The technology may be there. But has anyone bothered to specify a complete, consistent set of requirements? Reliable, secure, and permanent records aren't requirements, they're just a wishlist. Provide details.
Nonsense! He found, among other things, a particularly good death mask, and said "I have gazed upon the face of Agememnon."
No indication that he believed that he had actually found Agamemnon's gravesite, though he clearly found one of the gravesites used by the Mycenean kings (bandit warlords is probably a better description than "kings", by the way)....
The one thing that I believe needs to be addressed in this country over anything else is governmental efficiency. Government gives out grants for the most trivial of things. It really needs a kick in the pants to start acting like it is there to serve the people, not provide jobs for the people. If government were run like a business the US could easily rule the world, and we would have twice the standard of living of any other country. Corporation jokes aside, the patriot act should be repealed and replaced with a lighter bill that:
1. Does in no way infringe upon the constitution
2. Makes it easier to gain warrants, but citizens subject to an arrest on suspision of terrorism must be charged and not just held in Guantanamo.
Personally, I prefer governmental inefficiency. They have 2 trillion dollars a year to spend. If they were efficient, they'd be dangerous with that amount of money. And it's not like "efficiency" would cause them to reduce the amount of money coming in (and being spent).
Second, your two objectives for PATRIOT-lite are mutually exclusive. The Consitution talks about warrants, if you'll remember - making them easier to obtain would violate said Constitution (unless we amended that part out of it )
on another subject - Bush ? Kerry. Anyone have any evidence that Kerry would repeal (or even bother to try) the PATRIOT Act if elected?
How about the Second Amendment? I've never heard that he has voted against any gun-control bills.
The First? He voted for the BCRA, which makes him anti-First Amendment as well.
As to voting my conscience, I do. However, let's ask what "your conscience" tells you:
if you find one of the R/D pair too disgusting for words, and the other objectionable, but not so much that you could NOT hold your nose and vote for him, then a vote for a third party candidate is a vote for the one who is too disgusting for words - after all, HE didn't lose a vote when you voted independent, the one you MIGHT have voted for barring an independent candidate lost a vote. Which is why Clinton won both times - too many on the right were offended by Bush, voted Perot, and handed election to Bill. Same thing happened, in reverse, in Bush?Gore - Nader took enough votes from Gore (who on the right would vote Nader?) to cost Gore the election.
for the most part, Presidential candidates try their best to sit in the middle on every issue (after the election, it's a whole new ball game, of course). So independent candidates tend to be more extreme, rather than less.
It is true that the parties have switched positions more than once. Within my lifetime, the Democrats have moved from "Big Government is good"(Kennedy/LBJ) to "Big Government is bad"(Nixon/Ford/Carter) to "Big Government is good" (Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush), and the Republicans have made similar shifts, but starting at "bad". If and when the Democrats or Republicans switch on any of *my* fundamental issues, then I'll change my position from "mostly Republican" to "mostly Democrat" (yes, I actually vote "D" from time to time, even for a Senator or two).
Big problem with voting a third party is that you mostly just weaken the least objectionable (to you) of the major parties. Now, if one of the major parties is imploding (as happened when the Republicans came on the scene), then there is plenty of room for a third party to grow. Realistically, if a third party has no representation in Congress, it's a waste of time to vote for them for President.
Theoritically the government only has the rights that the people allow it to.
the government has the powers that we allow it. Only people have rights.
It is an important distinction, since it implies that while there are things the government is forbidden to ever do (abridge freedom of speech ), there is nothing that we cannot forbid the government to do.
Theoretically, of course
Nope, spend a lot of time in the kitchen.
Anyways, yes, have the oven at head height (chest height, rather). You don't have to have the range on top of the oven - look at a lot of newer kitchens with the oven wall-mounted and the range on an island. Makes much more sense. Then you don't need to have the door to rest things on, just reach in at normal height (or have a slide-out rack).
Have you ever considered a 20 pound (9 kilo for the metric types among us) turkey, plus dressing, within that context? Have you asked your wife about it?
For that matter, have you considered "reaching in" to that nice, hot oven with the turkey inside? It had better be one huge oven, or you're going to have some lovely burns on your arms/hands as you attempt to baste the the thing while inside the oven.
Please note that I do NOT spend a lot of time in the kitchen, but my wife had a few things to say about oven doors swinging up, and ovens at chest height. And while she concedes the latter is done quite a bit these days, she also points out that more often than not, the lady of the house asks her husband to put the turkey in/remove it from such ovens....
