Hang up, and they'll try calling back later. Cuss them out, and they'll try calling back later. Anything other than "removing me from your calling list," and they'll try calling back later.
"Last I checked we had decimals (you even used them in your degree values)."
As does the Fahrenheit scale. SI and its ilk don't have a monopoly on decimal numbers.
But the point is that there are always applications for which one particular measurement system is ill-suited; where 1 is too big and 0.1 is too small to be useful. In the example of human body temperature, a fever of 1 C would leave you bed-ridden while 0.1 C would hardly be noticed. Measuring on the Fahrenheit scale gives you a middle ground between "healthy" and "flat on your ass" without the need to go down a whole order of magnitude.
"My thermostat has.5 degree increments which gives me plenty of accuracy."
I'd wager that Celsius isn't the only temperature scale your thermostat can use, then.
"Great Britain might be part of Europe politically and in geological terms but there is the barrier of the English Channel which has kept us safe from French, Spanish and German invasion attempts for 900 years."
And yet Ireland shows more overlap with with continent than Great Britain.
I'm now kind of curious about how such a map of North America would look in comparison, because to me there are some pretty big areas here where there is no overlap (Great Britain, southern Italy, Poland, Sweden...). They've been on the same continent for how many centuries, and they're still so distinct?
Because it's not possible for different layers of air to be at different temperatures?
"Same with 100, also very hot, and usefull even in the kitchen."
No, it's not. When was the last time you stuck a thermometer into a liquid on the stove in the process of cooking? Does your range have temperatures on the burner controls? Boiling water isn't useful in the kitchen because it's "exactly 100 degrees Celsius" (which it isn't), but because it's at a constant temperature, regardless of what number you chose to associate with it. And even then, stovetop recipes have to be adjusted for altitude ("How high am I above sea level?" is a question asked more often than "What temperature is this boiling water?")
"(and both 0 and 100 can be easily calibrated on Earth)"
No, they can't. Celsius is defined as a linear offset to kelvin, period. At a "standard" atmospheric pressure of 101 325 Pa, water boils at about 99.974 C (and this is a mathematical approximation based on experimental data). So even if you had a barometer that was accurate to 1 Pa absolute, arbitrarily declaring the saturation temperature in the room at the time as "100 C" is no more accurate than declaring it to be "212 F" (and at least there the approximately 180 F temperature difference between freezing and boiling is easier to subdivide geometrically).
As a linear offset to thermodynamic temperature, no mere mortal has the equipment to properly calibrate their thermometer (Celsius or Fahrenheit) in their kitchen.
"And no, 100 Fahrenheit isn't very usefull medically - it's a temperature of somebody with severe fewer;"
With respect to measuring human body temperature, Fahrenheit is useful medically by simple virtue of being more granular. Assuming a normal body temperature of 98.6 F (37 C), a fever of 100 F is still less than 1 C above normal. 38 C is 100.4 F.
"BS, even Celsius scale has way more precision than we need in day-to-day life"
Then the adjustments on your thermostat are marked only to the nearest 5 C? If it's more granular than you need, then put your money where your mouth is and set your thermostat up another 2 C.
"it's just above zero", "it's around 5", "a bit below 10"
So the "metric" temperature scale is one that people "feel" in units of 5 rather than 10? In Fahrenheit, that would be "in the 30's," "in the 40's" and "in the 50's," respectively.
"I mean, what kind of self-respecting galactic overlord would have a throne room without a deep reactor pit of death in it?"
The place was still under construction, and evil space empires don't have "DANGER--DO NOT ENTER" yellow tape. Heck, as pointed out by Family Guy, they don't even install safety railings in completed Death Stars.
"that reminds me, there was a new york city marathon runner, never smoked, and when they died their lungs were as black as a life long smoker of 60 years, a 3 pack a day smoker's lungs.
even with 'tough' anti pollution laws, you can still get three packs a day worth of crud in your lungs just from running outdoors in a large city."
Got anything to back up your anecdote? After all, you didn't see serious environmental controls in places like New York until at least the late 1960's.
And people tend not to look into dead people's lungs for shits and giggles.
"In the last two decades, a number of provinces have seceeded from larger eastern european countries, and every time the international community ("the west") was quick to recognize the independence,"
Because more often than not those eastern countries maintained their borders solely by force of arms. Practically since inception, Yugoslavia had been a state dominated by Serbian people and Serbian interests, with the ruling Serbian elite viewing the other nationalities as racially inferior, imposing Serbian language, customs and religion on the rest. The eventual ethnic cleansing campaign initiated by Belgrade in the 1990's as Serbian power over the state waned is a pretty good indication of how Serbians felt about their "fellow" Yugoslavs.
