Yet another story from the warmist conspiracy, piling more so-called "science" on top of their propaganda.
The reason for the pole shift is simple. Due to a toxic spill of lead and cadmium paints, Santa Claus was forced to move his workshop slightly. The Elves are no longer permitted egg-nog while on duty.
P.S. I'm a climate skeptic goddamnit. It really pisses me off when warmists keep calling me a denialist. Only people with no real evidence to back up their case resort to name-calling. Until someone can prove to my satisfaction that the pole shift wasn't caused by a toxic spill at Santa's workshop, my explanation is just as valid as any warmist's "theory".
So because they withdrew their applications, these attacks were ok, because obviously they were trying to hide stuff the IRS was digging up???
If most of the applications at issue were withdrawn, and withdrawn because they were non-compliant with being tax-exempt, then it is entirely possible that any particular probing-questions could have been directly related to whatever issue made them non-compliant. *If* they were valid questions investigating genuine tax-exemption issues, then claims of persecution do not exactly indicate any attack actually existed at all.
From the available story so far, it does seem some sort of abuse occurred. I want more details to come out. It seems some people may have seriously abused their positions violating rules to "attack" the perfectly valid applications of groups they disliked. Which would be seriously fucked up, and people should be fired. But if these applications turned out to be invalid, and the investigations were directed to those non-compliance issues, and the investigations were comparable to other investigations of non-compliant applications, then this story could be a tempest in a teacup.
I want it investigated thoroughly. I want more details. If investigators were violating rules and harassing perfectly valid applicants for ideological reasons, then I want them fired.
I think the illegal/violations language we've been using is a poor fit to the situation, and may be muddying things.
Organizations were applying for tax-exempt status. Obviously those applications should/will only be approved if the organizations activities were and will be within the legally defined limits of what tax exempt organizations are allowed to do. I was saying that it appears that in at least some of these cases applications were withdrawn because investigations identified problems where organizations were not within the legal bounds for tax-exempt approval. Note that I specifically did not suggest the organizations had any intent to break any laws. I specifically indicated that any invalid applications could be innocent mistakes "perhaps due to ignorance or error in what non-profits are permitted to do".
Further note that I was not addressing the entirety of the situation, I was not claiming investigators did nothing wrong. I was replying to "150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked". I felt that was a flagrantly out-of-context quote, selectively editing out the fact that "some withdrew their applications". I felt it gave a rather misleading impression that there was a pure witch-hunt against categorically innocent victims. The investigators' job is to investigate tax-exemption applications and ensure improper ones do not get approved. And when an organization's name and activities have a strong political interest of any stripe, and they push up against the limits of what is permissibly under tax-exempt status, it warrants closer examination than a non-ideological "feed the homeless" group. And yeah, it looks like some "highly motivated" investigators went way over the line in that closer scrutiny. It looks like some people definitely need to get fired.
A lot of the coverage seems to suggest the existence of a "Tea-Party-in-the-name" pile is itself the problem. Maybe it's a nitpick, but I think that's slightly off target. I think any and every politically-affiliated term is good reason to toss applications in piles for routine closer scrutiny. But it's seriously fucked up if agents are personally grabbing the cases of groups they dislike and violating standard procedures going after them.
I still want more more details to come out. If there was a flood of inexperience Tea Party groups filing a flood of non-compliant tax-exempt applications, and if it turns out those investigations were comparable to other non-compliant applications, then the story may be overblown. But as I said, it's seriously fucked up if agents were selecting their own cases, breaking rules, harassing applications that were in fact valid. There need to be strict mechanisms in place to prevent that sort of thing. I don't want groups of any political persuasion getting away with invalid tax-exemptions, and I don't want anyone hijacking their government position against anyone they dislike. That needs to get smacked down, hard.
"According to CNN exit polls, 93% of African-Americans, 71% of Hispanics and 73% of Asians supported Obama over Romney."
No, the supported the Democrat over the Republican. And you can confirm that by looking at the 2004 and previous elections where minorities supported the white Democrat over the white Republican by almost exact same margins. Racists are not exactly inclined to join the Democratic party because that's where all the "brown people" are, and minorities are not exactly inclined to join the Republican party because that's where all the bigots are. It's a self-reinforcing cycle. The fact that the Democrats ran a black candidate for president hardly budged any of the percentages. Few racists were going to vote Dem no matter who ran, and few minorities were going to vote Repub no matter who ran.
