Yeah, but I'm not out there preaching what people should do. Since Moore thinks the government should be taking most of our money away, it's only right that he should give most of his money to the IRS. Of course, he won't. He thinks he can spend his money better, which is true. What he doesn't believe is that the average American ("the stupidest people in the world" in his words) cannot. You don't get much more hypocritical that that. Typical elitest.
how does one take everyone who is non complacent and apathetic about this issue and get them thinking environmentally?
When the cost and hassle are not significantly more than the status quo. I would have considered a hybrid if Honda had had the 5-seater in 2001, but it would have cost significantly more to do so (I know the Toyota Prius was around back then, and Toyota makes good cars, but I was afraid that would be that much more expensive).
All the solutions you suggested are great, and we should pump more research money into them. I understand that the Bush Administration is trying to get through an Energy Bill that includes a lot of research money for that purpose, but it's being held up for political reasons... probably something about ANWR. The problem is that none of these alternatives come close to energy density and low cost of gasoline, and are unlikely too any time soon. Plus with the byzantine environmental regulations across the U.S. different regions require different formulations, meaning gas isn't fungible acorss states, creating regional shortages (e.g., $3/gallon in parts of CA while the rest of us pay around $2).
Add this to the fact that the auto manufcturers are reluctant to invest in expensive new technologies that people aren't going to want to buy. California can dictate quotas on alternative energy vehicles until it's blue in the face, but the consumers won't buy what they don't want. However, with the incredible breakthroughs happening in materials engineering and other technoloogies, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before something good to replace the gasoline engine is invented and adopted, but that could still be decades away. We need to keep up the idealism and look for alternatives, while at the same time ensure our economic security in the short term. You can't do just one.
Maybe we could convert all those disposable DVD's that companies insist on inventing into a fuel source. That's gotta be about 50 years worth of fuel right there.
Well, we're going to need oil until those other choices are viable. It's not like we can wave a magic wand and declare "energy independence" and we suddenly have alternative energy sources to replace oil, despite what certain presidential candidates might think.
What we need to do is pursue other source while we look for more oil. They've been looking for other solutions for 100 years. The problem is the consumers will not want to trade their gasoline-powered cars for something else that will cost them a lot more. The problem with arguments like yours is that it assumes money just magically appears out of thin air.
THe main cause of international violence is corrupt governments that keep their people in abject poverty even though it isn't necessary, and then convincing them it is someone else's fault (the U.S., Israel, etc, etc).
Marvel's success probably has something to do with Stan the Man running things and him making sure that the movies remain true to the books. After all, most of those classics were created by him in the first place.
I'd love to see a movie homage to Jack Kirby... a character with no fingernails.;-)
X-Men hinted they were going into the Dark Phoenix saga, which I'm not a big fan of, especially if they're going to squeeze it into 2 hours.
Well, seeing as how the "death" of Jean was incredibly contrived, I can't see how they are not going to go there for movie 3 (unless they are planning it for movie 4). Of course, the firebird image was even more blatant.
memepool.com had a mention of John Byrne's web site, on which he has a nice big JPG of a recreation of the cover of X-Men #137 that I downloaded the other day. That was the comic book where I decided not to buy extra copies to speculate on price and would just simply collect. I don't regret that decision, even though it would probably be worth $40 or so these days.
Anyhow, based on the first two movies, I think they could pull it off. However, I do have a couple of complaints about X-Men 2, and that was that they seemed to be pretty casual about letting people die. Nightcrawler teleported into the Cerebro 2 to rescue Storm, but nobody suggested they try to rescue whatsisname. In the classic days, I would see them rescuing him and Professor X struggling to help the poor guy out, which would make for a good story in and of itself. The other point was how Wolvie leaves General Evilguy to die, wrapped in chains, with a kid in his arms and the kid just sticks his reptile tongue out. I know Wolverine's character, but I'm a little upset that the kid was so callous too.
Still, great movie and I can't wait to see more. Next I wanna see Iron Man and the FF.
