I did some more digging on these topics last night but it took be a while because I got side-tracked reading the Columbia accident report which I stumbled across.
According to Robert Biggs, ex Rocketdyne engineer, the original (pdf, page 6 footnote 1) target life of the SSME was 100 missions with occasional thrust excursions to full power level (FPL) which was 109% of rated power level (RPL). That was cut down to 55 missions to allow constant operation at FPL. I think FPL is now 104% with 109% being available in abort situations.
I mis-remembered the original SSME target removal and overhaul frequency, it was 10 missions not 100.
The relatively new block II high pressure fuel and oxidizer turbopumps are advertised (by P&W) to last 10 missions between overhaul with a total life of 30 missions. As far as I know the engines are still being removed every flight.
I wouldn't say scary hacks but they do do a lot of craftsman-like work that wasn't originally intended.
For example the foam insulation on the external tank is applied by hand in some areas and the performance is dependent on the workmanship.
The main engines are removed and rebuilt every mission, the original intent was for them to be swapped out every 100 missions. So the work area in the engine bay is very cramped.
And the paperwork. Paperwork is a part of every aerospace maintenance job, but on the STS it goes to a whole other level. Each little step on every job being signed off and countersigned as having been done. That's to make sure that everything that is supposed to get done is verifiable via a paper trail. I wouldn't be surprised if the paperwork makes up a large fraction of the cost of each launch.
Did you now that the Earth does in fact have an elliptical orbit, and that in January it is actually three million miles closer than it is in July?
That depends on your definition of "closer". And "orbit". And "fact" and "elliptical". And "Earth", "in", "actually", "have", "now", "it", "miles", "an", "than", "and", "July", "January", "is", "did", "that", "does", "you", and "million".
And "three".
Did you also know that the primary reason there is solid carbon dioxide on Mars is the density of the atmosphere, and not the distance to the sun?
Yes, I didn't not know that you didn't say it wasn't true.
Did you also know that if your mommy was any uglier, or your daddy wasn't drunk, you wouldn't exist? It's true! The existence of life is contingent on many factors.
Haha! It was my mom who was drunk! HaHA! You fail at mommy/daddy!
And besides, Charley's in the trees, man, he's in the freakin' trees!
Given how common binary star systems are in the galaxy it wouldn't be surprising to find that most non-binary systems have a Jupiter (which can be thought of as a failed star). The location of a system's Jupiter may well, as you point out, be a critical factor in determining if and where other planets form.
Maybe our Jupiter is at just the right place to allow Earth to exist while protecting it from a lot of bombardment from comets and the like.
There is another thing that without any doubt makes Earth unique and that is our huge moon. The formation of that was a total fluke resulting from the collision of earth with a Mars-sized body billions of years ago.
I've not see convincing arguments for why a large moon would be an advantage, some ideas that have been put forward are that the moon's gravity skims off nasty things from Earth's atmosphere, or that the tidal working that Earth receives relives stresses so that our earthquakes and volcanoes are relatively small and constant rather than cataclysmic and rare.
If Venus had a moon like ours maybe it wouldn't have turned into the hell hole it is.
Satellites that experience drag will tend towards circular orbits.
Say a satellite starts in an elliptical orbit. At perihelion the satellite is traveling faster than at aphelion. If we are speaking about hydrodynamic drag, faster speed means higher drag, so the body loses velocity at perihelion. That means the height of aphelion is lowered and the elliptical orbit becomes less eccentric.
As this process goes on and on the difference between aphelion and perihelion becomes smaller and smaller and the circularization process weakens, becoming zero for a circular orbit. So the orbit asymptotes to a circle.
I believe a similar argument can be made if the drag is due to tidal forces.
So circular orbits aren't just another ellipse which randomly may or may not happen, planets, I always thought, eventually find their way to circular orbits.
Ask any random person anywhere in the world if they would rather live in *any* US city or Kabul. You honestly don't think they'd choose Kabul do you? Unless they have an emotional attachment to it and consider it home.
