In my mind the fundamental tenant of scientific thinking is that we are fallible
Oddly enough,that's pretty much a fundamental tenet (not tenant - we don't rent) of at least the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) as well. Funny how that works.
Also remember that American history hide the realities of the American Indians. They had HUGE cities that were as large as some european cities.
Which "American history" hides this? What I had in HS 30 years ago mentioned Aztec, Maya, Inca cities quite clearly. As well as the droughts and smallpox that seems to have done them in.
Or were you trying to suggest that the Indians north of the Rio Grande also had huge cities? If so, then, to put it politely, you were mistaken....
The only thing offensive is that there are still people who think that Christmas is Jesus' (Joshua, Yeshua) was born on Christmas day.
Sorry, Christmas (Christ's Mass) celebrates the birth of Jesus (Joshua, Yeshua) of Nazareth, but doesn't actually claim to be his birthdate. Note that the Gospels that even mention his birth include elements that are not consistent with a December birth.
Okay, there are TWO things that are offensive - the other is that nominally educated people can't spell "believe".
Umm, you think that the inconclusive opinions of a subsidiary of Monoc Security are positive proof?
Seems to me you're doing exactly what the guys you're poo-pooing were doing - using your own opinions to turn next to no data into proof positive that you were right.
something every one of us can help do with very little time, money and effort.
Come back when you've got "very little" down to "none." And "every one of us" down to "someone else."
And this summarizes the crux of the whole problem quite nicely. Everyone thinks something should be done about the problem, and everyone thinks that the problem is best solved by OTHER people doing whatever should be done about the problem.
Note that mostly they're right. The problem should be solved by other people. Specifically, the people who make decisions for power companies. If it were less advantageous to burn fossil fuel, and more advantageous to do anything else, then we'd stop burning that stuff....
The big problem with transferring people out of Gitmo is that NOONE WANTS THEM.
In order to release those people, we have to send them somewhere. That "somewhere" has to be willing to take them (there are actually a few places like this, for some of the detainees) AND has to promise not to just kill them on arrival (the few places mentioned above don't seem to be willing to do this part).
Which means, ultimately, the choice we have is to either keep them in Gitmo, or to release them into the USA.
Half the sky is not visible from the US so we should not assume that we got the better half.:)
Umm, no.
New Orleans is 30 degrees north latitude. Which means that we can see down to 60 degrees South latitude (yah, 60 S is sitting on the horizon and the viewing is terrible, but it's still visible).
Which means all we're really missing the the south polar skies. WAAAAAY less than half the sky.
So, we start with the quote about a Hohmann Transfer, in such a way as to suggest something completely different.
I'm sure there was a good reason for that, though TFA itself manages to mangle a bit of orbital physics all on its own, in addition to whoever submitted/edited the/. suumary....
then there is a market for some kind of private van service that makes runs from the area with the bars. Load 10 drunks into a passenger van, get their addresses, let a computer pick the most efficient route, and charge each of them half the cab fare.
Hmm, sounds like a business model there. I know, we could call it "Uber"!
It's not like the cab companies would give us a hard time with this sort of thing, right?
Both the Army and Marines operate their own rotary wing aircraft, but only the Marines operate their own fixed wing aircraft too
It should be noted that every time the Army tried to get its own fixed wing aircraft for ground support, the Air Force blocked the move.
And the only reason the Air Force doesn't do the same to the Marines is that the Marines are NAVY. And the Navy never let the Air Force camel's nose into their tent.
For those who aren't big on inter-service rivalry history, this all grew out of the squabbling between the Bomber Generals and everyone else in the WW2 Army Air Corps.
The Bomber Generals believed that the Army (and Navy) were no longer necessary, because any enemy could be defeated by just bombing him into oblivion. They didn't even see a burning need for fighters, since the massed bombers could defend themselves nicely.
After WW2, when the Army Air Corps started pushing for their own branch of service (US Air Force), they very conveniently overlooked things like the Schweinfurt Raid (bombers only, no fighter escort, since the P47 and P51 weren't ready, lots of bombers didn't come home. Not quite a majority didn't come home, but it was close), and demanded control of ALL fixed-wing aviation. The Navy told them to f**k off, but the Army was forced to give it all up.
Since then, every time something new that could fly came along, the Air Force has tried their best to make sure it was forbidden to the Army. They failed with helicopters, but they've always succeeded with armed fixed wing planes....
Alas, the A10 suffers one irredeemable fault - its only function is to support the Army.
Which function the Air Force disapproves of on a visceral level.
A multi-function aircraft, while it is handicapped by being ABLE to support the Army, has the virtue of being able to NOT support the Army. Hence the F16, F35, etc.
