Holy cow - this demonstrates why you shouldn't believe what your told during elections! (And demonstrates why you can't hide from hackers)
If this is accurate, the page was 18 when this stuff went down, but straight! So, it still isn't consenting adults, but it is at least adults...
So, if he was 18, what does that mean? Is this something that really shouldn't have been aired? Some kind of harrasment? (Or is he just trying to stay in the closet on this?)
I wish gay politicians could just run as gay politicians. I think the double life thing must be killing them.
To be honest, I'm not following this that closely - a government official do dumb/illegal sexual stuff is hardly news. But my understanding is that the emails were inapropriate, but not "solicting a minor for sex". If it were, surely the FBI would have broken the news right after the arrest?
I'm not currently trusting anything on the news about politicians - it's campaign season.
Hm, perhaps I only read it on bad days normally - typically my impetus to read it is to see the Muslim world's reaction to an event like 9/11, Hezbolla's attack on civilians, etc. When I check, the only reaction I see is that it is the US's fault (bad policies, etc), that the Isrealies are killing civilians (which they were, of course, but no mention was made of the civilians Hezbolla was killing). Today's version seems pretty normal - though still anti-west, of course.
Really, did you read the article about the Pope?
"If Muslims close ranks and unite, no one in the world would dare to attack them and insult their religion and Prophet. Those who accuse Islam of intolerance and violence are either ignorant or full of enmity,..."
This is the guy that Aljazeera says is peaceful and tolerant: essentially, if you accuse me of intolorance your an idiot or bigot. Um, tolerance is accepting the insult and not retaliating, not scaring everyone so much that they don't dare to insult you!
Do you also read the Chinese news, Xinhua? That also provides interesting insights...
Um, so are you afraid that they are going to come over here and reposess their stuff? They are not trading now and tommorrow looting our corpses, they are trading stuff for a leafy green and its perceived value. (Both sides are making this trade willingly, so both sides must be better off)
If the amount of oil on the market should decrease (as it is), the amount of USD used to purchase it should decrease
Aside from the fact that the amount of oil on the market is higher than ever and shows no signs of "peaking", if the market price goes up then the dollars used to buy the oil also goes up. (Remember, you are proposing limitted supply, not demand - if real demand fell, fewer dollars would be used)
Should anyone consider trading oil for something else, like Flainian Popple Beads or (I dunno) Euros, the enormous crowd of people demanding value for their dollars will totally hump your economy
Just a wild guess here, but I'm betting rather heavily that if the world switches to Flainian Popple Beads the US will quickly start consuming its own goods rather than externally made goods. This would (according to your logic) be good for the US (because our trade deficit instantly goes to zero) and bad for the rest of the world (because all the jobs provided by the US's consumerism disappear overnight). In reality, it would be bad for the US (things would get slightly more expensive) and far worse for everyone else (lost jobs cascade into destroyed economies, social collapse, etc.).
Not printing treasury bonds which you have no means of backing.
Think about this, seriously. If we really could do that - and people would trade us gold, oil, and stuff for them - we would be fools not to make the trade, wouldn't we? The only question left would be why anyone would accept leafy greens! The fact is, the leafy greens are backed up by the strongest economy on the planet - and doesn't even come close to overextending our resources.
Really, why is China's elite breaking every law in their country to transfer wealth to the US if they are so much better? You really think you know better than they do? (Hint: if you do, just bet against them on the currency exchange and you'd make billions!)
Why would someone looking to get out from under such a system bother moving to Europe then?
How do you get this when more than half the Muslims in Europe say they wish they could impose/live under Sharia in Europe? Basically, I see this whole situation as people ignoring the cause/effect relationships. They really think that Europe is nice because it has somehow "stolen" something from them - they don't see that Sharia is what destroyed their countries. In most Arab nations, oil propps up the what they call the local economy - but it is not a true economy. In many ways I think the oil wealth has been extremely bad for the people of the middle east.
