1. There was no blast. Therefore, there was no blast radius. The average dose of radiation to the people in the area affected by Three Mile Island was 1 millirem. To put that in perspective, a full set of chest X-rays exposes the patient to 6 millirem.
2. The area that was evacuated of pregnant women and pre-school children was a 5 mile radius.
In short, if TMI is a worst-case (or even close to worst-case) scenario, my local utility company has my permission to construct a modern nuclear power plant in my back yard any time.
This will allow the use of Open Office, and, very soon, every other word processor under the sun (including Word) because the authors of all those other word processors will be falling over themselves to support ODF (or go out of business).
<sarcasm>Yeah, if MS loses the State of Massachusetts as a client, they'll be as dead as FreeBSD...</sarcasm>
Somehow I knew right after I posted that someone would bring up shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre. I really don't an argument against that particular point of view - it's kind of like how my right to swing my fist ends at everyone else's nose. With every right comes responsibility, of course, and I suppose that the examples you give can all be described as responsibilities that come with rights.
My argument, in a nutshell, is that rights should not ebb and flow with the times. They should not be limited to any greater extent than to prevent one's activities from infringing on the rights of others. The boundaries may be very fine lines in some instances, but those fine lines should be immovable. With changing circumstances, there may arise cases where the line has not yet been found. In those cases, it should be found and carved in stone. Consistency in the law is of great importance.
To paraphrase a sig I saw here on/. the other day, the problem with freedom isn't "I must be free." The problem is "that other jerk must be free as well." I'm willing to live with that problem, and ask only that the other jerk be willing to live with that problem as well.
There are certain freedoms that should be (and as far as I'm concerned, are) absolute, irrevocable, unalienable and non-negotiable.
Among those are the right to speak what's on your mind, the right to associate with anyone you choose to associate with, the right to worship whatever deit(ies) you want to worship in whatever way you want to worship him/her/it/them (or no deity at all), the right to not have your home and possessions ransacked on a whim, and several others, not all of which are encoded in the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution (hence the 9th and 10th Amendments).
No threat is so great, no amount of security so precious as to convince me to give one iota of ground on those rights. I doubt that many of the so-called Founding Fathers would disagree with me in this.
Don't waste your time sending e-mail to your congress critter. I'd be willing to bet that of the 535 members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, maybe 200 have actually seen a real e-mail displayed on a computer screen, 100 have actually read an e-mail on a screen, and maybe 20 have actually opened an e-mail client on their computer, accessed incoming e-mail and typed a reply at some point in their lives. The remainder might, possibly, have some vague knowledge that there is something called the Internet and that with it you can send something called e-mail.
Letters and telephone calls may not get a whole lot more attention than e-mails, but e-mails tend to go unread except *maybe* by some staffer who reads the subject header, the first sentence, and hits the delete button. At least they send a form letter reply when you write a dead-tree letter.
If you want your duly elected representative to really acknowledge your existence, the best and most effective way to achieve that is to call her office, tell the person who answers the phone that you'd like to make a $50,000 contribution to the general fund of the party to which she belongs, along with a $2,000 contribution to her re-election campaign (the max allowed by law) and ask for a 5-minute meeting to discuss a few things on your mind. Your $52,000 might possibly get you 5 minutes in a room with a freshman Representative. A meeting with a Senator will probably run you about $100,000 or more.
The Michelle Malkin (who is this woman?) article links to and quotes an article in the Lawrence Journal World. That is where the info about the location and time of the alleged beating comes from.
It'd be hard to spin the alleged facts presented in the article. The good professor claims:
He was on his way to breakfast, at about 6:40 AM.
He was being tailgated by two men in a pickup truck
He pulled over and stopped.
The two men tailgating him stopped and exited their vehicle.
The good professor exited his vehicle
The two men beat him.
Now, it seems to me that the good professor did at least 2 extremely stupid things in that situation -
Just recently, here in northwestern Georgia, a man was shot 5 times in front of his kids, when he got out of his truck to confront a man who had been tailgating him. It was dark at the time.
If someone's tailgating me after dark on a country road, I make random turns till the tailgater decides to stop following me. If he persists, I loosen my jacket, unsnap my holster, and drive to a well-lit area like a 24-hour convenience store.
The issue was not control of the WWW. It was control of DNS, which is a mechanism of the Internet at large. Yes, DNS affects the WWW. It also affects IRC, FTP, and every other type of service that is accessed via the Internet.
Despite what you may have read in Workers World or the New York Times, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is still taught to every public school student in the United States.