"Mass traffic violence"? Please.
Now, there's no doubt the American century is over, and China and India may well be on the ascendancy. Russia, I don't think so, that country is descending into totalitarian stagnation (again).
Does that mean the US will fade away and become a pastoral backwater like Vermont? That's not going to happen. The US simply remains and always will be an intellectual and financial powerhouse. China and India may catch up and pass the US but that will take decades, maybe more than a century. In our lifetimes the US will remain dominant with other countries slowly assuming greater influence in world affairs.
I detect definite tones of resentment toward the west in your posts. That's understandable, but you should be realistic too. Wherever you are in the world I hope your future is good, but you should also hope the place you are from has ideas of freedom modelled after the US. You could do a lot worse.
Yes well. If Russia insists on being ruled by strongmen gangsters and China keeps killing anyone with original ideas, I don't think the west has much to worry about. The only horrible thing we will have to cope with is watching billions of Chinese and Indians starve and feeling rotten that there is nothing we can do.
IIRC the US brought Russia in on ISS support to give the Russian rocket scientists something to do so they wouldn't go work for the likes of the Axis of Evil(tm).
Which makes sense. Has that changed?
As for flying the STS beyond its planned retirement, I think estimates of its reliability don't take account of the tlc it receives. Those things get practically rebuilt by some very big brains every time they fly. I do respect his 1/12 failure probability it's probably a rigorous number, but conservative.
What puzzles me is why NASA chose to re-do Apollo with improvements instead of re-doing an improved shuttle. It's just odd.
This is only peripherally related, but I've been wondering about this lately.
The CIA isn't allowed to spy domestically right? I think the same holds true of CSIS in Canada. But nothing stops the CIA from spying on Canadians in Canada and the same would be true of CSIS.
Since Canada and the US cooperate on intelligence, what's to stop CSIS and the CIA from spying on each others citizens and sharing the information? That wouldn't technically break any laws.
Probably the NSA could even help CSIS, I remember in 2006 NSA resources were used to help catch 17 people suspected of planning blowing up the Canadian parliament buildings.
Google must have noticed what a wonderful contribution the comments on YouTube videos make to the viewing experience. Now they want to bring that level of witty repartee to the internet in general.
(Insert ref to that YouTube comic at xjdk^h^h^h^hxckd^h^h^h^hkxhd^h^h^h^hxjxd^h^h^h^hdamitdamitDAMIT)
Far be it from me to RTFA, but I can foresee this evolving into a framework where, to track the quality of rankings given by individuals, the individuals in question must, to coin a phrase, "log on" to Google.
I suppose we should call the process of rating the rankings something. Let's randomly pick a word, mmmmm, say "moderate". And then, to rate the rankings given by said individuals, other "logged on" users could anonymously rate the ratings, as it were. Darn it, now we need another word, what about...mmm...me-...mega-...megamoderate..nonono...meta...metamoderate! Yes!, "logged on" users will "metamoderate" the "moderations"!
Subsidized child care and similar benefits reward parents at the expense of other employees.
Ex-fucking-scuse me? Reward parents? As if having children is some kind of weakness that shouldn't be encouraged?
Yes I know it's popular to let some kind of economic framework do your thinking for you, which might lead you to conclude that a person that makes a decision that does not maximize personal wealth is somehow "wrong" but...
1. Some people love children.
2. Employers prefer married people with children. Single self-absorbed brats are unreliable.
3. Children are the future customers that the single self-absorbed brats will make money off. However, the single self-absorbed brats believe that the original creation of those customers was a mistake. Single self-absorbed brats are therefore in denial and idiots about this subject. When they talk like having children is a weakness.
Holy heck. I can't reply to everyone who has said something like "why should I pay for something I don't use?" You aren't paying for anything. Your employer is paying for something and if your employer didn't pay that thing, they wouldn't give the money to you because you have proven you will work for whatever you are already being paid.
You can't control Internet by gagging a few editors because the Internet is full of normal people blogging away about the things that interest them.
