There is an easy way to implement that. A professor of mine had the following line in his syllabus.
"If your cell phone rings during class or during an examination I will answer it. Further, I will deduct five points from your final grade."
A phone went off once in that class. He told the caller in no uncertain terms where the cell phone being called was located and informed them that future calls to that number should be avoided during his class.
He also followed through on the grade policy. It was never a problem again.
Incidently, so did Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the Maxim Gun (the first non-gattling machine gun). He built his gun to make warfare so terrible as to be unthinkable.
Then there was WWI. Worked out really well for him too.
That depends what you mean by that. In the 1700s the power to declare war needed to rest with the legislative. Afterall, the ability of a foreign power to do any real damage to the country inside of hte time frame it would take congress to react was insignificant.
Today, however, entire world wars could be stated and ended inside of 2 hours. Congress is not designed to respond to such eventualities, but it is clear the United States must be able to.
As such, your stance on this depends on what you term 'declar[ing] war.' If a declaration of war is a signed peice of paper that formaly states that the United States and country X are at war, then yes, only Congress should be able to delcare war. If, on the other hand, a declaration of war constitutes undertaking acts of hostility towards a forgien power, then the executive needs to be able to declare war.
And as we all know, the reporters are the ones who have the most influences over what goes into the final finished product that you see on the screen.
The roll of all those production managers, producers, directors, and lets not forget overwhelmingly rich and powerful media moguls is to sit around and whittle their dicks.
You can't seriously think that just because the majority of journalists are liberals that the media has a liberal bias. That's like saying that because the majority of workers in the automotive industry are democrats that the industry as a whole supports the democrats. The evidence would be against you in that one.
You can't tell me that with ultra conservative individuals like Rupert Murdoch behind the scenes issuing direct memoranda to the lowest levels of his media empire directing stations on what to run and not to run that conservatives are powerless and unrepresented in the media.
He who has the money makes the rules. The having of money is one of the strongest predictors of political affiliation and the people at the top have a lot of money.
The number of troops isn't just about NATO though, it's about keeping those bases at realistic levels to allow their deployment to other theaters around the world.
It doesn't matter which side of the terror controversy you back. The NATO pull out was a bad idea either way.
Democrat: Troops overseas keep us close to our allies. Our troops spend money, bolster local economies, and engender a sence of loyalty and familial warmth between the US military and foreign powers. Closeness with our allies is the only way we can expect to realisticly fight a war on terrorism
Republican: Overseas troops are vital to our ability to project force into the Mid East and Asia. Islamist extremism is the number one threat to national security and our ability to feild military power overseas depends on our ability to support and supply our troops utilizing the closest available existing military infrastucture. Planes need airstrips, toops need hospitals, and ships need harbors. All of these facilities and the people who man them are vital assets in the war on terror.
Finaly, the "trip wire" force isn't intended to be able to defend shit. If the North rolls over the border into the south they kill American soliders and we're at war. The reason they're there is because the 1st Korean was was touched off by Dean Atchison (while he served under Truman) when he failed to enumerate S. Korea as an area we'd defend.
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In other news, Tom Ridge has locked himself in his office with a Geiger counter and a shotgun.
The United States has some of the most extensive unguarded boarders in the world.
The former Soviet Union CAN NOT FIND some 900 of the nuclear weapons that it had when it collapsed in December of 1991.
2+2=4
The fewer people who hate us, the less likely we are to have a smoking glass crater where one of our favorite cities used to be.
I'm not saying that we need to capitulate to the demands of every crackpot who comes along, but electing George "fuck diplomacy" Bush to another term sounds like a great way to antagonize the rest of the planet's population into thinking of more coercive ways to get the Petroleum Hitman to leave them alone.
Speaking as a military historian however, the pull back form Germany and other NATO commitments is a very bad idea for several reasons.
1.) US troops overseas in places like Germany and Japan reaffirms the commitments inherent in NATO. While the NATO alliance was once about mutual defense, it's now a league of ideologically aligned states. As such, it provides one of the single most stabilizing influences in the world. Pulling back from these commitments signals a US regression towards isolationism which, in turn, signals a weakening of the NATO alliance.
2.) US troops manning bases overseas provide forward deployment points for conflicts world wide. The reason we use air force bases in Germany for casualties in Iraq (for example) is that the facilities are just as good as those available in the United States but don't involve hauling injured persons across the Atlantic. These bases provide a strategically valuable bridge between the home front and the forward operating theater.
Fundamentally, this pull back is a very very very bad idea. It's being done for political reasons to assure people that we won't need to worry about reinforcements for those being cut down in Iraq. Mostly, it's being done to convince people like my extended family that their sons and daughters who are in the guard won't have to go overseas to fight in a war that most of them are indifferent to.
The draft thing is being kicked around as a metaphor for a bigger problem. Most people who are in the US reserves (guard, etc) are in them with the same preconceptions that Bush and his fellow guardsmen had in the 1970s, namely that you can serve in the guard and not see combat. Admittedly, this is a really stupid conclusion to make. Nonetheless, people made it and now they're afraid they'll get sucked into Iraq because of Bush's war. Kerry bats around the draft because implicit in that idea is that the guardsmen are going to Iraq, it also conjures up the specter of Vietnam. Bush pooh-poohs the idea of a draft to downplay the possibility of guardsmen going to Iraq and to quash the specter of Vietnam.