Not sure which football you're thinking of, but a field used for the sport called "football" by USians is about 110 meters long (including end zones) and about 46 meters wide. In US-speak, it's 120 yards long including end zones and 50 yards wide.
helmet issue: huhh I went to miami early this year and I freaked out on all the idiots riding speedbikes without a helmet. I had 2 nasty crashes on competitions and during practicing with BMX that ended in serious facial injury, one which almost popped my eye out, so I can imagine what impact a 50km/h+ crash could have on a human head -> beanie helmet is for idiots, wannabes, not even girls on a scooter at 30km/hour.
The laws vary from state to state - here in Georgia, helmets are required for all motorcycle riders. They don't have to be full-face helmets, but they do have to meet some arcane Department of Transportation impact rating. As for 50 km/h....try closer to 112 km/h - that's the speed limit on the freeways here (converted from 70mph). And if you're actually obeying the speed limit on the freeways around here, even the little old blue-haired grandmothers honk angrily as they blow by:-P
On the meat thing - Yeah, I appreciate the health aspects, and can even get behind someone limiting their meat intake and adding plenty of plant materials to his diet. As for the cruelty aspect of it, I don't think it's cruel to eat animals - even animals eat other animals, and I think most of them don't have the capacity for cruelty. To the lion's way of thinking, the gazelle isn't a "victim of a violent act" - it's just dinner. Same for me and the ham sandwich I had for lunch today.
There is one meat dish that I know for a fact I could never give up willingly - barbecued baby back ribs. There's even a recipe for them in my journal. I still experiment with different spices and different kinds of wood for the fire, looking for the Perfect Rack of Ribs (TM).
Pardon me while I expose how much of a redneck I am...
The big social event I attend on Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day is a barbecue (all holidays are as shown on a US calendar, which has radically different holidays than most countries). A bunch of us gather and start the fire at about 7am, in a smoker made from a water tank and a 1977 AMC Pacer chassis (is that redneck enough for you? *grin*). We cook about a dozen racks of ribs, 4-5 hams, a dozen chickens, a large pot of Brunswick Stew, and a large pot of barbecue beans while the womenfolk are inside making potato salad, cole slaw, etc. We also tend to drink beer and watch whatever sport is in season on a portable television, while cooking. I've eaten at little greasy-spoon diners and I've eaten at 5-star restaurants where the waiters wear monkey suits and white cotton gloves to take your order for a dinner that runs over $300 per person, not counting drinks or tip. I've had the home cooking of more grandmothers than I can count, but I've never had anything that tasted quite as good as some high quality barbecued baby back ribs and beans, with a bottle of cheap beer. If eating meat makes me die of a heart attack at the age of 55, I think it's worth it. But again, that's just me.
Lard as a sandwich topping - that's just....ick. *shudder*
Back on topic, every single aspect of modern civilization either directly pollutes or relies on another aspect which pollutes. There's no way we could come anywhere close to approximating what is considered a "decent" lifestyle without ever polluting. Decreasing pollution, however, is a Good Thing.
McDonald's has made a few baby steps in the right direction over the years - using post-consumer recycled paper rather than "lasts till the end of time" styrofoam to package their artery-hardening hamburgers is one. They have a LONG way to go before they can be called "environmentally sound", even leaving aside the parts of their business model that are debatably environmentally unsound - e.g. the killing of animals.
Ford and GM are offering more fuel efficient vehicles, but their real profits (when they made them) come from the upscale SUV market. Perhaps now that SUV's are going out of style, they'll turn more of their attention to improvin
Ah, okay...dirt bikes have a different seating configuration than street bikes. I sat a Honda Rebel 250 and felt like a circus bear on a minibike. Seriously, knees in the handlebars. Same for the Yamaha Virago 250. The Ninja 250 had my knees bent at a very uncomfortable angle, with my feet directly under my arse. I imagine a dirt bike would be a different story, just because of the higher seat height, the pegs being further forward than on a sport bike, and the grips being further forward than on a cruiser. My ride is a 1985 Yamaha Virago XV700N - just enough bike to be able to ride on the freeway and keep up with traffic. Even with it, though, I'm still turning 4000 rpm at 60mph - closer to 5000 rpm at 75mph. Redline is 7000 rpm and I'm leery of running for an hour or so at well over half of the max. I get the feeling that with a bit more displacement and a taller gear, I could get about the same fuel economy and better freeway performance - but my budget allowed for the bike I have. C'est la vie.
On the meat thing...well, that's cool, leaves more meat for me *grin*
I seriously don't think I'd want to live if I couldn't eat steaks...or cheeseburgers...or BACON cheeseburgers...or bell peppers stuffed with ground beef...or...damn, I've made myself hungry! But if you don't want to eat meat, that's cool. At least you're not advocating the prohibition of meat eating:)
I do find it refreshing to find someone on/. with whom I can disagree peacefully. Kudos to you on that.
