That being said, I'm entirely willing to believe that a *new* volvo would pwn the renault in a crash test. Not going to swear either way since I haven't seen test results, but they do seem pretty well-engineered for safety.
Personally, though, I'll take good handling over more shell around me any day. Since switching from driving various vans and econo-boxes to a nimble sports coupe two years ago, I have had zero of those "oh wow I got so lucky that was almost a crash" events that used to occur at least every couple months, due to the fact that I *can* stop, turn, or accelerate out of trouble faster than 99% of the vehicles around me. YMMV ofc.
Very interesting video from Fifth gear about just how much safer newer cars are.
My wife's family swears by their old volvo station wagon, and having been in a similar accident to what you describe in it, is built like a tank in terms of how much structural damage it takes in a minor impact (ie, how expensive the repairs will be).
But as you can see in this video, it's more an illusion of safety than a reality.
New cars crumple and destroy themselves so that *they* absorb the force instead of *you* absorbing it. It's not just a way to make things cheaper and force insurance companies to buy new cars more often.
Then why does every racing manual I've ever read indicate that a good driver can out-brake ABS using threshold braking instead of ABS?
ABS pulses the brakes. If you can hold the brakes exactly at the threshold instead, you will do better. It's been proven on many tracks.
The problem is that doing a threshold brake is something that takes more serious driver training, and is much more difficult to do in an emergency reaction situation than on a race track. ABS *is* faster than the old "pump the brakes to stop fast" method, because that's exactly what it is doing, only much faster than your foot can do it.
I think they use a pretty big yagi for their normal install. The LOS is iffy - no hills in the way, but a decent number of trees is what the tech explained as killing the signal. My neighbor across the street can get a signal, but sort of barely, since we're out on the far edge. I'm currently trying to work out another wireless jump from his house to mine, but I'm having some bad luck with DOA bridges so far.
I'm out in middle of nowhere Ohio. There's a Wifi company with an antenna on the grain silos in town, but apparently I'm just barely out of range from them. Been trying to find out how big of a tower I'd need to be able to hit them.
Satellite is $80-90/month for DSL speeds, with high latency, and bandwidth caps at around 7-12gigs/month. Moreover, the providers I have found have policies that are beyond draconian if you exceed these bandwidth limits - you continue to pay your monthly fee, but are limited to dial-up speeds.
There are plenty of reasons to avoid satellite if you physically can. The problem is that I'm not sure that's possible where I live:(
So in summary - you can blame the Democrats for the lost homes and mortgage collapse and the Republicans for letting that collapse destroy the whole economy.
Farm subsidies affect farm corporations a lot more than independent farmers. I guess I'm thinking of a talk with grandma, who said that where she lived no one ever even considered taking farm subsidies because then the government controlled what you could plant.
I agree 100% that there are huge flaws in the culture. I grew up in a town where if you weren't a good baptist they either pitied or hated you (depending on who you talked to). And anyone with a different culture might as well have been aliens. They didn't hate them in a racist way, but they definitely didn't understand them in a reasoned way, either. My favorite was the hour long busride of one of the youth pastors explaining to my mormon friend all of the stuff that he thought the mormons believed, and pretty much ignoring anything my friend said about them.
The difference in viewpoint I've seen from people who believe in welfare and government programs and those who don't is how well they expect someone can get by on their own with little money. Maybe it's more how dependent your direct livelihood is on some larger company/government/factory? Where I grew up, if you didn't have enough money for cable you didn't have cable, and you ate macaroni and cheese and lived in a little old house with bad plumbing until you'd worked your way up to something better (or never worked your way up... but your kids still went to school so they could). Whereas just twenty miles away where my mom teaches in I guess what you'd call an "inner small city" school, most of her kids are on food stamps, with one parent and maybe grandma, and most of them still have cable and new sneakers. And the graduation rate is around 60%. What your opinions on welfare type programs are (as someone who would be taxed to pay for it) seem to be whether you expect the former or the latter out of people on the edge.
