There's no need to launch an ICBM from off the US coast. It's called Inter-Continental for a reason
What better way to demonstrate that you can hit any target you want? Not only does the missile have incredible range, but they can launch it from under the Golden Gate if they so chose.
Often these notices will be released at the last minute and there certainly won't be much in the way of details, but if this is an official test by the U.S. military there usually is at least some claim to the fact that it happened. The question is ore why that wasn't the case here, or perhaps it was an "oops" where some sailor screwed up and punched the wrong button. If that was the case, expect a cover-up on this because those kind of secrets never get released to the public.
As of my most recent searching the list of people denying knowledge includes:
The Navy The Airforce The FAA The DoD as a whole
This, also, is almost 24 hours after the fact. If some idiot sailor accidentally spent several hundred thousand dollars we'd probably know about it by now.
Even if everything you said is true, there still exists the possibility of a gap in command. I think it is more likely that no one was confident enough to give the command to return fire before it was determined that the missile didn't do any harm. Imagine the impact of our sinking them and their claiming the whole thing was a malfunction. Only the President or the very, very highest levels of command would be comfortable with making that particular call.
You're analyzing the situation like you've had a few hours to think about it. The people on the ground, however, did not. And I highly, highly doubt we're sitting around at the necessary DEFCON levels to return fire on suspicion alone.
Cool theory, except for the part where they evidently weren't caught. So yes, maybe their stealth sub is THAT GOOD that they can fire a missle a few miles off our coast and get away with it.
Unless perhaps since the President was out of town, no one gave the order to return fire before they realized that it was just a demonstration and not an actual attack?
Are we certain that this was a friendly missile, not e.g. a Chinese sub saying "look where we managed to drive this thing"?
China may be bold, but sub launching a missile within a few miles of major US cities and military installations is a quick way to nuclear annihilation.
What part of 'mutual annihilation' is unclear to you? If this WAS China, then they have just demonstrated the ability to launch an ICBM off our own shores, right under the nose of the Ronald Regan Carrier Group, and escape unharmed.
If they can do that, we'd be foolish to make any move against them whatsoever. We'd all be dead before we finished dispatching the orders.
Hitler killing Jews was not only certain, but it happened on an extraordinary scale.
Tigers eating children, on the other hand, is extremely rare and only happens under certain precise conditions, such as being in the cage with the tiger.
Not being able to do the "remove vampirism" quest doesn't make the PS3 version un-winnable since the vampire quest is an optional one.
Spoken like a true apologist. Do you think it is likely that players would be aware of the need to avoid this quest until they had encountered the bug? Just because it is possible to enjoy the product without running into this pitfall does not mean that the pitfall is not dangerous. It's like letting your kid play with a tiger. The tiger doesn't ALWAYS attack humans, only once every year or so. Quality matters.
Finding this incongruent with Christ's teachings, I've basically rejected it as being true.
In my opinion, not having been there, I feel pretty confident that the Israelites made it out of whole cloth. I just cannot fathom Christ telling you to con your enemies into circumcision so they'll be easier to slaughter, for example. Nor do I find it likely that the sun literally stood in a single place for days on end. And so on.
I see Christ as a reboot of the Jewish dogma back to the original teachings.
But that's not a largely-popular view, I know, and I had no expectation of you predicting that.
If you take the whole thing at it's literal word you'd have one too. Congratulations on locating your first logical loop. The Bible is a big thing, modified over time by many cultures. Don't take it too literally, or you risk not understanding the contents, which is rather the point of writing it down.
Or are we to believe the entire thing is just a social experiment to see how well it survives after being handed from culture to culture?
Profiling passengers doesn't work, either: most of the passengers who fit broad profiles (like race) are perfectly innocent, and focusing on those passengers means focusing less on the rest, creating potential holes in your security.
That's irrelevant. Fewer than one percent of one percent of all passengers are perfectly, completely innocent. In fact, by the time you factor everyone who's ever been screened against the number of actual attackers, you're going to need scientific notation to express your percentage.
Innocence is irrelevant when you're looking for something as improbable as this.
This would work up until the point terrorists realize they should recruit suicide bombers who don't fit the profile of a terrorist. Actually, indications are that they've already started to do so.