"and the new borders exactly as the breakaway province claimed them, disregarding any claim by the other side as imperialism."
Maybe because the international community you so deride had already seen that kind of Sudetenland bullshit before? How long did the Serbians shell Sarajevo again?
"The war in Bosnia for example was a result, as a large chunk of the new country felt more Serbian than Bosnian, and attempted to break away from Bosnia by military means"
And yet, after the Dayton Accords, Bosnia and Herzegovina still has the same borders. Funny how, after the UN stopped the Belgrade government from pouring in propaganda, men and materiel, the Serbs in B&H discovered that they could live just fine under a new federal arrangement.
"More such conflicts (and probably wars) are almost certain, as about 15 million Russians live in former Soviet republics (up to 30% of the population in some), many of whom presumably would prefer to be part of Russia."
Because it's not possible to be ethnically Russian and not want to be a part of the sacred motherland? There's a whole bunch of ethnic Russians in Brooklyn, does this mean that Moscow would be justified in sending troops to Long Island to "look out for their interests?"
We've seen this over and over again; if the Russian minority is being marginalized, the solution is to reorganize the government to satisfy their legitimate concerns. But "I miss the good ol' days under the tsar and the Soviets when we ran things around here" is not a legitimate concern. A third party, whose interests are hardly neutral, pouring in large helpings of military force into the region, is historically how problems like this are made worse, not ended.
"The same situation took place in the countries of the present EU as nation states took form in the 19th century, which was followed by about 100 years of terrible wars, and ultimately settled by ethnic cleansing and assimilation politics on a massive scale."
But this ignores the centuries of wars and ethnic campaigns that started it all. The Ukrainians never asked to be Russian, the Serbs never asked to be Austrian, and the Greeks never asked to be Ottomans. But in each case, an ethno-imperial power felt they were more than justified to march in, displace the government, marginalize the locals, suppress the local tongue and the like. The solution is obviously not to do more of the same.
"(15 million ethnic Germans were deported from central and eastern Europe after WW2, for example, forever ending any German territorial claims)"
Because Germany's neighbors learned their lesson: having ethnic Germans among you justifies imperialist expansion in Berlin's eyes. After all, nobody even asked the Czech Germans if they wanted to trade Prague for Berlin. And as this example shows, as Moscow pours troops into Georgia, it's only logical that the other countries of the CIS, not just Georgia, will start to see the ethnic Russians among them as a liability and a threat to national security, serving to make conditions for ethnic Russians worse.
Which really goes to show that Tsar Vladimir doesn't really give a damn about the "plight ethnic Russians" to begin with, he just wants to plant the flag. Moscow only tolerates "independence" for the CIS republics so long as they continue to kowtow to Russian interests, but now they're daring to seek protection from Russia in NATO, and we can't have that, can we?
"I have a bad feeling that this conflict is going to spread,"
You're young. People always get a little jittery when an invasion happens somewhere and they're not the ones behind it. Now you know how the rest of the world feels.
"catalyzing all the violence that has been the undercurrent of world politics in the past few years."
Except that, if you turn off the television from time to time, you'd see that things are still rather peaceful compared to recent history.
"A possible world war."
It's difficult to have a world war without two large international factions aligned against each other. It'd be difficult (to say the least) to determine common enemies in the smattering of brushfire regional wars we're seeing.
Heck, what we're seeing in Georgia right now stands out because it's just so damned old skool: using a fifth column to destabilize a neighbor to soften them up for some good ol' fashioned land-grabbing. You gotta give credit to Putin, he knows his stuff.
"In what seems to be a repeat of what happened in July, a few news sites have mentioned that there is evidence of a campaign against Georgia."
A campaign against Georgia? You don't say! What tipped you off, the explosions? The Black Sea Fleet moving off the coast? The miles-long military convoys crossing into Georgian territory? The planes dropping bombs in populations centers?
Oh, the IP logs. Can't have a real war until Netcraft confirms it, I s'pose.
"A soldier would rather not be doing his job and while they think they have to kill they do not think they are going to heaven because they are doing it. A suicide bomber believes that by *intentionally* killing a bus of women, kids, and elderly they are earning heaven."
