"His chances are so slim because of logic like this."
His chances are nill, and its all because of Mike Gravel, no one else. There is no conspiracy here. He's addressed the public, and been found wanting as a candidate. Same thing with Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, and Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter. All have small, rabid followings, and none have topped 5 percent nationally. The onus is on them to convince people they're viable. Nothing annoys me in a campaign more than Candidate X's followers pointing their finger at me and saying "well, he'd have more support if you'd just get behind him!". Well, he didn't convince me, and it's not my job to carry him. Its his job to gain a following, no one else's.
No matter how you might be attracted to their ideas, not enough other people are supporting them to give them a viable campaign. While I personally think the MSM has their favorites, they can't completely control the election process. Two months ago, they'd written John McCain and Barack Obama off completely. Funny how real voters (and not polls) have a way of deciding things for themselves.
"I don't trust any of them. They all want the job, which should be enough in itself to disqualify them."
Funny you should say that. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan tells people he'd like to propose a Constitutional Amendment, stating that "anyone willing to do the ridiculous things necessary to become President is hereby banned from that office".
"Sure, it's not a pancea - but it might be able to give us the time figure out how to exploit renewable energies cheaply and safely enough.."
What we should be doing is leveraging as many energy sources as we can....that means coal, nuclear, and drilling for more oil, all while doing research on new sources. If its there, go get it.
"At $31 a share, Yahoo believes the bid undervalues the company, two sources said."
Undervalued? Do they really believe that? Or is that just negotiation strategy, because Microsoft offered much more per share than what the stock was going for.
"Especially since they're using it as an "outreach" to people who aren't regular church-goers. That makes it not only a public performance, but performance in return of expectation of a "good or valuable consideration. The church is in the wrong here - like on so many other things."
Your email address describes you well.
Are you honestly saying that a bunch of people getting together to watch a football game at a church is the same thing as putting on a performance for profit or material gain? And how do you know they're doing it as "outreach" (as if that would matter anyway)? The people are my wife's church are just getting together to watch a friggin' football game. Are you so bitter about religion that you're going to side with the NFL on clear copyright abuse, just so you can stick it to those mean 'ole churchgoers?
"Nobody wants to deal with the real issue of why there are so many non-viable embryos available for research purposes in the first place. "
This is where your argument is flawed. If it were only discarded embryos used in the process, there might not have been so much fuss. But even scientists that favor embryonic research admit that there just aren't enough discarded embryos for their research. To do it properly, they'd have to have a continuing, and large, supply. The only way to do this viably would be to either harvest them, or produce them en masse, via some kind of factory. I don't know about you, but the prospect of creating massive numbers of human life...even embryonic human life, for the sole purpose of then destroying it to harvest resources just opens up all kinds of pandora's boxes. Add to that the fact that thus far, embryonic research has yet to come up with any of the real world successes that experimentation with adult lines has, and you can see both moral and practical arguments against embryonic research.
"The last non-carrier nuclear surface boat was the Long Beach, I believe, an escort cruiser."
Nope, the California and Virginia class cruisers were also nukes, 6 ships in all. They've all been retired now, though.
When I was in, I was under the impression that the reason for phasing out non-carrier surface nuke vessels was because the smaller surface ships made so many more ports of call and so many more replenishment trips that nuke power was overkill. If you have to get beans and bullets often, why not just get gas too? Carriers, with their massive stores spaces, replenish far less. With the small size of reactors in subs, even monsters like the Ohio class, I can't imagine that the problem is one of diminishing returns the smaller the reactor. Subs are especially energy hungry. Unless an Ohio boat uses less juice than a destroyer, then I can't see the economy of scale argument.
Oh, and the Aegis class hulls were like destroyers because they were from destoryers....the Navy simply used the Spruance/Kidd class destroyer hulls in the design to save money. From the weather deck on down, the exterior hull is exactly the same, and the interior spaces are mostly the same.
Obviously, he didn't know the Cole was a destroyer. He was under the impression that it was a carrier that was hit. I'm ex-Navy (on aircraft carriers, in fact), and I'll cut him some slack on this, because he was right in that had the jihadis tried the same thing on a supercarrier, yeah, the damage would have been much less, as the hull on a carrier is much, much thicker and stronger than a Burke class destroyer.
I hope you notice that candidates in other countries just don't talk in such belligerent terms about their nations position in the world."