If I google someone and find only blog gossip that is different from finding an article in the New York Times. 99% of blogs are no more than two ladies with their hair in curlers talking over the back fence.
I believe this will become more and more true in the future when it will become clear that random blogs can and often do contain outright lies.
Let's say I mouth off about totalitarian China. Then some Chinese operative (love that word, so rarely get to use it in a sentence) writes a blog falsely claiming to have read about my child molestation trial in the Sydney Morning Herald. How long before every single person on the planet has their character assassinated that way? Not long I bet.
Having said all that I don't dispute you have a point. I can think of ways around these things, none of them perfect, all of them painful. The alternative is to give up age-old ideas of privacy. Which should we do?
Sounds like maybe this judge needs to think a little harder about how the Internet works.
Maybe you should think a little harder about how humans work.
Is the internet a tool in the service of mankind or vice-versa? Anything the internet wants the internet gets? What if the internet wants to publish every hot chat you ever had with who you thought was a woman but was actually a 9 year old boy? It's the internet, we have to give it what it wants, sorry.
And what would you suggest Obi Wan? Maybe Medicine? Law? Literature? Give some alternatives.
For anyone with aptitude in math and physics and who is always trying to figure out how stuff works, you could consider getting into the field of aircraft structural engineering.
I manage the structural engineering group at a medium-sized Canadian company. Yesterday we tried to offer an experienced guy a $75/hour contract job and he politely declined. We can't afford him. He is contracting because he wants to and has several other offers. With bonuses and OT he would have grossed around $200K per year and it wasn't enough.
I have two Indian subcontractors working for me with another on the way. We do that not because of the cost but because it's so hard to find good people in this field. I have working for me one Indian/Canaidan girl, a French/Canadian guy, a plain vanilla Canaidan guy, the two Indians, a Moroccan, a Brit, and a Venezuelan guy working for me. Americans don't seem to be on the market because they are all sucked up by US defence companies that like US citizens for security reasons.
The labour market is tight right now. It is cyclic but I have to admit I haven't seen any unemployment amongst my peers in 20 years, the last rough spot being the late 70's/early 80's.
Here's how you get into it. A bachelors in mechanical or aerospace engineering is basic. Most people have a Masters, try to orient that toward materials or structural analysis. A thesis on composites would be good. The education is hard, you have to think of it on the same level as getting a medical degree. Suffer through it if you have to.
Develop an interest in manual analysis with a pencil. I get lots of resumes from people that can make finite element meshes and run NASTRAN, what I want is people who know what a piece of structure should look like and why and you get that ability from just sitting and thinking about things and reading the bible "Analysis and Design of Flight Vehicle Structures" by E.H. Bruhn. That book is 40 years old and anyone who knows it forward and backward can get their $200K job.
Then get a job with a large prime like Boeing for 5 years. Think of that like your internship. At the end of that you can start contracting, or move jobs to push your salary up. I would recommend contracting, not just for the money but for the contacts you make. It's a small world in this business and if you know the people you can always get a job.
So if you are 18 now, you are looking at a plan that will get you in a really good place when you are 30. Not many people want seem to have the stomach for that kind of commitment, but it'll pay off, I promise. And, all along the way you get to work on pretty cool stuff.
Telephone communications are considered private, right? That is, unlike email, a phone conversation can reasonably be expected to be between only me and the party on the other end.
How can one then presume that a private activity such telephone communication should be treated as a broadcast medium? Political free speech is an exemption? Am I to let every politician come into my bedroom for a little pillow talk because of "free speech"?
The phone is a direct line into the heart of my private home. I don't want anyone in my home who I didn't invite.
You might say calling me is no different from coming up and knocking on my door. OK then, come up and knock on my door. Too expensive you say? Calling is more efficient you say? Well I believe the term was "free speech", not "cheap speech".
Oh, and when you do come knocking, don't forget to read the sign that says "No Solicitors". You know, the sign that sets the rules on my private property where I have certain rights also.