Being a suicide bomber is idiotic, plain and simple. The only thing working in their favor is radical religious propaganda. Finding people outside the profile should prove to be enormously difficult, because they're not raised in that culture, and won't be wooed by the promise of 'forty virgins' upon death, etc.
Hooray for equality, now we treat everybody like a criminal.
That's ridiculous. We should only treat young Middle Easteners like criminals. </sarcasm>
The quickest path towards resolving this is genuinely for all non-criminal young Middle Easterners to start ejecting the radical element from within their ranks. The next time one of your peers tells you how evil all those white infidels are, tell him to shut the hell up, to grow up, and step away from the radical idiot who cares less for their life than for his own ego. End the war from within, and see those who fear you turn into your supporters.
Solutions to this sort of thing start at home.
Consequentially, this is likewise why I believe we need a full evacuation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Until the jihadis themselves are ready to reject this idiocy for what it is, we need to reject them. We can try other things, but they're just not going to be effective at the costs we'd find reasonable to pay.
See, this is why I love the Tea Party approach. Given sufficient cuts in funding, all of this nonsense would dry up and blow away. The only reason we're saddled with all this security theater is because there are contractors who want our tax dollars. If there weren't anyone trying to sell us body scanners, remodel our airports, and otherwise siphon off our cash, we'd wouldn't be bothering with it.
Certainly the missing link isn't completely congruent, but the Victorian-era debate over that topic was immense. Ironically, it will never be decided. On those grounds, I opted to leave it in the list...
My point, though, was that not even the scientists agree. If you find someone standing on solid ground, beating others about the head and shoulders with it, look beneath and check for dogma. A true scientist would love to see your experiments disproving gravity.
You're actually a bit incorrect about me, there, Mr Coward. I believe that everyone hears the voice of God in their heart, but ascribes it to different things. I absolutely do not dismiss the other possible gods, but in fact I understand that the potential to misunderstand in this way is implicitly reflected even in the Ten Commandments (check near the beginning.)
It is a witty phrase, present in any good atheist's dogma, but simply isn't true in my own case.
Also, this God guy certainly is a huge prick for creating creatures able to succumb to temptation that don't know right from wrong and then punish them for doing something he could have simply prevented in the first place. Screw that guy!
You're describing the very essence of free will. Should I smoke cigars? They make me feel good, but not as good later. Decisions, decisions.
You're advocating a world where we're all still animals, amoral and ignorant. You're labeling the one who freed us from that as a 'prick'. That's just odd.
Use a little logic. How would you, personally, behave if you thought you were being measured in this way? Wouldn't you want to preserve the notion of faith, to keep up the pretense of free will, at any costs?
Have you never heard the story of the man in the flood?
If you genuinely believe that I'm attempting to 'insult women' by labeling them as reserving the right to change their minds on a whim, call your mother and apologize for your lack of respect. I'd google and link to you the plentiful references to this notion in western culture, but I suspect you're just trolling because you don't like God. And while that's your right, I'm not necessarily required to entertain your loose logic while you get your ya-yas.
God is defined as omnipotent. You can elect to not believe it, but there's simply no room for you, personally, to take any exception whatsoever. This definition predates you by millenia, and the notion that someone invented it to deliberately antagonize Gunnut1124 on a slashdot post is rather absurd.
Indeed, I believe that the plan was for someone to take the apple from the very beginning. I think the parable as presented has been twisted by the culture that was retelling it. I do not see things like 'painful childbirth' as 'punishment' but rather as 'consequence'.
HeronBlademaster's got you there. It isn't that the knowledge is evil, but that with the knowledge we're no longer animals. It is a harder existence, but if God hadn't wanted us to eventually select it for ourselves, there would have been no apple.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no need to launch an ICBM from off the US coast. It's called Inter-Continental for a reason
What better way to demonstrate that you can hit any target you want? Not only does the missile have incredible range, but they can launch it from under the Golden Gate if they so chose.
Often these notices will be released at the last minute and there certainly won't be much in the way of details, but if this is an official test by the U.S. military there usually is at least some claim to the fact that it happened. The question is ore why that wasn't the case here, or perhaps it was an "oops" where some sailor screwed up and punched the wrong button. If that was the case, expect a cover-up on this because those kind of secrets never get released to the public.