Nice comparison to the Third Reich there. Thanks heaps.
I don't know if you're an American or not, but if you're actually expecting a candidate for President of the United States to essentially say "You know, its time we let someone else be the most powerful nation in the world"....I'd be willing to bet the house that such a candidate would lose by a landslide.
But hey...if you are an American, and you'd like to go around promoting your candidate with slogans like "Vote for X! Because America shouldn't be #1 anymore!", let me know how that works out...
Actually, I'm the guy that submitted this story, and I'm glad you posted that. I'm not necessarily sold on Romney yet (but I'm beginning to favor him over McCain), but what I'd like to see on Slashdot is a tech voter guide, outlining all of the major candidate's positions on major technology questions....H-1Bs, intellectual property, fair use, net neutrality. I'd also like to see some questions about the role of technology in education, as answers to this can be very revealing. I'm always wary of candidates that think the solution to education problems is to throw new computers at kids.
"Stop being paranoid. The world is not out to get you."
I'm not being paranoid. I'm being defensive to an asshole that clearly relished what the radicals got away with. I'd be willing to lay cash that if it were Richard Dawkins that was prevented from speaking at the same university, you'd be pretty pissed.
"Has anybody else noticed that Catholicism is quickly becoming the more "accepting/open-minded" branch of Christianity, especially compared to "mainstream Christianity" in the US? Discuss."
If by "open minded" you really mean "willing to chuck aside their convictions", then no, I wouldn't agree with you. Catholicism is actually in the process of stepping back from Vatican II and reaffirming some older traditions. JPII also put his foot down on the subject of Liberation Theology and heresies, and Benedict has followed in his stead.
Your more "open minded" churches...the ones willing to bend or toss aside teachings from the Bible and older theologians in the interest of "adapting to the times" are actually losing bodies. I don't think its a coincidence that the theologically conservative and evangelical churches are growing (and Catholicism is included here), while the mainstream denominations that embraced liberalization and a turning away from Biblical principals are losing members every year. The Episcopal Church is a hollow shell of its former self, and is splitting up in a schizm between conservatives and liberals. The same is happening to other "liberal" denominations. Even the Jesuits, considered a liberal order this past century, are starting to do an about face theologically. And its the younger generation of priests that are actually embracing the return to Catholic tradition, such as the Tridentine Mass. Its the 60's/Vatican II generation that is horrified by this. That generation is the one that fought the hardest for liberalization, but that battle was lost with the coming of JPII.
Goldberg cites sources and names interview subjects in his article. His article can be fact checked. So are you saying that the content should be ignored because it came from National Review? Would you have the similar objections to same subject in The Nation or Mother Jones or Rolling Stone?
"And you've provided absolutely nothing in the way of doing that, other than some rant by Jonah Goldberg that makes a bunch of claims without citing sources"
Uhhh, Goldberg does give sources in his article, namely author Roger Nisbet's book, and quotes from Sheahan and other named sources from the newspaper article he cites. You're insinuating that he pulled a Stephen Glass and just made shit up. He writes for National Review, not The New Republic, thanks.
"is he a scientist? a physicist? then what makes him - or anyone - think that he's automatically entitled to a soapbox at a scientific institution?"
Its a university, with different departments. If it was strictly a scientific institute, maybe you'd have a point. Otherwise, why do some people from the science department have the right to shut out speakers from other fields where the whole university is concerned?
"Why is it ironic? The scientist aren't protesting just any pope from visiting, they are protesting this particular pope, because of remarks that he made."
That's kind of disingenuous. Its not just the current Pope they're raging against....its the entire Catholic Church. The articles note that this whole thing really picked when radical students got into the act, and their sentiments against the Church are pretty clear. I think you would have seen this kind of reaction had it been Billy Graham that was invited to speak instead of the Pope. A subset of the university has decided that faith = bad, and that's that. They weren't going to stand for a religious leader speaking at the university, no matter what anyone else thought about the matter.
"Too many relgious types seem to confuse criticism with persecution. It's laughable for any Christian to think they are being persecuted in a Western country, and particularly American Christians..."
Lets have a look at the thread topic....protesters caused a big enough stink to prevent the Pope from speaking at their university. Now, colleges an universities are supposed to be marketplaces of ideas, all kinds of ideas. And yet a relatively small group of people....some science faculty and some radical students (as described by the news accounts themselves) succeeded not in criticizing the Pope's message, but in preventing that message from even being given. Their aim was clearly to shut him down, not offer a rebuttal to his ideas. You can call that whatever you want, but I call that persecution.