Except the vast majority of black racists, to whom Obama can do no evil, and no white candidate no matter how virtuous and capable of leadership could ever be considered, so long as a black man is running.
There's itty-bitty little detail you overlooked, in your rant about "black racists" voting for Obama just because he's black, and against the "virtuous and capable of leadership" of his opponent merely because he was white. The one itty-bitty detail you overlooked is that, even with the historic first African American running for president, the percentages on the African American vote hardly budged. The fact is that African Americans voted as they did because almost 100% of them vote Democratic, have been voting that way for decades, and have been doing so for good reason.
And to avoid redundant posts, this reply also goes out to the multitude of other Anonymous Cowards who also posted whinging about (paraphrase) "those damn racist blacks" who all voted for Obama "just because he's black".
On, and as for the whole marriage thing, you can't conclude causality in the fact that few interracial couples exist... You point to few interracial couples as proof of prejudice but so what?
Howdy howdy heay there! Thanks your your reply! If you look back at my post you might notice I wasn't talking about there being "few interracial couples" as some indication of racism. I was talking about brain damaged sub-human scum who voted for interracial marriage to be FUCKING ILLEGAL ya moron. The sooner the racist asshats drop dead the better. Have a nice day:)
except for the fact that they weren't breaking the law!
From the following link, the IRS investigator Lerner had to say: "150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked..."
Wow, you deserve some sort of award for that brazen quote mining. And what are the words you cut out with that dot dot dot? "150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked [dot dot dot] though some withdrew their applications."
It sounds like some groups were attempting to break the law (perhaps due to ignorance or error in what non-profits are permitted to do), and withdrew their tax-exempt-applications when IRS investigations caught their violation. Although at the moment we have no indication whether or not Tea Party groups were among those withdrawing tax-exempt claims.
yet groups like Organizing for America and MoveOn.org remain unmolested... funny that?
Ummm, could that possibly.... just maybe.... have something to do with the fact that Organizing for America didn't file as a non-profit? Ya think?
As for "MoveOn.org", maybe.... just maybe, that has something to do with the fact thatMoveOn.org Political Action doesn't file as non-profit? Or perhaps you meant MoveOn.org Civic Action, which is indeed filed as non-profit. MoveOn.org Civic Action has very directly addresses the legal issue of what non-profits are and aren't allowed to do, and they've established an easy and effective relief-valve against pressures to cross that line. If someone wants to donate money to promote candidates, MoveOn.org Civic Action has no hesitation to suggest the money be donated to MoveOn.org Political Action instead. And if someone at MoveOn.org Civic Action has some idea/motivation to engage in candidate advocacy, there's no problem sending the idea (or the motivated person) over to MoveOn.org Political Action to deal with it.
It's a lot harder to remain within the bounds of non-profit legal limits when you don't have that sort of big organizational structure carefully drawing the line of what is and isn't allowed by non-profits, and when you don't have organizational structure in place to easily and effectively vent the inevitable pressures to exceed non-profit limits.
I messed up the editing the paragraph with the percentages. For clarity:
1998 South Carolina: 38% voted in favor of interracial marriage being illegal in the state constitution.
2000 Alabama: 40.5% of voters voted in favor of interracial marriage being illegal in the state constitution.
2011 Mississippi: Poll of Republicans: 46% said interracial marriage should be illegal, 14% not-sure, 40% legal. P.S. I'm not sure if this was a general poll of Republicans or likely-primary-voter Republicans. Either way it's a rather gross set of statistics.
It is rather sad when many leftists simply write off opponents to the President as racists of some sort
Not all opponents of the president are racist. On the other hand, all of the racists are opponents of the president.
Next, lets look at the percentages a bit. It's not easy to pin down exact percentages for racists, but how about I toss out a couple of rather significant numbers. In 1998 South Carolina, In 2000 Alabama, 38% voted in favor of interracial marriage being illegal in the state constitution. 40.5% of voters voted in favor of interracial marriage being illegal in the state constitution. In 2011 a poll of Mississippi Republicans directly asked whether interracial marriage should be illegal. 46% said it should be illegal. I'd like to point out that another 14% went with the don't-know/not-sure option. Only 40%...... that's FOURTY-FUCKING-PERCENT of Mississippi Republicans reached the bare threshold of not being FLAMING-SHITHOLE-BIGOTs far enough to merely say interracial marriage should not be ILLEGAL. Nevermind the additional percentage of (cough cough) "mild-racists" who accept interracial marriage as legal, but who still violently forbid their children from dating anyone brown.
