True -- I totally forgot about the TDI. I was very interested in getting a Jetta TDI at one time but my mechanic suggested that I wouldn't see the efficiencies it can deliver because it would barely warm up by the time I got to work (my commute is less than 4 miles) and those short trips wouldn't be all that great for a diesel engine.
There's not a single car sold in America that gets 50+ mpg, which does not mean that such cars don't exist or are impossible
12 years ago I zipped all around Japan for a couple weeks in a Honda Today, got something like 60ish MPG, cruised right along at freeway speeds, power windows, AC -- it was a great car.
I suppose I should have put "credit" in quotes. But how would you say the credit Obama gets for ending the war is unwarranted because rather than try to end it, he tried to extend it.
And yeah, GWB was an evil SOB who blah blah blah. Totally agree. But why is it so hard for the Obamabots to understand that evil does not magically become good because Obama does it?
Evil like trippling the number of troops in Afghanistan. Evil like defining as 'militant', any male person over the age of 13 or whatever who happens to be murdered by one of his signature strikes. Evil like using secret legal memos to justify due process free execution written by Marty Lederman (who excoriated GWB for using secret legal memos to justify due process free detention). Evil like forgiving and forgetting those who torture. Evil like signing the NDAA. etc. etc. etc.
Oh but wait, he signed the Lilly Leadbetter Act, a single page piece of legislation tweaking existing law that was passed virtually unanimously by both houses. Ferchrisake, Satan would have signed it too.
What should actually be noted by Obama apologists, is that his plan to "close" Guantanamo was not a plan to stop the practices of Guantanamo, but to move those practices to a Federal prison in Thompson IL. Many in congress, including liberals Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders, voted against Obama's plan not because they're neocon authoritarians, but because it made Gitmo worse by importing its unconstitutional practices to the US at great expense.
So yeah, Congress interfered with Obama's plan to spend lots of money importing Gitmo to the states. This really doesn't mean however, that Congress interfered with his liberal motives, as is so often implied by Obamabots. Kind of like how they give him credit for ending the War in Iraq, when what actually happened is that despite intensive lobbying of the Iraqi government, he failed to extend the expiration of SOFA beyond the Dec 2011 deadline GWB established, and as a result, his choice was to leave soldiers in Iraq subject to local prosecution for crimes, or pull them out. Obamabots give him credit for ending the war when he only deserves credit for failing to extend the war.
If Christianity is a religion of love and peace, how did it get one of the easiest moral question ever, wrong (i.e., slavery). Seriously, behind killing someone and in front of taking their stuff without permission, is it that hard to think of slavery as immoral? Sure, now you're all against it in the modern age, but your books and teachers weren't. Which tells me a lot about the value of their morals.
This kind of problem is purely situational and can apply to any provider -- in contrast, I have T-Mobile and have no problem streaming Netflix in most of the places I go, and I pay the extra $15 so I can use my phone as a wifi hotspot with my tablet or laptop.
There is one place that I go regularly where I've never had reception, except way back in the day when I had a phone that had an external antenna jack -- I put a "trucker antenna" way up a pole and then I had five bars when plugged in.
Well, I live in the Pacific NW, and with the exception of July, August, and September, this region provides ample opportunity to fish in overcast conditions. Sometimes it even rains. Personally, I prefer a light drizzle but you can't have perfect weather all the time.
Explain how it shows any regard for human decency to consider one's personal secret opinion to be the "due process" in "no person shall be deprived of life... without due process of law."
And then there's the rest of the list. If you think Obama is about human decency, then you must likewise think the same about GWB and Cheney.
I hate being in bright sunlight so that isn't an issue for me. I have a basic kindle and Nexus 7, and I've read books on both.
Both are a handy size for reading and both can be held in one hand comfortably, though the kindle is lighter. I haven't read so long with the Nexus that I've drained the battery, but if you are going to be away from power for days, the kindle is better because it will have juice.
