"they will tell you that they are much more afraid of violence in countries that allow people to carry weapons around (e.g. the USA) than in countries where it is not allowed, no matter what the Official Crime Rate is."
Aside from the fact that we're talking about "feelings" (advertisers must love you folks), are these people that have actually been to the US, or are they just going by anedotal stories and talking about how they would feel if they were in the States?
And then the next question would be "Where in the US?" Big country, widely varying state laws, etc. etc.
"Not having read the article, it's hard to see how one meteorite could bake animals on the other side of the world."
As fluids, water and air transmit energy remarkably well. Consider tsunamis, for example, which can travel around the world to flatten buildings and such. Another example are nuclear weapons, where most of the damage we associate with them come neither from the radiation nor the blast but from the resultant shockwave (the surrounding air getting really hot really fast and expanding because of it).
And when you're talking about the scale of a major asteroid/comet impact, don't forget that the planet itself is mostly fluid (or else earthquakes wouldn't be a problem). A serious impact would ripple throughout the interior of the planet, causing all sorts of eartquakes and volcanic eruptions around the globe.
"That's right, citizens! If you aren't able and willing to quit your life-long chosen career and devote the next 20-30 years"
A term in the White House is four years. Many people spend longer than that trying to graduate from college.
"building up political capital for a presidential run"
"Political capital?" No, you just need name recognition, which Moore obviously has. Just look at how long a certain someone had to gather this "political capital" you speak of before becoming governor of California. And that's 52 electoral votes right there!
"you have NO RIGHT TO CRITICIZE OUR DEAR LEADER BUSH!"
That's exactly the wrong angle I intended. I'm tired of seeing people complain about government and then, when cornered about their positions, simply say "Oh, there's nothing little old me can do about it..." All they end up doing is propagating the whole Divine Right of Politicians mythos that has stifled democracy since time immemorial. How else do you have "a government of the people, by the people, for the people" if the people themselves don't get involved? Acta non verba!
You don't need to be a millioinaire. You don't need to be a war hero. You don't need to be a lawyer or even have a degree. You don't need to have a full head of hair or perfect teeth. You need to have been born in the United States and you need to be at least 35. That's all. And if you're not able to meet one or both of those requirments then Congress is the place for you, where you'd be able to keep the White House's power in check. Two years still too much of a commitment for you? Have you considered your state's legislature? With the constant erosion of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments that's damned near a part-time job these days (thatt still manages to pay better than most full-time jobs). If nothing else it gives you the ability to vote for the one person on the face of the plant that really can represent you.
Would I vote for Moore? Hell no! But the man has his principles and he's far more committed to them than either Bush or Kerry seem to be to theirs, and it seems his platform would be more than just "Vote for me so I can protect you from my competitor!"
You know what this country really needs? Another presidential election where nobody gets the majority of electoal votes. It would remind the candidates that they, too, are mortal, it would put the fear of God into Congress (because people will actually be paying attention to them for once), and when the sun still rises the next day it would teach everybody that life would still go on, no matter what the Democrats or Republicans might say. Who knows, if that happens maybe neither Bush nor Kerry would be president for the next four years, and isn't that all what we all really want?
You don't exactly have to know how to code to run for political office. There are two and only two requirements to be president, and you get those by being in the right place at the right time. If you think you need to be some super-1337 politico-type person to do it, well... you've been listening to them too long.
"Doesn't making a film counting as doing something?"
That would depend on the film; is it more about about bringing attention to facts, or about expressing opinion about what should be done about it?
"It's certainly more than you or I are doing posting on slashdot!"
Out of curiosity, do you vote?
"Moore I think is a much more talented film maker than politician."
From what I've seen so far he's been wearing both hats a lot lately. And besides, I thought the theory was that people who make good politicians are exactly the wrong people to be in political office.
"Guns are good. The more, and the bigger, the better."
Definition of irony: Michael Moore bringing light to acts of brutaility by US soldiers and then railing against the Second Amendment in the same brath.
