents tell you what your sexual identity is."
Don't get me wrong: I *don't* think LGBT groups are cults, and I have nothing but respect for the people who face terrible choices like this in the face of verbal and physical abuse from their families. But the point is that a variety of social groups do encourage members to seek independence and sometimes separation from their parents, often for good reasons, and so that can't be our sole criterion for defining a cult.
In a world where 50 million children are malnourished, who cares if... "Paul Venezia offers a field guide to understanding your resident Unix veteran," "Google Goes After Content Farms" "Ethernet switch and adapter makers are making Fibre Channel available for free." "Motorola is Adopting 3 Laws of Robotics For Android" "Harvard Professor Creates Paper Accelerometer"
We live in a world where it's possible to care about more than one thing at a time. Slashdot is mostly about those things that aren't mass starvation.
a cult pressures new members to separate themselves from their families and only to associate with other members of the group.
Speaking only as devil's advocate, I could use that definition to argue that my campus varsity sports teams, LGBT group, Green Party and Young Republicans should all be banned.
All groups encourage their members to associate with the like-minded, and to distance themselves from family when the family is seen as abusive or misguided. Whether that pressure rises to true cult status is largely a matter of degree.
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We're actually pretty good at emergency response to things like hurricanes. Where we fail is at solving vast existential problems with no quick fix solution. Like "a major city is 20 feet below sea level".
The Katrina disaster occured decades before the levees failed.
Nah, I wanted to make this point anyway, and the troll lets me do it without being the first to start throwing mud. :)
It's not exactly a coincidence or a lack of give-a-damn on our part. You don't plan for things that don't happen. If the continental U.S. lay on a major subduction zone, we'd be better prepared for this. Maybe not as prepared as the Japanese...
the Kobe earthquake didn't generate a tsunami. Christ, I think I saw 22 people get killed in just the videos they're showing on CNN. Nothing graphic, just cars frantically trying to turn around as the tsunami wave bears down on them. I'd be surprised if the final death toll wasn't in the thousands+.
Oh, you've decided it's "use the tsunami to score political points" time, now, is it? Okay, game on. How about the House appropriations committee's current plans to cut 10% from the NOAA budget, 5% from USGS, and (I think) 100% of Corps of Engineers funding for flood control and coastal emergencies?
King Pyrrhus would disagree.
Quoted for truth. Do. Not. Fuck. With. Microwaves.
If I was designing a microwave oven, I'd probably stick a big capacitor on top of the magnetron even if it wasn't necessary. Nothing says "you're too ignorant to be playing with this thing" like getting thrown across the room by a couple thousand volts. All things considered, a really nasty electrical shock is far safer for everyone involved -- tinkerer, bystanders, and EMTs -- than letting a kilowatt of microwaves loose in the world.
I'm as critical of the war on terror as you are, but you have to remember the military's role in a democracy. It's not their job to decide when to go to war, with whom, for what reason. It is their job to *assume* the country's elected representatives have good reasons to go to war, and to prosecute that war as efficiently (in terms of lives and dollars) as possible.
Exceptions can be made for individual soldiers' conscientious objection, but that cannot apply to the military as an institution. If all it takes to start or stop a war is a hefty bribe to the Chiefs of Staff, we're screwed.
So from a perspective that assumes the war must be fought -- a perspective I totally disagree with, but which the military *must* adopt -- $400,000 to avoid the death of a platoon of highly-trained soldiers *is* money well spent, even from a pure dollars-invested perspective. Adding in some measure of the innate value of human life makes it even more so.
If you don't want that $400,000 to be spent, your beef is with your congressmen, not the generals.
Your point is absolutely correct, but I just wanted to nitpick: since GPS isn't a 2-way general-purpose communications network, it's not really described by the OSI system. Or if you insist, GPS doesn't really have layers 3 through 5, and layer 2 (physical addressing, aka satellite identity) is folded into the application datastream.
Me, I just go for a simple analogy: you don't have to be able to read a book to be able to burn it.
Trolling and trawling are two different fishing terms. (Trawling is dragging a net behind a boat, trolling is dragging a baited hook behind a boat.) Your instinct was dead on.