I have had conversations with liberals who grew up in nice upper-middle-class neighborhoods who have told me that it is impossible for a family to get by on $30k a year. Having grown up on less than that (and nearby geographically - I realize that these numbers vary across the country), and never gone hungry or taken welfare, I disagreed rather wholeheartedly. It's something different in the culture you're exposed to, and the farmland (whether it's still farmed or not - the culture is still somewhat there) versus city/corporation is the only thing I can think of to cause that culture difference. I'm entirely open to other theories. Including that all of the secondary issues most people vote on are just realigning the rest of their thinking because they want to vote for the guy who is pro-union/anti-abortion... but that seems to ignore *something* of a core difference, because I've talked to people on both sides and there's more to their philosophical differences than that.
You do realize that WWI was the end of one of the longest running peaceful times in European history, with huge economic and social progress for most of its populace? That this peace was brought about directly by the balance of power and threat between the various states brought about by the treaties after the battle of Waterloo?
Western Europe doesn't fight itself any more - but then, Ohio and Michigan once went to war over Toledo, and you don't see them grabbing their guns against each other too often either. In both cases the scale of conflict has moved beyond them - they have a common enemy. Would the EU have come about without the threat of Russia hanging over the continent? Are you so sure that the rising EU will not at some point come into conflict with those with a different view and opinion on how the world should be run - China, Russia, India, the US, or the growing Islamic movements?
There is always peace in the presence of a balance of power, or in the countries not on the frontiers of those powers.
Our current political situation is untenable. The US has of yet no counter, and so makes war with impunity against minor devils while those who once appreciated its protection begin to consider it unworthy. Someone will challenge it within our lifetimes, and those who would prefer the US to win (whether they know it or not) will appreciate some of our military spending.
And when it falls, those who refuse to acknowledge the realities of international power politics had best hope that they can live with its replacement.
But somehow it seems as though the democrats are failing at doing the same thing. Important bills (like FISA) that they should have been able to kill passed anyway.
If the republicans have the ability to stop things they don't like, why don't the democrats (with the same seat numbers) managed to do the same? The only reason I can think of is that they suck at standing together and being a useful opposition party.
The media can push whatever it wants - the truth is that there is some difference in the main candidates, just perhaps not on the issues that are actually in the media.
They'll both be for larger more authoritarian government. They'll go shit all over our liberties.
But don't tell me that if Al Gore won the presidency we'd still be in Iraq. Afghanistan/Pakistan hell yes. Iraq, no. Clinton/Gore were big on putting their fingers in every random dispute worldwide, but that was all he put. Bush/Cheney jump in with both feet.
The problem was that who the hell could have foreseen that back in 2000. The only thing we got out of Bush that we should have really expected was the No Child Left Behind bullshit and abstinence only sex ed. Until 9/11 he was considered a lame duck president in his first term.
So there's are differences, but damned if we'll know what the important ones are at election time:(
If you've worked in construction, you'd know the huge value of a 3-6" lock blade with a third blade. Most indispensable thing I ever had in my pocket, and perfectly capable of killing someone... doesn't mean that was why I carried it.
There's a great story I've heard repeated about this question.
Man walks into a gun shop and asks what handgun he should buy to protect him from bears.
The guy behind the counter points him to a small revolver without small sights.
The man looks confused. "this will stop a bear" he says.
"No," the store owner replies, "but it'll hurt less afterwards when he shoves it up your ass."
If you need to protect yourself from bear, use a high powered rifle or maybe a shotgun with deer slugs. Even a.45 will take some very good shooting from very close range to do much good against a grizzly.
I agree, a lot of the "small town values" bullshit being thrown around lately is referring to a world that for many of those people doesn't exist, and never existed for them. It's a culture not a current reality.
which is part of why personally I'm a big fan of our theoretically federalized system, so everyone can get their own house in order instead of trying to run mine, but no one running for office seems to go for that.
Your question is biased in an of itself. If liberals are so charitable, why are they so willing to add an inefficient government system that will increase our taxload, giving people less money to spend on medicine, and could eventually put medical progress itself at risk?
Not saying I espouse either value, but it's not a fair question:)
Personally I think it's a strange urban versus rural mentality.
