His first act, if you'll recall, was to let the Muslim world know that the US wasn't at war with them, rather the factions that support terrorism.
You obviously never paid any attention to Bush's speeches after 9/11. He very specifically said that the US wasn't at war with Islam, but with the people who twisted Islam into something that could support things like 9/11.
So, basically, Obama did the same thing that Bush did, but said it in an even nicer way?
If it seemed like you were 60% towards that goal, and giving you the Nobel Peace Prize would push you over the hump and give you the political capital to get you much nearer to 100%, they would probably give it to you.
I take it that you believe that Obama is 60% of the way towards his goal, then?
If so, what, exactly, has he accomplished in that 60%?
On the other hand, Tutu was working to bring Apartheid down long before '84.
I've not heard of anything Obama has done to work toward a peaceful resolution to Iraq and Afghanistan yet, much less to make the world a better place.
In a lot of ways, I think that this is a better use of the prize; not to recognize achievements after the fact, but to encourage and foster new achievements that might not have happened without the award.
I trust I'll get it next year, then.
After all, I've done nothing really to deserve it, but I just might do something "that might not have happened without the award" if I get it.
Wow, so in your world affordable health care is "insane" but blowing billions of dollars on a war is business as usual? Where do you people come from?
Have you actually looked at the Health Care Reforms that have been proposed in Congress? They're not going to make health care more affordable, they're not going to provide universal coverage. If they pass as written, the main thing they're going to do is increase the revenues of the current Health Insurance companies by about 10%.
Surely you remember those current Health Insurance companies? The ones largely blamed for the problems with American healthcare? Yah, those guys will make more money, the rest of us will spend more money, and Congress will call it good.
They have done this before, for example they gave the price to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 because he was trying to open up the Soviet Union.
And here I thought Gorbachev got his for what he did in Eastern Europe in '89 and '90 - allowing it to open itself up without interference. And not preventing the opening of the Wall. That sort of thing.
In other words, it isn't how liberal Obama is or how Conservative Bush is, it's about competence.
Okay, I'll bite. What, in the description you provided, implies any sort of "competence" on Obama's part?
From the text you provided, seems more a matter of "appearances" than of "competence"....
Obama may turn out to be the greatest President in US history. He may earn that Peace Prize several times before he's done. But so far, he's done nothing to earn the silly thing, and awarding it to him makes the committee look like a bunch of morons dazzled by P.R.
This is part of the problem -- too many people think a meal has to include slices of meat, otherwise it's not a real meal.
I cooked a risotto earlier. It was delicious, one of the best meals I've made this year. It happened to be vegetarian (I used butter) but it doesn't make it less of a meal than the vaguely-Chinese meal with pork strips with noodles I made yesterday.
No, this isn't part of the problem. Part of the problem is people who think that everyone should eat like they do.
I have no particular objection to meals without meat, I had one last night. Nor do I have any particular interest in them. I can go to most any Italian restaurant around here and take my pick of meals with meat, without meat, whichever I happen to have a yen for at the moment.
Oddly enough, most steak houses I frequent don't actually require that I have steak (or, indeed, any meat at all) with my meal.
Vegan restaurants, alas, do not offer me the choice of meat or no meat. And I'd rather have the choice, thank you.
(Or going to a vegan restaurant, they know what they're doing.)
Unless the Vegan restaurants over there serve a lot more steaks than the ones over here, I think I'll take my chances on the pub fare. Though some curry would be nice...
Isaac Asimov did NOT write that story, which was full of the numerous illogical holes typical of Hollywood. In Asimov's actual stories, the Three Laws were NEVER violated, and nobody ever was killed by a robot.
Of course, in one of the Daneel Olivaw stories, someone was killed WITH a robot. Robot had interchangable extremities, and had been told by the murderer to hand his owner his arm when next the owner got really angry (owner had anger-management issues), and the owner then used the arm to beat to death the guy he was having an argument with....
Why take starlight as-is when you can use solar collectors to gather it up and power a laser to drive your sail?
Here's a handy tip: next time you fall in a hole, you can get out by lifting yourself by your own bootstraps.
Of course, your example just shows you don't know what he's talking about. You build the solar collectors in orbit around Mercury, and then aim the laser at the solar sail in deep space.
Robert Forward even showed how you can use one of them to decelerate when you get where you're going - basically, you release about 3/4 of your lightsail, and focus that section so that the laserlight, reflected off the larger section of lightsail shines on the smaller one, decelerating it relative to your start point.
Hmmm, look at who was running the government when abusive monopolies are formed and re-formed, and who is running the government when the DOJ issues antitrust tickets?
Hmm, the previous IBM antitrust case was started under the Republicans, and dismissed under the Republicans. The behaviour that caused the previous case would have been happening under the Democrats (and presumably the Republicans, since it wouldn't have come to a trial if the behaviour had been stopped a year or so earlier).
The current case will be (if it is started t all) started under the Democrats, and the behaviour happened under the Republicans (and, presumably the Democrats, since they wouldn't bring charges if the behaviour had stopped last year).