I'll go one step further... this is not a trade-off, it's exactly the right way to make a comic book movie. Back in the early sixties, characters with depth and humanity is what created the Silver Age of comic books and Spider-Man was at the front of the pack. "Spider-man 2" sounds like the anti-"Spawn", a movie about someone you care about with some good action on the side.
While I thought "Superman 2" was the best superhero movie ever until the latest generation of superhero movies started coming out (ironically, all based on Marvel characters), the level of special effects has advanced to the point where the action can match the action of the comics, and when combined with thorough and good character development, will make some my favorite movies ever.
When the special effects help create an immersive reality (hello, Peter Jackson) without overwhelming the story or actors (George Lucas, call your office) then you have the best combination.
Mozilla might be like using a 4x4 to go shopping, but IE is like using a Ford Pinto with faulty brakes and pressure sensitive blasting caps jammed into the gas cap. It'll get you there, but you're likely to blow up along the way. There are people griping that Firefox 0.9 has bugs, yet Internet Explorer has been around for almost 10 years. Just like Explorer, it's so inherently flawed it will never be fixed unless all the code is simply thrown out.
It's not a matter of the extra features... I use Firefox and the only extra features I actively use is tabbed browsing and the Google control. But on the other hand, when I do have to use IE for those sites that don't work right otherwise (microsoft.com comes to mind), I am floored at how many popups I see. I can't imagine how I ever put up with that... and that doesn't even begin to get into the security issues.
I thought MS took a month off a couple years ago to dedicate themselves to fixing security. I thought since then there have more than one time where they publically and vocally rededicated themselves to security. Given that they are the richest company in the world, how many years will it take for us to actually see some improvement?
IE has all but been retired by MS, so it seems to me that all they have to worry about is bug fixes and security and yet the weekly secuirty problems have continued unabated for years. It will take a hacker version of 9/11 before any real changes happen (i.e., people changing browsers, no MS actually fixing anything), but of course by then thousands of people will be seriously affected.
Here's the question I have, and no I haven't done a lot of research into.NET. But with MFC, a simple FTP program or HTTP page tearer took several hundred lines of code. I can write similar programs with my tools in a dozen lines or so. I bet Linux programmers can do better. I have yet to see a Microsoft coding technology that didn't require you to copy and paste large swaths of "cookbook" code to make anything work and then struggle like crazy to make it do something different than the demos, usually due to lack of meaningful documentation. And if you make a mistake like mismatching your releases, you might as well get Madame Zorba to find the problem reading tea leaves. Real tools do work for you, Microsoft tools make you work for them.
If this isn't true for.NET then maybe it's worth checking out.
It depends. There are two kinds of jobs out there: jobs where you have to work with a bunch of MS stuff and jobs where you have to get something done. I've seen no lack of the latter, and using VS6 with MFC and the tools I've built to enhance and replace some of the more lame and half-implemented parts of MFC, I don't have a problem with "getting something done."
I gotta agree with you. As a Windows developer, I am infuriated on an almost daily basis by Microsoft, but I have to say I actually enjoy using Visual Studio. It's reasonably simple (if you ignore the next-to-useless, pseudo-CASE tools), flexible enough to let you do what you need, and it works... I've been using VS6 for about 5 or 6 years and it's solid as a rock. I'd like to upgrade, but the project I'm using is staying with VS6 for now.
I will say I have no interest in.NET, "managed code" and all the other well-meaning but ultimately frightening things that they are doing to the tools. I can tell you that every two or three years they regild OLE, tack a new name on it and try to sell it as something other than a hodge-podge of incomprehensible and poorly documented cookbook tools. My philosophy with MS development has always been, the development environment is great, the libraries suck.