You want to say not-all Obama opponents are racists? Sure. That's true. HOWEVER, the percentage of the population who are loudly anti-Obama is damn-near the same percentage of the population who are flaming shithole racists. The Obamam haters aren't being smeared as racists because of one or two bad-apple racists, and it's not one or two bad-apple racists who are unwanted by some fictional decent mainstream majority Obama critics. No, the percentage of people riled up against Obama is almost the same as the percentage of Racists in the population, and all the racists are in the group riled up against Obama, with mathematically means the substantial majority of Obama haters are nothing but pissed off racists. And any Obama-haters who aren't racists are still immersed in a community discussion primarily driven by angry racists. An atmosphere saturated by venomous irrational conspiracy-theorist distortion-and-outright-fiction rhetoric of racists. A non-racists may certainly be angry at Obama for some legitimate reasons, however it's a virtual certainty that the anger of a non-racists Obama-hater has, at least in part, been created or amplified by crap that JUST AIN'T TRUE circulating around the (MAJORITY racists) anti-Obama community.
And yet to the left... it is the color of ones skin, what sort of genitals one has, or what kind of genitals they prefer on the person they are with that is more important than the content of their character.
Content of character? Look at those percentages who want interracial marriage to be illegal, and you go right ahead and talk about content of character. Yes, especially go right ahead and talk about how character is more important than skin color.
As the autonomy of the system increases, it becomes harder and harder to form the connection between the inputs (your senses) and the outputs (your behavior), but it exists, and is deterministic. The same set of inputs will generate the same set of outputs every time. The problem, however, is that the person will never see exactly the same input twice.... The problem is that this different behavior in apparently similar situations can be interpreted as "free will" or agency on the part of the person. While this mental agency is part of our definition of a person, it is vital for us to remember what is causing this agency.
I do not think Microsoft is as arrogant as people on this very anti-MS site make it them out to be.
Of course they are. It takes an ego massive enough to bend light to release an update named "Windows Blue" without realizing the next two words in everyone's heads will be "screen" and "death".
It disgusts me when cretins like your trivialize the horrible struggle for civil rights in the USA in this manner. Lincoln was a Republican, the Civil Right Act was sponsored and voted for by Republicans, and Jim Crow was a creation of the Democrats. You would know this if you weren't a vainglorious European who has no idea what the KKK even was, or is.
It's hysterical how vainglorious Republicans trivialize the horrible struggle for civil rights in the USA, and how they have no idea (or are in UTTER DENIAL) of the history and modern reality of their own party.
In 1970 Nixon's political strategist stated the following in a New York Times interview:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that...but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
Actually the "Southern Strategy" started with Republican Herbert Hoover was running against a Catholic Democratic candidate 1928. In 1928 the KKK, and the majority of Southerners, hated and feared Catholics nearly as much blacks. Hoover deliberately courted the KKK vote, and deliberately stirred up Southern religious bigotry fears of a potential Catholic president. Not only did the strategy work, Hoover became the first Republican to win Texas and picked up several other (at the time) solidly Democratic ex-confederate states. THIS was the original point where civil rights leaders started fleeing the Republican party and joining the Democratic party. Over the next several years there were several Democratic presidents who strongly supported civil rights, FDR Kennedy and Johnson, and in each case African Americans increasingly saw the Democratic party as a viable choice, and southern racist white Democrats became increasingly outraged and alienated. At the time the Democratic party was indeed infested with racist, but Democratic presidents and most of the Democratic political leadership refused to pander to the racist element of their base.
During this period almost all civil rights leaders were re-aligning with the Democrats.
And then along came GOLDWATER rejecting the Civil Rights Act. BAM! African Americans fled the Republican party in droves. And then the Honorable Richard M. Nixon came along running for president, and he took Hoover's pro-KKK "Southern Strategy" and cranked it up to eleven. As quoted above, Nixon and the Republican party as a whole adopted a strategy of deliberately driving out blacks, and deliberately using blacks to "prod" racist Democrats into re-aligning with the Republicans.