As of my most recent searching the list of people denying knowledge includes:
The Navy
The Airforce
The FAA
The DoD as a whole
This, also, is almost 24 hours after the fact. If some idiot sailor accidentally spent several hundred thousand dollars we'd probably know about it by now.
Even if everything you said is true, there still exists the possibility of a gap in command. I think it is more likely that no one was confident enough to give the command to return fire before it was determined that the missile didn't do any harm. Imagine the impact of our sinking them and their claiming the whole thing was a malfunction. Only the President or the very, very highest levels of command would be comfortable with making that particular call.
You're analyzing the situation like you've had a few hours to think about it. The people on the ground, however, did not. And I highly, highly doubt we're sitting around at the necessary DEFCON levels to return fire on suspicion alone.
Cool theory, except for the part where they evidently weren't caught. So yes, maybe their stealth sub is THAT GOOD that they can fire a missle a few miles off our coast and get away with it.
Unless perhaps since the President was out of town, no one gave the order to return fire before they realized that it was just a demonstration and not an actual attack?
Are we certain that this was a friendly missile, not e.g. a Chinese sub saying "look where we managed to drive this thing"?
China may be bold, but sub launching a missile within a few miles of major US cities and military installations is a quick way to nuclear annihilation.
What part of 'mutual annihilation' is unclear to you? If this WAS China, then they have just demonstrated the ability to launch an ICBM off our own shores, right under the nose of the Ronald Regan Carrier Group, and escape unharmed.
If they can do that, we'd be foolish to make any move against them whatsoever. We'd all be dead before we finished dispatching the orders.
You're implying not only that you've heard both, but that you've done so often enough to discern the difference.
I don't think so:
Hitler killing Jews was not only certain, but it happened on an extraordinary scale.
Tigers eating children, on the other hand, is extremely rare and only happens under certain precise conditions, such as being in the cage with the tiger.
Not being able to do the "remove vampirism" quest doesn't make the PS3 version un-winnable since the vampire quest is an optional one.
Spoken like a true apologist. Do you think it is likely that players would be aware of the need to avoid this quest until they had encountered the bug? Just because it is possible to enjoy the product without running into this pitfall does not mean that the pitfall is not dangerous. It's like letting your kid play with a tiger. The tiger doesn't ALWAYS attack humans, only once every year or so. Quality matters.
If a game that crashes FUBARs your PC, it's the operating system that's at fault.
One game, out of hundreds, is FUBARing your PC, admittedly due to some fault of the OS. Do you:
A) Get another OS, limiting your selection of games permanently.
or
B) Get another game which does not encourage your OS to FUBAR your PC.
Don't buy games before 1 or 2 patches have been released. Buying shortly after release means, you're asking for it.
If you're at all interested in competitive multiplayer, waiting this long could mean the difference between 'fun' and 'scrotums'.
TFA said it was about the body heat being collected, so what exactly got solved?
Finding this incongruent with Christ's teachings, I've basically rejected it as being true.
In my opinion, not having been there, I feel pretty confident that the Israelites made it out of whole cloth. I just cannot fathom Christ telling you to con your enemies into circumcision so they'll be easier to slaughter, for example. Nor do I find it likely that the sun literally stood in a single place for days on end. And so on.
I see Christ as a reboot of the Jewish dogma back to the original teachings.
But that's not a largely-popular view, I know, and I had no expectation of you predicting that.
If you take the whole thing at it's literal word you'd have one too. Congratulations on locating your first logical loop. The Bible is a big thing, modified over time by many cultures. Don't take it too literally, or you risk not understanding the contents, which is rather the point of writing it down.
Or are we to believe the entire thing is just a social experiment to see how well it survives after being handed from culture to culture?
Is this why they shot holes in that one girl's laptop?
Profiling passengers doesn't work, either: most of the passengers who fit broad profiles (like race) are perfectly innocent, and focusing on those passengers means focusing less on the rest, creating potential holes in your security.
That's irrelevant. Fewer than one percent of one percent of all passengers are perfectly, completely innocent. In fact, by the time you factor everyone who's ever been screened against the number of actual attackers, you're going to need scientific notation to express your percentage.