"I hope more and more images and video keeps coming out of Iraq in regards to the abuse, torture, rape and slaughter of Iraqi citizens,"
Look, I'm am literally sickened and disgusted with the actions of those people. I'm amazed by how lenient the "maximum" penalties they will be facing in their courts martial are (a few months of hard labor with a dishonerable dishcarge? Come on! Enron execs are facing worse than that, nevermind drug dealers!). I am epespecially pissed by them claiming they were *ahem* "just following orders" (reguardless if it's true, that is exactly the wrong answer to be giving). And I'm pissed at the civillians who say "oh well, these things just happen."
But I do find it rather interesting that these things only make the news when its Americans doing the brutality. Part of the reason we invaded Iraq to begin with was that the Ba'ath regime had been doing these kinds of things for decades, often simply for the sport of it (it's a shame we couldn't catch Qusay alive). And Iraq is far from the only country where stuff like this happens. Anybody else notice how Rwanda got a lot more press on the anniversary of its massacres than it did when they were actually happening? Anybody else notice that four dead students in Ohio gets a lot more play in history books than what they were protesting against: US troops in Pol Pot's Cambodia?
Yes, I realize there was a time when Washington openly supported Sadam Hussein, but I see that more as a reason in favor of invading, not against it: it's our mess and we should be the ones to clean it up.
No, we have nothing but those kinds of people. All I see around me are a bunch of people who sit around on the sidelines and bitch and moan about how things are being done but they don't do anything beyond that. Michael Moore is a natural-born citizen of the United States over the age of 35; if he really knows how to fix things and knows what would be best for the country, why doesn't he try running for the White House himself?
"I hope people can see that the right wing has a history of using money to censor media outlets in this country."
"Freedom of the press is limited to those that own one." Like it or not, the owners of media outlets are generally not obligated to pay for somebody else's political opinion.
"The liberals in this country want open and free discussion."
From what I've seen so far, what the people you call "liberals" really want is what they refer to "fair access," where media outlets are legally required to foot the bill to broadast opinion from "both" views. Now then, care to explain how you feel Disney should be legally required to pay for a work they don't like while you yourself should somehow be free from paying for spam or junk faxes you don't want?
"Want more information on the republican campaign to quiet the liberal voice check out howardstern.com."
As much as I dislike FCC censorship (why even bother with TV content ratings when the FCC is just trying to make it all "general audience" anyway?), I suspect the reason Stern hasn't jumped ship from ClearChannel to XM or Sirius is that he'd then have one less thing to complain about.
And how did the FCC come up in all of this, anyway? We're talking about Disney (not a government entity) and about a movie (not under the purview of the FCC unless/until it's broadcasted).
"Do you honestly believe that that one shell with traces of sarin (unconfirmed, last i saw) justifies invading a sovereign nation?"\
First off, it's been confirmed IIRC. A search for "sarin" on Google News turns out too much editorial rhetoric (on both sides) to find information one way or the other, though.
Secondly, I find it interesting that the people who used it to set up that roadside bomb apparently thought it was just a conventional shell. That means it looked like a conventional shell. Now, either it looked that way because the people who made a one-of-a-kind shell went through effort to make it look normal (why?), or the shell looked that way because it was mass-produced (like ordinary shells).
In the 1990's, before leaving, UNSCOM said there were over 500 such shells filled with sarin they couldn't account for.
(What worries me is that the people who used that shell know where it came from and now know what it it was.)
"If you spoke loud enough, you could be heard 50 miles away. Of course, you'd need some serious speakers to help you speak that loudly... and noise pollution laws would make doing so illegal."
Screw that, you probably wouldn't survive the experience. The only times I remember hearing something from 50 miles away involved the space shuttle.
" Regulating air waves? For what? I thought radios work with electromagnetic waves.."
Mostly because of those EM waves that reflect off of that layer of air called the ionosphere. If all terrestrial EM communications had to be line-of-sight, we might not even have an FCC.
"It's a demonstration of how you can make even a brick fly with the right thrust to weight ratio."
Ah yes, the age old struggle between Brute Force vs. Aerodynamics. Remember, kids: If brute force doesn't solve your problems, you're not using enough! It's what got us to the moon, after all...
I mean, I knew that CVN-65 was a tad over-powered with its 8 fission reactors, but they actually got the USS Enterprise to lift out of the water? Dear God!
"Coincidence that 10 year old girls have C cup's now ?"