As for protective gear, I'd wear the brightly-colored synthetic gear with the armor inserts, but that stuff is EXPENSIVE here - and it'd clash a bit with a mostly black and chrome cruiser;-)
I once read about an abrasion test using the nylon material they put in the synthetic riding gear, versus leather, denim, etc. The leather lasted a bit longer than the nylon in an abrasion test on asphalt at 60mph. The denim lasted about 1/3 as long as the leather, and regular cotton trousers lasted half as long as the denim. It's not a fetish, it's self-preservation. Especially here in the US where they let barely-conscious, semi-literate mouth-breathers operate 3-ton SUV's at 70mph+ on public roads while talking on a cell phone, sipping a bottle of soda, putting on makeup and reading the newspaper, every little bit of protection counts.
Too many of my cruiser-riding brethren, particularly those who ride large overpriced cruisers made by a company headquartered in Wisconsin, go out on the road with a T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, and a "beanie" helmet. Some think only a wuss wears a full-face helmet and other protective gear. Ah well, maybe they'll learn after their first major reconstructive skin graft surgeries.
I'm a steak-munching conservative who enjoys an occasional meal at McD's. I am of the opinion that people like the assholes from "Mountain Justice Summer" who blocked the road to the Zeb Mountain Mine this summer belong in prison. I wear leather. Lots of it. Frequently. Bulls are good for 4 things: eating, wearing, fighting, and riding in rodeos. Cows can add milk production to their resume. My better half owns a couple of nice fur coats - nothing better for keeping warm, except maybe a few layers of sweaters under my leather jacket.
That said, I ride a motorcycle. Mine's a 700cc model because I sat a few 250cc bikes and they all seemed to be sized for a double jointed midget. They weren't just uncomfortable, they would have been dangerous for me to ride - with my hands on the bars and feet on the pegs, my knees hit the bars. Besides, I was able to get a decent 700cc bike for only $1400. But I still feel pretty good about my fuel usage on the bike. It gets way better fuel economy than my 1996 F-150 with 4.9L engine. And yes, there are plenty of times when I need the hauling capacity of the F-150. However, I'm not going to ride the motorcycle when it's 33 degrees outside and raining slush, or when it's 15 degrees outside with ice on the roads. That's just dumb. My better half drives a 1991 Nissan Sentra (she can't ride a motorcycle due to a pair of artificial hips she got as a souvenir of a major accident long ago). I will not buy a fourth vehicle - at least not as long as our total household income is less than $35,000 a year.
My point is, yeah, I'm a flag-waving, gun-toting, southeastern-US, backwoods redneck conservative who probably votes whatever way you wouldn't vote - but I still see the value of conserving resources. That's the part of what Max Weber called the "Protestant Work Ethic" that today's neoconservatives have lost. Conservation and conservative both have the same root word - I don't understand why there aren't more conservatives who like conservation. There's also the fact that Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, was perhaps best remembered for his works to conserve nature.
My question is, am I misusing "OUR" planet? I'm an American and I own a vehicle that gets maybe 15 miles per gallon on a good day. I eat meat and wear animal skins. But I do ride the motorcycle whenever it's dry and warm enough to ride safely and without the risk of frostbite. I recycle when afforded the opportunity. I even got myself a water-saving showerhead and suffer through the lack of water pressure in the shower every morning.
As an aside - when you ride your motorcycle, I sincerely hope for your own safety that you wear a full-face helmet, motorcycle-specific leather jacket with armor panels, motorcycle-specific leather gloves with extra layers at the knuckles, leather boots, and leather chaps - at the least. Road rash hurts - don't expose any skin that you are not willing to part with.
First off, just because one person (or government) does evil things doesn't excuse another person (or government) doing evil things.
Secondly, the United States abolished slavery 140 years ago. It was recognized as evil, and outlawed by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. Not to mention that abolishing it was an effective way to financially punish those uppity Southerners who had the gall to think the 10th Amendment means what it says, thus "starting" the War of Northern Aggression.
Isn't China still imprisoning people who belong to religions the government doesn't like, people who say and/or print things the government doesn't like, and "unauthorized" people caught attempting to flee the country?
Is the Chinese government's censorship of speech and filtering of Internet content a myth?
These are evil things that are going on RIGHT NOW, and no amount of draggin up ancient wrongdoings can make these evil things right today.
I, too, live in Chattanooga (actually Rossville, GA, but less than a mile from the Chattanooga City Limits). I'd hardly call it a decent-sized city. I mean, it's spread out a lot, so the area is decent-sized, but the population in the city limits is only about 150,000. Add in East Ridge, Red Bank, Hixson, Rossville, and so forth and you might hit 250,000 population.
