And, generally speaking, do so earlier and more frequently than the rest of us, what with them being a little confused about how the whole process works...
In fact, I think I'm going to stop paying all my bills.
Oho, so you two are tight, I get it. < nudge, nudge >
Then, next time I try to buy something and either have to pay more or altogether can't buy it because my credit score is only two digits, I'll sue the credit reporting agencies, citing this case as president.
Ah. See, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Tip of the Day:
The word president is pronounced préz - ih - dent. It means, "one who presides", i.e. "one who takes the lead", deriving from Latin pre- "in front" or "before", and Latin sidere "to sit".
The word you're looking for is precedent, pronounced préss - eh - dent -- "that which has happened previously", deriving from Latin pre- "in front" or "before", and Latin cedere "to go".
Because if A is true, then B was colossally stupid. The machines would get fixed in short order.
Fixed in short order -- like the Diebold machines have been?
I'm not arguing that B was not colossally stupid, but there's no guarantee the machines will get fixed, even if there's a video tutorial on vote fraud put out by the very ES&S technicians themselves showing the SC voting machines getting tweaked in time for Alvin Greene.
Yes, Walmart is a good example of scale and market dominance, but there you also have a key difference -- Walmart is in the business of selling cheap goods, and everyone knows it: it's how Walmart bills itself. I would still posit that Walmart similarly walks a line in terms of striking the right pricing balance, but I also think the dynamics make this line much thicker for Walmart than for Microsoft of the automakers, in that cars and motorcycles, and even to some extent software, are durable goods, and are expected to last for longer with a minimum of maintenance, whereas Walmart's products are widely regarded as disposable.
If memory serves, the basic "value" equation comprises the three components of time, money, and quality -- Walmart's products excel in terms of money (low price), but kinda suck on the other two counts (minimal feature sets and shorter useful lifetimes). Partly because "cheap" is part of Walmart's public identity, if the company were to raise prices much, they would open themselves to competition. Meanwhile, cars and business software are more complex, generally offering longer product lifetimes, with companies competing more in terms of price and quality.
That's a bit rambling (Friday AM before my coffee), but I think that covers the points I'm trying to make. I hope it makes sense?
You have to BE here to be receive your guaranteed rights
This is a distressingly common misperception. Try reading the actual text of the Amendments -- look closely, for there is no mention of location.
Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Fifth Amendment – due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, eminent domain.
No person shall be held to answer for any capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
These Amendments apply to "the people" and to "person[s]". These apply no matter where you are.
You tread very dangerous ground indeed if you start arguing that not being within the borders of the country means you are no longer "of the people" and no longer a "person".
Perhaps we just are overdue for a revolution and a rewrite of our constitution and government to one that properly secures rights, because this 200 some year old one isn't held in high enough regard anymore...
Heck, I'd settle for a reboot instead of a rewrite, where the Constitution is put back in place as the actual legal foundation for anything in this country's legislation.
As things currently stand, there's so much awful unconstitutional cruft floating around that will likely never be cleared away... and then new laws are written and new case law decided based on this unconstitutional cruft. Meh. Idjimit (or corrupt) congress members can draft and even pass horribly written, prima facie unconstitutional legislation, and unless it's challenged and taken to court and judged unconstitutional, it stands. Herein lies the rub.
So how about we just clear house, clean out the cruft, and get back to basics. And make sure any knucklehead in public office actually understands and follows through on those various oaths to protect and uphold the Constitution.
This is how the Japanese got a foothold in the American auto industry, (but not in Europe) with cheap, crap automobiles.
They might have broken into the US automobile (and motorcycle) market by selling at low prices, but quality was indeed part of their leverage. My dad remembers when Yamaha first started making motorcycle sales in Minnesota -- people actually started buying them instead of Vulcans or Indians because 1) they didn't shake themselves apart, and 2) they would actually start in the winter. And I can easily recall how crap the US cars were in the late 70s through the 80s, when Toyota and Honda really started eating Detroit's lunch. My folks went in for a Saab and a Honda. My first two cars were a Honda Civic and a Toyota Corolla. Ford stood for "fix or repair daily", something the Japanese automakers wouldn't stand for -- or more accurately, couldn't afford. Ford et al couldn't afford it either, in the long run, but too few people were looking at the long run.