Over the course of a few decades there was a 100% reversal. Republicans took on a deliberate strategy of making a welcoming home for racists, and pandering to them. And it worked. The Republicans drove off essentially 100% of blacks, drove off all of the civil rights leaders, and succeeded in drawing racists into the party. And it worked. The Republicans drew in a huge body of racist voters, enough that they didn't care about running off minority voters, pandered to the the racists, and won elections specifically on the back of racist votes.
Calling out to Lincoln as a Republican is like calling out to George Washington as British subject. Things change. Sometimes people switch sides. Sometimes associations undergo a 100% reversal. Calling out to an association which has ceased to exist is completely hollow, if not deliberately disingenuous.
And now the chickens have come home to roost. Now that minorities are (collectively) starting to become the majority of voters, Republicans are suddenly waking up to the fact that they are currently losing more votes than they ar
It's not a pirated version. It is a 100% legal free version of the game released by the developers.... it's essentially a glorified demo release.
doesn't that make it a more realistic version and therefore a better version of the game?
If you buy the paid version of the game, you play in a reasonably accurate historical model of the universe where game development is&was a challenging, competitive, and generally profitable business. Any pirated copies merely aren't mentioned because, duh, they aren't (and shouldn't be) listed in profit or expense calculations.
The free version is less realistic. #1 Only you are affected by piracy, any competitors in the industry are immune. Extremely unrealistic. #2 It exists in a fantasy universe where each download equals a lost sale.... where anyone with a hobby of downloading tons of random free stuff could have and would have actually bought all that free stuff they found. Also extremely unrealistic. And those two points lead into #3: Profits and expenses deliberately mis-scaled into an unrealistic no-win scenario. Not only does that all make it very unrealistic, it obviously makes it a "worse version" of the game. But duh... of course any demo version is a "worse version" of a game.
Yeah, my first thought was that it's not going to be very bright. I did a back of the envelope calculation.
According to Wikipedia photosynthesis efficiency is about 3 to 6% of incoming sunlight. Lets call it 4.5%. That's the energy a plant uses to grow and just to keep itself alive - lets assume we can burn about half of that energy for light production without starving the plant itself. In fireflies Lucifer is about 90 to 98 efficient in converting energy into light. Lets say out engineered plant manages 90%. Next let's note that this plant is going to waste energy glowing even during midday sun. That basically cuts in half (or less) the amount of useful energy spend on blowing at night in the dark. Next let's note that the light is going to be generated inside the plant, but only a portion of it will make it out and be visible. The rest will hit internal plant tissue and be absorbed (remember, the very purpose of leaf tissue is to be a good absorber of light). The fraction of light that usefully escapes is hard to estimate, but lets call it 50%.
At this point we're down to about 1/200th.
Peak direct visible sunlight is about 440 watts per square meter. Average from sunrise to sunset will be less than half that. And with the 1/200th factor above we're looking at less than 1 watt of light output per square meter. (Note that we don't need to mess with the leaf surface area, we only need to consider the 2-D cross-section of the plant intercepting the available sunlight.)
The good news is that at this point in our calculation our wattage gets translated into light as if it's 100% efficiency. This means that a modest size BUSH that's 1 meter (or 1 yard) in diameter could, optimistically, glow at night with the equivalent light output of a 20-watt to 40-watt incandescent bulb.
That's probably close to the high end of what's possible, and I doubt their first attempt will be that good, but it is more than I expected. If you have good night vision, and if you sat right up against a bush, it may be just enough to (uncomfortably) read by. If all you have is typical size potted plant you'll only get a tiny fraction of that much light though.... maybe 5% of that.
Slashdot Mirror
So, you're saying it's kinda like the way my weight hasn't changed but my pants don't fit anymore?
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Yet another story from the warmist conspiracy, piling more so-called "science" on top of their propaganda.
The reason for the pole shift is simple. Due to a toxic spill of lead and cadmium paints, Santa Claus was forced to move his workshop slightly. The Elves are no longer permitted egg-nog while on duty.
P.S.
I'm a climate skeptic goddamnit. It really pisses me off when warmists keep calling me a denialist. Only people with no real evidence to back up their case resort to name-calling. Until someone can prove to my satisfaction that the pole shift wasn't caused by a toxic spill at Santa's workshop, my explanation is just as valid as any warmist's "theory".