However, for reading PDFs, particularly PDFs with color, the kindle is very weak compared to the tablet. For example, I have the fishing regs for my state uploaded to my kindle and to the kindle app on the Nexus 7, and it's a real pain to use on the kindle. On the tablet, it's a snap to zoom in on a picture of a fish for example, or on some small print for a particular marine area. It's so clunky to do the same thing on the Kindle that I don't even bother trying.
However, reading in the dark with the kindle app on the Nexus 7 can be blinding. The Kindle app doesn't respect the brightness settings you set for the tablet, at least not once you're in your book. Fortunately, you can choose to adjust the display in the kindle app once you are on a page of the book by clicking on the font size icon -- then you can choose black on white, sepia, or white on black. You can also adjust brightness. I can't figure out why that is in the font size setting area, rather than in the preferences area, and I found it only accidentally. Anyway, for me, white text on black at the minimum brightness is tolerable enough for reading till I doze off. It isn't as good as ambient light on e-ink, but tolerable.
The nexus will play netflix vids fine, though I rigged up a bit of stand by bending up a coat hanger so I can just set it on a side table rather than hold it if I want to fall asleep watching a show. Obviously the kindle won't do video at all. The tablet is a lot closer to having a real computer too and can do interesting things like marine charts, games, etc. etc.
Anyway, if I didn't already have the kindle, I wouldn't buy one now that I have a 7" tablet. It will do what the kindle does best reasonably well, plus a million things the kindle won't do at all, and excels at a few things the Kindle does poorly (like full color PDFs).
I don't have a 10" tablet, but I don't think I'd want one either. At that size a laptop is more compelling to me, but a 7" tablet can be used with one hand quite handily. So anyway, I'd get a 7" tablet and use the $100 a kindle costs for buying books rather than buying both devices.
No, there's a long way to go. When we get to a disparity levels like pre-revolution France, that's when it will change. Till then, more aid for banksters and a few welfare crumbs for the seriously poor to prevent them from feeling too revoltish.
Yeah right. You might as well suggest Americans change their government, but average Joes are in the same position the world over: bent over at the waist clutching their ankles saying "do it again please."
If you don't consider Obama to be right winger, you must then agree that GWB was not a right winger. Their policies are practically identical although in some ways, Obama is even more far right, for example, he just murders people by drone rather than indefinitely detaining them. Solves the whole pesky trial problem.
Here's my list of the similarities: nothingchanged.org
Compared to the Lilly Leadbetter Act that he signed (which was basically passed unanimously and is a one page tweak to existing law), there's some serious shit to explain if you are going to say Obama is NOT a rightwinger.
And as a liberal, I have to say they're right. Sure there are some wedge issues here and there, but not of that matters if you've been assassinated by the president or thrown in a gulag till you die.
About the only politicians that people actually like are the "long shot" candidates like Ron Paul, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Naturally, they have no shot in winning...
It is people constantly worried about winning or losing to the other evil that is the main problem. A third party candidate doesn't have to win to cause a victory for America. All a third party candidate has to do is show the status quo Demoplicans or Republocrats that it is the 1/3 of voters (independents) who decide elections and that they aren't speaking to those voters anymore.
The only way to get there is to make your voice heard by NOT voting for Mr. Brain Cancer (D) or Mr. Ebola (R). If it becomes clear to Mr. Cancer and Democrats that he lost an election because independent liberal minded voters went with Stein instead of him, then the party is going to do something (hopefully beyond mere rhetoric) to try to appeal to those voters. If they don't they'll never be in power again, and that's a mighty incentive.
Here's the key though: you have to be willing to take a short term loss for the long term win.
