Certainly there's something to protest, in the minds of the protestors.
Taxation without representation.
Clinton does not represent those who declare openly that he does not share their interests. It is their right, therefore, to demand fair and adequate representation at the table. Since the WTO accords could be seen as a form of taxation - in that they have costs, as well as benefits - it is the right of the people to fair representation of their choosing.
A) the Constitution of the United States guarantees the freedom of movement and assembly to all citizens.
B) the Constitution defines the President's role as the elected leader of the people. It does NOT make him anything more than a citizen of the US, like any other, temporarily filling in as spokeperson. It emphatically does not allow for the kinds of protections and civil distruptions that Clinton causes on a daily basis, specifically because those are the rights of a King, not the rights of a President.
Actually, they couldn't prove intent. I might print out large sheets of 100 dollar bills, as exactly as I can manage. Can you prove that my intention is to pass those sheets of paper as cash? No. I might like the idea of a room wallpapered with cash. Or use it for toilet paper.
You can't prove intent unless I cut the paper into individual bills, make sure they look real, and try to use them to purchase something. Period. Anything UP TO BUT NOT INCLUDING trying to exchange the copies for cash or merchandise is perfectly legal.
You raise an interesting point. Where is the line?
We consider it appropriate that the Boston Tea Party broke the law; it was an unjust law. OK.
We consider it innappropriate that some protestors in Seattle broke store windows - belonging to private individuals, not the government - and blocked streets and sidewalks. OK. So where's the line?
I think the majority of the protestors in Seattle knew exactly what they were doing, and they were doing it correctly. A few individuals chose to act inappropriately, and as such should be punished. But which ones? And who decides?
Should we punish the government for blocking all access to the area around the WTO? That's not only wrong, it's illegal. Why isn't anyone complaining?
1) splicing a gene to produce something "useful" like insulin into a plant is not an easy thing to do. You're taking an animal characteristic and trying to give it to a plant.
2) Insulin production is already as high as it needs to be, and relatively inexpensive, as well. Sheep and pigs naturally produce insulin, and can be easily modified to produce fully human insulin. (Sold under the trade name Humilin.)
3) If you wait for the government to decide to allow such things, and especially if you wait for the government to fund it and create them, you will be waiting a long time. Accept that a free market creates most - not all - of the things you will need, with the price of fair payment to the creator, and learn to accept it.
Actually, I think it will be easy to tell the difference for anothe reason. Take any good story, one you really liked, and plug it into just about any modern word processor with a grammar checker. It's quite simple; the best writers, be they short story authors, novelists, or columnists, know that a truly good story breaks the rules of grammar regularly. The hard part is defining how much is too much. And that, I don't think a computer can do.
The moon is Tethys, and yes, it is all black with an oval white patch. When the images first came in at JPL, I'm told (by someone who was there) there was a stunned silence, and one of the mission heads faxed the image to Clarke, claiming they'd kill him if there was a black dot in the center of the image.
Fortunately, (?) there wasn't. We don't think. Hard to say. That's probably just a spot on the image.
Ganymede is believed to have water ice, and there is some indication that Callisto does, too. The difference is that Callisto and Ganymede are much rougher planets, so you don't have such a large mass of ice to retain heat. It's also possible Europa got its water from a collision with a massive comet billions of years ago. Or five hundred years ago. We'd never know...
You'd still get tides, because Europa does not orbit in a perfect circle around Jupiter. (As a matter of fact, nothing does.) In theory, if you had a moon tidally locked on a planet AND orbiting in a perfect circle, AND with no other large celestial objects, then you'd still have tides, but they'd be constant - they'd just pull the satellite and the planet slightly out of round, very slightly egg shaped, with the points of the eggs facing each other.
Since Europa is not in a perfectly circular orbit, and since Jupiter has 3 other "tidally significant" moons (i.e. big enough to matter on a macroscopic scale) you could get some killer tides. In fact, with Jupiter, the Sun, and Ganymede, Callisto, and Io all creating separate tidal patterns, you'd have five different high tides and ebb tides each day - day being the same as an orbit, of course, since we're locked - and those tides would all reinforce and cancel eachother out. 96 foot waves would probably require all five tides in sync - but that would happen several times a year, I think.
But seriously though, is letting your government know what you look like such a big privacy issue? They already know that you exist from birth certificates or visas. That coupled with the fact that most photo ID comes from the government makes me wonder why this is such a big deal...
That's actually the issue. The government would not walk up to someone from, say, 100 years ago and say "we want your name, date of birth, who you are married to, how many children you have, where you live, your picture, and the right to sell all of that information to the highest bidder, or failing that, give it away. We also want to issue you a number, and if we draw that number, you're going to have to join the army." 100 years ago, the average citizen would have started a revolution over less. (140 years ago, a bunch of people DID.)
Instead, the government said "We just want to start tracking births and deaths. It's important to know how many citizens we have." They had no real use for the information that anyone could see, other than a census - so nobody minded.
Then they started tracking marriages. There were some benefits, and they seemed to offset the problems, so nobody minded. Except a few privacy nuts - probably polygamists.
Then they start issuing ID numbers to everybody. "It's just a number; it helps us keep track of where government benefits should go. You don't want to lose out on benefit money, do you?" So nobody minded.
Then they started licensing drivers. Those new motor cars were dangerous if the driver was unskilled; so nobody minded.