How many people here read Aljazeera? Read the English version sometime - it really gives you insight into how much hate the average Muslim has for the US. It doesn't matter what the topic is, the US is on the bad side. Muslim good, everyone else bad. Muslims wouldn't burn nuns in churches if only those darn Popes would stop quoting bad texts. Just to show you how nonviolent Muslims are we killed all those that said we were violent.
The only hope is the US Muslims, and to a lesser extent the European Muslims - but think about it, which Muslims are going to move to the "Great Satan"? It is not going to be the radicals...
One thing that is often lost in discussions like these is the fact that there is never a real trade imbalance. No, really - we are consuming lots of stuff and exporting lots of stuff, and to balance the stuff going in with the stuff going out we manufacture a soft product called the US dollar. This product costs the US very little to produce (it is mainly a type of investment medium), and the outside world has a large demand for it.
People do not engage in commerce for the fun of it. If a US dollar (or promissary note) was worth less to a Chinese worker than a Nike shoe, they'd keep the shoe!
It actually speaks to the strength of the US economy that we can export dollars and import goods. What is crazy is that many of those third world nations do not emulate working economies, but instead emulate the ones that crashed and burned. Really, how hard is it to copy the ones that work instead?
The real reason to not throw away radioactive waste is that it is an excellent power source. Yes, we may think it's power density is now too low to be worth using - but oil shale was thought of the same way once, aren't we glad someone didn't just launch it all into space? We currently mine the garbage dumps of previous generations for minerals (the roman copper mines, for example), and future generations (less worried about the magical radiation) will mine our radioactive wastes.
Look at it this way: 1) You want to go about 8km/s. Assuming constant accelaration, that means the average speed will be 4km/s. 2) Now calculate the time to get to 8km/s at your favorite number of Gs: 1 G=8000s, 10 Gs=800s, 100 Gs=80s, 1000 Gs=8 seconds. 3) multiply the time * 4 km/s, and get: 1 G=64,000 km track; 10 G=6,400 km track, 100 G=640 km track, 1000 Gs=64 km!
Now note that the 1 G track is further than geosynchronous orbit...
The gaseous explosion doesn't happen, fortunately. During the Appolo program, a guy in a vaccuum chamber fell down and shattered his face mask - he was very suddenly exposed to total vaccuum. He was consious for a few seconds (say 5-10), and then passed out. It took them another few seconds to bring the chamber back up to atmospheric (say about 20-30 seconds). He was resuscitated, and had no long term injuries from the experience.
BTW, there is a much easier way to calculate this stuff - just note that orbit is 1 G. So if you want 10 Gs, your track is 1/10 to radius of the Earth.
When there is an international law against spying, let me know. Spying is good for the world, it prevents misunderstandings and promotes peace, as long as peace is justified.
It's quite possible to fight the insurgents without bombing wedding parties.
Not when every time you bomb the insurgents they claim it was a wedding party...
And of course, all terrorists are presumably civilians with guns - so very few Americans beleive the civilian death counts.
I really have trouble caring about those that want my death. The last time I saw, Muslims still held parties whenever an American is killed. They (the "normal" people, not just the terrorists) still kill Americans and anything related to America whenever Mohamed is deemed to be insulted.
As a good person, I care, and I wish that we didn't have to kill anyone. But they made the mistake of saying, us or them. I choose them. And I can carry that out.
I agree with that, and it would be nice to live in a world where you can just play nice and not get sucker punched - I just don't live in that world. And neither do Muslims. And neither do you.
People exist that truely believe that they are entitled to kill you and take your posessions, rape your wife and daughters, etc. because of past wrongs that you didn't even do. In the end, we probably have to kill those people, and there will be a lot of innocents killed on both sides.
You actually believe that all the little countries obeyed the law and didn't attack? You live on a different planet then I do, then.
The problem with having the UN in charge is that the UN sent Syrian troops to prevent Syria from rearming Lebanon. The UN is a joke, and the US was shown that it must defend itself.