The detailed critiques of "Bowling" that I've seen make it very clear that this so-called "documetary" was anything but in many ways. Moore is an expert at taking things out of context and manipulating the facts so that they appear much worse than they really are. He is driven by ideology and fits the facts into his predrawn conclusions. The only thing he truthfully documents is his own notions of how things should be. Is it Free Speech? Sure, and it should be, but I don't give it any more weight than my own silly rants above.
p.s. I don't run my life that way, and I try to be informed too. I _don't_ listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage for the exact reasons you state. As I've stated on/. before, I don't like Sean Hannity even though I almost always agree with him. As it is with all things, the voices that are the loudest are usually the ones you shouldn't be listening to. And I think Michael Moore fits that perfectly, and I get a little steamed about him because he's so contemptuous and ego-inflated himself.
I think Bush oversold us on the WMD's because there was a (IMO) more important reasons to go over, reasons that were clearly stated before the war. He talked about this, but since it is less concrete (although far more important), I don't think he felt the public would buy in the way we would for WMD's.
That reason is: "To change the face of the Middle East." I'm sure you've heard that phrase. By taking out regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq that were clearly in bed and supportive of terrorists (at the _very_ least Saddam was very openly and publically financing Palestinian suicide attackers, but let's no forget what Putin was saying, or the fact that they tried to assassinate a former president of ours), and replacing them with democracies that are at least not openly hostile to the West, Bush is addressing number 2 in the "Axis of Evil", Iran. Iran is a huge source for terrorism and other bad things that from extreme Islamo-nutcases. However, the people of Iran are in a much better position to actually do something about it. Being sandwiched between two countries that no longer look like Herbert's "Dosadi Experiment" is going to put a lot of pressure on Iran to join the modern world, much of it from its own citizens. There is a much bigger picture here than most people seem to be aware of.
Now if he would only put pressure on Saudi Arabia to pick a side and stop trying to ride the fence between the good guys (i.e., the rest of the world) and the Wahabists, who are a huge source of bad news (9/11, etc), we'd be even better off. I do have a criticism of Bush in that he's too cozy with the Saudis who do not really act like our friends.
p.s. As to the third piece of the Axis of Evil, I believe the U.S. is going to work with China to keep Kim Jung Il in check and let China take the credit for helping to maintain stability in the region. The last thing China wants is the U.S. coming around, and we know and appreciate that. I believe they will help us in this problem.
Well, that's misleading. The America he loves is some twisted socialist version of the country we live in. Why else would he recently tell Canada that becoming more like America is like "pissing all over yourself."? I find it hard to see the love in that comment.
There's a certain contingent in this country that flat out HATES Bush. Not just disagrees with him, but hates him. The same was true when Clinton was in office, and it was just as pathetic then. Moore is clever enough to realize that he can capitalize on all these spittle-spewing folks to line his pockets (and I bet he doesn't contribute most of his income to the government even though he thinks it should take most of our income) while trying to affect national politics toward his end. Smart. Cynical, but smart.
By the way, "not going to with Iraq" is not a solution to a problem, it's just putting it off. The problem with Iraq was not going to go away on its own, and I can't believe the incredible short-sightedness and naivete of people who think that "not going to war" answers anything. It's just a pat non-answer, much like most rhetoric (from both sides). I don't know about you, but 3 years ago, everyone was worried about WMD's. I've seen transcripts of Kerry and Kennedy warning about the problem and taking the existence of WMD's as given. What happened to change the waffle meister's and America's favorite swimming instructor's minds? That Bush acted on that information, and Republican == wrong? Bush simply chose to act before the problem became worse. Maybe the timing wasn't optimal but everyone else in the world was happy to wait for something that made 9/11 look like a tea party. The problem wasn't going to just go away... not after Saddam kicked out the inspectors in '98 and then took 5 years to do whatever he pleased before they came back in. Clinton wasn't wagging the dog when he lobbed a few missiles over there for various reasons, in fact, he should have done much more. If the U.S. had shown Iraq the spine the U.N. lacks in '98, things might have gone a lot better, but if the public didn't like the idea in 2003 if would have been far more against it in 1998.