Then they started tracking income. "We have to know where the poorest areas are, so we know who needs help the most." So nobody minded.
And now today, the government knows your name, date of birth, who you are married to, how many children you have, where you live, your picture, tracks you by number for taxation and draft purposes, and nobody minds. Except a few privacy nuts. But hey, don't worry - the government says their all a bunch of paranoid gun nuts. Just watch, I'll bet they'll be in a bunker someday, threatening your children, and we'll have to go after them with tanks. But we'll need their pictures, so we know who we're going after, so if you'll just line up here please, and smile...
I have tried and tried to see your point. I can't find one that makes sense.
Let's see... the Bible has sold more copies than any other book. Well, let's be fair. Prohibit publishing the Bible for 2000 years while allowing the Koran. There, now the Koran has sold more copies than any other book. Care to convert?
It's full of answers to "why."
I'll agree it's full of something. I've read it several times; was raised Catholic, you see. There's lots of answers "why," all right, but there's nothing to explain why those answers are the correct and final answers.
As a matter of fact, here's an interesting question you aren't allowed to contemplate, Mr. Christian: Why is it that there is no independent evidence that Jesus ever lived?
For example, there is documentation to support that there once was a man named Mohammed, who founded Islam. We even know today who is descended from him, through his daughter Fatima. Nearly every major religion with a central, human or human-like figure can point to documentation to show that that person actually lived at some point in history. But there is NO evidence of a man living at the time you claim he did, doing the things you claim he did. Romans kept excellent records; there should be plenty of circumstantial evidence. Executions by crucifiction were recorded in the Roman records; why is there no entry for the crucifiction of two thieves and one pretend king? (That being the offense he was supposedly killed for.) Why?
My God man, a true Christian does what the bible says is right, and doesn't do what the bible says not to do.
Yes, the perfect Christian is an unthinking, unquestioning idiot who stumbles through life with his eyes glazed, doing only what he is told to do. Sheep do that. Perhaps that's why "The Lord is my Shepard" is such a common theme. Baaa.
And don't try to judge what it says eather.
Sorry. Thinking again. Bad habit, I know.
If we all could afford to send our kids to 'religious schools' we would. you know, the one's where kids aren't getting shot... Might be those 'morals' on the wall, the 10 ones.
Not me. I went to one of your precious schools with the ten "morals" on the wall. Believe me, if I hadn't been as strong mentally and emotionally as I am, if the torture of your "good children" had been a little bit harder to endure, you would have heard of a school shooting a long time ago. And how about Suicides? Shall we discuss suicide statistics from your precious religous schools? I knew of three kids in various private religous schools in my immediate area who committed suicide. All of them left behind notes indicating school abuse from teachers and students as the primary cause. Strangely, I can't find any statistics on it though. Wonder why...
But, I think this draft would benefit from plain English. Or, correct English. Or, readable English. Or, readable any language.
I think it would benefit even more from having a little common-sense applied to it. Bad grammar and spelling I can wade through (to a point) but when the author is a fool, perfect grammar doesn't help.
There are a few problems with your argument, however. The first is the assumption inherent in your argument that blind, dyslexic, or poor people need your help to get by. If the only "disabled" people you know are in need of your help, then you need to get out more. Quite simply, ability is all that is necesary to live well, and ability is not limited to physical ability and wealth.
Second, define "equal terms with the rest of us." We all start out naked, screaming, and helpless. After that, we head in different directions, based on skill, luck, determination, and family. If your father is Bill Gates? Well, you got a head start on me. And if you don't know your father and your mother is a crack-using whore in the poor neighborhoods of Chicago/Moscow/Mexico City? Then I got a head start on you. But my skill and determination can overcome Bill Gates' child, and yours could overcome me. That is fair. That's a level playing field with equal terms. Forcing me - and Bill Gates' child - to give up some of our skill, luck, and determination for you is not, and it never will be. And I will fight that with every means at my disposal.
Southern Baptists never said our way is the only way, they simply do whatever they can to ban/outlaw/destroy any other religous or social group.
Catholics (the church I was raised in) quietly preached that we, being the only true faith, would be saved. Not that everyone else was necesarily damned, but we certainly had a leg up on the others.
Mormons. Not loudly, but quietly.
It's not the screamers I'm worried about, or the people that hate everyone else. Nazis don't worry me, nor the KKK, nor even (directly) the government. It's the quiet ones, that want to "save" me, that bother me. They'll talk about how wonderful they are while they're readying the gas chambers.
Chisel? Hah! What a wuss! Why, in MY day, we just beat on a big rock with a smaller rock! Get out of here with your smooth-edged lettering and your FORTRAN! Hell, we didn't even HAVE a common language, we just made it up as we went along, made cooperation a bitch, let me tell you...
Actually, no. I'm describing a nation that has a society rather than a government.
See, I'm not an anarchist - I'm a minimalist, otherwise known as a strict constitutionalist. I don't think we should all have the right to kill anyone who gets in our way in order to get more food; I think that if you or I are intelligent, capable people, then we shouldn't be handicapped by our government with social security taxes that we'd be better off without, or saddled with the burden of providing for all those less fortunate.