No comment on who will be in charge when this is dropped, though at least part of it was dropped already, under the Democrats.
Posted too soon, I did. Should have checked the source of the picture first.
What we have accompanying the article on Apophis is a picture of Asteroid 253 Mathilde. Apparently pulled off the NASA website at random by the author's of TFA.
Hmm. Let's ignore the scale line on the picture. Comparing that picture to other pictures of Apophis, I don't think that's even a picture of Apophis. Apophis is double-lobed, and this basically looks like an egg.
Actually, come to that, it looks like Phobos. Scale is still off, Phobos isn't 60+ km across either, but that big crater is pretty distinctive.
So, basically you're saying that the other 1.8 million people in prison in the USA don't count?
Hint: the federal prison population consists of people violating federal laws. Murder, arson, assault, rape, things like that? State laws cover them, unless committed on Federal land or against officers of the Federal government.
Ditto for most property crimes.
Drug crimes, on the other hand, include a lot of smuggling into the country. Which is federal territory.
Hence a large number of drug offenders in Federal Prison, but a small number in State prisons. Note, by the by, that more than half of all drug offenders in the nation are in Federal Prison, while only about 3% of the violent criminals are so incarcerated.
Note also that that "higher incarceration rate than any other nation" includes State prisons as well as Federal ones (based on the fact that the numbers that go with the claim are in the millions, rather than less than 200,000).
While it's a relief that half of the prisoners aren't in there for drugs, fully one in five inmates are incarcerated for drugs.
And your point is?
I was not trying to suggest that ANYONE should be incarcerated for drug offenses. Merely that the guy I was responding to was full of crap for suggesting that "most" (his word, not mine) of our prison population was for "minor drug offenses".
He was wrong about that.
You, on the other hand, are wrong in assuming that my comment indicated any sort of tacit approval for imprisoning people for drug crimes.
Considering most of them are in their for minor drug charges and are no more evil than you or me...
Oddly enough, when I start googling for statistics to support your statement, I find things that say that there are fewer Drug offenders in prison that people convicted of Property crimes, and fewer of both those groups combined than people convicted of Violent crimes.
In other words, drug charges, major or minor, account for about 22% of the prison population in the USA.
Oh, and 55% of the prison population are in for violent crimes, and the remainder for property crimes.
Nevertheless everyone who looks at the different other civilizations, and where to split them will agree with the massive split that existed, for example between Inca's and Maya's.
You almost convinced me that you weren't totally clueless, until this point.
In case you weren't aware, the Incas were an Andean civilization, and the Mayans a Central American one. Neither had the slightest thing to do with each other, so it wasn't a case of "one fell, the other rose in its ashes". It would've been about as insightful to discuss the "massive split that existed, for example, between Chinese and Zulus"...
Perhaps if you'd said "Mayan and Aztec", you might've appeared to be less clueless, but, alas, you didn't.
Neither of those was really about "interplanetary war".
Ender's Game was a book about "how we fight", really. The whole book was about training leaders. The fact that the war was interplanetary (interstellar, even) was largely irrelevant. Note that the entire story took place within a school.
Starship Troopers was about "why we fight". Again, the fact that the war was interplanetary (interstellar, even) was largely irrelevant. Note that, even here, the book spent far more time talking about training (of soldiers and officers) than actually fighting (two battle in the entire book, covering between them less than one day of the lead character's life).
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What has he accomplished in such a short time? Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything. Other than getting the 2016 Olympics for Chicago...
You obviously never paid any attention to Bush's speeches after 9/11. He very specifically said that the US wasn't at war with Islam, but with the people who twisted Islam into something that could support things like 9/11.
So, basically, Obama did the same thing that Bush did, but said it in an even nicer way?
I take it that you believe that Obama is 60% of the way towards his goal, then?
If so, what, exactly, has he accomplished in that 60%?
He might deserve the Peace Prize someday.
Today, it's just a bad joke.
I've not heard of anything Obama has done to work toward a peaceful resolution to Iraq and Afghanistan yet, much less to make the world a better place.
I trust I'll get it next year, then.
After all, I've done nothing really to deserve it, but I just might do something "that might not have happened without the award" if I get it.
Stupidest reason ever for the Peace Prize.
A nuke free world can't be taken lightly. But Obama has done nothing to even move us in that direction.
Have you actually looked at the Health Care Reforms that have been proposed in Congress? They're not going to make health care more affordable, they're not going to provide universal coverage. If they pass as written, the main thing they're going to do is increase the revenues of the current Health Insurance companies by about 10%.
Surely you remember those current Health Insurance companies? The ones largely blamed for the problems with American healthcare? Yah, those guys will make more money, the rest of us will spend more money, and Congress will call it good.
And here I thought Gorbachev got his for what he did in Eastern Europe in '89 and '90 - allowing it to open itself up without interference. And not preventing the opening of the Wall. That sort of thing.
Okay, I'll bite. What, in the description you provided, implies any sort of "competence" on Obama's part?
From the text you provided, seems more a matter of "appearances" than of "competence"....
