You're right- islamic terrorists are practically risk-free compared to the Ruskies. But they're all we've got as an enemy except maybe for Iran - a third rate power that apparently poses a terrible risk to the US because they just won't do what we tell them to!
They're calling it "Islamic terrorism" because, say, Catholic terrorism, Buddhist terrorism, or atheist terrorism simply aren't problems for the US right now. No, they're calling it "Islamic" because that's a fear-inducing hot-word in an election. There are plenty of other terrorists around that are political and even environmental: Timothy McVey, Ted Kazinsky, and the two DC snipers come easily to mind.
"The scientists say that the handful of terrestrial halophiles -- species that can tolerate high salinity -- descended from ancestors that first evolved in purer waters. Based on what we know about Earth, they say that it's difficult to imagine life arising in acidic, oxidizing brines like those inferred for ancient Mars."
Looks like it is just very unlikely with what we know. And 20 years ago they would have said that it was difficult to imagine finding life in water above 212F, yet we have found bacteria in the deep-sea vents that require those temperatures and die if cooled. Don't give up hope yet.
"I blame the NG commanders who are clearly incompetent and don't think it's important to get real and appropriate training for their men"
I don't. The commanders understand perfectly well that their troops are there purely for show, and that it doesn't even matter whether or not it's a good show. Given that fact, spending money on training would be wasteful. Oh, and don't worry about the guardsmen shooting innocents in a firefight -- they don't have any ammunition so they can't shoot anyone.
The Madrid train bombing and London bus bombings prove the risk to transportation systems is real no matter what you think. Spending money on training would be wasteful!? Training that could save civilians and even the soldiers own lives, and maybe prevent significant damage to a major transport hub and the economic consequences that would result? I'll grant that a lot of money is being wasted to prevent attacks on sites that would never be attacked, but major transportation hubs in New York City aren't in that group.
Do you have any evidence that the NG troops in Grand Central Terminal are unarmed or are you just making stuff up as you go along?
Your argument is logically flawed -- who knows if the light causes thieves to leave your van alone? I mean, your van also hasn't been crushed by stampeding elephants, but it's not because the red light scared them away. Get a sense of humor for crying out loud.
in 2002 I bought a ford focus zx3, complete with a blinking red light on the dash, which the dealer refered to as an "anti-theft device." Actually, this works. I regularly place a battery-powered blinking LED in my van when I park it overnight in New York City. All you have to do is make the thief decide to look for easier pickings. Face it - if the thief really wants your stuff even a real car alarm isn't going to deter him.
National Guard troops posted in Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station to provide security. What a joke. They are clearly untrained for transportation hub security duties. If they had to fire their weapons they would kill more civilians than terrorists. They stand around in groups of four or five (grenade fodder). They try to pick up girls. They window shop. Their weapons are unsuitable for indoor fire fights. Contrast this with professional securty guards at airports and train stations in Europe. They travel in pairs, always moving. They do NOT try to pick up girls. Their weapons (SMGs not assault rifles) are slung across their chests and always held in a ready position. They are always observing and evaluating. They are clearly the real thing, not theater like in the US.
I could forgive this lack of training in US security immediately after 9/11, but it has now been seven years and they still aren't trained. I blame the NG commanders who are clearly incompetent and don't think it's important to get real and appropriate training for their men, and I also blame Homeland Security who are trying to do security on the cheap by not establishing a professional and highly trained security force. Farce.
I imagine the security checkpoint creates enough of a bottleneck that a bomb detonated right in the middle of it would kill as many people as a bomb on board an airplane. And not simply kill people. Attacking a security line would disrupt air travel even more effectively than bringing down another plane. Airport security is the biggest piece of theater around - so easy for terrorsits to defeat it's laughable.
Gun vs Burglar is not security theater. It actually does have value in your defense against the burglar and it's not really a "theater" in the sense you aren't even advertising that you are keeping a gun in your home. There doesn't have to be an audience for it to be theater.
But eh, they did explain it. If their explanation (the only part I quoted) was wrong, feel free to point out the error.
No, they did not explain it. They made up some stuff they thought supported their conclusions. Point out the error(s)? Ok, I will.