Note further that "lady of the house" is my phrasing, not her's. She'd kill me if she knew I used it to describe her.
MY own opinions - a door swinging upward would not prevent heat from escaping the oven, since the entire front of the oven would still be open. Freezer doors that open horizontally (like an ice chest) have been done forever, on large floor deep freezes, such as my mother has in her pantry - works quite well. However, you couldn't practically put a fridge on top of it, or it on top of a fridge, so it would double the floor space required for the combined functionality. At least. Which is not a big deal if you have a big freezer, but for the usual freezer compartment-sized box, it would be impractical.
Large, clear windows in either oven or fridge would tend to be points where heat escapes, either inward or outward. They would reduce the efficiency of the unit somewhat. Whether this would be overcome by the lessened need to open the door is debatable. And besides, how long do you actually spend with the door open when you reach in for a beer/steak/whatever? Would it be appreciably shortened if you could see it in advance? Don't know about the rest of you, but I know where pretty much anything I'll be wanting normally is inside my fridge, and seldom have to actually root around in there looking for things.
And finally, please note that even eskimos use fridges these days - keeps stuff much warmer than outdoors, thus allowing you to thaw things faster. A fridge/freezer is all about controlled temperature, not low temperature per se. Sure, low compared to the inside of the house, but not necessarily low compared to the outdoors.
Change your machinegun date to ~1914. In 1865, black-powder gatling guns were not considered nearly as significant a threat as rifled cannon, much less repeating rifles - they fouled too quickly to maintain fire for more than a few minutes without a thorough cleaning. Even worse, the smoke cloud from their firing made it impossible for the gunners to aim after more than a minute or so.
That said, we have indeed a great deal more capacity for "terror" than most people are willing to admit, since all those terrible weapons of the past have been used, and have not, in fact, made war too terrible to contemplate.
Which doesn't mean that the next "weapon so nasty it will make war unthinkable" will be like the last umpteen. I tend to think we'll adapt quite nicely to the next generation of super-weapons, but then, I tend to think we'll get clobbered by an asteroid while we maunder on about the at some conference in the future....
Take my word for it...as we gradually run out of oil [economist.com], (and we will reach the halfway mark sometime between 2015-2030 according to that article), the rising costs, scarcity and worries will spark many more serious wars than the current one (of which oil is the root cause, I believe) a long time before the "final crunch".
It remains to be seen if we will have a future left to worry/fantasize about if the current world scenario continues down it's plunging curve.
How very "Club of Rome"! Seems to me they said the same thing, but dated more or less now, 30 years ago.
It doesn't. When Hubble was designed, NASA were claiming that the shuttle would fly fifty times a year and launch payloads for $250 a pound, so repair made sense. Now that it actually flies four or five times a year and payload costs $25,000 a pound, it doesn't make much sense...
A shame that we weren't willing to finance the fleet of 20 or so shuttles required for that 50 launches a year.
Especially given that a shuttle a week would have meant that making reapirs to a damaged shuttle at ISS would have been a trivial exercise - you wouldn't have to wait more than a few days for the next scheduled flight. Hell, you could just leave the broken one in orbit and ride back on the next scheduled flight, and fix the damaged one at your leisure.
Shuttle was a good idea, but the idea was massacred by the budget people before it ever got past the design stage - four of them was never enough to make them worthwhile. They could only be worth having if dozens were flying.
Here's hoping the Chinese continue to push their own manned space program. Maybe if the Chinese send men to the moon, we'll wake up and get back on track toward Mars and beyond.
The telescope is to be situated at L2 because that is well shaded by the earth, and already has a sunshade to keep the telecope body reasonably cool
L2 is shaded by the earth? When did they move it?
Last I looked, L2 is the stable point beyond the moon, which should leave it in direct sunlight pretty much all the time. It may be eclipsed for rather less than an hour at a time a couple times a year, at most.
L2 is shaded FROM the earth, not BY the earth. An important distinction.
Prime example is airport "security". Everyone went crazy after 9/11, and of course the vast majority of the measures currently in place would not have stopped what happened. And if these measures were in place in 2001, the hijackers would have done something different.
But when it was fresh in people's minds, implementing more "security" at airports sounded good all of a sudden. Nevermind what a pain in the ass it is to fly 2.5 years later, with no real amount of added security
The flaw in the reasoning here is that what "we, the people" wanted after 9/11 was more effective security at airports. We didn't actually want more make-work security, that inconveniences us without actually making us safer.