WRT "vacation time"... do you know what the President does on vacation? I bet he works more "on vacation" than you or I do during "crunch time". This argument is specious at best. Kerry's been on vacation throughout all of 2004 missing something like 86% of his votes, while he galavants around making those painfully monotonous speeches of his with all the charisma of a schlogg of sea foam (and almost as much content). I don't know what he's getting paid for, but it sure doesn't seem like he's being paid to be a Senator.
WRT "distorting the facts", Bush didn't distort the facts any more than the two Senators from Massachusetts did regarding the same subject in 1998, or France or Germany or Russia (remember Putin warned Bush repeatedly about Saddam planning terrorism in the U.S.) or even the U.N. The only difference of opinion was that Bush decided that meaningless U.N. Resolutions (now available on convenient cardboard rolls for easy dispensing) were compromising the security of the U.S. and its allies. You should read the letter by the interim leader of Iraq, who takes power in a couple of days. He was thanking the coalition for allowing him and other Iraqi patriots to work towards joining the free and modern world, and doing things _their_ way, not the U.S.'s. I was proud of the contribution of my country to bring that letter about. Heck, now that the hard work is done, even France admits it's nice to have a potential friend in the middle east (well, a different friend in their case... and let's not even get into the U.N. Oil for Food scandal, where we find out who was _really_ in it for the oil).
But I'm not going to change the minds of anyone here. After the last political discussion on/. I quickly figured out that almost everyone here just spou
Of course, I did that on purpose, because I've found it's no less effective that pointing out real facts, i.e., if you agree with Moore, nothing I could say would change your mind.
And it wasn't a huge amount either. At least from her point of view.
Re:What out for Michael Moore lawsuits through....
on
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
The movie just came out. I don't know about you but Moore responded to valid criticisms of his movie with "Have you seen it? No? Then you can't talk about it." even though much of the content of the movie has been public for weeks. Furethermore, since Moore has consistently been misleading and untruthful in the past, what's to assume he'd change his tune.
Even if I didn't think Moore was a big, fat, pathetic loser who takes out his own depression on everyone around him with his non-stop torrent of hate speech, I'd still have a hard time believing anyone who was so full of himself that he must weigh 300 pounds. What else could explain that he so detests the very country where someone like him could become so rich and famous?
There is no doubt in my mind that he is using his "satire" and "mockumentaries" to blur the lines between truth and his warped anti-American political views in order to to sway the ignorant, or more commonly these days, people too angry to bother with facts or reason. Any legitimate points he might make (however few) are far outweighed by his gross manipulation and distortion of facts.
I have one suggestion to Bush's critics: If Bush is so bad, what would you do better? Even his opponent in the presidential race can't answer that question. Stop hating so much and start coming up with answers of your own. I'm so sick of hearing what's wrong with the USA and the current administration with no reasonable alternatives being offered except "Hate the rich!" and "Kowtow to the U.N.!"
Well, you're right about that. I was also surprised to see this headline, but I've also noticed that the pace of development in materials engineering seems to be increasing, maybe not like Moore's law, but I think we will see some radical changes in our lives in the next decade or two because of it.
I'm waiting for extremely high density batteries. I think that will revolutionize technology more than anything since the integrated circuit, and it seems to me (IANAME) that the developments in nano-materials will allow this.
However, I still think you are way overstating the odds that it won't happen in 15 years. Of course, this is a gut feeling based on nothing more than, well, gut feeling.
I think there may very well be a space elevator. And better yet, I'd love to take a ride on it and meet God.
Clearly, you didn't RTFA, nor have you heard of all the related advances that are being made. Why is it that people who think they do know better often understand the least?
Slashdot Mirror
Uhm, the phrase "pointy haired bosses" doesn't have any meaning whatsoever outside the context of Dilbert.
Obviously, you've never worked for a big company.
Yeah, but I'm not out there preaching what people should do. Since Moore thinks the government should be taking most of our money away, it's only right that he should give most of his money to the IRS. Of course, he won't. He thinks he can spend his money better, which is true. What he doesn't believe is that the average American ("the stupidest people in the world" in his words) cannot. You don't get much more hypocritical that that. Typical elitest.