In short, I agree mostly with your timeline - but I would say it as: We proposed that any attacks not sanctioned by the UN would be illegal. We stopped attacking. We found a problem that needed intervention but the UN stalled, so we bent the rule. We were then attacked anyway so we negated the rule. And its a good thing we did.
Whenever you think that Bush went too far and is an evil extremist, remember that in the US a large percentage of the population wanted to go nuclear after 9/11. And currently, over half say that Iran must be prevented from getting nukes by any means necessary - that was the exact wording on the survey. If you don't agree with that and you are in the US, realize that you are in the minority and live in a representational democracy. And I guess be glad that you do not live in a true democracy...
I would mainly agree with you, except to add that if you are the only one obeying the law, you will not survive - so when your enemy throws out the laws, you must as well.
"You say I contradict myself? OK, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes!"
Well, people were asking, so I answered. But yes, that law only exists as long as people respect it - it has no weight on it's own. In reality, what I am saying is that if you blow up the space shuttle because it overflew your land, expect a war. If you shoot down an F16 that overflew your land, expect an apology. You may get neither in either case, but it does set expectations.
If that were really true of all generals, stuff like this would never happen. Probably would be a far better world. (Think about it, this action has no possible positive benefits for a business, but has a risk of incredible negatives for business. In other words, the Mafia would not have have done this.
The truth is that there never has been international law. There are just big countries beating up on little countries, and people complaining about that. Any law that an international body passes will not be enforced by anyone that doesn't want to enforce it. Any illegal action that becomes desireable for a nation will be done. We can alter what is desireable or not, but we can't do that as long as everyone is talking about "international law".
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Holy cow - this demonstrates why you shouldn't believe what your told during elections! (And demonstrates why you can't hide from hackers)
If this is accurate, the page was 18 when this stuff went down, but straight! So, it still isn't consenting adults, but it is at least adults...
So, if he was 18, what does that mean? Is this something that really shouldn't have been aired? Some kind of harrasment? (Or is he just trying to stay in the closet on this?)
I wish gay politicians could just run as gay politicians. I think the double life thing must be killing them.
So which are they? Freedom fighters, terrorists, or civilians?
To be honest, I'm not following this that closely - a government official do dumb/illegal sexual stuff is hardly news. But my understanding is that the emails were inapropriate, but not "solicting a minor for sex". If it were, surely the FBI would have broken the news right after the arrest?
I'm not currently trusting anything on the news about politicians - it's campaign season.
Here. OK, so it is only 4/10, slightly less than half. The point is still valid - these people are not trying to escape Sharia.
(And that only took a few seconds on Google, and has been reported on Slashdot before!)
No, no, you misunderstood. The 'D' was for Dummy.
I mean come on - this is right up there with oval office blowjobs, someone was gonna talk! Why do these fools think that they can get away with it?
(I probably don't want to know the answer, cause it's probably along the lines of "because they normally do get away with it")
Hm, perhaps I only read it on bad days normally - typically my impetus to read it is to see the Muslim world's reaction to an event like 9/11, Hezbolla's attack on civilians, etc. When I check, the only reaction I see is that it is the US's fault (bad policies, etc), that the Isrealies are killing civilians (which they were, of course, but no mention was made of the civilians Hezbolla was killing). Today's version seems pretty normal - though still anti-west, of course.
..."
Really, did you read the article about the Pope?
"If Muslims close ranks and unite, no one in the world would dare to attack them and insult their religion and Prophet. Those who accuse Islam of intolerance and violence are either ignorant or full of enmity,
This is the guy that Aljazeera says is peaceful and tolerant: essentially, if you accuse me of intolorance your an idiot or bigot. Um, tolerance is accepting the insult and not retaliating, not scaring everyone so much that they don't dare to insult you!
Do you also read the Chinese news, Xinhua? That also provides interesting insights...