Tell you what, here's a good way to do it. Since I can't put a sign on my phone, why not make a rule that says if you want to call me you have to have come to my door and get me to sign a piece of paper that says I agree to take your calls. If that's too much trouble, then I probably didn't want to hear from you anyway.
The way I look at this is that the car with the GPS on it is like a...car see? With a device. On it.
You have to imagine the GPS satellites driving around on big...highways...except way up in the sky. Kind of like really fast...flying cars. Way up there.
So the car drives around like, if you follow me, the car, and then the other cars that are, um, way, um, up there. Can see it through their windshields because they are like...cars, see?
And then that all does stuff like that, and then the police go where the "car" is by using transportation of a nature that can best be understood by imagining a car, only it has police in it.
For someone with a lotta love you sure are grumpy.
your messiah, B. Hussein Obama
It just kills you that our guy is gonna beat your guy doesn't it? Try not to think about it. Instead, think about how many more guns you can buy now and enjoy the warm fuzzy that gives you.
Sorry to break the news to you, but Ronald Reagan is gone.
What started with "There you go again" and ended with "Mission Accomplished" is dead. Neo Conservatism had it's kick at the can and, after giving us the Creationism Museum and the Lies of Mass Destruction, has nothing left to do but blubber around like a deflating balloon until it finally falls limply to the floor.
Classic Reaganesqe barb? Check. Blame foreigners? Check. Blame the UN? Check. Claim that poverty isn't caused by lack of money? Check.
Full disclosure, you and I come from completely different ends of the gun debate spectrum. I think guns cause more harm than good.
However...
If it becomes the fad amongst gun owners to use their weapons to shoot out the cctv spy cams that are staring to pop up in more and more places, I promise I'll shut up and never say another word about guns.
Slashdot Mirror
I did some more digging on these topics last night but it took be a while because I got side-tracked reading the Columbia accident report which I stumbled across.
According to Robert Biggs, ex Rocketdyne engineer, the original (pdf, page 6 footnote 1) target life of the SSME was 100 missions with occasional thrust excursions to full power level (FPL) which was 109% of rated power level (RPL). That was cut down to 55 missions to allow constant operation at FPL. I think FPL is now 104% with 109% being available in abort situations.
I mis-remembered the original SSME target removal and overhaul frequency, it was 10 missions not 100.
The relatively new block II high pressure fuel and oxidizer turbopumps are advertised (by P&W) to last 10 missions between overhaul with a total life of 30 missions. As far as I know the engines are still being removed every flight.
*sigh*
I wouldn't say scary hacks but they do do a lot of craftsman-like work that wasn't originally intended.
For example the foam insulation on the external tank is applied by hand in some areas and the performance is dependent on the workmanship.
The main engines are removed and rebuilt every mission, the original intent was for them to be swapped out every 100 missions. So the work area in the engine bay is very cramped.
And the paperwork. Paperwork is a part of every aerospace maintenance job, but on the STS it goes to a whole other level. Each little step on every job being signed off and countersigned as having been done. That's to make sure that everything that is supposed to get done is verifiable via a paper trail. I wouldn't be surprised if the paperwork makes up a large fraction of the cost of each launch.
O'well, I guess we'll have to go back to plan 2...
Wake me up when we get to Plan 9.
Did you now that the Earth does in fact have an elliptical orbit, and that in January it is actually three million miles closer than it is in July?
That depends on your definition of "closer". And "orbit". And "fact" and "elliptical". And "Earth", "in", "actually", "have", "now", "it", "miles", "an", "than", "and", "July", "January", "is", "did", "that", "does", "you", and "million".
And "three".
Did you also know that the primary reason there is solid carbon dioxide on Mars is the density of the atmosphere, and not the distance to the sun?
Yes, I didn't not know that you didn't say it wasn't true.
Did you also know that if your mommy was any uglier, or your daddy wasn't drunk, you wouldn't exist? It's true! The existence of life is contingent on many factors.
Haha! It was my mom who was drunk! HaHA! You fail at mommy/daddy!