Poor conservatives tend to come from a rural cultural background where you didn't have much materially, but always had both a farm to keep you fed, and a large social network of family and friends to lean on in times of crisis. Even if it no longer holds true entirely, the culture is still based around the consequences of that mentality - you don't depend on the government for things, because your core needs are handled, and while you expect to stay poor through hard work for yourself (on your own farm, or family's farm) you will never be desperate. Even with the medical situation - the whole cultural memory of a poor country doctor accepting a chicken because that's all they had to give is a strong ideal that still means something to people, even if it isn't something that's reasonable now - in a small town you know everyone well enough that sometime someone has done that sort of favor for you at some point in your life, and you've done the same.
Someone who grew up in it can fill in the urban half of this better than I, but it seems that being in a larger city, you are much more interdependent on society as a system, as opposed to individuals. You generally don't have that level of your own farm produce and land to fall back on - if you lose your job, if you can't get a paying job, you're on the street. And there's a lot more people around in general, so instead of the homeless population of the town being named "Bob," it becomes a real social concern. You're more likely to see police in action, or their failure to act. Your experience with guns is a couple drug dealers shooting each other intead of hunting a deer to add to your dinner or your grandma's story about scaring off robbers. Government and society in general just has a lot more to do with your life - so you expect it to do something for it, look to it for answers because the problems you see aren't of a scale where the preacher at church can just take a donation to help the Jones' get through a hard couple months.
I guess that's where I see people's base leaning of conservative versus liberal coming from. Anything beyond and more intelligent than that requires real thought and investigation, which is more than most people put into it.
I'm pretty sure they are trying that. Having a national candidate just gets a wider stage for their views.
But ballot access is a huge thing. In Ohio the libertarian party just won a big court case to even be allowed to run as libertarians. You could be Democrat, Republican, or Independent, but you weren't allowed to actively declare a different party. And they had to go to court over that.
I've go with (B) and (C). Although what I'm actually concerned about is having the executive and legislative branches under control of the same party (just based on incumbency advantages and who is up for election this year, the democrats should pick up a few seats in both houses).
As broken as healthcare is, I don't think government subsidized insurance is a step in the right direction.
Like the DRM used in games consoles, the Steam DRM is tolerable because it works properly, and the rules that it imposes are consistent across nearly all of the games (Bioshock being an exception). We do not see this "flash mob" rating all the XBox games as 1: why not? Because the DRM in that case doesn't get in the way.
Until it doesn't, and then I can't play any of my goddamn single player valve games because I haven't got internet at my house yet:P Even though I activated and played them constantly before I moved.
DRM is tolerable until it doesn't work for *you*. Probably is you never know when that's going to happen.
I've had much more of a problem with the plastic centers breaking off.
You can still use the plug, but you have to be really careful not to bend the wires or jiggle the connection. I've had that happen on several system, mostly laptops where it's easy for someone to bump the system and push the cables coming out the back into something.
While they're at it, I wish they could have made them a little easier to see which side is which while leaning upside down behind the back of a desk:) The firewire unbalanced hexagon is much easier to get right by feel.
I still haven't seen anything matching it for real time stuff. Not that I wouldn't mind, at all.
But writing I don't think I've seen OpenGL code in another language that wasn't incredibly slow. Maybe that's just momentum, but regardless, it's still the state of things.
So far as I know the only people in Gitmo are those who allegedly tried to kill us or support those trying to kill us. That's a bit different than the Gulag which stored political dissidents.
There, fixed that for you.
Without a process in court, no one has proven anything. Some of them were picked up in actual attacks. Some of them were random guys turned in for a reward. Until they actually let them have a trial they are political prisoners held without charge. That's why habeas corpus is the most basic of our legal rights, whatever bullshit we've been fed about it lately.
I work for a defense company, and this is pretty correct.
The top people in big business make more than anyone else in the big business, but they are also employing a ton of people, and making more people money in their 401k's.
We still shouldn't f'ing be in Iraq, and it's likely largely because of corporate interests that we're there, but don't lose sight in your corporate hatred that despite their (major) flaws America is not a superpower or a major economy without them, and Americans do not have jobs without them.
