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User: Qrlx

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  1. Re:They also left out a good deal of context on How Did Wikileaks Do It? · · Score: 1

    >The cameraman was even found lying on top of an RPG round.

    Right, and they found a hijacker's passport in the rubble at Ground Zero too.

    >The pictures recovered from their cameras show that they were sitting one block from a group of vehicles that were under small arms fire. The perfect place from which to launch an RPG attack

    So, they had pictures of a Humvee, they had RPGs, and they had the perfect place from which to attack. Why then did they never attack? The most logical explanation is that they weren't terrorists after all.

    Another possibility is that Reuters cameramen have joined the Iraq insurgency. That one seems a little less likely.

  2. Re:Who cares how? The better question is why the b on How Did Wikileaks Do It? · · Score: 1

    The pilot and gunner did not know this. Under the Rules of Engagement, when some of a group is armed, they are all combatants

    In other words, if the chain of command mistakenly believes you've got a rocket launcher, the ROE permit an indiscriminate and unprovoked attack.

    Thus the text provided by Wikileaks is accurate.

  3. Re:Politics on Scientists Step Down After CRU Hack Fallout · · Score: 1

    Look at this graph from your link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png

    During the time in which we have ice ages, CO2 fluctuates between about 180 and 280 PPM. Now we are well past the upper bound, at 380 ppm and climbing.

    What causes you to believe we will continue to have ice ages now? The atmospheric CO2 concentration is not within the realm of previous ice-age cyclical behavior.

  4. Re:Politics on Scientists Step Down After CRU Hack Fallout · · Score: 1

    But, the next ice age is still coming, regardless if we select "Pol Pot" or "Party On". And we'll be buried under volcanic debris again. And we'll be the bottom of an inland sea again. A mere two or three ice age cycles from now, you'd never know the difference between "Pol Pot" and "Party On". Certainly in a couple million years or so, it would be nearly impossible to tell.

    Do you really have a basis for this statement? In a couple million years some radioactive waste will still be radioactive, and I have been led to believe large amounts of plastic will still be around for at least a few thousand years if not millions.

    Ice ages have happened in the past. But, "past performance is no guarantee of future results." And also realize we've changed the conditions. The climate of today has 2x the atmospheric CO2 concentration than the climate which has for the past few hundred thousand years regularly produced ice ages. On what authority can you state that we are still within the bounds of that cycle? Our fossil fuel use has driven the system well beyond normal operating parameters.

  5. Re:Everything we eat is GM. Everything. on Judge Rejects Approval of Engineered Sugar Beets · · Score: 1

    Is it just the tool that's the problem or is it hysteria

    It's release unknown, untested organisms into the biosphere. Killer bees for example. Kudzu in the south is another warning sign. Snakes in Guam.

    Everything we've eaten for millenia has been genetically modified for maximum yield and higher efficiency. We just have different tools now.

    We can now directly modify genes. It's not the same thing as breeding hybrids, etc. There is no way to breed a strawberry with a salmon. Though if someone has tried, I'd like to see it on YouTube.

    Eventually Mostanto could create a roundup-ready corn using artificial selection, the same way we've been doing it since we dug furrows in Mesopotamia.

    The problem with this statement is that we can't keep some of that Monsanto corn to plant next year, the same way we've been doing it since we dug furrows in Mesopotamia.

  6. Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified on Judge Rejects Approval of Engineered Sugar Beets · · Score: 1

    The GM foods allow for agriculture in places that would normally starve.

    I'm curious, at what point does your Christian outreach organization actually teach a man to fish, i.e. teach the poor in barren land to construct their own GMO crops, that they might survive without your charity and religious proselytizing?

    To sum up, I doubt that teaching the poor to subsist on expensive, patent-protected GMO seed is in accord with the teachings of Jesus.

  7. Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified on Judge Rejects Approval of Engineered Sugar Beets · · Score: 1

    So you test the corn that comes out, and if there's no permethrin in the kernels, what difference does it make to you in the food chain?

    The food chain is substantially larger than the tiny segment we humans eat.

  8. Re:cops on Cops Play Wii During Undercover Drug Raid · · Score: 1

    they've come to the conclusion that it should be illegal as a result of their experiences with it and not because they're assholes?

    Depends. Did they try it more than once? Did they smoke it throughout college and law school, like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?

    But let's say they tried it and personally didn't like it. So now it should be illegal for everyone?

    The grandparent poster has a valid point.

  9. Re:cops on Cops Play Wii During Undercover Drug Raid · · Score: 1

    Are you so dense as to think people can just up and move to other countries -- and take jobs that would otherwise be filled by citizens of those countries -- because they want to smoke pot, or for any other god damned reason under the sun?

  10. Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified on Judge Rejects Approval of Engineered Sugar Beets · · Score: 1

    I don't think it's accurate to call it evolution unless it is the product of random mutation.

    When we splice the salmon gene into the strawberry, it's not random, and it's not a mutation. Perhaps the best phrase for it is "Intelligent Design."

    Though it should be noted the self-proclaimed intelligent designers have a long history of hubris...

  11. Re:Nesson Screwed His Client on Fair Use Defense Dismissed In SONY V. Tenenbaum · · Score: 1

    But if he chunks this case and leaves the defendant holding the bag, he's lower than even the lowest bottom-sucker.

    +5 unintentionally hilarious John Edwards reference! http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/160341/

  12. Re:appeal on Fair Use Defense Dismissed In SONY V. Tenenbaum · · Score: 1

    Does the Judge's dismissal of a Fair Use defense mean the defendants can present that argument again at appeal? I feel like I really should know that...