What about, instead of an Islamic fundamentalist blowing himself up, it's a Marxist radical? You're not going to find many of those who think what they're doing will snag them any sort of afterlife, let alone a pleasurable one.
And instead of talking about a generic, idealized soldier, what if we look at examples like Lynndie England? She apparently derived sexual pleasure from what she perceived her job to be.
What if, instead of trying to either play thought police or prejudge motive, we focus on punishing actions instead of ideas?
"The Afgan Weddings, while tragic were not intentional, the pilot did not wake up that morning and prepare himself to kill a bunch of civi's. The suicide bomber meticulously goes though ceremony preparing himself, selects the busiest bus, the most crowded market, or the most painful target thats a huge difference than the soldier."
On the contrary; by most accounts, those that carry out terrorist attacks, much like recognized soldiers, have their missions, their targets selected by higher-ups, who hand down marching orders (after all, why else would an organization like al Qaeda exist to begin with if all their would-be martyrs acted alone on their own initiative?). Other than the choice of weapons, the only real difference between the two is that, in one case, the bureaucracy messed up and killed the wrong people.
So then the question boils down to "Which is worse, killing uninvolved civilians on purpose or by accident?"
They each get paid at least $169,300, with automatic yearly adjustments to the "cost of living" (Twenty-Seventh Amendment be damned), and this doesn't count various gifts and other perks, which may or may not be allowed by the FEC. And this is what they do on your time!
Slashdot Mirror
Hang up, and they'll try calling back later. Cuss them out, and they'll try calling back later. Anything other than "removing me from your calling list," and they'll try calling back later.
"Last I checked we had decimals (you even used them in your degree values)."
As does the Fahrenheit scale. SI and its ilk don't have a monopoly on decimal numbers.
But the point is that there are always applications for which one particular measurement system is ill-suited; where 1 is too big and 0.1 is too small to be useful. In the example of human body temperature, a fever of 1 C would leave you bed-ridden while 0.1 C would hardly be noticed. Measuring on the Fahrenheit scale gives you a middle ground between "healthy" and "flat on your ass" without the need to go down a whole order of magnitude.
"My thermostat has .5 degree increments which gives me plenty of accuracy."
I'd wager that Celsius isn't the only temperature scale your thermostat can use, then.
"Great Britain might be part of Europe politically and in geological terms but there is the barrier of the English Channel which has kept us safe from French, Spanish and German invasion attempts for 900 years."
And yet Ireland shows more overlap with with continent than Great Britain.
I'm now kind of curious about how such a map of North America would look in comparison, because to me there are some pretty big areas here where there is no overlap (Great Britain, southern Italy, Poland, Sweden...). They've been on the same continent for how many centuries, and they're still so distinct?
"what will happen to water today?"
Before or after the salt trucks come through?
"what can fall from the sky today?"
Because it's not possible for different layers of air to be at different temperatures?
"Same with 100, also very hot, and usefull even in the kitchen."
No, it's not. When was the last time you stuck a thermometer into a liquid on the stove in the process of cooking? Does your range have temperatures on the burner controls? Boiling water isn't useful in the kitchen because it's "exactly 100 degrees Celsius" (which it isn't), but because it's at a constant temperature, regardless of what number you chose to associate with it. And even then, stovetop recipes have to be adjusted for altitude ("How high am I above sea level?" is a question asked more often than "What temperature is this boiling water?")
"(and both 0 and 100 can be easily calibrated on Earth)"
No, they can't. Celsius is defined as a linear offset to kelvin, period. At a "standard" atmospheric pressure of 101 325 Pa, water boils at about 99.974 C (and this is a mathematical approximation based on experimental data). So even if you had a barometer that was accurate to 1 Pa absolute, arbitrarily declaring the saturation temperature in the room at the time as "100 C" is no more accurate than declaring it to be "212 F" (and at least there the approximately 180 F temperature difference between freezing and boiling is easier to subdivide geometrically).
As a linear offset to thermodynamic temperature, no mere mortal has the equipment to properly calibrate their thermometer (Celsius or Fahrenheit) in their kitchen.
"And no, 100 Fahrenheit isn't very usefull medically - it's a temperature of somebody with severe fewer;"
With respect to measuring human body temperature, Fahrenheit is useful medically by simple virtue of being more granular. Assuming a normal body temperature of 98.6 F (37 C), a fever of 100 F is still less than 1 C above normal. 38 C is 100.4 F.