Does that mean I'm cruel and heartless? No. I'm willing to be charitable; if someone knocked on my door and explained that they were hungry, I'm more likely to say "sure, pal, pull up a chair, it's meatloaf night" than anything else. But I don't like having some faceless, nameless Washington freak take money from my paycheck, even if it's ostensibly to do the same thing.
Rome and the US have a few differences, yes. Not as many as you think, though. The death of the Republic of Rome came when the Senate became isolated from the people, and Ceasar became a dictator rather than a member of the populace. Look around you; Congress is populated by career politicians, rather than farmers, doctors, and factory workers. When is the last time you could relate to a member of Congress? As for the President - well, it's become a Ceasar position that changes name and face every four years. Used to be, Teddy Roosevelt opened the doors of the White House to let the citizens wander through. Not guided tours - sinply wander through "the People's House." While they did so, he'd stroll through with them, guiding them himself or simply talking to them. Presidents used to go out to museums and plays almost as members of the general public. Dangerous? Certainly. Just ask Lincoln. But so is climbing a light pole in the middle of a thunderstorm - linemen do that all the time. It's part of the job. Protecting the President from the people - well, the Secret Service do a necesary job. One maniac with a gun does not - and should not - represent the will of the people. But protecting the President ALL the time from ALL of the people makes him separate from the people - and more like a king or, yes, Ceasar.
Finally - this society, the one we live in, is the one that kills dreams. I dream of new frontiers; that's why I went to work for NASA. But our society is out of the frontier business; we'd rather squabble for scraps of bread and manufacture dreams of wealth or fame. The worthwhile dreams are dead; we punish those that dare to dream them and stifle the opportunity to live them.
The fool is not the one who advocates change; for change is inevitable, and at least he will prepared. The fool is the one standing on the beach, sqwacking about the perfection of the present, and trying to sweep back the tide.
Nope. A free one. You want murder to be illegal? Fine. You want the right to criticize the way I raise my kids, prevent me from worshiping my own religion or no religion at all, or keep constant surveillance on me and my family because I just might be a terrorist/child molester/[insert hot-button issue here]? Not fine.
One where somenone can come and rape your wife/daughter?
Nope. But I'll take one where I have the right to protect my wife/daughter from such people.
One where someone can take what you work hard to get, and there is nothing you can do about it?
Yeah, that would suck. Oh, wait - ever hear of social security? That program to "help you" that you can't opt out of?
The colonials fought together, using the very same things you're trying to outlaw, to gain the right to act independently. If I crash my car and get myself mangled, there shouldn't be any government program to fix me up - which means your tax bill wouldn't go up. Insurance? Can't help that - but it goes on whether you try to stop it or not. Read the legend of King Knut.
What you need to wake up and realize is that more individual freedom is not a bad thing. You want your tax bill to go down? Scrap welfare, scrap income tax (started "for the duration of the war" in the 40s, BTW) scrap Social Security, scrap Medicare, get rid of 90% of all government workers. Scrap the NEA, scrap every single government agency and program that should not be a government agency. (What else? Start with the USPS - that's a market function now. Education - check the test scores, privatized schools are doing so much better than public that it's not even funny. By killing income tax and eliminating all these government "taxes" that aren't labelled as such, you can eliminate most of the IRS - fold it back into the Treasury, where it belongs.)
Oh, we won't do it. The people like their Bread and Circuses, and so we'll chase the rabbit around and around some more. Until one day we realize that the track is a spiral, not a circle, and it doesn't lead up.
Of course, you'll refuse to believe it. Fools always do. You sit there and read your revisionist history and doing your new math, and it never occurs to your tiny, dark little mind that maybe, just maybe, this has all happened before. Change your statement to Latin, and it could be straight from the arguments before the fall of Rome. But hell, you don't care; things were so different then, and who reads that stuff, anyway? Gibbon is so damned heavy, and there're no pictures.
Meanwhile the rest of us watch in sadness, we lonely few who've been taught to think instead of simply memorizing... watch as the grand experiment, the wonderful land of hope and freedom known as the United States, decays and dies like every republic before it. For the same reasons. We don't need barbarians at the gate; they're inside already, and they're sitting on the throne.
Re:I don't know if I like the new format
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Return of The Onion
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Oh, Christ, not again...
Believe it or not, "eye travel" and the rest of your "pro" sh*t do not make web sites better. Far from it. The more crap people like you add to their site, the better the content has to be before I'll even try to read it.
I'll say it slower. C O N T E N T.
Which the Onion always did do well, and still do.
Re:Dreaming of space travel
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NASA's X-37
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You're right, but you're wrong...
It's like this. (BTW - I am an aerospace design engineer, specializing in structures and systems. Structurally, I am certain of my facts; entire systems, GIGO but otherwise I'm pretty sure. Anything else, I'm not a qualified "expert" although my degree says I am. We'll wing it.)
Since then, I've been enlightened. Probably the biggest kick in the pants came from reading _The Hubble Wars_ and _Dragonfly_, about the space telescope and Shuttle-Mir programs, respectively. I've now realized that the astronauts put up with a hell of a lot of crap for the one to three chances most of them get to fly in space. The politics is unbelievably craven. The programs NASA touts as its future -- like ISS -- are boondoggles that have been disavowed by the scientific community.