So no, I don't think market share alone determines success or market control, not long-term. A monopolist or consortium can control a market to some degree, but if things get too far out of balance, if they stray out of bounds (set prices too high, allow quality to degrade too far, try to lead their customer base in a very different unliked direction, etc etc), the time is ripe for outsiders to bring in new products and new brands and dethrone the controlling interests. Detroit got cocky, and was undone by its own hubris; it kinda looks like Microsoft is heading down that same road.
What is this "work" you speak of? We just want to sit on our bums and rake in the cash as it comes floating by. Just think of us as tunicates or sea anemones who have secured a really rich position in this market environment. We're permanently attached; it's why we don't need chairs to sit on, and can instead use them for projectile weaponry...
I agree with your general point, that group affiliations should mean bupkus in the end. That said, in the context of this thread, I brought up that my friend is Muslim (which, for whatever it might be worth, I'm not) *and* a good man simply to refute couchslug's implication that all Muslims are violent nasty people.
We've had this discussion, and his answer was "no". As he explained in more detail, his view is that killing is out of the picture, but that others in the Islam camp do not hew precisely to the "turn the other cheek" doctrine and do condone violence, against an attacker only, in cases of self-defense. Per his take on the issues, the hardliner terrorist bomber types are not proper Muslims. The mainstream of Muslim thought would condone violence to drive out an invader if that's what it took to get them to leave, as with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the Soviets in Afghanistan in years before, but even in such cases, any proper defender of the faith should only act against the oppressing soldiers, and should have compassion and mercy for all others. As such, suicide bombings in crowded markets is the antithesis of Islam.
Frankly, this strikes me as reasonable. I understand the ideals of Christian love, but I am also aware that if someone is attacking me, I am not guaranteed a favorable outcome either way, should I be passive, or should I actively resist. At least in an active role, I seem to maintain more control over the situation.
For that matter, when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, it's more just the old story of a local population fighting an invading force, no matter how much religion gets bandied about. Vietnam was cast in the light of the Free West against the Iron Curtain of Communism, but in the end the conflict was more about "get these damn furreners out of our country!" That's what we hear now from Arizona, from Palestine/Israel (where both sides claim the country as "ours"), from the Basque regions, from Ireland (though thankfully less these days), from East Turkmenistan/Xinjiang Province, etc. etc.
Unless you have some serious poll figures to back that up, I don't think you can fairly claim to speak for either any Christian or Muslim majority. Yes, there are a lot of people on both sides making a lot of unpleasant noise -- but there are many more people participating in both religions that we never hear from in this grand media-based echo chamber, and I'd hazard that few of them indeed support any kind of atrocity. Maybe I'm just being naïve, but my life experience to date seems to bear out the position that most people are actually pretty reasonable. There are assholes and idiots everywhere, sure enough, but most people aren't either of these, most of the time.
The argumentative structure, "A doesn't do B any more than C does D", means that C does *not* do D, and only compares the relationships between A and B, and between C and D.
When I say that extremists don't define Islam, I then analogize to say that Pat Robertson doesn't define Christianity. Both are factually true points. This in no way makes the case that Pat Robertson is the same as Ruholla Khomeini, and in no way tries to "drag" anyone down to any level.
kklein, for English faculty, you let your language run away with you. "Better" is a purely subjective value judgment. Define your terms -- what does "better" mean here? I'm sure the Lakota don't agree -- does this make your underlying argument "might makes right"? Or is it simply "what helps me and mine is right"? That's what it sounds like, which isn't a very extensible or defensible position. If you'd care to clarify, I'm curious.
Then there's the historical confusion. Have a look at 1491, among other books and publications taking a second look at the archaeology of the New World. It sounds increasingly like the Mississippi basin was home to sizable urban cultures, such as the Caddoan. And while the drier areas closer to the Rockies were indeed less densely populated, people have known how to smoke meat for time out of mind -- even assuming the pre-horse cultures of the prairie would slaughter a whole herd of buffalo at a time, proper preparation would allow them to harvest far more meat than just one or two animals' worth. There's also a growing consensus that human-set prairie fires weren't some sort of dangerous mistake or unwieldy hunting method, but rather a deliberate way of managing what grew where, to maintain the prairie as prairie and ensure proper pasture for the herds, and of managing when the fires happened -- the lack of deliberate controlled fire-setting allows a build-up of fuel in many areas of the western US, which then goes destructively all at once and of a sudden when things finally catch, due to a lightning strike or cigarette butt or what have you.