"BS, even Celsius scale has way more precision than we need in day-to-day life"
Then the adjustments on your thermostat are marked only to the nearest 5 C? If it's more granular than you need, then put your money where your mouth is and set your thermostat up another 2 C.
"it's just above zero", "it's around 5", "a bit below 10"
So the "metric" temperature scale is one that people "feel" in units of 5 rather than 10? In Fahrenheit, that would be "in the 30's," "in the 40's" and "in the 50's," respectively.
Yes, how dare they use a scale that's rigidly defined in terms of kelvin! Godless metric communists!
Does 160 degrees Rankine make you happier?
In businesses like this, it is more important to be first than it is to be best
"I mean, what kind of self-respecting galactic overlord would have a throne room without a deep reactor pit of death in it?"
The place was still under construction, and evil space empires don't have "DANGER--DO NOT ENTER" yellow tape. Heck, as pointed out by Family Guy, they don't even install safety railings in completed Death Stars.
I was expecting someone putting a record into a flatbed scanner, but I suppose the ol' 45-at-LP has merit as well.
"There is a question whether the computer work is being done by the Russian military or others."
Plausible deniability.
http://www.officedepot.com/a/promo/pages/0928_recycling/
"that reminds me, there was a new york city marathon runner, never smoked, and when they died their lungs were as black as a life long smoker of 60 years, a 3 pack a day smoker's lungs.
even with 'tough' anti pollution laws, you can still get three packs a day worth of crud in your lungs just from running outdoors in a large city."
Got anything to back up your anecdote? After all, you didn't see serious environmental controls in places like New York until at least the late 1960's.
And people tend not to look into dead people's lungs for shits and giggles.
"In the last two decades, a number of provinces have seceeded from larger eastern european countries, and every time the international community ("the west") was quick to recognize the independence,"
Because more often than not those eastern countries maintained their borders solely by force of arms. Practically since inception, Yugoslavia had been a state dominated by Serbian people and Serbian interests, with the ruling Serbian elite viewing the other nationalities as racially inferior, imposing Serbian language, customs and religion on the rest. The eventual ethnic cleansing campaign initiated by Belgrade in the 1990's as Serbian power over the state waned is a pretty good indication of how Serbians felt about their "fellow" Yugoslavs.
"and the new borders exactly as the breakaway province claimed them, disregarding any claim by the other side as imperialism."
Maybe because the international community you so deride had already seen that kind of Sudetenland bullshit before? How long did the Serbians shell Sarajevo again?
"The war in Bosnia for example was a result, as a large chunk of the new country felt more Serbian than Bosnian, and attempted to break away from Bosnia by military means"
And yet, after the Dayton Accords, Bosnia and Herzegovina still has the same borders. Funny how, after the UN stopped the Belgrade government from pouring in propaganda, men and materiel, the Serbs in B&H discovered that they could live just fine under a new federal arrangement.
"More such conflicts (and probably wars) are almost certain, as about 15 million Russians live in former Soviet republics (up to 30% of the population in some), many of whom presumably would prefer to be part of Russia."
Because it's not possible to be ethnically Russian and not want to be a part of the sacred motherland? There's a whole bunch of ethnic Russians in Brooklyn, does this mean that Moscow would be justified in sending troops to Long Island to "look out for their interests?"
We've seen this over and over again; if the Russian minority is being marginalized, the solution is to reorganize the government to satisfy their legitimate concerns. But "I miss the good ol' days under the tsar and the Soviets when we ran things around here" is not a legitimate concern. A third party, whose interests are hardly neutral, pouring in large helpings of military force into the region, is historically how problems like this are made worse, not ended.
"The same situation took place in the countries of the present EU as nation states took form in the 19th century, which was followed by about 100 years of terrible wars, and ultimately settled by ethnic cleansing and assimilation politics on a massive scale."
But this ignores the centuries of wars and ethnic campaigns that started it all. The Ukrainians never asked to be Russian, the Serbs never asked to be Austrian, and the Greeks never asked to be Ottomans. But in each case, an ethno-imperial power felt they were more than justified to march in, displace the government, marginalize the locals, suppress the local tongue and the like. The solution is obviously not to do more of the same.