That's a very obvious and not terribly helpful comment. Thank you.
What the grandparent is trying to get across is the idea that when the US has an internal crisis over its own electoral process and then awards the office to the guy who got fewer votes it looks, to the rest of the world, as something of a quandary.
The US electoral system is weird, hands down, and among democracies (republics if you prefer) it is considered somewhat antiquated and strange. We're talking about a system that fundamentally distrusts the masses, leaving the decision to the politically elite (this was the framers intent with the college) which has been beaten into a vague semblance of a plebiscite, though with questionable success.
The United States was entering a legitimacy crisis in 2000 and 2001, a period that all democratic governments enter with some regularity. The last one we endured was Vietnam. The 2001 crisis was cut short by the attacks on September 11. Without those attacks the US political landscape would be a radically different place today. Even so, the same elements continue to smolder as the Bush administration burrows deeper and deeper into the quagmire that is Iraq.
At its core, the nation is polarizing. Sides are being drawn up and, as Jefferson might say, the Tree of Liberty is being refreshed, even as we speak. In the 1960s and 1970s it was the remains of the 1950s military establishment against the anti-war movement. Today we're seeing a similar backlash against corporate government.
This is an interesting time we live in, and one that is not well served by the oversimplifications you offer. What happens in these next few months will change the face of American democracy forever.
A Chinese proverb says "may you live in interesting times." Of course, it is worth noting that this is a curse.
It's worth noting that a space elevator has enormous military potential and consequently will (inevitably) be both a valuable asset and a prime target for whomever manages to build it. Once you can haul heavy stuff into space cheeply you can drop heavy stuff on people from space cheeply.
Realism dictates that someone's gonna want to get their hands on this to bomb the crap out of someone else. It's just a matter of time. As a consequence, something like this needs to be heavily defended at all times by something fairly neutral.... I'm not sure even the UN qualifies.
Behold, an explanation of space elevators using only playground equipment and imaginary experiments.
First off, if "cetripital" [sic] force is going to have any affect on a space elevator, why aren't satellites flying off into space? The answer of course, is gravity. The space elevator consists of two things, a satellite, held in orbit by the Earth's gravity and its own forward velocity and a cable, extending from the satellite to the earth's surface.
The cable is not some kind of tether by which we're swinging the satellite around, it's merely a cable. Here's an example... Sit on the middle of a merry-go-round. Have someone with a strong sense of balance and an iron stomach sit on the outside of the merry-go-round and run a string between the two of you. Place a washer on that string and get a third person to spin the merry-go-round as fast as they can.
While this is happening, elevate and lower your end of the string, causing the washer to move up and down the string. Observe how the person on the outside rim of the merry-go-round does not go flying off into space. Observe how they do not drag you with them.
That's how a space elevator would work. It's also worth noting that the cable will be (initially) of trivial weight, 20 tons or so maximum. This will be a leader cable, much as you'd run a small string over a tree limb in order to draw a heaver rope over it for a swing. That way you only have to haul 20 tons of cable into orbit (a trivial endeavor with proper financial backing) and can use the cable to construct a bigger, better, stronger, elevator for (basically) free (as in beer).
Given that the films were scanned into the ILM system in a format exceeding HD's pixel count, I'd say an HD release is inevitable.
I read somewhere (but now can't find the source to save my life, so call it heresay) that Lucas is essentialy doing this in preparation for a HD release of the films. I think he'll be waiting for the HD format to settle down before he makes any moves.
For those of you who want to try out HD DVD you've got only one choice as of right now.... Terminator 2's latest addition (fugly metal case etc) is the only HD DVD on the market in the US.
Personally I think this entire thread is self defeating. Think about it.... "what's your favorite blog?"
I don't know about the rest of you, but I thumb through a huge number of blogs/news sites/etc looking for material that catches my interest. Then I do my own research (not as in depth as I'd like sometimes) and try to make my own contribution, be it emotional or analytical to the topic.
So my favorite blog is [The Nephandus Weblog (aka Mephistopheles' Journal)] which is... well... mine if you'll pardon the plug. I'm surprised more people aren't saying that. The macroscopic purpose of bloging is to get the individual's ideas out there, to circumvent the established publication process and to bring a voice to the masses.
Admittedly, the masses are sometimes dumb as rocks. Rather than complain about the blogs you don't like, start your own! I know my blog doesn't get the traffic that the big names get, but it does get some and I'd like to think that those that see it are in some way influenced by it.
On the flip side, this thread has been a wonderful resource for me, because now I have even more to thumb through. The average/.er has at least a more skeptical view of the world than most, to say nothing of technical ability etc. I'd like to read what more of you have to say outside the bounds of this community.
Einstein was willing to put his science before his faith, such as it was. Many have argued that Einstein's religion was more a reaction to oppression in Europe than it was a deeply seated religious belief.
I think you've got a good point here, but that you're being unnecessarily confrontational and that your point risks being lost in that.