I think if we had been told, "Look, we can't give you better security without requiring a ten hour wait at the airports and an FBI-level background check on all passengers, but we CAN give you a two hour wait that looks like real security! How about that instead?", that we would have laughed uproariously, told them not to bother, and gone about our lives....
The Brady Law requires that background checks be performed by the Feds within three business days (if possible - it is not an automagic downcheck on the sale if the background check is not completed in a timely manner). Records related to the sale (except the paperwork the dealer is required to maintain under older firearms regulations) are requierd to be destroyed after the check is complete.
And yet, the Feds have been maintaining this information (unlawfully) for extended periods, ostensibly for statistical analysis.
So don't be too sure that any of those records in Florida will ever disappear.
Actually, wasn't referring to the Biblical text per-se, but to the Middle Eastern culture it derived from.
Both "1000" and "40" were used, then, to refer to "an indefinitely large number". Never mind that "40" isn't even a large number of sheep. If you wanted to count sheep, you'd do it. If you saw a whole bunch of sheep running off a cliff, you'd refer to 40 sheep. Or 1000, depending on how big a fish story you meant to tell.
Note that "41" isn't "an idefinitely large number". It's just 41. But, 40 and 1000 were special that way.
and I lived in Mississippi a few years back. Isn't hotter in summer, really, but we're getting colder winters pretty regular - when I was a kid, it never snowed. Now it snows every couple-three years.
Went through part of their Global Climate change exhibit online. Interesting that they admit that natural forces were partially responsible for the warming trend of the last century.
Even more interesting that they show a climate model without human influence in comparison to the same one with himan influence. While the two are different (without models the first part of the century well, with models the last part well, both model the middle well), they are less different than the two climate models that they use to predict the results of continuing the trend for another 100 years.
Too bad they didn't show a model with only human influence, no natural influences. Might have been a useful sanity check. Or not.
Please state the list of rights that you have lost
the right to run a TV ad mentioning Ralph Nader within 30 days of an election for which he is a candidate?
"political speech" used to be the least restricted form of "free speech" - now it is arguably the most restricted.
And, yes, I know that as long as I could prove to the satisfaction of the FEC that I had had no contact with ANYONE connected to ANY of the presidential candidates campaigns that it would be perfectly ok for me to run my little ad. Problem being that proving such would be impossible, if only because I don't know the identities of everyone connected to all the candidates' campaigns. Much less keep detailed logs of who I talk to in the Walmart checkout lines....
Well, thats probably all the entertainment i got out of Andromida after the first episode. The quote "Did you see the size of him? He looks like some ancient Greek God or something!" did it
Wish I'd seen that one, I might have actually watched the show. Nothing wrong with a show that's willing to make fun of itself from time to time....
The Middle East was a battleground long before oil meant anything.
But for completely different reasons.
The Middle East is pretty much the crossroads between Africa, Asia and Europe. Not only did important trade routes pass through it, (e.g. Silk Road, Suez Canal), an army going from point A to point B was going to have to pass through the Middle East on its way. Think Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians. Think Alexander or the Romans pushing their empire into Asia.
With fast and reliable worldwide ocean navigation, air travel, and now information based commerce, these kind of gepolitical and geoeconomic factors just aren't as important as they used to be. The Middle East simply is not the kind of choke point for world trade it once was.
So pretty much these days the importance of the middle east is oil. This is why we are worried about Iraq and Saudi Arabia, rather than Jordan or Syria.
How long ago do you think the Suez Canal was built?
Your reasoning is mostly sound, but for one thing. You are mistaking US interest in the Middle East (it's just an oilfield) for everyone's interest. Given the presence of the Holy sites of three (four if you care about Zoroastrian Holy S\sites) major religions, the Suez Canal (back door to the Med, and shortcut from Asia to Europe), and populations that don't like each other, and never have (Turks, Arabs, Persians, Jews, Armenians, subsets of all those groups), it is likely they will still fight even after the oil is gone.
It is true that with the oil removed from the picture that noone outside the area will give a rat's ass what happens there. As has been said, it'll be like Rwanda - ignored as much as is humanly possible (and that's a LOT!)
It's written that the earth was created in 7 days. There are some places (I can't cite them ATM) saying that one day in God's time is 1000 years to us mortals.