With you so far.:) The problem is that NASA was given the goal of becoming obsolescent, which is something no government agency will ever deliberately do. NASA was supposed to develop the technology to allow anyone access to space quickly, cheaply, and easily, and also to improve Air travel technology in the same way. (That first A, remember?) Well, along about 1975, NASA realized that they weren't needed for the Air stuff anymore - private industry had taken it all over and was doing more of it better than NASA could. Which meant that they had done their jobs, of course, but it also meant that they only had one thing left to keep them funded. Space. And so the games began.
There's a very interesting phenomenon in space research. There are only a few successful private aerospace companies in the US; Orbital is one, Hughes in their own kinky way, and one or two others. They all have one thing in common:
NASA is just a customer.
Whenever a start-up starts allowing NASA to "assist" them, things start to fall apart. Which is odd, because some of them had really good ideas. DC-X. Kistler's K-1. And on, and on, and on.
Two other odd things, and then I'll shut up. One's even on-topic.:)
1) Take a good look at the X-37. Then go dig up an old photo of Boeing's proposal on X-33. Hmmm. Shrink the X-33 a bit, and PRESTO! You've got an X-37. Wonder how that happened? Yet NASA tossed Boeing's design for X-33 because it was "technically unfeasable."
2) I recall hearing about the new NASA project to build solar-power sats in LEO or HEO and beam it down to Earth with microwaves. Hemos - or maybe Commander Taco, I forget - mentioned that it would take until 2015, and be really expensive, and NASA was commissioning a preliminary study to see if it was worth it. It jogged my memory, so I wandered over to my old bookshelf, the engineering one. Yup, right there - Gerard K. O'Neil, a study of production possibilities and techniques and costs. Published by NASA and Princeton, 1978. Conclusion? Too expensive. BUT there's a little graph O'Neill did showing lift costs versus production costs. What it boils down to is that in 1978, you could produce power on the order of 10 lbs. lift cost per kilowatt of power production - meaning that you have to lift ten pounds of material, men, and supplies into orbit to produce the capability for 1 kilowatt of power on the Earth. Which was too expensive. But USING 1978 LIFT TECHNOLOGY, the numbers showed that if you could manage to get it down to 5 lbs. per kilowatt, it became economically possible, and at 4, profitable. Anybody care to guess the production numbers for today, even still using 1978 lift capability?
We could produce at about 2.3 lbs. per kilowatt.
Is Commonwealth Edison or any other power company listening?
Re:The path to commercial space travel
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NASA's X-37
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Bullshit.
I worked on the periphery of the X-33 project for 2.5 years. Adjusting for inflation, they threw away more money than Apollo, made lots of promises (both Lockheed and NASA) and ignored reality.
Fact 1: The X-33 still hasn't flown. Why not? It is not capable of flight, because it doesn't have enough thrust, it's still 5000 lbs. (roughly 2 tonnes, for the metrically inclined) overweight.That's empty weight, by the way. No payload.
Fact 2: Building and operating VentureStars, even if they ever do manage to get one off the ground, will be expensive as hell. I've seen studies - conveniently shuffled off, of course - that prove non-reuseable Big Dumb Rockets using modern engine technology and perhaps just using a reusably engine pob would be 3 to 4 times cheaper than any X-33 derivative.
Fact 3:
NASA ate the fucking dream. We gave NASA our dreams of spaceflight, and they turned it into a dog-and-pony show. It started when they shitcanned fully-operational man-rated Saturn V rockets and turned them into lawn ornaments, continued through a "reuseable" shuttle that can't leave LEO, flys like a brick, and costs more per mission than a Saturn V. And finally, in choosing your precious VentureStar, they ignored the advice of their own engineers, selected the Lockheed proposal, and ignored an already-operating SSTO in the form of the Delta Clipper. Why? Nobody knows. Who in their right mind would select a paper-only program with no actual hardware and a lot of evidence that the design was crap over a flying prototype? Only NASA...
So why am I no longer working in the Space Program? Because I'm tired of it. NASA killed any chance of ordinary people flying into space, which is why I wanted to be an aerospace engineer in the first place. So if NASA asked me back tomorrow, I'd say no - I'd rather be a whore. It may be immoral and somewhat dirty - but so's working for NASA, and at least I've met some honest whores...
Voting is not an obligation, it is a privelage. You don't have (or rather, you shouldn't have) the right to walk in and blindly stab the ballot card in hopes that something will change. You have the privelage of considering the candidates, selecting the one that you believe will best serve the country, voting for them.
Random voting, and voting in your own personal interest, are two ways NOT to vote. I'd rather you stay home than just pick candidates at random. The reason Democrats try every year to "Get out the vote" is because historically, the uninformed and uninterested vote for Democrats, because they have a reputation for more bread and circuses for the masses.
I would have more respect for your argument if you showed any signs of intelligence or logical thought.
A) Logically, life must be possible in the Universe. Else you would not be here. Assuming you are.
B) If life is possible here, then it is possible where ever the conditions are like the conditions here.
C) The Sun is a normal, slightly variable G0 star in the main sequence. Slightly heavier than the average in heavy metals and Rare Earth metals, but that's not all that rare. Millions of stars just like it are scattered through the galaxy.
D) Every day, we find more planets around stars we never thought could possibly have them, indicating that planets are very common in the Universe.
E) Given all these things, we are extremely likely to find life someday. Through SETI? Who knows? Let's find out.