So for someone like me who is very worried about civil liberties, the worst vote I could make is to vote for Obama because all he has done is make what was radical under GWB, the new normal. If I vote for him, I give Democrats the green light to be even worse. The only way to drive Democrats back to pretending to care about civil rights, is to make it clear that liberal voters abandoned Obama. However, if I use my protest vote for Romney, it will be heard by the Democrats as a suggestion to be even more neo-con than they are currently acting. That option is as bad as voting for Obama. And of course, not voting would just lump me in with the apathetic so it would gain me nothing.
That leaves me with one rational vote: Jill Stein. She is strong on civil liberties and on the ballot. It's actually a very plain choice for anyone who thought GWB's policies were evil and doesn't think those same polices become magical and sparkly fine merely because Obama practices them. All those policies liberals hate will just get worse under Obama, but if he loses, there will, at least hopefully, be some pushback.
A conservative could come up with a similar analysis to vote Buddy Roemer or whoever (fwiw, I've heard him speak and I like him too, I just want my vote to be a clear anti-war, anti-police state vote).
Only old people use facebook. Wasn't it just a few years ago that only old people used email? Or was that in the context of texting? Can't remember -- I'm just getting too old for everything I guess.
I see the difference but really, it makes the constitution pretty hollow when all the courts can do is strike down a law but can in no way hold the Feds responsible for violating the constitution. The courts can strike down all the laws they want, but what is a citizen to do when the Feds violate the constitution? Nothing. Sovereign immunity trumps everything I guess.
The drug war got the ball rolling on the erosion of civil liberties, GWB ran with that after 9/11, and Obama has totally shredded the constitution with his policy of "I AM the due process in the 'no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law' provision".
Now, Birss says Apple must post a notice to its UK website that outlines the July 9 decision, and the notice must remain on the site for six months.... Unsurprisingly, Apple's lawyer in the case, Richard Hacon, pushed back on the order by arguing that Apple would essentially be forced to advertise for Samsung. "No company likes to refer to a rival on its website,"...
Thanks for pointing this out. I fairly frequently write confusing messages because "I" and "U" are right next to each other and can really change the intended meaning: "I need to lose weight" v. "U need to lose weight" (I never use "U" for "you" but nobody really knows that).
Anyway, I'll try messagease for a few days to see if it turns out to be less error prone than qwerty -- qwerty has a familiarity advantage of course. One thing I liked right off the bat about messagease is that it needs no special permissions of any kind. It's rare to see android apps that don't want to know your contact list even if all they're doing is converting weights and measures or such.
As for dextr, it doesn't look like any thought was put into arranging the keyboard based on the letter content of words. Alphabetical order is just as random in that sense as qwerty, and lacks qwerty's familiarity.
Don't get all bent out of shape -- giving money to the government is exactly like giving money to banks, though the reverse is not true. But so what, as long as the money winds up in the pocket of a billionaire so he can hire a few more maidservants -- everything is great. I mean, charity for the rich, that's how you make jobs right?
Except that the steel should attract the magnetite and the fish would end up swimming in circles.
Except the ocean just dissolves steel, unless it's stainless steel (and then the process is merely slower, not absent), and a lot of stainless steel doesn't attract magnets.
Nobody wants to say it, because society treats doctors like gods, but doctors are some of the greediest people in the world, and then when they start running insurance companies, they go nuts.
Consumption of distilled beverages rose dramatically in Europe in and after the mid 14th century, when distilled liquors were commonly used as remedies for the Black Death. Around 1400 it was discovered how to distill spirits from wheat, barley, and rye beers, a cheaper option than grapes.
So... booze got cheaper and more widely available in the century before the introduction of condoms (if the 500 year history of condoms is correct). Plus it cured the plague!
Slashdot Mirror
True -- I totally forgot about the TDI. I was very interested in getting a Jetta TDI at one time but my mechanic suggested that I wouldn't see the efficiencies it can deliver because it would barely warm up by the time I got to work (my commute is less than 4 miles) and those short trips wouldn't be all that great for a diesel engine.