But that said, some people are morning people. They are weird but they exist. They get up by their own preference at like 5:30 am
***raises hand***
That's me, folks. However, a qualifier must be added. I didn't start behaving that way till I stopped ALL caffeine intake. Back when I did coffee/pepsi, getting me out of bed before noon involved liberal use of dynamite. A couple decades back, for reasons I no longer recall, I decided to stop with the caffeine. And since then, waking up is like flipping a light switch - fully asleep to fully awake in a second, ready to get up and do things at oh-dark-hundred...
Authoritarians have infiltrated both the Republican and Democratic parties,
Got bad news for you - this is the norm.
You don't spend gobs of money and time running for office if you don't want to tell people what to do.
You may tell yourself that telling them what to do is "for their own good", but it's really about the rush you get when large numbers of people do what you say.
In other words, there is no "infiltrate", there is only "that's the whole point of politics"....
it is doubtful that the wrench was used a the sole tool for some important fix.
Given that the "wrench" was really a socket driver (or so it appears from the pic), no, it wasn't the sole tool - the socket must've been up there.
Note the label on the driver, by the by 3 inch-pounds torque. It's a wrench for a very delicate piece of equipment, looks like.
Oh, and I can well believe they didn't have a torque wrench on hand for something like that. Not like you need a 3 inch-pound wrench all that often....
Presumably, it was enough of a selective factor among mastodon hunters that they tended to breed people tough enough to be stepped on by a mastodon and live to tell the tale?
Thought not.
Not enough people get into auto accidents, much less die of them, to have much impact on whatever traits are being selected for via natural selection.
In general NORAD tracking of Santa is a gimmick to help bring up good will towards the organization.
Saw an article last week (early this week?) discussing the origin of the whole business.
Apparently, it got started with a Sears ad with a typo - the ad included a number to "call Santa", but a misprint gave a number to a NORAD watch officer (from TFA, the phone number was supposed to be known only to the watch officer and the duty general in the Pentagon),
Anyways, long story shortened, some kids called the number, NORAD guys went slightly apeshit that their secret phone was on a Sears ad, but they decided to play along with it, and since then, NORAD has been "tracking Santa"....
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Launched by Papal Law? Or did you actually mean "cannon"?
And is the Matahorn anywhere near the Matterhorn? Just curious....
Oddly enough,that's pretty much a fundamental tenet (not tenant - we don't rent) of at least the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) as well. Funny how that works.
Which "American history" hides this? What I had in HS 30 years ago mentioned Aztec, Maya, Inca cities quite clearly. As well as the droughts and smallpox that seems to have done them in.
Or were you trying to suggest that the Indians north of the Rio Grande also had huge cities? If so, then, to put it politely, you were mistaken....
Of course, he had to use the Julian Calendar to make it "true", since under the Gregorian Calendar, Newton was born in January of 1643....
The only thing offensive is that there are still people who think that Christmas is Jesus' (Joshua, Yeshua) was born on Christmas day.
Sorry, Christmas (Christ's Mass) celebrates the birth of Jesus (Joshua, Yeshua) of Nazareth, but doesn't actually claim to be his birthdate. Note that the Gospels that even mention his birth include elements that are not consistent with a December birth.
Okay, there are TWO things that are offensive - the other is that nominally educated people can't spell "believe".
Centuries behind us, you mean? What you're describing was more or less standard in the USA in the last half of the nineteenth century.
Seems to me you're doing exactly what the guys you're poo-pooing were doing - using your own opinions to turn next to no data into proof positive that you were right.
And this summarizes the crux of the whole problem quite nicely. Everyone thinks something should be done about the problem, and everyone thinks that the problem is best solved by OTHER people doing whatever should be done about the problem.
Note that mostly they're right. The problem should be solved by other people. Specifically, the people who make decisions for power companies. If it were less advantageous to burn fossil fuel, and more advantageous to do anything else, then we'd stop burning that stuff....
The big problem with transferring people out of Gitmo is that NOONE WANTS THEM.
In order to release those people, we have to send them somewhere. That "somewhere" has to be willing to take them (there are actually a few places like this, for some of the detainees) AND has to promise not to just kill them on arrival (the few places mentioned above don't seem to be willing to do this part).
Which means, ultimately, the choice we have is to either keep them in Gitmo, or to release them into the USA.
And we don't want them either....
Umm, no.
New Orleans is 30 degrees north latitude. Which means that we can see down to 60 degrees South latitude (yah, 60 S is sitting on the horizon and the viewing is terrible, but it's still visible).
Which means all we're really missing the the south polar skies. WAAAAAY less than half the sky.