Haven't you been getting your daily required dose of television lately? We Americans are so obese that our 10 year old boys have C cups.
Re:Bad economics and incorrect facts.
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 1
"This effects the $40/barrel price of crude oil how?"
Consider that $40 per 42-gallon barrel comes down to $0.95 per gallon or so. Now compare that to the price of your favorite flavor of gasoline at the pump. Only some of that ~$1.90 you pay at the pump can be explained away with federal and state taxes.
"Hell, it doesn't even effect the gas price of people outside of those regions much,"
The more time you devote to refining mix A, the less you have to refine mix B, reducing the supply of B and driving up the price.
"the answer would be to adopt the better standards"
That would be for the states to decide, wouldn't it?
"It seems that in talks to increase production. Only Venezuela and Iran are vocally against this."
And Venezuela is the OPEC member we import from the most. If the price of a barrel of oil is the same throughout the world, the price of shipping it is all of the difference. This is why the vast majority of oil imported into the US is from countries in our own hemisphere (with Canada, Mexico and Venezuela being the big three, IIRC).
"There is no Jar Jar (*cough*) in episodes IV, V and VI."
Jaba and (especially) Bobba Fett weren't in IV, at least not the first time around. If Lucas can make Greedo shoot first, I'm sure he can squeeze Jar Jar into the re-re-re-re-remastering of IV, V and IV.
Slashdot Mirror
"they will tell you that they are much more afraid of violence in countries that allow people to carry weapons around (e.g. the USA) than in countries where it is not allowed, no matter what the Official Crime Rate is."
Aside from the fact that we're talking about "feelings" (advertisers must love you folks), are these people that have actually been to the US, or are they just going by anedotal stories and talking about how they would feel if they were in the States?
And then the next question would be "Where in the US?" Big country, widely varying state laws, etc. etc.
"especially in spring, which is probably why we're seeing them now."
Except the observatory in question is south of the Equator.
Now that would suck!
... FUCK!
Saturnian Surgeon General: We all need 8 glasses of CH4 a day to live! And the nearest sources is...
Saturnians (looking up):
And that's before you consider ther day is only ~10 hours.
"The PAL required that the correct 8-digit launch code be entered by the missiliers before the missile would establish ignition."
You must be talking about the Soviets. Everybody knows Americans use NTSC!
"Your success in life and love can be increased with numbers by at least a factor of two, and possibly by up to a factor of five!"
Must be a backwards American. Everybody else seems to know that things can only be increased by factors of 10, and usually only by factors of 1000.
"Toddler is amazed after opening smallest Russian doll yet found, only to find a smaller Russian doll inside."
That's the classical/relativistic model. In quantum mechanics the doll on the inside is larger than the doll on the outside.
"then BAM!!!! Another notch!"
That's a pretty damned big notch. I'd say it's more on the order of a gigabam or a terabam.
"Not having read the article, it's hard to see how one meteorite could bake animals on the other side of the world."
As fluids, water and air transmit energy remarkably well. Consider tsunamis, for example, which can travel around the world to flatten buildings and such. Another example are nuclear weapons, where most of the damage we associate with them come neither from the radiation nor the blast but from the resultant shockwave (the surrounding air getting really hot really fast and expanding because of it).
And when you're talking about the scale of a major asteroid/comet impact, don't forget that the planet itself is mostly fluid (or else earthquakes wouldn't be a problem). A serious impact would ripple throughout the interior of the planet, causing all sorts of eartquakes and volcanic eruptions around the globe.
"That's right, citizens! If you aren't able and willing to quit your life-long chosen career and devote the next 20-30 years"
A term in the White House is four years. Many people spend longer than that trying to graduate from college.
"building up political capital for a presidential run"
"Political capital?" No, you just need name recognition, which Moore obviously has. Just look at how long a certain someone had to gather this "political capital" you speak of before becoming governor of California. And that's 52 electoral votes right there!
"you have NO RIGHT TO CRITICIZE OUR DEAR LEADER BUSH!"
That's exactly the wrong angle I intended. I'm tired of seeing people complain about government and then, when cornered about their positions, simply say "Oh, there's nothing little old me can do about it..." All they end up doing is propagating the whole Divine Right of Politicians mythos that has stifled democracy since time immemorial. How else do you have "a government of the people, by the people, for the people" if the people themselves don't get involved? Acta non verba!