Notably, VW sells the Polo in Europe with a 1.2 liter TDI that gets 80 mpg:
http://www.nextgreencar.com/news-item.php?VW-launches-new-80mpg-Polo-Bluemotion
Again, the only reason cars sold in America get lousy mileage is because we are allowed only to buy those that get lousy mileage.
I used the figures from the website. Blame Honda.
There's not a single car sold in America that gets 50+ mpg, which does not mean that such cars don't exist or are impossible
12 years ago I zipped all around Japan for a couple weeks in a Honda Today, got something like 60ish MPG, cruised right along at freeway speeds, power windows, AC -- it was a great car.
Here's an example of new minicar:
http://www.honda.co.jp/LIFE/webcatalog/spec/
The base model gets 22km/l (51.7mpg). The turbo 4wd model gets 18km/l (42.3 mpg).
This looks like an interesting microvan:
http://www.honda.co.jp/Nboxplus/
Efficiency range is 18.8 km/l (bigger engine 4wd) to 21.8 km/l (smaller engine FWD).
http://www.honda.co.jp/Nboxplus/webcatalog/spec/
Anyway, the reason we don't have cars with 55 mpg is merely because they aren't sold here. Not because of physics.
I suppose I should have put "credit" in quotes. But how would you say the credit Obama gets for ending the war is unwarranted because rather than try to end it, he tried to extend it.
And yeah, GWB was an evil SOB who blah blah blah. Totally agree. But why is it so hard for the Obamabots to understand that evil does not magically become good because Obama does it?
Evil like trippling the number of troops in Afghanistan. Evil like defining as 'militant', any male person over the age of 13 or whatever who happens to be murdered by one of his signature strikes. Evil like using secret legal memos to justify due process free execution written by Marty Lederman (who excoriated GWB for using secret legal memos to justify due process free detention). Evil like forgiving and forgetting those who torture. Evil like signing the NDAA. etc. etc. etc.
Oh but wait, he signed the Lilly Leadbetter Act, a single page piece of legislation tweaking existing law that was passed virtually unanimously by both houses. Ferchrisake, Satan would have signed it too.
What should actually be noted by Obama apologists, is that his plan to "close" Guantanamo was not a plan to stop the practices of Guantanamo, but to move those practices to a Federal prison in Thompson IL. Many in congress, including liberals Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders, voted against Obama's plan not because they're neocon authoritarians, but because it made Gitmo worse by importing its unconstitutional practices to the US at great expense.
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/
So yeah, Congress interfered with Obama's plan to spend lots of money importing Gitmo to the states. This really doesn't mean however, that Congress interfered with his liberal motives, as is so often implied by Obamabots. Kind of like how they give him credit for ending the War in Iraq, when what actually happened is that despite intensive lobbying of the Iraqi government, he failed to extend the expiration of SOFA beyond the Dec 2011 deadline GWB established, and as a result, his choice was to leave soldiers in Iraq subject to local prosecution for crimes, or pull them out. Obamabots give him credit for ending the war when he only deserves credit for failing to extend the war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/obama-iraq_n_1032507.html
If Christianity is a religion of love and peace, how did it get one of the easiest moral question ever, wrong (i.e., slavery). Seriously, behind killing someone and in front of taking their stuff without permission, is it that hard to think of slavery as immoral? Sure, now you're all against it in the modern age, but your books and teachers weren't. Which tells me a lot about the value of their morals.
http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=new+testament+on+slavery
Your sig:
Perhaps you should consider a second line as a corollary:
As for this article, just another one in the endless stream of "look how evil Iran is, Obama should start the drone attacks now."
This kind of problem is purely situational and can apply to any provider -- in contrast, I have T-Mobile and have no problem streaming Netflix in most of the places I go, and I pay the extra $15 so I can use my phone as a wifi hotspot with my tablet or laptop.
There is one place that I go regularly where I've never had reception, except way back in the day when I had a phone that had an external antenna jack -- I put a "trucker antenna" way up a pole and then I had five bars when plugged in.