Allow me to paraphrase:
Religion and Science are mutually exclusive because Science is built around the Scientific Process. Through this process of hypothesis and conclusion a theory can be disproved and shown to be wrong. Observable evidence from the physical world can be applied to a conjecture about the physical world and can be used to show that conjecture as true or false.
Religion does not have what are called "falsifiable" hypotheses. In other words, Religion puts forth explanations for which no evidence can be collected.
A Scientific Statement is one like "This ball drops to the floor because of a force called gravity which acts on all things."
A Religious Statement is one like "This ball drops to the floor because the Gods want it to and they reach out and pull it to the floor."
I can collect evidence for or against the Gravity hypothesis. We can argue over it and come to a meaningful conclusion. The Gods hypothesis is unfalsifiable because no matter what evidence I bring to the table you can say "The Gods didn't want your ball to fall" and that's the end of the discussion.
As elegant as science is, and as helpful as it has been to the world around us, it has no room for things like morality.
That's a bit misleading. It's not that Science doesn't have room for morality; it's that Science doesn't address the issue. I'm sure that somewhere someone has compiled a sociological study of what behaviors are required of the individual in a utopian society. These could be considered a scientific moral code if you wanted to think of them that way. Religion fuses moral judgments with an attempt to explain the world. These are better separated. If you have thoughts on how a person should treat another person or thing, those thoughts are your own. There is nothing unscientific about your willingness to live by those beliefs or to encourage others to live by them. We can even scientifically demonstrate which beliefs make the people around you happy and angry and by extension which are more suited to the social community we live in (a Scientific pursuit). What we can't do is say that behavior X is desirable because a deity requires it. Morality is about how you interact with yourself and your world. If you don't want to eat pork, fine, don't eat pork. Don't tell me it's because God doesn't like pork though. Even God's gotta have a reason not to like bacon.
The Catholic Church (wow, I never thought I'd hear my self say this).... the Catholic Church has taken a surprisingly liberal view on the sciences recently, and has endured the wrath of the religious right in the United States because of it.
I'm not going to get into the whole abortion debate here, because fundamentally that's a personal decision and religion really should have nothing to do with it at the legislative/judicial level. Nonetheless, the Catholics while still endorsing "God Guided Evolution" (last I checked) also still buy into a number of other apocryphal stories in the Old Testament such as Noah and that guy who got eaten by the whale (Johna?).
What the Church needs to do is step back and say one way or the other "The Bible contains passages which may be metaphorical" or "The Bible should be taken literally at all times." If you're willing to admit the former, you need to be willing to allow the individual to judge what is Metaphorical and what is not for themselves. Obviously the Church has it within her power to take exception to this from time to time through the Pope's power of speaking Ex Cathedra.
Still, were the Church to view things in this way it would set a powerful precedent for the rest of the world and might just allow some of the Authoritarian Theocratic States (like the USA) to accomplish something in the sciences.
Obviously there are portions of the Bible that are important. That whole "love they neighbor" thing can make for a pretty decent place to live. But you can buy into that without agreeing with the bit about Adam living to be 900 or so.
This is not flamebait! The Nazi regime was an Evil one with horrific purpose, but to condem the German people as a whole for its crimes is tantamount to condeming all Southerners for the acts of the KKK.
The Nazi regime ruled Germany through terror tactics. Without doubt, the attacks on the German industral base were founded and necessary attacks to cripple the industrial power of the German State. The attack on Dresden (a protected city and a refugee camp) was not necessary, nor was it honorable. We hit Dresden because the Germans hit Coventry. We carried out the raid because we knew the Germans were going to hit Covernty and couldn't act on that information without giving away the breaking of Enigma. We did it because we were angry.
War is a horrible thing. The Nazi regime was a horrible thing. This does not excuse the Allies' actions at Dresden. There is a difference between war and murder. In war they enemy can shoot back. Dresden was a strictly civilian target.
To be fair, most of the Scientists we tood weren't kidnapped so much as given a choice. The choice wasn't a very good one, and it didn't make the US or the USSR look terribly good in the eyes of the world, but it was a choice. The weapons these individuals helped make killed a lot of people. While the individual german laborer had little impact on the war and could not realisticly make much of a difference, those at the top helping develop the Nazi superweapons were capable of making a huge difference. Their decision to stay in Germany and comply with the requests of the Nazi goverment made them colaborators. In exchange for their services we were willing to overlook that whole "being a Nazi" problem.
I'm not sure what you mean by slave labor, in your previous context. The US did not, to the best of my knowledge, use slave labor in the development of its space program. Of course, the early days of the US economy were fed from the tit of Slavery. While US slavery was not nearly as brutal as the practices employed by the Europeans in the Carribian, it was and is a disgrace and a black mark in the history of this country. It's hard to draw a line from that to the space program though.
Not impossible, just hard. To be fair, I'd call it impossible for N. Korea to construct a 5Kt weapon given their lack of experiance in the subject matter.
With sophisticated facilities, extensive work done in neutron reflectors and fission enhancing substances (Tritium for example), it would be possible to construct such a weapon.
Think of it this way, the Manhattan project wasn't interested in a target yeild, they just wanted to make the concept work. All three of their first generation nukes tipped the scales around 15-20 kt. For all intents and purposes, it's fair to assume that 15-20 kt is the default size of your average nuke unless you engineer it differently. If N. Korea is trying to build the "lets see if this works" nuke, it's likely going to fall into that range.