I work at the east end of Fort Oglethorpe (visit the bookstore on Cloud Springs Road near I-75 to see this faceless poster in action). My commute is about 15-20 minutes, depending on the traffic signals and whether I get stuck behind a blue-haired grandmother on the way. There is absolutely no public transportation available where I live, nor where I work. And even if there was county-provided public transportation in both places, a public-transport commute would involve a transfer from the system of one county to the system of another.
I lived in Smyrna, GA for a few years, and worked in the Midtown area of Atlanta. My commute was 20 minutes on average. In 2003, when I moved back to the Chattanooga area, there was no way of getting from within 1 mile of home to within 1 mile of work using public transportation. Again, my daily commute crossed a county line. On top of that, there's just no way I'd get on a bus or train with the people who lived between where I lived and where I worked. Not without a Glock 19 and a few spare mags, anyway.
The "Park and Ride" gimmick is apparently only for people who work in Buckhead and can afford to live in Gwinnett County, and they're the folks who drive BMW's and Benzes. Of course, the Park and Ride lots are also the favorite hunting grounds of car thieves now. Imagine that - criminals gravitating to a place where hundreds, if not thousands, of expensive late-model luxury and performance cars are parked for 8 hours every day while their owners are miles away.
Atlanta could probably benefit greatly from an integrated rail/bus system that spans Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett, and DeKalb counties, but I have serious doubts about the same working well for Chattanooga. This is partly due to how spread out the population is, but mainly due to the geography of the city. With the Tennessee River, Signal Mountain, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, it would at least be a major engineering challenge. The land slopes sharply uphill from the river on the north bank (look at Forrest Avenue going up the hill from north end of the Walnut Street Bridge), and on the south bank there are plenty of obstacles to east-west movement (think I-24 going up the ridge cut).
BTW, while Chattanooga does tend to somewhat suck, a move to Atlanta is a bad idea. I lived down there for 3 years, and hated every picosecond of it. All of the disadvantages of a large city, with none of the perks. I hated my "$10,000 stereo in a $5000 car" neighbors, I hated the smell (Atlanta just plain smells BAD, especially close to the Chattahoochie River), I hated the Braves and the traffic downtown when they were playing, I hated the constant road construction downtown, I hated the crowds, I hated the crappy tap water, and I hated the puffed-up fake people who tried to act like Atlanta was NYC, as if that's something worthwhile to aspire to.
Then again, I'm probably the polar opposite of you. Rossville (population about 5000) is about the biggest city I ever plan to live in for the rest of my life, though its proximity to the much larger city of Chattanooga is a downside. If Rossville were the biggest city within 30 miles, it'd be just about right. When I retire I plan to buy 100 acres on Sand Mountain and put up a 12-foot-tall electric fence topped with razor wire with big signs that say "KEEP OUT", put an alligator-filled moat just inside the fence, and build myself a home in the center of the property. Or as close to that as I can afford:-P
Yeah, terrorists are imaginary. GWB just imagined that whole 11 September 2001 thing. Those nice people would have just sat on their asses and thought happy-happy thoughts forever if not for that evil, evil man and his invasion.
FWIW, I opposed the invasion of Iraq. Not because the invasion wasn't the Right Thing - the invasion *was* the Right Thing. But the Right Thing, in this case, wasn't the Right Thing for America. I wanted to let the problem of Saddam fester until he became a threat to the EU. Maybe then they'd get off their asses and clean up the mess he was making, essentially, in their own back yard.
BTW, why is it that piece of shit liberals like you blame GWB for everything you perceive as wrong in the world? "Wah! My toast burned! GWB's fault!" "Wah! My radio won't pick up that station 80 miles away! GWB's fault!"
Yes, this is flamebait. I don't give a flying fuck. I have karma to burn.
You might find it interesting that the three-judge panel who issued the ruling was made up of Harry Thomas Edwards, Karen LeCraft Henderson, and David S. Tatel. The dissenting opinion was written by Henderson.
Who appointed these judges?
Edwards - Jimmy Carter appointee Tatel - Bill Clinton appointee Henderson - George H. W. Bush appointee
So, it was the Democratic appointees who want to stifle your free speech on the Internet. Just like it was the Democratic appointees, plus O'Connor, who ruled that your local corrupt municipality can take your land and give it to a developer to build a strip mall, if they can find even the most specious argument that it's "for the good of the community" - and that "good" includes "generates more tax revenue for us."
What it boils down to, is that politicians on both sides suck. They just suck in different ways.