It's a fun exercise - do animals feel 'human' emotion? Love? Hate? Try to prove it either way, with more than a "no, they're animals" or "yes, my puppy wuvs me."
You have to start with defining these deeper emotion. Most would agree that a dog can be angry or sad, as they have seen a dog exhibit all of the signs and actions that go along with these. But when you get to something deeper like love, how do you define it? I think it could be foolish to think that your dog or cat "loves" you... but can I even prove it?
If it is selflessness, devotion or loyalty, then animals have that... but that can 'just' be pack instinct or 'just' parent instinct toward child survival. But then what is a mother's love for her child or a soldier's love for his country? If it is feelings toward a mate... then what is emotional love but hormones and reproduction instinct?
If it involves the self awareness and self examination of a love emotion, that is hard to prove either way what a person or an animal is thinking about something, especially when there is such a strong communication barrier as exists between species.
It becomes very hard to define a hard line without some mythical "human" quality that to me sounds parochial. Not that I am raising animals to the level of humans... I would say that human emotions are psychological constructs on more basic instincts and behaviors. Not that it makes them less important... it's like saying that Beethoven's 9th symphony is 'just' vibrations.
I think there's a complication there, both for Stewart/Colbert and for people in general, of being seen as liberal or pro-Democrat when they are more strongly anti-Bush right now.
I know I've had it in arguments with co-workers. I think that Bush and the Republican party has done their best to trash this country over the last eight years. I blame the Democrats mostly for failing to stop it... but to be criticized to have to have done something.
What have the democrats led in the last few years? You can complain at them for enabling Iraq, but they didn't start it. Same for our economic problems, wiretapping, environmental policies, etc. They may be floating some crazy ideas, and they may be enabling the Republicans - but for recent history, they haven't been successful enough to be able to make fun of them.
I don't want ANYTHING that Obama is talking about. But I don't want to elect someone who continues Bush's policies, either. And so my complaints end up sounding pro-Obama.
I imagine the Daily Show will be just as funny after the election, because the mainstream media isn't going to stop being ridiculous any time soon.
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That being said, I'm entirely willing to believe that a *new* volvo would pwn the renault in a crash test. Not going to swear either way since I haven't seen test results, but they do seem pretty well-engineered for safety.
Personally, though, I'll take good handling over more shell around me any day. Since switching from driving various vans and econo-boxes to a nimble sports coupe two years ago, I have had zero of those "oh wow I got so lucky that was almost a crash" events that used to occur at least every couple months, due to the fact that I *can* stop, turn, or accelerate out of trouble faster than 99% of the vehicles around me. YMMV ofc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ygYUYia9I
Very interesting video from Fifth gear about just how much safer newer cars are.
My wife's family swears by their old volvo station wagon, and having been in a similar accident to what you describe in it, is built like a tank in terms of how much structural damage it takes in a minor impact (ie, how expensive the repairs will be).
But as you can see in this video, it's more an illusion of safety than a reality.
New cars crumple and destroy themselves so that *they* absorb the force instead of *you* absorbing it. It's not just a way to make things cheaper and force insurance companies to buy new cars more often.
Then why does every racing manual I've ever read indicate that a good driver can out-brake ABS using threshold braking instead of ABS?
ABS pulses the brakes. If you can hold the brakes exactly at the threshold instead, you will do better. It's been proven on many tracks.
The problem is that doing a threshold brake is something that takes more serious driver training, and is much more difficult to do in an emergency reaction situation than on a race track. ABS *is* faster than the old "pump the brakes to stop fast" method, because that's exactly what it is doing, only much faster than your foot can do it.
I think they use a pretty big yagi for their normal install. The LOS is iffy - no hills in the way, but a decent number of trees is what the tech explained as killing the signal. My neighbor across the street can get a signal, but sort of barely, since we're out on the far edge. I'm currently trying to work out another wireless jump from his house to mine, but I'm having some bad luck with DOA bridges so far.
I'm out in middle of nowhere Ohio. There's a Wifi company with an antenna on the grain silos in town, but apparently I'm just barely out of range from them. Been trying to find out how big of a tower I'd need to be able to hit them.