I always thought Scientology should have been illustrated by Jack Kirby.
Since decibels are a logarithmic unit of measurement, it's more like "we are talking desruction of the universe". ...and people think Apple is better.
"Honey, Jimmy destroyed the universe again."
"That's it! I'm writing that Steve Jobs a nasty letter!"
how does one take everyone who is non complacent and apathetic about this issue and get them thinking environmentally?
When the cost and hassle are not significantly more than the status quo. I would have considered a hybrid if Honda had had the 5-seater in 2001, but it would have cost significantly more to do so (I know the Toyota Prius was around back then, and Toyota makes good cars, but I was afraid that would be that much more expensive).
All the solutions you suggested are great, and we should pump more research money into them. I understand that the Bush Administration is trying to get through an Energy Bill that includes a lot of research money for that purpose, but it's being held up for political reasons... probably something about ANWR. The problem is that none of these alternatives come close to energy density and low cost of gasoline, and are unlikely too any time soon. Plus with the byzantine environmental regulations across the U.S. different regions require different formulations, meaning gas isn't fungible acorss states, creating regional shortages (e.g., $3/gallon in parts of CA while the rest of us pay around $2).
Add this to the fact that the auto manufcturers are reluctant to invest in expensive new technologies that people aren't going to want to buy. California can dictate quotas on alternative energy vehicles until it's blue in the face, but the consumers won't buy what they don't want. However, with the incredible breakthroughs happening in materials engineering and other technoloogies, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before something good to replace the gasoline engine is invented and adopted, but that could still be decades away. We need to keep up the idealism and look for alternatives, while at the same time ensure our economic security in the short term. You can't do just one.
Maybe we could convert all those disposable DVD's that companies insist on inventing into a fuel source. That's gotta be about 50 years worth of fuel right there.
Well, we're going to need oil until those other choices are viable. It's not like we can wave a magic wand and declare "energy independence" and we suddenly have alternative energy sources to replace oil, despite what certain presidential candidates might think.
What we need to do is pursue other source while we look for more oil. They've been looking for other solutions for 100 years. The problem is the consumers will not want to trade their gasoline-powered cars for something else that will cost them a lot more. The problem with arguments like yours is that it assumes money just magically appears out of thin air.
THe main cause of international violence is corrupt governments that keep their people in abject poverty even though it isn't necessary, and then convincing them it is someone else's fault (the U.S., Israel, etc, etc).
Marvel's success probably has something to do with Stan the Man running things and him making sure that the movies remain true to the books. After all, most of those classics were created by him in the first place.
;-)
I'd love to see a movie homage to Jack Kirby... a character with no fingernails.
X-Men hinted they were going into the Dark Phoenix saga, which I'm not a big fan of, especially if they're going to squeeze it into 2 hours.
Well, seeing as how the "death" of Jean was incredibly contrived, I can't see how they are not going to go there for movie 3 (unless they are planning it for movie 4). Of course, the firebird image was even more blatant.
memepool.com had a mention of John Byrne's web site, on which he has a nice big JPG of a recreation of the cover of X-Men #137 that I downloaded the other day. That was the comic book where I decided not to buy extra copies to speculate on price and would just simply collect. I don't regret that decision, even though it would probably be worth $40 or so these days.
Anyhow, based on the first two movies, I think they could pull it off. However, I do have a couple of complaints about X-Men 2, and that was that they seemed to be pretty casual about letting people die. Nightcrawler teleported into the Cerebro 2 to rescue Storm, but nobody suggested they try to rescue whatsisname. In the classic days, I would see them rescuing him and Professor X struggling to help the poor guy out, which would make for a good story in and of itself. The other point was how Wolvie leaves General Evilguy to die, wrapped in chains, with a kid in his arms and the kid just sticks his reptile tongue out. I know Wolverine's character, but I'm a little upset that the kid was so callous too.
Still, great movie and I can't wait to see more. Next I wanna see Iron Man and the FF.