BTW - Thanks for invoking Godwin's Law so early in the discussion. Now please take off your tin-foil hat so we may commence with the re-education mind-control rays.
Slashdot Mirror
and how many Libraries of Congress per Fortnight/Hectare is that anyway?
*grin*
How many slashdotter's have the literacy to read it? hah!
I would guess very few. I've yet to see one who knows such basic things as the difference between the possessive and plural forms of a noun.
"twenty mile last radius"???
1. There was no blast. Therefore, there was no blast radius. The average dose of radiation to the people in the area affected by Three Mile Island was 1 millirem. To put that in perspective, a full set of chest X-rays exposes the patient to 6 millirem.
2. The area that was evacuated of pregnant women and pre-school children was a 5 mile radius.
Source: United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission
In short, if TMI is a worst-case (or even close to worst-case) scenario, my local utility company has my permission to construct a modern nuclear power plant in my back yard any time.
Damn, I wish you hadn't posted that anonymously; it's hard to "friend" Anonymous Coward...
Yes, but unfortunately we haven't yet found the Ancient outpost in Antarctica where the Zero Point Modules are.
Somehow I knew right after I posted that someone would bring up shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre. I really don't an argument against that particular point of view - it's kind of like how my right to swing my fist ends at everyone else's nose. With every right comes responsibility, of course, and I suppose that the examples you give can all be described as responsibilities that come with rights.
/. the other day, the problem with freedom isn't "I must be free." The problem is "that other jerk must be free as well." I'm willing to live with that problem, and ask only that the other jerk be willing to live with that problem as well.
My argument, in a nutshell, is that rights should not ebb and flow with the times. They should not be limited to any greater extent than to prevent one's activities from infringing on the rights of others. The boundaries may be very fine lines in some instances, but those fine lines should be immovable. With changing circumstances, there may arise cases where the line has not yet been found. In those cases, it should be found and carved in stone. Consistency in the law is of great importance.
To paraphrase a sig I saw here on
There are certain freedoms that should be (and as far as I'm concerned, are) absolute, irrevocable, unalienable and non-negotiable.
Among those are the right to speak what's on your mind, the right to associate with anyone you choose to associate with, the right to worship whatever deit(ies) you want to worship in whatever way you want to worship him/her/it/them (or no deity at all), the right to not have your home and possessions ransacked on a whim, and several others, not all of which are encoded in the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution (hence the 9th and 10th Amendments).
No threat is so great, no amount of security so precious as to convince me to give one iota of ground on those rights. I doubt that many of the so-called Founding Fathers would disagree with me in this.
Don't waste your time sending e-mail to your congress critter. I'd be willing to bet that of the 535 members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, maybe 200 have actually seen a real e-mail displayed on a computer screen, 100 have actually read an e-mail on a screen, and maybe 20 have actually opened an e-mail client on their computer, accessed incoming e-mail and typed a reply at some point in their lives. The remainder might, possibly, have some vague knowledge that there is something called the Internet and that with it you can send something called e-mail.
Letters and telephone calls may not get a whole lot more attention than e-mails, but e-mails tend to go unread except *maybe* by some staffer who reads the subject header, the first sentence, and hits the delete button. At least they send a form letter reply when you write a dead-tree letter.
If you want your duly elected representative to really acknowledge your existence, the best and most effective way to achieve that is to call her office, tell the person who answers the phone that you'd like to make a $50,000 contribution to the general fund of the party to which she belongs, along with a $2,000 contribution to her re-election campaign (the max allowed by law) and ask for a 5-minute meeting to discuss a few things on your mind. Your $52,000 might possibly get you 5 minutes in a room with a freshman Representative. A meeting with a Senator will probably run you about $100,000 or more.
It'd be hard to spin the alleged facts presented in the article. The good professor claims:
Now, it seems to me that the good professor did at least 2 extremely stupid things in that situation -
Just recently, here in northwestern Georgia, a man was shot 5 times in front of his kids, when he got out of his truck to confront a man who had been tailgating him. It was dark at the time.
If someone's tailgating me after dark on a country road, I make random turns till the tailgater decides to stop following me. If he persists, I loosen my jacket, unsnap my holster, and drive to a well-lit area like a 24-hour convenience store.
The issue was not control of the WWW. It was control of DNS, which is a mechanism of the Internet at large. Yes, DNS affects the WWW. It also affects IRC, FTP, and every other type of service that is accessed via the Internet.
Despite what you may have read in Workers World or the New York Times, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is still taught to every public school student in the United States.
so....where do you put them? Parliament?
Not sure which football you're thinking of, but a field used for the sport called "football" by USians is about 110 meters long (including end zones) and about 46 meters wide. In US-speak, it's 120 yards long including end zones and 50 yards wide.