Sooner or later, people want their "value" back
Um, so are you afraid that they are going to come over here and reposess their stuff? They are not trading now and tommorrow looting our corpses, they are trading stuff for a leafy green and its perceived value. (Both sides are making this trade willingly, so both sides must be better off)
If the amount of oil on the market should decrease (as it is), the amount of USD used to purchase it should decrease
Aside from the fact that the amount of oil on the market is higher than ever and shows no signs of "peaking", if the market price goes up then the dollars used to buy the oil also goes up. (Remember, you are proposing limitted supply, not demand - if real demand fell, fewer dollars would be used)
Should anyone consider trading oil for something else, like Flainian Popple Beads or (I dunno) Euros, the enormous crowd of people demanding value for their dollars will totally hump your economy
Just a wild guess here, but I'm betting rather heavily that if the world switches to Flainian Popple Beads the US will quickly start consuming its own goods rather than externally made goods. This would (according to your logic) be good for the US (because our trade deficit instantly goes to zero) and bad for the rest of the world (because all the jobs provided by the US's consumerism disappear overnight). In reality, it would be bad for the US (things would get slightly more expensive) and far worse for everyone else (lost jobs cascade into destroyed economies, social collapse, etc.).
Not printing treasury bonds which you have no means of backing.
Think about this, seriously. If we really could do that - and people would trade us gold, oil, and stuff for them - we would be fools not to make the trade, wouldn't we? The only question left would be why anyone would accept leafy greens! The fact is, the leafy greens are backed up by the strongest economy on the planet - and doesn't even come close to overextending our resources.
Really, why is China's elite breaking every law in their country to transfer wealth to the US if they are so much better? You really think you know better than they do? (Hint: if you do, just bet against them on the currency exchange and you'd make billions!)
Wait - aren't we at war with them?
Why would someone looking to get out from under such a system bother moving to Europe then?
How do you get this when more than half the Muslims in Europe say they wish they could impose/live under Sharia in Europe? Basically, I see this whole situation as people ignoring the cause/effect relationships. They really think that Europe is nice because it has somehow "stolen" something from them - they don't see that Sharia is what destroyed their countries. In most Arab nations, oil propps up the what they call the local economy - but it is not a true economy. In many ways I think the oil wealth has been extremely bad for the people of the middle east.
How many people here read Aljazeera? Read the English version sometime - it really gives you insight into how much hate the average Muslim has for the US. It doesn't matter what the topic is, the US is on the bad side. Muslim good, everyone else bad. Muslims wouldn't burn nuns in churches if only those darn Popes would stop quoting bad texts. Just to show you how nonviolent Muslims are we killed all those that said we were violent.
The only hope is the US Muslims, and to a lesser extent the European Muslims - but think about it, which Muslims are going to move to the "Great Satan"? It is not going to be the radicals...
One thing that is often lost in discussions like these is the fact that there is never a real trade imbalance. No, really - we are consuming lots of stuff and exporting lots of stuff, and to balance the stuff going in with the stuff going out we manufacture a soft product called the US dollar. This product costs the US very little to produce (it is mainly a type of investment medium), and the outside world has a large demand for it.
People do not engage in commerce for the fun of it. If a US dollar (or promissary note) was worth less to a Chinese worker than a Nike shoe, they'd keep the shoe!
It actually speaks to the strength of the US economy that we can export dollars and import goods. What is crazy is that many of those third world nations do not emulate working economies, but instead emulate the ones that crashed and burned. Really, how hard is it to copy the ones that work instead?
So think about that and tell me (long term) who is going to run things?
Hint - it isn't the guy that eliminates himself...
The real reason to not throw away radioactive waste is that it is an excellent power source. Yes, we may think it's power density is now too low to be worth using - but oil shale was thought of the same way once, aren't we glad someone didn't just launch it all into space? We currently mine the garbage dumps of previous generations for minerals (the roman copper mines, for example), and future generations (less worried about the magical radiation) will mine our radioactive wastes.
Look at it this way:
1) You want to go about 8km/s. Assuming constant accelaration, that means the average speed will be 4km/s.
2) Now calculate the time to get to 8km/s at your favorite number of Gs: 1 G=8000s, 10 Gs=800s, 100 Gs=80s, 1000 Gs=8 seconds.