Innocence is irrelevant when you're looking for something as improbable as this.
This would work up until the point terrorists realize they should recruit suicide bombers who don't fit the profile of a terrorist. Actually, indications are that they've already started to do so.
Being a suicide bomber is idiotic, plain and simple. The only thing working in their favor is radical religious propaganda. Finding people outside the profile should prove to be enormously difficult, because they're not raised in that culture, and won't be wooed by the promise of 'forty virgins' upon death, etc.
That's ridiculous. We should only treat young Middle Easteners like criminals. </sarcasm>
The quickest path towards resolving this is genuinely for all non-criminal young Middle Easterners to start ejecting the radical element from within their ranks. The next time one of your peers tells you how evil all those white infidels are, tell him to shut the hell up, to grow up, and step away from the radical idiot who cares less for their life than for his own ego. End the war from within, and see those who fear you turn into your supporters.
Solutions to this sort of thing start at home.
Consequentially, this is likewise why I believe we need a full evacuation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Until the jihadis themselves are ready to reject this idiocy for what it is, we need to reject them. We can try other things, but they're just not going to be effective at the costs we'd find reasonable to pay.
See, this is why I love the Tea Party approach. Given sufficient cuts in funding, all of this nonsense would dry up and blow away. The only reason we're saddled with all this security theater is because there are contractors who want our tax dollars. If there weren't anyone trying to sell us body scanners, remodel our airports, and otherwise siphon off our cash, we'd wouldn't be bothering with it.
Cut the funding, and let apathy do the rest.
Some people will grasp at any straw to derail a perfectly mundane comments section toward stupid and tedious.
You appear to be one of them. You scrolled down this far, why not just keep scrolling?
Certainly the missing link isn't completely congruent, but the Victorian-era debate over that topic was immense. Ironically, it will never be decided. On those grounds, I opted to leave it in the list...
My point, though, was that not even the scientists agree. If you find someone standing on solid ground, beating others about the head and shoulders with it, look beneath and check for dogma. A true scientist would love to see your experiments disproving gravity.
You're actually a bit incorrect about me, there, Mr Coward. I believe that everyone hears the voice of God in their heart, but ascribes it to different things. I absolutely do not dismiss the other possible gods, but in fact I understand that the potential to misunderstand in this way is implicitly reflected even in the Ten Commandments (check near the beginning.)
It is a witty phrase, present in any good atheist's dogma, but simply isn't true in my own case.
Also, this God guy certainly is a huge prick for creating creatures able to succumb to temptation that don't know right from wrong and then punish them for doing something he could have simply prevented in the first place. Screw that guy!
You're describing the very essence of free will. Should I smoke cigars? They make me feel good, but not as good later. Decisions, decisions.
You're advocating a world where we're all still animals, amoral and ignorant. You're labeling the one who freed us from that as a 'prick'. That's just odd.
Use a little logic. How would you, personally, behave if you thought you were being measured in this way? Wouldn't you want to preserve the notion of faith, to keep up the pretense of free will, at any costs?
Have you never heard the story of the man in the flood?
If you genuinely believe that I'm attempting to 'insult women' by labeling them as reserving the right to change their minds on a whim, call your mother and apologize for your lack of respect. I'd google and link to you the plentiful references to this notion in western culture, but I suspect you're just trolling because you don't like God. And while that's your right, I'm not necessarily required to entertain your loose logic while you get your ya-yas.
God is defined as omnipotent. You can elect to not believe it, but there's simply no room for you, personally, to take any exception whatsoever. This definition predates you by millenia, and the notion that someone invented it to deliberately antagonize Gunnut1124 on a slashdot post is rather absurd.
Indeed, I believe that the plan was for someone to take the apple from the very beginning. I think the parable as presented has been twisted by the culture that was retelling it. I do not see things like 'painful childbirth' as 'punishment' but rather as 'consequence'.
HeronBlademaster's got you there. It isn't that the knowledge is evil, but that with the knowledge we're no longer animals. It is a harder existence, but if God hadn't wanted us to eventually select it for ourselves, there would have been no apple.