"Contraception policies of the catholic church (instigated by JP II) are killing people today".
Wait a second....how in the hell are the Church's contraceptive policies killing people?
Condoms? If you're actually following church teachings, and having sex within a marriage, then what's the health risk of not using one? It seems silly to blame someone getting an STD from unprotected non-marital sex on the Catholic Church when the Catholic Church teaches that you shouldn't do that in the first place.
I can't imagine that you're insinuating that having more kids is dangerous. Even among Catholic families, birthrates are much lower in industrialized countries than it used to be, and in third world countries, birthrates are high no matter what your religion is. So again, it seems patently silly to blame the Church for childbirth morbidity for mothers, especially since modern medicine has largely made childbirth safe for even mothers with large families, even with the increased risk of having more children.
Another Cafeteria Catholic. Well, the cafeteria is now closed. But I hear the Episcopalians and Unitarians are looking for someone to fill their increasingly empty seats. As a UU, you don't even have to actually have any convictions about anything, so perhaps that would suit you better.
"While that is more or less true, consider that tere are really only three main OS Codebases in Microsoft now. Windows NT (non server, the current offering is various form of Vista, as well as XP until they discontinue it). Windows server (a very close relative to the NT series, but optimized for server environments, and multi-processor usage.) Those two code bases are close enough that they share binaries (when on the same architecure) and they could even be used for the opposite purposes with only minor difficulty."
I thought Vista's codebase was adopted directly from 2003 server as a result of the previous version of "longhorn" basically sucking so bad, Microsoft had no choice?
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"His chances are so slim because of logic like this."
His chances are nill, and its all because of Mike Gravel, no one else. There is no conspiracy here. He's addressed the public, and been found wanting as a candidate. Same thing with Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, and Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter. All have small, rabid followings, and none have topped 5 percent nationally. The onus is on them to convince people they're viable. Nothing annoys me in a campaign more than Candidate X's followers pointing their finger at me and saying "well, he'd have more support if you'd just get behind him!". Well, he didn't convince me, and it's not my job to carry him. Its his job to gain a following, no one else's.
No matter how you might be attracted to their ideas, not enough other people are supporting them to give them a viable campaign. While I personally think the MSM has their favorites, they can't completely control the election process. Two months ago, they'd written John McCain and Barack Obama off completely. Funny how real voters (and not polls) have a way of deciding things for themselves.
"I don't trust any of them. They all want the job, which should be enough in itself to disqualify them."
Funny you should say that. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan tells people he'd like to propose a Constitutional Amendment, stating that "anyone willing to do the ridiculous things necessary to become President is hereby banned from that office".
"What if a massive cloud of CO2 is released suddenly, due to a massive earthquake or whatnot? "
This already happens every time a volcano blows anyway. Volcanic eruptions launch massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.
"Sure, it's not a pancea - but it might be able to give us the time figure out how to exploit renewable energies cheaply and safely enough.."
What we should be doing is leveraging as many energy sources as we can....that means coal, nuclear, and drilling for more oil, all while doing research on new sources. If its there, go get it.
"At $31 a share, Yahoo believes the bid undervalues the company, two sources said."
Undervalued? Do they really believe that? Or is that just negotiation strategy, because Microsoft offered much more per share than what the stock was going for.
"Can we get rid of their tax exemption while we're at it?"
No, thanks for playing.
"Or does this 52" TV have some demonstrable charitable purpose?"
That large tv has legitimate uses, like displaying, oh, I don't know....religious content?
"HAHAHA! Where is their God NOW?!"
Yeah, ha ha ha, silly people, they....what's that? A meteor took out broadcast satellite before the game? What are the odds, eh?
"Especially since they're using it as an "outreach" to people who aren't regular church-goers. That makes it not only a public performance, but performance in return of expectation of a "good or valuable consideration. The church is in the wrong here - like on so many other things."
Your email address describes you well.
Are you honestly saying that a bunch of people getting together to watch a football game at a church is the same thing as putting on a performance for profit or material gain? And how do you know they're doing it as "outreach" (as if that would matter anyway)? The people are my wife's church are just getting together to watch a friggin' football game. Are you so bitter about religion that you're going to side with the NFL on clear copyright abuse, just so you can stick it to those mean 'ole churchgoers?