At least rename what HE practices to New Islam or something.
Interesting argument, and I see where you're coming from. To play devil's advocate though (perhaps the wrong turn of phrase given the high emotional tone of some posts in this thread?), this could be re-cast as a cultural and linguistic struggle within the greater Muslim movement itself. By way of analogy, my wife self-identifies as Christian, but espouses beliefs and behaviour very different from most televangelists and Bible-thumpers. Should she thus be disallowed from using the label "Christian"? Or, as she herself describes it, should she hold onto that moniker, and strive to make it mean what *she* wants it to mean?
The second path is harder, sure enough, and it swims upstream against whatever is the mainline public image. But whoever said life was easy "must have been selling something", to paraphrase a wiser author than myself.;)
Algebra, optics, and chivalry all arise as examples of indigenous Arabic or Islamic developments that were later adopted by Europe. Yes, the Arabs imported the concept of zero from India, as well as the basics of algebraic equations. But algebra as a full-blown discipline, independent of arithmetic or geometry, comes into its own in the Arab world.
Historical allegory aside, my intent was actually more to point out the fallacy of couchslug's professing to have a handle on the "true Muslim character". What is the "true Muslim character"? What is the "true Christian character"? My friend is a devout Muslim, and one of the kindest, gentlest, most sincere people you could hope to meet. I'd much rather spend time in his company than with some of the self-identified Christians I've had the misfortune to know, who claim some personal connection with Jesus at one moment, and happily spout bigoted hateful venom the next.
Islam's rejection of the foundational principles of modern civilization is a problem NOW.
Islam has its own foundational principles of modern civilization. That these foundational principles don't happen to match your own is an issue of cultural discourse, not absolutist violence. For that matter, some of the vaunted Enlightenment is actually predicated on learning imported from the Muslim world.
Coexistance isn't even possible because of their expansionist and supremisist ideas.
Swap "their" here for "our" -- for can we not say exactly the same thing about the US? The United States, for all its fanfare and mythologizing, has been one of the biggest thugs on the planet for the better part of a century.
That means Ann Coulter's solution of "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." It will be the worst human rights atrocity in recorded history but I'm damned if I see a better solution.
Given that the core tenet Christianity is essentially "love thy neighbor", it sounds like you've hit the nail on the head here -- I'd hazard that neither Ann Coulter nor yourself are all that familiar with the underlying ideals you both seem to be espousing. Never mind the general ignorance of what Islam is. Yes, there are wacko bad apples, and yes, some of these elements happen to run countries. These do not define Islam, any more than Pat Robertson speaks for all Christianity, though they do appear to define the face of Islam as perceived by many here in the US.
Moreover, any look at the cultural friction between the many countries and political groups identifying themselves as Islamic must look as well at how the various governments of the West are fully implicated in helping to polarize and poison the dynamics at work. For instance, the situation with Iran and militant Shiism owes much to the hamfisted bungling of MI5, the CIA, and our friend in the Gulf, BP. Being ignorant of the West's role in defining the anger and resentment expressed by many of the more vocal elements of the Muslim world is fixable and excusable; ignoring it is hypocritical. The West helped create this problem, and the West must also help solve it, constructively. Sadly, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Gaza, among other present issues, aren't helping.
Not only is George Washington dead, the Americans are turning Fundamentalist, so now we'll have Theocracy with a taste for dead brown people (erm, "Furreners"). The veneer of modern civilization is peeling off (granted, the glue never dried) and they are revealing their true Christian character.
I dunno, but it seems to me that dogmatic, xenophobic, recidivist behaviour is on the rise worldwide -- Islam certainly has no corner on the market for running amok, not now, and not historically, and the term "Christian" probably carries as much negative baggage through the years as "Muslim" does.
Meanwhile, Christianity also has no corner on the market for truly pious, love-thy-neighbour actions -- one of my good friends growing up made it his life's mission to open an elementary school for the poor in his home town, and a book drive at our high school helped get him the beginnings of their library. A fellow named Ali, who is Bangladeshi, and Muslim.
Yep, the fuel requirements alone just for getting into orbit are pretty steep. Adding in the requirements of refiring the motor and bringing the whole shebang to earth without a bang makes me think we're going to see even huger fuel cans flying up with even smaller payloads.
Then again, with the ability to start the motor while in freefall, I wonder if they plan to launch these things by dropping them from a high-altitude jet first? Getting them up high before they even fire would save some on fuel.