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So because they withdrew their applications, these attacks were ok, because obviously they were trying to hide stuff the IRS was digging up???
If most of the applications at issue were withdrawn, and withdrawn because they were non-compliant with being tax-exempt, then it is entirely possible that any particular probing-questions could have been directly related to whatever issue made them non-compliant. *If* they were valid questions investigating genuine tax-exemption issues, then claims of persecution do not exactly indicate any attack actually existed at all.
From the available story so far, it does seem some sort of abuse occurred. I want more details to come out. It seems some people may have seriously abused their positions violating rules to "attack" the perfectly valid applications of groups they disliked. Which would be seriously fucked up, and people should be fired. But if these applications turned out to be invalid, and the investigations were directed to those non-compliance issues, and the investigations were comparable to other investigations of non-compliant applications, then this story could be a tempest in a teacup.
I want it investigated thoroughly. I want more details. If investigators were violating rules and harassing perfectly valid applicants for ideological reasons, then I want them fired.
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I think the illegal/violations language we've been using is a poor fit to the situation, and may be muddying things.
Organizations were applying for tax-exempt status. Obviously those applications should/will only be approved if the organizations activities were and will be within the legally defined limits of what tax exempt organizations are allowed to do. I was saying that it appears that in at least some of these cases applications were withdrawn because investigations identified problems where organizations were not within the legal bounds for tax-exempt approval. Note that I specifically did not suggest the organizations had any intent to break any laws. I specifically indicated that any invalid applications could be innocent mistakes "perhaps due to ignorance or error in what non-profits are permitted to do".
Further note that I was not addressing the entirety of the situation, I was not claiming investigators did nothing wrong. I was replying to "150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked". I felt that was a flagrantly out-of-context quote, selectively editing out the fact that "some withdrew their applications". I felt it gave a rather misleading impression that there was a pure witch-hunt against categorically innocent victims. The investigators' job is to investigate tax-exemption applications and ensure improper ones do not get approved. And when an organization's name and activities have a strong political interest of any stripe, and they push up against the limits of what is permissibly under tax-exempt status, it warrants closer examination than a non-ideological "feed the homeless" group. And yeah, it looks like some "highly motivated" investigators went way over the line in that closer scrutiny. It looks like some people definitely need to get fired.
A lot of the coverage seems to suggest the existence of a "Tea-Party-in-the-name" pile is itself the problem. Maybe it's a nitpick, but I think that's slightly off target. I think any and every politically-affiliated term is good reason to toss applications in piles for routine closer scrutiny. But it's seriously fucked up if agents are personally grabbing the cases of groups they dislike and violating standard procedures going after them.
I still want more more details to come out. If there was a flood of inexperience Tea Party groups filing a flood of non-compliant tax-exempt applications, and if it turns out those investigations were comparable to other non-compliant applications, then the story may be overblown. But as I said, it's seriously fucked up if agents were selecting their own cases, breaking rules, harassing applications that were in fact valid. There need to be strict mechanisms in place to prevent that sort of thing. I don't want groups of any political persuasion getting away with invalid tax-exemptions, and I don't want anyone hijacking their government position against anyone they dislike. That needs to get smacked down, hard.
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Basically: shuffling all the comments on one item is like cutting up a movie script, mixing up the dialogue and expecting it to still make sense.
Facebook is turning into a David Lynch movie.
For those unfamiliar with David Lynch movies, Rabbits.
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Are you sure about that?
Yep.
"According to CNN exit polls, 93% of African-Americans, 71% of Hispanics and 73% of Asians supported Obama over Romney."
No, the supported the Democrat over the Republican. And you can confirm that by looking at the 2004 and previous elections where minorities supported the white Democrat over the white Republican by almost exact same margins. Racists are not exactly inclined to join the Democratic party because that's where all the "brown people" are, and minorities are not exactly inclined to join the Republican party because that's where all the bigots are. It's a self-reinforcing cycle. The fact that the Democrats ran a black candidate for president hardly budged any of the percentages. Few racists were going to vote Dem no matter who ran, and few minorities were going to vote Repub no matter who ran.
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Except the vast majority of black racists, to whom Obama can do no evil, and no white candidate no matter how virtuous and capable of leadership could ever be considered, so long as a black man is running.