I remember this... it's a program that generates screeds. Pretty clever stuff, because ultimately it's all content free.
Hooray for Markov!
Now let's try to keep our posts on topic instead of flaunting our opinions as if other people really give a damn.
You must be new here.
I'll go one step further... this is not a trade-off, it's exactly the right way to make a comic book movie. Back in the early sixties, characters with depth and humanity is what created the Silver Age of comic books and Spider-Man was at the front of the pack. "Spider-man 2" sounds like the anti-"Spawn", a movie about someone you care about with some good action on the side.
While I thought "Superman 2" was the best superhero movie ever until the latest generation of superhero movies started coming out (ironically, all based on Marvel characters), the level of special effects has advanced to the point where the action can match the action of the comics, and when combined with thorough and good character development, will make some my favorite movies ever.
When the special effects help create an immersive reality (hello, Peter Jackson) without overwhelming the story or actors (George Lucas, call your office) then you have the best combination.
Yeah, watching F911 will get you in the right frame of mind to watch a fantasy story. But at least S2 admits is a fantasy.
You seem to be completely missing the point that the pages now work in any modern browser rather than only in IE.
That was certainly worth two days of effort.
Mozilla might be like using a 4x4 to go shopping, but IE is like using a Ford Pinto with faulty brakes and pressure sensitive blasting caps jammed into the gas cap. It'll get you there, but you're likely to blow up along the way. There are people griping that Firefox 0.9 has bugs, yet Internet Explorer has been around for almost 10 years. Just like Explorer, it's so inherently flawed it will never be fixed unless all the code is simply thrown out.
It's not a matter of the extra features... I use Firefox and the only extra features I actively use is tabbed browsing and the Google control. But on the other hand, when I do have to use IE for those sites that don't work right otherwise (microsoft.com comes to mind), I am floored at how many popups I see. I can't imagine how I ever put up with that... and that doesn't even begin to get into the security issues.
I thought MS took a month off a couple years ago to dedicate themselves to fixing security. I thought since then there have more than one time where they publically and vocally rededicated themselves to security. Given that they are the richest company in the world, how many years will it take for us to actually see some improvement?
IE has all but been retired by MS, so it seems to me that all they have to worry about is bug fixes and security and yet the weekly secuirty problems have continued unabated for years. It will take a hacker version of 9/11 before any real changes happen (i.e., people changing browsers, no MS actually fixing anything), but of course by then thousands of people will be seriously affected.
Here's the question I have, and no I haven't done a lot of research into .NET. But with MFC, a simple FTP program or HTTP page tearer took several hundred lines of code. I can write similar programs with my tools in a dozen lines or so. I bet Linux programmers can do better. I have yet to see a Microsoft coding technology that didn't require you to copy and paste large swaths of "cookbook" code to make anything work and then struggle like crazy to make it do something different than the demos, usually due to lack of meaningful documentation. And if you make a mistake like mismatching your releases, you might as well get Madame Zorba to find the problem reading tea leaves. Real tools do work for you, Microsoft tools make you work for them.
.NET then maybe it's worth checking out.
If this isn't true for
It depends. There are two kinds of jobs out there: jobs where you have to work with a bunch of MS stuff and jobs where you have to get something done. I've seen no lack of the latter, and using VS6 with MFC and the tools I've built to enhance and replace some of the more lame and half-implemented parts of MFC, I don't have a problem with "getting something done."
I gotta agree with you. As a Windows developer, I am infuriated on an almost daily basis by Microsoft, but I have to say I actually enjoy using Visual Studio. It's reasonably simple (if you ignore the next-to-useless, pseudo-CASE tools), flexible enough to let you do what you need, and it works... I've been using VS6 for about 5 or 6 years and it's solid as a rock. I'd like to upgrade, but the project I'm using is staying with VS6 for now.
.NET, "managed code" and all the other well-meaning but ultimately frightening things that they are doing to the tools. I can tell you that every two or three years they regild OLE, tack a new name on it and try to sell it as something other than a hodge-podge of incomprehensible and poorly documented cookbook tools. My philosophy with MS development has always been, the development environment is great, the libraries suck.