Not really, geographic considerations make a 5 satelite setup almost impossible save in specific areas of the country.
Dish recently produced a DP44 (that's Dish Pro 4 Input 4 Output) switch which is being beta tested by select retailers. The DP44 allows the installation of four satelite locations, usualy 119, 110, (105 or 121) and (61.5 or 148).
Four locations is more than enough as is, though the locals market is the single bigest consumer of Dish's bandwidth.
If we go to a dual band system as mentioned in this article, it will necessitate some new tech, probably involving retooling the LNBF (reciving gear on the dish) for all satelite locations. Given company history, if that happens, you're probably looking at 24.95 with a 1 year commitment to service (but obviously this is all conjecture).
Congress didn't get to terribly involved, at least not that I'm aware of. The FCC laied down the law, however, and required that, if Dish was going to pull that wing trick, we had to provide a 2nd dish (to get the wing stations) free of charge.
The official company policy is that we have to mention the channels you'd be missing if you don't get the 2nd dish, but that we shouldn't encourage customers to get this dish. ("Well Sir, you'll be getting all your local channels except a UPN station and a few independents which would require a 2nd dish to pick up. We'll install that dish for free if you want us to, but it will necessitate you staying home for a 4 - 5 hour span and some additional hardware tacked onto your house").
Incidently, we charge customers who want to get international channels almost $100 for the same dish pointing in the same direction with the same installation. We can't encourage those who want to get that 2nd dish for free to go the locals route, but if they figure that out on their own....
Bullshit. I work for Dish, we have 100 or so local markets but to say that we need to provide locals to everyone if we provide locals to Atlanta doesn't make any sense.
Plain and simple, there are people out there who don't get local channels. There are people out there who do get local channels. As no action has been taken, we can only assume you to be wrong on this point.
What you probably meant is that if Dish provides NBC, ABC, CBS etc for the Atlanta area, they have to make the same pricing scheme available to other local channels in the Atlanta area. They can't just carry the big names and shut the little guy out. They also can't charge lower interest channels a premium rate to be uplinked.
That does make for ugly bandwidth problems, but remember this is directional. Dish (for example) has satelites at the following orbital locations 119 110 61.5 148 121 105. The doubleing capacity attainable by opening up another band there is huge. More to the point though, is that those low demand channels aren't on the valuable realestate (119 110), they get shunted over to the wings (148, 61.5). There's not as much of a crunch as you think...
The problem is that The Fox News Network - a so called "news channel" - has a right to get their opinions on the air. But[,] thanks to McCain-Feingold, another individual who doesn't have the money to fund a massively biased "news" channel doesn't have the ability to respond. Advertisments by individuals and parties will be greatly restricted that late in the campaign.
Let me just be frank up front. I'm a Liberal (note the caps on the L). I believe in universal health care, clean air, clear water, a safe and reasonable working environment, all that other good liberal stuff that we take for granted.
I also think G.W. Bush is about the worst thing to happen to this country since Jefferson Davis.
At the same time, I recognize Moore's film as what it is. It's not propaganda, but it's not exactly objective.
First and foremost, it's important to realize that propaganda isn't just one film, one tv program, or one leaflet. Propaganda refers to a blanket of misinformation that is produced and distributed in such a way as to obscure truth and to impose a particular viewpoint as the only viewpoint.
If you want to get technical, Fox News is the closest to Propaganda this country has come in the last 50 years. Fox is as close to a ubiquitous news source as we have in this country and it's view point is very clear. Nonetheless, Fox pitches itself as being "fair and balanced," something it is patently not. Deceptions like this are what constitute propaganda.
In contrast, Moore's film (even ignoring the fact that you can't create media saturation with two hours of footage) is very clear on its objectives and viewpoints. Moore himself is even more vocal, and has made no bones about the liberal bias in his film.
Nonetheless, factual inaccuracies are something he, as a professional documentary maker, has avoided at all costs.
It is worth noting, however, that Moore leads his audience to some conclusions which are not accurate. He never states anything untrue or inaccurate, but he does not prevent his audience from making assumptions.
Example: We hear a great deal about how the Bin Laden family was evacuated in the days following September 11. We know they weren't interviewed by the FBI (this is true). We know planes around the country were grounded (this is also true). We know the Bin Laden family was in the air and on its way out of the country while a lot of other planes were on the ground (also true). We are lead to assume (but never actually told) that the Bin Laden family was flying as a special exception to the faa's ban on air travel. This is not the case, and while Moore never states it, he leads you to the conclusion.
Documentaries are not always without an agenda. Personally, if the GOP wants to push to have Moore's film counted against the advertising budget of the DNC and Kerry I'm all for it. I'd expect the Kerry campaign to have a similar lawsuit pinning the entire operating budget of Fox News (and indeed the Rupert Murdoch media empire) on the RNC in short order though.
Bottom line: quit your bitching. F911 isn't propaganda. Before it can be labeled as such we need to figure out where Rush, Sean Hannity, and O'Riley fit into the definition.