Still far larger than the telescope, of course.
The laws vary from state to state - here in Georgia, helmets are required for all motorcycle riders. They don't have to be full-face helmets, but they do have to meet some arcane Department of Transportation impact rating. As for 50 km/h....try closer to 112 km/h - that's the speed limit on the freeways here (converted from 70mph). And if you're actually obeying the speed limit on the freeways around here, even the little old blue-haired grandmothers honk angrily as they blow by :-P
On the meat thing - Yeah, I appreciate the health aspects, and can even get behind someone limiting their meat intake and adding plenty of plant materials to his diet. As for the cruelty aspect of it, I don't think it's cruel to eat animals - even animals eat other animals, and I think most of them don't have the capacity for cruelty. To the lion's way of thinking, the gazelle isn't a "victim of a violent act" - it's just dinner. Same for me and the ham sandwich I had for lunch today.
There is one meat dish that I know for a fact I could never give up willingly - barbecued baby back ribs. There's even a recipe for them in my journal. I still experiment with different spices and different kinds of wood for the fire, looking for the Perfect Rack of Ribs (TM).
Pardon me while I expose how much of a redneck I am...
The big social event I attend on Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day is a barbecue (all holidays are as shown on a US calendar, which has radically different holidays than most countries). A bunch of us gather and start the fire at about 7am, in a smoker made from a water tank and a 1977 AMC Pacer chassis (is that redneck enough for you? *grin*). We cook about a dozen racks of ribs, 4-5 hams, a dozen chickens, a large pot of Brunswick Stew, and a large pot of barbecue beans while the womenfolk are inside making potato salad, cole slaw, etc. We also tend to drink beer and watch whatever sport is in season on a portable television, while cooking. I've eaten at little greasy-spoon diners and I've eaten at 5-star restaurants where the waiters wear monkey suits and white cotton gloves to take your order for a dinner that runs over $300 per person, not counting drinks or tip. I've had the home cooking of more grandmothers than I can count, but I've never had anything that tasted quite as good as some high quality barbecued baby back ribs and beans, with a bottle of cheap beer. If eating meat makes me die of a heart attack at the age of 55, I think it's worth it. But again, that's just me.
Lard as a sandwich topping - that's just....ick. *shudder*
Back on topic, every single aspect of modern civilization either directly pollutes or relies on another aspect which pollutes. There's no way we could come anywhere close to approximating what is considered a "decent" lifestyle without ever polluting. Decreasing pollution, however, is a Good Thing.
McDonald's has made a few baby steps in the right direction over the years - using post-consumer recycled paper rather than "lasts till the end of time" styrofoam to package their artery-hardening hamburgers is one. They have a LONG way to go before they can be called "environmentally sound", even leaving aside the parts of their business model that are debatably environmentally unsound - e.g. the killing of animals.
Ford and GM are offering more fuel efficient vehicles, but their real profits (when they made them) come from the upscale SUV market. Perhaps now that SUV's are going out of style, they'll turn more of their attention to improvin
Ah, okay...dirt bikes have a different seating configuration than street bikes. I sat a Honda Rebel 250 and felt like a circus bear on a minibike. Seriously, knees in the handlebars. Same for the Yamaha Virago 250. The Ninja 250 had my knees bent at a very uncomfortable angle, with my feet directly under my arse. I imagine a dirt bike would be a different story, just because of the higher seat height, the pegs being further forward than on a sport bike, and the grips being further forward than on a cruiser. My ride is a 1985 Yamaha Virago XV700N - just enough bike to be able to ride on the freeway and keep up with traffic. Even with it, though, I'm still turning 4000 rpm at 60mph - closer to 5000 rpm at 75mph. Redline is 7000 rpm and I'm leery of running for an hour or so at well over half of the max. I get the feeling that with a bit more displacement and a taller gear, I could get about the same fuel economy and better freeway performance - but my budget allowed for the bike I have. C'est la vie.
:)
/. with whom I can disagree peacefully. Kudos to you on that.
;-)
On the meat thing...well, that's cool, leaves more meat for me *grin*
I seriously don't think I'd want to live if I couldn't eat steaks...or cheeseburgers...or BACON cheeseburgers...or bell peppers stuffed with ground beef...or...damn, I've made myself hungry! But if you don't want to eat meat, that's cool. At least you're not advocating the prohibition of meat eating
I do find it refreshing to find someone on
As for protective gear, I'd wear the brightly-colored synthetic gear with the armor inserts, but that stuff is EXPENSIVE here - and it'd clash a bit with a mostly black and chrome cruiser
I once read about an abrasion test using the nylon material they put in the synthetic riding gear, versus leather, denim, etc. The leather lasted a bit longer than the nylon in an abrasion test on asphalt at 60mph. The denim lasted about 1/3 as long as the leather, and regular cotton trousers lasted half as long as the denim. It's not a fetish, it's self-preservation. Especially here in the US where they let barely-conscious, semi-literate mouth-breathers operate 3-ton SUV's at 70mph+ on public roads while talking on a cell phone, sipping a bottle of soda, putting on makeup and reading the newspaper, every little bit of protection counts.