I think you are misunderstanding an archaic reference. "1000" was frequently used to mean "an indefintely large", in much the same was as "40" was. "it rained for 40 days and nights" should be read as "it rained a really long time".
If you're really concerned with the Six Days of Creation, consider that there was no Sun (and therefore, no "day") until the Third Day.
Keep in mind also that the Book of Genesis is the transcription of previously extant history/mythology of no certain dating. Unlike the rest of the Pentateuch (sp?), which are nominally rules for living handed down by God, and which are actually (whatever the source) an enormously practical set of guidelines for living, plus the census data, plus the history of Moses' time (nominally, the transcriber).
If you take the Creation parts of Genesis as allegorical, they don't match up too terribly badly to current thinking, so long as you keep in mind that a "day" means "an indefinite amount of time" - start with the Big Bang ("Let there be light"), and work forward....
Religion wouldn't work if it could be tested, because it requires faith. Religionists offering "proof, evidence, and successful tests" are only succumbing to the general trends towards scientific acceptance and religious rejection, and are fighting a losing battle.
"Religion" being unprovable ("requiring faith") is actually a relatively recent idea. More or less corresponding to the beginning of the scientific era.
Back in the pre-scientific times, the concept of a "Creator" was considered self-evident. Possibly due to the way that our heads are wired, possibly due to the nature of indo-aryan languages (the whole subject-verb-object thing).
Note that a "Creator" is essentially unprovable, though. Or, at least, I can't think of any way to prove it without presupposing certain characteristics to the "Creator". Even then, all you'd disprove by your test's failure is that those characteristics are not characteristic of the "Creator". I think. Well, I think I think.
Also, if you think that your description of Christianity is accurate (or even reasonable exageration), you should try going back to the Gospels. What you describe is the result of 2000 years of searching for sermons of a Sunday. It has little relation to the original Gospels. Which is why the Protestant Reformation happened, though the accretion of ideas to protestantism has continued since that particular break from the previous 1500 years of sermon ideas.
The "afterlife" is, of course, merely a matter of waiting, as you assert. We'll all know the answer by and by.
However, "Judgement Day" (unless you mean the T3 movie) is an example of "apocalytpic (sp?) literature". That is, it has certain characteristic forms which are irrelevant to the actual message (sort of like the way music videos have pretty girls dancing, no matter the subject of the song). If you check, you'll find that the Revelation of St John is a thinly disguised diatribe against the Roman Empire, dressed up with a great deal of Babylonian imagery courtesy of the Book of Daniel, which got the Babylonian imagery from the original source (Babylon, in case that's not obvious). I've never understood why it was included in the Bible, unless it was, in fact, written by the Apostle John ("St John" does NOT imply Apostle John, necessarily). It is the only book of "prophesy" in the New Testament, and its inclusion is problematic at best, given that "prophesy" ended with the coming of the Messiah.
but there is an unambiguous fact, it's legalInterestingly enough, in 1860 in the USA, slavery was legal. Should I assume that you consider it wrong that people opposed slavery during the period leading to the Civil War?
The whole damned thing could have been won after 1st manassis. nothern generals before Grant became eastern theatre commander were fairly lame. However, the south didn't make the move. If they had followed the nothern army on the retreat, they would have been able to take DC on the first day of the war. That would more than likely be called 'winning' -- capturing the enemy capitol in record time. yup.
Probably not. Capture of Washington DC might have meant something if Congress and the President were captured with it, but not otherwise.
Most likely result if Washington had been captured, and the Government had escaped, was that the fighting on that particular front would have had significantly less importance in the war as a whole. Note that the really important parts of defeating the Confederacy happened elsewhere - taking control of the Mississippi, Sherman's March to the Sea. Those events were more militarily significant than the fighting between Washington and Richmond (which only happened because Washington and Richmond were so close together - neither city was especially important).
Note also that the British captured Washington in the War of 1812. That did not have any real effect on the outcome of the war, though it probably bothered Dolly quite a lot.
Slashdot Mirror
The technology may be there. But has anyone bothered to specify a complete, consistent set of requirements? Reliable, secure, and permanent records aren't requirements, they're just a wishlist. Provide details.
5 billion people survived the destruction of ALL agricultural plants? What did they eat, the other 5 billion?
Nonsense! He found, among other things, a particularly good death mask, and said "I have gazed upon the face of Agememnon." No indication that he believed that he had actually found Agamemnon's gravesite, though he clearly found one of the gravesites used by the Mycenean kings (bandit warlords is probably a better description than "kings", by the way)....