You don't need to be a millioinaire. You don't need to be a war hero. You don't need to be a lawyer or even have a degree. You don't need to have a full head of hair or perfect teeth. You need to have been born in the United States and you need to be at least 35. That's all. And if you're not able to meet one or both of those requirments then Congress is the place for you, where you'd be able to keep the White House's power in check. Two years still too much of a commitment for you? Have you considered your state's legislature? With the constant erosion of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments that's damned near a part-time job these days (thatt still manages to pay better than most full-time jobs). If nothing else it gives you the ability to vote for the one person on the face of the plant that really can represent you.
Would I vote for Moore? Hell no! But the man has his principles and he's far more committed to them than either Bush or Kerry seem to be to theirs, and it seems his platform would be more than just "Vote for me so I can protect you from my competitor!"
You know what this country really needs? Another presidential election where nobody gets the majority of electoal votes. It would remind the candidates that they, too, are mortal, it would put the fear of God into Congress (because people will actually be paying attention to them for once), and when the sun still rises the next day it would teach everybody that life would still go on, no matter what the Democrats or Republicans might say. Who knows, if that happens maybe neither Bush nor Kerry would be president for the next four years, and isn't that all what we all really want?
You don't exactly have to know how to code to run for political office. There are two and only two requirements to be president, and you get those by being in the right place at the right time. If you think you need to be some super-1337 politico-type person to do it, well... you've been listening to them too long.
"Doesn't making a film counting as doing something?"
That would depend on the film; is it more about about bringing attention to facts, or about expressing opinion about what should be done about it?
"It's certainly more than you or I are doing posting on slashdot!"
Out of curiosity, do you vote?
"Moore I think is a much more talented film maker than politician."
From what I've seen so far he's been wearing both hats a lot lately. And besides, I thought the theory was that people who make good politicians are exactly the wrong people to be in political office.
"Guns are good. The more, and the bigger, the better."
Definition of irony: Michael Moore bringing light to acts of brutaility by US soldiers and then railing against the Second Amendment in the same brath.
Or am I the only one who's noticed that?
"I hope more and more images and video keeps coming out of Iraq in regards to the abuse, torture, rape and slaughter of Iraqi citizens,"
Look, I'm am literally sickened and disgusted with the actions of those people. I'm amazed by how lenient the "maximum" penalties they will be facing in their courts martial are (a few months of hard labor with a dishonerable dishcarge? Come on! Enron execs are facing worse than that, nevermind drug dealers!). I am epespecially pissed by them claiming they were *ahem* "just following orders" (reguardless if it's true, that is exactly the wrong answer to be giving). And I'm pissed at the civillians who say "oh well, these things just happen."
But I do find it rather interesting that these things only make the news when its Americans doing the brutality. Part of the reason we invaded Iraq to begin with was that the Ba'ath regime had been doing these kinds of things for decades, often simply for the sport of it (it's a shame we couldn't catch Qusay alive). And Iraq is far from the only country where stuff like this happens. Anybody else notice how Rwanda got a lot more press on the anniversary of its massacres than it did when they were actually happening? Anybody else notice that four dead students in Ohio gets a lot more play in history books than what they were protesting against: US troops in Pol Pot's Cambodia?
Yes, I realize there was a time when Washington openly supported Sadam Hussein, but I see that more as a reason in favor of invading, not against it: it's our mess and we should be the ones to clean it up.
"and, by God, America needs more of them."
No, we have nothing but those kinds of people. All I see around me are a bunch of people who sit around on the sidelines and bitch and moan about how things are being done but they don't do anything beyond that. Michael Moore is a natural-born citizen of the United States over the age of 35; if he really knows how to fix things and knows what would be best for the country, why doesn't he try running for the White House himself?
"I hope people can see that the right wing has a history of using money to censor media outlets in this country."
"Freedom of the press is limited to those that own one." Like it or not, the owners of media outlets are generally not obligated to pay for somebody else's political opinion.
"The liberals in this country want open and free discussion."