1. They say that modern wind turbines use wide blades. That is not the case. The most efficient shape for blades has remained unchanged - long and thin.
2. They say that blades turn slowly. Not true. In their non-technical dilitant way they have confused low RPMs with low blade speed (they're artists, web designers, and self-promoters - not engineers). Even at a low RPM the tips of long blades can be travelling very fast - even approaching the speed of sound.
3. They say that just by adding gearing (their stupid bicycle analogy) turbines can get the same energy from lower blade speeds. Just put some gears in to speed up the generator part! Again that is not true. There is no free lunch and the blades have to turn at their most efficient speed given the wind-speed. You can't simply slow them down and add a gear to speed up the generator. Again, they show their utter lack of understanding not only of wind-turbine design, but of even the basic physics of everyday mechanical systems.
And these are the people you quote as experts! And because you did many people now think that wind turbines have been shown to be completely harmless to birds - based on the musings of a bunch of incompetents.
Seriously, unless you have a specific argument against what I quoted, your opinions on the authors are entirely irrelevant. They do in this case explain what I wanted them to, and I don't vouch for the rest of the site. ha ha. You quote unqualified, self-promoting dilitants as your technical source to justify your point of view, and somehow that makes my observations on the quality your experts irrelevant? You and I clearly live on a different planet. On mine experts quoted to support a technical argument should have some hint of technical ability. Credentials if you will. If not, your argument remains unsupported. And remember what your [frankly] off-the-wall argument was: spinning windmill blades look like a solid cliff face to birds. Uh huh.
It is plain wrong when people cite biased PR sites that masquarade as scientific sites to argue against global warming, and I see no difference in what you did to support your position. So yes, I am angry about it. It is scientifically and logically deceptive to cite people who don't know a damned thing about the topic in question and to give the impression that they are "experts". I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say you did it by accident, but be more careful next time, please.
Borrowed from here: Pulease. As an actual degree-granted environmental scientist (M.S., Environmental Sciences and Engineering), I find this site to be total baloney. Please take a look at treehugger's staff list - not a single environmental scientist or engineer in the bunch. In fact, there isn't a single technical degree in the lot of them. They're all web gurus, ex-fashion designers, design students and 20-something "serial entrepeneurs" (I would be embarassed to write that about myself) who have clearly jumped on the sustainability bandwagon. I read things like "did work for Microsoft" in their career summaries. Anyone who has ever hired consultants knows fuzzy descriptors like that are red flags for an attempt to make a consultant with weak credentials sound more qualified than he or she really is. One senior staffer's big accomplishment listed in her career summary was "lived on Maui", for crying out loud. Their Science and Technology Editor read a book by David Suzuki! That's actually listed in his qualifications! YOU'RE QUOTING THESE PEOPLE AS EXPERTS ON WIND-TURBINE BLADE DESIGN!?
This "article" about the so-called misconceptions of wind-turbine bird-kills from a bunch of "sustainability enthusiasts" (their words) is about as worthless as it gets.
Feckless? The area of the blades in the windmill's blade-arc is about 98% open space, and even less at the tips. That's hardly like a cliff - in fact it is a lot more like open sky than a cliff. As for blade speed, to you the speed of the blades may appear slow, but your brain is being fooled by he windmill's size and low RPMs just like a bird's would be.
I'm not saying the windmills would or would not be harmful to birds, but your ideas on why they would not be show remarkably poor reasoning on your part.
Try and remember that first section of US constitution is based on English Bill or Rights (1689) and Scottish Claim of Right, which itself carries on a tradition of defining the limits of state power and citizens rights dating back to Magna Carta (which predates Columbus by 200 years).
Worth thinking about every time americans get all misty eyed about their own history.
That's not to say the UK is a perfect democracy, but neither is the US. However, the US was the first country to declare that these rights were not "granted" but "inherent". That may seem subtle, but it means that no government can take them away. Since England and Scotland had kings who granted their subject's these rights they could theoretically take them away. The US Bill of Rights was a huge advancement in human rights because ir "recognized" rights and did not grant them as previous documents had done.