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There is an easy way to implement that. A professor of mine had the following line in his syllabus.
"If your cell phone rings during class or during an examination I will answer it. Further, I will deduct five points from your final grade."
A phone went off once in that class. He told the caller in no uncertain terms where the cell phone being called was located and informed them that future calls to that number should be avoided during his class.
He also followed through on the grade policy. It was never a problem again.
Incidently, so did Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the Maxim Gun (the first non-gattling machine gun). He built his gun to make warfare so terrible as to be unthinkable.
Then there was WWI. Worked out really well for him too.
That depends what you mean by that. In the 1700s the power to declare war needed to rest with the legislative. Afterall, the ability of a foreign power to do any real damage to the country inside of hte time frame it would take congress to react was insignificant.
Today, however, entire world wars could be stated and ended inside of 2 hours. Congress is not designed to respond to such eventualities, but it is clear the United States must be able to.
As such, your stance on this depends on what you term 'declar[ing] war.' If a declaration of war is a signed peice of paper that formaly states that the United States and country X are at war, then yes, only Congress should be able to delcare war. If, on the other hand, a declaration of war constitutes undertaking acts of hostility towards a forgien power, then the executive needs to be able to declare war.
And as we all know, the reporters are the ones who have the most influences over what goes into the final finished product that you see on the screen.
The roll of all those production managers, producers, directors, and lets not forget overwhelmingly rich and powerful media moguls is to sit around and whittle their dicks.
You can't seriously think that just because the majority of journalists are liberals that the media has a liberal bias. That's like saying that because the majority of workers in the automotive industry are democrats that the industry as a whole supports the democrats. The evidence would be against you in that one.
You can't tell me that with ultra conservative individuals like Rupert Murdoch behind the scenes issuing direct memoranda to the lowest levels of his media empire directing stations on what to run and not to run that conservatives are powerless and unrepresented in the media.
He who has the money makes the rules. The having of money is one of the strongest predictors of political affiliation and the people at the top have a lot of money.
The number of troops isn't just about NATO though, it's about keeping those bases at realistic levels to allow their deployment to other theaters around the world.
It doesn't matter which side of the terror controversy you back. The NATO pull out was a bad idea either way.
Democrat: Troops overseas keep us close to our allies. Our troops spend money, bolster local economies, and engender a sence of loyalty and familial warmth between the US military and foreign powers. Closeness with our allies is the only way we can expect to realisticly fight a war on terrorism
Republican: Overseas troops are vital to our ability to project force into the Mid East and Asia. Islamist extremism is the number one threat to national security and our ability to feild military power overseas depends on our ability to support and supply our troops utilizing the closest available existing military infrastucture. Planes need airstrips, toops need hospitals, and ships need harbors. All of these facilities and the people who man them are vital assets in the war on terror.
Finaly, the "trip wire" force isn't intended to be able to defend shit. If the North rolls over the border into the south they kill American soliders and we're at war. The reason they're there is because the 1st Korean was was touched off by Dean Atchison (while he served under Truman) when he failed to enumerate S. Korea as an area we'd defend.
In other news, Tom Ridge has locked himself in his office with a Geiger counter and a shotgun.
The United States has some of the most extensive unguarded boarders in the world.
The former Soviet Union CAN NOT FIND some 900 of the nuclear weapons that it had when it collapsed in December of 1991.
2+2=4
The fewer people who hate us, the less likely we are to have a smoking glass crater where one of our favorite cities used to be.
I'm not saying that we need to capitulate to the demands of every crackpot who comes along, but electing George "fuck diplomacy" Bush to another term sounds like a great way to antagonize the rest of the planet's population into thinking of more coercive ways to get the Petroleum Hitman to leave them alone.
Speaking as a military historian however, the pull back form Germany and other NATO commitments is a very bad idea for several reasons.
1.) US troops overseas in places like Germany and Japan reaffirms the commitments inherent in NATO. While the NATO alliance was once about mutual defense, it's now a league of ideologically aligned states. As such, it provides one of the single most stabilizing influences in the world. Pulling back from these commitments signals a US regression towards isolationism which, in turn, signals a weakening of the NATO alliance.
2.) US troops manning bases overseas provide forward deployment points for conflicts world wide. The reason we use air force bases in Germany for casualties in Iraq (for example) is that the facilities are just as good as those available in the United States but don't involve hauling injured persons across the Atlantic. These bases provide a strategically valuable bridge between the home front and the forward operating theater.
Fundamentally, this pull back is a very very very bad idea. It's being done for political reasons to assure people that we won't need to worry about reinforcements for those being cut down in Iraq. Mostly, it's being done to convince people like my extended family that their sons and daughters who are in the guard won't have to go overseas to fight in a war that most of them are indifferent to.
The draft thing is being kicked around as a metaphor for a bigger problem. Most people who are in the US reserves (guard, etc) are in them with the same preconceptions that Bush and his fellow guardsmen had in the 1970s, namely that you can serve in the guard and not see combat. Admittedly, this is a really stupid conclusion to make. Nonetheless, people made it and now they're afraid they'll get sucked into Iraq because of Bush's war. Kerry bats around the draft because implicit in that idea is that the guardsmen are going to Iraq, it also conjures up the specter of Vietnam. Bush pooh-poohs the idea of a draft to downplay the possibility of guardsmen going to Iraq and to quash the specter of Vietnam.