Personally, I prefer governmental inefficiency. They have 2 trillion dollars a year to spend. If they were efficient, they'd be dangerous with that amount of money. And it's not like "efficiency" would cause them to reduce the amount of money coming in (and being spent).
Second, your two objectives for PATRIOT-lite are mutually exclusive. The Consitution talks about warrants, if you'll remember - making them easier to obtain would violate said Constitution (unless we amended that part out of it )
on another subject - Bush ? Kerry. Anyone have any evidence that Kerry would repeal (or even bother to try) the PATRIOT Act if elected?
How about the Second Amendment? I've never heard that he has voted against any gun-control bills.
The First? He voted for the BCRA, which makes him anti-First Amendment as well.
As to voting my conscience, I do. However, let's ask what "your conscience" tells you:
if you find one of the R/D pair too disgusting for words, and the other objectionable, but not so much that you could NOT hold your nose and vote for him, then a vote for a third party candidate is a vote for the one who is too disgusting for words - after all, HE didn't lose a vote when you voted independent, the one you MIGHT have voted for barring an independent candidate lost a vote. Which is why Clinton won both times - too many on the right were offended by Bush, voted Perot, and handed election to Bill. Same thing happened, in reverse, in Bush?Gore - Nader took enough votes from Gore (who on the right would vote Nader?) to cost Gore the election.
for the most part, Presidential candidates try their best to sit in the middle on every issue (after the election, it's a whole new ball game, of course). So independent candidates tend to be more extreme, rather than less.
It is true that the parties have switched positions more than once. Within my lifetime, the Democrats have moved from "Big Government is good"(Kennedy/LBJ) to "Big Government is bad"(Nixon/Ford/Carter) to "Big Government is good" (Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush), and the Republicans have made similar shifts, but starting at "bad". If and when the Democrats or Republicans switch on any of *my* fundamental issues, then I'll change my position from "mostly Republican" to "mostly Democrat" (yes, I actually vote "D" from time to time, even for a Senator or two).
Big problem with voting a third party is that you mostly just weaken the least objectionable (to you) of the major parties. Now, if one of the major parties is imploding (as happened when the Republicans came on the scene), then there is plenty of room for a third party to grow. Realistically, if a third party has no representation in Congress, it's a waste of time to vote for them for President.
the government has the powers that we allow it. Only people have rights.
It is an important distinction, since it implies that while there are things the government is forbidden to ever do (abridge freedom of speech ), there is nothing that we cannot forbid the government to do. Theoretically, of course
Have you ever considered a 20 pound (9 kilo for the metric types among us) turkey, plus dressing, within that context? Have you asked your wife about it?
For that matter, have you considered "reaching in" to that nice, hot oven with the turkey inside? It had better be one huge oven, or you're going to have some lovely burns on your arms/hands as you attempt to baste the the thing while inside the oven.
Please note that I do NOT spend a lot of time in the kitchen, but my wife had a few things to say about oven doors swinging up, and ovens at chest height. And while she concedes the latter is done quite a bit these days, she also points out that more often than not, the lady of the house asks her husband to put the turkey in/remove it from such ovens....
Note further that "lady of the house" is my phrasing, not her's. She'd kill me if she knew I used it to describe her.
MY own opinions - a door swinging upward would not prevent heat from escaping the oven, since the entire front of the oven would still be open. Freezer doors that open horizontally (like an ice chest) have been done forever, on large floor deep freezes, such as my mother has in her pantry - works quite well. However, you couldn't practically put a fridge on top of it, or it on top of a fridge, so it would double the floor space required for the combined functionality. At least. Which is not a big deal if you have a big freezer, but for the usual freezer compartment-sized box, it would be impractical.
Large, clear windows in either oven or fridge would tend to be points where heat escapes, either inward or outward. They would reduce the efficiency of the unit somewhat. Whether this would be overcome by the lessened need to open the door is debatable. And besides, how long do you actually spend with the door open when you reach in for a beer/steak/whatever? Would it be appreciably shortened if you could see it in advance? Don't know about the rest of you, but I know where pretty much anything I'll be wanting normally is inside my fridge, and seldom have to actually root around in there looking for things.
And finally, please note that even eskimos use fridges these days - keeps stuff much warmer than outdoors, thus allowing you to thaw things faster. A fridge/freezer is all about controlled temperature, not low temperature per se. Sure, low compared to the inside of the house, but not necessarily low compared to the outdoors.