There's itty-bitty little detail you overlooked, in your rant about "black racists" voting for Obama just because he's black, and against the "virtuous and capable of leadership" of his opponent merely because he was white. The one itty-bitty detail you overlooked is that, even with the historic first African American running for president, the percentages on the African American vote hardly budged. The fact is that African Americans voted as they did because almost 100% of them vote Democratic, have been voting that way for decades, and have been doing so for good reason.
And to avoid redundant posts, this reply also goes out to the multitude of other Anonymous Cowards who also posted whinging about (paraphrase) "those damn racist blacks" who all voted for Obama "just because he's black".
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On, and as for the whole marriage thing, you can't conclude causality in the fact that few interracial couples exist...
You point to few interracial couples as proof of prejudice but so what?
Howdy howdy heay there! Thanks your your reply! :)
If you look back at my post you might notice I wasn't talking about there being "few interracial couples" as some indication of racism. I was talking about brain damaged sub-human scum who voted for interracial marriage to be FUCKING ILLEGAL ya moron. The sooner the racist asshats drop dead the better. Have a nice day
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except for the fact that they weren't breaking the law!
From the following link, the IRS investigator Lerner had to say: "150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked..."
Wow, you deserve some sort of award for that brazen quote mining. And what are the words you cut out with that dot dot dot?
"150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked [dot dot dot] though some withdrew their applications."
It sounds like some groups were attempting to break the law (perhaps due to ignorance or error in what non-profits are permitted to do), and withdrew their tax-exempt-applications when IRS investigations caught their violation. Although at the moment we have no indication whether or not Tea Party groups were among those withdrawing tax-exempt claims.
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There is a Catholic joke in here somewhere.
Ok....
MoveOn are a bunch of godless atheists destroying America, so of course they're not getting molested.
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yet groups like Organizing for America and MoveOn.org remain unmolested... funny that?
Ummm, could that possibly.... just maybe.... have something to do with the fact that Organizing for America didn't file as a non-profit? Ya think?
As for "MoveOn.org", maybe.... just maybe, that has something to do with the fact thatMoveOn.org Political Action doesn't file as non-profit? Or perhaps you meant MoveOn.org Civic Action, which is indeed filed as non-profit. MoveOn.org Civic Action has very directly addresses the legal issue of what non-profits are and aren't allowed to do, and they've established an easy and effective relief-valve against pressures to cross that line. If someone wants to donate money to promote candidates, MoveOn.org Civic Action has no hesitation to suggest the money be donated to MoveOn.org Political Action instead. And if someone at MoveOn.org Civic Action has some idea/motivation to engage in candidate advocacy, there's no problem sending the idea (or the motivated person) over to MoveOn.org Political Action to deal with it.
It's a lot harder to remain within the bounds of non-profit legal limits when you don't have that sort of big organizational structure carefully drawing the line of what is and isn't allowed by non-profits, and when you don't have organizational structure in place to easily and effectively vent the inevitable pressures to exceed non-profit limits.
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I messed up the editing the paragraph with the percentages. For clarity:
1998 South Carolina: 38% voted in favor of interracial marriage being illegal in the state constitution.
2000 Alabama: 40.5% of voters voted in favor of interracial marriage being illegal in the state constitution.
2011 Mississippi: Poll of Republicans: 46% said interracial marriage should be illegal, 14% not-sure, 40% legal.
P.S. I'm not sure if this was a general poll of Republicans or likely-primary-voter Republicans. Either way it's a rather gross set of statistics.
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It is rather sad when many leftists simply write off opponents to the President as racists of some sort
Not all opponents of the president are racist.
On the other hand, all of the racists are opponents of the president.
Next, lets look at the percentages a bit. It's not easy to pin down exact percentages for racists, but how about I toss out a couple of rather significant numbers. In 1998 South Carolina, In 2000 Alabama, 38% voted in favor of interracial marriage being illegal in the state constitution. 40.5% of voters voted in favor of interracial marriage being illegal in the state constitution. In 2011 a poll of Mississippi Republicans directly asked whether interracial marriage should be illegal. 46% said it should be illegal. I'd like to point out that another 14% went with the don't-know/not-sure option. Only 40%...... that's FOURTY-FUCKING-PERCENT of Mississippi Republicans reached the bare threshold of not being FLAMING-SHITHOLE-BIGOTs far enough to merely say interracial marriage should not be ILLEGAL. Nevermind the additional percentage of (cough cough) "mild-racists" who accept interracial marriage as legal, but who still violently forbid their children from dating anyone brown.