Slashdot Mirror
I always wondered why tracks recorded recently seem to be mixed so much louder than in the past. Thanks, NYCL, you've explained it all!
Cheers,
I ask out of genuine curiosity -- if anyone has a compelling reason why any attention should be paid to AOL, please explain.
Cheers,
And, generally speaking, do so earlier and more frequently than the rest of us, what with them being a little confused about how the whole process works...
Cheers,
My name is McMac, you insensitive clod!
Cheers,
I mean, c'mon, WEHOS? WE HOS!
Yeah, I'll certainly remember that -- though probably not the way Microsoft would have wanted...
Cheers,
Handheld gaming -- Yer doin' it wrong.
Yeesh!
Cheers,
So you have a high opinion of Obama, I take it?
Oho, so you two are tight, I get it. < nudge, nudge >
Ah. See, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Tip of the Day:
The word president is pronounced préz - ih - dent. It means, "one who presides", i.e. "one who takes the lead", deriving from Latin pre- "in front" or "before", and Latin sidere "to sit".
The word you're looking for is precedent, pronounced préss - eh - dent -- "that which has happened previously", deriving from Latin pre- "in front" or "before", and Latin cedere "to go".
Cheers,
Fixed in short order -- like the Diebold machines have been?
I'm not arguing that B was not colossally stupid, but there's no guarantee the machines will get fixed, even if there's a video tutorial on vote fraud put out by the very ES&S technicians themselves showing the SC voting machines getting tweaked in time for Alvin Greene.
Maybe I'm just too cynical. I actually hope so.
Cheers,
Yes, Walmart is a good example of scale and market dominance, but there you also have a key difference -- Walmart is in the business of selling cheap goods, and everyone knows it: it's how Walmart bills itself. I would still posit that Walmart similarly walks a line in terms of striking the right pricing balance, but I also think the dynamics make this line much thicker for Walmart than for Microsoft of the automakers, in that cars and motorcycles, and even to some extent software, are durable goods, and are expected to last for longer with a minimum of maintenance, whereas Walmart's products are widely regarded as disposable.
If memory serves, the basic "value" equation comprises the three components of time, money, and quality -- Walmart's products excel in terms of money (low price), but kinda suck on the other two counts (minimal feature sets and shorter useful lifetimes). Partly because "cheap" is part of Walmart's public identity, if the company were to raise prices much, they would open themselves to competition. Meanwhile, cars and business software are more complex, generally offering longer product lifetimes, with companies competing more in terms of price and quality.
That's a bit rambling (Friday AM before my coffee), but I think that covers the points I'm trying to make. I hope it makes sense?
Cheers,
This is a distressingly common misperception. Try reading the actual text of the Amendments -- look closely, for there is no mention of location.
These Amendments apply to "the people" and to "person[s]". These apply no matter where you are.
You tread very dangerous ground indeed if you start arguing that not being within the borders of the country means you are no longer "of the people" and no longer a "person".
Cheers,
Heck, I'd settle for a reboot instead of a rewrite, where the Constitution is put back in place as the actual legal foundation for anything in this country's legislation.
As things currently stand, there's so much awful unconstitutional cruft floating around that will likely never be cleared away... and then new laws are written and new case law decided based on this unconstitutional cruft. Meh. Idjimit (or corrupt) congress members can draft and even pass horribly written, prima facie unconstitutional legislation, and unless it's challenged and taken to court and judged unconstitutional, it stands. Herein lies the rub.
So how about we just clear house, clean out the cruft, and get back to basics. And make sure any knucklehead in public office actually understands and follows through on those various oaths to protect and uphold the Constitution.
Cheers,
They might have broken into the US automobile (and motorcycle) market by selling at low prices, but quality was indeed part of their leverage. My dad remembers when Yamaha first started making motorcycle sales in Minnesota -- people actually started buying them instead of Vulcans or Indians because 1) they didn't shake themselves apart, and 2) they would actually start in the winter. And I can easily recall how crap the US cars were in the late 70s through the 80s, when Toyota and Honda really started eating Detroit's lunch. My folks went in for a Saab and a Honda. My first two cars were a Honda Civic and a Toyota Corolla. Ford stood for "fix or repair daily", something the Japanese automakers wouldn't stand for -- or more accurately, couldn't afford. Ford et al couldn't afford it either, in the long run, but too few people were looking at the long run.