That's a very obvious and not terribly helpful comment. Thank you.
What the grandparent is trying to get across is the idea that when the US has an internal crisis over its own electoral process and then awards the office to the guy who got fewer votes it looks, to the rest of the world, as something of a quandary.
The US electoral system is weird, hands down, and among democracies (republics if you prefer) it is considered somewhat antiquated and strange. We're talking about a system that fundamentally distrusts the masses, leaving the decision to the politically elite (this was the framers intent with the college) which has been beaten into a vague semblance of a plebiscite, though with questionable success.
The United States was entering a legitimacy crisis in 2000 and 2001, a period that all democratic governments enter with some regularity. The last one we endured was Vietnam. The 2001 crisis was cut short by the attacks on September 11. Without those attacks the US political landscape would be a radically different place today. Even so, the same elements continue to smolder as the Bush administration burrows deeper and deeper into the quagmire that is Iraq.
At its core, the nation is polarizing. Sides are being drawn up and, as Jefferson might say, the Tree of Liberty is being refreshed, even as we speak. In the 1960s and 1970s it was the remains of the 1950s military establishment against the anti-war movement. Today we're seeing a similar backlash against corporate government.
This is an interesting time we live in, and one that is not well served by the oversimplifications you offer. What happens in these next few months will change the face of American democracy forever.
A Chinese proverb says "may you live in interesting times." Of course, it is worth noting that this is a curse.
It's worth noting that a space elevator has enormous military potential and consequently will (inevitably) be both a valuable asset and a prime target for whomever manages to build it. Once you can haul heavy stuff into space cheeply you can drop heavy stuff on people from space cheeply.
Realism dictates that someone's gonna want to get their hands on this to bomb the crap out of someone else. It's just a matter of time. As a consequence, something like this needs to be heavily defended at all times by something fairly neutral.... I'm not sure even the UN qualifies.
Behold, an explanation of space elevators using only playground equipment and imaginary experiments.
First off, if "cetripital" [sic] force is going to have any affect on a space elevator, why aren't satellites flying off into space? The answer of course, is gravity. The space elevator consists of two things, a satellite, held in orbit by the Earth's gravity and its own forward velocity and a cable, extending from the satellite to the earth's surface.
The cable is not some kind of tether by which we're swinging the satellite around, it's merely a cable. Here's an example... Sit on the middle of a merry-go-round. Have someone with a strong sense of balance and an iron stomach sit on the outside of the merry-go-round and run a string between the two of you. Place a washer on that string and get a third person to spin the merry-go-round as fast as they can.
While this is happening, elevate and lower your end of the string, causing the washer to move up and down the string. Observe how the person on the outside rim of the merry-go-round does not go flying off into space. Observe how they do not drag you with them.
That's how a space elevator would work. It's also worth noting that the cable will be (initially) of trivial weight, 20 tons or so maximum. This will be a leader cable, much as you'd run a small string over a tree limb in order to draw a heaver rope over it for a swing. That way you only have to haul 20 tons of cable into orbit (a trivial endeavor with proper financial backing) and can use the cable to construct a bigger, better, stronger, elevator for (basically) free (as in beer).
Given that the films were scanned into the ILM system in a format exceeding HD's pixel count, I'd say an HD release is inevitable.
I read somewhere (but now can't find the source to save my life, so call it heresay) that Lucas is essentialy doing this in preparation for a HD release of the films. I think he'll be waiting for the HD format to settle down before he makes any moves.
For those of you who want to try out HD DVD you've got only one choice as of right now.... Terminator 2's latest addition (fugly metal case etc) is the only HD DVD on the market in the US.
Personally I think this entire thread is self defeating. Think about it.... "what's your favorite blog?"
/.er has at least a more skeptical view of the world than most, to say nothing of technical ability etc. I'd like to read what more of you have to say outside the bounds of this community.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I thumb through a huge number of blogs/news sites/etc looking for material that catches my interest. Then I do my own research (not as in depth as I'd like sometimes) and try to make my own contribution, be it emotional or analytical to the topic.
So my favorite blog is [The Nephandus Weblog (aka Mephistopheles' Journal)] which is... well... mine if you'll pardon the plug. I'm surprised more people aren't saying that. The macroscopic purpose of bloging is to get the individual's ideas out there, to circumvent the established publication process and to bring a voice to the masses.
Admittedly, the masses are sometimes dumb as rocks. Rather than complain about the blogs you don't like, start your own! I know my blog doesn't get the traffic that the big names get, but it does get some and I'd like to think that those that see it are in some way influenced by it.
On the flip side, this thread has been a wonderful resource for me, because now I have even more to thumb through. The average
... and how long will it take before the title track happens to be the bonus track as well?
Einstein was willing to put his science before his faith, such as it was. Many have argued that Einstein's religion was more a reaction to oppression in Europe than it was a deeply seated religious belief.
I think you've got a good point here, but that you're being unnecessarily confrontational and that your point risks being lost in that.