From what I've seen so far, what the people you call "liberals" really want is what they refer to "fair access," where media outlets are legally required to foot the bill to broadast opinion from "both" views. Now then, care to explain how you feel Disney should be legally required to pay for a work they don't like while you yourself should somehow be free from paying for spam or junk faxes you don't want?
"Want more information on the republican campaign to quiet the liberal voice check out howardstern.com."
As much as I dislike FCC censorship (why even bother with TV content ratings when the FCC is just trying to make it all "general audience" anyway?), I suspect the reason Stern hasn't jumped ship from ClearChannel to XM or Sirius is that he'd then have one less thing to complain about.
And how did the FCC come up in all of this, anyway? We're talking about Disney (not a government entity) and about a movie (not under the purview of the FCC unless/until it's broadcasted).
"Do you honestly believe that that one shell with traces of sarin (unconfirmed, last i saw) justifies invading a sovereign nation?"\
First off, it's been confirmed IIRC. A search for "sarin" on Google News turns out too much editorial rhetoric (on both sides) to find information one way or the other, though.
Secondly, I find it interesting that the people who used it to set up that roadside bomb apparently thought it was just a conventional shell. That means it looked like a conventional shell. Now, either it looked that way because the people who made a one-of-a-kind shell went through effort to make it look normal (why?), or the shell looked that way because it was mass-produced (like ordinary shells).
In the 1990's, before leaving, UNSCOM said there were over 500 such shells filled with sarin they couldn't account for.
(What worries me is that the people who used that shell know where it came from and now know what it it was.)
"I looked long and hard for Shatner, but i got nuthin'! Cheap skate."
The Federal Election Commission frowns very heavily on accepting campaign contriubtions from foreign nationals.
"If you spoke loud enough, you could be heard 50 miles away. Of course, you'd need some serious speakers to help you speak that loudly... and noise pollution laws would make doing so illegal."
Screw that, you probably wouldn't survive the experience. The only times I remember hearing something from 50 miles away involved the space shuttle.
" Regulating air waves? For what? I thought radios work with electromagnetic waves.."
Mostly because of those EM waves that reflect off of that layer of air called the ionosphere. If all terrestrial EM communications had to be line-of-sight, we might not even have an FCC.
"wtf is kph? Not kilometers per hour, that is km/h."
If you're going to be anal, do it right: m/s.
See, there is no "hour," only 3.6 kiloseconds. God forbid anybody use a unit that isn't base-10, after all...
"It's a demonstration of how you can make even a brick fly with the right thrust to weight ratio."
Ah yes, the age old struggle between Brute Force vs. Aerodynamics. Remember, kids: If brute force doesn't solve your problems, you're not using enough! It's what got us to the moon, after all...
I mean, I knew that CVN-65 was a tad over-powered with its 8 fission reactors, but they actually got the USS Enterprise to lift out of the water? Dear God!
"Coincidence that 10 year old girls have C cup's now ?"
Haven't you been getting your daily required dose of television lately? We Americans are so obese that our 10 year old boys have C cups.
"This effects the $40/barrel price of crude oil how?"
Consider that $40 per 42-gallon barrel comes down to $0.95 per gallon or so. Now compare that to the price of your favorite flavor of gasoline at the pump. Only some of that ~$1.90 you pay at the pump can be explained away with federal and state taxes.
"Hell, it doesn't even effect the gas price of people outside of those regions much,"
The more time you devote to refining mix A, the less you have to refine mix B, reducing the supply of B and driving up the price.
"the answer would be to adopt the better standards"
That would be for the states to decide, wouldn't it?
"It seems that in talks to increase production. Only Venezuela and Iran are vocally against this."
And Venezuela is the OPEC member we import from the most. If the price of a barrel of oil is the same throughout the world, the price of shipping it is all of the difference. This is why the vast majority of oil imported into the US is from countries in our own hemisphere (with Canada, Mexico and Venezuela being the big three, IIRC).
"There is no Jar Jar (*cough*) in episodes IV, V and VI."
Jaba and (especially) Bobba Fett weren't in IV, at least not the first time around. If Lucas can make Greedo shoot first, I'm sure he can squeeze Jar Jar into the re-re-re-re-remastering of IV, V and IV.