I will say I have no interest in
The detailed critiques of "Bowling" that I've seen make it very clear that this so-called "documetary" was anything but in many ways. Moore is an expert at taking things out of context and manipulating the facts so that they appear much worse than they really are. He is driven by ideology and fits the facts into his predrawn conclusions. The only thing he truthfully documents is his own notions of how things should be. Is it Free Speech? Sure, and it should be, but I don't give it any more weight than my own silly rants above.
/. before, I don't like Sean Hannity even though I almost always agree with him. As it is with all things, the voices that are the loudest are usually the ones you shouldn't be listening to. And I think Michael Moore fits that perfectly, and I get a little steamed about him because he's so contemptuous and ego-inflated himself.
p.s. I don't run my life that way, and I try to be informed too. I _don't_ listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage for the exact reasons you state. As I've stated on
I think Bush oversold us on the WMD's because there was a (IMO) more important reasons to go over, reasons that were clearly stated before the war. He talked about this, but since it is less concrete (although far more important), I don't think he felt the public would buy in the way we would for WMD's.
That reason is: "To change the face of the Middle East." I'm sure you've heard that phrase. By taking out regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq that were clearly in bed and supportive of terrorists (at the _very_ least Saddam was very openly and publically financing Palestinian suicide attackers, but let's no forget what Putin was saying, or the fact that they tried to assassinate a former president of ours), and replacing them with democracies that are at least not openly hostile to the West, Bush is addressing number 2 in the "Axis of Evil", Iran. Iran is a huge source for terrorism and other bad things that from extreme Islamo-nutcases. However, the people of Iran are in a much better position to actually do something about it. Being sandwiched between two countries that no longer look like Herbert's "Dosadi Experiment" is going to put a lot of pressure on Iran to join the modern world, much of it from its own citizens. There is a much bigger picture here than most people seem to be aware of.
Now if he would only put pressure on Saudi Arabia to pick a side and stop trying to ride the fence between the good guys (i.e., the rest of the world) and the Wahabists, who are a huge source of bad news (9/11, etc), we'd be even better off. I do have a criticism of Bush in that he's too cozy with the Saudis who do not really act like our friends.
p.s. As to the third piece of the Axis of Evil, I believe the U.S. is going to work with China to keep Kim Jung Il in check and let China take the credit for helping to maintain stability in the region. The last thing China wants is the U.S. coming around, and we know and appreciate that. I believe they will help us in this problem.
Moore consistently says that he loves America
/. I quickly figured out that almost everyone here just spou
Well, that's misleading. The America he loves is some twisted socialist version of the country we live in. Why else would he recently tell Canada that becoming more like America is like "pissing all over yourself."? I find it hard to see the love in that comment.
There's a certain contingent in this country that flat out HATES Bush. Not just disagrees with him, but hates him. The same was true when Clinton was in office, and it was just as pathetic then. Moore is clever enough to realize that he can capitalize on all these spittle-spewing folks to line his pockets (and I bet he doesn't contribute most of his income to the government even though he thinks it should take most of our income) while trying to affect national politics toward his end. Smart. Cynical, but smart.
By the way, "not going to with Iraq" is not a solution to a problem, it's just putting it off. The problem with Iraq was not going to go away on its own, and I can't believe the incredible short-sightedness and naivete of people who think that "not going to war" answers anything. It's just a pat non-answer, much like most rhetoric (from both sides). I don't know about you, but 3 years ago, everyone was worried about WMD's. I've seen transcripts of Kerry and Kennedy warning about the problem and taking the existence of WMD's as given. What happened to change the waffle meister's and America's favorite swimming instructor's minds? That Bush acted on that information, and Republican == wrong? Bush simply chose to act before the problem became worse. Maybe the timing wasn't optimal but everyone else in the world was happy to wait for something that made 9/11 look like a tea party. The problem wasn't going to just go away... not after Saddam kicked out the inspectors in '98 and then took 5 years to do whatever he pleased before they came back in. Clinton wasn't wagging the dog when he lobbed a few missiles over there for various reasons, in fact, he should have done much more. If the U.S. had shown Iraq the spine the U.N. lacks in '98, things might have gone a lot better, but if the public didn't like the idea in 2003 if would have been far more against it in 1998.