So, we start with the quote about a Hohmann Transfer, in such a way as to suggest something completely different.
I'm sure there was a good reason for that, though TFA itself manages to mangle a bit of orbital physics all on its own, in addition to whoever submitted/edited the /. suumary....
Notice they're not armed....
Hmm, sounds like a business model there. I know, we could call it "Uber"!
It's not like the cab companies would give us a hard time with this sort of thing, right?
It should be noted that every time the Army tried to get its own fixed wing aircraft for ground support, the Air Force blocked the move.
And the only reason the Air Force doesn't do the same to the Marines is that the Marines are NAVY. And the Navy never let the Air Force camel's nose into their tent.
For those who aren't big on inter-service rivalry history, this all grew out of the squabbling between the Bomber Generals and everyone else in the WW2 Army Air Corps.
The Bomber Generals believed that the Army (and Navy) were no longer necessary, because any enemy could be defeated by just bombing him into oblivion. They didn't even see a burning need for fighters, since the massed bombers could defend themselves nicely.
After WW2, when the Army Air Corps started pushing for their own branch of service (US Air Force), they very conveniently overlooked things like the Schweinfurt Raid (bombers only, no fighter escort, since the P47 and P51 weren't ready, lots of bombers didn't come home. Not quite a majority didn't come home, but it was close), and demanded control of ALL fixed-wing aviation. The Navy told them to f**k off, but the Army was forced to give it all up.
Since then, every time something new that could fly came along, the Air Force has tried their best to make sure it was forbidden to the Army. They failed with helicopters, but they've always succeeded with armed fixed wing planes....
The Air Force doesn't want to keep the A10.
Alas, the A10 suffers one irredeemable fault - its only function is to support the Army.
Which function the Air Force disapproves of on a visceral level.
A multi-function aircraft, while it is handicapped by being ABLE to support the Army, has the virtue of being able to NOT support the Army. Hence the F16, F35, etc.
Two things:
1) Causality isn't necessarily a law of nature, so much as "the way our senses are wired to see things".
2) It is unlikely that tachyons have brakes. Cars have brakes, even bicycles have brakes. But probably not tachyons.
***raises hand***
That's me, folks. However, a qualifier must be added. I didn't start behaving that way till I stopped ALL caffeine intake. Back when I did coffee/pepsi, getting me out of bed before noon involved liberal use of dynamite. A couple decades back, for reasons I no longer recall, I decided to stop with the caffeine. And since then, waking up is like flipping a light switch - fully asleep to fully awake in a second, ready to get up and do things at oh-dark-hundred...
Drives my wife crazy, btw.
I hope you weren't being silly enough to suggest that electric cars are what caused oil/gasoline prices to collapse recently?
Got bad news for you - this is the norm.
You don't spend gobs of money and time running for office if you don't want to tell people what to do.
You may tell yourself that telling them what to do is "for their own good", but it's really about the rush you get when large numbers of people do what you say.
In other words, there is no "infiltrate", there is only "that's the whole point of politics"....
Given that the "wrench" was really a socket driver (or so it appears from the pic), no, it wasn't the sole tool - the socket must've been up there.
Note the label on the driver, by the by 3 inch-pounds torque. It's a wrench for a very delicate piece of equipment, looks like.
Oh, and I can well believe they didn't have a torque wrench on hand for something like that. Not like you need a 3 inch-pound wrench all that often....
Presumably, it was enough of a selective factor among mastodon hunters that they tended to breed people tough enough to be stepped on by a mastodon and live to tell the tale?
Thought not.
Not enough people get into auto accidents, much less die of them, to have much impact on whatever traits are being selected for via natural selection.
They did the same with the old Forest-Fire (USS Forrestal) when it came time to turn it into razor blades....
Note that obscene speech is NOT illegal in the USA. Absent a threat, speech is not, in and of itself, illegal at all....
Yeppers.
Of course, it requires the vote of 2/3 of the House of Representatives, plus 2/3 of the Senate. Then it requires 38 States to approve the change.
Good luck on getting 2/3 of Congress to approve of toilet paper, much less repealing the First Amendment.
And we're likelier to see another Civil War than we are to see 38 States approve such a thing.....
Saw an article last week (early this week?) discussing the origin of the whole business.
Apparently, it got started with a Sears ad with a typo - the ad included a number to "call Santa", but a misprint gave a number to a NORAD watch officer (from TFA, the phone number was supposed to be known only to the watch officer and the duty general in the Pentagon),
Anyways, long story shortened, some kids called the number, NORAD guys went slightly apeshit that their secret phone was on a Sears ad, but they decided to play along with it, and since then, NORAD has been "tracking Santa"....