That said, we have indeed a great deal more capacity for "terror" than most people are willing to admit, since all those terrible weapons of the past have been used, and have not, in fact, made war too terrible to contemplate.
Which doesn't mean that the next "weapon so nasty it will make war unthinkable" will be like the last umpteen. I tend to think we'll adapt quite nicely to the next generation of super-weapons, but then, I tend to think we'll get clobbered by an asteroid while we maunder on about the at some conference in the future....
How very "Club of Rome"! Seems to me they said the same thing, but dated more or less now, 30 years ago.
A shame that we weren't willing to finance the fleet of 20 or so shuttles required for that 50 launches a year.
Especially given that a shuttle a week would have meant that making reapirs to a damaged shuttle at ISS would have been a trivial exercise - you wouldn't have to wait more than a few days for the next scheduled flight. Hell, you could just leave the broken one in orbit and ride back on the next scheduled flight, and fix the damaged one at your leisure.
Shuttle was a good idea, but the idea was massacred by the budget people before it ever got past the design stage - four of them was never enough to make them worthwhile. They could only be worth having if dozens were flying.
Here's hoping the Chinese continue to push their own manned space program. Maybe if the Chinese send men to the moon, we'll wake up and get back on track toward Mars and beyond.
L2 is shaded by the earth? When did they move it?
Last I looked, L2 is the stable point beyond the moon, which should leave it in direct sunlight pretty much all the time. It may be eclipsed for rather less than an hour at a time a couple times a year, at most.
L2 is shaded FROM the earth, not BY the earth. An important distinction.
The flaw in the reasoning here is that what "we, the people" wanted after 9/11 was more effective security at airports. We didn't actually want more make-work security, that inconveniences us without actually making us safer.
I think if we had been told, "Look, we can't give you better security without requiring a ten hour wait at the airports and an FBI-level background check on all passengers, but we CAN give you a two hour wait that looks like real security! How about that instead?", that we would have laughed uproariously, told them not to bother, and gone about our lives....
And yet, the Feds have been maintaining this information (unlawfully) for extended periods, ostensibly for statistical analysis.
So don't be too sure that any of those records in Florida will ever disappear.
is that even a word? in the english language, I mean. And if it is, it shouldn't be, so don't ever use it again.
Both "1000" and "40" were used, then, to refer to "an indefinitely large number". Never mind that "40" isn't even a large number of sheep. If you wanted to count sheep, you'd do it. If you saw a whole bunch of sheep running off a cliff, you'd refer to 40 sheep. Or 1000, depending on how big a fish story you meant to tell.
Note that "41" isn't "an idefinitely large number". It's just 41. But, 40 and 1000 were special that way.
Went through part of their Global Climate change exhibit online. Interesting that they admit that natural forces were partially responsible for the warming trend of the last century.
Even more interesting that they show a climate model without human influence in comparison to the same one with himan influence. While the two are different (without models the first part of the century well, with models the last part well, both model the middle well), they are less different than the two climate models that they use to predict the results of continuing the trend for another 100 years.
Too bad they didn't show a model with only human influence, no natural influences. Might have been a useful sanity check. Or not.
the right to run a TV ad mentioning Ralph Nader within 30 days of an election for which he is a candidate? "political speech" used to be the least restricted form of "free speech" - now it is arguably the most restricted. And, yes, I know that as long as I could prove to the satisfaction of the FEC that I had had no contact with ANYONE connected to ANY of the presidential candidates campaigns that it would be perfectly ok for me to run my little ad. Problem being that proving such would be impossible, if only because I don't know the identities of everyone connected to all the candidates' campaigns. Much less keep detailed logs of who I talk to in the Walmart checkout lines....
Wish I'd seen that one, I might have actually watched the show. Nothing wrong with a show that's willing to make fun of itself from time to time....
Kids are enterprising too. Wonder how many will be selling the notebooks themselves, rather than waiting for them to be stolen?
How long ago do you think the Suez Canal was built?
Your reasoning is mostly sound, but for one thing. You are mistaking US interest in the Middle East (it's just an oilfield) for everyone's interest. Given the presence of the Holy sites of three (four if you care about Zoroastrian Holy S\sites) major religions, the Suez Canal (back door to the Med, and shortcut from Asia to Europe), and populations that don't like each other, and never have (Turks, Arabs, Persians, Jews, Armenians, subsets of all those groups), it is likely they will still fight even after the oil is gone. It is true that with the oil removed from the picture that noone outside the area will give a rat's ass what happens there. As has been said, it'll be like Rwanda - ignored as much as is humanly possible (and that's a LOT!)