So no, I don't think market share alone determines success or market control, not long-term. A monopolist or consortium can control a market to some degree, but if things get too far out of balance, if they stray out of bounds (set prices too high, allow quality to degrade too far, try to lead their customer base in a very different unliked direction, etc etc), the time is ripe for outsiders to bring in new products and new brands and dethrone the controlling interests. Detroit got cocky, and was undone by its own hubris; it kinda looks like Microsoft is heading down that same road.
Cheers,
What is this "work" you speak of? We just want to sit on our bums and rake in the cash as it comes floating by. Just think of us as tunicates or sea anemones who have secured a really rich position in this market environment. We're permanently attached; it's why we don't need chairs to sit on, and can instead use them for projectile weaponry...
[/cynicism]
Cheers,
I agree with your general point, that group affiliations should mean bupkus in the end. That said, in the context of this thread, I brought up that my friend is Muslim (which, for whatever it might be worth, I'm not) *and* a good man simply to refute couchslug's implication that all Muslims are violent nasty people.
Cheers,
Clearly, what we need here is a car analogy!
Anyone?
Cheers,
We've had this discussion, and his answer was "no". As he explained in more detail, his view is that killing is out of the picture, but that others in the Islam camp do not hew precisely to the "turn the other cheek" doctrine and do condone violence, against an attacker only, in cases of self-defense. Per his take on the issues, the hardliner terrorist bomber types are not proper Muslims. The mainstream of Muslim thought would condone violence to drive out an invader if that's what it took to get them to leave, as with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the Soviets in Afghanistan in years before, but even in such cases, any proper defender of the faith should only act against the oppressing soldiers, and should have compassion and mercy for all others. As such, suicide bombings in crowded markets is the antithesis of Islam.
Frankly, this strikes me as reasonable. I understand the ideals of Christian love, but I am also aware that if someone is attacking me, I am not guaranteed a favorable outcome either way, should I be passive, or should I actively resist. At least in an active role, I seem to maintain more control over the situation.
For that matter, when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, it's more just the old story of a local population fighting an invading force, no matter how much religion gets bandied about. Vietnam was cast in the light of the Free West against the Iron Curtain of Communism, but in the end the conflict was more about "get these damn furreners out of our country!" That's what we hear now from Arizona, from Palestine/Israel (where both sides claim the country as "ours"), from the Basque regions, from Ireland (though thankfully less these days), from East Turkmenistan/Xinjiang Province, etc. etc.
Cheers,
Unless you have some serious poll figures to back that up, I don't think you can fairly claim to speak for either any Christian or Muslim majority. Yes, there are a lot of people on both sides making a lot of unpleasant noise -- but there are many more people participating in both religions that we never hear from in this grand media-based echo chamber, and I'd hazard that few of them indeed support any kind of atrocity. Maybe I'm just being naïve, but my life experience to date seems to bear out the position that most people are actually pretty reasonable. There are assholes and idiots everywhere, sure enough, but most people aren't either of these, most of the time.
Cheers,
Anon, you've completely missed my point.
The argumentative structure, "A doesn't do B any more than C does D", means that C does *not* do D, and only compares the relationships between A and B, and between C and D.
When I say that extremists don't define Islam, I then analogize to say that Pat Robertson doesn't define Christianity. Both are factually true points. This in no way makes the case that Pat Robertson is the same as Ruholla Khomeini, and in no way tries to "drag" anyone down to any level.
Thanks for playing. Have a nice day.
Cheers,
kklein, for English faculty, you let your language run away with you. "Better" is a purely subjective value judgment. Define your terms -- what does "better" mean here? I'm sure the Lakota don't agree -- does this make your underlying argument "might makes right"? Or is it simply "what helps me and mine is right"? That's what it sounds like, which isn't a very extensible or defensible position. If you'd care to clarify, I'm curious.
Then there's the historical confusion. Have a look at 1491, among other books and publications taking a second look at the archaeology of the New World. It sounds increasingly like the Mississippi basin was home to sizable urban cultures, such as the Caddoan. And while the drier areas closer to the Rockies were indeed less densely populated, people have known how to smoke meat for time out of mind -- even assuming the pre-horse cultures of the prairie would slaughter a whole herd of buffalo at a time, proper preparation would allow them to harvest far more meat than just one or two animals' worth. There's also a growing consensus that human-set prairie fires weren't some sort of dangerous mistake or unwieldy hunting method, but rather a deliberate way of managing what grew where, to maintain the prairie as prairie and ensure proper pasture for the herds, and of managing when the fires happened -- the lack of deliberate controlled fire-setting allows a build-up of fuel in many areas of the western US, which then goes destructively all at once and of a sudden when things finally catch, due to a lightning strike or cigarette butt or what have you.