Also, no one in the US could ever be charged with a crime of carrying a sign that merely insulted someone or called them a cult (public obscenity excluded, but obscenity isn't an issue with what is being said, just how it is said). Here they may herd you off to a "freedom zone" for carrying an offensive political sign, but they won't charge you with a crime.
I'm not an "America right, no matter what" kind of person, but in the area of preserving public free speech we have clearly done a better job than the Brits.
I once worked for Pfizer and "owned" a critical system to support emergency (as in explosions, firefighting, health, etc) operations globally. Dual servers, raids, back-up power supply, the whole works. It had run for years with no outages. The one thing I didn't do was put redundant servers in one of our European data centers because, I was assured, it was nearly impossible for the power to this NJ farm to go away because of backup generators, etc. One day I get a call from IT and they were going to take my emergency information system off-line for half a day! Why? The power switch on the UPS was broken and they couldn't turn it OFF! They brought down my critical never-to-be-offline system that was running perfectly because they couldn't turn it OFF! It was, without a doubt, the dumbest thing I ever saw.
The way I understand it, the majority of NASA's work is placed in the public domain. If the Discovery Channel is giving NASA a copy of their restored HD footage for their archives, will this copy be public domain as well, or will it remain under the copyright of the Discovery Channel? If you use public domain photos to make a coffe-table book you own the copyright to the book. You do not own the copyright to the indvidual pictures even if you sharpen them up in Photoshop first. Anyone can photocopy one of those pictures and sell it, but they can't copy the entire book (or even large parts of it) and sell that.
Discovery Channel will not own the copyright to the NASA images, restored or not, but they will own the copyright to the "When We Left Earth" work and the creative arrangements of those images.
IN the 70's I went to a presentation by an astronaut at my university and he projected some film shot out the window during some docking maneuvers. It was projected large, it had to be a copy not the original, and it was incredibly sharp. So sharp it was obvious how much air degrades acuity even over short distances. There was no way it was 9mm. So they may have used 9mm but not all the time.
But as for those drivers who I've seen sending TEXT MESSAGES while driving--argh, I just want to smack them. Seriously, they aren't even looking at the road. I've had to lay on the horn several times because they're weaving erratically, or stopped in traffic. Has anyone noticed the alarming increase in the number of drivers watching TELEVISION or READING while driving? It makes me want to drag them out of their cars and beat them to a pulp.
Even so there are levels of risk that are acceptable. Life is risky but we take the risk of taking a shower knowing that we may slip and fall and become injured or die as a result. We drive because going somewhere is worth the risk of having an accident. We listen to books on tape or the radio because the risk of being to distracted is better than being bored. We talk on the cell phone because the communication is worth the risk... However if you don't want to risk it perhaps the world is better off without another idiot. The problem with this arguement is two-fold. First you are talking about perceived risk, not actual risk. The actions that your brain decides are "worth it" may in fact not be worth it because your brain has misinterpreted the true risk. Fatal accidents such as the crane collapse in NYC last month are a perfect example - the operators decided that using the old safety straps was worth the risk because the crane had never collapsed before. The riggers did not perceive the risk as significant, when in reality it killed them and several people on the ground. The human brain is geared toward the pereption of risk in a non-technologcal environment and is often a very poor estimator of risk today.
The second problem is that when performing your risk analysis and deciding that cellphone use in a car is acceptable risk, you are also forcing that risk level on other drivers and pedestrians around you. Although you may determine that going 50 mph on a city street while talking on the phone and drinking a milkshake is acceptable risk, the people on the sidewalks and in cars around you may not think so. You are imposing your invalid risk assessment on others.
Sort of puts a new spin on your statement that "maybe the world is better off without another idiot", doesn't it?
It is thought that punishment of petty crimes deters the more violent and dangerous crimes. The reason is that if people see that they can get away with small stuff, they will push the boundaries and see all what else they can get away with. If small crimes are prosecuted, they won't dare try to commit a serious crime. That's the enterpretation by the law and order crowd, anyway. In fact, decrease in serious crime and Quality of Life enforcements are simply a correlation. Serious crime went down across the nation in the 90's even in places where there weren't strict Quality of Life crimes enforcement. In NYC Guilliani took political credit for this national decrease in serious crime by saying there was a causal link between HIS program of rousting squeegee guys and the robbery/murder rates. How absurd.