You want to say not-all Obama opponents are racists? Sure. That's true. HOWEVER, the percentage of the population who are loudly anti-Obama is damn-near the same percentage of the population who are flaming shithole racists. The Obamam haters aren't being smeared as racists because of one or two bad-apple racists, and it's not one or two bad-apple racists who are unwanted by some fictional decent mainstream majority Obama critics. No, the percentage of people riled up against Obama is almost the same as the percentage of Racists in the population, and all the racists are in the group riled up against Obama, with mathematically means the substantial majority of Obama haters are nothing but pissed off racists. And any Obama-haters who aren't racists are still immersed in a community discussion primarily driven by angry racists. An atmosphere saturated by venomous irrational conspiracy-theorist distortion-and-outright-fiction rhetoric of racists. A non-racists may certainly be angry at Obama for some legitimate reasons, however it's a virtual certainty that the anger of a non-racists Obama-hater has, at least in part, been created or amplified by crap that JUST AIN'T TRUE circulating around the (MAJORITY racists) anti-Obama community.
And yet to the left... it is the color of ones skin, what sort of genitals one has, or what kind of genitals they prefer on the person they are with that is more important than the content of their character.
Content of character? Look at those percentages who want interracial marriage to be illegal, and you go right ahead and talk about content of character. Yes, especially go right ahead and talk about how character is more important than skin color.
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As the autonomy of the system increases, it becomes harder and harder to form the connection between the inputs (your senses) and the outputs (your behavior), but it exists, and is deterministic. The same set of inputs will generate the same set of outputs every time. The problem, however, is that the person will never see exactly the same input twice. ... The problem is that this different behavior in apparently similar situations can be interpreted as "free will" or agency on the part of the person. While this mental agency is part of our definition of a person, it is vital for us to remember what is causing this agency.
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Consider it comedy's version of poetic license :)
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I do not think Microsoft is as arrogant as people on this very anti-MS site make it them out to be.
Of course they are.
It takes an ego massive enough to bend light to release an update named "Windows Blue" without realizing the next two words in everyone's heads will be "screen" and "death".
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It disgusts me when cretins like your trivialize the horrible struggle for civil rights in the USA in this manner. Lincoln was a Republican, the Civil Right Act was sponsored and voted for by Republicans, and Jim Crow was a creation of the Democrats. You would know this if you weren't a vainglorious European who has no idea what the KKK even was, or is.
It's hysterical how vainglorious Republicans trivialize the horrible struggle for civil rights in the USA, and how they have no idea (or are in UTTER DENIAL) of the history and modern reality of their own party.
In 1970 Nixon's political strategist stated the following in a New York Times interview:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that...but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
Actually the "Southern Strategy" started with Republican Herbert Hoover was running against a Catholic Democratic candidate 1928. In 1928 the KKK, and the majority of Southerners, hated and feared Catholics nearly as much blacks. Hoover deliberately courted the KKK vote, and deliberately stirred up Southern religious bigotry fears of a potential Catholic president. Not only did the strategy work, Hoover became the first Republican to win Texas and picked up several other (at the time) solidly Democratic ex-confederate states. THIS was the original point where civil rights leaders started fleeing the Republican party and joining the Democratic party. Over the next several years there were several Democratic presidents who strongly supported civil rights, FDR Kennedy and Johnson, and in each case African Americans increasingly saw the Democratic party as a viable choice, and southern racist white Democrats became increasingly outraged and alienated. At the time the Democratic party was indeed infested with racist, but Democratic presidents and most of the Democratic political leadership refused to pander to the racist element of their base.
During this period almost all civil rights leaders were re-aligning with the Democrats.
And then along came GOLDWATER rejecting the Civil Rights Act. BAM! African Americans fled the Republican party in droves. And then the Honorable Richard M. Nixon came along running for president, and he took Hoover's pro-KKK "Southern Strategy" and cranked it up to eleven. As quoted above, Nixon and the Republican party as a whole adopted a strategy of deliberately driving out blacks, and deliberately using blacks to "prod" racist Democrats into re-aligning with the Republicans.