Too many of my cruiser-riding brethren, particularly those who ride large overpriced cruisers made by a company headquartered in Wisconsin, go out on the road with a T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, and a "beanie" helmet. Some think only a wuss wears a full-face helmet and other protective gear. Ah well, maybe they'll learn after their first major reconstructive skin graft surgeries.
I'm a steak-munching conservative who enjoys an occasional meal at McD's. I am of the opinion that people like the assholes from "Mountain Justice Summer" who blocked the road to the Zeb Mountain Mine this summer belong in prison. I wear leather. Lots of it. Frequently. Bulls are good for 4 things: eating, wearing, fighting, and riding in rodeos. Cows can add milk production to their resume. My better half owns a couple of nice fur coats - nothing better for keeping warm, except maybe a few layers of sweaters under my leather jacket.
That said, I ride a motorcycle. Mine's a 700cc model because I sat a few 250cc bikes and they all seemed to be sized for a double jointed midget. They weren't just uncomfortable, they would have been dangerous for me to ride - with my hands on the bars and feet on the pegs, my knees hit the bars. Besides, I was able to get a decent 700cc bike for only $1400. But I still feel pretty good about my fuel usage on the bike. It gets way better fuel economy than my 1996 F-150 with 4.9L engine. And yes, there are plenty of times when I need the hauling capacity of the F-150. However, I'm not going to ride the motorcycle when it's 33 degrees outside and raining slush, or when it's 15 degrees outside with ice on the roads. That's just dumb. My better half drives a 1991 Nissan Sentra (she can't ride a motorcycle due to a pair of artificial hips she got as a souvenir of a major accident long ago). I will not buy a fourth vehicle - at least not as long as our total household income is less than $35,000 a year.
My point is, yeah, I'm a flag-waving, gun-toting, southeastern-US, backwoods redneck conservative who probably votes whatever way you wouldn't vote - but I still see the value of conserving resources. That's the part of what Max Weber called the "Protestant Work Ethic" that today's neoconservatives have lost. Conservation and conservative both have the same root word - I don't understand why there aren't more conservatives who like conservation. There's also the fact that Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, was perhaps best remembered for his works to conserve nature.
My question is, am I misusing "OUR" planet? I'm an American and I own a vehicle that gets maybe 15 miles per gallon on a good day. I eat meat and wear animal skins. But I do ride the motorcycle whenever it's dry and warm enough to ride safely and without the risk of frostbite. I recycle when afforded the opportunity. I even got myself a water-saving showerhead and suffer through the lack of water pressure in the shower every morning.
As an aside - when you ride your motorcycle, I sincerely hope for your own safety that you wear a full-face helmet, motorcycle-specific leather jacket with armor panels, motorcycle-specific leather gloves with extra layers at the knuckles, leather boots, and leather chaps - at the least. Road rash hurts - don't expose any skin that you are not willing to part with.
Shit! I meant to mod yer post as "Underrated" but hit "Overrated" instead. Replying now to undo the moderation. Sorry man.
Excellent post!
:) ...and people say I hate all liberals...
Welcome to my friends list
First off, just because one person (or government) does evil things doesn't excuse another person (or government) doing evil things.
Secondly, the United States abolished slavery 140 years ago. It was recognized as evil, and outlawed by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. Not to mention that abolishing it was an effective way to financially punish those uppity Southerners who had the gall to think the 10th Amendment means what it says, thus "starting" the War of Northern Aggression.
Isn't China still imprisoning people who belong to religions the government doesn't like, people who say and/or print things the government doesn't like, and "unauthorized" people caught attempting to flee the country?
Is the Chinese government's censorship of speech and filtering of Internet content a myth?
These are evil things that are going on RIGHT NOW, and no amount of draggin up ancient wrongdoings can make these evil things right today.
I, too, live in Chattanooga (actually Rossville, GA, but less than a mile from the Chattanooga City Limits). I'd hardly call it a decent-sized city. I mean, it's spread out a lot, so the area is decent-sized, but the population in the city limits is only about 150,000. Add in East Ridge, Red Bank, Hixson, Rossville, and so forth and you might hit 250,000 population.