F) If the Earth First! and Greenpeace and other tree-hugging wackos would quit getting in the way of nuclear plants and solar power stations, we would not be using any fossil fuels. All the neo-luddites can go live in caves in the dark if they wish. I prefer the taste of well-cooked steak and nice, bright electric lamps and convenient hot water. But if you disagree, that's your right. Go ahead. Quit using your computer - you don't want to waste more fuel, do you?
Finally, the art of language is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. Quit mangling it.
I haven't heard you use logic yet. Neither did the originator of the thread. Logic, you see, is on the side of the Seti team, not yours. Your logic is the logic of the old school, the logic of those who told the Wright brothers they couldn't fly, and the logic that told Columbus he'd never succeed.
Your logic is based on the idea that "It's never happened before, so it will never happen." Which is, quite simply, wrong.
Go read Drake's equation. Plug any numbers you like into it, remembering that your numbers must be reasonable and must accept as your starting hypothesis that the lowest possible answer is 1 - Earth. Solve for 1 and see the numbers that are required, just to prove the point. They're preposterous - way, way too small. Any reasonable number provides for millions of planets with life. Intelligent life? Well, that's another question, but it's at least worth taking a look.
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Taxation without representation.
Clinton does not represent those who declare openly that he does not share their interests. It is their right, therefore, to demand fair and adequate representation at the table. Since the WTO accords could be seen as a form of taxation - in that they have costs, as well as benefits - it is the right of the people to fair representation of their choosing.
A) the Constitution of the United States guarantees the freedom of movement and assembly to all citizens.
B) the Constitution defines the President's role as the elected leader of the people. It does NOT make him anything more than a citizen of the US, like any other, temporarily filling in as spokeperson. It emphatically does not allow for the kinds of protections and civil distruptions that Clinton causes on a daily basis, specifically because those are the rights of a King, not the rights of a President.
You can't prove intent unless I cut the paper into individual bills, make sure they look real, and try to use them to purchase something. Period. Anything UP TO BUT NOT INCLUDING trying to exchange the copies for cash or merchandise is perfectly legal.
We consider it appropriate that the Boston Tea Party broke the law; it was an unjust law. OK.
We consider it innappropriate that some protestors in Seattle broke store windows - belonging to private individuals, not the government - and blocked streets and sidewalks. OK. So where's the line?
I think the majority of the protestors in Seattle knew exactly what they were doing, and they were doing it correctly. A few individuals chose to act inappropriately, and as such should be punished. But which ones? And who decides?
Should we punish the government for blocking all access to the area around the WTO? That's not only wrong, it's illegal. Why isn't anyone complaining?
1) splicing a gene to produce something "useful" like insulin into a plant is not an easy thing to do. You're taking an animal characteristic and trying to give it to a plant.
2) Insulin production is already as high as it needs to be, and relatively inexpensive, as well. Sheep and pigs naturally produce insulin, and can be easily modified to produce fully human insulin. (Sold under the trade name Humilin.)
3) If you wait for the government to decide to allow such things, and especially if you wait for the government to fund it and create them, you will be waiting a long time. Accept that a free market creates most - not all - of the things you will need, with the price of fair payment to the creator, and learn to accept it.
Actually, I think it will be easy to tell the difference for anothe reason. Take any good story, one you really liked, and plug it into just about any modern word processor with a grammar checker. It's quite simple; the best writers, be they short story authors, novelists, or columnists, know that a truly good story breaks the rules of grammar regularly. The hard part is defining how much is too much. And that, I don't think a computer can do.
Fortunately, (?) there wasn't. We don't think. Hard to say. That's probably just a spot on the image.
Right?
Since Europa is not in a perfectly circular orbit, and since Jupiter has 3 other "tidally significant" moons (i.e. big enough to matter on a macroscopic scale) you could get some killer tides. In fact, with Jupiter, the Sun, and Ganymede, Callisto, and Io all creating separate tidal patterns, you'd have five different high tides and ebb tides each day - day being the same as an orbit, of course, since we're locked - and those tides would all reinforce and cancel eachother out. 96 foot waves would probably require all five tides in sync - but that would happen several times a year, I think.
My head hurts...
That's actually the issue. The government would not walk up to someone from, say, 100 years ago and say "we want your name, date of birth, who you are married to, how many children you have, where you live, your picture, and the right to sell all of that information to the highest bidder, or failing that, give it away. We also want to issue you a number, and if we draw that number, you're going to have to join the army." 100 years ago, the average citizen would have started a revolution over less. (140 years ago, a bunch of people DID.)
Instead, the government said "We just want to start tracking births and deaths. It's important to know how many citizens we have." They had no real use for the information that anyone could see, other than a census - so nobody minded.
Then they started tracking marriages. There were some benefits, and they seemed to offset the problems, so nobody minded. Except a few privacy nuts - probably polygamists.
Then they start issuing ID numbers to everybody. "It's just a number; it helps us keep track of where government benefits should go. You don't want to lose out on benefit money, do you?" So nobody minded.
Then they started licensing drivers. Those new motor cars were dangerous if the driver was unskilled; so nobody minded.
Then they started tracking income. "We have to know where the poorest areas are, so we know who needs help the most." So nobody minded.