Cheers,
Interesting argument, and I see where you're coming from. To play devil's advocate though (perhaps the wrong turn of phrase given the high emotional tone of some posts in this thread?), this could be re-cast as a cultural and linguistic struggle within the greater Muslim movement itself. By way of analogy, my wife self-identifies as Christian, but espouses beliefs and behaviour very different from most televangelists and Bible-thumpers. Should she thus be disallowed from using the label "Christian"? Or, as she herself describes it, should she hold onto that moniker, and strive to make it mean what *she* wants it to mean?
The second path is harder, sure enough, and it swims upstream against whatever is the mainline public image. But whoever said life was easy "must have been selling something", to paraphrase a wiser author than myself. ;)
Cheers,
Algebra, optics, and chivalry all arise as examples of indigenous Arabic or Islamic developments that were later adopted by Europe. Yes, the Arabs imported the concept of zero from India, as well as the basics of algebraic equations. But algebra as a full-blown discipline, independent of arithmetic or geometry, comes into its own in the Arab world.
Cheers,
Historical allegory aside, my intent was actually more to point out the fallacy of couchslug's professing to have a handle on the "true Muslim character". What is the "true Muslim character"? What is the "true Christian character"? My friend is a devout Muslim, and one of the kindest, gentlest, most sincere people you could hope to meet. I'd much rather spend time in his company than with some of the self-identified Christians I've had the misfortune to know, who claim some personal connection with Jesus at one moment, and happily spout bigoted hateful venom the next.
Islam has its own foundational principles of modern civilization. That these foundational principles don't happen to match your own is an issue of cultural discourse, not absolutist violence. For that matter, some of the vaunted Enlightenment is actually predicated on learning imported from the Muslim world.
Swap "their" here for "our" -- for can we not say exactly the same thing about the US? The United States, for all its fanfare and mythologizing, has been one of the biggest thugs on the planet for the better part of a century.
Given that the core tenet Christianity is essentially "love thy neighbor", it sounds like you've hit the nail on the head here -- I'd hazard that neither Ann Coulter nor yourself are all that familiar with the underlying ideals you both seem to be espousing. Never mind the general ignorance of what Islam is. Yes, there are wacko bad apples, and yes, some of these elements happen to run countries. These do not define Islam, any more than Pat Robertson speaks for all Christianity, though they do appear to define the face of Islam as perceived by many here in the US.
Moreover, any look at the cultural friction between the many countries and political groups identifying themselves as Islamic must look as well at how the various governments of the West are fully implicated in helping to polarize and poison the dynamics at work. For instance, the situation with Iran and militant Shiism owes much to the hamfisted bungling of MI5, the CIA, and our friend in the Gulf, BP. Being ignorant of the West's role in defining the anger and resentment expressed by many of the more vocal elements of the Muslim world is fixable and excusable; ignoring it is hypocritical. The West helped create this problem, and the West must also help solve it, constructively. Sadly, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Gaza, among other present issues, aren't helping.
Cheers,
I dunno, but it seems to me that dogmatic, xenophobic, recidivist behaviour is on the rise worldwide -- Islam certainly has no corner on the market for running amok, not now, and not historically, and the term "Christian" probably carries as much negative baggage through the years as "Muslim" does.
Meanwhile, Christianity also has no corner on the market for truly pious, love-thy-neighbour actions -- one of my good friends growing up made it his life's mission to open an elementary school for the poor in his home town, and a book drive at our high school helped get him the beginnings of their library. A fellow named Ali, who is Bangladeshi, and Muslim.
Just sayin'.
Cheers,
Yep, the fuel requirements alone just for getting into orbit are pretty steep. Adding in the requirements of refiring the motor and bringing the whole shebang to earth without a bang makes me think we're going to see even huger fuel cans flying up with even smaller payloads.
Then again, with the ability to start the motor while in freefall, I wonder if they plan to launch these things by dropping them from a high-altitude jet first? Getting them up high before they even fire would save some on fuel.
Cheers,
We have a winner! :D
Cheers,