Well, I live in the Pacific NW, and with the exception of July, August, and September, this region provides ample opportunity to fish in overcast conditions. Sometimes it even rains. Personally, I prefer a light drizzle but you can't have perfect weather all the time.
You obviously didn't read any of the items.
Explain how it shows any regard for human decency to consider one's personal secret opinion to be the "due process" in "no person shall be deprived of life ... without due process of law."
And then there's the rest of the list. If you think Obama is about human decency, then you must likewise think the same about GWB and Cheney.
I hate being in bright sunlight so that isn't an issue for me. I have a basic kindle and Nexus 7, and I've read books on both.
Both are a handy size for reading and both can be held in one hand comfortably, though the kindle is lighter. I haven't read so long with the Nexus that I've drained the battery, but if you are going to be away from power for days, the kindle is better because it will have juice.
However, for reading PDFs, particularly PDFs with color, the kindle is very weak compared to the tablet. For example, I have the fishing regs for my state uploaded to my kindle and to the kindle app on the Nexus 7, and it's a real pain to use on the kindle. On the tablet, it's a snap to zoom in on a picture of a fish for example, or on some small print for a particular marine area. It's so clunky to do the same thing on the Kindle that I don't even bother trying.
However, reading in the dark with the kindle app on the Nexus 7 can be blinding. The Kindle app doesn't respect the brightness settings you set for the tablet, at least not once you're in your book. Fortunately, you can choose to adjust the display in the kindle app once you are on a page of the book by clicking on the font size icon -- then you can choose black on white, sepia, or white on black. You can also adjust brightness. I can't figure out why that is in the font size setting area, rather than in the preferences area, and I found it only accidentally. Anyway, for me, white text on black at the minimum brightness is tolerable enough for reading till I doze off. It isn't as good as ambient light on e-ink, but tolerable.
The nexus will play netflix vids fine, though I rigged up a bit of stand by bending up a coat hanger so I can just set it on a side table rather than hold it if I want to fall asleep watching a show. Obviously the kindle won't do video at all. The tablet is a lot closer to having a real computer too and can do interesting things like marine charts, games, etc. etc.
Anyway, if I didn't already have the kindle, I wouldn't buy one now that I have a 7" tablet. It will do what the kindle does best reasonably well, plus a million things the kindle won't do at all, and excels at a few things the Kindle does poorly (like full color PDFs).
I don't have a 10" tablet, but I don't think I'd want one either. At that size a laptop is more compelling to me, but a 7" tablet can be used with one hand quite handily. So anyway, I'd get a 7" tablet and use the $100 a kindle costs for buying books rather than buying both devices.
No, there's a long way to go. When we get to a disparity levels like pre-revolution France, that's when it will change. Till then, more aid for banksters and a few welfare crumbs for the seriously poor to prevent them from feeling too revoltish.
Yeah right. You might as well suggest Americans change their government, but average Joes are in the same position the world over: bent over at the waist clutching their ankles saying "do it again please."
If you don't consider Obama to be right winger, you must then agree that GWB was not a right winger. Their policies are practically identical although in some ways, Obama is even more far right, for example, he just murders people by drone rather than indefinitely detaining them. Solves the whole pesky trial problem.
Here's my list of the similarities: nothingchanged.org
Compared to the Lilly Leadbetter Act that he signed (which was basically passed unanimously and is a one page tweak to existing law), there's some serious shit to explain if you are going to say Obama is NOT a rightwinger.
And as a liberal, I have to say they're right. Sure there are some wedge issues here and there, but not of that matters if you've been assassinated by the president or thrown in a gulag till you die.
It is people constantly worried about winning or losing to the other evil that is the main problem. A third party candidate doesn't have to win to cause a victory for America. All a third party candidate has to do is show the status quo Demoplicans or Republocrats that it is the 1/3 of voters (independents) who decide elections and that they aren't speaking to those voters anymore.