It's one thing to argue that the new laws were unnecessary, but are you really saying it's a bad thing to use them to solve other crimes? Yes, they may be trivial crimes listed, but they are still crimes. If the ability is there to solve them, why shouldn't they? I don't want to dodge dog shit every time I walk down the street, and if there was a camera pointed at the area, I think police should look at the footage to see who is doing it.
In every pack there are dogs at the bottom of the heirarchy that just follow the pack and go where the other dogs go, obeying the pack rules. Then there are those who pretty much go where they want to no matter what the pack rules say... and those are the ones that get to lead their own packs and get laid! CCTV = pack rules. No CCTV = independent behavior. Guess which you appear to be.
I'd like to suggest that you talk to a doctor. No grown adult should consider a 5 lb, 10"x16" chunk of plastic either "big" or "heavy", and it shouldn't require "lugging" Clearly you don't do much traveling through airports or even from the rental car counter to the car park "lugging" bags and computers. Sure 5 lbs is no big deal when all you have to do is carry the PC from a car to the coffee bar by itself, but when you ADD 5 lbs to your load and then carry all that from gate to gate, or parking to terminal, or baggage pick-up to the taxi stand it can be a major backache.
Censorship, throughout history, has never had much success in suppressing that which had been targeted. It has, however, been quite successful in suppressing those that disseminate information. and creating an environment of fear.
Censorship is terrorism. When I was five I was reading every comic book I could get my hands on. When I was 12 and 13 I was reading Ayn Rand and books like "The Thin Red Line" from the local library. When I was 15, "The Agony and the Ecstacy". All of these are books with sexually explcit scenes. Heck, when I was eleven I was reading stage plays from my local library that were real shockers in their reality (I self-censored those as many were too disturbing for me to enjoy).
My point being that universally preventing people below 18 from accessing new ideas in libraries is morally wrong. Just as my parents allowed me to read ANYTHING (well, almost) I have allowed my kids to read whatever they want, whenever they want; and its worked out quite well, thank you.
There are no such laws. The fact that everyone just happily assumes there are laws behind movie, music, and game ratings is one of the more unsettling aspects of life in twenty-first century America. Although technically true, the industry rating systems you described were self-imposed by the intertainment industry because Congress was ready to set legal requirements that might have been much more strict than the final industry standards. So there is nothing "unsettling" about these ratings not being laws - it's simply how the system works. It is common for industries of all kinds to develop standards and codes of conduct when Congress is threatening to do it for them in law.
The last time I had to go, I took a quick look at who they were excusing, and who they kept. They kept the unemployed, the single parent, the person with a criminal record, etc. Excuse me!? The single parents!? You mean they were actually stupid enough to treat a person who had a child and was not (or no longer) married as a human being? And those worthless stupid unemployed - they should NEVER be allowed to perform any civic duties they are so pathetic! But I get the code-words buddy - you're not elitist, you're simply racist. You really meant the black unemployed, the black single-mothers, the black "criminals".
So you got booted from several the juries. Why am I not surprised? And of course you blame it on the fact that you're educated and not because you're a racist? After all, you're clearly smart enough to recognize that there is a undeserving, worthless underclass who aren't like you... worthy and fine and capable of participation in government. Pity the poor defendant in any case you jury. Seems to me those lawyers were pretty damned smart.
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You're right- islamic terrorists are practically risk-free compared to the Ruskies. But they're all we've got as an enemy except maybe for Iran - a third rate power that apparently poses a terrible risk to the US because they just won't do what we tell them to!
Looks like it is just very unlikely with what we know. And 20 years ago they would have said that it was difficult to imagine finding life in water above 212F, yet we have found bacteria in the deep-sea vents that require those temperatures and die if cooled. Don't give up hope yet.
I don't. The commanders understand perfectly well that their troops are there purely for show, and that it doesn't even matter whether or not it's a good show. Given that fact, spending money on training would be wasteful. Oh, and don't worry about the guardsmen shooting innocents in a firefight -- they don't have any ammunition so they can't shoot anyone.