And besides, Charley's in the trees, man, he's in the freakin' trees!
Given how common binary star systems are in the galaxy it wouldn't be surprising to find that most non-binary systems have a Jupiter (which can be thought of as a failed star). The location of a system's Jupiter may well, as you point out, be a critical factor in determining if and where other planets form.
Maybe our Jupiter is at just the right place to allow Earth to exist while protecting it from a lot of bombardment from comets and the like.
There is another thing that without any doubt makes Earth unique and that is our huge moon. The formation of that was a total fluke resulting from the collision of earth with a Mars-sized body billions of years ago.
I've not see convincing arguments for why a large moon would be an advantage, some ideas that have been put forward are that the moon's gravity skims off nasty things from Earth's atmosphere, or that the tidal working that Earth receives relives stresses so that our earthquakes and volcanoes are relatively small and constant rather than cataclysmic and rare.
If Venus had a moon like ours maybe it wouldn't have turned into the hell hole it is.
Satellites that experience drag will tend towards circular orbits.
Say a satellite starts in an elliptical orbit. At perihelion the satellite is traveling faster than at aphelion. If we are speaking about hydrodynamic drag, faster speed means higher drag, so the body loses velocity at perihelion. That means the height of aphelion is lowered and the elliptical orbit becomes less eccentric.
As this process goes on and on the difference between aphelion and perihelion becomes smaller and smaller and the circularization process weakens, becoming zero for a circular orbit. So the orbit asymptotes to a circle.
I believe a similar argument can be made if the drag is due to tidal forces.
So circular orbits aren't just another ellipse which randomly may or may not happen, planets, I always thought, eventually find their way to circular orbits.
Ask any random person anywhere in the world if they would rather live in *any* US city or Kabul. You honestly don't think they'd choose Kabul do you? Unless they have an emotional attachment to it and consider it home.
"Mass traffic violence"? Please.
Now, there's no doubt the American century is over, and China and India may well be on the ascendancy. Russia, I don't think so, that country is descending into totalitarian stagnation (again).
Does that mean the US will fade away and become a pastoral backwater like Vermont? That's not going to happen. The US simply remains and always will be an intellectual and financial powerhouse. China and India may catch up and pass the US but that will take decades, maybe more than a century. In our lifetimes the US will remain dominant with other countries slowly assuming greater influence in world affairs.
I detect definite tones of resentment toward the west in your posts. That's understandable, but you should be realistic too. Wherever you are in the world I hope your future is good, but you should also hope the place you are from has ideas of freedom modelled after the US. You could do a lot worse.
I'm not American nor do I live there.
Yes well. If Russia insists on being ruled by strongmen gangsters and China keeps killing anyone with original ideas, I don't think the west has much to worry about. The only horrible thing we will have to cope with is watching billions of Chinese and Indians starve and feeling rotten that there is nothing we can do.
IIRC the US brought Russia in on ISS support to give the Russian rocket scientists something to do so they wouldn't go work for the likes of the Axis of Evil(tm).
Which makes sense. Has that changed?
As for flying the STS beyond its planned retirement, I think estimates of its reliability don't take account of the tlc it receives. Those things get practically rebuilt by some very big brains every time they fly. I do respect his 1/12 failure probability it's probably a rigorous number, but conservative.
What puzzles me is why NASA chose to re-do Apollo with improvements instead of re-doing an improved shuttle. It's just odd.
This is only peripherally related, but I've been wondering about this lately.
The CIA isn't allowed to spy domestically right? I think the same holds true of CSIS in Canada. But nothing stops the CIA from spying on Canadians in Canada and the same would be true of CSIS.
Since Canada and the US cooperate on intelligence, what's to stop CSIS and the CIA from spying on each others citizens and sharing the information? That wouldn't technically break any laws.
Probably the NSA could even help CSIS, I remember in 2006 NSA resources were used to help catch 17 people suspected of planning blowing up the Canadian parliament buildings.