"(15 million ethnic Germans were deported from central and eastern Europe after WW2, for example, forever ending any German territorial claims)"
Because Germany's neighbors learned their lesson: having ethnic Germans among you justifies imperialist expansion in Berlin's eyes. After all, nobody even asked the Czech Germans if they wanted to trade Prague for Berlin. And as this example shows, as Moscow pours troops into Georgia, it's only logical that the other countries of the CIS, not just Georgia, will start to see the ethnic Russians among them as a liability and a threat to national security, serving to make conditions for ethnic Russians worse.
Which really goes to show that Tsar Vladimir doesn't really give a damn about the "plight ethnic Russians" to begin with, he just wants to plant the flag. Moscow only tolerates "independence" for the CIS republics so long as they continue to kowtow to Russian interests, but now they're daring to seek protection from Russia in NATO, and we can't have that, can we?
"I have a bad feeling that this conflict is going to spread,"
You're young. People always get a little jittery when an invasion happens somewhere and they're not the ones behind it. Now you know how the rest of the world feels.
"catalyzing all the violence that has been the undercurrent of world politics in the past few years."
Except that, if you turn off the television from time to time, you'd see that things are still rather peaceful compared to recent history.
"A possible world war."
It's difficult to have a world war without two large international factions aligned against each other. It'd be difficult (to say the least) to determine common enemies in the smattering of brushfire regional wars we're seeing.
Heck, what we're seeing in Georgia right now stands out because it's just so damned old skool: using a fifth column to destabilize a neighbor to soften them up for some good ol' fashioned land-grabbing. You gotta give credit to Putin, he knows his stuff.
"In what seems to be a repeat of what happened in July, a few news sites have mentioned that there is evidence of a campaign against Georgia."
A campaign against Georgia? You don't say! What tipped you off, the explosions? The Black Sea Fleet moving off the coast? The miles-long military convoys crossing into Georgian territory? The planes dropping bombs in populations centers?
Oh, the IP logs. Can't have a real war until Netcraft confirms it, I s'pose.
Who the fuck cares about the Olympics?
"A soldier would rather not be doing his job and while they think they have to kill they do not think they are going to heaven because they are doing it. A suicide bomber believes that by *intentionally* killing a bus of women, kids, and elderly they are earning heaven."
What about, instead of an Islamic fundamentalist blowing himself up, it's a Marxist radical? You're not going to find many of those who think what they're doing will snag them any sort of afterlife, let alone a pleasurable one.
And instead of talking about a generic, idealized soldier, what if we look at examples like Lynndie England? She apparently derived sexual pleasure from what she perceived her job to be.
What if, instead of trying to either play thought police or prejudge motive, we focus on punishing actions instead of ideas?
"The Afgan Weddings, while tragic were not intentional, the pilot did not wake up that morning and prepare himself to kill a bunch of civi's. The suicide bomber meticulously goes though ceremony preparing himself, selects the busiest bus, the most crowded market, or the most painful target thats a huge difference than the soldier."
On the contrary; by most accounts, those that carry out terrorist attacks, much like recognized soldiers, have their missions, their targets selected by higher-ups, who hand down marching orders (after all, why else would an organization like al Qaeda exist to begin with if all their would-be martyrs acted alone on their own initiative?). Other than the choice of weapons, the only real difference between the two is that, in one case, the bureaucracy messed up and killed the wrong people.
So then the question boils down to "Which is worse, killing uninvolved civilians on purpose or by accident?"
"There have been many Creations and Armageddons in the past."
Damned Hindu fundamentalists are ruining the internet!
Let me fix this for you:
"there is no "right to privacy" explicitly stated in federal law
"a night life that involves actually talking to creative people doing exciting things."
Pretension still doesn't count as "substance."
"And why not sue France?"
You mean go dig up some pretender to the throne and see if he has any actual money?
"People tend to paint bush as some kind of Christian Fundamentalist,"
Probably because they form his political base and he tends to act, in an official capacity, in accordance with their beliefs and wishes.
"not his own beliefs to judge from his denominational affiliation."
He can believe whatever he wants, its his actions that we are to be concerned with.
Because the State of Arizona and the Navajo Nation get along so fantastically well!
Heck, they can't even agree on the time of day for most of the year.
"They could just let individual air lines react to market forces."
If they did that, there'd be no airlines.
They each get paid at least $169,300, with automatic yearly adjustments to the "cost of living" (Twenty-Seventh Amendment be damned), and this doesn't count various gifts and other perks, which may or may not be allowed by the FEC. And this is what they do on your time!