And now today, the government knows your name, date of birth, who you are married to, how many children you have, where you live, your picture, tracks you by number for taxation and draft purposes, and nobody minds. Except a few privacy nuts. But hey, don't worry - the government says their all a bunch of paranoid gun nuts. Just watch, I'll bet they'll be in a bunker someday, threatening your children, and we'll have to go after them with tanks. But we'll need their pictures, so we know who we're going after, so if you'll just line up here please, and smile...
Let's see... the Bible has sold more copies than any other book. Well, let's be fair. Prohibit publishing the Bible for 2000 years while allowing the Koran. There, now the Koran has sold more copies than any other book. Care to convert?
It's full of answers to "why."
I'll agree it's full of something. I've read it several times; was raised Catholic, you see. There's lots of answers "why," all right, but there's nothing to explain why those answers are the correct and final answers.
As a matter of fact, here's an interesting question you aren't allowed to contemplate, Mr. Christian: Why is it that there is no independent evidence that Jesus ever lived?
For example, there is documentation to support that there once was a man named Mohammed, who founded Islam. We even know today who is descended from him, through his daughter Fatima. Nearly every major religion with a central, human or human-like figure can point to documentation to show that that person actually lived at some point in history. But there is NO evidence of a man living at the time you claim he did, doing the things you claim he did. Romans kept excellent records; there should be plenty of circumstantial evidence. Executions by crucifiction were recorded in the Roman records; why is there no entry for the crucifiction of two thieves and one pretend king? (That being the offense he was supposedly killed for.) Why?
My God man, a true Christian does what the bible says is right, and doesn't do what the bible says not to do.
Yes, the perfect Christian is an unthinking, unquestioning idiot who stumbles through life with his eyes glazed, doing only what he is told to do. Sheep do that. Perhaps that's why "The Lord is my Shepard" is such a common theme. Baaa.
And don't try to judge what it says eather.
Sorry. Thinking again. Bad habit, I know.
If we all could afford to send our kids to 'religious schools' we would. you know, the one's where kids aren't getting shot... Might be those 'morals' on the wall, the 10 ones.
Not me. I went to one of your precious schools with the ten "morals" on the wall. Believe me, if I hadn't been as strong mentally and emotionally as I am, if the torture of your "good children" had been a little bit harder to endure, you would have heard of a school shooting a long time ago. And how about Suicides? Shall we discuss suicide statistics from your precious religous schools? I knew of three kids in various private religous schools in my immediate area who committed suicide. All of them left behind notes indicating school abuse from teachers and students as the primary cause. Strangely, I can't find any statistics on it though. Wonder why...
Actually, it's "moley." In as much as there is a proper way to spell such a word.
I think it would benefit even more from having a little common-sense applied to it. Bad grammar and spelling I can wade through (to a point) but when the author is a fool, perfect grammar doesn't help.
There are a few problems with your argument, however. The first is the assumption inherent in your argument that blind, dyslexic, or poor people need your help to get by. If the only "disabled" people you know are in need of your help, then you need to get out more. Quite simply, ability is all that is necesary to live well, and ability is not limited to physical ability and wealth.
Second, define "equal terms with the rest of us." We all start out naked, screaming, and helpless. After that, we head in different directions, based on skill, luck, determination, and family. If your father is Bill Gates? Well, you got a head start on me. And if you don't know your father and your mother is a crack-using whore in the poor neighborhoods of Chicago/Moscow/Mexico City? Then I got a head start on you. But my skill and determination can overcome Bill Gates' child, and yours could overcome me. That is fair. That's a level playing field with equal terms. Forcing me - and Bill Gates' child - to give up some of our skill, luck, and determination for you is not, and it never will be. And I will fight that with every means at my disposal.
Southern Baptists never said our way is the only way, they simply do whatever they can to ban/outlaw/destroy any other religous or social group.
Catholics (the church I was raised in) quietly preached that we, being the only true faith, would be saved. Not that everyone else was necesarily damned, but we certainly had a leg up on the others.
Mormons. Not loudly, but quietly.
It's not the screamers I'm worried about, or the people that hate everyone else. Nazis don't worry me, nor the KKK, nor even (directly) the government. It's the quiet ones, that want to "save" me, that bother me. They'll talk about how wonderful they are while they're readying the gas chambers.
Chisel? Hah! What a wuss! Why, in MY day, we just beat on a big rock with a smaller rock! Get out of here with your smooth-edged lettering and your FORTRAN! Hell, we didn't even HAVE a common language, we just made it up as we went along, made cooperation a bitch, let me tell you...
See, I'm not an anarchist - I'm a minimalist, otherwise known as a strict constitutionalist. I don't think we should all have the right to kill anyone who gets in our way in order to get more food; I think that if you or I are intelligent, capable people, then we shouldn't be handicapped by our government with social security taxes that we'd be better off without, or saddled with the burden of providing for all those less fortunate.
Does that mean I'm cruel and heartless? No. I'm willing to be charitable; if someone knocked on my door and explained that they were hungry, I'm more likely to say "sure, pal, pull up a chair, it's meatloaf night" than anything else. But I don't like having some faceless, nameless Washington freak take money from my paycheck, even if it's ostensibly to do the same thing.