Satellite is $80-90/month for DSL speeds, with high latency, and bandwidth caps at around 7-12gigs/month. Moreover, the providers I have found have policies that are beyond draconian if you exceed these bandwidth limits - you continue to pay your monthly fee, but are limited to dial-up speeds.
There are plenty of reasons to avoid satellite if you physically can. The problem is that I'm not sure that's possible where I live :(
So in summary - you can blame the Democrats for the lost homes and mortgage collapse and the Republicans for letting that collapse destroy the whole economy.
Farm subsidies affect farm corporations a lot more than independent farmers. I guess I'm thinking of a talk with grandma, who said that where she lived no one ever even considered taking farm subsidies because then the government controlled what you could plant.
I agree 100% that there are huge flaws in the culture. I grew up in a town where if you weren't a good baptist they either pitied or hated you (depending on who you talked to). And anyone with a different culture might as well have been aliens. They didn't hate them in a racist way, but they definitely didn't understand them in a reasoned way, either. My favorite was the hour long busride of one of the youth pastors explaining to my mormon friend all of the stuff that he thought the mormons believed, and pretty much ignoring anything my friend said about them.
The difference in viewpoint I've seen from people who believe in welfare and government programs and those who don't is how well they expect someone can get by on their own with little money. Maybe it's more how dependent your direct livelihood is on some larger company/government/factory? Where I grew up, if you didn't have enough money for cable you didn't have cable, and you ate macaroni and cheese and lived in a little old house with bad plumbing until you'd worked your way up to something better (or never worked your way up... but your kids still went to school so they could). Whereas just twenty miles away where my mom teaches in I guess what you'd call an "inner small city" school, most of her kids are on food stamps, with one parent and maybe grandma, and most of them still have cable and new sneakers. And the graduation rate is around 60%. What your opinions on welfare type programs are (as someone who would be taxed to pay for it) seem to be whether you expect the former or the latter out of people on the edge.
I have had conversations with liberals who grew up in nice upper-middle-class neighborhoods who have told me that it is impossible for a family to get by on $30k a year. Having grown up on less than that (and nearby geographically - I realize that these numbers vary across the country), and never gone hungry or taken welfare, I disagreed rather wholeheartedly. It's something different in the culture you're exposed to, and the farmland (whether it's still farmed or not - the culture is still somewhat there) versus city/corporation is the only thing I can think of to cause that culture difference. I'm entirely open to other theories. Including that all of the secondary issues most people vote on are just realigning the rest of their thinking because they want to vote for the guy who is pro-union/anti-abortion... but that seems to ignore *something* of a core difference, because I've talked to people on both sides and there's more to their philosophical differences than that.
You do realize that WWI was the end of one of the longest running peaceful times in European history, with huge economic and social progress for most of its populace? That this peace was brought about directly by the balance of power and threat between the various states brought about by the treaties after the battle of Waterloo?
Western Europe doesn't fight itself any more - but then, Ohio and Michigan once went to war over Toledo, and you don't see them grabbing their guns against each other too often either. In both cases the scale of conflict has moved beyond them - they have a common enemy. Would the EU have come about without the threat of Russia hanging over the continent? Are you so sure that the rising EU will not at some point come into conflict with those with a different view and opinion on how the world should be run - China, Russia, India, the US, or the growing Islamic movements?
There is always peace in the presence of a balance of power, or in the countries not on the frontiers of those powers.
Our current political situation is untenable. The US has of yet no counter, and so makes war with impunity against minor devils while those who once appreciated its protection begin to consider it unworthy. Someone will challenge it within our lifetimes, and those who would prefer the US to win (whether they know it or not) will appreciate some of our military spending.
And when it falls, those who refuse to acknowledge the realities of international power politics had best hope that they can live with its replacement.
But somehow it seems as though the democrats are failing at doing the same thing. Important bills (like FISA) that they should have been able to kill passed anyway.
If the republicans have the ability to stop things they don't like, why don't the democrats (with the same seat numbers) managed to do the same? The only reason I can think of is that they suck at standing together and being a useful opposition party.
The media can push whatever it wants - the truth is that there is some difference in the main candidates, just perhaps not on the issues that are actually in the media.