3) multiply the time * 4 km/s, and get: 1 G=64,000 km track; 10 G=6,400 km track, 100 G=640 km track, 1000 Gs=64 km!
Now note that the 1 G track is further than geosynchronous orbit...
The gaseous explosion doesn't happen, fortunately. During the Appolo program, a guy in a vaccuum chamber fell down and shattered his face mask - he was very suddenly exposed to total vaccuum. He was consious for a few seconds (say 5-10), and then passed out. It took them another few seconds to bring the chamber back up to atmospheric (say about 20-30 seconds). He was resuscitated, and had no long term injuries from the experience.
BTW, there is a much easier way to calculate this stuff - just note that orbit is 1 G. So if you want 10 Gs, your track is 1/10 to radius of the Earth.
Sounds a little bigger that way, doesn't it?
When there is an international law against spying, let me know. Spying is good for the world, it prevents misunderstandings and promotes peace, as long as peace is justified.
It's quite possible to fight the insurgents without bombing wedding parties.
Not when every time you bomb the insurgents they claim it was a wedding party...
And of course, all terrorists are presumably civilians with guns - so very few Americans beleive the civilian death counts.
I really have trouble caring about those that want my death. The last time I saw, Muslims still held parties whenever an American is killed. They (the "normal" people, not just the terrorists) still kill Americans and anything related to America whenever Mohamed is deemed to be insulted.
As a good person, I care, and I wish that we didn't have to kill anyone. But they made the mistake of saying, us or them. I choose them. And I can carry that out.
I agree with that, and it would be nice to live in a world where you can just play nice and not get sucker punched - I just don't live in that world. And neither do Muslims. And neither do you.
People exist that truely believe that they are entitled to kill you and take your posessions, rape your wife and daughters, etc. because of past wrongs that you didn't even do. In the end, we probably have to kill those people, and there will be a lot of innocents killed on both sides.
You actually believe that all the little countries obeyed the law and didn't attack? You live on a different planet then I do, then.
The problem with having the UN in charge is that the UN sent Syrian troops to prevent Syria from rearming Lebanon. The UN is a joke, and the US was shown that it must defend itself.
In short, I agree mostly with your timeline - but I would say it as: We proposed that any attacks not sanctioned by the UN would be illegal. We stopped attacking. We found a problem that needed intervention but the UN stalled, so we bent the rule. We were then attacked anyway so we negated the rule. And its a good thing we did.
Whenever you think that Bush went too far and is an evil extremist, remember that in the US a large percentage of the population wanted to go nuclear after 9/11. And currently, over half say that Iran must be prevented from getting nukes by any means necessary - that was the exact wording on the survey. If you don't agree with that and you are in the US, realize that you are in the minority and live in a representational democracy. And I guess be glad that you do not live in a true democracy...
I would mainly agree with you, except to add that if you are the only one obeying the law, you will not survive - so when your enemy throws out the laws, you must as well.
"You say I contradict myself? OK, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes!"
Well, people were asking, so I answered. But yes, that law only exists as long as people respect it - it has no weight on it's own. In reality, what I am saying is that if you blow up the space shuttle because it overflew your land, expect a war. If you shoot down an F16 that overflew your land, expect an apology. You may get neither in either case, but it does set expectations.
If that were really true of all generals, stuff like this would never happen. Probably would be a far better world. (Think about it, this action has no possible positive benefits for a business, but has a risk of incredible negatives for business. In other words, the Mafia would not have have done this.
Those are all lies and you know it.
The truth is that there never has been international law. There are just big countries beating up on little countries, and people complaining about that. Any law that an international body passes will not be enforced by anyone that doesn't want to enforce it. Any illegal action that becomes desireable for a nation will be done. We can alter what is desireable or not, but we can't do that as long as everyone is talking about "international law".
So if the US destroys China's undersea fiber optic cable, is that not an act of war? Those aren't manned, either. Manned or unmanned is irrelevant.