Rome and the US have a few differences, yes. Not as many as you think, though. The death of the Republic of Rome came when the Senate became isolated from the people, and Ceasar became a dictator rather than a member of the populace. Look around you; Congress is populated by career politicians, rather than farmers, doctors, and factory workers. When is the last time you could relate to a member of Congress? As for the President - well, it's become a Ceasar position that changes name and face every four years. Used to be, Teddy Roosevelt opened the doors of the White House to let the citizens wander through. Not guided tours - sinply wander through "the People's House." While they did so, he'd stroll through with them, guiding them himself or simply talking to them. Presidents used to go out to museums and plays almost as members of the general public. Dangerous? Certainly. Just ask Lincoln. But so is climbing a light pole in the middle of a thunderstorm - linemen do that all the time. It's part of the job. Protecting the President from the people - well, the Secret Service do a necesary job. One maniac with a gun does not - and should not - represent the will of the people. But protecting the President ALL the time from ALL of the people makes him separate from the people - and more like a king or, yes, Ceasar.
Finally - this society, the one we live in, is the one that kills dreams. I dream of new frontiers; that's why I went to work for NASA. But our society is out of the frontier business; we'd rather squabble for scraps of bread and manufacture dreams of wealth or fame. The worthwhile dreams are dead; we punish those that dare to dream them and stifle the opportunity to live them.
The fool is not the one who advocates change; for change is inevitable, and at least he will prepared. The fool is the one standing on the beach, sqwacking about the perfection of the present, and trying to sweep back the tide.
Nope. A free one. You want murder to be illegal? Fine. You want the right to criticize the way I raise my kids, prevent me from worshiping my own religion or no religion at all, or keep constant surveillance on me and my family because I just might be a terrorist/child molester/[insert hot-button issue here]? Not fine.
One where somenone can come and rape your wife/daughter?
Nope. But I'll take one where I have the right to protect my wife/daughter from such people.
One where someone can take what you work hard to get, and there is nothing you can do about it?
Yeah, that would suck. Oh, wait - ever hear of social security? That program to "help you" that you can't opt out of?
The colonials fought together, using the very same things you're trying to outlaw, to gain the right to act independently. If I crash my car and get myself mangled, there shouldn't be any government program to fix me up - which means your tax bill wouldn't go up. Insurance? Can't help that - but it goes on whether you try to stop it or not. Read the legend of King Knut.
What you need to wake up and realize is that more individual freedom is not a bad thing. You want your tax bill to go down? Scrap welfare, scrap income tax (started "for the duration of the war" in the 40s, BTW) scrap Social Security, scrap Medicare, get rid of 90% of all government workers. Scrap the NEA, scrap every single government agency and program that should not be a government agency. (What else? Start with the USPS - that's a market function now. Education - check the test scores, privatized schools are doing so much better than public that it's not even funny. By killing income tax and eliminating all these government "taxes" that aren't labelled as such, you can eliminate most of the IRS - fold it back into the Treasury, where it belongs.)
Oh, we won't do it. The people like their Bread and Circuses, and so we'll chase the rabbit around and around some more. Until one day we realize that the track is a spiral, not a circle, and it doesn't lead up.
Of course, you'll refuse to believe it. Fools always do. You sit there and read your revisionist history and doing your new math, and it never occurs to your tiny, dark little mind that maybe, just maybe, this has all happened before. Change your statement to Latin, and it could be straight from the arguments before the fall of Rome. But hell, you don't care; things were so different then, and who reads that stuff, anyway? Gibbon is so damned heavy, and there're no pictures.
Meanwhile the rest of us watch in sadness, we lonely few who've been taught to think instead of simply memorizing... watch as the grand experiment, the wonderful land of hope and freedom known as the United States, decays and dies like every republic before it. For the same reasons. We don't need barbarians at the gate; they're inside already, and they're sitting on the throne.
Believe it or not, "eye travel" and the rest of your "pro" sh*t do not make web sites better. Far from it. The more crap people like you add to their site, the better the content has to be before I'll even try to read it.
I'll say it slower. C O N T E N T.
Which the Onion always did do well, and still do.
It's like this. (BTW - I am an aerospace design engineer, specializing in structures and systems. Structurally, I am certain of my facts; entire systems, GIGO but otherwise I'm pretty sure. Anything else, I'm not a qualified "expert" although my degree says I am. We'll wing it.)
Since then, I've been enlightened. Probably the biggest kick in the pants came from reading _The Hubble Wars_ and _Dragonfly_, about the space telescope and Shuttle-Mir programs, respectively. I've now realized that the astronauts put up with a hell of a lot of crap for the one to three chances most of them get to fly in space. The politics is unbelievably craven. The programs NASA touts as its future -- like ISS -- are boondoggles that have been disavowed by the scientific community.
With you so far. :) The problem is that NASA was given the goal of becoming obsolescent, which is something no government agency will ever deliberately do. NASA was supposed to develop the technology to allow anyone access to space quickly, cheaply, and easily, and also to improve Air travel technology in the same way. (That first A, remember?) Well, along about 1975, NASA realized that they weren't needed for the Air stuff anymore - private industry had taken it all over and was doing more of it better than NASA could. Which meant that they had done their jobs, of course, but it also meant that they only had one thing left to keep them funded. Space. And so the games began.
There's a very interesting phenomenon in space research. There are only a few successful private aerospace companies in the US; Orbital is one, Hughes in their own kinky way, and one or two others. They all have one thing in common:
NASA is just a customer.
Whenever a start-up starts allowing NASA to "assist" them, things start to fall apart. Which is odd, because some of them had really good ideas. DC-X. Kistler's K-1. And on, and on, and on.