Bitter much?
"Nobody wants to deal with the real issue of why there are so many non-viable embryos available for research purposes in the first place. "
This is where your argument is flawed. If it were only discarded embryos used in the process, there might not have been so much fuss. But even scientists that favor embryonic research admit that there just aren't enough discarded embryos for their research. To do it properly, they'd have to have a continuing, and large, supply. The only way to do this viably would be to either harvest them, or produce them en masse, via some kind of factory. I don't know about you, but the prospect of creating massive numbers of human life...even embryonic human life, for the sole purpose of then destroying it to harvest resources just opens up all kinds of pandora's boxes. Add to that the fact that thus far, embryonic research has yet to come up with any of the real world successes that experimentation with adult lines has, and you can see both moral and practical arguments against embryonic research.
"The last non-carrier nuclear surface boat was the Long Beach, I believe, an escort cruiser."
Nope, the California and Virginia class cruisers were also nukes, 6 ships in all. They've all been retired now, though.
When I was in, I was under the impression that the reason for phasing out non-carrier surface nuke vessels was because the smaller surface ships made so many more ports of call and so many more replenishment trips that nuke power was overkill. If you have to get beans and bullets often, why not just get gas too? Carriers, with their massive stores spaces, replenish far less. With the small size of reactors in subs, even monsters like the Ohio class, I can't imagine that the problem is one of diminishing returns the smaller the reactor. Subs are especially energy hungry. Unless an Ohio boat uses less juice than a destroyer, then I can't see the economy of scale argument.
Oh, and the Aegis class hulls were like destroyers because they were from destoryers....the Navy simply used the Spruance/Kidd class destroyer hulls in the design to save money. From the weather deck on down, the exterior hull is exactly the same, and the interior spaces are mostly the same.
"Sorry, mate, but that's just sick."
Obviously, he didn't know the Cole was a destroyer. He was under the impression that it was a carrier that was hit. I'm ex-Navy (on aircraft carriers, in fact), and I'll cut him some slack on this, because he was right in that had the jihadis tried the same thing on a supercarrier, yeah, the damage would have been much less, as the hull on a carrier is much, much thicker and stronger than a Burke class destroyer.
"Woo! Go USA! Thousand year empire!
I hope you notice that candidates in other countries just don't talk in such belligerent terms about their nations position in the world."
Nice comparison to the Third Reich there. Thanks heaps.
I don't know if you're an American or not, but if you're actually expecting a candidate for President of the United States to essentially say "You know, its time we let someone else be the most powerful nation in the world"....I'd be willing to bet the house that such a candidate would lose by a landslide.
But hey...if you are an American, and you'd like to go around promoting your candidate with slogans like "Vote for X! Because America shouldn't be #1 anymore!", let me know how that works out...
Actually, I'm the guy that submitted this story, and I'm glad you posted that. I'm not necessarily sold on Romney yet (but I'm beginning to favor him over McCain), but what I'd like to see on Slashdot is a tech voter guide, outlining all of the major candidate's positions on major technology questions....H-1Bs, intellectual property, fair use, net neutrality. I'd also like to see some questions about the role of technology in education, as answers to this can be very revealing. I'm always wary of candidates that think the solution to education problems is to throw new computers at kids.
"Stop being paranoid. The world is not out to get you."
I'm not being paranoid. I'm being defensive to an asshole that clearly relished what the radicals got away with. I'd be willing to lay cash that if it were Richard Dawkins that was prevented from speaking at the same university, you'd be pretty pissed.
"Has anybody else noticed that Catholicism is quickly becoming the more "accepting/open-minded" branch of Christianity, especially compared to "mainstream Christianity" in the US? Discuss."
If by "open minded" you really mean "willing to chuck aside their convictions", then no, I wouldn't agree with you. Catholicism is actually in the process of stepping back from Vatican II and reaffirming some older traditions. JPII also put his foot down on the subject of Liberation Theology and heresies, and Benedict has followed in his stead.