The Madrid train bombing and London bus bombings prove the risk to transportation systems is real no matter what you think. Spending money on training would be wasteful!? Training that could save civilians and even the soldiers own lives, and maybe prevent significant damage to a major transport hub and the economic consequences that would result? I'll grant that a lot of money is being wasted to prevent attacks on sites that would never be attacked, but major transportation hubs in New York City aren't in that group.Do you have any evidence that the NG troops in Grand Central Terminal are unarmed or are you just making stuff up as you go along?
National Guard troops posted in Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station to provide security. What a joke. They are clearly untrained for transportation hub security duties. If they had to fire their weapons they would kill more civilians than terrorists. They stand around in groups of four or five (grenade fodder). They try to pick up girls. They window shop. Their weapons are unsuitable for indoor fire fights. Contrast this with professional securty guards at airports and train stations in Europe. They travel in pairs, always moving. They do NOT try to pick up girls. Their weapons (SMGs not assault rifles) are slung across their chests and always held in a ready position. They are always observing and evaluating. They are clearly the real thing, not theater like in the US.
I could forgive this lack of training in US security immediately after 9/11, but it has now been seven years and they still aren't trained. I blame the NG commanders who are clearly incompetent and don't think it's important to get real and appropriate training for their men, and I also blame Homeland Security who are trying to do security on the cheap by not establishing a professional and highly trained security force. Farce.
No, they did not explain it. They made up some stuff they thought supported their conclusions. Point out the error(s)? Ok, I will.
1. They say that modern wind turbines use wide blades. That is not the case. The most efficient shape for blades has remained unchanged - long and thin.
2. They say that blades turn slowly. Not true. In their non-technical dilitant way they have confused low RPMs with low blade speed (they're artists, web designers, and self-promoters - not engineers). Even at a low RPM the tips of long blades can be travelling very fast - even approaching the speed of sound.
3. They say that just by adding gearing (their stupid bicycle analogy) turbines can get the same energy from lower blade speeds. Just put some gears in to speed up the generator part! Again that is not true. There is no free lunch and the blades have to turn at their most efficient speed given the wind-speed. You can't simply slow them down and add a gear to speed up the generator. Again, they show their utter lack of understanding not only of wind-turbine design, but of even the basic physics of everyday mechanical systems.
And these are the people you quote as experts! And because you did many people now think that wind turbines have been shown to be completely harmless to birds - based on the musings of a bunch of incompetents.
It is plain wrong when people cite biased PR sites that masquarade as scientific sites to argue against global warming, and I see no difference in what you did to support your position. So yes, I am angry about it. It is scientifically and logically deceptive to cite people who don't know a damned thing about the topic in question and to give the impression that they are "experts". I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say you did it by accident, but be more careful next time, please.
Pulease. As an actual degree-granted environmental scientist (M.S., Environmental Sciences and Engineering), I find this site to be total baloney. Please take a look at treehugger's staff list - not a single environmental scientist or engineer in the bunch. In fact, there isn't a single technical degree in the lot of them. They're all web gurus, ex-fashion designers, design students and 20-something "serial entrepeneurs" (I would be embarassed to write that about myself) who have clearly jumped on the sustainability bandwagon. I read things like "did work for Microsoft" in their career summaries. Anyone who has ever hired consultants knows fuzzy descriptors like that are red flags for an attempt to make a consultant with weak credentials sound more qualified than he or she really is. One senior staffer's big accomplishment listed in her career summary was "lived on Maui", for crying out loud. Their Science and Technology Editor read a book by David Suzuki! That's actually listed in his qualifications! YOU'RE QUOTING THESE PEOPLE AS EXPERTS ON WIND-TURBINE BLADE DESIGN!?
This "article" about the so-called misconceptions of wind-turbine bird-kills from a bunch of "sustainability enthusiasts" (their words) is about as worthless as it gets.
Feckless? The area of the blades in the windmill's blade-arc is about 98% open space, and even less at the tips. That's hardly like a cliff - in fact it is a lot more like open sky than a cliff. As for blade speed, to you the speed of the blades may appear slow, but your brain is being fooled by he windmill's size and low RPMs just like a bird's would be.