Two other odd things, and then I'll shut up. One's even on-topic. :)
1) Take a good look at the X-37. Then go dig up an old photo of Boeing's proposal on X-33. Hmmm. Shrink the X-33 a bit, and PRESTO! You've got an X-37. Wonder how that happened? Yet NASA tossed Boeing's design for X-33 because it was "technically unfeasable."
2) I recall hearing about the new NASA project to build solar-power sats in LEO or HEO and beam it down to Earth with microwaves. Hemos - or maybe Commander Taco, I forget - mentioned that it would take until 2015, and be really expensive, and NASA was commissioning a preliminary study to see if it was worth it. It jogged my memory, so I wandered over to my old bookshelf, the engineering one. Yup, right there - Gerard K. O'Neil, a study of production possibilities and techniques and costs. Published by NASA and Princeton, 1978. Conclusion? Too expensive. BUT there's a little graph O'Neill did showing lift costs versus production costs. What it boils down to is that in 1978, you could produce power on the order of 10 lbs. lift cost per kilowatt of power production - meaning that you have to lift ten pounds of material, men, and supplies into orbit to produce the capability for 1 kilowatt of power on the Earth. Which was too expensive. But USING 1978 LIFT TECHNOLOGY, the numbers showed that if you could manage to get it down to 5 lbs. per kilowatt, it became economically possible, and at 4, profitable. Anybody care to guess the production numbers for today, even still using 1978 lift capability?
We could produce at about 2.3 lbs. per kilowatt.
Is Commonwealth Edison or any other power company listening?
I worked on the periphery of the X-33 project for 2.5 years. Adjusting for inflation, they threw away more money than Apollo, made lots of promises (both Lockheed and NASA) and ignored reality.
Fact 1:
The X-33 still hasn't flown. Why not? It is not capable of flight, because it doesn't have enough thrust, it's still 5000 lbs. (roughly 2 tonnes, for the metrically inclined) overweight.That's empty weight, by the way. No payload.
Fact 2:
Building and operating VentureStars, even if they ever do manage to get one off the ground, will be expensive as hell. I've seen studies - conveniently shuffled off, of course - that prove non-reuseable Big Dumb Rockets using modern engine technology and perhaps just using a reusably engine pob would be 3 to 4 times cheaper than any X-33 derivative.
Fact 3:
NASA ate the fucking dream. We gave NASA our dreams of spaceflight, and they turned it into a dog-and-pony show. It started when they shitcanned fully-operational man-rated Saturn V rockets and turned them into lawn ornaments, continued through a "reuseable" shuttle that can't leave LEO, flys like a brick, and costs more per mission than a Saturn V. And finally, in choosing your precious VentureStar, they ignored the advice of their own engineers, selected the Lockheed proposal, and ignored an already-operating SSTO in the form of the Delta Clipper. Why? Nobody knows. Who in their right mind would select a paper-only program with no actual hardware and a lot of evidence that the design was crap over a flying prototype? Only NASA...
So why am I no longer working in the Space Program? Because I'm tired of it. NASA killed any chance of ordinary people flying into space, which is why I wanted to be an aerospace engineer in the first place. So if NASA asked me back tomorrow, I'd say no - I'd rather be a whore. It may be immoral and somewhat dirty - but so's working for NASA, and at least I've met some honest whores...
Voting is not an obligation, it is a privelage. You don't have (or rather, you shouldn't have) the right to walk in and blindly stab the ballot card in hopes that something will change. You have the privelage of considering the candidates, selecting the one that you believe will best serve the country, voting for them.
Random voting, and voting in your own personal interest, are two ways NOT to vote. I'd rather you stay home than just pick candidates at random. The reason Democrats try every year to "Get out the vote" is because historically, the uninformed and uninterested vote for Democrats, because they have a reputation for more bread and circuses for the masses.
A) Logically, life must be possible in the Universe. Else you would not be here. Assuming you are.
B) If life is possible here, then it is possible where ever the conditions are like the conditions here.
C) The Sun is a normal, slightly variable G0 star in the main sequence. Slightly heavier than the average in heavy metals and Rare Earth metals, but that's not all that rare. Millions of stars just like it are scattered through the galaxy.
D) Every day, we find more planets around stars we never thought could possibly have them, indicating that planets are very common in the Universe.
E) Given all these things, we are extremely likely to find life someday. Through SETI? Who knows? Let's find out.
F) If the Earth First! and Greenpeace and other tree-hugging wackos would quit getting in the way of nuclear plants and solar power stations, we would not be using any fossil fuels. All the neo-luddites can go live in caves in the dark if they wish. I prefer the taste of well-cooked steak and nice, bright electric lamps and convenient hot water. But if you disagree, that's your right. Go ahead. Quit using your computer - you don't want to waste more fuel, do you?
Finally, the art of language is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. Quit mangling it.
Your logic is based on the idea that "It's never happened before, so it will never happen." Which is, quite simply, wrong.
Go read Drake's equation. Plug any numbers you like into it, remembering that your numbers must be reasonable and must accept as your starting hypothesis that the lowest possible answer is 1 - Earth. Solve for 1 and see the numbers that are required, just to prove the point. They're preposterous - way, way too small. Any reasonable number provides for millions of planets with life. Intelligent life? Well, that's another question, but it's at least worth taking a look.