Burning my own karma to say:
Mod parent HILARIOUS.
The summary is talking about the evils of postmodernism, cultural relativism, and deconstructivism.
The New York Times article linked is about head-in-the-sand data denial.
These two things have nothing to do with each other. The Republican congressmen in question don't give a damn about postmodernistm or cultural relativism. They don't believe that the truth depends on your perspective, or that morals and ethics are culturally informed. They believe that their ideal of the traditional American way of life is the only truth, and that anything that contradicts that must not be true.
TFS author is trying to shove a square peg down his favorite round hole.
You're either the least original troll ever, or just as wrong as the other three people who posted here. Some of us both know how to fish and were on Usenet when the term was invented.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawling
You've pretty much summarized the reason for the "(mostly)" in my post. It's certainly possible to troll in real life, but as a practical matter, the loss of reputation and trust are severe enough that very few people do it.
If this is a troll, I salute you. Otherwise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawling
Can we go back to the Usenet definition? Please? It referred to a specific new phenomenon (mostly) unique to online conversation, which was desperately in need of a name. And the name made sense: when you're trolling you're dragging bait through the water hoping some sucker will take a bite.
The word "troll" doesn't make sense when applied to hostile posters, and we already have lots of good words for people who are overly confrontational in conversation. "Asshole" and "dick", for a start.
Looks like some stockbroker who never took a science class overheard their buddy talking about "milliseconds" in a bar, and decided to find a cool sounding word to one-up them with.
Somebody should just teach these dudes about the Planck Time and be done with it.
Agree. Also, there is no fool so foolish as a fool in love.
Falling for Nigerian fraud scams isn't normal. But on Love it is.
Love. Not even once.
Wow, that's scary. Too bad it's not true.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/faq/faqfrs.htm#5
It created our central banking system. The fact that every other civilized country on Earth has a similar system only makes it more sinister in the eyes of our lunatic fringe.
Anytime someone utters the words "Federal Reserve Act of 1913", it's 50-50 odds what happens next. Half the time they'll follow it up by declaring that income taxes are invalid, money is only money if it's backed by gold, and fluoride treated water is a government mind control tool. The other half of the time they'll just hole up in their fortified compound and start shooting.
Sticks and stones... Pushing is not the same as shouting, and children are not the same as adults. Analogy fail.
Way to go, ANONYMOUS, way to pick the tough battle, to go against the grain and stand up against the weight of public opinion.
Almost everyone hates the Westboro Baptist Church. It's easy, and also cowardly, to attack people whose beliefs are repugnant to the majority. But it takes true bravery to stand by and respect their right to say repugnant things.
Yes, the athletics team isn't perfect, it's more for humor value. But the LGBT society is the meat of my argument:
"We're glad you've come out as gay and joined our group, but your family does not approve of the gay lifestyle, and is being abusive toward you and your new friends. If you can't convince them to accept you as gay, you should get out of the house, live your own life with your new gay friends, and don't let your asshole parents tell you what your sexual identity is."
Don't get me wrong: I *don't* think LGBT groups are cults, and I have nothing but respect for the people who face terrible choices like this in the face of verbal and physical abuse from their families. But the point is that a variety of social groups do encourage members to seek independence and sometimes separation from their parents, often for good reasons, and so that can't be our sole criterion for defining a cult.
In a world where 50 million children are malnourished, who cares if ...
"Paul Venezia offers a field guide to understanding your resident Unix veteran,"
"Google Goes After Content Farms"
"Ethernet switch and adapter makers are making Fibre Channel available for free."
"Motorola is Adopting 3 Laws of Robotics For Android"
"Harvard Professor Creates Paper Accelerometer"
We live in a world where it's possible to care about more than one thing at a time. Slashdot is mostly about those things that aren't mass starvation.
a cult pressures new members to separate themselves from their families and only to associate with other members of the group.
Speaking only as devil's advocate, I could use that definition to argue that my campus varsity sports teams, LGBT group, Green Party and Young Republicans should all be banned.
All groups encourage their members to associate with the like-minded, and to distance themselves from family when the family is seen as abusive or misguided. Whether that pressure rises to true cult status is largely a matter of degree.