I'm not saying the windmills would or would not be harmful to birds, but your ideas on why they would not be show remarkably poor reasoning on your part.
Worth thinking about every time americans get all misty eyed about their own history.
That's not to say the UK is a perfect democracy, but neither is the US. However, the US was the first country to declare that these rights were not "granted" but "inherent". That may seem subtle, but it means that no government can take them away. Since England and Scotland had kings who granted their subject's these rights they could theoretically take them away. The US Bill of Rights was a huge advancement in human rights because ir "recognized" rights and did not grant them as previous documents had done.
Also, no one in the US could ever be charged with a crime of carrying a sign that merely insulted someone or called them a cult (public obscenity excluded, but obscenity isn't an issue with what is being said, just how it is said). Here they may herd you off to a "freedom zone" for carrying an offensive political sign, but they won't charge you with a crime.
I'm not an "America right, no matter what" kind of person, but in the area of preserving public free speech we have clearly done a better job than the Brits.
I once worked for Pfizer and "owned" a critical system to support emergency (as in explosions, firefighting, health, etc) operations globally. Dual servers, raids, back-up power supply, the whole works. It had run for years with no outages. The one thing I didn't do was put redundant servers in one of our European data centers because, I was assured, it was nearly impossible for the power to this NJ farm to go away because of backup generators, etc. One day I get a call from IT and they were going to take my emergency information system off-line for half a day! Why? The power switch on the UPS was broken and they couldn't turn it OFF! They brought down my critical never-to-be-offline system that was running perfectly because they couldn't turn it OFF! It was, without a doubt, the dumbest thing I ever saw.
Discovery Channel will not own the copyright to the NASA images, restored or not, but they will own the copyright to the "When We Left Earth" work and the creative arrangements of those images.
IN the 70's I went to a presentation by an astronaut at my university and he projected some film shot out the window during some docking maneuvers. It was projected large, it had to be a copy not the original, and it was incredibly sharp. So sharp it was obvious how much air degrades acuity even over short distances. There was no way it was 9mm. So they may have used 9mm but not all the time.
The second problem is that when performing your risk analysis and deciding that cellphone use in a car is acceptable risk, you are also forcing that risk level on other drivers and pedestrians around you. Although you may determine that going 50 mph on a city street while talking on the phone and drinking a milkshake is acceptable risk, the people on the sidewalks and in cars around you may not think so. You are imposing your invalid risk assessment on others.
Sort of puts a new spin on your statement that "maybe the world is better off without another idiot", doesn't it?
In every pack there are dogs at the bottom of the heirarchy that just follow the pack and go where the other dogs go, obeying the pack rules. Then there are those who pretty much go where they want to no matter what the pack rules say... and those are the ones that get to lead their own packs and get laid! CCTV = pack rules. No CCTV = independent behavior. Guess which you appear to be.It's one thing to argue that the new laws were unnecessary, but are you really saying it's a bad thing to use them to solve other crimes? Yes, they may be trivial crimes listed, but they are still crimes. If the ability is there to solve them, why shouldn't they? I don't want to dodge dog shit every time I walk down the street, and if there was a camera pointed at the area, I think police should look at the footage to see who is doing it.
Censorship is terrorism. When I was five I was reading every comic book I could get my hands on. When I was 12 and 13 I was reading Ayn Rand and books like "The Thin Red Line" from the local library. When I was 15, "The Agony and the Ecstacy". All of these are books with sexually explcit scenes. Heck, when I was eleven I was reading stage plays from my local library that were real shockers in their reality (I self-censored those as many were too disturbing for me to enjoy).
My point being that universally preventing people below 18 from accessing new ideas in libraries is morally wrong. Just as my parents allowed me to read ANYTHING (well, almost) I have allowed my kids to read whatever they want, whenever they want; and its worked out quite well, thank you.
No government censorship of libraries!
So you got booted from several the juries. Why am I not surprised? And of course you blame it on the fact that you're educated and not because you're a racist? After all, you're clearly smart enough to recognize that there is a undeserving, worthless underclass who aren't like you