Allow me to paraphrase:
Religion and Science are mutually exclusive because Science is built around the Scientific Process. Through this process of hypothesis and conclusion a theory can be disproved and shown to be wrong. Observable evidence from the physical world can be applied to a conjecture about the physical world and can be used to show that conjecture as true or false.
Religion does not have what are called "falsifiable" hypotheses. In other words, Religion puts forth explanations for which no evidence can be collected.
A Scientific Statement is one like "This ball drops to the floor because of a force called gravity which acts on all things."
A Religious Statement is one like "This ball drops to the floor because the Gods want it to and they reach out and pull it to the floor."
I can collect evidence for or against the Gravity hypothesis. We can argue over it and come to a meaningful conclusion. The Gods hypothesis is unfalsifiable because no matter what evidence I bring to the table you can say "The Gods didn't want your ball to fall" and that's the end of the discussion.
As elegant as science is, and as helpful as it has been to the world around us, it has no room for things like morality.
That's a bit misleading. It's not that Science doesn't have room for morality; it's that Science doesn't address the issue. I'm sure that somewhere someone has compiled a sociological study of what behaviors are required of the individual in a utopian society. These could be considered a scientific moral code if you wanted to think of them that way. Religion fuses moral judgments with an attempt to explain the world. These are better separated. If you have thoughts on how a person should treat another person or thing, those thoughts are your own. There is nothing unscientific about your willingness to live by those beliefs or to encourage others to live by them. We can even scientifically demonstrate which beliefs make the people around you happy and angry and by extension which are more suited to the social community we live in (a Scientific pursuit). What we can't do is say that behavior X is desirable because a deity requires it. Morality is about how you interact with yourself and your world. If you don't want to eat pork, fine, don't eat pork. Don't tell me it's because God doesn't like pork though. Even God's gotta have a reason not to like bacon.
The Catholic Church (wow, I never thought I'd hear my self say this).... the Catholic Church has taken a surprisingly liberal view on the sciences recently, and has endured the wrath of the religious right in the United States because of it.
I'm not going to get into the whole abortion debate here, because fundamentally that's a personal decision and religion really should have nothing to do with it at the legislative/judicial level. Nonetheless, the Catholics while still endorsing "God Guided Evolution" (last I checked) also still buy into a number of other apocryphal stories in the Old Testament such as Noah and that guy who got eaten by the whale (Johna?).
What the Church needs to do is step back and say one way or the other "The Bible contains passages which may be metaphorical" or "The Bible should be taken literally at all times." If you're willing to admit the former, you need to be willing to allow the individual to judge what is Metaphorical and what is not for themselves. Obviously the Church has it within her power to take exception to this from time to time through the Pope's power of speaking Ex Cathedra.
Still, were the Church to view things in this way it would set a powerful precedent for the rest of the world and might just allow some of the Authoritarian Theocratic States (like the USA) to accomplish something in the sciences.
Obviously there are portions of the Bible that are important. That whole "love they neighbor" thing can make for a pretty decent place to live. But you can buy into that without agreeing with the bit about Adam living to be 900 or so.
.... you can go about your business.
This is not flamebait! The Nazi regime was an Evil one with horrific purpose, but to condem the German people as a whole for its crimes is tantamount to condeming all Southerners for the acts of the KKK.
The Nazi regime ruled Germany through terror tactics. Without doubt, the attacks on the German industral base were founded and necessary attacks to cripple the industrial power of the German State. The attack on Dresden (a protected city and a refugee camp) was not necessary, nor was it honorable. We hit Dresden because the Germans hit Coventry. We carried out the raid because we knew the Germans were going to hit Covernty and couldn't act on that information without giving away the breaking of Enigma. We did it because we were angry.
War is a horrible thing. The Nazi regime was a horrible thing. This does not excuse the Allies' actions at Dresden. There is a difference between war and murder. In war they enemy can shoot back. Dresden was a strictly civilian target.
To be fair, most of the Scientists we tood weren't kidnapped so much as given a choice. The choice wasn't a very good one, and it didn't make the US or the USSR look terribly good in the eyes of the world, but it was a choice. The weapons these individuals helped make killed a lot of people. While the individual german laborer had little impact on the war and could not realisticly make much of a difference, those at the top helping develop the Nazi superweapons were capable of making a huge difference. Their decision to stay in Germany and comply with the requests of the Nazi goverment made them colaborators. In exchange for their services we were willing to overlook that whole "being a Nazi" problem.
I'm not sure what you mean by slave labor, in your previous context. The US did not, to the best of my knowledge, use slave labor in the development of its space program. Of course, the early days of the US economy were fed from the tit of Slavery. While US slavery was not nearly as brutal as the practices employed by the Europeans in the Carribian, it was and is a disgrace and a black mark in the history of this country. It's hard to draw a line from that to the space program though.
Not impossible, just hard. To be fair, I'd call it impossible for N. Korea to construct a 5Kt weapon given their lack of experiance in the subject matter.
With sophisticated facilities, extensive work done in neutron reflectors and fission enhancing substances (Tritium for example), it would be possible to construct such a weapon.