The only way to get there is to make your voice heard by NOT voting for Mr. Brain Cancer (D) or Mr. Ebola (R). If it becomes clear to Mr. Cancer and Democrats that he lost an election because independent liberal minded voters went with Stein instead of him, then the party is going to do something (hopefully beyond mere rhetoric) to try to appeal to those voters. If they don't they'll never be in power again, and that's a mighty incentive.
Here's the key though: you have to be willing to take a short term loss for the long term win.
So for someone like me who is very worried about civil liberties, the worst vote I could make is to vote for Obama because all he has done is make what was radical under GWB, the new normal. If I vote for him, I give Democrats the green light to be even worse. The only way to drive Democrats back to pretending to care about civil rights, is to make it clear that liberal voters abandoned Obama. However, if I use my protest vote for Romney, it will be heard by the Democrats as a suggestion to be even more neo-con than they are currently acting. That option is as bad as voting for Obama. And of course, not voting would just lump me in with the apathetic so it would gain me nothing.
That leaves me with one rational vote: Jill Stein. She is strong on civil liberties and on the ballot. It's actually a very plain choice for anyone who thought GWB's policies were evil and doesn't think those same polices become magical and sparkly fine merely because Obama practices them. All those policies liberals hate will just get worse under Obama, but if he loses, there will, at least hopefully, be some pushback.
A conservative could come up with a similar analysis to vote Buddy Roemer or whoever (fwiw, I've heard him speak and I like him too, I just want my vote to be a clear anti-war, anti-police state vote).
Only old people use facebook. Wasn't it just a few years ago that only old people used email? Or was that in the context of texting? Can't remember -- I'm just getting too old for everything I guess.
I see the difference but really, it makes the constitution pretty hollow when all the courts can do is strike down a law but can in no way hold the Feds responsible for violating the constitution. The courts can strike down all the laws they want, but what is a citizen to do when the Feds violate the constitution? Nothing. Sovereign immunity trumps everything I guess.
The drug war got the ball rolling on the erosion of civil liberties, GWB ran with that after 9/11, and Obama has totally shredded the constitution with his policy of "I AM the due process in the 'no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law' provision".
It isn't just some newspaper ads:
The Streisand effect was designed in California too, correct?
Thanks for pointing this out. I fairly frequently write confusing messages because "I" and "U" are right next to each other and can really change the intended meaning: "I need to lose weight" v. "U need to lose weight" (I never use "U" for "you" but nobody really knows that).
Anyway, I'll try messagease for a few days to see if it turns out to be less error prone than qwerty -- qwerty has a familiarity advantage of course. One thing I liked right off the bat about messagease is that it needs no special permissions of any kind. It's rare to see android apps that don't want to know your contact list even if all they're doing is converting weights and measures or such.
As for dextr, it doesn't look like any thought was put into arranging the keyboard based on the letter content of words. Alphabetical order is just as random in that sense as qwerty, and lacks qwerty's familiarity.
Don't get all bent out of shape -- giving money to the government is exactly like giving money to banks, though the reverse is not true. But so what, as long as the money winds up in the pocket of a billionaire so he can hire a few more maidservants -- everything is great. I mean, charity for the rich, that's how you make jobs right?
Except the ocean just dissolves steel, unless it's stainless steel (and then the process is merely slower, not absent), and a lot of stainless steel doesn't attract magnets.
Nobody wants to say it, because society treats doctors like gods, but doctors are some of the greediest people in the world, and then when they start running insurance companies, they go nuts.
PickaSAP, any SAP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP
Same boat -- TFA isn't that illuminating either.
Or condom avoidance mechanisms such as: http://www.absolut.com/us
Also interesting with distilled spirits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_beverage#History_of_distillation
So ... booze got cheaper and more widely available in the century before the introduction of condoms (if the 500 year history of condoms is correct). Plus it cured the plague!