WRT "vacation time"... do you know what the President does on vacation? I bet he works more "on vacation" than you or I do during "crunch time". This argument is specious at best. Kerry's been on vacation throughout all of 2004 missing something like 86% of his votes, while he galavants around making those painfully monotonous speeches of his with all the charisma of a schlogg of sea foam (and almost as much content). I don't know what he's getting paid for, but it sure doesn't seem like he's being paid to be a Senator.
WRT "distorting the facts", Bush didn't distort the facts any more than the two Senators from Massachusetts did regarding the same subject in 1998, or France or Germany or Russia (remember Putin warned Bush repeatedly about Saddam planning terrorism in the U.S.) or even the U.N. The only difference of opinion was that Bush decided that meaningless U.N. Resolutions (now available on convenient cardboard rolls for easy dispensing) were compromising the security of the U.S. and its allies. You should read the letter by the interim leader of Iraq, who takes power in a couple of days. He was thanking the coalition for allowing him and other Iraqi patriots to work towards joining the free and modern world, and doing things _their_ way, not the U.S.'s. I was proud of the contribution of my country to bring that letter about. Heck, now that the hard work is done, even France admits it's nice to have a potential friend in the middle east (well, a different friend in their case... and let's not even get into the U.N. Oil for Food scandal, where we find out who was _really_ in it for the oil).
But I'm not going to change the minds of anyone here. After the last political discussion on
Of course, I did that on purpose, because I've found it's no less effective that pointing out real facts, i.e., if you agree with Moore, nothing I could say would change your mind.
And it wasn't a huge amount either. At least from her point of view.
The movie just came out. I don't know about you but Moore responded to valid criticisms of his movie with "Have you seen it? No? Then you can't talk about it." even though much of the content of the movie has been public for weeks.
Furethermore, since Moore has consistently been misleading and untruthful in the past, what's to assume he'd change his tune.
Even if I didn't think Moore was a big, fat, pathetic loser who takes out his own depression on everyone around him with his non-stop torrent of hate speech, I'd still have a hard time believing anyone who was so full of himself that he must weigh 300 pounds. What else could explain that he so detests the very country where someone like him could become so rich and famous?
There is no doubt in my mind that he is using his "satire" and "mockumentaries" to blur the lines between truth and his warped anti-American political views in order to to sway the ignorant, or more commonly these days, people too angry to bother with facts or reason. Any legitimate points he might make (however few) are far outweighed by his gross manipulation and distortion of facts.
I have one suggestion to Bush's critics: If Bush is so bad, what would you do better? Even his opponent in the presidential race can't answer that question. Stop hating so much and start coming up with answers of your own. I'm so sick of hearing what's wrong with the USA and the current administration with no reasonable alternatives being offered except "Hate the rich!" and "Kowtow to the U.N.!"
Let's hear some ideas for a change.
Well, you're right about that. I was also surprised to see this headline, but I've also noticed that the pace of development in materials engineering seems to be increasing, maybe not like Moore's law, but I think we will see some radical changes in our lives in the next decade or two because of it.
I'm waiting for extremely high density batteries. I think that will revolutionize technology more than anything since the integrated circuit, and it seems to me (IANAME) that the developments in nano-materials will allow this.
However, I still think you are way overstating the odds that it won't happen in 15 years. Of course, this is a gut feeling based on nothing more than, well, gut feeling.
I think there may very well be a space elevator. And better yet, I'd love to take a ride on it and meet God.
Clearly, you didn't RTFA, nor have you heard of all the related advances that are being made. Why is it that people who think they do know better often understand the least?