They'll both be for larger more authoritarian government. They'll go shit all over our liberties.
But don't tell me that if Al Gore won the presidency we'd still be in Iraq. Afghanistan/Pakistan hell yes. Iraq, no. Clinton/Gore were big on putting their fingers in every random dispute worldwide, but that was all he put. Bush/Cheney jump in with both feet.
The problem was that who the hell could have foreseen that back in 2000. The only thing we got out of Bush that we should have really expected was the No Child Left Behind bullshit and abstinence only sex ed. Until 9/11 he was considered a lame duck president in his first term.
So there's are differences, but damned if we'll know what the important ones are at election time :(
With how much it costs to get elected, how many of the people who make legislature really care about that extra 100k/year?
If you've worked in construction, you'd know the huge value of a 3-6" lock blade with a third blade. Most indispensable thing I ever had in my pocket, and perfectly capable of killing someone... doesn't mean that was why I carried it.
There's a great story I've heard repeated about this question.
Man walks into a gun shop and asks what handgun he should buy to protect him from bears.
The guy behind the counter points him to a small revolver without small sights.
The man looks confused. "this will stop a bear" he says.
"No," the store owner replies, "but it'll hurt less afterwards when he shoves it up your ass."
If you need to protect yourself from bear, use a high powered rifle or maybe a shotgun with deer slugs. Even a .45 will take some very good shooting from very close range to do much good against a grizzly.
I agree, a lot of the "small town values" bullshit being thrown around lately is referring to a world that for many of those people doesn't exist, and never existed for them. It's a culture not a current reality.
which is part of why personally I'm a big fan of our theoretically federalized system, so everyone can get their own house in order instead of trying to run mine, but no one running for office seems to go for that.
Your question is biased in an of itself. If liberals are so charitable, why are they so willing to add an inefficient government system that will increase our taxload, giving people less money to spend on medicine, and could eventually put medical progress itself at risk?
Not saying I espouse either value, but it's not a fair question :)
Personally I think it's a strange urban versus rural mentality.
Poor conservatives tend to come from a rural cultural background where you didn't have much materially, but always had both a farm to keep you fed, and a large social network of family and friends to lean on in times of crisis. Even if it no longer holds true entirely, the culture is still based around the consequences of that mentality - you don't depend on the government for things, because your core needs are handled, and while you expect to stay poor through hard work for yourself (on your own farm, or family's farm) you will never be desperate. Even with the medical situation - the whole cultural memory of a poor country doctor accepting a chicken because that's all they had to give is a strong ideal that still means something to people, even if it isn't something that's reasonable now - in a small town you know everyone well enough that sometime someone has done that sort of favor for you at some point in your life, and you've done the same.
Someone who grew up in it can fill in the urban half of this better than I, but it seems that being in a larger city, you are much more interdependent on society as a system, as opposed to individuals. You generally don't have that level of your own farm produce and land to fall back on - if you lose your job, if you can't get a paying job, you're on the street. And there's a lot more people around in general, so instead of the homeless population of the town being named "Bob," it becomes a real social concern. You're more likely to see police in action, or their failure to act. Your experience with guns is a couple drug dealers shooting each other intead of hunting a deer to add to your dinner or your grandma's story about scaring off robbers. Government and society in general just has a lot more to do with your life - so you expect it to do something for it, look to it for answers because the problems you see aren't of a scale where the preacher at church can just take a donation to help the Jones' get through a hard couple months.
I guess that's where I see people's base leaning of conservative versus liberal coming from. Anything beyond and more intelligent than that requires real thought and investigation, which is more than most people put into it.
I'm pretty sure they are trying that. Having a national candidate just gets a wider stage for their views.
But ballot access is a huge thing. In Ohio the libertarian party just won a big court case to even be allowed to run as libertarians. You could be Democrat, Republican, or Independent, but you weren't allowed to actively declare a different party. And they had to go to court over that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/us/politics/19ohio.html
I've go with (B) and (C). Although what I'm actually concerned about is having the executive and legislative branches under control of the same party (just based on incumbency advantages and who is up for election this year, the democrats should pick up a few seats in both houses). As broken as healthcare is, I don't think government subsidized insurance is a step in the right direction.