Google must have noticed what a wonderful contribution the comments on YouTube videos make to the viewing experience. Now they want to bring that level of witty repartee to the internet in general.
(Insert ref to that YouTube comic at xjdk^h^h^h^hxckd^h^h^h^hkxhd^h^h^h^hxjxd^h^h^h^hdamitdamitDAMIT)
Far be it from me to RTFA, but I can foresee this evolving into a framework where, to track the quality of rankings given by individuals, the individuals in question must, to coin a phrase, "log on" to Google.
I suppose we should call the process of rating the rankings something. Let's randomly pick a word, mmmmm, say "moderate". And then, to rate the rankings given by said individuals, other "logged on" users could anonymously rate the ratings, as it were. Darn it, now we need another word, what about...mmm...me-...mega-...megamoderate..nonono...meta...metamoderate! Yes!, "logged on" users will "metamoderate" the "moderations"!
Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?
The one we all want to know more about is Victoria's Secret Service. I demand congressional hearings on, you know, that! Etcetera!
He meant the Department of Homeland Depot. It's the privatization of government, don't you know.
Subsidized child care and similar benefits reward parents at the expense of other employees.
Ex-fucking-scuse me? Reward parents? As if having children is some kind of weakness that shouldn't be encouraged?
Yes I know it's popular to let some kind of economic framework do your thinking for you, which might lead you to conclude that a person that makes a decision that does not maximize personal wealth is somehow "wrong" but...
1. Some people love children.
2. Employers prefer married people with children. Single self-absorbed brats are unreliable.
3. Children are the future customers that the single self-absorbed brats will make money off. However, the single self-absorbed brats believe that the original creation of those customers was a mistake. Single self-absorbed brats are therefore in denial and idiots about this subject. When they talk like having children is a weakness.
Holy heck. I can't reply to everyone who has said something like "why should I pay for something I don't use?" You aren't paying for anything. Your employer is paying for something and if your employer didn't pay that thing, they wouldn't give the money to you because you have proven you will work for whatever you are already being paid.
Accused can represent a person or persons. So therefore shouldn't the plural possessive be "Accused's" and not "Accuseds'"?
You can't control Internet by gagging a few editors because the Internet is full of normal people blogging away about the things that interest them.
If I google someone and find only blog gossip that is different from finding an article in the New York Times. 99% of blogs are no more than two ladies with their hair in curlers talking over the back fence.
I believe this will become more and more true in the future when it will become clear that random blogs can and often do contain outright lies.
Let's say I mouth off about totalitarian China. Then some Chinese operative (love that word, so rarely get to use it in a sentence) writes a blog falsely claiming to have read about my child molestation trial in the Sydney Morning Herald. How long before every single person on the planet has their character assassinated that way? Not long I bet.
Having said all that I don't dispute you have a point. I can think of ways around these things, none of them perfect, all of them painful. The alternative is to give up age-old ideas of privacy. Which should we do?
Sounds like maybe this judge needs to think a little harder about how the Internet works.
Maybe you should think a little harder about how humans work.
Is the internet a tool in the service of mankind or vice-versa? Anything the internet wants the internet gets? What if the internet wants to publish every hot chat you ever had with who you thought was a woman but was actually a 9 year old boy? It's the internet, we have to give it what it wants, sorry.
And what would you suggest Obi Wan? Maybe Medicine? Law? Literature? Give some alternatives.
For anyone with aptitude in math and physics and who is always trying to figure out how stuff works, you could consider getting into the field of aircraft structural engineering.
I manage the structural engineering group at a medium-sized Canadian company. Yesterday we tried to offer an experienced guy a $75/hour contract job and he politely declined. We can't afford him. He is contracting because he wants to and has several other offers. With bonuses and OT he would have grossed around $200K per year and it wasn't enough.
I have two Indian subcontractors working for me with another on the way. We do that not because of the cost but because it's so hard to find good people in this field. I have working for me one Indian/Canaidan girl, a French/Canadian guy, a plain vanilla Canaidan guy, the two Indians, a Moroccan, a Brit, and a Venezuelan guy working for me. Americans don't seem to be on the market because they are all sucked up by US defence companies that like US citizens for security reasons.