Think of it this way, the Manhattan project wasn't interested in a target yeild, they just wanted to make the concept work. All three of their first generation nukes tipped the scales around 15-20 kt. For all intents and purposes, it's fair to assume that 15-20 kt is the default size of your average nuke unless you engineer it differently. If N. Korea is trying to build the "lets see if this works" nuke, it's likely going to fall into that range.
Not really, geographic considerations make a 5 satelite setup almost impossible save in specific areas of the country.
Dish recently produced a DP44 (that's Dish Pro 4 Input 4 Output) switch which is being beta tested by select retailers. The DP44 allows the installation of four satelite locations, usualy 119, 110, (105 or 121) and (61.5 or 148).
Four locations is more than enough as is, though the locals market is the single bigest consumer of Dish's bandwidth.
If we go to a dual band system as mentioned in this article, it will necessitate some new tech, probably involving retooling the LNBF (reciving gear on the dish) for all satelite locations. Given company history, if that happens, you're probably looking at 24.95 with a 1 year commitment to service (but obviously this is all conjecture).
Congress didn't get to terribly involved, at least not that I'm aware of. The FCC laied down the law, however, and required that, if Dish was going to pull that wing trick, we had to provide a 2nd dish (to get the wing stations) free of charge.
The official company policy is that we have to mention the channels you'd be missing if you don't get the 2nd dish, but that we shouldn't encourage customers to get this dish. ("Well Sir, you'll be getting all your local channels except a UPN station and a few independents which would require a 2nd dish to pick up. We'll install that dish for free if you want us to, but it will necessitate you staying home for a 4 - 5 hour span and some additional hardware tacked onto your house").
Incidently, we charge customers who want to get international channels almost $100 for the same dish pointing in the same direction with the same installation. We can't encourage those who want to get that 2nd dish for free to go the locals route, but if they figure that out on their own....
Bullshit. I work for Dish, we have 100 or so local markets but to say that we need to provide locals to everyone if we provide locals to Atlanta doesn't make any sense.
Plain and simple, there are people out there who don't get local channels. There are people out there who do get local channels. As no action has been taken, we can only assume you to be wrong on this point.
What you probably meant is that if Dish provides NBC, ABC, CBS etc for the Atlanta area, they have to make the same pricing scheme available to other local channels in the Atlanta area. They can't just carry the big names and shut the little guy out. They also can't charge lower interest channels a premium rate to be uplinked.
That does make for ugly bandwidth problems, but remember this is directional. Dish (for example) has satelites at the following orbital locations 119 110 61.5 148 121 105. The doubleing capacity attainable by opening up another band there is huge. More to the point though, is that those low demand channels aren't on the valuable realestate (119 110), they get shunted over to the wings (148, 61.5). There's not as much of a crunch as you think...
The problem is that The Fox News Network - a so called "news channel" - has a right to get their opinions on the air. But[,] thanks to McCain-Feingold, another individual who doesn't have the money to fund a massively biased "news" channel doesn't have the ability to respond. Advertisments by individuals and parties will be greatly restricted that late in the campaign.
Let me just be frank up front. I'm a Liberal (note the caps on the L). I believe in universal health care, clean air, clear water, a safe and reasonable working environment, all that other good liberal stuff that we take for granted.
I also think G.W. Bush is about the worst thing to happen to this country since Jefferson Davis.
At the same time, I recognize Moore's film as what it is. It's not propaganda, but it's not exactly objective.
First and foremost, it's important to realize that propaganda isn't just one film, one tv program, or one leaflet. Propaganda refers to a blanket of misinformation that is produced and distributed in such a way as to obscure truth and to impose a particular viewpoint as the only viewpoint.
If you want to get technical, Fox News is the closest to Propaganda this country has come in the last 50 years. Fox is as close to a ubiquitous news source as we have in this country and it's view point is very clear. Nonetheless, Fox pitches itself as being "fair and balanced," something it is patently not. Deceptions like this are what constitute propaganda.
In contrast, Moore's film (even ignoring the fact that you can't create media saturation with two hours of footage) is very clear on its objectives and viewpoints. Moore himself is even more vocal, and has made no bones about the liberal bias in his film.
Nonetheless, factual inaccuracies are something he, as a professional documentary maker, has avoided at all costs.
It is worth noting, however, that Moore leads his audience to some conclusions which are not accurate. He never states anything untrue or inaccurate, but he does not prevent his audience from making assumptions.
Example: We hear a great deal about how the Bin Laden family was evacuated in the days following September 11. We know they weren't interviewed by the FBI (this is true). We know planes around the country were grounded (this is also true). We know the Bin Laden family was in the air and on its way out of the country while a lot of other planes were on the ground (also true). We are lead to assume (but never actually told) that the Bin Laden family was flying as a special exception to the faa's ban on air travel. This is not the case, and while Moore never states it, he leads you to the conclusion.
Documentaries are not always without an agenda. Personally, if the GOP wants to push to have Moore's film counted against the advertising budget of the DNC and Kerry I'm all for it. I'd expect the Kerry campaign to have a similar lawsuit pinning the entire operating budget of Fox News (and indeed the Rupert Murdoch media empire) on the RNC in short order though.
Bottom line: quit your bitching. F911 isn't propaganda. Before it can be labeled as such we need to figure out where Rush, Sean Hannity, and O'Riley fit into the definition.