Like the DRM used in games consoles, the Steam DRM is tolerable because it works properly, and the rules that it imposes are consistent across nearly all of the games (Bioshock being an exception). We do not see this "flash mob" rating all the XBox games as 1: why not? Because the DRM in that case doesn't get in the way.
Until it doesn't, and then I can't play any of my goddamn single player valve games because I haven't got internet at my house yet :P Even though I activated and played them constantly before I moved.
DRM is tolerable until it doesn't work for *you*. Probably is you never know when that's going to happen.
I've had much more of a problem with the plastic centers breaking off.
You can still use the plug, but you have to be really careful not to bend the wires or jiggle the connection. I've had that happen on several system, mostly laptops where it's easy for someone to bump the system and push the cables coming out the back into something.
While they're at it, I wish they could have made them a little easier to see which side is which while leaning upside down behind the back of a desk :) The firewire unbalanced hexagon is much easier to get right by feel.
I still haven't seen anything matching it for real time stuff. Not that I wouldn't mind, at all.
But writing I don't think I've seen OpenGL code in another language that wasn't incredibly slow. Maybe that's just momentum, but regardless, it's still the state of things.
So far as I know the only people in Gitmo are those who allegedly tried to kill us or support those trying to kill us. That's a bit different than the Gulag which stored political dissidents.
There, fixed that for you. Without a process in court, no one has proven anything. Some of them were picked up in actual attacks. Some of them were random guys turned in for a reward. Until they actually let them have a trial they are political prisoners held without charge. That's why habeas corpus is the most basic of our legal rights, whatever bullshit we've been fed about it lately.
I work for a defense company, and this is pretty correct.
The top people in big business make more than anyone else in the big business, but they are also employing a ton of people, and making more people money in their 401k's.
We still shouldn't f'ing be in Iraq, and it's likely largely because of corporate interests that we're there, but don't lose sight in your corporate hatred that despite their (major) flaws America is not a superpower or a major economy without them, and Americans do not have jobs without them.
It's a fun exercise - do animals feel 'human' emotion? Love? Hate? Try to prove it either way, with more than a "no, they're animals" or "yes, my puppy wuvs me."
You have to start with defining these deeper emotion. Most would agree that a dog can be angry or sad, as they have seen a dog exhibit all of the signs and actions that go along with these. But when you get to something deeper like love, how do you define it? I think it could be foolish to think that your dog or cat "loves" you... but can I even prove it?
If it is selflessness, devotion or loyalty, then animals have that... but that can 'just' be pack instinct or 'just' parent instinct toward child survival. But then what is a mother's love for her child or a soldier's love for his country? If it is feelings toward a mate... then what is emotional love but hormones and reproduction instinct?
If it involves the self awareness and self examination of a love emotion, that is hard to prove either way what a person or an animal is thinking about something, especially when there is such a strong communication barrier as exists between species.
It becomes very hard to define a hard line without some mythical "human" quality that to me sounds parochial. Not that I am raising animals to the level of humans... I would say that human emotions are psychological constructs on more basic instincts and behaviors. Not that it makes them less important... it's like saying that Beethoven's 9th symphony is 'just' vibrations.
I think there's a complication there, both for Stewart/Colbert and for people in general, of being seen as liberal or pro-Democrat when they are more strongly anti-Bush right now.
I know I've had it in arguments with co-workers. I think that Bush and the Republican party has done their best to trash this country over the last eight years. I blame the Democrats mostly for failing to stop it... but to be criticized to have to have done something.
What have the democrats led in the last few years? You can complain at them for enabling Iraq, but they didn't start it. Same for our economic problems, wiretapping, environmental policies, etc. They may be floating some crazy ideas, and they may be enabling the Republicans - but for recent history, they haven't been successful enough to be able to make fun of them.
I don't want ANYTHING that Obama is talking about. But I don't want to elect someone who continues Bush's policies, either. And so my complaints end up sounding pro-Obama.
I imagine the Daily Show will be just as funny after the election, because the mainstream media isn't going to stop being ridiculous any time soon.