Obama may turn out to be the greatest President in US history. He may earn that Peace Prize several times before he's done. But so far, he's done nothing to earn the silly thing, and awarding it to him makes the committee look like a bunch of morons dazzled by P.R.
No, this isn't part of the problem. Part of the problem is people who think that everyone should eat like they do.
I have no particular objection to meals without meat, I had one last night. Nor do I have any particular interest in them. I can go to most any Italian restaurant around here and take my pick of meals with meat, without meat, whichever I happen to have a yen for at the moment.
Oddly enough, most steak houses I frequent don't actually require that I have steak (or, indeed, any meat at all) with my meal.
Vegan restaurants, alas, do not offer me the choice of meat or no meat. And I'd rather have the choice, thank you.
Unless the Vegan restaurants over there serve a lot more steaks than the ones over here, I think I'll take my chances on the pub fare. Though some curry would be nice...
Of course, in one of the Daneel Olivaw stories, someone was killed WITH a robot. Robot had interchangable extremities, and had been told by the murderer to hand his owner his arm when next the owner got really angry (owner had anger-management issues), and the owner then used the arm to beat to death the guy he was having an argument with....
Of course, your example just shows you don't know what he's talking about. You build the solar collectors in orbit around Mercury, and then aim the laser at the solar sail in deep space.
Robert Forward even showed how you can use one of them to decelerate when you get where you're going - basically, you release about 3/4 of your lightsail, and focus that section so that the laserlight, reflected off the larger section of lightsail shines on the smaller one, decelerating it relative to your start point.
Hmm, the previous IBM antitrust case was started under the Republicans, and dismissed under the Republicans. The behaviour that caused the previous case would have been happening under the Democrats (and presumably the Republicans, since it wouldn't have come to a trial if the behaviour had been stopped a year or so earlier).
The current case will be (if it is started t all) started under the Democrats, and the behaviour happened under the Republicans (and, presumably the Democrats, since they wouldn't bring charges if the behaviour had stopped last year).
No comment on who will be in charge when this is dropped, though at least part of it was dropped already, under the Democrats.
Your point was?
Or, in the case of dissection, "hands-in"....
Posted too soon, I did. Should have checked the source of the picture first.
What we have accompanying the article on Apophis is a picture of Asteroid 253 Mathilde. Apparently pulled off the NASA website at random by the author's of TFA.
Actually, come to that, it looks like Phobos. Scale is still off, Phobos isn't 60+ km across either, but that big crater is pretty distinctive.
So, basically you're saying that the other 1.8 million people in prison in the USA don't count?
Hint: the federal prison population consists of people violating federal laws. Murder, arson, assault, rape, things like that? State laws cover them, unless committed on Federal land or against officers of the Federal government.
Ditto for most property crimes.
Drug crimes, on the other hand, include a lot of smuggling into the country. Which is federal territory.
Hence a large number of drug offenders in Federal Prison, but a small number in State prisons. Note, by the by, that more than half of all drug offenders in the nation are in Federal Prison, while only about 3% of the violent criminals are so incarcerated.
Note also that that "higher incarceration rate than any other nation" includes State prisons as well as Federal ones (based on the fact that the numbers that go with the claim are in the millions, rather than less than 200,000).
Looks bigger than that in the picture.
Of course, the text also said it was less than two football fields long, not two and a half football fields. Who writes this stuff?
And your point is?
I was not trying to suggest that ANYONE should be incarcerated for drug offenses. Merely that the guy I was responding to was full of crap for suggesting that "most" (his word, not mine) of our prison population was for "minor drug offenses".
He was wrong about that.
You, on the other hand, are wrong in assuming that my comment indicated any sort of tacit approval for imprisoning people for drug crimes.
Oddly enough, when I start googling for statistics to support your statement, I find things that say that there are fewer Drug offenders in prison that people convicted of Property crimes, and fewer of both those groups combined than people convicted of Violent crimes.
In other words, drug charges, major or minor, account for about 22% of the prison population in the USA.
Oh, and 55% of the prison population are in for violent crimes, and the remainder for property crimes.
You almost convinced me that you weren't totally clueless, until this point.
In case you weren't aware, the Incas were an Andean civilization, and the Mayans a Central American one. Neither had the slightest thing to do with each other, so it wasn't a case of "one fell, the other rose in its ashes". It would've been about as insightful to discuss the "massive split that existed, for example, between Chinese and Zulus"...
Perhaps if you'd said "Mayan and Aztec", you might've appeared to be less clueless, but, alas, you didn't.
Neither of those was really about "interplanetary war".
Ender's Game was a book about "how we fight", really. The whole book was about training leaders. The fact that the war was interplanetary (interstellar, even) was largely irrelevant. Note that the entire story took place within a school.
Starship Troopers was about "why we fight". Again, the fact that the war was interplanetary (interstellar, even) was largely irrelevant. Note that, even here, the book spent far more time talking about training (of soldiers and officers) than actually fighting (two battle in the entire book, covering between them less than one day of the lead character's life).