  13. Doesn't seem like much of a breakthrough on Swine Flu Kills Obese People Disproportionately · · Score: 1

    Is this really that surprising a revelation? Don't we already know that being fat is bad for your health?

    Or are we trying to out-evolve the flu here, by using our technological edge to artifically create people so fat in numbers never seen before that they serve as a sort of "leading edge" of the frontier of the genome wars?

    Our Advanced Medical Technology keeps alive not just morbidly obese, but all the outliers who would have died off -- presumably of "natural causes" -- in previous generations. They are the DEW Line, and the honeypots where future attacks can be contained and analyzed more safely. :)

  14. Hope for copyright reform? on Obama Photog Says "You're Both Wrong" To AP & Fairey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the photographer is due something. But by the time the courts have figured out exactly what that is, the lawyers will have used up all the money.

    Arbitration seems like a worthy alternative to the courts.

    Since it's a famous picture of him, maybe the President could spend a few hours looking over those law books and sorting out some of this Intellectual Property mess we find ourselves in. Look at it another way, if Barack Obama can somehow be personally dragged into this vortex the way John Q. Downloader has been, maybe there finally will finally be some... Change. :)

  15. Re:Irresponsible headline, summary on Computers Key To Air France Crash · · Score: 1

    Boeing planes allow pilots to take over from computers during emergency situations, Airbus planes do not. It's not a design flaw -- it's a philosophical divide.

    I feel compelled to point out that American pilots are, when given contradictory instructions by ATC and TCAS II, instructed to do what TCAS says. In Europe, ATC overrides TCAS.

    TCAS is an onboard short-range transponder designed to notify the pilot when his/her aircraft is on a collision course with another TCAS-equpped plane, and give crash-avoiding instructions to both pilots.

    And...there was a crash over Europe when ATC said one thing and TCAS said something else. The pilots (correctly) did what ATC (incorrectly) told them to do.

  16. Re:Stupid Law on Adult Website Use At Work Leads To Hacker Conviction · · Score: 1

    It varies from state to state. Where I live, simply being fired "for cause" is not sufficient to deny umemployment. You have to be fired for a pretty serious cause like stealing from the company or divulging trade secrets. I believe the threshold is you have to materially harm the company. Most people fired for cause can still get unemployment benefits.

  17. Re:rocket science on North Korea Missile Launch Fails · · Score: 1

    If there is anything to fear it is that N. Korea is doing science while we are arguing over evolution.

    I bet you could persuade some of the anti-evolution petitioners to drop their case by properly casting the threat of the Red Peril (or Yellow Menace or whatever it's called these days).

  18. Re:It is like patenting slavery on IBM Tries To Patent Offshoring · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So what if IBM wants to help India produce more things of value?

    You're trying to tell us altruism, not cost-cutting, is the motivation for globalization?

    I want some of what you're smoking.

  19. Re:Although I still think global warming real... on The Global Warming Heretic · · Score: 1

    You really think it's a hasn't-happened-in-a-million years climate event and not us?

    Going back, there's a clear pattern of oscillation between 180 and 280 ppm. But now it's way higher. What drove it higher? "We did" doesn't seem like an unreasonable explanation, considering all the fossil fuels we've been burning.

  20. Re:There is money and publicity on The Global Warming Heretic · · Score: 1

    Multiple unpopular actions? Carter only tried to rescue the hostages once.

  21. Re:Although I still think global warming real... on The Global Warming Heretic · · Score: 1

    Care to guess at how many humans it would take to change the atmosphere?

    In about a century, CO2 levels have risen to roughly twice what they've been for the past 500,000 years. If that wasn't caused by humans, what did it?

  22. Re:Been following this for awhile. on Strip-Search Case Tests Limits of 4th Amendment · · Score: 1

    Where did I ever say that I'm opposed to private ownership of firearms?

    The willful disingenuity of your post is staggering.

    And you claim I'm a revisionist...

  23. Re:Been following this for awhile. on Strip-Search Case Tests Limits of 4th Amendment · · Score: 1

    Now that is a good point.

  24. Re:Been following this for awhile. on Strip-Search Case Tests Limits of 4th Amendment · · Score: 1

    Good point. I shouldn't go so far as to claim slavery as the sole reason. It was one of the big reasons though. (From my armchair historian perspective.)

    I guess it's kind of a double-edged sword. The gun can be a tool for slavery or for freedom, depending on who wields it. We managed to use it for both. Like you said, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

  25. Re:Been following this for awhile. on Strip-Search Case Tests Limits of 4th Amendment · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Slavery could not have happened without the individual right to bear arms. Southern states demanded that right be codified in the new Constitution, lest the Federal government change their mind (a very real possibility as many Americans at the time were opposed to slavery). The North said "okay."

    That holds no water?

    As a practical matter, I'm sure you'll agree that the history of the Second Amendment is more notable for the decades of slavery which followed, not for any successful defense against a tyrranical government.

    As a matter of fact, can you provide an example of when the Second Amendment provided the sort of protection you claim it does?

    What the Second Amendment actually did was this: It ensured slavery could continue under the new Federal government, which was a necessary concession for the South to join in the new government.

    I'm not suggesting the Second Amendment solely allows us to bear arms for the singular purpose of forming militias and putting down slave uprisings (or Indian rebellions for that matter). I am saying that the reason the Second Amendment was included in the first place was as an explicit guarantee that the tools by which slavery was maintained in slave states would not be taken away by the Federal government.