The labour market is tight right now. It is cyclic but I have to admit I haven't seen any unemployment amongst my peers in 20 years, the last rough spot being the late 70's/early 80's.
Here's how you get into it. A bachelors in mechanical or aerospace engineering is basic. Most people have a Masters, try to orient that toward materials or structural analysis. A thesis on composites would be good. The education is hard, you have to think of it on the same level as getting a medical degree. Suffer through it if you have to.
Develop an interest in manual analysis with a pencil. I get lots of resumes from people that can make finite element meshes and run NASTRAN, what I want is people who know what a piece of structure should look like and why and you get that ability from just sitting and thinking about things and reading the bible "Analysis and Design of Flight Vehicle Structures" by E.H. Bruhn. That book is 40 years old and anyone who knows it forward and backward can get their $200K job.
Then get a job with a large prime like Boeing for 5 years. Think of that like your internship. At the end of that you can start contracting, or move jobs to push your salary up. I would recommend contracting, not just for the money but for the contacts you make. It's a small world in this business and if you know the people you can always get a job.
So if you are 18 now, you are looking at a plan that will get you in a really good place when you are 30. Not many people want seem to have the stomach for that kind of commitment, but it'll pay off, I promise. And, all along the way you get to work on pretty cool stuff.
Telephone communications are considered private, right? That is, unlike email, a phone conversation can reasonably be expected to be between only me and the party on the other end.
How can one then presume that a private activity such telephone communication should be treated as a broadcast medium? Political free speech is an exemption? Am I to let every politician come into my bedroom for a little pillow talk because of "free speech"?
The phone is a direct line into the heart of my private home. I don't want anyone in my home who I didn't invite.
You might say calling me is no different from coming up and knocking on my door. OK then, come up and knock on my door. Too expensive you say? Calling is more efficient you say? Well I believe the term was "free speech", not "cheap speech".
Oh, and when you do come knocking, don't forget to read the sign that says "No Solicitors". You know, the sign that sets the rules on my private property where I have certain rights also.
Tell you what, here's a good way to do it. Since I can't put a sign on my phone, why not make a rule that says if you want to call me you have to have come to my door and get me to sign a piece of paper that says I agree to take your calls. If that's too much trouble, then I probably didn't want to hear from you anyway.
The way I look at this is that the car with the GPS on it is like a...car see? With a device. On it.
You have to imagine the GPS satellites driving around on big...highways...except way up in the sky. Kind of like really fast...flying cars. Way up there.
So the car drives around like, if you follow me, the car, and then the other cars that are, um, way, um, up there. Can see it through their windshields because they are like...cars, see?
And then that all does stuff like that, and then the police go where the "car" is by using transportation of a nature that can best be understood by imagining a car, only it has police in it.
So that's the best way to understand all that.
I love it.
For someone with a lotta love you sure are grumpy.
your messiah, B. Hussein Obama
It just kills you that our guy is gonna beat your guy doesn't it? Try not to think about it. Instead, think about how many more guns you can buy now and enjoy the warm fuzzy that gives you.
here we go again...
Sorry to break the news to you, but Ronald Reagan is gone.
What started with "There you go again" and ended with "Mission Accomplished" is dead. Neo Conservatism had it's kick at the can and, after giving us the Creationism Museum and the Lies of Mass Destruction, has nothing left to do but blubber around like a deflating balloon until it finally falls limply to the floor.
Classic Reaganesqe barb? Check. Blame foreigners? Check. Blame the UN? Check. Claim that poverty isn't caused by lack of money? Check.
Enjoy your sunset.
Full disclosure, you and I come from completely different ends of the gun debate spectrum. I think guns cause more harm than good.
However...
If it becomes the fad amongst gun owners to use their weapons to shoot out the cctv spy cams that are staring to pop up in more and more places, I promise I'll shut up and never say another word about guns.