Over the course of a few decades there was a 100% reversal. Republicans took on a deliberate strategy of making a welcoming home for racists, and pandering to them. And it worked. The Republicans drove off essentially 100% of blacks, drove off all of the civil rights leaders, and succeeded in drawing racists into the party. And it worked. The Republicans drew in a huge body of racist voters, enough that they didn't care about running off minority voters, pandered to the the racists, and won elections specifically on the back of racist votes.
Calling out to Lincoln as a Republican is like calling out to George Washington as British subject. Things change. Sometimes people switch sides. Sometimes associations undergo a 100% reversal. Calling out to an association which has ceased to exist is completely hollow, if not deliberately disingenuous.
And now the chickens have come home to roost. Now that minorities are (collectively) starting to become the majority of voters, Republicans are suddenly waking up to the fact that they are currently losing more votes than they ar
$8 / game *214 legitimate copies = $1600
That was the day-of-release active players. I suspect they might have made a couple more sales on the second day....
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the pirated version
It's not a pirated version. It is a 100% legal free version of the game released by the developers.... it's essentially a glorified demo release.
doesn't that make it a more realistic version and therefore a better version of the game?
If you buy the paid version of the game, you play in a reasonably accurate historical model of the universe where game development is&was a challenging, competitive, and generally profitable business. Any pirated copies merely aren't mentioned because, duh, they aren't (and shouldn't be) listed in profit or expense calculations.
The free version is less realistic. #1 Only you are affected by piracy, any competitors in the industry are immune. Extremely unrealistic. #2 It exists in a fantasy universe where each download equals a lost sale.... where anyone with a hobby of downloading tons of random free stuff could have and would have actually bought all that free stuff they found. Also extremely unrealistic. And those two points lead into #3: Profits and expenses deliberately mis-scaled into an unrealistic no-win scenario. Not only does that all make it very unrealistic, it obviously makes it a "worse version" of the game. But duh... of course any demo version is a "worse version" of a game.
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Yeah, my first thought was that it's not going to be very bright. I did a back of the envelope calculation.
According to Wikipedia photosynthesis efficiency is about 3 to 6% of incoming sunlight. Lets call it 4.5%. That's the energy a plant uses to grow and just to keep itself alive - lets assume we can burn about half of that energy for light production without starving the plant itself. In fireflies Lucifer is about 90 to 98 efficient in converting energy into light. Lets say out engineered plant manages 90%. Next let's note that this plant is going to waste energy glowing even during midday sun. That basically cuts in half (or less) the amount of useful energy spend on blowing at night in the dark. Next let's note that the light is going to be generated inside the plant, but only a portion of it will make it out and be visible. The rest will hit internal plant tissue and be absorbed (remember, the very purpose of leaf tissue is to be a good absorber of light). The fraction of light that usefully escapes is hard to estimate, but lets call it 50%.
At this point we're down to about 1/200th.
Peak direct visible sunlight is about 440 watts per square meter. Average from sunrise to sunset will be less than half that. And with the 1/200th factor above we're looking at less than 1 watt of light output per square meter. (Note that we don't need to mess with the leaf surface area, we only need to consider the 2-D cross-section of the plant intercepting the available sunlight.)
The good news is that at this point in our calculation our wattage gets translated into light as if it's 100% efficiency. This means that a modest size BUSH that's 1 meter (or 1 yard) in diameter could, optimistically, glow at night with the equivalent light output of a 20-watt to 40-watt incandescent bulb.
That's probably close to the high end of what's possible, and I doubt their first attempt will be that good, but it is more than I expected. If you have good night vision, and if you sat right up against a bush, it may be just enough to (uncomfortably) read by. If all you have is typical size potted plant you'll only get a tiny fraction of that much light though.... maybe 5% of that.
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once people get a hold of the fact that the enzyme is called 'Luciferase', things could get rather warm for the company (at least in the US)
We could simply rename the enzyme.
I'm sure something like 'Obamase' would solve the problem.
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When you can [] 3D printer [] then food manufacturers will start putting DRM in food...
I believe Monsanto's got the patent on that.
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No signal or off, either way the non-presence of mythology obviously can't be labeled a different brand of mythology.
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Atheism is as much a religion as Christianity
"Off" is a much a TV channel as Fox News.
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It's got what plants crave.
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