I think you are misunderstanding an archaic reference. "1000" was frequently used to mean "an indefintely large", in much the same was as "40" was. "it rained for 40 days and nights" should be read as "it rained a really long time".
If you're really concerned with the Six Days of Creation, consider that there was no Sun (and therefore, no "day") until the Third Day.
Keep in mind also that the Book of Genesis is the transcription of previously extant history/mythology of no certain dating. Unlike the rest of the Pentateuch (sp?), which are nominally rules for living handed down by God, and which are actually (whatever the source) an enormously practical set of guidelines for living, plus the census data, plus the history of Moses' time (nominally, the transcriber).
If you take the Creation parts of Genesis as allegorical, they don't match up too terribly badly to current thinking, so long as you keep in mind that a "day" means "an indefinite amount of time" - start with the Big Bang ("Let there be light"), and work forward....
Religion wouldn't work if it could be tested, because it requires faith. Religionists offering "proof, evidence, and successful tests" are only succumbing to the general trends towards scientific acceptance and religious rejection, and are fighting a losing battle. "Religion" being unprovable ("requiring faith") is actually a relatively recent idea. More or less corresponding to the beginning of the scientific era. Back in the pre-scientific times, the concept of a "Creator" was considered self-evident. Possibly due to the way that our heads are wired, possibly due to the nature of indo-aryan languages (the whole subject-verb-object thing). Note that a "Creator" is essentially unprovable, though. Or, at least, I can't think of any way to prove it without presupposing certain characteristics to the "Creator". Even then, all you'd disprove by your test's failure is that those characteristics are not characteristic of the "Creator". I think. Well, I think I think. Also, if you think that your description of Christianity is accurate (or even reasonable exageration), you should try going back to the Gospels. What you describe is the result of 2000 years of searching for sermons of a Sunday. It has little relation to the original Gospels. Which is why the Protestant Reformation happened, though the accretion of ideas to protestantism has continued since that particular break from the previous 1500 years of sermon ideas. The "afterlife" is, of course, merely a matter of waiting, as you assert. We'll all know the answer by and by. However, "Judgement Day" (unless you mean the T3 movie) is an example of "apocalytpic (sp?) literature". That is, it has certain characteristic forms which are irrelevant to the actual message (sort of like the way music videos have pretty girls dancing, no matter the subject of the song). If you check, you'll find that the Revelation of St John is a thinly disguised diatribe against the Roman Empire, dressed up with a great deal of Babylonian imagery courtesy of the Book of Daniel, which got the Babylonian imagery from the original source (Babylon, in case that's not obvious). I've never understood why it was included in the Bible, unless it was, in fact, written by the Apostle John ("St John" does NOT imply Apostle John, necessarily). It is the only book of "prophesy" in the New Testament, and its inclusion is problematic at best, given that "prophesy" ended with the coming of the Messiah.
but there is an unambiguous fact, it's legal Interestingly enough, in 1860 in the USA, slavery was legal. Should I assume that you consider it wrong that people opposed slavery during the period leading to the Civil War?
In Louisiana, your car is considered an extension of your house.
The whole damned thing could have been won after 1st manassis. nothern generals before Grant became eastern theatre commander were fairly lame. However, the south didn't make the move. If they had followed the nothern army on the retreat, they would have been able to take DC on the first day of the war. That would more than likely be called 'winning' -- capturing the enemy capitol in record time. yup.
Probably not. Capture of Washington DC might have meant something if Congress and the President were captured with it, but not otherwise.
Most likely result if Washington had been captured, and the Government had escaped, was that the fighting on that particular front would have had significantly less importance in the war as a whole. Note that the really important parts of defeating the Confederacy happened elsewhere - taking control of the Mississippi, Sherman's March to the Sea. Those events were more militarily significant than the fighting between Washington and Richmond (which only happened because Washington and Richmond were so close together - neither city was especially important).
Note also that the British captured Washington in the War of 1812. That did not have any real effect on the outcome of the war, though it probably bothered Dolly quite a lot.
The Lagrange Points ARE in orbit.
Also, the stable Lagrange Points (4 & 5) are as far from the moon as Earth is...