Your more "open minded" churches...the ones willing to bend or toss aside teachings from the Bible and older theologians in the interest of "adapting to the times" are actually losing bodies. I don't think its a coincidence that the theologically conservative and evangelical churches are growing (and Catholicism is included here), while the mainstream denominations that embraced liberalization and a turning away from Biblical principals are losing members every year. The Episcopal Church is a hollow shell of its former self, and is splitting up in a schizm between conservatives and liberals. The same is happening to other "liberal" denominations. Even the Jesuits, considered a liberal order this past century, are starting to do an about face theologically. And its the younger generation of priests that are actually embracing the return to Catholic tradition, such as the Tridentine Mass. Its the 60's/Vatican II generation that is horrified by this. That generation is the one that fought the hardest for liberalization, but that battle was lost with the coming of JPII.
Goldberg cites sources and names interview subjects in his article. His article can be fact checked. So are you saying that the content should be ignored because it came from National Review? Would you have the similar objections to same subject in The Nation or Mother Jones or Rolling Stone?
"And you've provided absolutely nothing in the way of doing that, other than some rant by Jonah Goldberg that makes a bunch of claims without citing sources"
Uhhh, Goldberg does give sources in his article, namely author Roger Nisbet's book, and quotes from Sheahan and other named sources from the newspaper article he cites. You're insinuating that he pulled a Stephen Glass and just made shit up. He writes for National Review, not The New Republic, thanks.
"is he a scientist? a physicist? then what makes him - or anyone - think that he's automatically entitled to a soapbox at a scientific institution?"
Its a university, with different departments. If it was strictly a scientific institute, maybe you'd have a point. Otherwise, why do some people from the science department have the right to shut out speakers from other fields where the whole university is concerned?
"Why is it ironic? The scientist aren't protesting just any pope from visiting, they are protesting this particular pope, because of remarks that he made."
That's kind of disingenuous. Its not just the current Pope they're raging against....its the entire Catholic Church. The articles note that this whole thing really picked when radical students got into the act, and their sentiments against the Church are pretty clear. I think you would have seen this kind of reaction had it been Billy Graham that was invited to speak instead of the Pope. A subset of the university has decided that faith = bad, and that's that. They weren't going to stand for a religious leader speaking at the university, no matter what anyone else thought about the matter.
"Too many relgious types seem to confuse criticism with persecution. It's laughable for any Christian to think they are being persecuted in a Western country, and particularly American Christians..."
Lets have a look at the thread topic....protesters caused a big enough stink to prevent the Pope from speaking at their university. Now, colleges an universities are supposed to be marketplaces of ideas, all kinds of ideas. And yet a relatively small group of people....some science faculty and some radical students (as described by the news accounts themselves) succeeded not in criticizing the Pope's message, but in preventing that message from even being given. Their aim was clearly to shut him down, not offer a rebuttal to his ideas. You can call that whatever you want, but I call that persecution.
"Contraception policies of the catholic church (instigated by JP II) are killing people today".
Wait a second....how in the hell are the Church's contraceptive policies killing people?
Condoms? If you're actually following church teachings, and having sex within a marriage, then what's the health risk of not using one? It seems silly to blame someone getting an STD from unprotected non-marital sex on the Catholic Church when the Catholic Church teaches that you shouldn't do that in the first place.
I can't imagine that you're insinuating that having more kids is dangerous. Even among Catholic families, birthrates are much lower in industrialized countries than it used to be, and in third world countries, birthrates are high no matter what your religion is. So again, it seems patently silly to blame the Church for childbirth morbidity for mothers, especially since modern medicine has largely made childbirth safe for even mothers with large families, even with the increased risk of having more children.
Another Cafeteria Catholic. Well, the cafeteria is now closed. But I hear the Episcopalians and Unitarians are looking for someone to fill their increasingly empty seats. As a UU, you don't even have to actually have any convictions about anything, so perhaps that would suit you better.
"Not in my experience. There are a bunch of CTF maps that are usually full of bots."
There. Fixed it for you.
Democrats concentrated on social issues...this is a shock?
"While that is more or less true, consider that tere are really only three main OS Codebases in Microsoft now. Windows NT (non server, the current offering is various form of Vista, as well as XP until they discontinue it). Windows server (a very close relative to the NT series, but optimized for server environments, and multi-processor usage.) Those two code bases are close enough that they share binaries (when on the same architecure) and they could even be used for the opposite purposes with only minor difficulty."
I thought Vista's codebase was adopted directly from 2003 server as a result of the previous version of "longhorn" basically sucking so bad, Microsoft had no choice?