:-P
I work at the east end of Fort Oglethorpe (visit the bookstore on Cloud Springs Road near I-75 to see this faceless poster in action). My commute is about 15-20 minutes, depending on the traffic signals and whether I get stuck behind a blue-haired grandmother on the way. There is absolutely no public transportation available where I live, nor where I work. And even if there was county-provided public transportation in both places, a public-transport commute would involve a transfer from the system of one county to the system of another.
I lived in Smyrna, GA for a few years, and worked in the Midtown area of Atlanta. My commute was 20 minutes on average. In 2003, when I moved back to the Chattanooga area, there was no way of getting from within 1 mile of home to within 1 mile of work using public transportation. Again, my daily commute crossed a county line. On top of that, there's just no way I'd get on a bus or train with the people who lived between where I lived and where I worked. Not without a Glock 19 and a few spare mags, anyway.
The "Park and Ride" gimmick is apparently only for people who work in Buckhead and can afford to live in Gwinnett County, and they're the folks who drive BMW's and Benzes. Of course, the Park and Ride lots are also the favorite hunting grounds of car thieves now. Imagine that - criminals gravitating to a place where hundreds, if not thousands, of expensive late-model luxury and performance cars are parked for 8 hours every day while their owners are miles away.
Atlanta could probably benefit greatly from an integrated rail/bus system that spans Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett, and DeKalb counties, but I have serious doubts about the same working well for Chattanooga. This is partly due to how spread out the population is, but mainly due to the geography of the city. With the Tennessee River, Signal Mountain, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, it would at least be a major engineering challenge. The land slopes sharply uphill from the river on the north bank (look at Forrest Avenue going up the hill from north end of the Walnut Street Bridge), and on the south bank there are plenty of obstacles to east-west movement (think I-24 going up the ridge cut).
BTW, while Chattanooga does tend to somewhat suck, a move to Atlanta is a bad idea. I lived down there for 3 years, and hated every picosecond of it. All of the disadvantages of a large city, with none of the perks. I hated my "$10,000 stereo in a $5000 car" neighbors, I hated the smell (Atlanta just plain smells BAD, especially close to the Chattahoochie River), I hated the Braves and the traffic downtown when they were playing, I hated the constant road construction downtown, I hated the crowds, I hated the crappy tap water, and I hated the puffed-up fake people who tried to act like Atlanta was NYC, as if that's something worthwhile to aspire to.
Then again, I'm probably the polar opposite of you. Rossville (population about 5000) is about the biggest city I ever plan to live in for the rest of my life, though its proximity to the much larger city of Chattanooga is a downside. If Rossville were the biggest city within 30 miles, it'd be just about right. When I retire I plan to buy 100 acres on Sand Mountain and put up a 12-foot-tall electric fence topped with razor wire with big signs that say "KEEP OUT", put an alligator-filled moat just inside the fence, and build myself a home in the center of the property. Or as close to that as I can afford
Yeah, terrorists are imaginary. GWB just imagined that whole 11 September 2001 thing. Those nice people would have just sat on their asses and thought happy-happy thoughts forever if not for that evil, evil man and his invasion.
FWIW, I opposed the invasion of Iraq. Not because the invasion wasn't the Right Thing - the invasion *was* the Right Thing. But the Right Thing, in this case, wasn't the Right Thing for America. I wanted to let the problem of Saddam fester until he became a threat to the EU. Maybe then they'd get off their asses and clean up the mess he was making, essentially, in their own back yard.
BTW, why is it that piece of shit liberals like you blame GWB for everything you perceive as wrong in the world? "Wah! My toast burned! GWB's fault!" "Wah! My radio won't pick up that station 80 miles away! GWB's fault!"
Yes, this is flamebait. I don't give a flying fuck. I have karma to burn.
You might find it interesting that the three-judge panel who issued the ruling was made up of Harry Thomas Edwards, Karen LeCraft Henderson, and David S. Tatel. The dissenting opinion was written by Henderson.
Who appointed these judges?
Edwards - Jimmy Carter appointee
Tatel - Bill Clinton appointee
Henderson - George H. W. Bush appointee
So, it was the Democratic appointees who want to stifle your free speech on the Internet. Just like it was the Democratic appointees, plus O'Connor, who ruled that your local corrupt municipality can take your land and give it to a developer to build a strip mall, if they can find even the most specious argument that it's "for the good of the community" - and that "good" includes "generates more tax revenue for us."
What it boils down to, is that politicians on both sides suck. They just suck in different ways.
BTW - Thanks for invoking Godwin's Law so early in the discussion. Now please take off your tin-foil hat so we may commence with the re-education mind-control rays.